Nobody's complained yet!

As long as the orders keep rolling in, she'll keep filling them. Next stop: healing artifact.

The incantation for the direct healing spell was [a bunch of French], translating to "Heal this [entity's] injury, restore it to perfect health as though it was never harmed." The artifact version can be restricted to humans, but should drop the word "injury" in the hope that it will also work on illnesses, allergy attacks, etc. She emails Bella the publisher's info and what she has on healing so far, including a tweaked incantation and  some notes on where the translation into English is inexact, then sits and takes some notes on types of medical issue someone could have.

That's pretty expensive for the publishing, but maybe we could sell enough subscriptions in advance to break even if we advertised hard enough.

Yeah. I've got some money saved up from selling rings you can use to turn invisible, but I'd rather not run this journal at a loss if it's going to be sustainable.

Got any suggestions/cautions for the healing artifact before I try making one? I was thinking use the same diagram to start out and just replace the incantation with the new one.

You know more about artifacts than I do. If that worked before I wouldn't know what to advise you to change.

What are you charging for rings?

Three grand apiece. They're popular with monsters for sneaking out of Avalons.

She gets a pebble and an earthworm from outside, and sets the pebble on a fresh healing diagram over which she says the worm version of her new incantation. It translates to "Make this rock heal any earthworm it touches, restoring that earthworm to full health as though it was never unwell." (The human version will be voice-activated, but this is a proof of concept that doesn't require specifying multiple targets.)

This works about as well as the healing spell alone on worms.

Now for the human version, on another rock. "Make this rock heal its holder when its holder says 'heal', restoring that person to full health as though that person was never unwell." If the spell appears to go off, she'll test it with a minor self-injury again.

This works as well as the spell alone.

Margaret reports these results to Bella, along with some commentary.

Eventually I'll want a version that can be used to heal someone other than the person saying the keyword, in case the person in need of healing is unconscious or something. Also it should probably be something other than a rock. But this is most of the way there.

Why a command word? It makes sense for invisibility, but for healing why not make it work continuously when touched or something?

When I set a rock to glow continuously, the light faded noticeably over time; a rock that could be turned on and off and was usually kept turned off didn't show that effect on the timescales I checked. Also, with a continuous healing item I'd be worried about someone who didn't know about magic getting a hold of it.

I suppose. Could you key it to an owner?

Well now Margaret's in a bit of a bind, because she doesn't want to mention the failed attempts to key the invisibility artifact to a specific person. 

I know that's possible in principle, because medallions do it, but it would probably be better to have something anybody can use on anybody in a pinch.

I was wondering if it wouldn't count as being always-on if you did that, was my thinking, if waiting for an owner to touch it as needed would serve as well as waiting for a word.

Oh huh, maybe.

She tries again with her hand on the rock and the incantation "Make this rock heal the person currently touching it whenever she touches it, restoring her to full health as though she was never unwell." (Referring to herself in the third person is weird.)

This works just fine.

She sends along the incantation she used and the fact that it worked.

Good to know. I'm filing rough edges off my spreadsheet and then I can send you a copy, but I want to have the master version in definitely exactly one place, so please don't add a bunch of runes to it, just tell me the runes and I'll add them and send you the updates as they're made.

That's both very reasonable and less work for me. Here's the first bunch, let me know if any of the photos are too grainy:

There follows a half-dozen photos taken on her laptop camera, with associated rune names and meaning values.

Thanks! What's the angle between the little thing in the upper left and the main shaft in the third one, is it forty five degrees?

Where in the world did she put her protractor while she was unpacking . . . oh, there it is under her calculator.

Forty five, yeah.

In the sheet. Let me know when you're done sending batches.

She sends several more batches, the last one with the note

That's all the ones I didn't note as being in the Seattle library dictionary. There might be a couple more I've missed; I'll double-check when I get the spreadsheet.

I should have the spreadsheet ready for you Thursday, maybe Friday if it takes longer than I expect to write up instructions on how to use it.