"Definitely. Actually, I wonder if we could just print a thusly constructed spell--it says here you can't cast out of the book but I don't know if that's because printing doesn't work or because someone pre-used the spells to make it harder for novices to hurt themselves with them or for some other reason."

"Good question. I can swing by my mom's school after mine lets out and swipe her copier, if there turns out to be anything in here we actually want to test." The toy examples they have seen so far would, if cast, explode an inanimate object of more than two tons, set the entire diagram on fire, and turn a rat into a pigeon, respectively; they were chosen for their illustrative runic characteristics and not practicality. May makes a note of this contingent to-do item.

"Setting the diagram on fire shouldn't be too dangerous if we put the paper it's printed on in a metal bowl first, and don't put the metal bowl on anything flammable," he notes.

"We don't know how hot the fire is," May points out. "Paper doesn't burn especially hot, but magical fire might be special. She's not going into a lot of detail here."

"Point. I suppose a rat would be relatively easy to acquire from a pet store, but then you have the question of what to do with it if printing the spell doesn't work."

"And if the spell went wrong in some way, poor rat. I mean, I'd sacrifice a rat to learn about magic, people do worse for biology, but I'd rather find a spell I actually want to try first."

"Agreed. It's certainly preferable to detonating a two-ton rock, but far better to find something less...wasteful." Pause. "If we do ultimately attempt the pigeon spell I suspect it would be best not to tell anyone at the pet store what we're intending to do with the rat."

"I'd probably want to get the sort of rat intended for feeding to snakes," May says.

"Oh, do they have live ones of those? I thought it was just frozen mice."

"I think so? I've never owned a snake, but I think some of them get live food."

"I've never had any sort of pet. Just read books with characters who had," he shrugs. "With any luck it will be immaterial."

"See you tomorrow."

"Awesome. It was great to meet you." May packs up her books and rolls away, disappearing the blue scales across her cheeks.

The next day he is poring over a book on critters when she arrives. He looks vaguely frustrated.

"Hey. What's got your goat? I checked and it definitely wasn't el chupacabra."

"Mm. An unpromising research avenue. This book doesn't have dates in it to compare to likely origin points for various legends--given that new critters can apparently come into existence if you mess up a spell, I've been trying to see whether some of them were inspired by legends rather than vice-versa. But I'm afraid I'm not really getting anywhere with that."

"I was surprised that perytons exist. Their first incursion into human media was in like the fifties."

"...I have no idea what that implies."

"Haven't gotten to that chapter in the book yet, but if I had to guess perytons emerged sometime after most of the legends got established and were better at hiding than other critters, until around then. I'd say it was a complete coincidence - somebody would have thought of mashing up a bird with a deer eventually - if it weren't for the names matching. That could just be the guy who published the book knowing someone who knew about critters and suggesting the term, though."

"That would make the most sense, I think...although most likely not before the art of creating medallions was lost." He stops for a moment to consider. "I should look into seeing what anyone's best guess for when exactly that was, is."

"Fifteenth or sixteenth centuries A.D.," May says. "A little later in Asia. There was a war between two factions of critters and the knowledge was a casualty. It's possible individual makers of medallions survived longer."

"...There could be written instructions left somewhere. In someone's tomb or forgotten library or abandoned workshop or something. I wonder if anyone's thought it a priority to check to find out." He purses his lips. "Even if they don't now they probably have at some point in the past...I wonder if it would be possible to create a spell to reconstruct destroyed nonmagical objects..."