"Say more about the going back and forth?"

"Like, if something's really on the edge like that then whether or not I can do it can change from moment to moment, depending on how I'm thinking about it at the time. It usually settles out pretty fast one way or another, but it happens. Mostly when I'm in the middle of doing something and it reminds me of something else through a weird tenuous chain of associations."

"Can I get an example of a tenuous chain of associations?"

"Like - hypothetical example: somebody wants their headache fixed, they're wearing a blue shirt, that reminds me of water, reminds me of the beach, reminds me of that girl who wanted a pretty shell, I go look her up and she needs something but isn't praying for it - I might be able to help her still holding onto the headache prayer, but I probably wouldn't, because it's just too far gone. And I bet it'd flicker like that."

"Can you tell where in a chain like that is the weak link that's making it unstable or untenable?"

"Sort of not exactly. Because what matters is if I think it's relevant or not, and that changes depending how I'm thinking about it - if I look at it and think 'nah, too far', I'm probably not basing that on any one specific connection so much as just a feeling about the whole thing, and if I stop and try to work it out more specifically then how I'm thinking about it changes and whatever weak link I find only counts for the new thinking."

"Hm, inconvenient. What would happen if somebody prayed to be a whatever-you-are?"

"I wouldn't know how to give it to 'em. And I'm not sure I'd want to, depending who it was. They'd better be at minimum as nice as me, for sure."

"I'm making no statements about whether the things I'm asking about are in general wise or not, I'm talking theory," Kaylo says. "Back to the future-telling spell - there are all kinds of probably superstitious ways to go about it to make the results come in clean, but what we'd want to do would basically be everybody involved making up their minds to follow through with the waking potion test, and you in particular making up your mind to react specific ways if you can. Then, if the spell works like it's supposed to instead of falling apart like a badly engineered house of cards, I will see what would happen if you got the potion - specifically I'd see you reacting in some predetermined way, with magic or by talking to my accomplice or whatever - and then we wouldn't have to complete the experiment to know how it'd go. If the results came back clean, which they might not, because these spells are idiotic."

"Define 'idiotic', I'm having trouble finding an example in history. People don't seem to cast them that often."

"That is because they're idiotic," says Kaylo. "It extrapolates the future. The problem is, what I'm likely to do feeds into the future. So if I'm in the wrong frame of mind - it's not even an intentional component like normal spells - when I cast it, then my decisions if I get whatever result will feed into it and I get noise. For the spell to be useful I have to sit on the sidelines enough for it to get a result that doesn't factor me in, but not so far that I can't interrupt if it turns out giving you a potion will be a disaster. And you will too, since I guess you'll be able to both see what results I get and affect the processes that would lead to them."

"Okay. So I have to be - really predictable," he says. "And we have to figure out how to get mortal me to be really predictable even if he doesn't remember who I am? That sounds hard."

"It might work if he'd definitely not do some specific thing that miraculous-you can agree to do. But it might not work for that or any of a hundred other reasons."

"Hmmm... he doesn't speak all the languages I do," he says. "Un-translation-spell him, ask him a really simple question in Draconic or vampire like 'Which way to the bottom of the world', then if he's me he knows to say 'Down', otherwise you're going to get something like 'what the hell?' And that's how you'll know if he either speaks the language or remembers being me well enough to get the answer. And if I'm still out here active, whether he remembers me or doesn't or what, have somebody be praying for a signal and I'll, I dunno, turn the floor purple. Would that work?"

"Translation spells don't work on Draconic, so undoing his spell isn't necessary," says Kaylo. "Okay. I'll need accomplices..."

"Got anybody in mind?"

"Not really, do you?"

"There's that vampire girl, I guess..."

"Somebody who is both here and likely to be on board with the project?"

"She goes to this school. I don't know if she'd want to help, but we could ask."

"Okay. What's her room number? Or do you want to ask her yourself?"

Leekath listens to the note. "What do you want me to do?" she asks.

"Be going to feed you the potion; if the results are good she can follow through, but then so can I - can you manufacture one if I ask or do I have to go to a witch's and buy one? - and memorize a phonetic sentence in Draconic and ask you if you wake up."