"Oh. Are you not a critter?"

"I am, it's just that they'd worry too much."

"Huh. Okay."

And now it's time to move far far away from the subject of Margaret's critterhood. "So if the school is a thing for a few years from now, maybe in the meantime we could publish a journal. Like Nature, but for runecasting. Publish our own research and try to get other people to do the same."

"Ooh, huh. That's an interesting idea. I wrote to the publisher of the runecasting books I found to see if they had anything else, and they didn't, but they still exist as a publisher of secret materials."

"That's convenient. What's their name, I can look up how much they charge. Might also want an internet version."

"Whisker Press."

She writes that down, remembers her burger and takes a bite of it. "I don't know if it would be better to try to charge for it, or do it as a public service and let it build a reputation to help the school."

"Charging for it means dumb ten year olds without credit cards can't trivially get at it?"

"Ugh, that's true, any given thing we could publish would make some people safer and some people less safe. Charging for it isn't the best filter but it might be the best one we could do en masse."

"There might be better but it does seem like it improves on open access outright."

"Just so. On a similar note, there's the current shortage of anything introductory--better to have more comprehensive explanations for people just starting out, or leave it and eventually direct newbies to the school?"

"I think the school. For double-checking, and using Xeroxed or stamped materials first."

"Yeah. Slower, but better in the long run."

"You gotten anywhere with healing?"

"I've healed a couple injured cats and dogs, and little cuts on myself, but I've been too nervous to try anything serious."

"- so no healing artifacts?"

"Not yet, but that would actually be a good way to do more testing--artifact results seem to be a bit more reliable across repeats than straight spells." Notetake notetake.

"How do you mean?"

"Well, for instance, when I did a bunch of trials of heating water to a specific temperature I got a lot of variation in the temperature even when I gave a number in Celsius. But enchanting pebbles to glow, I can do pretty precise colors of light just with French color words. Also, having an enchantment means you only need to get the diagram and incantation perfect once, so it's a good bet generally."

"That doesn't sound like you've been comparing like with like, the water versus the glow."

"Yeah, it could be something about heating, or about water. I could reuse the glowing-object diagram for floating lights and might be able to turn the water-boiling diagram into a hot plate, get a cross-comparison."

"A diagram designed only to boil water might work more like a microwave than a hot plate and I'd be nervous about having it just - pointed up into the air."

"Floating lights is probably safer, I've never gotten anything even close to dangerously bright. But it might also be worth going straight to a healing artifact and doing a lot of testing on bugs."

"They work on bugs? Huh, how about that."