"Not necessarily have to, but it's easier? Like, the difference between trying to do a complicated math problem in your head versus writing it out stepwise."

"Huh. Does it help to do it in koizumr instead of drawing it with, like, a pencil?"

"Yeah, it's an inherently magical substance and that--empowers?--the ritual, like, a ritual is sort of a tool for getting more oomph out of a certain amount of mana than a spell would, and there are a bunch of factors there that trade off against each other, but koizumr's magical properties let me, uh, cheat? A little bit? Get more bang for the various axes of buck."

"...the way you described that left me with an image where it only helps for a complete ritual you're going to actually cast and not a draft but the context implies otherwise."

"Because the closer a draft is to something that would actually work, the better I can feel out the places where it doesn't work."

"Like... shooting blanks instead of shooting nothing at all?"

"I...don't know. I have never used a gun."

"Fair enough. Like, uh, making a draft garment in muslin instead of just drawing it."

"Yeah! Not, like, exactly the same, but pretty similar."

"What are you planing to do with your koizumr objects after, get Paula to sell them to R&D places?"

"I can use 'em for other stuff later, break 'em down or build up on them or whatever. I could fill them all in and then add corners and turn them into tabletops if I didn't have anything better to do with the stuff. Certainly R&D places can have some if they want 'em."

"You could have an Etsy store."

"That would be hilarious and I might do it but I think I want to let the R&D people poke at them first to make sure they won't blow up if the wrong esper pokes them or something first."

May theatrically takes a step back.

"They're not going to explode when you poke them. If they have a weird interaction it's going to be with an esper with a, uh, splashier, power."

She pokes it.

It does not explode. Or do anything else visible. 

"I like the texture." She flicks it with a fingernail to see what noise it makes. "Sort of like how I'd imagine ivory feels but I haven't touched ivory."

"It's usually described as being like a cross between wood and metal..." she tilts it so the light plays across its surface. "Although that's probably partly because--they're subtle, but there's little gradations of hue, they're not that much like woodgrain but they're more like it than like marble..."

"I can see the wood/metal thing too, yeah. It's pretty! On its origin world is a lot of stuff made of it?"

"Very little that isn't magic is made of it. The means by which my wand makes more are rare and not usually in the possession of people who want to go into industrial production, and the other ways of making it are much more difficult and expensive, and there are way more people there who know how to usefully do magic things with it."

"That makes sense, you're making it so casually but if there's not one of you in every factory then they're not gonna make the lawn furniture out of it."

"There is not. And honestly I have better things to do than sit in a factory too, like, I don't mind making some in my spare time but I am not going to industrialize production."

Nod nod.

"Still better ongoing production than anything that comes out of a dungeon."