"We are asking Tea what the matter is with the flying vehicles that people don't just fly them around everywhere."

"They're expensive to make or acquire, many of them can only land and take off at specialized flat locations, they require skill to operate, and they are often large enough to be unwieldy for casual use."

"That sounds very inconvenient on all counts."

"If you'd met me last year I could've introduced you to someone who could supply you with flying vehicles more convenient than the standard, but unfortunately he is now dead."

"Why can't anyone else do it?"

"There are other people who can, but none who are nearly so likely to. You'd have to find someone who not only had the relevant expertise and resources, but also knew about magic and was willing to help you."

"Why doesn't anyone who knows about magic just tell everyone else?"

"Because no one wants to do it first. Which is an oversimplification but not a drastic one."

"What would happen to whoever did it first?"

"Uncertainty about that is one of the reasons people are reluctant to try it," he says. "An informed local conspiracy might decide to silence them. A previously uninformed local conspiracy might react poorly to the revelation and become hostile to them in any of a variety of inconvenient or hazardous ways. Previously uninformed non-conspirators might react similarly."

"The field of magic doesn't look like it's been principally pioneered by the risk-averse."

"And yet."

"No other obvious obstacles?"

"What do you mean?"

"There isn't some - bizarre spell over everything making it impossible to say or impossible to be believed, there hasn't been a long conspicuous history of people trying and unpleasantly failing...?"

"I think you may be overestimating the degree to which anyone consciously assesses the risks," he says. "My personal reasons for not having gone public include the fact that I don't have a good reason to try it in the first place and the fact that it observably hasn't happened despite the lack of overt obstacles."

"Fair enough, I suppose."

"Do you have any theories about what the covert obstacles might be, if they exist?"

Shrug.

"I don't expect it to be useful to the project to announce magic to mortals in general, but having to operate as if it's a secret is an unhelpful constraint..."

"My advice is that you refrain from blatantly announcing the existence of the supernatural to mortals until you anticipate some direct benefit from doing so. I don't know that there is some covert obstacle that might get in your way, but I don't know that there isn't, and it seems plausible, so it's worth waiting until you'd get something out of it that might make up for whatever unknown inconvenience would befall you."

"I suppose that's a reasonable threshold."

"I thought so."