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"It makes itself pretty obvious. Also, he named the place Ye Olde Magic Shoppe. Subtlety was not the goal."

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"Oh. I suppose that would help. I've seen a number of stores with names that are puns and I'm not sure I'd reliably get one of those."

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"Really? I'm surprised, your English is very good."

And that accent but she is not mentioning that.
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"I'm an interpreter," explains Gianna. "But puns are tricky even if you know all the words; context helps less."

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She can talk while she walks, if she doesn't get too distracted admiring Gianna; she starts them towards the magic shop. "That makes sense," she allows. "I'm fluent in Mandarin and I still struggle with the jokes sometimes. There's so many homophones."

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"Mandarin is - a Chinese dialect?"

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"Yes. It's the official language of China, so it has the most speakers, but some of the dialects are so different I'm never quite sure they count."

They turn onto the second shopping district street and head down it. The magic shop sign can be seen a couple blocks down. "When did you learn English? Did you always want to be a translator?"
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"I started in school and everyone thought I was good at it, so I just - carried on with it, and went to England and America a few times, and then it turned out to be my most marketable skill. The work is good but I didn't dream about it when I was small."

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"Well, you are good at it, they were right. Though now I'm curious what you dreamed about when you were small."

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"Oh, the same things everyone else does. Being a princess or a painter or a rock star."

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"I wanted to be a rock star too! Although I wanted to be the king, not a princess." Vivian smiles rather mischievously. "I suppose that should have been a hint."

They're not far from the magic shop now. Vivian nods at the sign, which is now close enough to be easily read. "The shop's right up there. Don't worry about the owner, he's standoffish and bitter to everyone, just be polite and you'll be fine."
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"All right," nods Gianna, and she pushes past the door.

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Vivian watches her go with a rather goofy smile, then shakes herself and goes in search of Isabella. Knowing Isabella, this will be a search of, at most, ten feet.

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There's Isabella, in the library with three books and a notebook.

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"Ready to go, love? There's something I want to discuss with you on the way home."

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"Uuuum okay." Isabella puts bookmarks in the books and then goes and checks them out. "What is it?"

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"I met a nice lady at the docks today who has a sick brother. I'm going to look into spells to try to make him feel better. Would you like to help?"

Vivian will explain things in more detail to Isabella later, when saying "sphinx magic" will not get her stared at by passersby.
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"Yeah! I want to learn healing magic and then heal everybody."

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"We will learn all the magic and fix all the things," Vivian agrees. "And we can heal people and help fix the environment and solve world hunger and be superheroes."

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Isabella giggles.

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Once they're safely in the car on their way home, Vivian circles back to the subject. "One more thing, sphinxette. I didn't want to say anything in the Avalon in case anyone heard, but I've read a couple books that said that sphinxes were often healers. I can't find anything saying what exactly they did, so I know I'm not being very much help, but I think you might be able to do more than just the spells I've shown you."

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"I don't know how though. I read that too and I tried to fix my knee when I tripped once and I tried to fix my shoulder when I had that really big bruise and nothing happened."

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"It could only be for certain things. Maybe they can only make illnesses go away instead of fixing injuries, or maybe they could only reattach things you lost, or something. 'Healing' is pretty broad."

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Nod, nod. "I'll try to fix the lady's brother. And it's okay to do that? They know things?"

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"She knows about magic and critter things, yes."

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