Such as one dorm-bound student who finds it, somehow, easier to do homework in the various public buildings in the middle of the night, than in her dorm.

"...'scuse me, but am I going to get mind-wiped for seeing this or something?  Because I'd really prefer not that," says a young woman with a messenger bag slung over her shoulder, "but if I don't get any say in the matter please just do it now so you do the least damage."

As she freezes staring at the newcomer, her wand raised, the rainbows subside to a small glowing around her three circles on the sidewalk.

Then after a moment, when her mind's finally processing the newcomer's words, she answers the part that's easiest to answer.

" - well, if I wanted to mind-wipe you, of course I'd do it after asking you all sorts of questions about why you came here!  It'd be a lot harder to find that out afterwards!"

"...I'm a student.  It's easier to work when I'm not crammed into a 10-by-14 dorm room that's split down the middle and full of built-ins taking up the space that isn't occupied by beds," she deadpans.  "And quite a few of the buildings are still technically open at this hour, so I can find myself a nice little corner to work in."

"Well, of course they're still technically open to students; that's why I'm a student now.  Maybe not tonight, but sometime this week I'll be wanting to go inside here to look at the other side of these walls.

"And I didn't think dorm rooms would be that bad if you didn't have to keep most of your actual studies secret from your roommate...?"

"There is floorspace enough for exactly one person to fit down the center of my dorm room if neither of us are using the desks."

"And you could absolutely hide whatever you're doing in plain sight, as worldbuilding notes for a game or something.  People lift from real-world environments for their fiction all the time."

Aeslin tries to imagine a room that small, and it seems rather comfortable until she imagines trying to do anything in it besides sit at a desk, let alone... "How can you even store your books in there!?

"And - I didn't know games were getting as detailed as this?"  She flicks her wand and lifts one of her thick reference books (An Incomplete Guide to Properties of Fay-Made Materials) into the air.

"With effort.  And there's the cabinets and all that.  Though most of my textbooks are in digital format anyway."

And speaking of textbooks...

"Okay, yeah, you'd probably have to hide or at least digitize the reference materials, that's...  Nobody has that much vanity press budget when they're rooming with someone, I wouldn't think, unless they're an Eccentric Rich Kid.  Which...  I mean, maybe you could pull that vibe off, I don't know you?  But PDFs are cheap.  ...Though they do do single bed dormrooms here, but that's more expensive than offcampus.  Especially after you factor in the meal plan requirement..."

She wrinkles her nose.

"I prefer the feel of paper.  Besides, most of the older mages haven't bothered computerizing their books yet... entirely aside from the magical significance of books which I'm not sure would be captured in such a new thing as computers, though I admit I haven't run any experiments..."

A car backfires somewhere across campus, which interrupts Aeslin's musing and makes her suddenly remember who she's talking with.

"... But, I believe we were talking about 'mindwipes'?  That isn't the standard first-rung procedure for much of anything... Do you have reason to believe you've encountered a 'mindwipe' before?"

"...No, they're just a horribly popular Masquerade enforcement trope.  In fantasy and sci-fi, even."

Aw, darn...  She had more things she wanted to say!

"...Also, fake dustjackets would help with your book-concealing needs at minimal cost, I think.  Before we go anywhere else."

"...but... Wait a fucking minute.  Why the hell is there a Masquerade to begin with, someone should have been caught on camera, there's just too many cameras - aren't we on camera right now?  I swear I saw one right over there...  And then that's assuming that there aren't any asshole mages who'd break your statute of secrecy, or whatever it is, to fuck with mundanes for shits and giggles!  Which is kind of absurd!  There's always assholes!"

She follows Mira's glance.  "Camera - oh yes, that one.  I glamoured it first thing.  Also that other one.  Don't worry; if anyone unsavory comes by they will still see him.

"I'm honestly sure there are some mages who're still messing with muggles, even after the Great Mapmaking with most of the Fay.  But the sort of mage who wants to mess with muggles generally doesn't want to shake up the whole order of the world... or if he does, then so far he's been obvious about it.  And thank goodness the Fay are invested in our secrecy too, these days, even if it's more so than I'd prefer..."

"But - you didn't know about any of this magic before tonight?"

She raises her wand and traces the knot of the simplest truthspell, which will stop any direct lies from either of them for maybe the next half-minute.  (It doesn't feel like anything to Mira.)

"You didn't have a camera of your own recording this, do you?"

"...To the best of my knowledge, no, I did not, though now I'm wondering if there's anything that might actually be behind some family stories and personal experiences.

"...I doubt it, but if magic is real, then why the hell wouldn't it be possible for my mother to have occasionally had weirdly prophetic dreams for reasons instead of out of some grand cosmic coincidence.

"Anywho.  No, I do not - and did not - have a camera recording this.  The only camera I have that I could reasonably do that with is on my phone.  You'd probably be able to tell if I was taking video!"

(...But not necessarily if she was fine with just an audio recording, which...)

(Her hands are already in that pocket.  If things look like they're about to go sour...  She might try it.)

"...Is that important?"

Oh good, that makes things easier.

"Yes, I do always try to clean up my own messes."  Especially because if she doesn't, her friends and sponsors won't like it.  And if her picture is on the next leak, there's a tiny chance the Greater Fay would be angry too even if it does get covered up as a hoax, and she really doesn't want that.

"So..."  She stares at Mira.  "I could just wipe away these circles and walk away and you could have a nice story no one would believe.  At least the part about the real rainbows.  That's how it usually happens, in fact."

But there's something about Mira, and the sort of questions she's been asking, that makes Aeslin not really want to do that.  For reasons aside from how it'd make her wait for another night to get to study these stones.

"That sounds like there are other things that could happen that aren't me having to walk away from magic.

"...Even if I'm never going to be able to do any, I...

"I've always wanted magic to be real.  And having to leave all my questions forever unanswered...

"I mean, I assume your masquerade doesn't care all that much about my psychological wellbeing, but if I have to walk I will forever be haunted by this.  ...Damn, now I have to wonder if the crystal-woo people are onto something.

"But...  Please don't make me walk away.

"...Also, I've already seen you with the circles.  You don't need to wipe them now, that damage is done, no?"

She laughs.  "And I've chattered at you more than enough already, too!  So you've got more questions after your great ones so far?  I'm sure I'll be happy to answer more of them!"

(She never liked the Fay's insistence on fencing around their secrecy in all sorts of needless ways, anyway.)

"To start with, crystals -" She shrugs.  "Some people have built wands out of them.  It doesn't work as well as wood most of the time, but it works if it comes from the right places.  But just a crystal isn't anything more than just a piece of wood from the right tree."

(And after answering Mira's questions, she'll walk away... or, some other ghosts of possibilities are tickling in the back of Aeslin's mind.  Some of them, the Fay couldn't justly criticize themselves... not that they wouldn't criticize them anyway, but...)  

"...Huh...  Does petrified wood behave uniquely vis-a-vis being simultaneously chemically mineral and yet also a tree?"

"Now that's an interesting question...  I haven't heard of anyone trying!  I imagine it would depend on the fossilization process...  You see, to make a wand, you need something that's already been infused with magic - either from a magical tree, or a rock-nymph's rocks, or so on.  I'm sure some magical trees fossilized - they're common enough; half the hazels are magic for instance; they're not noticeable as magic unless you're doing magic around them - so it should be able to be tried!"

"...But would the trees of - taking my phone out to check some numbers -" tappity tappity tap "- 65 million years ago or more, be the same trees you can confirm are likely to be magic?  I mean you could do it artificial-like, actually, you just need a sufficiently anoxic environment with the right sort of mineral water..."

Aeslin does keep her eyes on the phone while Mira has it out, though she still looks like she's paying more attention to things far away.

"Artificial petrified wood?  Wow, I didn't know you could do that without magic -

"Anyway, even if you couldn't identify any trees of the right species from sixty-five million years ago, I'm sure there were some magical trees there; I could go through the petrified forests testing them like I was a wandmaker... I suppose that couldn't distinguish negative results because the trees weren't originally magical versus because the fossilization destroyed their magic, though after a while enough negative results could be telling...

"But that would take too long.  Maybe I'll throw it on the ideas list for the next time someone's volunteered to be my lab assistant.  Or the next time a journal's asking me for a letter."