"This is weird. It's like I'm thinking of all these things on my own but they're – not quite what I'd usually think about, not quite directly mine?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's like a really weird inspiration for planning but it's more insistent than my usual planning urges are."

"...is it really? Or is it possible you just never paid attention before?"

"It is entirely possible that I haven't paid attention before strongly enough but usually – it's." Pause. "I'm not sure how to phrase it? This is sort of like if I were going for 'stereotypical but powerful evil mastermind, plot all the ways I can possibly direct people into my system under my command', instead of – busybee-organization-ing?"

"How do you usually go about busybee-organization-ing?"

"… Slowly and more politely and quietly, in comparison?"

"Right, but, what does it feel like from the inside? ...you could try doing it now and see if it changed? Or if you notice something you hadn't before?"

"I usually… have some particular goal in mind… or some group of people where the goal is just for them to work together?"

"I mean, there are the two of us here."

"… It's usually a larger group, two people isn't all that challenging to manage."

"Well try to think about how you'd... I dunno, do something to a large group, then? Or think back on some other plan and... something?"

She thinks about her party planned for next week and how she's going to manage people and keep things from getting out of hand… and realizes she mostly has a cached list of steps to take, people she watches out for, signs something's going to go badly, ways she can reduce this with convenient timing of food and so on…

If she tries replanning, ignoring what she already has cached?

Well then she can obviously rethink those things—she has them cached for a reason, it's because it's useful that's the reason—but she knows all the ways she can act, or not act, and everything she needs to set up and organize to make this more likely than that, and if this happens then she can do that but if something else happens then she can do that other thing instead...

The possibilities are endless, really.

"… It's happening with other things, too. I'm pretty sure it wasn't like this before, but I don't know when 'before' ended?"

"Well, Theo became a vampire a few days ago, I've had my magic as long as I can remember—I wonder if I should try doing something to it now, maybe it's changed, too—but maybe you just never noticed it before. People have managed to fail to notice my skin was literally ruby red."

She shrugs. "I don't know? Maybe it came in in bits, I just didn't notice, but I'm not sure I can actually find out now that it's happened."

"I guess. Is this—thing—giving you full formed plans, or just, like, making them more obvious, or, what?"

"It's like a lot of pieces of inspiration for what I could do and then I can think more about that idea and think of ways to implement it. Like, oven – if the weather were cooler and the heating were broken, it could be used, or if I asked Theo for some muffins to see if he can still do that while he presumably doesn't eat human food."

"Okay... so steps to make things more likely sprout into your mind. Or making your goals happen, I'm honestly not sure there's a difference here and might just be anchored to my idea."

"I think it's sort of – ways to make things more likely, ways I could implement my goals, ways I could plan for things to go the way I want? But they're all pretty similar."

"And you can definitely include magic there."

"Definitely include it as a goal, or a method, or…?"

"Method, I meant, but, uh, as a goal might be—nice? Making it more likely you'll figure out how to use it better, maybe?"

"It might help with plans to get used to using it, maybe."

Any chance?