She shakes her head. "You don't know that yet," she repeats. "Most people can't feel the magic until they hold a - large pin, a magic weapon - and try a few times."

"...We really should figure out some way of confirming your story that doesn't involve dying. But as long as it's temporary it can't hurt to make one anyway, how are they shaped?"

"Like this—"

She draws a plain cylinder on a spare sheet of paper. It's about an inch wide and ten inches long.

"If you make a gold one it will only do light, it won't be a weapon."

She makes a gold one.

"You were right," she says thoughtfully. "I did speak too soon."

Kyralaine smiles.

"I wanna try!"

Emily hands her the wand.

She holds it for a moment, trying to figure out how to—oh, huh. It's subtle, but there's definitely a feeling of something there.

So then how do you use this subtle feeling to make light...?

She tries manipulating the faintly perceptible energy field in various possible ways. The magic word turns out to be 'squeeze'. The end of the wand lights up like a flashlight until she mentally releases it.

"Nifty," she says, passing it to Anna.

"How'd you make it go?"

"You kind of... squeeze it? But like, magically?"

She tries that. Flashlight!

"Cool."

"No kidding."

Anna offers the wand to Edie. "Wanna try?"

"Definitely." Squeeze. Light. "You know, Emily, I bet you could have a lot of fun with a wand of liquefaction and the rose telekinesis."

"Oooooh."

"...What exactly are you plotting to liquefy, here?"

"Nothing specific, yet, but liquefied objects reconstitute, so if I liquefied, say, a piece of glass, and then telekinetically shaped it until it was solid again..."

"Ooh, huh."

"Wouldn't necessarily even need telekinesis, depending on viscosity; naively I'd expect glassblowing with this stuff to be harder but safer, and molds exist."

"I guess we can experiment, but saving the world probably comes first."

"Definitely."

"Yes," says Ashras.

"It's a pity scrying isn't a rose power, or at least not one we have yet."

"What?"

"Yeah we haven't explained the roses have we. Do we want to explain the roses. We probably want to explain the roses."