Ooh, food! He's actually kinda hungry, what with the long trek he just got surprise-snatched from.

It's pretty plain, but roasted just so.

Eh, still food, and he's been on travel rations for the past few days, so.

Om nom. She grabs an apple from the fruit bowl when she's had her meat and veg.

"Thank you very much for the food," Sadde says when he's done. "So it just occurred to me—is there a way for you to protect the alethiometer from being snatched by someone else doing a similar spell?"

"I could try some stuff, but mostly I just don't expect any other witches to do that. Since I'm apparently the first one to think of it."

"I suppose... But security through obscurity does not leave me feeling very secure."

"You want me to, what, curse your alethiometer?"

"Is it a curse if it's positive?"

"I don't know what kind of effect you're looking for here."

"'Cannot be fetched by magic' would be good."

"I'd classify that as a curse! What if you drop it somewhere inconvenient?"

"'Cannot be fetched by magic except Isabella's'?"

"Way more difficult."

"Yeah, makes sense that it would be."

"I'm glad that you find magic so sensible."

"It's just, what's it called, that thing where more complicated things are less likely to be true, it makes sense that they'd be harder to make a spell for."

"Occam's razor?"

"That must be it."

"It doesn't always apply very straightforwardly - witch magic treats living things as more basic than they are."

"Does it map more neatly to, like, mental concepts, maybe?"

"Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it."

"That seems like a good aesthetic fit, at least. And should still hold that putting more conditions together would make stuff harder."

"A good aesthetic fit for what?"

He gestures vaguely. "The way witch magic kind of looks like?"