"Honestly I just want to get to level 5 and be able to blast zombies and ride a magic horse."

"Those are like signature paladin class features, it's kind of lame you have to wait that long."

"Yeah. Maybe the designers were imagining longer campaigns, or more XP early on, or something."

"Or just starting at level five, that's what I do when I'm DMing."

"Makes sense. I like the simplicity of starting at level 1 for my first proper campaign, because there's less to keep track of, but when you're more experienced I can see the appeal of skipping a few levels."

"Did you play a less proper campaign before?"

"I did like two sessions a couple years ago, but the party was too big and the scheduling didn't work and I had to drop out."

"Aw, that sucks."

"Yeah. I'm glad it's working out better this time; I'm having lots of fun."

"Good!"

"I should get on home and go to sleep; see you next week!"

"G'night, Margaret!"

"Good night!" And home to lounge in bed in fullform and then sleep. 

Once she has her water-boiling stamp done and checked, she starts in on testing it. What are the largest residual meanings, and can she detect any side-effects related to them? Does it get water to a lower temperature if it starts out cooler? Does a larger quantity of water get cooled less?

Her largest residual meaning is "light" and if she looks really closely the water might sparkle a little for a bit. With an incantation aiming for a specific temperature, a larger amount of water or a colder amount does not get cooled less unless she starts with really cold water or many liters of it.

That's weirdly different from the heating spell! That one had more variable results even with a specific temperature in the incantation. Maybe it's because she has smaller residuals. Or it's somehow an effect of the other one being designed for boiling rather than heating, though how that could be it when they both use only two runes in the first layer she couldn't begin to say.

During one of her evenings of experimentation, the fire alarm goes off. Margaret stutters a word of her incantation.

Nothing happens.

The diagram, if she checks, is used up.

She thought she was dead for sure for a moment there. Did she only imagine stuttering? But the diagram was used up . . . maybe there's some threshold of stuttering that makes the spell fail but not catastrophically? She wants to know but doesn't want to find out.

The shrieking noise cuts off; her mother's voice comes up from downstairs saying, "Sorry! Everything is fine, but tomorrow's dinner is going to be pizza."

"Okay!" Margaret yells back. "Just glad nobody's hurt or anything!"

She can't bring herself to try the spell again for a couple days after that. At her next trip to the library, she looks for history books again. Is there anything else on dragons or sphinxes or the extinction war?

Aftermath: Lingering Effects of the Extinction War in the Social Fabric of Nonhuman Civilization

Eastern Dragons, or, Stop Calling Us That

Septima and the Dragon: A Novel

Sphinxes in Popular Culture

Zinnia Ostler's Collected Primary Sources From The Extinction Era

She'll take Aftermath as the one most obviously relevant to her own problems, the book of primary sources on general principle, and something random on bugbears to avoid having nothing but war books. She heads to the checkout with the bugbear book on top.

The librarian checks her out and doesn't seem suspicious at all!

Of course not. She hasn't done anything suspicious. She just feels constantly suspicious all the time. She'll read the bugbears book "outside" near the pond for a while.

Bugbears have a unique cultural tradition of actively preferring single parenthood - usually, moms keep daughters and dads keep sons, and the parent who isn't keeping the kid wanders off to pick up a new relationship. Bugbear family trees are titanic, intricate things; there are some examples.

Single parenthood sounds exhausting, but apparently it works for them. Do they help out with their friends' children a lot, or something?

They're actually pretty solitary! Maybe bugbear babies are easier or something.

Maybe! It's not really her business unless she falls in love with a bugbear, she supposes. What is her business is what that little mom-and-pop place is serving today.