Sue follows her in, white bow drawn.

The witch's exterior blends the city streets into odd, twisting shapes, opalescent gems cracking through the pavement like tree roots. Gem-encrusted squirrels dance around, chittering, and the trees sway oddly in a non-existent wind.

The squirrels don't seem to be the current biggest threat... She keeps her eyes open for if any approach them, or for more threatening familiars, and pays attention to what the older magical girl seems to think is a good strategy here.

She's conserving her magic, mostly, rather than opening up with attacks and rousing the witch. She's also deftly avoiding clusters of familiars as she works her way deeper into the maze.

Sue is less talented at evasion and stealth, but sticks close to the magical girl, effectively borrowing her sensory abilities.

Sue barely gets a chance to fight, the few times they're successfully ambushed.

Whoever this woman is, she's powerful.

Kinda impressively scarily so.

Sue pays close attention, tries to learn.

And, sooner rather than later: the center of the labyrinth. The woman doesn't try to stop Sue from following her in.

She bites her lip - 

And goes in.

The center of the labyrinth resembles the inside of a tree hollow, the witch's seat an enormous woodpecker made of glittering gems.

The strange woman takes the lead in the fight - Sue won't have much space to interfere, but she can learn a good bit just by watching.

She watches carefully. It's - instructive, definitely.

The woman finishes, more quickly than Sue's used to these fights going - and, apparently, without burning much actual magic.

The witch labyrinth dissolves, and the woman walks over to find the dropped grief seed.

"That was cool," Sue says, very clearly making no attempt to try and steal the grief seed. "You're really good."

"I've been at this for a very long time. I wouldn't be alive if I wasn't 'really good.'"

She nods. She doesn't know exactly how old the woman is, of course - magical girls either stop aging or age really slowly once they're adults -

But she's definitely a woman, far past the vaguely twenty really old magical girls seem to settle in. At least thirty, maybe forty - Sue's pretty bad at guessing the ages of adults who aren't really obviously barely not teenagers or really obviously someone's grandparent.

"How long a time?" Sue asks.

"Oh, I've never really counted. Millennia, at least."

"That's a really long time."

Almost unbelievably so, really.

"How come you haven't witched?"

"Unusual for a new magical girl to know about that," she says, instead of answering.

"My older sister was a magical girl first. She turned into a witch."

"How come you haven't?"

She pauses, clearly thinking.

"Kyubey doesn't lie," she says at last. "He'll mislead you, and he won't answer questions entirely, but you can back him into a corner and get the truth that way. They were a lot more desperate for recruits, in my day, and especially with my high potential they couldn't afford to just waste me. So they let me wish."

"I worded my wish fairly carefully, it seems, or at least enough for the millennia so far. It prevents me from becoming a witch, centrally and foremost, and from being mind controlled by other magical girls. By the time other magical girls were common enough that conflict between us was even really possible, I was already the most experienced girl on the planet, and no one could successfully beat me."

...Huh.

"That sounds - smart."

The woman smiles a little. "I like to think of myself as wise, at least, and perhaps sometimes even smart."

That gets her a shy smile back.

"I didn't have time to think my wish through... I just wanted to be strong enough for - "

She shrugs, awkwardly.

"A powerful sort of wish, still, and one unlikely to turn on you. You have good instincts, it seems."

"I don't know if it's really that unlikely to turn on me? Girls regretting their wishes seems pretty common..."