"That is a very reasonable school of thought but I do not happen to share it."

"If I get a familiar one day I shall name it something like... well, it will depend on what it is, it would be different for a cat or a bird or what have you."

"--Ooh, familiars are a thing?"

"Oh yes! People do not generally have them in here. But on the outside. My mother has a squirrel."

"I will have to tell Papa the next time I nap. He adores cats. How does one go about taking a familiar?"

"You feed it bits of mana and pet it and so on."

"Easy enough. What do they do?"

"Samosa - the squirrel - can braid her hair for her, and bring her things in her workshop, and scold us when she is mad going chitter-chitter-chitter."

"Nice! Papa named a cat the Admiral once, but the Admiral lives with Aunt Georgie now."

"How come the Admiral is redeployed?"

"Well, they were dating when they got him, and Aunt Georgie kept him in the breakup."

"I see. Familiars are not this way, you cannot redeploy them."

"That's probably for the best."

"Papa had a dog but it died - familiars are not very exciting to mals but can get in the way when one comes anyhow."

"...Mm. Well, so far there are no mals where I'm from." And the relationship of animals with Fear is...a thing that is probably not going to get worsened by the whole familiarship process.

"Yet! Watch out, they are sneaky."

"I'm...pretty sure they can't get in through Dream Together."

"Why would you be sure of this?"

"Because Dream Together is a mental thing, and Iron Will protects those."

Nia consults her pamphlet. "That means they cannot get you there, not that they cannot ride piggyback, I think?"

"I think even riding piggyback would require a sort of...contact, that Iron Will could shield against."

"Well, it is your lookout if you wish to try this."

“Oh, I already wizarded my parents yesterday.”

"I hope they do not homegrow their own mals!"

“I…think…that’s not likely. I mean for one thing the huge mal problems are a lot more recent than wizards existing at all, right.”