"Did the mint, rosemary, and most of the watercress, though that one's not as completely finished because I ran out of mana partway through. They're big fields."

Lecasryn giggles. "Then it might be cute, though, when you're five. Did she drop daggers on you?"

"Mana?" asks Luzia.

"Once or twice. When she was just starting I was usually a turtle, though."

"Basically, I can only use so much magic in a certain amount of time. That's powered by mana, which I just sort of - have floating around my body? I guess? My brother's the magic nerd, I just kind of have a nebulous understanding of it. If I run out of it completely I die. Or, if I almost run out of it completely, I have a few really bad days and eventually recover. It regenerates, sleep helps but doesn't make it instant."

"That... Is a smart move."

"Huh. Our magic doesn't work that way at all. More significant spells are more complicated, but that just means they take time and care."

"I know," says the mousebird smugly.

"That sounds useful! Though annoying. We get complicated spells, too. For example, I spent most of my morning getting a crash course in a translation spell from my brother. It took hours. It sucked."

Lecasryn snickers. As much as a bird can snicker, anyway. "Did other daemons do that, or did most of them just try to dodge?"

"What about it took hours?" wonders Luzia. "I mean, a single witch spell could take that long if you were trying to understand why all the parts fit together and how to change something to get a different effect, but if you're willing to copy out of a written document and learn the verse phonetically you can knock even a complicated diagrammed one out in less than an hour."

"Some of them stole my idea," says Radna. "Or burrowed, or just became small and hid in their witches' hair or in boxes or whatever."

"Ours we have to understand exactly what we're doing. Not the - not what the effects are going to be, but what we need to make happen in order for it to do what you want. If you miss something - like a safety - it could be a key part of the spell and it'll do something that you don't want."

"Ah, well. Whatever they can do to protect themselves from - daggers, I suppose. Can't say I blame them."

"Skipping stuff could be risky with our spells too. Miss a line or a symbol and something's on fire... but understanding's not a prerequisite. Half our spells are in languages nobody even bothers to teach the little girls anymore."

"If Luzia's dagger had been blessed their ideas would've worked better than turtling. But it was just a practice dagger until she learned to stop dropping it."

"That's useful! So someone can invent a spell and you can just copy what they did and get it right? No study for hours required? I want that."

"I'm just imagining giving little kids magic daggers and - it's very good that it's just practice daggers. Because - wow that would end badly."

"Yep," says Luzia. "It can be inconvenient. If somebody gives you a spell and lies to you about what it does. And I don't think anybody can make it work for you, sorry."

"Even the adults' daggers aren't very magic, dropping one carelessly on a turtle wouldn't kill it," demurs Radna. "But yes."

"Didn't think so, my magic's non-transferable, too. Oh well. I like my magic, even if it's annoying sometimes."

"I'd still feel sorry for the turtle. Magic isn't - well, safe for children. Especially magic weapons."

"Maybe you could do magic while we do magic and get interesting things to happen," muses Luzia.

"Well, their versing works as well as anybody else's, if they read the wrong poems. Sometimes there's accidents," says Radna. "Not too many, though. They mispronounce things or don't say them versily enough."

"Maybe! I don't know, though - I'd probably have to sit around and scry things while you do your magic. That might be possible, but I don't know what kind of combinations would be possible."

"Versily enough?"

"What kind of scrying have you got?" inquires Luzia.

"Verse spells have to scan. They don't have to rhyme, even though lots of them do. If you pronounce them so they don't scan, then they don't work," says Radna.

"I kind of sit and stare at things for a while? I mean, do you want what I'm actually doing rather than what it looks like I'm doing? It's not a whole big thing like normal spells, scrying's easy."

"Oooh. That makes sense. Zeviana's magic doesn't work like that at all. Pronounciation isn't important at all, you just have to understand it."

"What you're actually doing," laughs Luzia.

"Are there even things to pronounce?" Radna wonders.

Zeviana snickers. "It's like - okay, magic happens when you tell things to do stuff that they don't normally do. Like - tell plants to grow taller, walls to have a door to a place you tell it to go, so on. So scrying's just - telling it to tell you about itself. Except usually it's visual with some mental explanations. It's not literally explaining itself to you, like, 'Hi how are you today, I am a pen.'"

"Nope. That's why it's not important at all! You can cheat and talk to yourself, though, that makes it easier. Faster than writing things down, too."

Luzia laughs. "We do a little scrying, but it's not a prerequisite for most things... and it's often symbological in nature. Visual representations of meanings."

"How does it make it easier then?" Radna wants to know.

"Ah. If scrying weren't so straightforward I don't think any of us would be able to get anything done. It's really, really necessary. At least if you don't want to do something horrifically wrong and get yourself killed. Which, obviously, I'd like to avoid."

"It's like - reminders? If you memorize a thing to say that will remind you of all the things you need to remember, and then say it as you're casting the spell, it'll help you remember what you need to. Like a checklist, sort of."

"Sensible of you," snorts Luzia.

"And the thing you memorize is shorter than the thing it reminds you of, I guess?"

"I try," snickers Zeviana.

"Yup! Because there's not really any way you can say everything you need to remember in any kind of useful time frame. Zeviana's brother keeps a book of cheat sheets and that works out pretty well, too."

"It's been occasionally hypothesized that witches could get useful magic out of getting themselves killed - or for that matter other people - but nobody's been doing it in practice far as I know," says Luzia. "Usually if we need to kill something it winds up being a rabbit or a pigeon or a deer or whatever, and since it's a sacrifice we then go on to not eat it, is how it works."

"Cheat sheets like what?" asks Radna.

"Yeah, uh, let's avoid human sacrifices. Does the magic undo itself if you eat a sacrifice, or does it become - I dunno, unfit for eating?"

"Like - notes on spells that he worked out but then didn't use for years or something. The necessary checklist of things that need to be known, and if everything there is understood, he can just do the spell."

"Little of both depending on the spell, little of bad luck in general too, especially with animals. Not the sort of thing you want to make a habit of."

"Makes sense," says Radna.

"Oooh. Okay, so it's a - proper sacrifice, then. I doubt it'll come up for me, but it's still cool to hear," says Zeviana. "So is being gorgeous just a natural part of being a witch, or is that all you?"

"Yeah. Our magic likes making sense, we think. It doesn't like making something from nothing, for example - it'll just keep eating up mana until that goes away."