"Huh, I wouldn't have expected not metamorphosing would make them sick. Axolotls are fine."

"I'm just speculating really; I don't know enough about frog biology to say anything for sure. I do think the tadpoles aren't getting the full benefit of me being a dragon; I didn't catch myself suppressing anything when I was doing the casting and I think it's because I wanted to know what happens more than I wanted to avoid specific results."

"Huh, that hadn't occurred to me. It's good you have a way to check if you're suppressing anything or not."

"Yeah, it's been really good for my peace of mind, especially with planning to teach. As far as I can tell it goes off what I want unless I'm not thinking about it and then it lines up pretty well with what I would or wouldn't be happy with."

"Somewhat more user friendly than mine."

"Yeah, I'm glad mine doesn't knock me unconscious."

"And I don't even know why! I don't know if I'm damaging anything delicate by magically waking myself up after a second."

"Yikes. . . . Do you want to try doing something that would knock you out while I deliberately try to suppress just the unconsciousness part? Or just try to suppress anything that would be harmful to you?"

"That's a good idea! Of course, if it turns out sphinx magic is harmful no matter what or something then I don't have an obvious thing to do in response but I guess I could raise my prices."

"Yeah." If it turns out sphinx magic is dangerous Margaret is going to invest a lot more work in healing spells. "Maybe we can do that with next week's batch of medallions so you don't do any extra magic just for the test."

"Good plan."

Speaking of next week, they can go ahead and book that house tour.

How exciting. They can make sure it doesn't have black mold or anything.

It does not! It does have mediocre insulation and some questionable lighting fixture placement decisions but overall it's pretty good. The real estate agent seems to have decided they're doing this as research for a school project rather than as an attempt to buy real estate, and is unusually detailed and candid in his explanations as a result.

Gosh, that's the most helpful result that has ever eventuated from somebody not taking a teenager seriously! And means they will not stand out as very odd if they ask weird things about its zoning and how much maintenance the yard wants and stuff.

The real estate agent doesn't know a ton about zoning, but she knows what words people who are looking to change the purpose of a building tend to use and can point them in the right direction. Lawn maintenance is one of those things where any three people will have at least two opinions, but this place doesn't have a neighborhood association so there wouldn't be three people whose opinions actually matter.

"Really? My dad is a cop and he gets calls about people not maintaining their yards - not like 'it's six inches tall' but like 'it's getting weed seeds everywhere'."

The real estate agent makes a face like that level of lawn non-maintenance was so outside her overton window that it hadn't occurred to her to think about it and makes some vague noises about well yes, some level of maintenance is just necessary.

And how big is this yard.

This particular house is kind of in the middle of nowhere, so the edges of the property aren't obvious, but the agent can point out the boundary lines. It's a pretty big piece of land by suburbia standards, but much of it is woods that don't need any maintenance and the nearest neighbor who could theoretically complain about the smaller grassy part is a long way off.

Hmm, all right. (Househunting is kind of fun.)

House-hunting is oddly fun. Somehow the idea of running a school seems a lot more real when she can imagine herself giving a lecture in this room, or looking over students' diagrams at that table.

There are a lot of prospective houses out there, and it probably makes sense to look at at least a few different ones before making an offer.

Bella agrees.

The housing market of the rural western United States is happy to provide more prospective houses than even a pair of teleporters can reasonably do tours of.

Then they only need deign to view the very loveliest ones.