Gosh. Huge noisy eggs. What will the ancients think of next.

Kaede actually has lots of stories about the ancients' stupid ruins if Ruava thinks to ask.

The spell she cast has an exception for each other, so they can tell where the other is even without seeing, and she starts gliding down towards the huge eggs.

But will it let Ruava read books while Kaede stares at eggs?

Yeah, that was the plan so there was also an exception for books.

The books are... not actually visible. They just, somehow, remain readable in spite of not being visible.

They land, a few metres ahead of the eggs, and Kaede stares.

...this is a fascinating state for a book to be in, and Ruava might be distracted by trying to figure out how the spell does that and what its edge cases are, but that's just as occupying as actually reading the books so it's all good.

Well the book is there—she can tell, and she can feel it and touch it—and if she looks at it then she can tell which letter is where by some method other than vision that nonetheless requires her to be looking at them. What she can conclude about edge cases probably depends on how she experiments with it.

Well, what if she looks at it but with her eyes closed? What if she looks at it but with her eyes unfocused? Is this nonvisual reading amenable to both the thing where you're learning a new language and you have to pick through the letters individually and the thing where you know the language well enough to just pick up the word at a glance and move on - she has to do a fair bit of reading the book to answer that last part, so perhaps Kaede will be done with her egg-staring by then.

Eyes closed: doesn't work. Unfocused: works just like she were trying to read an actual, visible book with her eyes unfocused, i.e. not well. The nonvisual reading is in fact amenable to those things. Kaede will be staring at the eggs for a few hours, so it's likely hunger will catch up with them before she stops doing that.

Ruava kind of does not notice the hunger thing, she's too busy being fascinated - does the text have colours, can she tell what colours it is, can she tell whether it has colours -

Probably, no, no, she can read but that does not happen via vision and other than knowing what letters are where she cannot tell other visually distinguishing characteristics.

This is so weird. And why does it have to depend so thoroughly on vision when it's so thoroughly nonvisual? Can she tell the specific shapes of the letters or is it just the pure knowledge of the letter itself as an abstract entity...?

Shapes, yep.

Including the small variations between individual instances of a particular letter? She will scrutinize the entire book in detail if she has to in order to determine this.

The small variations are really small, given that the printing press has been invented, but yes, she can.

Well that's why she's scrutinizing the entire book in detail for it. Excellent.

Eventually the eggs are close enough that they should probably get out of the way to be squished, and this snaps Kaede from her reverie.

"We should move. And, er, possibly eat."

"...good idea," says Ruava. "Wow, I'm hungry. And this invisibility spell with reading allowed is fascinating."

"I thought you might like it," she says, the invisible smile reflected in her voice. "Let's picnic on the other side of the eggs."

"Sounds good!"

The flight spell is still active, and lets them fly above the eggs and set a picnic. "How're you finding the book?"

"I kind of haven't been paying much attention to the actual book part of the book because I was too busy being fascinated by how I can read it while it's invisible."

She giggles. "I didn't define the exact behaviour of the spell with respect to books when I designed it, just let magic fill it in."

"It came out really weird. I can't see the letters, but I can tell exactly what shape they are, but not what colour."

"Ha. Yeah, I defined that you should be able to read the book, so I guess it took some definition of that and built the details around it?"

"And even though I'm not reading it with my eyes, I have to be looking at it as though I was or I can't, uh, not-see it."