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...that's not Sadde's apartment. He's pretty certain his apartment should not have all those tables and a counter and—he's pretty certain his apartment shouldn't be a bar. He has perfect memory, he'd know. Which has several implications, but the most interesting one is "Cool there's a bar where my apartment used to be!" so he walks in, walking at human speed towards the bar. He takes a seat, just for appearances' sake, and then there's a napkin: "Welcome to Milliways! I'm the bar, I can take requests and I talk via napkin. Your first drink is free. Female pronouns, please." "...this is the coolest thing. Do you answer questions or just take orders?" "I can answer questions." And of course an entirely predictable string of those succeeds. This is probably the state one will find the oddly pale man for the next while.
"Probably not the same kind of witch as mine or hers," he says, gesturing at Flora, "since we're both witches."
"Horrible creatures that distort space and time that generate from and feed on despair."
"Um. Yeah, no, my kind of witch is just humans or vampires or werewolves with one magical power and hers is humans that can do potions and spells, apparently, by the way I need to ask both of you a lot of stuff."
"Despair? That sounds really awful. Wait, you never mentioned werewolves before, what are they like? What kind of stuff?"
"Bar, some more paper?" he asks, and starts writing on it. "Vampires are the sort of thing I am," Sadde tells the new girl, "and by the way I'm Sadde and she's Flora."
"Pleasure. I'm writing here a list of all the stuff vampires can do and how they can do it, mostly the advantages 'cause Flora has a list of the disadvantages, but you might guess super multitasking is amongst our superpowers. Werewolves are born that way where I'm from, they were magically created somehow to fight vampires and people with the werewolf gene can floof when in contact with a vampire after puberty, and then they quickly age until they look twenty-five and stop aging then. They can turn into giant wolves at will, and in that form they basically share all their thoughts with their pack. They also have a magic soulmate thing going on but it's different and completely asymmetrical. As for the stuff I wanna ask, mostly how your magic works."
"'Floof'? That sounds really cute. ... Your world is really, really into the soulmate thing, isn't it. ..Are there any other species? And, oh, feel free to ask about the magic, I just don't really know where to start."
Willow takes the list once Sadde's done with it and starts reading. "...okay, either the drawbacks are really huge or everyone should be a vampire."
"There are some pretty severe drawbacks but I still think everyone should be a vampire. And there are also part-vampires where I'm from, half—and quarter—and three-quarters and stuff, but other than that no species that I know of. Let's start with you, Flora?"
Flora offers the list of drawbacks to Willow. "Like I said, I'm not sure where to start. The mechanics, maybe? Okay, right. It's like, for everyone but the most powerful and skilled wixen, to cast a spell you need to have a wand and wave it correctly, you need to speak the incantation correctly, and sometimes you need an intent component, such as where you want to float something you're levitating." She demonstrates, floating a napkin up and down, left and right.
"Potions are kind of like stored magic, if you get what I mean. They need even more precision, but they let you get big effects without exhausting yourself. There's also Runes which let you ward a place or make a magical object. And then I can also make new spells because I took Arithmancy. Oh, there's Divination too, maybe it can help find who I'll mate to? I'll try that, in any case. It's imprecise for all but the most basic of things, but that should work."
Willow pauses her exploration of the list of drawbacks to watch the floating and pay some attention. "That’s really different than my magic," she comments.
"Mine, too," Sadde agrees, then starts writing down the questions as he asks them. "How do you get a wand? Does it have to be a wand as opposed to some other implement? Why? What's the range of magic you can do? You mentioned it's hereditary, how common is it? Is it secret? Is there a shadow government? Are there other species than humans?"
(Explanation mode engaged.)
"Wandmakers sell them. It could be a staff but those are unwieldy and old-fashioned. It channels magic, and to do so most efficiently you need a core covered by magical wood, with a gluing substance in-between. The most impressive, at least from my perspective, feat of magic modern wixen are capable of is the Fidelius charm, which hides one place from everyone except those who are told about it and its location by a person called the Secret Keeper. I forget the statistics but not that many, somewhere around 300,000. It is secret, and here lies one of the most horrible things about our world: if a non-magical person sees magic, their memories are removed or even modified! There are the various Ministries of Magic, but not a shadow government, I don't think. There are lots of non-human sentient species, in fact, and they are not treated very well."
"That's terrifying. The memory thing. I want to overthrow your governments."
"I was hoping to do it peacefully, bring down the Statute of Secrecy all at once, perhaps, and nothing anyone can do matters, but I suppose that way might work too? Especially with, you know, vampire help. And possibly -- magical girl help, did I get it right?"
"Yep, but I can't go to another world for too long because I need to fight witches to stay alive."
