"I don't know what you call verifiable, but I feel pretty verified. The maintenance mode is there, I can use it now that I've done it once - it's grown in, not built in, arose naturally instead of being designed as part of my systems, that's why I didn't know about it."

"Okay, this is starting to sound beyond the bounds of readily accessible divinatory spells unless she's doing serious inventing in her spare time."

"Somehow I thought so," he says.

"The majority of people with her diagnosis are both not wizards and incapable of day to day functioning, though," says Kaylo. "They start hearing things when they're little kids and can't learn to do arithmetic or name the capitals of the countries of the world or whatever."

"I can believe it's a strain to hear stuff talking all the time," says Brilliance. "It sounded like not really the kind of thing you could turn off."

"...possibly," allows Kaylo. "Again not a psychologist."

"Okay, but between 'crazy person who invented spells to tell her all the stuff her crazy is supposed to be telling her, including really obscure things about a kind of magic she can't possibly have heard of before today' and 'actually her magic just works like she says it does', you can see why I might go for the second thing, right?"

"Yyyyes."

"I wonder if Leekath in particular is just an anomaly of some kind or if this would turn up in a meta-analysis."

"Meta-analysis?"

"If I read all the studies that have ever been done on vampiric inanimate audition with this in mind is it going to shake out in an obvious way."

"Couldn't tell ya. Go ahead and try it," he says. "Still wanna try to invent spells that'll let you look at my magic?"

"Yeah, it's on my list."

"List of what?"

"List of things to research or invent."

"What else is on your list?"

"Oh, figure out what the heck channeling capacity is, develop the theory of Lialen, that kind of thing."

"What the heck is channeling capacity?" he asks, giggling.

"Nobody knows! We can use it and we can count it but we can't figure out what it is. That's why I want to find out."

"Sounds hard. Any ideas so far?"

"Not really. I'm trying to be thorough about checking preexisting research, of which there is a great deal, all of which leads nowhere."

"Well, that sounds tremendously boring."

"It really is, but if I skip to the fun part there's always the chance someone will go 'a-ha, you have been operating in ignorance of Obscure Study #945', which would be less fun."

"Gotcha. Hmm," he says.