"Yeah, they'll get used to it, I think they wanted me to have like asked them first but sorry not sorry."

"Yeah, it's hard to turn down, even with the drawbacks and the craziness of the world behind the Veil to deal with. I've had people dither but never actually back out, there's just too much to love."

"Yeah, even if I were a real scaredy-cat I could have been a regular - wosscalled, neutral? - witch and not gone for any of the drawbacks."

"And not a warlock, probably - some people would doubt Selaliel was a real servant of God, or just get much worse patrons offering. But magic is just too great - fun, useful, beautiful, you name it."

"Yeah! And I'm a small enough bird that I can fly around in our apartment."

"Oh? Do you know what kind yet? I'm a yellow warbler, but it took me a while to find the matching species in a bird book."

"I'm not sure! It's pink and red. I'll show you." Poof.

She is a cute little bird.

"Aww, you're such a cute bird!" She poofs into her warbler and tweets at Rebecca.

Chirp chirp!

Cheep cheep!

"It's funny," she says, changing back and adjusting her new supersoft clothes back into place, "I thought only boy birds were colorful."

She also turns back, words are useful. "They're usually more colorful, but not always. I've heard some sirens claim they have the male coloration, but I'm never sure if they have the species right - there are some probably-not-magical but still wild breeds of animal in some places."

"Oh, do other planets have other birds, I guess that would make sense!"

"If you go far enough the worlds get really weird - the Order 'pole' or whatever every apple tree looks exactly the same and so on for every species, and the Chaos one everything's constantly changing. But go a little way toward Chaos and you get crazy species of everything. Sometimes witches import them as fancy pets."

"Oh, fun! Is it hard to get all these places?"

"It's hard to open the way there, you need strong Portals and Aethermancy, but if you can get there it's not hard to make it so other witches can follow - witches can all see and use portals by default and there are tons of mostly-permanent portals between Earths and dimensions. You probably saw the map of entrances for Arcadia, right? Hundreds just on this Earth. And it's the same thing, it's just a little easier when it's an artificial dimension like Arcadia is."

"Yeah, it's not a bad commute, I'll be able to come home weekends."

"You can also take your family on vacations through Arcadia. They'll want them to stick with you while you're passing through campus, but they're chill with being a transit hub for friends and family. If I remember right there's two-hop trips to Redwood National Park and Yellowstone, just on Earth. ...Maybe get recommendations before taking them to other worlds, there's beautiful sights but some of them will be real risky for mortals. Alfheimr's magnificent but go there with school friends, not family."

"What happens to mortals there?"

"Monsters, even in safer areas. If you're well within the boundaries of a lord's holding, you won't see anything witches can't scare off - and usually nothing you couldn't just beat into a pulp - but if you don't see it coming, it could attack a mortal, and even if they weren't hurt badly, it's much harder to fight off a horribear or wyvern when there's a fragile powerless person right next to them."

"A horribear?"

"It's like a grizzly twenty feet tall, only it has armor plates, claws that can scratch steel and teeth that could puncture it, and absolutely no caution. They don't back down from a fight from anything they can see. Elementalism works fine to hurt them from a distance and scare them, so witches are fine, but they're pretty dangerous."

"Wow! Are there like, magic martial arts classes or something at Arcadia, I'm not sure I have like, the right reflexes."

"Some will be covered in elementalism classes, and they definitely have dedicated classes if you want them."

"Cool. I wanna go places and see stuff even if the stuff is gigantic horribears."