"Perfectly content to stay on the ground."

"Fair point. Wasn't questioning his choice, just - eh, I like flying and magic. If I and Savannah weren't critters I would have neither."

"If Ch- Dad wants to learn to magic he can do that without crittering, right?"

"Yup. But I wouldn't have known that I could learn it without crittering. He's in a different situation than I was."

"There you go. He doesn't want the cosmetics or the flying or the secret handshake, all the other cool stuff he can get without."

"Fair enough. Does he want to learn magic?"

"Not especially. If we get thoroughly checked and tested Xeroxed scrolls made he might take one or two for emergency situations."

"Aha. Makes sense. I feel like when I start making scrolls I'm just going to make absurd amounts."

"We'll get a copier and take stacks of 'em to the Avalon every other weekend and warn people not to re-xerox them because there could be errors introduced by more layers of it."

Darren snickers. "We'll have to see if copied scrolls will work. They might not, it could be like the native language thing and cause issues. If they do, though - magic is the best thing."

"If a copier doesn't work maybe we do woodcuts and a makeshift printing press?"

"Yeah. Stencils, too. Runes might require being hand-drawn, stencils could make that a whole lot faster."

"Ooh, nice, it hadn't occurred to me that it might matter if you draw them."

"Thanks! I need to test that, if it matters or not. It hadn't come up yet for me on my own, but since we need scrolls for self-defense, now - time to find out."

"A stencil could still be really fast, though, considering, and it would make it harder for someone else to figure out our secret and swipe our market share."

"I think you mean 'economic'. Economical makes it sound like we're doing it with discount snacks from Costco."

"That was the second stage of my plan," drawls Darren.

Bella laughs.

Darren does, too.

Savannah desperately wishes they would kiss. Maybe not now, with their dads in the car, but eventually.

Darren snickers, and gives her a rune.

"Augh," says Savannah. Then she flops over and tries to sleep because magic makes her head hurt.