Leonardo rummages around and produces a box of somewhat haphazard long flat copper scraps, a neat coil of somewhat lumpy wire varying around a millimeter thickness, and a small reel of thinner wire.

"Does the dowel need to be perfectly round? There are small square cross section supporting struts, that we use to space out pieces of equipment. That's the closest I have on hand."

"I'll make do; honestly I may as well use my fingers.  ...Do you have a lodestone or any other magnetized object..."

...Right.  Now if she just...

Coil the millimeter-thickness wire tight for the magnet, a long tube...

An antenna - she'll just do - A Jacob's ladder, maybe, there's hardly lightbulbs or anything, she just needs visible evidence -

"...y'all can do better than this at drawing wire, how do you even get something this lumpy, the lumps are supposed to be smoothed out by the process of drawing it through the dies...

"Anyway.  I have almost no idea what I'm doing.  But if I'm right, we'll see some better-behaved lightning in here soonish."

...She just needs to get the experimental setup standing up.  Can't rely on gravity without vertical orientation...

"To get enough length we had the medium wire re-melted and hammered."

He hands her a tiny scrap of lodestone on a stick. "Mostly we just use this for fishing iron scraps out of awkward places, I wasn't aware it had electrical applications."

"Electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin!"

...What happens once she drops the magnet down the tube?

(Please do something, please do something, please do something, please do something!)

It does something!

It crackles ominously and gives her a nasty shock, probably to be accompanied by some blistering if she doesn't do something urgent about that. 

"What in the absolute hell is fucking with - that is ILLEGAL!  BAD experimental apparatus!  The sparks go that way!"

She then sticks her fingers in her mouth because ow, and, after a minute or two, declares the following:

"We are being fucked with.  There is no mechanism by which this should have shocked me.  And yet it did.  Something very strange is happening here, even beyond my spontaneous existence."

"Well, yes, that does tend to be the price of progress. Would you like me to take a look at that? While the arts of the physick are no longer my primary profession, it behooves one in my position to keep a little knowledge regarding interesting wounds."

"No, it's not - 'the price of progress' - this is literally not how physics works.  The induction coil cannot spark like that.  Not 'shouldn't' - can't.  Literally physically impossible according to my best model of how electrons function, and with how it was so specifically vengeful?  There were better places to ground to, even if I was wrong.  I made sure of that as best I could!  No, this result has to be some sort of magic at work or I'll eat my fucking hat.  Notwithstanding that I don't have one.  ...That said, something for my fingers would be great, actually."

He reaches into a pouch and pulls out a little pot of bright green salve and a roll of light, gauzy bandage. "Let me see... yes, it should only take a tiny bit. Other than the superficial burns, you are feeling all right in yourself, yes? No unexpected torso pain, sudden aches, dizziness?"

"I'm not having a heart attack, no.  I appreciate your concern.  There's no way that should have produced enough current to cause one, and fucking yet, with what just happened, I can't blame you for checking!"

Leonardo slices off an appropriate length of bandage with a small knife, uses a tiny silver spoon to measure out a portion of salve, and then distributes that onto the bandage with what looks like a tiny palette knife.

"This might sting a little at first, but it should clear it right up," he says, wrapping it carefully around the affected area. "Best to keep it on for the next couple of hours to keep the new skin safe, it can still be a touch delicate."

It feels like Sophia's fingers are going through pretty much the entire process of healing the burn in a few seconds, which is in fact what is happening.

"...wow, that feels really weird -- how does it do that?  What is it doing, actually?"

"It's your natural healing process, just sped up a bit. As for how, I'm afraid herbalism is definitely out of my area of expertise. I expect it has a little Spring magic in it, although now that I say that I can fondly imagine the college's herbalists having a several hour discourse about how that is reductive and magic-centric of me."

"Gotta wonder how that impacts aging.  Anyway - I think we need to investigate what the heck is happening magically when we do electrical experiments, if we ever want to actually do any without this...interference."

"Unfortunately frequency of True Vervain use is already heavily correlated with not reaching one's natural lifespan for a large number of reasons, which makes study of this topic rather challenging.

Elena can do a little magic, certainly enough to see if there is an active effect. Naturally produced lightning does not have a Realmic alignment, nor does the friction based version, but we had not previously introduced a lodestone - they also aren't Realm-aligned in and of themselves, but the Winterfolk tend to claim they are a manifestation of hearth magic, and there might be an astronomantic connection."

"...Of course you have adventurers.  Why am I not surprised.

"...I doubt you'll find whatever's fucking with us in the materials.  And I bet it'll replicate if I use an artificial magnet."

"...you can construct an artificial lodestone?"

"Yeah, just drag a magnet along some iron.  In the same direction, repeatedly.  Oh, and if you have iron filings...

"...Damn, I should have gone for that."

"For what? We likely have a box of iron filings here somewhere, the ironmonger presents us with a discount if we return the filings and offcuts. It is sounding as if we may need a better lodestone?"

"Nah, this ought to be plenty of magnet - although it'd be better if it wasn't on a stick, for this, really -"

"It's only slotted in and held by rabbit glue, it wouldn't be difficult to do again if you'd like to break it apart."

Oof, the poor rabbits.

"I think I'd like to."

She'll just...create the exact same experimental setup, now with some iron filings spread carefully on the table as well - but she'll activate it from a much greater distance, thanks to having broken off the magnet and worked up a place to leave the magnet (with the supporting struts' assistance).  Then she'll poke it down the tube with a stick.

Sure, that demonstrates some Vigilance, iron filing patterns are pretty harmless.

Less ominous crackling, more iron filings lining up in approximately the expected fashion.

"...Yeah, we're being fucked with."

"Could you be so kind as to inform me of your hypotheses, and how the results differed therefrom?"