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.

Margaret makes a spreadsheet with the price, size, state of repair, floor plan quality, zoning law situation, neighbor situation, et cetera of each one, and sends it to Bella with her top few choices highlighted.

"Oh good, we both like this one."

"I guess now we make an offer and see if they believe we mean it or if we need to show up with the cash in a briefcase or something."

"It'd be kind of funny if we did! I've never carried a briefcase, perhaps I'd take to it."

"I think you're supposed to use a check, but it is a funny mental image. I wouldn't want to use a briefcase for most things when backpacks are a more symmetrical weight and leave both your hands free, but maybe briefcase people know something I don't."

"It's aesthetic. With a backpack your options are student and hiker. Briefcases open 'businessperson'."

"I think I would look ridiculous trying to dress like a businessperson. You'd look excellent, though."

"I don't care much about what I wear, honestly, but I can imagine caring. I'd probably go full on fantasy paperback wizard lady if I did though. Not sure what that implies for choice of bags."

"That would be so awesome. I guess if I ever get bags of holding figured out, that'll be the logical choice, but aesthetically . . . cloth shoulder-bag embroidered to match your wizard robes? Heh, you could embroider actual runes on them and have magic robes."

"That sounds dangerous."

"Yeah, probably more likely to get damaged than a tattoo even if you could enchant them to be durable without making them stiff."

"Yeah, you could get away with it but I'll probably just do the stars and moons thing."

"Honestly I'll probably just stick to boring clothes rather than try to find wizard robes with pockets and then get used to them."

"Also legit, also something I might do, they'd be a pain to replace."

"I guess when we go public we're going to need to optimize a bunch of things for being taken seriously, but I don't actually know what the proper outfit is for revealing the existence of new species."

"If it were aliens I'd say a labcoat, but..."

"Yeah, that feels off. I think the closest thing to actual precedent is Victorian explorers announcing the discovery of the platypus or dinosaur fossils or whatever, but dressing like that would also be ridiculous."

"Maybe I'll get a wizard hat for special occasions and wear it over jeans and a t-shirt and call it good."