"...It was the fastest way to get here."

"Yes and it looked really amazing."

"Well, that's not why I did it like that."

"I know." He shakes his head. "Hi! I'm Kaede. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Mara Bright," she says. "Edie says you're some kind of extradimensional magic user who wants to stare at my Opal for a while."

"Yeah, that's approximately correct. Do I have your permission?"

"Yes."

So he looks at the opal.

The opal is super complicated.

Yes. Yes it is. Is it connected to her? And for that matter—" What does it do?"

It is connected to her!

"A large number of things," she says, "many of which I would not prefer to reveal aloud in public. The lightning is a common factor in many of them, though."

"Can you do something with it while I'm watching?"

She nods, spreads her hands, and black lightning crackles in an arc between them.

Ooooh. "What can you do with that?"

"Like this? I can hit things with lightning, essentially. Magical lightning, mind, that needn't be as--dangerous, as the real thing, on several different levels, if I don't want it to be."

"Oooh can you show me?"

"Here? That would violate the terms of my probation."

"Oh. Can you do other things that won't?"

"Well, just this doesn't," she says, nodding to the self-contained arc between her hands. "And--" the lightning goes out, and thousands of tiny arcs start traveling over her skin. (This is, magically speaking, a different thing).

"This is fascinating."

She smiles slightly. "I'm glad you find it so."

Beam. "I'm—I'd love to watch a lot of things about this artefact but I'm afraid that'd be terribly boring and I'm not sure what arrangement you have with Edie."

"I have a book. We should find somewhere more comfortable to sit down, but reading in a park on a sunny day doesn't sound like a waste of my time."

He nods. "Okay. Wherever you like."

She finds a nice bench and takes a book out of a pocket.