"Awesome. Okay." Off goes Iris, to grow a flower. She pulls a seed from her pocket, drops it onto a good patch of grass, waters it, and gets to poking at it with magic. A little green sprout pokes up from the soil.

"So, ready for the ritual procedure?" asks the other.

Eva nods eagerly. "Definitely!"

"Okay, so. Before the ritual even starts, you'll need to draw on your bowl with the graphite. Whatever you draw needs to be abstractly represent or express yourself - symbolism is a definite no. So, no drawing trees or flowers or the like - there's a bit of leeway if you don't intend to symbolize anything. You can't draw diamond shapes on it because you like diamonds, but you can draw diamond shapes if they seem like they're appropriate with the rest of what you're drawing. If there's any large landmarks nearby, though, you should stay away from drawing anything like them, because that might confuse the magic a bit - I'd stay away from rings if you can, for example."

"... Huh, okay. It's going to be hard to stay away from symbolism when basically everything looks like something I've seen at some point, but I guess I'll manage. Go on?"

"That's the only ritual prep you need to do, but part of the ritual's under a time crunch. The beginning part you can take as long as you like with, though. You take the quartz and put it in the center of the bowl. Then, you pour the distilled water into the bowl, covering the quartz but not overflowing from the bowl. It's perfectly okay for the distilled water to get mixed with, say, the graphite, or other things present on you, it being distilled is to prevent other unsanctioned materials from getting involved and potentially messing things up. After that, you poke yourself with the sentimental sharp object, and bleed into the bowl, starting the time crunch. The blood's actually crucial here, so - if you want to do every other part of the ritual but that for practice, you can. With me so far?"

"I'm with you so far, but the letter opener's going to be a bit awkward to cut myself with."

She holds it up for inspection: the sharp bit is wedged behind a long thin wooden piece, probably to prevent one from cutting oneself on it. Irony.

"... A bit, yes. I'm not sure how to help with that, for my ritual I didn't have a sharp object I felt anything towards, I had to specifically go out of my way to get a knife, get an emotional connection with it, and then used that."

Eva sighs.

"... I'm going to have to use my proper athame for this, aren't I."

"Not if you feel more strongly about your letter opener. But it does sound like it'd be easier to cut yourself with it."

"The reason I didn't offer the proper athame in the first place was because it was too importantly personal to mention casually to a stranger."

Eva produces a black-handled knife from a pocket of her dress. Unfolding a small piece of rawhide from around the blade, she lays it out flat on her palms. The black stone blade gleams dully, the scalloped indents of hammer-blows evident along its length: solidly wrapped twine affixes the blocky wooden handle.

"Here it is. Please don't touch it, or I'll have to reconsecrate it. Will it work, do you think?"

"..... Possibly." She peers at it. It's hard to get a good idea of what this looks like, magically, when she's not touching it, but it's possible.

"It could work," she decides, "if I were to tweak the ritual. Which is worth it, I stress, if you care about this more than the letter opener. I have actually tweaked rituals before, and none of the people I did it for had any trouble with the results."

"I'm not sure I want to risk a 'possibly'... Do you need to examine it more closely? I remember you did that with the crystal."

"I actually can tell things about stuff magically without touching it, it's just harder. Also a bit more margin for error, if I'm honest. Which, I am."

Eva looks at knife, then at Invavet, then back at the knife. "... Then examine it more closely. I give you permission to touch it for that purpose."

Inavet - senses that this is a lot of trust. She swallows, then nods solemnly.

And then she pokes it with a finger.

"... It's not unsuitable," she decides, un-poking it, "there is nothing that I can sense in it that would prevent or screw up a ritual, it's that I might have trouble balancing the ritual with it involved. ... I think I can, but I'll need to sit and calculate things and possibly poke some strange materials to see if I can find new multiverse puzzle pieces instead of making due with the ones I have, to know for sure."

Eva puts the knife away again for the moment, carefully rewrapping it in its rawhide sheath.

"I work for the OTC, and I have some discretionary spending for self-improvement: I can probably get you close-to-ideal items if you know what you're looking for."

"I'll know what I'm looking for, but know what I'm looking for in - weird magic terms, not 'I need an item with these physical properties,' but - that does sound ideal, yes." Smile. "And I could incorporate the quartz while I'm at it."

"That would be wonderful." She smiles. "And if you can tell OTC what you need - even in weird magic terms - it should be able to find it for you."

Nod!

"Then - I suppose I'll be a nerd for a while, holed up in -" Pause. "... Is there a place I could stay while I am a huge magic nerd?"

"The Society has rooms, and as a member in exceedingly good standing I can almost definitely find you one at short notice. Do you have any preferences for your amenities? View of the streets, a garden? Near a library?"

"I'm not really picky anymore. Uh. View of a garden, near a library?" she attempts.

"Alright!"

Eva opens a side door from the courtyard and beckons for Ina and Iris to follow.

Iris actually needs to be prodded by her fork to stop staring in fascination at plants. They are all just so interesting.

But then both of the Inavets follow Eva out of the courtyard.

There are some uncrowded hallways, and then a room! It has a big huge queen-sized bed, a window overlooking the gardens, a complex arrangement of hovering purple rocks on the bedside table, a nice comfortable desk for writing on, and a whole wall dedicated to books.

Eva encompasses the room with a casual wave. "Does this work for you both?"

... They glance at each other for confirmation about the queen sized bed, and then realize that it's kind of pointless to do that, and instead Inavet just says, "It'll be fine, thank you."

"What do the purple rocks do?" wonders Iris.