It likes it when people are happy and have the things they want. Any people, but especially the people it sees most clearly, who resonate with its central themes and so are easier for it to perceive and understand.

It can't possibly be that simple, so why is the notebook pretending it is? What's the catch? He considers, once again, the possibility that the notebook is just lying about the whole thing. Assuming it's not, though...

How does that benefit the Spirit?

It's hard to describe in mortal-scale concepts what the Spirit is or where it comes from, but a story you could tell that would be more true than false is that the Spirit is made of people wanting things, and so feels fulfilled when it experiences people getting what they want in kind of the same way that people feel fulfilled when they experience eating food and sleeping and having friends and falling in love.

So maybe something a little like the Gods? He doesn't bother writing that, because he can predict the notebook's answer: it doesn't know enough about this world to make comparisons. 

So you're saying that people getting what they want, especially when they want to be beautiful and special and powerful and feminine, directly helps or feeds the Spirit in some sense? 

Something like that. But more like having friends or falling in love than like eating or sleeping, because the Spirit isn't the kind of thing that has needs, exactly.

Well, that's very convenient. If it's true, which he has no way of verifying. 

It's getting late again, and you've given me a lot to think about. Let's pause for now and I'll come back another day.

And a few days later, after the initial pleasantries and an update on how long it's been: 

Can you tell me a bit more about how your power-granting abilities work? For instance, what does Catherine have to do to get the powers? Could you give powers to someone else, or just her?

In order to accept the Spirit's power, Catherine has to tell me what form she wants that power to take, and tell me clearly which set of choices she intends to finalize. That doesn't necessarily involve specifying a lot of detail, but I do try to talk people through their choices to make sure they understand what their options are. I can't empower anyone other than Catherine while I'm here to talk to Catherine, but the Spirit might also send me separately to other people, and this instance of me wouldn't necessarily know if there are any others in this world right now.

Well, that second part is about what he expected, but it was worth checking. 

So it's all done through writing in you, just like this? And what can you tell me about the choices Catherine has available to her? 

Yes, it's all done through communicating with me and I don't have any other way to communicate.

What would you like to know about the choices available to Catherine? It's a pretty big question. The Spirit's power can take a lot of forms depending on the needs and desires of the individual person.

Hmm. That's more evasive than he'd like.

Hmm, can you give me...examples? Or an overview? I'm not sure what questions I should be asking here. 

The only choice that definitely needs to be made is whether to stay in this world, choose or imagine another specific world to go to, or let the Spirit choose a destination. If someone wanted to make just that choice and take all the rest of the Spirit's power as unrealized potential capable of forming specific powers spontaneously in the future, they could, though I wouldn't recommend it. As for the kinds of specific powers that someone could choose... there are appearance powers that affect how the bearer looks, and powers for learning new things and acquiring new magic, and powers that affect social things like how readily the bearer is listened to or understood or fallen in love with, and by whom. There's a power that guarantees that the bearer will always be okay eventually no matter what happens, and a power that guarantees that the bearer will never get hurt in a fight. And for each of those powers there are people who want them and benefit from them, and people who don't want them and would be better off without them. It's pretty hard to summarize, because there are so many different things and different ones are relevant to different people.

I guess I would say that, generally, powers granted by the Spirit affect what kinds of things can and can't and will and won't happen to their bearer, and the question of which ones to choose is the question of what kind of life a person wants to live.

...yes, he can't really imagine Catherine giving some cosmic entity, no matter how seemingly benevolent, a blank slate to give her whatever powers it feels like. Or letting it pick a world to send her to, for that matter. 

That's a very helpful overview, thank you. 

Also a slightly awe-inspiring one—a power that guarantees you'll never get hurt in a fight??? He doesn't think even the most powerful Named he's heard of can do that, not with perfect certainty. 

I'm still puzzling over the question of how we can verify anything you've told us; have you had any new ideas there? 

You're welcome! I'm glad I can be helpful.

Figuring out how you can verify what I've told you is pretty difficult, from my perspective. Being unable to act outside my covers makes me more nonthreatening but also means I don't have any good ways to demonstrate that I was sent by a power beyond anything a single world could contain.

Yes, you've indicated that the actions you can take are limited to making words appear on your pages—can you draw, as well?—and giving Catherine, but nobody else, magic powers. 

Do you have to give her all of the powers at once, or could you give her, say, one power to demonstrate the ability, and then the rest later? 

I can only channel the Spirit's power into someone once. I could give her one power, but that would involve finalizing the choice to take that one power and either stay here or go somewhere else and leave all the rest of her possible powers as unrealized potential.

...well, that's inconvenient for his idea. Or, possibly, suspiciously convenient for the Notebook and whoever's behind it. 

So until she's finalized her choices, you can't do anything other than write in yourself and read what's written in you? 

Yes.