Yeah, but I probably still need someone who can heal. Maybe I should try a sphinx- or angel-finding spell, I know magic understands critter types from when I was checking which of my parents is a wyvern.

I mean is there an obvious reason you can't rework it so it can suck the magic out of a healing rock or something?

I guess I could try that? I expect if that would work they would have done it that way to begin with, so they didn't need to have specific people on hand. Also, of all the places to experiment with something new, the healing part of a medallion is one of the scarier ones.

I'm not sure we should assume they had a goal of scaling up production so they wouldn't need specific people on hand, it could have been a sort of IP thing.

Maybe, yeah. And populations were smaller back then.

It's still weird that Bella would suggest changing something in an unfamiliar spell without trying to do it the original way first. Which reminds her of a different weird thing about Bella.

I have another question, but it's kind of nosy.

Yeah?

So, when I went to give you the teleport, I scried ahead to make sure you were alone and interruptible. But the first time I tried you weren't, and I accidentally saw you getting a tattoo of an invisibility diagram. And my question is, why invisibility? 

It's not my only one. I'm getting a few different emergency ones.

Okay. I would have gone for healing and your phasing-through-walls thing first. It's smart of you to be prepared.

And with that she exits the library and returns to translating.

Bella doesn't seem to have anything to text her about for a while.

Then eventually:

I have a translation! Except for the two weird bits I mentioned it all makes sense. Want me to email it?

Sure, I'd be happy to look it over.

Okay, emailed.

Margaret gets out her dragon magic detector and her coordinates-finding diagram. She's just not willing to try changing things in the medallion process without at least trying to avoid it. Sure, she can apparently suppress unwanted magic, but there's no guarantee that applies to effects that wouldn't kick in until someone started using a thing she made. 

Also, much as she hates the fact, if her winged lion friend doesn't want her looking for sphinxes, that's kind of a reason to look.

First, as a proof of concept, she asks for the latitude and longitude of the nearest dragon.

This has the expected result of finding Margaret.

The second nearest dragon is presumably at her mom's office. The third nearest is . . .?

Spell fail.

That has any implications for her possibly eventually having children. If she finds someone to have children with, and if the double-layered masquerade comes down enough that it's safe, she's going to feel kind of obligated. But that's a long way off.

Now, where is the nearest sphinx?

Phoenix, Arizona.

She wasn't not expecting that but she wasn't fully expecting it either. She pulls Bella's location by name, checks that they match, and then sits down. 

Bella's a sphinx. Which is fine, great even, except Margaret's a dragon. And for all Margaret knows, Bella grew up hearing stories of every dastardly deed a dragon ever did. And since she knows that sphinxes survived the war, she's probably at least thought about whether dragons did too, which means Margaret is way less safe than she thought. She needs to hide better, she needs to find out Bella can be trusted . . . 

She needs to not weave herself into a web of deceit. If she wants to convince Bella that there's no need to start the war again, cloak and dagger and trying to manipulate her is the wrong way to go. After all, this is Bella she's thinking about. Is someone who wants to unite critters and humans, someone who breaks into hospitals to cure cancer patients and then confesses rather than let someone else take the fall, really going to start a race war? Not if Margaret doesn't give her a reason to. And she owes Bella the truth.

Bella--can you call me when you're somewhere private and have time to talk? I have something important but not urgent I need to tell you over the phone.

And then she sits and waits and fidgets with her hair until it looks like she's incompetently tried to curl it. She doesn't want to have this conversation over text.

Guess on how long the conversation will run?

It might go for a while; maybe budget an hour for it?

After dinner works for me.

Okay.

In the time between now and then, she debates looking for other sphinxes for a while, and eventually decides against it.

Bella calls her at seven fifteen.

"Hi. I have something kind of scary to say, so I want to start out by saying I mean well and I don't think you have anything to be scared of."

"I'm. Actually a dragon."