That is kind of way hotter than it has any right to be. He should not flirt with her.

"There's a way it looks like, right, it has a whole thing going for it, with cloud-pine and sugar runes and herbs and stuff."

"I'm used to that all existing as a matter of fact rather than aesthetic!"

Sadde grins and shrugs. "But it does have an aesthetic!"

"You could say county fairs have an aesthetic, but there's not a fundamental reason why Ferris wheels and cotton candy and guess-my-weight games should have anything to do with each other. They just appear together often enough that they appear to have an aesthetic, without that aesthetic being constructive in the sense that you can make predictions about what other things would suit county fairs."

"Then maybe the aesthetic is just me pattern-matching various vague memories about descriptions of witchcraft I've encountered in my life."

"Which is legit but not a constructive aesthetic so don't lean on it too hard."

"Fair, fair, I'll try not to make any predictions."

"Or bet me on them if you do."

"I thought witches didn't use money."

"That's changing a little, I've currently got the use of a credit card as 'a favor' and I think money makes sense for some things."

"What things does it not make sense for?"

"I don't like the thing where you have to buy something to use the bathroom in a gas station or whatever. Fortunately I have found that glaring at people witchily substitutes."

"I think buying things at a gas station to be allowed to use their restroom is a noncentral case of trading money for goods and services!"

"And I don't think anything on clan lands would be improved if we introduced money internally."

"I can't comment on that, no idea how those work, but that doesn't seem implausible. I don't think introducing money in familial relationships would improve anything and it stands to reason there are other institutions with the same property."

"It's bigger than your average nuclear family but we are mostly at least a little related."

"Yeah that was my impression. And I think you guys probably have, like, loyalty stuff involved?"

"You could describe it that way, yeah."

"Do you use any money other than the borrowed credit card? Do you pay rent or own the land, and what about taxes?"

"My teacher has the use of the house as a favor. Witches don't really pay taxes - I guess estate taxes might hit us if our dads leave us money? And I guess with the credit card I wind up paying sales tax? Other than that no."

"Huh. That's really peculiar."

"We don't have incomes! And the clan lands - this isn't a clan land - are sort of like Native reservations."

"Oh that makes sense as a category. ...how many witches are there? I always figured your population would be much larger than what I think native populations are..."

"Smaller, there are only five clans in the States and there's like four hundred witches in mine and the others are likely comparable."