"We're not showing you all of them, this is public contact info, something you could find on HexVPN with the right searches." The librarian says. "Maybe not the Godmother's direct. I don't recommend using it, by the way."

"Yeah, somehow I don't think directly poking an archtypal mafia matriarch when you haven't been invited to do so contributes positively to your life expectancy. I'll email Loretta instead. Thanks for these!"

"No problem! Glad we can try to make up for how ya got here, at least. Want to head to medical? She's probably done, the scans don't take that long."

"Sounds like a plan!" She falls into step alongside J.

"Hey," Lenora tells them where she's sitting on the benches outside. "I have been officially approved as not a horrible tentacle monster that wants to end reality, and have a stamp to prove it. Also, even if that scare talk was exaggeration, yikes. You find anything good, Sable?"

"Hooray for not being an omnicidal abomination! I'm so glad I didn't accidentally start befriending an omnicidal abomination. That would be such a challenge!"

She giggles, then holds up her two printouts. "Yeah, I did. Got some details on how my resurrection works, and that I'm apparently going to be very difficult to deprive of mana once I do some initial setup. Also got contact details for two other Inkborn."

"Nice. I don't think I'll have too much trouble either, though... Headpats are kiiiind of embarassing." Blush. "Anyway, - thank you officer," she says with barely a falter in her expression, "I'd like some help packing up my apartment and dealing with my car - it's honestly barely worth the salvage value."

"We need deniable vehicles and fucking with the DMV isn't exactly hard for us but it's better not to. We'll buy it off you at a generous price, if ya want?"

"That'd be nice. And my apartment's a month-to-month so I can just tell the company I'm leaving.

...Feels weird to just cut it all off like that. I can still call my friends and family, I guess."

Oh no, she's dangerously cute when she blushes. Don't get distracted, Sable.

"Yeah, from what I hear, phones and internet all still work. I'll need help picking my stuff up too, officer, although I don't have a car to sell you."

"Oh! Are there masquerade exceptions for close family or anything like that?"

"Close friends and family, yes. Anyone you could ask for a favor from and expect them to agree without fuss, is my rule of thumb. It's only big breaches or showing strangers that really hit you hard - or like, having something obviously inhuman doing chores for you in a mundane shop, or selling magic to ordinary people. You don't want to push it, if you try to get creative and the Veil decides against you it gets... Snappy. Anybody you tell gets hit with the Masquerade themselves if they try to spread it further, though. Most of the world has to remain ignorant of magic - it's important in ways that are at least slightly classified."

"Say, can you..... Make someone else a witch?"

"It has ever been done. But it's not easy, we're talking super rare and expensive artifacts, or power beyond rank five. Think about it later."

Sable makes a mental note of all of that.

"Well, sounds like it's about time to go pack. I'm making a stop in Chicago. Where are we stopping for you, Lenora?"

"Champaign, Urbana-Champaign - home of U-I-U-C if you haven't heard of it, big important school." Sigh.

"We got portals, it won't take twenty minutes to get from one to the other I bet."

Sable steps close to Lenora as they walk toward the portals, nudges her gently, and asks softly, "What's bothering you, if y'don't mind my asking?"

"Aside from all the magic shock and being a mouse? ...Huh, I'm getting more used to walking like this, though. I'm just worried I'll be awful at being a witch too. Athletic, but not enough for sports. Got into college, wasn't great at it, left to stop wasting money. Tried, like, art. And doing Youtube videos. Tried dating and it was - weird. I was weird." Shrug. "I'm not that good at things."

"Doubt it. First of all, that's not the vibe I get from you. There's more to you than that. I've always had a little bit of a sense for when people can do something exceptional if they find their niche, and something of a sense for where the niche is, and ain't been wrong yet in twenty-three years.

"Second, you're already approaching what's generally considered the standard of 'pretty capable'. Hitting Rank Three in one or two specialties — after years of study — is considered a capable witch. You have at least your Witchery, and probably one or more of your elemental magics given that you're a sorceress, already to rank two, without even training yet.

"Third," she pauses and grabs another cheap pen from her purse, bites the tip off, spits it out into a passing trash can, and sucks on the pen for a moment before continuing. "You grew up in a mortal world that has been ruthlessly optimized, over decades, to crush people's spirits and leave them trapped in a cycle of wage slavery and consumerist copium. You have every right to feel demoralized by that life history. That world takes people with interesting potential and grinds us down to fit into simple little boxes.

"You couldn't possibly reach your full potential under that. No one can, not truly. You deserve better than that. And now you'll have it."

She blushes and pauses and tries to think of a response to that.

"-I wanna argue about the non-magic world. Modern medicine is pretty nice, and grocery stores, and the internet. I guess none of those things are, like, the government... So I can't really. Is that really the scale? Most witches aren't..." She waves vaguely. "...How do you tell that about people?"

("We're all three powerhouses here, babe," she wants to say. But actually she stays quiet, because this is cute. Staying quiet it is~)

"Yes. Most witches do not excel, you have already outdone what many do without even trying yet. And it's not even mostly the government. It's more like capitalism, and corporate greed, and marketing, and countless other things all colliding. It's a mess, and I'm not in a mood to do a detailed breakdown of all the hows and whys again, those take hours, and we have better things to do.

"As for how I can tell," she says, before trailing off for a moment, sucking on her pen again.

Because I love people immediately, and want the best for them, and have an intuition for where to find it, she doesn't say.

Because I'm the story of sparking that potential in someone, and I always have been, even before I Awoke, she doesn't say.

"I don't fully know how that intuition works. I've always had it. Maybe it's connected to my archetype. All I can say for sure is it's loud as fuck about you. It's like someone painted your character in color in a world of black and white. Everyone has the colors if they try, and I can always see them, even when they're too ground down, but for most people they're muted, muffled under years of the world's garbage."

She sighs, shakes her head.

"You, though. Even after everything that's tried to crush you, you're still practically neon. You feel to me like you're just waiting to be more, like your whole life's been the backstory of a heroine the readers are gonna fall in love with."