"It's about the war, not what came before. I mean--there must have been culture, mustn't there?"

"There must have. Entire societies of critters, organized enough to wipe each other out..."

"And now it's gone. There are the Avalons, of course, but..."

"There are barely Avalons, and they're crowded and can barely afford to support the monsters who have trouble finding work."

"Quite." Pause. "We're going to have to fix that."

"We've got a lot of stuff to do."

"We have so much stuff to do! Personally I'd prefer if more of our to-do list were academically interesting challenges and less were problems no one else has been addressing, but a full to-do list is always a good thing."

"I don't know, I kind of like that no one else is addressing them - I mean, from a certain perspective. It is terrible that they have been going unaddressed but at least we don't have to finagle existing and probably terrible in some way behemoth egregores about it."

"Yes, I did mean that I would prefer that they were being addressed. So the situation at hand is worse than if someone else competent were handling it but better than if someone incompetent were handling it."

"That's a better way of putting it," nods May.

"Aaaaand we have advantages no one else does, anyway." He grins at her irrepressibly.

"Yes. ...Makes me feel a lot less apprehensive about the entire project."

"Yes, I approve of a lower risk of getting accidentally smote. I expect Jaromira will still want to check everything, since there's the chance that something harmless and useful to you could have negative side effects for someone else, but frankly even if only you did all the casting I would expect this to speed things up quite a bit."

"Yeah. It's possible I can handle other people's castings too if I'm nearby, maybe only at touch range? We could see if I can stop you from boiling things, if you bring your tablet tomorrow."

"I might want to re-carve the tablet a bit before then--repeatedly boiling things on wax is starting to warp it a little bit, I'd like to straighten out the edges. Actually, I think I'd like to get something a little more resilient than wax at some point. But for now a little bit of maintenance will keep it workable."

"It's probably not necessary to put the kettle on it."

"Jaromira actually found a recipe for a simple plastic on the internet that should be more durable than wax even aside from the heat thing, so we're going to try that. But perhaps with a different spell, to start; I must admit a slight sentimental attachment to the object with which I cast my first spell."

"Frame it. We can put it in our school or ruling-the-world headquarters or whatever."

"Someday museums will want it as a historical artifact."

"Of course they will." She kisses him on the cheek.

"Are you confident in Jaromira's ability to keep secrets from Daphne?"

"I don't expect her to keep any of her own secrets from Daphne, but I'm confident that she could keep your secrets from her."

"It's not - I don't mind being a dragon, or some unfactionated firebird or probable-human knowing that I am a dragon. I just don't want this to turn into a chain of a lot of people being really totally trustworthy up until someone thinks that I'm going to kill their hiding sphinx friend or relative because they don't trust that their friend's boyfriend's brother's friend's sister's friend or whatever says that it's okay and this is a nice dragon, and in such a condition of uncertainty they'd better kill me first. I probably should have asked you if you were comfortable keeping secrets from literally everybody before I said. Although given the timing I bet you could have guessed."

"I can keep secrets from Jaromira in the short term. I don't know about the long term, I've never tried. I expect she'd be more comfortable with it if she believed you'd be alright with her telling Daphne at some point in the future if and when you trusted her more, but I also expect she'd do it regardless."