Bella thinks that's adorable. "And of course our mutual lesbianhood is all we need to know. We're like oxygen atoms that way. Oxygen atoms who can only complete their reactions in Canada, but still. But since I have somehow learned your name apart from 'fellow lesbian' I might as well introduce myself, I'm Bella."

"Enchantée," says Solvei. She sets herself and her lunch down at their table. "And what brings you to this fine town, Fellow Lesbian Bella?"

"We have a very nice house annoyingly far out of town," laughs Solvei. "Once in a while I convince Ghys to let me have a big party, and the rest of the time I either visit someone or I make friends with the deer."

"Are the deer friendly?"

"Not if they notice you."

"Your friendships are doomed."

"I make friends with the deer very stealthily."

"Sounds to me like you stalk them. Those poor deer. Who will save them."

"Come now. Would I stalk a deer? Look at this face," she says, with a look of comically exaggerated innocence.

"I bet you would stalk a deer. And probably put flower garlands on it, too, you monster."

"How dare you accuse me of such crimes! I am innocent! Innocent, I tell you!"

"Of all days for me to forget how to perform a citizen's arrest! It had to be this one!"

Solvei cracks up into helpless giggles.

"But if I ever catch you frolicking with deer, watch out."

"No, no. If you catch me frolicking with the deer, then my plan has succeeded and I am no longer stalking them."

"You'd be frolicking. The deer would be helplessly attempting to escape you, obviously."

She shakes her head firmly. "Not at all. The frolicking and flower garlands only begin once they have accepted my presence."

"Through insidious psychological conditioning. Unconscionable."

"Sitting still for hours on end until they think I am an oddly dressed tree, then bringing them food. The machinery of friendship!"

"Won't they? Oh, I see, I forgot a step. In between the tree impersonation and the bringing them food, I obviously have to ostentatiously kiss a girl."

"Ah, that makes everything all right, then."

"The lack of volunteers has of course been why befriending the deer has been taking me so long."

"A serious problem. I'm given to understand lesbians are rare around here."

"So it would appear. Of course, you never know. We could be surrounded by deceivers."

"Of course," agrees Solvei. "And Jessica's word is unfailingly accurate in all things."

"Alas, no. But you can always ask for directions. I made them myself."

"All right, what are our options and are any of 'em coconut?"

"No coconut today. White chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate; hazelnut, pecan, orange, cinnamon," she says, indicating the three rows and four columns that divide the array of truffles into rectangular sections. "Some combinations turned out better than others, but that's the nature of experimentation."

"All right then." Bella grabs a cinnamon.

Solvei goes for the intersection of milk chocolate and orange, then picks up the box to start handing out truffles to all and sundry. Judging by the reaction of all and sundry, this is a well-known aspect of the lunchtime routine.

Spiffy perk of an otherwise uninspiring school. Bella proceeds to class after lunch, pleased. She has biology this period.

Bella waves back and plunks down. "Hi. Do you think anyone's going to notice the opportunity for hilarious jokes on the word 'partner'?"

Giggle.

Witty and academic, wonders never cease. Bella takes notes on the day's lesson and remembers having done some of the same things in a different order in her old school.

Witty, academic, friendly, and chipper. And noble - apparently she volunteered to be the odd one out so nobody else would have to go partnerless. And she dispenses chocolate at lunchtime. No wonder everyone likes her so much.

Well, Bella's not going to buck the common thread of appreciating Solvei, here.

How nice. Solvei does like to be appreciated.

"Those truffles were great," Bella remarks. "Well, at least the one I had was, for all I know the dark chocolate ones were involved in a horrible accident and now occasionally attempt to fight Superman in some appropriately gimmicky way, but you know."

"I'm proud of my truffles," says Solvei. "Want to learn how to make them? They're tricky, but fun."

"Sure! I didn't realize they were homemade."

"I am a woman of many talents."

"Does one need fancy candy-making equipment? My dad's kitchen leaves a lot to be desired."

"One doesn't technically need fancy candy-making equipment. I can bring everything, anyway. Unless you want to do it at my place, but Ghys makes such a production out of it if I'm having anybody over - I mean, requiring two days' notice so she can have a cleaning service in to clean the whole house before and after, inspecting all the bookshelves to make sure everything is shelved correctly, the works - it's just not worth it unless I'm inviting the whole school."

"Wow, that sounds like a hassle. Probably easier for you to bring stuff."

"It is an enormous hassle. I will bring stuff. When would you like to schedule your learning experience? I'm free tomorrow, Thursday, and Saturday."

"Thursday's good. Tomorrow's blocked off for inventorying the kitchen to see if there are any spices left anywhere from last summer and then making a grocery run. What should I pick up for truffles?"

"Oh, here—" and she writes down a grocery list in her obnoxiously beautiful handwriting. "Pick whichever ones you feel like out of the flavourings section, I will not be disappointed if I show up and you are missing chopped hazelnuts and orange oil. And if there's anything you want and can't find, let me know and I'll bring some." She adds her phone number to the page, detaches it from her notebook, and hands it over.

"Great, thanks." Bella tucks it into her own notebook.

Solvei grins.

"I don't have a car."

"Okay. I got the really good parking spot today, I'm the ancient station wagon."

"Lucky you."

"I've been trying to show up early, I don't like having to pick my way across the parking lot with all the ice."

"Makes perfect sense."

"Yeah. I'm not used to it, and this is on top of being klutzy enough to statistically compensate for an entire gymnastics team."

"Unlucky you."

"Just a bit."

"When I was a kid I had fragile bones and anytime I slipped and fell I'd usually break something. This is a problem in Thule. But we moved away and I took a lot of calcium supplements and the meager ice of Forks holds no fear for me."

"What's Thule like? Do you miss it?"

"It's gorgeous," she sighs. "I miss the architecture, I miss the landscapes. And just - feeling like I'm home, you know? But Ghys would rather live somewhere firmly below the Arctic Circle, so here we are."

"Why Forks in particular?"

"Ghys likes the rain. And there was that old house for sale."

"Is the place nice? I think I know what house you're talking about but I haven't gone and had a look at it."

"It took a little fixing up, but we're past that phase now and it's very pretty. In an - American way."

"Thule would require a glacier in the backyard?"

Snort.

"Do you mind if I ask why you live with your aunt?"

"I mean, I don't mind if you ask, but the answer's a bit depressing. My parents died in a fire when I was a kid."

"Yikes. I'm sorry."

She half-smiles. "Thanks."

"I live with my dad because my mom remarried. The guy's fine, it's just he's a baseball player and would be traveling around all the time and she'd rather go along than stay put to look after me. Insofar as I require looking after. So, I have this serviceable dad, why not live there for the last year and a half of my tenure as a high schooler."

"Thoroughly reasonable."

"I like to think so."

And when they and the paraphernalia are in the station wagon Bella drives them to her house. It is small and lived-in and the kitchen is a foundation of bachelor with a veneer of teenager.

"Wow. I don't even have most of this at Renée's house."

"I like making truffles! And sweet things in general." (Her lunch handouts since Bella's arrival have been truffles, truffles, and peanut brittle.) "And it causes everyone to love me. Although honestly, sometimes I could maybe do with everyone loving me a little less."

"Should I not have invited you over for truffles? Is your social calendar overbooked?"

"Hey, I offered," she points out. "No, it's not that. It's - this is kind of awkward, actually, but I am not in fact a lesbian. I'm bi, if anything. It's just that I don't want to date any of the boys in Forks, whereas ninety percent of the boys in Forks apparently want to date me, and a few months after I moved here there was this one guy who just would not give up so I finally told Jessica I'm very very gay and after this went out with the morning news most of them found other girls to pester, Mike included. But I'm beginning to regret it because now the only guys who bother me are the kind of guys who bother lesbians, and that gets uncomfortable fast."

"Eugh. I formally offer you the protection of my sexual orientation for all the good it may do you. None of these guys have homed in on me yet, but I'm betting it's only a matter of time, who do I look out for?"

"Thank you. Larry asks me out to every single school dance, but he's very polite about it, I don't mind him all that much. It's Jack and George who are making me regret my choices. George is taking the 'but how do you know you don't like boys until you try one' angle, with accompanying rude comments, and Jack keeps trying to get me alone. Like, not in a way I could go to an authority figure over, but very much in a way that makes me want to stay far far away from him."

"Good to have warning. I think my dad can be enlisted for less justification than I'd need for the average authority figure if someone gets seriously creepsome."

"Well, you'd know better than I would. If I notice Jack getting any creepier, I'll tell you about it."

"And then my dad can loom at him. ...I mean, for certain values of looming, he's not actually very tall relative to the general adult male population."

"But better at looming than, say, me."

"Yes. You aren't really built for looming. You are maybe built for climbing all over somebody and biting them like an angry ferret."

...Solvei cracks up.

"I can just see you gnawing on some football player's ankle. Leaving bite marks that read 'lesbian means no'."

"How," giggle, "how talented of me!"

"You are a woman of many talents, I'm told."

Nod nod giggle nod.

"Anyway. Happier subjects. Prepare to make truffles!"

"Truffles!"

For which Bella's only average cooking skills are grateful.

They successfully produce delicious truffles.

Solvei is so proud of their truffles. She taught a thing! Bella learned it! The results were tasty!

Charlie approves, too!

"Should I give you a ride home?" Bella asks.

"That would be handy," says Solvei. "I'll call Ghys and let her know."

"Sure."

"Sure. I won't peer into your windows," says Bella. "It's easy to forget you wouldn't have grown up speaking English, your accent's flawless."

"I have a talent for languages. Plenty of Thulians do learn English growing up, but we mostly learn it from other Thulians who speak it as a second language; it took me a while after we moved the first time to pick up this accent."

Out to the car they go. "I thought it was really hard to pick up native-quality accents after age, I don't remember, nine, ten?"

"I was eight," she shrugs.

"Ah, I see."

"But I'm also just a really good mimic, I'm pretty sure that helped."

"Yeah, what else can you mimic?"

"Oh, just about anything," she shrugs. "Who do you want to hear an impression of?"

"...Can you do Jessica?"

Without missing a beat, she utters in spot-in imitation of Jessica, "We actually have lesbians in Forks!"

Bella cracks up.

Solvei giggles.

"Okay, have you known me long enough to do me, I'm curious now."

She doesn't just put the voice on for this one - she gets the expression and bodily mannerisms down too. "You underestimate my powers if you think I can't do this in two days."

Bella laughs. "Oh man, that's exactly how I would've put it, too."

As herself again, "I mean, even if I suddenly became taller and whiter I couldn't impersonate you for long, there's more to a person than just how they talk. But yeah. I do very accurate impressions."

"It's a very cool ability even if it's impractical for becoming a tiny super-spy."

"I could totally be an actress, for example."

"You could! Is that what you wanna do? ...Also you need to be giving me driving directions here."

"I'm not sure either. Might go for being a doctor, as more or less the boring option. Research probably, not patients."

"Doctor is the boring option? What's the exciting option?"

"Politics. More like 'the ACLU' than like 'run for President', though not necessarily much like either one."

"Huh. Well, good luck."

"Thanks."

More directions!

"No thanks," says Solvei.

"Sure," says Solvei. "Thanks for the save."

"You're welcome."

"See what I mean about him? There's nothing overtly wrong, but..."

"Oh yeah, I see it."

"Yeah."

"Don't go to any movies with him and his extremely vaguely existent friends."

"I'm not planning to," she agrees.

"Good. ...Also if you don't like Pride and Prejudice and/or do not know how to make fudge I am open to changes in the details of the plans. Or you could suddenly have to cancel whenever Jack is no longer available to notice this. Whatever."

"Are you kidding? I would love to teach you to make fudge. And I haven't actually read Pride and Prejudice, or seen any film adaptations for that matter, so I have no basis for judging it yet."

"You might wanna read the book first."

"Sure."

"I don't have a copy on me to loan you, but it's public domain so you could probably get it online if you have decent internet."

"I'm sure we have a copy. It's the sort of thing Ghys would put on a bookshelf just to have it there even if the genre isn't really her style."

"That also works."

"So I will read Pride and Prejudice and then go teach you to make fudge."

"Great."

"Hi!" says Bella to Ghys, unsure what to call her, as her marital status and for that matter surname are not clear and she isn't sure if she goes by nickname with her niece's friends.

"Likewise," says Bella politely.

"So, I have sugar, and butter," says Bella, letting Solvei into the house. "And vanilla and chocolate and peanut butter, we can make a few kinds?"

"Sounds perfect!" says Solvei. "And I liked the book all right."

"Cool. I'll put on the best one first so if we get sick of 'em you'll have seen that." She selects a Pride and Prejudice and puts it on. The first of assorted Misters Darcy begins doing things ardently. Fudge is made.

Yes he will, once he comes home. He takes some of the peanut butter and pats Bella on the shoulder appreciatively.

Solvei beams. "You're a pretty great student," she says to Bella. "I will teach you all of my culinary secrets. You can put 'apprentice confectioner' on your resume."

"I'm sure medical schools nationwide will be very impressed."

"It's good to have a diverse skillset."

"I can make poorly thought out gifts of little candy anatomical structures to my fellow students. Here, have an aorta, that sort of thing."

Snicker. "How charming. They'll love you."

"No, for love I have to give them an actual heart, an aorta won't cut it."

"Does this mean I need to teach you how to make candy hearts?"

"Yes. Gotta be ready."

"That can be the next step in your apprenticeship, then."

"Sure. What kind of candy do candy hearts get made of?"

"I'm thinking of maybe lollipops. The hard part will be finding a mold, but there's molds for nearly anything."

"You can't just make them out of tinfoil?"

"If you want to try sculpting an anatomically correct heart mold out of tinfoil, feel free. But it might not hold its shape too well, and your heart would be all crinkly."

"Heh. On second thought I'll pass on the art project."

"I will find you heart-shaped candy molds," Solvei promises.

"We can make both regular lollipops and the chocolate kind."

"Fun!"

"And cake pops are a thing, right? Red velvet cake pops."

"Cake pops are a thing. We can make cake pops."

"Cool. Three uses is enough to justify the purchase of silly anatomical heart molds, right?"

"Of course it is."

Nom nom fudge!

Monday's delicious offering is lollipops. Ordinary circular ones, in blue and green and purple and yellow and red.

Solvei ignores him completely. As soon as he makes one of his remarks, George temporarily ceases to exist in her universe. Who wants a lollipop?

Well, not any of the people who heard George's opinion of lollipops and are feeling insecure in their masculinity today.

Too bad for those people and their inexplicable problem with lollipops.

But most everyone else wants a lollipop. When Solvei leaves the section of the cafeteria with George in it he decides to compliment her on her ass.

George is still nonexistent to her, so Solvei has no reaction to that.

"You've got a very good 'ignore' feature going there," remarks Bella, when the lollipops are disbursed and Solvei's sitting down again.

"Do I?"

"Yes. Very impressive. I wish you didn't need it."

"Me too," she sighs.

"Alas, teenage boys."

"Alas."

"She's in the hopsital!" says the someone. "I bet if you tell people she's your girlfriend you can get out of class to go see her."

"Do you know anything yet?"

"It doesn't look good. They're working on it."

Nod.

Silence.

"Hi, Solvei. Look, it's a miracle."

"Bella! You're okay! ...What do you mean, a miracle?"

"Well, uh, literally no one has any idea why I can... breathe, let alone walk... so. Dad, were you invoking the power of prayer, you know how I feel about the power of prayer."

"No. D'you want to let them keep you for tests, Bells?"

"No, I'd rather celebrate not being lacerated by also not being punctured. I don't think medical science knows squat on this one. I'd love to let them learn something, but this isn't exactly a research hospital and the stuff they had me hooked up to they said it had nothing except sudden miraculous health, so."

"Well. Congratulations on your miracle," says Solvei. "I guess I can go back to school now. What would you like me to tell the rumour mill? The rumour mill might already be a little confused - somebody suggested to me that I could get permission to go see how you were doing if I told appropriate authorities we were dating."

"Tell the rumor mill I'm - going to be back tomorrow, I guess?" says Bella. "Do you suppose the teenage boys will invent new ways to be obnoxious if people think we're dating, and if so will it at least correspondingly reduce their usual obnoxiousness?"

"I can just imagine what George will say," she snorts. "But I'm up for fake dating if you are. If it doesn't discourage Jack it'll at least provide convenient excuses. Plus, candy apprenticeship dates."

"So mote it be."

"Cool. See you tomorrow."

"See you."

And the next day Bella is back at school. Looking sort of perpetually unsettled by her okayness.

"...So," says Solvei, sitting with her at lunch, "when should we have our next candy apprenticeship date?"

"...Today?" suggests Bella. "What with my being inexplicably able to do things. Such as make candy."

"Today works for me. We can make cake pops. Ordinary ones, I still haven't found that heart mold."

Solvei is uncharacteristically quiet on the drive.

"Are you? You seem kind of - freaked out about being less dead than you expected? Which, I can respect that, it's a little freaky."

"I'm - mm, not freaked out about being not dead. I'm freaked out about being subject to unexpected processes. Like, if there was an explanation, even if that explanation was 'and then someone went and got you a flagon of water from the healing fountain down the street', that would be fine, but - nothing."

"If there was a healing fountain down the street, I'd think somebody would've noticed. But then, I guess that applies to anything. If people spontaneously recovering from car accidents was a thing that happened, I'd think somebody would've noticed."

"Exactly! Although I haven't been deluged in reporters yet, so, there's that, maybe this happens only just infrequently enough that nobody knows how to explain or report on it."

"Plausible."

"But I don't know. So, like, I apologize if this unknown process leads to a sudden relapse and I bleed out on the dashboard while steering you into a tree."

"Apology accepted. I will not call up your ghost to yell at you afterward."

"Do call up my ghost, though, I'd love to continue existing postmortem as long as I'm recognizably myself."

"You know, at this point, if you spontaneously die I am looking up every way I can find to call up a ghost and trying all the ones that don't involve murdering somebody else."

"Important qualification, that one."

"I thought it bore mentioning."

"Actually, also skip the ritual that involves maiming a dozen virgins, it's not worth it."

"No murder, no excessive virgin-maiming. What if I only have to maim one virgin?"

"Well, if it's only one you might be able to get her to volunteer depending on her values and how much she likes her legs."

"No murder, no maiming of non-volunteer virgins."

"You shouldn't ask Ghys about any of this," she goes on more quietly. "I - there's some things that - I want to ask you to promise not to tell your dad, before I say them."

"He already knows I was miraculously healed and he's not stupid. He might put other clues together if there are any."

"He's not going to put the clues together on this one even if he reads all the right history books."

"Yes," says... not, apparently, Solvei.

"What do they do?"

"Make her young and beautiful forever. And heal people. I - there's a reason I knew she had healing powers. She can do other things but I don't know what they all are. There's a kind of... theme to it. Chains. Magic chains."

"She gets all her magic from this - jewel egg thing, but she wears it literally all of the time, even if somebody tried to steal it in her sleep she'd just wake up and kill them. If they were lucky."

"Damn. Okay. And she doesn't melt in water or she wouldn't fucking live here. Prophecy of doom? Nemesis with a magic sword? I'm not actually being helpful and should just hug you or something?"

"I mean if you come up with a brilliant plan to kill Ghys that actually succeeds, I will—be very grateful, but hugs are likely to be of more practical benefit in the short term," she says.

Hug.

"...I wouldn't think so. Uh, this is a sleepy little town with very few mass suicides, does she have to go to big cities for fuel?"

"Yeah. Not that often unless she's using a lot of magic. I don't have an exact count because sometimes she goes to big cities for other reasons, but maybe once every two or three weeks on average? And I don't know how much of that is killing witches and how much is just - scouting for them."

"Could you run away while she was on a witch hunt? Or would her magic plus presumably having the legal status of being your aunt suffice to locate you?"

"I've tried to run away before. I've. Stopped trying," she murmurs. "It never ends well. If I just do everything she wants me to all the time, and be the exact version of Solvei that she wants at any given moment, then she lets me go to school and visit friends and I get to spend most of my time being a version of Solvei whose life is completely fine."

"Do you know where she got her magical powers?"

"Some kind of wish-granting genie thing. That only appears to teenage girls. She keeps going back and forth on whether she wants to introduce me to it. I think you only get one wish per teenage girl, because I know what she wants me to use mine for and it's resurrecting Stasya Koskin, and I think if I got more wishes than that she'd have uses for them too."

"Okay. ...What does 'one wish' cover. I am also a teenage girl."

"I don't know. Apparently not both a resurrection and a different thing Ghys wants and can't get by herself."

"Okay, but... how likely is it that she's just not very creative."

"She's plenty creative."

"So they're limited, somehow, but you don't know how?"

"That's about the size of it, yeah."

"Of ways you could have gone crazy, considering, that one sounds reasonably functional."

"So, like, I have been friends with Solvei, and now this is sort of weird, and apparently my life was saved by an evil person with magical powers and that is also weird, and apart from sort of noting those things the rest of my brain is all I want magic powers so bad."

Not-Solvei freezes when the view out the window changes in her peripheral vision.

My name is Kyubey! says a voice in their heads. May I come in and talk to you?

I am! You can just speak to me in your mind, like this.

"How does. That work."

If you direct your thoughts at me, I will be able to hear them. It doesn't matter very much right now, but it would be useful if we wanted to talk privately somewhere in front of normal people.

"Why are you here?"

I want you to form a contract with me and become magical girls!

"Why now, why us, what's the catch, can you read thoughts that aren't directed at you, and how big a wish can you cough up?"

Well, says Kyubey, you both have the potential to become magical girls! Working together could help you, too. I can only read thoughts that are directed at me. And a wish can be anything! But I'm not allowed to offer any suggestions, and when you contract for whatever you most wish for, you agree to become a magical girl, and fight witches.

"'Agree' meaning what? What's the contract? Who enforces it and how?"

Once you are a magical girl, you will need to fight witches. The contract is that you will receive a wish in exchange for that.

"By anything do you mean, say: omnipotence."

You would need a lot of magical potential for that! There are girls with more and less natural talent and neither of you could sustain a wish that size. But it could still be amazing, far beyond what most humans think of.

"If we tell you something we want, how well can you guess whether we have enough magical potential to get it?"

Very well! I have to be able to do that to do my job.

"And your job is... getting people to make wishes and become magical girls?"

That's right.

"What would happen if nobody killed the witches?"

Witches are very dangerous. When they grow, they can sometimes threaten whole human cities. So far they have never gotten very much bigger than that, because magical girls hunt them.

"...What do they do to whole human cities?"

This can depend on the witch, but sometimes the destruction is blamed on a natural disaster, if the witch is large enough. Ordinary humans can't see the witches.

"But we're not ordinary?"

You aren't! You both have the potential to make a contract with me and become magical girls. That's also why you can see me.

"...We couldn't otherwise? Why not?"

If normal humans could see me it would cause a lot of problems.

"We've never seen you before."

I'm very small, and because of telepathy, I don't need to be near another person to talk to them, it explains.

"And I bet Ghys didn't want you talking to me until she decided whether to introduce us... could I resurrect Stasya Koskin with a wish? I'm not sure if I want to, but could I?"

Yes, you have enough potential to bring her back to life if that is what you wish.

"Good to know, I guess."

"Could she - or I, which of us has more oomph? - bring back multiple people, and if so, how many?"

Solvei has more potential than you, but either of you could bring back just one person, says Kyubey.

Kyubey hops in and lands in Solvei's lap and curls up there, fluffily.

I think it is all the fur, says Kyubey.

"The tiny paws are also a contributing factor."

You are very likely right, agrees Kyubey.

"So, regarding people with magic powers. It sounds like a good deal all by itself, but you're calling it a contract and adding wishes on top of the bargain."

Being a magical girl can be dangerous. Sometimes they compete with each other for territory, and often they find that they are lonely, but you have each other as friends.

"Compete with each other for territory because... witches are a limited resource?" she guesses. "Where do witches come from, anyway?"

Witches are born from the despair in people's hearts. Tail-flick.

"Which is why they go around making people kill themselves and similar, I guess?"

They also feed on negative emotion, agrees Kyubey.

"What kind of mortality rate are we looking at for magical girls? ...Is there a less stupid name for magical girls?"

Puella magi is the Latin, it suggests. Well, some of them last for a very long time, if they're clever about how they use their magic. It all depends a lot on strategy and talent. A reckless puella magi who finds herself far away from more witches to hunt, or picks fights with other magical girls that she can't win and then won't back down, or who has very little ability in combat and winds up fighting a powerful witch alone, is going to be in trouble. But a careful puella magi will live much longer than a normal human.

"Ghyslaine is over two hundred," murmurs Solvei. "How many of them last that long?"

She's very unusual, says Kyubey. She didn't get cocky after she was a little experienced and she chooses places to live that other magical girls don't want, like here.

"And she doesn't have any magical friends because she's horrible," says Solvei. "It's probably even easier to pull something like that off with allies."

Probably! agrees Kyubey. Working together would let you share resources when one of you had bad luck and defend each other from witches and other puella magi.

"Yeah."

"But only once we pick wishes. Why aren't you allowed to suggest things?" Bella asks the fluffball.

Only you know what you most want. If you took my suggestion you might regret it later, and also a wish you feel strongly about will help your Soul Gem glow brightly.

"And a brightly glowing Soul Gem means...?"

A puella magi's soul gem is the source of all of her magic and is what makes her different from normal humans. The brighter it is, the more magic she can do.

"Huh. So it's important to wish for something you feel strongly about," she muses.

"I mean, that's sort of folded into 'you only get one', unless 'feel strongly about' means on like an emotional level."

That is what it means, says Kyubey. Human emotions are very important to magic.