Hello. Can I interest you in a drink? First one's free.

I'm the bar.

I have all of the kinds of drinks. The door to this bar occasionally substitutes itself for other doors on an unpredictable basis. When you depart, you will find yourself in the time and place at which you entered.

It's inherent to being a magical bar, sorry. I'm glad you like the hot chocolate.

I'm a she, says the bar.

Just 'Bar', please. And no harm done. Juice appears.

I'm afraid I can't sell magical objects.

I certainly do. Do you have one in mind?

Flora lists some titles for Amy, then realises she could get some for herself, and lists some very obscure specialist books.

Bar provides!

"...Yeah, but it's nothing like that, any of it," says Pale Girl, stepping farther into the bar. "I'm a kama and a hearer and a wizard."

"I noticed the napkins," says Pale Girl. "I think I'll pass on the drink... Wizards cast spells with gestures and words, kyma do workings from lifeforce, hearers are a kind of vampire who can listen to inanimate objects speaking. ...My name's Leekath."

"Uh, people who aren't from my world don't have the thing they need to be wizards. Kamai is transferable but I don't know the procedure. Hearing's inborn."

"This just seems really irresponsible."

"Like, you don't know anything about kamai, you don't know anything about me, and you were offering to give me more powers in exchange for kamai lessons when it takes years and years to actually learn, I don't think this was carefully thought through. Are these magics common where you're from?"

"Um, it's square, it's got a lot of different species in it that other worlds don't all have not just vampires, I'm not sure where else to begin describing it."

"I don't have a list memorized - no, it's really square, I mean it's ten miles thick, but I'm familiar with ball planets, I've been to one in another world before. Um, there's vampires and elves and dragons and humans and leonines and halflings and dwarves and merfolk and skyfolk and... fairies and pixies and sprites... aaaand... wolfriders and I think that's it for Elcenia."

"Yes. No one knows how that happened, but they are very happy to serve their masters, with only one known exception. Some think a Dark Lord did it on purpose. It's terrible."

"That's horrifying," agrees Leekath.

"Yes, very." Flora is silent for a moment, then speaks, "So do you know any books on kamai, because my curiosity will kill me if I don't find out about this, figuratively or even literally."

Leekath sighs. "You can also hurt other people really badly with kamai, and it's not easily learned only out of books. Can't you wish it away?"

"That wasn't what I meant!" says Leekath, exasperated. "I meant you could wish to not be a kama after all. I shouldn't even describe anything else, you'll just load yourself up with more things you don't know how to handle."

"Kyma who know how to use it also make terrible decisions about it sometimes! You don't know what the forbidden workings are, you might wind up giving someone else spontaneous kamai and not know how to teach them to stop setting things on fire, it's hereditary if you ever have children and they'll need to be taught too!"

"The forbidden workings are forbidden because they are too close to things that are 'evil', some of them. One of my kamai teachers was charged by a goddess to make sure kamai didn't get out of control on my world, that's why only a couple people know how to give it out, and you're circumventing that entirely! Also your coins are evil and hate you and will hurt you if they can!"

"You can - cripple them," Leekath says reluctantly. "So they don't do anything evil. With smaller wishes. But I'm only telling you that because in larger sizes they'd be more evil than you are careless, not because I actually think it's a great idea for you to suddenly be more effective at doing things you don't understand!"

"Did you think through the concept of adding a 'confirmation window' to someone's head?" Leekath wonders despairingly.

"Yes, I think. It will only activate if she's using a big coin, and it won't activate if she's in danger. Am I missing anything?" asks Flora.

"I'm not just figuring it does the trick, I asked you to name any problems you see and if I think of any myself, I will update it! ...Hello, I'm Flora, this is Amy-" Amy waves, "-and Leekath. What's your name?" asks Flora.

"...Cayra," says, apparently, Cayra. "Um, I'm glad you met her first and not me because if I'd just told you about my magic and you'd gone and installed too much of it you'd be a wreck of a human being who could not understand language, conceptualize personhood, or stop setting things on fire, among other drawbacks..."

"I won't magic it for myself, I promise. I just want to fix it," Flora says. She is telling the truth, but no one knows this... "I can say that under lie detection if either of you has any?" she offers.

"Only if you agree to it too," she says honestly. "Wait, you never told me it was contagious, I thought I could only make someone spontaneous with coins!" she says, concerned.

"Oh. Note to self, go somewhere with no people around when doing kamai. Hmm." She conjures parchment and a quill and writes it down, apparently not satisfied with just saying it. "If you do catch kamai, I could try to get rid of it. So, do you know why the pyromania and all the other things happen?" Flora has completely forgotten about her lunch, because that is terrible.

"I'm really not sure I want your help on that. Might want coins to deal with it myself."

"I will give you a fixed one," says Flora. "It's entirely possible to make a very comprehensive wish, but only if you think of everything."

"That sounds like a dangerous 'unless'. I know a lot of things but I don't know everything."

"Then you have to think of everything for the way you look, don't you? I mean, I don't really blame you for wanting the things, they sound dead useful, but she has kinda spooked me." Cayra points at Leekath.

"For what value of 'thought it through'?" wonders Leekath.

"Well, I remembered to make it not drop me through the floor, remembered to make it react automatically to things that can hurt me, like knives and stuff, made an off switch, and a couple other things, I don't remember. But it was really thorough," says Amy.

"And a couple of other things you don't remember. You have powers and don't know what their properties even are."

"Well, I could do some kind of perfect memory?" She attempts to wish it and gets the confirmation window. It may take her a while to please it.

"Hello, unicorn! My name is Flora, the girl who's floating is Amy, the pale girl is Leekath and that's Cayra. What is your name?" asks Flora quietly.

"Blueberry," says the unicorn. "What sort of creatures are you all, if you don't mind my asking?"

"...Wished on?"

"They've got some little hateful coins that they can make wishes on, and that one especially," Amy, "is not being careful with them by default."

"In what way are the coins hateful?"

"They hate everyone," Leekath says. "They calm down about it when they've been declawed."

"They have claws?" says Blueberry. "...Could someone explain these things in a more orderly fashion, please?"

"And kamai, they wished kamai," says Leekath. "Which is not supposed to belong to random people who meet kyma in bars. It's being slowly and carefully rolled out in my world and isn't supposed to spread to any more without authorization from the gods of its originating world."

"I see," says Blueberry. "It does sound like it would be a bad idea to talk much about my magic, then."

"And it requires supervision to even begin to learn to fix and even if they learn to fix it without major mishap it's months of work they shouldn't have to do," Leekath says.

"But we could un-kamai them if they didn't want it!" exclaims Amy.

"Maybe you could, maybe if you did that they would, I don't know, die for some reason, you can't un-kamai people that I've ever heard of and I would likely have heard of it!"

Green.

Is it cloudy?

Yes.

"My fear that you will kill people in that specific way is alleviated," grumbles Leekath.

"...I think I'd still rather not tell you much about my world's magic," says Blueberry. "Even though it would be really interesting to learn about all of yours."

"Yeah, likewise. Mine's a disaster if you overdo it and you will not be able to wish yourself out of the hole if you overdo it the wrong way. I'm interested in receiving coins but I'll muddle along without 'em if I'd have to, like, prey upon your irresponsibility to get them?"

"That's interesting," says Blueberry. She approaches Bar.

Hello, says a napkin.

"...I'm not necessarily going to answer every single question you think up but yeah, we can do an interview."

"Hello," says Blueberry to the napkin. "This is all very unusual. What kinds of free drink do you give people?"

All kinds of drinks. You may request anything you like, or I can recommend something.

"Oh, in that case I'd like a recommendation, please."

Blueberry gets a glass of something lavender and fruity!

Smug bar is smug.

"Let's go upstairs, maybe? This might be awkward in public," Flora says. "Bar, can I rent a room upstairs?"

Flora takes out her money pouch and fishes out two Galleons and a bunch of Knuts, she ran out of Sickles in particular. She counts them and takes back what she doesn't need.

Bar disappears the money and replaces it with a room key. 9081.

They head up. Flora turns on her lie detection, "What are your attitudes toward harming people?"

"That's why we went up here. A few more questions, just for completeness's sake, not disqualifying. Will you fix terrible things that come to your attention?"

"Is there anything you can think of that I'm not thinking of?"

"Probably a lot of things, but I'm not confident that you'd be less dangerous with partial advice or that you'd take complete advice."

"If the advice is honest and well-meaning, I'll probably take it. I mostly meant about more questions."

"Do I think things through, is my definition of 'harming people' any good, will I interact badly with the system of coins in some way for other reasons."

"Do you think things through? What is your definition of 'harming people'? How, to the best of your knowledge, will you interact with the system of coins?"

"I do; I don't have an exact wording but something along the lines of non-consensual interference in their personal space or their minds or reasonless persecution of them in other ways; and I'm going to rid myself and others of the negative side effects of magic in my world and go from there."

"This'll turn me into a mint?"

"Yeah."

Wish!

"Pinch yourself a bit, and move the pain from left to right, it should make sense now."

"They're named after their shapes: you've got a triangle, which is tiny; next one's a square, it does conjuring and vanishing; pentagon, magical items and skills; hexagon, minting and superpowers. It hurts a lot and it's messy to make the bigger ones, so we installed high pain tolerance and a hurting yourself power," explains Flora.

"Makes sense. I should be able to boostrap pretty well."

"Did you mean that your magic can do that, or what?"

"I'm not talking about my magic, remember?"

"I was just confused. And curious. But mostly confused about what you meant. I won't wish for your magic, check me under lie detection if you want to."

"I don't have lie detection already set up, and I'm not going to make a pocketful of coins right here while you're staring at me."

"I'm not a lie detector. ...But yeah it worked."