"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."

(Ranata laughs quietly.)

"Ha," says Luzia, but she smiles. "It's not part of the package. You could say we've been breeding ourselves for it, scooping up the prettiest mortals. The ones who go for mortals and breeding, at any rate." She smiles a little wider.

"Are you hitting on us?" wonders Radna.

"Aha, that explains a lot. Good on your ancestors, they chose nicely."

Zeviana's grinning back. Goodness, why could that be? It's a mystery, of course.

"Yes," Lecasryn says. "But there won't be any hard feelings if you turn us down."

"If I recall right Mother thought my father had the most beautiful hands and that was why she wanted him, but I'm sure other choices have been made for other reasons. You are just lucky, I take it?" says Luzia.

"Good to know," says Radna. And she hops forward a step.

She giggles. "I think so! For lots of reasons, even. For example - helpful, gorgeous witches. Especially the ones that are that good with a dagger."

Lecasryn is pleased by this! She makes a happy noise, and looks very interested in Radna. "And you're returning the interest, I take it?"

Ranata finds something to do off thataway. Not too far, but enough to be out of earshot.

"Especially, huh?" Luzia takes her dagger out, spins it in her fingers.

"Maaaaybe," says Radna coyly.

"Ooo, a dagger. And I bet you know how to use it, even," says Zeviana, winking.

Lecasryn laughs. "Maybe? Aw, now I'm disappointed."

She does not look anything of the sort. At all.

"Sure. Not that I get much chance for, you know, field work. Haven't had a war in decades and decades, not supposed to wave the sharps at the mortals anymore..."

"Well, we're convincible," says Radna.