"I don't know the poem."

"The Chuci is a collection of poems by this guy named Qu Yuan about an ancient Chinese kingdom called Chu. It's the same Chu as my surname and me'n all my little sisters are named after parts of it."

"Huh. I don't know if any of the Chinese spells I know are from it, it didn't come up in any of my lit courses."

"Even if any of them are spells that doesn't mean they'd be spells you know, it's just funny to think about."

"Suppose it is. - anyone got a spare notebook so I can take notes on this spell, it helps me think."

"Oh, of course." 

She fetches a purple-fronted notebook from her room, along with a couple of pens. 

"Hang on, I thought all your notebooks had gold detailing on the covers." 

"I do that myself with permanent marker when I start using them."

"Thanks!" She will start diagramming out the spell like the kind she's familiar with.

Lisao will stand behind her shoulder and watch if and only if Bella does not indicate that she minds this. 

"This is okay while I'm just working on the spell but if I'm writing and you don't already know what I'm writing about don't read over my shoulder," Bella remarks absently.

"Sure, of course."

Now, can she figure this out? Honestly an anti-divination spell should be in-affinity...

She can definitely make progress but there is a lot of spell to put together. 

Ugh, it's like one of those heinous epic poems. "This might take me a while. - for calibration, how long would it take a witch, order of magnitude?"

"To cast or to learn? A divination doesn't take long to cast even at the really high ranks, but a ritual to imbue a fifth-rank rune would take about a week to perform. Total."

"To learn."

"Can only the witches who don't have to sleep do those?"

"No, you can pause a ritual." 

"Memorizing a spell long-term is harder than learning it well enough to cast the once, but the latter is often possible within a single day if you're determined."

"...huh. I think it's pretty rare for a wizard to forget a spell we've gotten down properly in the first place."

"Does remembering spells work differently than remembering other things?"

"Yeah, especially in-affinity. When I found out what my affinity was that was when I realized that in fact arrays are usually not designed mnemonically and most people don't get them stuck in their heads like annoying songs."

"Oh my. It doesn't work that way for us--memorizing a spell is like--memorizing a piece of music, you can lose it if you go long enough without 'playing' it."

"Sounds inconvenient but I'd trade you all things considered."