"That sounds unlikely."

"Nah, that's on my list."

Blink.

"Wait, for real?"

"It's harder than immortality, I think, but with an alethiometer, yeah, I hope to figure it out. I don't think it improves the witch bottleneck that much though because there are way fewer dead witches than dead mortals."

"No, that's not why, I meant that then it's less urgent to turn everyone immortal immediately because then anyone we miss we can get later. So yeah still bottlenecked but that's less a problem."

"How? Past-watching? Where is the spell getting its information from? ...maybe the same place the alethiometer is."

"It's a proof of concept all right."

"Was it made with witch magic?"

"No, but it demonstrates the principle in general."

"How was it made?"

"Pretty sure no one knows."

"I know. I'm just musing aloud."

"The information I have is 'by a dude'. So."

"He should have left a manual."

"Maybe the alethiometer itself can tell us."

"Presumably!"

"What a handy tool. How hard was the spell anyway? Do you need a blood moon to have happened however many days ago last blood moon was so you'll need to wait many months or can you do it whenever you're not particularly cross with grains of sugar?"

"Oh, I'm going to redo it after we've eaten."

"Was the development itself particularly difficult?"

"A few months."

"Huh. Surprising that you're the first one to think of this."

"There aren't that many witches, and most of them don't study that much magic."

This is Sadde's "what a goshdarn waste" face.

Shrug. She pulls out the turkey and the broccoli and divvies it up.