"Maybe. What do you think would cause that?"

"I don't know. I can't do it, but I have a soul gem. Wen Ning, do you feel - stable? I wasn't confident for a long time I would be stable."

"I feel...a lot of things. But none of them seem liable to do anything." She hesitates. "I was always very good at not acting on negative emotions, before I was a witch. It might be different for other people." 

"What did you wish for?"

"My older sister was a doctor. She was devastated, the first time one of her patients died. I tried to comfort her, but she brushed me off and said it happens to every doctor. But I could tell she was still hurting. So I wished her patient back to life." 

"Oh, that's so - so sweet of you -"

"I don't know if that wish is likely to be helping you now or not. Mine is."

"Hm?"

"It's a secret, jiejie."

"I was very good at healing, as a magical girl. I don't think it changed anything while I was a regular witch."

"But it might be having effects now. I suppose Wei Ying will just have to repeat her trick a few times."

She cracks her knuckles. "I am happy to do so."

"Is there anyone either of you know who 'died' of soul gem dimness who we should especially watch out for."

Headshake.

"I don't know if my old friends are all still around but I don't know them to have died."

"'Kay. We'll probably want to ask more people that question. I don't know any but I really haven't been magic that long." 

"In order to really scale this up we'll need to find more people who can make my wish."

"There are thousands but not tens of thousands of types of witches, you could most likely do it yourself if you were determined."

"That's good...not all witches come in recognizable types, though. And what about types that have been wiped out, where all the seeds are--wherever the Empress contains them so they won't sprout?"

"Not sure. It's possible she destroys them."

"Oh. I hope that's not true." 

Handsqueeze. 

"Okay. So maybe in order to retrieve everyone who's ever witched, we don't need more of me, we need someone who really wants to know who all the lost witches are and a buncha people invested in getting them all back...of course, at that point, there's no reason to stop at only the witches...hm. This really only scales well if one wish can make multiple people immortal, otherwise we'd just be grabbing the same people back over and over..."

"Is she always like this?"

"Yes."