"Yeah. Any other animals or plants related to immortality? Symbols, symbols are good, too. Isn't the Egyptian Ankh related to that?"

"Maybe? I don't know. We could ask the Runes professor and Sprout."

"Yes, good ideas. Okay, next up, disease. Penicillin, water, bacteria, viruses, cold? Because people get sick a lot in winter?"

"Maybe we could sift the white blood cells out of some blood. Rubbing alcohol or peroxide? Vitamins?"

"All good. That mask thing people sometimes wear. Er... what else?"

"The masks prevent transmission, they're not about cure or even prevention for the person wearing them... if we go that way soap, I guess, something to represent quarantine? Ingredients for medicinal potions..."

"The potions themselves, too. Things relating to curing? Change as well, renovation, a lot of the things related to death... We don't have much information on the general structure of alchemical products and metaphors and stuff."

"Yeah, we might have to wait until we've had more than one alchemy lesson before we go make long-lost alchemical things."

"Probably," he concedes. "But having lots of general ideas can help while we learn technique. Anything related to elixirs? Production of stuff?"

"...Production of stuff?"

"Well, the Stone technically produces the Elixir of Life, so I think there could be a part of the metaphor dedicated to the process."

"Okay... I can't think of anything that makes stuff from scratch, though. How does the Stone produce Elixir, does it... exude it, or turn something into it?"

"I... have no idea. Supposedly it only transmutes other metals to gold, but I don't think the books ever said where the Elixir actually came from. Not the ones I read anyway."

"I mean, it might be considered not to bear mentioning if you just drop it in a bucket of water and have a bucket of Elixir?"

"I dunno though, it sounds weird that they'd mention turning base metals to gold but not water to Elixir. Maybe it can transform any liquid?"

"That would be interesting... The Stone was supposedly destroyed eventually, I wonder how that was done."

"Well, was it ever said to be indestructible? Maybe someone stomped on it really hard."

"I guess, but if it's a stone why wouldn't the pieces work?"

"...really really hard?" He shrugs. "I dunno, the guy's dead. Why would anyone do that though..."

"I don't know!"

"Seriously, did they get bored or something? Is that even possible? There's so much to do!"

"If they were going to get bored I'd think they'd take less than six hundred years to do it!"

He shrugs. "Yeah I dunno." He shakes his head. "Anyway. Any more concepts related to production of things? Or, maybe, to transformation, since the Elixir might be transformed and gold definitely is. Butterflies? Or maybe just their cocoon? Actually I think lots of insects do stuff like that, and tadpoles as well..."

"We don't want to metamorphose. Well, I don't, anyway. Gold is transformed once you actually have the stone but it's not transformable - not in chemical composition and not easily, anyway."

"Yeah but this would just be the metaphor for the transformation of other metals to gold itself, not for the end product. I mean, I think our metaphor will have to either be pretty detailed or pretty unusual or something; just using something vaguely related to immortality and gold probably won't cut it."