Nod. "Yeah. So we'd need someone to help us out if I tried it, but volunteers shouldn't be so hard to find? ... Even if they're children?"

"They would have to be at least loosely within the definition of children, yes."

"That... Would be a complication."

"What exactly happens if you don't bind your familiar as a child?"

"You start getting rusty on the language, your spirit animal starts sleeping more and more and getting harder to see. People seem to forget about details of their spirit animals almost like they dreamed them."

"... That's a little terrifying, considering that familiars are sentient."

"Yyyyes. I revisit the question occasionally and have consistently come down on the side of 'the unfortunate dependence of familiar on potential binder does not oblige the binder to take responsibility for and risks on behalf of a familiar against their will' - but yeah, it's not great."

"Berathyme apparently wouldn't have minded, but - I don't think it's true of all familiars."

Adarin... Looks extremely upset.

"There are some theories that they get recycled - reincarnated, except without necessarily any better chances of properly incarnating the second time - but I think this is mostly wishful thinking; I've never heard of a spirit animal claiming to remember being someone else's."

Nod. "I'll look into trying to scry them."

"But what would we do with what we found, whatever it was?"

"... Try and figure out a way to help them. Or - give them a way to talk to each other, keep each other company. Something."

"The alethiometer won't be able to comment unless someone with a spirit animal moves to Chamomile, will it."

"Alas, no, and it's hard to lose it as a tool for any given project, but it's not like I can't do anything without reference to it."

Adarin nods. "And I'm used to not using it much at all. Considering how a lot of what I do involves other planes."

"Makes sense. It would be really great if you could do something for the spirit animals. Bound familiars sometimes have problems, too, we were actually looking this morning at a letter from someone whose familiar has run away."

Wince. "That one I don't think I can magic away. Sorry. The ball's in your court, your uh - majesties."

"I was thinking it'd be a decent test case for familiar rights as long as the binder has authorized us to step in to begin with. But it'll have to be done carefully, we don't want to just drive mistreatment of familiars underground."

Edarial nods. "It's something of a delicate situation. Your magic research is more straightforward."

"Yes. Draw out spellchart, revise, attempt to memorize. Fail, prune, retry."

"Essentially. But we can do this, too."

Iobel nods.