"Oh, huh. I guess. This is starting to sound like a book premise. The problem is most people who can write don't write about how critters really are, 'cause, you know, can't publish very far, but maybe somebody'd do it as a writing exercise?"

"I don't know anything about fiction writing, but it does sound like a fun idea. Especially if you go full 'everything but the kitchen sink' with it--aliens, fairies, surviving colonies of dragons and sphinxes hiding from each other, wizards, psychics, all at the same time."

"Ooh, psychics."

"The psychics and the wizards would probably have the easiest time noticing any of the others. The fairies would have either the hardest time hiding or the easiest depending on whether they had a fairyland to hide in."

"I was assuming either that or they're just really really small."

"Yeah, they could be like bug sized and anybody who caught a glimpse of one would think they saw a butterfly. And then the aliens could be any of a dozen different ways, they could shapeshift or turn invisible or be hanging out in orbit and occasionally abducting people but not actually have a way to hide on the surface."

"Yeah, like that. Lots of options."

"Yeah. I have too much else going on to try writing a story, but maybe at some point. Or you could write it." They arrive at the restaurant and get seated, Margaret orders the peanut noodles.

Brenda gets eggdrop soup and sesame chicken.

"Now that I've got some money, I was thinking of getting a ring of my own. Can I put in a request for something with a green stone in it?"

"Sure, is that as specific as you wanna be?"

"Maybe malachite, if you have it? And silver wire? Your artistic judgement is better than mine, I'll probably like what I get better if I leave it to you."

"Malachite and silver, you got it!"

"Awesome." She digs into her peanut noodles.

"You look kinda - lost in thought?"

"I don't have any reason to think there actually are any aliens or wizards or fairies out there, but it occurs to me that in theory a dragon or a sphinx could have survived the war and had descendants who don't even know they're critters."

"I guess, but it's been a long time, lots of chances for them to turn up. There's blank medallions that work for anyone whose species ever had medallions, that people try if nothing in the shop works."

"Blank medallions? Now that's some impressive magic."

"They're more expensive but I don't know if they were actually harder to make - it sounds that way to you?"

"It could potentially go either way, depending on how exactly medallions work, but if it wasn't harder than I'd expect all medallions to be blank."

"They might have been invented later."

"Could be. Maybe I'll start looking into medallions after I've got space-folding sorted. Though that'll be a while, of course."

"You're doing so much cool stuff, you must be a genius."

"I think it's more that it's a really neglected field. All the actual geniuses are off doing other things, so there's all this stuff someone ought to be doing and nobody else is."

"Why are they doing other things?"