The sugar runes scatter.
The lights flicker.
And the witch is holding -
"It's just hard to picture what-all the specific moving parts of an alethiometer-finding spell would be. Moving...? Truth device.......?"
"...that was a runes spell. You saw all the sugar, right? Sugar is not an herb."
"I hope you realise that no matter how much magic you learn you will not actually be able to use it."
"In this case it worked best for it to be sugar. Runes work differently from herbs though they both share the 'combining stuff that has individual meanings into a whole' aspect."
"Can a non-witch learn enough to do spell development or is there some intuitive component witches have natively that I wouldn't?"
"I'm... not actually sure. You wouldn't be able to trial and error anything but I guess you could probably learn the herbs and runes and how the goddesses' invocations work and stuff for someone else to try?"
"...yes. You really don't know very much about witches, do you. I know there are witches in Italy!"
"Yeah but how would I even learn this stuff, the media makes up all sort of ways witch spells do or don't work."
"We also felt it would be too frustrating to look up too many things about magic, knowing we would never be able to use it ourselves."
"You're right here," he says, gesturing emphatically in her direction with both arms.
"I just really thought it'd be common knowledge that we have goddesses!"
"Could've been just local Italian witches, could've been made up by media, are they real?"
"Generally they do not do stuff if one does not tell them to."
"It raises the question of why and whether they like anyone better and what kinds of powers they must have that limit them so but permit them to help out with spells—is it only spells, or can you just like pray for good fortune and get it?"
"Some people think so - some people think that's how witches dying works, actually, but other than that the results are underwhelming."
"What, witches die because of—actually is it just violence? You don't get diseases, do you?"