"Essentially - I do not know why this is a thing witches do or what it might feel like from the inside to want to, so it seems safer to give the potential impulse a nice wide berth."
"Eh, we'll see if my resolve holds up when I'm a fifty-year-old virgin or whatever. Though I'm crossing my fingers that the alethiometer can help, I'm not sure if it'll be clear enough to act on."
Adarin nods. "Good luck. I hope that it's not something about witches, just a cultural thing."
"It's not so easy to tell. I haven't detected sharp object related impulses in my psyche, but that could just be because I haven't been testing myself with live ammunition, so to speak."
From his lap, Vern is giving him a look. Adarin just keeps petting her.
"I'll keep the offer in mind - it's very kind. But maybe the alethiometer will tell me I'm being silly and it's not in my head to be found at all, wouldn't that be nice?"
Ignore the look from his daemon. Ignore it. No, he's smiling for alternative reasons, what are you talking about you crazy bird.
He is not, in fact, this dense. He's just shy, and used to being paranoid towards anything that involves romantics. Habits are hard to break, even when he's not home.
She looks out the window. "I can start magicking rocks if you like."
Adarin's glad she's not being pushy - he's very slow and deliberate, with his choices.
Out she goes. It's started to cool off with the sunset. She finds seven rocks of roughly the same size, with a little looking between herself and Path, and lays them out on a windowsill. "I'm going to do the same spell seven times and change nothing but the goddess name and the tweaks on that line necessary to make it continue to scan," she says. "One of them won't light up at all - Kas Petaal is the goddess of the new moon, which gives no light. The others will be all different kinds of light."
He follows! He sits at an appropriate spot to look at all the rocks, looking interested. "Very systematic of you, I approve."
The spell isn't English, but his spell will pick up the meaning - it scans and rhymes prettily, in the original:
"Segaard Oskei's light I call,
Brightness for me to see by,
Shine from that which I hold."
The rock starts to glow with an intense, warm yellow light.
"Sunshine," says Isabella. "That's the brightest version, and the most commonly used."
"Pretty," he pronounces, smiling at it. "I doubt this spell's anything secretive, but I do feel I should warn you; the translation spell I understood - most of that, I missed part of the first bit."
She picks up the second rock. The first line is slightly modified to accommodate the syllable change:
"Kas Petaal, it's your light I call,
Brightness for me to see by,
Shine from that which I hold."
This rock does, to all appearances, absolutely nothing.
She puts it down and repeats the procedure:
"Evisa Iannakara's light, come..." (The rock shines, like a firefly, faintly bluish and organic in character, not nearly as bright as the first.)
"Yambe Akka's light I call..." (The rock is speckled with faint yet attractive dots of starry light.)
"Farakhel Nimah's light, come here..." (The rock behaves like the waxing moon, a sliver of glow expanding until it covers the rest of the rock - and then it goes out.)
"Amariah Lytess's light is summoned..." (The rock lights up with gentle silvery moonglow and holds steady.)
"Memma Belir's light I call..." (This one is the reverse of Farakhel Nimah's; it starts like Amariah Lytess's and then slides into darkness.)
"The first one's probably the most practical, but the others are extremely pretty. Does the effect last indefinitely, or do they eventually go out on their own?"
"This will wear off unless I dunk the rocks in a potion. Do you want a glowy rock?"
He snickers. "I think so, yes. Not for any practical purpose, I can just make lights myself, but none of those are quite this pretty."
"Do you want all the ones that still have light on them or just one or what?"
He motions to the silvery moonglow one. Amariah Lytess' light - Vern is looking like she's trying very hard not to laugh.
Isabella scoops up the moonlight rock. "All right. You can watch me mix up the potion if you want."