She fixes her gaze on Cally for a few seconds then asks, in all seriousness, "Are you a fairy?"

"A fa- No. I am not a fairy. I am also not sure I could convince my mom not to disappear either us or you if she knows you know about magic."

"So she doesn't need to know," Sadde reasons.

"If you poke around she will find out. Oh, and don't bother trying to grow that moss somewhere else - haven't fully figured it out yet, but I think it only likes graveyards and battlefields and the like."

"I won't poke around if you tell me!" she explains brightly. "I will poke around if you don't though."

Sigh.

She seems to be done stretching. "You know what, no. I like you but you're not my best friend forever or anything. And it's your head. Unless you can convince me otherwise I've said too much already."

She drops the cheerful act. "At least explain to me why not. I'm not sure what I'm even arguing against, here, to me it looks like there's this well of resources that could be used to, I don't know, cure cancer or eradicate malaria for all I know and it's secret. That sounds like an absolute, absurd waste."

"You might not think about caution since all you've seen is that fluffy moss. Oh, it grows in graveyards, that's weird and slightly creepy but harmless. Sure. Other magic stuff is usually slightly creepy, but not usually harmless. Want to start an unquenchable forest fire by accident? I nearly did that once. Mom literally knocked me unconscious to stop it. Magic is scary. My parents are... Scary. I'm not actually sure how much their precautions are paranoia and how much are them defending against other magic users. Or magic things."

"So there's a whole conspiracy preventing this from being exploited for the common good, great," she grumbles.

"I don't know if it's a big conspiracy. I just know you don't want to mess with my old man, and maybe you don't want to mess with whatever... Monsters in the woods he tells stories about."

"Okay but I do want to learn magic and use it usefully. This sounds like, like all those rich people who have so much money and don't donate even ten percent of it to charity and when they do they do it to one of those charities that give a dying kid their last wish, like, how ineffective can you get?—not that, like, it's bad to make a kid happy, there are worse ways to spend your money, but still."

"No, I get that. But we're both kids. Teens, I mean."

"And the adults don't seem to be doing much of anything, do they! Not that I plan to do anything right now, but it's a previously unknown resource, how am I supposed to factor it in?"

"It's... Ugh. I don't know. Magic plants are finicky enough that you'd have trouble doing big things with them? I think? Even if you knew more."

"But there are other things than magic plants?"

"I don't think so. I think it's just plants and animals and doing things with plants and animals."

"Animals, too?"

"Maybe? Never actually seen one, but Mom says they exist."

"What other kinds of things are there that can be done?"

"Uh... It really depends on the plants. You're not going to try and sneak into our garden or anything right?"

"...what? No of course not."

"We both snuck in that graveyard. And mom too. Hm... Silencefruit. Eat one and you can be super quiet and sneaky for a while, but it makes you kind of a coward, too. Moonleaf. It glows white like the moon looks, and you can make a potion that someone will pay Dad a good chunk of money for with it. I don't know what exactly it does though."

"Well the graveyard isn't technically private property," she reasons. "But wait back up, this stuff messes with your personality?"

"Silencefruit - well, when you eat one you know you're being sneaky, and you know you're being more prone to running and hiding, and you know it'll wear off. And it does, after about an hour."

"...okay..."