"Well, you're not a witch, so where else would she be? Did her voice change recently?" asks Pathalan.

"I did not exist recently. Both of us are reeling from the change," explains the kagu.

"...Beg pardon?" asks Amariah. "From where I'm sitting no part of you existed recently."

"You mean to say you traveled here from another... 'plane'... and until you got here you were some kind of zombie?"

"Apparently so," deadpans Adarin. "Why am I a zombie if I don't have a magic talking bird on my shoulder?"

"I cannot even begin to explain all the things wrong with that question," says Isabella.

"I would hope I'm not a bear. I would be quite embarrassed to not have noticed by now," he replies. "Why bears specifically? Are there, say, field mice that have uh... 'Daemons'?"

"Only people have daemons, not mice," says Isabella patiently. "And only witches and mortals, of people; not armored bears."

"I've never had to explain daemons before," snorts Isabella. "Everybody's got one. If you'd showed up without one I'd have thought you were a zombie. Has she got a name?"

"It really depends. Daemon names are usually a little longer and fancier than their people's names; your parents' daemons are usually supposed to pick something. I'm Isabella - Isabella Amariah - and this is my Pathalan. How in the world do you get along without daemons?"

"Well, by default no one can get very far away from their daemon," shrugs Amariah. "If you do it anyway, then you can go on doing it and it doesn't hurt anymore. Witches do, when our daemons' shapes settle - when we're about thirteen. Humans overwhelmingly don't."

"...Most thirteen-year-old witches manage it within five tries and many on the first?" suggests Amariah. "It's more of an emotional - thing, than a physical pain."

"We are, yes."

"I have access to magic - it's how I got here. But I don't count as a witch?"

"Witches are all women," says Isabella archly.

"And there are no male magic users? At all?" asks Adarin. "That seems a strange distinction."

"I didn't make the rules," she shrugs. "We're basically a species. If my parents had had a boy instead I'd just be a mortal, no magic."

"That sounds inconvnient in its own way, although I suppose less so for you in particular."

"Does the place you're from have a name? I mean, this one doesn't so far as I know, so not having one would be reasonable, but it'd be convenient if it had."

"The world my people came from is called Kystle. The world we now live in we haven't thought of anything more creative for than 'New Kystle.' If it gains a new name, I'll update you," informs Adarin.

"So world-hopping is fairly casual for you, then? What are you doing here?"

"Not as casual as it sounds. I'm something of a special case, which is why I'm here. Our new home's missing a plant used for a remedy that we neglected to bring with us through to our new home. Since going back to Kystle would be suicidal, I did a few scryings and - your world has the plant," he summarizes. "On that note, do you happen to know where a flower called Chamomile is? It looks like a daisy."

"I don't know off the top of my head where to pick it wild. Will dried do?"

"Quite well, yes. Do you have some with you, or is there a place that sells it dried?" asks Adarin, smiling at his luck.

"Not with me, but I could get it. Are you just going to take some chamomile and go home and never come back, is that the plan?"

"...Oh, perhaps you don't know - you mustn't let anybody else touch her. Or while you're here touch anybody else's daemon. Ever."

Adarin goes rather still. "What will happen?" he asks, gravely. It's obvious he's taking this seriously.

"It... well, it's never happened to me, so I can't describe it exactly, but it feels - bad. Sometimes married couples do it and if they're close enough then it doesn't hurt, but you'd have to be really sure."

"If you do wind up separating she could just fly out of the way of anybody who tried to - pet her," says Isabella. "If this person wouldn't listen to just being told to back off, that is. How did your magic decide where in the world to put you? Why here, why not the middle of an interstate highway or in the ocean or Antarctica or midair or, for that matter, in a field of chamomile?"

"...In what sense is this spot closer? Are you from another planet and it happened to be in that direction," she points straight up, "or is there something else going on?"

"Huh. Well, this is kind of the middle of nowhere. I flew here; does your magic let you fly?"

"Extremely short distances, but I'd fall out of the sky in about ten minutes if I tried flying now," he says.

"I can prrrrobably take a passenger. But here's the point where I start wondering whether there's anything in it for me if I usher you to civilization and show you where to buy chamomile."

Adarin seems amused by this! "Well, I'd be happy to either pay you for your services, or help you in some way through my magic. I'm not sure what kinds of things you'd need, though."

"And witches avoid using money per se and I don't know what your magic can do that mine can't, apart from moving you from plane to plane."

"Ah. Well. I can do some simple spells for vanity right now, if you want it," says Adarin. Something in the way he's saying it seems he probably wouldn't respect her very much if she took him up on that offer. "On the more practical sense, I can make illusions, or portals from one place to another that will stick around once I've left. If those don't appeal, if there's a problem you're consistently having I might be able to help with it if you explain it."

"The portals are tempting. But what I most want is a solution to mortality. Failing that directly, I want an alethiometer, which I expect to be able to get myself eventually, and the ability to read it, which is notoriously difficult even when studied for a lifework."

"There are no solutions to mortality that I know of," he says carefully, regarding Isabella in a new light. "But I can do a scry or two with little trouble, if you'd like me to help find an... 'Alethiometer.' Reading it I might be able to help with, but I'm not sure. How do they work?"

"An alethiometer is a truth-telling device," says Isabella. "There are a number of symbols around the edge, each of which has a staggering number of meanings. You can ask it a question by turning a dial to the symbols relevant to the inquiry, and meditating on which of the meanings you want and what the grammar of the whole mess is, and get replies in a similar manner."

"That sounds like an utter nightmare," he says sympathetically. "I could make a spell that would bring up all possible translations for each symbol every time it's brought up, but I doubt that would help with the problem. I'll help how I can, however."

"It would be an incremental help, certainly - there are dictionaries, but they go only a few hundred meanings deep per symbol, and increasingly speculatively."

He nods, thinking about the problem. "I'd have to spell an object to help, since I doubt you want to wait around for me to show up to cast it for you? Paper or stone always works reasonably well in these sorts of situations, but you might want something else. The object would change and show all known meanings for a symbol in writing as you wanted."

"Either paper or stone would work well for me - can it do them in order? The alethiometer stops a specific number of times on the relevant symbols. If you can get them to work in order..."

"I can do the order, yes. Something to... Hmm. Record every symbol that comes up in the order it shows, then let you search through each symbol's meaning either in order or in whatever order you choose if you're going back to look over it? Does that sound doable?" he asks, curiously. He's smiling a little; he likes this problem. Not only is it interesting, but he likes the reason it's even being solved.

"So if it gave me, say, the alpha and omega and the beehive and the cherub, I'd have a stone that would note that it had given me those symbols, and I'd just have to keep count for each and I could look it up - and your spell would do it correctly and not like Professor So-and-so's guesswork about meaning four hundred and eighty or whatever?"

"If you need it to keep count I can do that, too. But yes, it would do it correctly, if the sources it's drawing from are correct. It sounds like it will only be able to show possibly correct meanings, it doesn't have the intellect to actually translate them perfectly. That would be up to you, I'm afraid."

"It'd be most convenient if it kept count. And gave me a way to look up meanings to compose questions with. I can muddle through the grammar - ask the same question a few different ways, maybe."

Adarin laughs a little. "This is going to be very complicated, isn't it? I'll try to spell a separate object for composing questions. May I ask if I can try to ask the truth teller questions of my own, as well?"

"As long as it's about relatively innocuous things like chamomile and you aren't, I don't know, looking for nuclear weapons."

"Then yes. I can't use it literally twenty-four hours a day, even once I get ahold of one. I'm on my way home to my teacher's house and she'll probably let me stash you in the attic long enough for me to invent a spell to find me a missing alethiometer. How long will the spell take once you've got one?"

"Less than an hour for one spell, though I'll need breaks between spelling each of the objects. These are shaping up to be large and complicated," he explains.

"How large? Maybe I want paper instead of rocks after all."

"The spells, not the objects. Paper would be fine, I'd just have to know what I'm spelling before I begin. I'd recommend keeping the paper safe or putting it under protections since it's flimsier than rocks or something, but other than that it's fine," he explains.

"If the rocks can be small I'll take rocks. As long as I can get them and the alethiometer itself, plus the things I usually carry, into my bag."

"They can be small. I can do some basic reshaping on rocks if you'd like, to get them to be a smoother surface or a certain shape or something."

"No extra charge?" inquires Isabella archly.

Adarin grins. "Tempting, but if I upset you, you could just fly away and leave me here in the middle of nowhere. You're also offering me a place to stay."

"Unless my teacher objects to you, but she probably won't unless you have terribly objectionable social habits."

"I hope I don't have any of those. Is there anything you or your teacher will strongly object to?"

"Making a lot of noise? Messing with her herbs? Interrupting her while she works?" shrugs Isabella. "Commonsense things."

"Well, it's also common sense here to never touch a daemon that isn't my own. Ever. I didn't know that before you told me," he points out, shrugging. "I wouldn't want to learn that I accidentally did something that was horrifying after the fact."

"Well, don't touch her daemon, but I've already told you that. And if you did it anyway she probably wouldn't bother to kick you out of the house before gutting you," says Isabella, shuddering.

With utmost sincerity, he replies, "I would never, now that I know. It's important enough to me to avoid doing something on that level of horrible that I think it's correct to be absolutely sure there's no chance of it at all."

"I mean - there are some allowances for accidents, emergencies. It's not literally a fate worse than death if it's only for a moment. Some little kids, before they're like three, have glitchy instincts about it and will try to grab people's daemons, and nobody arrests them because they're toddlers. But yeah, do take it seriously."

He smiles at her, just a bit. "I was ignoring extenuating circumstances. If it was- say, a toss up between a daemon dying and me touching it, I would go with the obvious choice. I would feel terrible about it, however. I do take it seriously. It seems like a serious matter."

She nods. "Well, yes. If your daemon dies, so do you, by the way - it seems obvious to me but I don't think I actually mentioned it."

"... Ah," he says, looking at his kagu daemon. "I will definitely have to practice lots and lots of shielding spells before I go home."

"Is your world really dangerous or something?"

"It can be, but I have something of a huge target on my head. An obvious weakness would be something that many would try to exploit," he explains.

"Ah. Yeah, practice your defenses. I wonder if it'd be redundant with witch-type defenses." She eats the last bite of her neglected sandwich. Path takes off from her knee and up through the trees. "Are you ready to go?" she inquires, picking up her cloud-pine.

"You'd probably have trouble keeping up with a fast cloud-pine anyway even if you were a flying kind of bird. Just - Adarin, sit behind me, your bird can cling to the back of your shirt nice and safe." She sets her cloud-pine hovering in the air and takes up a seat towards the front of it.

"That sounds workable, thank you," says Adarin. He sits down behind her, helping his daemon up behind him. Once they're both situated, he nods to Isabella. "Ready."

"Uh... Reasonably fast, I've flown by my own power before, but please don't send me flying off?" he calls back.

Adarin doesn't ask her to slow down, and has no complaints. There's a faint smile on his face once they get to the fun speed of flying, though. His daemon, on the other hand, laughs with joy. It's fun for a flightless bird to fly! Wheee!

When they attain top speed without any complaints, Isabella hollers over the wind, "Couple hours to get there."

"Alright!" he yells back. He holds on and plans out how he's going to go about the spells she's asked him to cast. It's quite a good way to occupy several hours. They're very complicated spells.

After the promised couple hours - during which it gets dark enough that they can see the lights of civilization below them - they reach Isabella's teacher's house. Isabella slows and lands on the front walk.

Adarin notices the lights, but doesn't comment. When they arrive, he gets off of the cloudpine with his daemon carefully, and then grins at her. "That must be a marvelous way to travel."

"Uh. I can look away? If she wants to be without clothes in her own home, I suppose it's unfair of me to ask any different," he says, looking somewhat embarrassed but trying not to make a big deal of it.

"She won't care if you look at her, but she'll be annoyed if you make a big deal about it. Witches don't have any hangups about being naked," shrugs Isabella. "We go around in our silks because mortals care, but as often as not skip it when it's clan lands or our own homes or whatever."

"I will not make a big deal of it. Isn't that er- cold, though?"

"That seems extremely lucky. You could just walk into a snowdrift and feel nothing at all?" asks Adarin, curiously. When Metis yells back he adds, "And, no interference or bothering if I can help it. Interfering with spells could get people killed. So no."

"Can you do it without an alethiometer handy?" asks Isabella.

"I could get the rocks, and a basic plan of how to do the spell down, but I would need an alethiometer in front of me to actually complete it," he explains.

"Aha. Well, there are rocks around outside, if they'll suit. I'm supposed to make dinner for me and Metis and can probably get away with sharing with you, but after that, if the rocks outside won't do, we can go looking elsewhere, and if they will I can start on the spell to fetch one of the missing alethiometers."

"They will, unless the rocks are particularly flimsy or something. Or if you want them to be in some kind of fancier stone?" says Adarin. "I brought my own food, if sharing dinner's a problem. I'd expected this to be a long trip and to not find any witches that would let me borrow their attic."

"I'd like them to hold up reasonably well, but I don't want them for their cosmetic value. We'll see if Metis makes any pointed remarks about dinner while I'm making it, shall we?"

"Sure. If she does, I'll take the hint and skulk off to the attic to eat cold bread in silence," he says, teasing a little.

"I can get you fed," snorts Isabella. "I'll do it, too, for an alethiometer index that works like you promise I'll find a way to get you dinner at a five-star restaurant, but Metis might take exception to divvying up the squab."

Adarin laughs. "Fair enough! Thank you. I honestly don't mind sticking with the food I brought. Most of it's meant to be cooked and isn't cold bread at all."

"Do you cook with magic?" asks Isabella, departing the attic to get started on the aforementioned squab.

"Only technically. I light a fire with magic, then it's regular cooking from there," he explains brightly. He follows her out of the attic, to look for some suitable rocks.

"Please don't set the attic on fire. You can use the firepit in the backyard when we aren't if you like." Isabella ducks into the fridge for two already-plucked-and-beheaded pigeons and takes them out to the back yard, where she skewers them on the spit. She lights the firepit with a dash of salt from the covered crock next to it; soon the pigeons are cooking.

"I was not planning on setting your attic on fire. I believe I said I wouldn't bother your teacher or interfere? I'm certain pyromania counts as one of those," he says, amused. He goes on the hunt for rocks! This is done by hand, rather than anything showy or magic, because practicality.

"Hey, you're from a zombie world, who knows what counts as something that can go without saying?"

"There's a wasteland way, way up north - you'd probably freeze if you didn't go in a ridiculous coat and have something to keep her warm, too - where daemons can't go. That's where witches separate - it's usually the daemon who's more reluctant about it than the witch, so it prevents them from changing their mind while the witch is still able to take steps away. You can do it without, though. I think standard practice for people whose daemons are, say, aquatic, or whose people are special operations soldiers, involves the daemon being held down by somebody else's while the human is driven away in a car."

"Ah," says the daemon, looking sad and scrunching in towards herself. "I know it will hurt. Neither of us want to, but we know we'll need to and we don't want to be distracted when that time comes."

"It might be easier for you than most people. Since you aren't used to each other you might not miss each other as readily. In which case you might benefit from doing it sooner rather than later. How far away from each other can you get comfortably now?"

"Maybe. It might also send you into shock and kill you," says Isabella. "Witches can't teleport, so it's never been tried."

"Path is too little to hold her," Isabella points out. "If you want to try the teleportation we could wait for the alethiometer and ask it. Otherwise you'd have to shut her up in a room, I bet you she yells, and it'll bother Metis."

"Alethiometer it is, then," he agrees. "I wouldn't want to have your teacher after my head."

"Decapitation isn't very witchy," says Amariah. "We're more about stab wounds."

Adarin laughs softly. "That makes me feel much better about the entire situation."

Isabella laughs. Round and round on the spit go the pigeons.

"Oh, gorgeous," she says approvingly, "I can string them on some silk and have them on my person."

"Oh, good. It would have been awkward if you'd said that you'd hated them," he says with a bit of a smile.

"A bit, yes."

"I actually can change the color of them, if you want me to, now that I think about it. It's pretty easy to do," he muses, looking at the rocks. He's only a little tempted to make them a fluorescent green, but he's supposed to be conserving power for the larger spells he'll do later.

"Black goes with everything," says Isabella.

"Perfect."

"Oh? So you don't want them to help you with the alethiometer?" he teases. "They're perfect as they are?"

Adarin laughs. "Right, right. That will get me booted out of the attic or stabbed. Or possibly both."

"I won't stab you for not helping me," snorts Isabella. "Witches can no longer get away with murder."

"You could, before?" asks Adarin, somewhat surprised.

"Of mortals? Yes. What could mortals do about it?" says Isabella. "That doesn't mean everyone took advantage, but if a witch killed a mortal who wasn't under another witch's protection even as recently as a hundred years ago, she could get away with it. These days mortals have enough technology and witches are integrated enough into the general population that it's not like that."

"That makes sense. Sad to say it's something of the same in my world, though few do," he replies. "And... What sort of technology do they have to defend themselves?"

"Security cameras, for instance, so they know who to retaliate against with a wide variety of overwhelming ordnance. Witch magic isn't very good at interacting with manufactured things - we can, it's just harder. And anyone who expects to be a target makes friends with some clan and gets wards put on them too."

"I have absolutely no idea what... 'security cameras' are," he informs her. "But I can't say I'm sorry that casual murder is more difficult to do."

"Do you want me to explain security cameras?"

"That would be fantastic, thank you."

"A camera is a device that can record a flat still image of whatever you point it at. A video camera can record a whole sequence of events. And a security camera is a video camera that's set up in a store or on a street or something, to have recorded evidence if anything goes on where it's pointed."

"It's not magic, it's - okay, what non-magical thing was most recently invented where you're from?"

"Hmm," he says, stopping to think. "The one I know best is two pieces of glass that go in a frame to change what a person sees and can be used to correct vision."

"So you have spectacles. Okay. That's pretty cool, right? And it doesn't take any magic to make. It turns out there are a lot of non-magical things to invent and we have a few hundred years' head start on you guys."

"... And they can get the equivalent of a type of scrying through technology? That's... Both nice to hear and somewhat unsettling."

"They've got all kinds of cool things. I have a phone -" She pulls out her cellphone. "I can use this to talk to my dad from across the country, or order food delivered, or summon emergency services, and access the internet, which is basically all the world's non-secret knowledge in a technological library that can be accessed by anybody with a compatible device."

"Nevermind. I take it back. That's amazing and I want a pocket library," he says, almost immediately. He coughs, right after. "I mean uh. That's interesting."

Isabella grins and puts her phone away. "I'm pretty sure you couldn't get 'pocket library' service where you're from. Requires a lot of elaborate technological infrastructure."

"Damnation," he says, maybe pouting just a little. He wanted a pocket library. It would have been useful.

"Also all the internet's information is about here, not there."

"A pocket library is a pocket library, I am not a picky man when it comes to all knowledge everywhere stored in a handhold device," he replies, archly.

Isabella laughs. "It's faster to get at from larger non-pocket devices, and it also costs money to keep your device - subscribed, and sometimes people put false information in the library. It's not perfect. But it is pretty great."

"I'm kind of jealous, even with the caveats it comes with," he says. "It sounds wonderful. Despite the false information."

"Your world presumably has neat stuff too."

"We do have portals. They are indeed nice," declares Adarin, with a smile. It's no pocket library, but it is convenient.

"Maybe witchcraft can do those too. I'll ask the alethiometer."

"Isabella. You have to give me some reason to not leave my world forever and go running off here for fantastic pocket libraries. Let me have something," he says. He's obviously joking.

"You have to bring them chamomile," she suggests. She pulls a dagger out of the folds of her silks and cuts open the nearer of the cooking pigeons; finding it cooked through, she turns off the fire and sets about plating them for herself and Metis.

"Hm. True. But then I could just go back, throw it at someone, then immediately turn around and come back here," he replies. "Chamomile delivered, my job is complete."

"Well, I'm not going to stop you if you want to immigrate, unless it turns out you're carrying horrible diseases or are secretly evil or something."

"As far as I know, I am neither," he defends. "Though- honestly I don't think I'm in a position to immigrate."

"No?" Isabella goes into the kitchen, where she sprinkles rosemary and salt and pepper on both squabs.

"... Well. It would be screwing over various people that don't deserve it? But I suppose I'm physically capable of it," he explains. "Arrogant though it sounds to say that just me leaving would cause that, I realize."

Adarin takes his share of squab, "Thank you. Do you remember how I explained how magic works in my world?"

"The diluting hereditary thing, yeah."

"Eegh," says Isabella.

"Yes," he replies.

"...I wonder if your kids will have daemons, now, even if you have them back in New Kystle."

"I... Have no idea. I do expect that I have quite some time before I'll find out, though," he says with a bit of amusement.

"Not keen on being the ancestor of a population of Kystle-type-magic-people anytime soon?" (Om nom squab.)

"Trying to drug you? Seriously?"

"I wish I were joking."

"That's pretty terrible. I can't claim a better record for witches in general - although not so much within my lifetime. Though drugs have never been a preferred solution."

"I'm very glad that they haven't been. Though, now that I think of it, the alternatives might have been worse...?" he winces. Eeeugh.

"It was pretty much 'corner cute mortal at daggerpoint, mortal gets to either die or marry the witch'," sighs Isabella.

"Ah. So not any better in the slightest," says Adarin. "Just a different flavor of terrible."

"Yeah. But, we no longer get away with murder, so, that has been on the decline."

Adarin attempts a little smile, and teases, "Careful, I'm supposed to be not running off to your fantastic world of pocket libraries and declining horrific acts towards attractive members of the opposite sex."

"Oh, well, in that case, the place is a disaster, you'll be well shut of it. After you give me my alethiometer accessories."

Adarin laughs. "Thank you. I'll keep that in mind."

Presently the squab has been reduced to a skeleton, which Isabella discards. "All right, I suppose I'll get started on that spell I'm going to invent to get me an alethiometer."

He nods, finishing his own squab section. "I'll start writing down the basic structure for the index spell, then. It will probably take a while to organize - I'm not sure how long it'll take you for your spell. Do you have a general idea?"

"Depends. I might have to go through a few drafts. Probably not more than a couple days if I can do it at all."

"Alright. If that fails, I can try my magic to locate one, though we'd have to go and physically retrieve it," he offers.

"Which could be a problem if it's at the bottom of the ocean or something, although there's probably a way to hire somebody with a separated dolphin daemon or something for exorbitant exchanges."

"I never said it was a perfect method."

Isabella smiles and goes up to her room to start sketching runes for the spell-circle she'll need.

Adarin retrieves the shaped and colored rocks, and then heads to the attic. He retrieves some paper and a pen and writes complicated words then draws arrows between them, muttering and scratching some of them out occasionally. It's all very exciting.

Eventually Isabella calls it a day and goes to sleep in her hammock.

Adarin does the same a bit later, once his daemon helpfully nudges him and reminds him he's forgotten to do that important thing called 'sleep.' He goes and does that, in a sleeping bag in the attic. Strange though it seemed at first, he's starting to like having a personified version of his soul walking around.

In the morning Isabella makes oatmeal, enough for three if Adarin is downstairs in time to collect some.

"You're welcome. We have loads of oats, it's no trouble."

"It was still nice," he points out, retrieving the food in question. Noms ensue. In between the tea. Tea's the really important part.

"Yes, I know. Not being self-congratulatory about it is also nice," smirks Isabella.

Adarin snickers, "Aw, but it was such a good opportunity for being self-congratulatory."

Path hoots at her in a friendly sort of way.

She makes a friendly trill right back!

"How does constructing a new spell work for you?"

"Huh. There's four potential components to the practice of a witch spell and any combination of them can yield an effect if a witch does them. Verse, herbs, runes, and sacrifice. Verse in particular can go off by accident - when I was still going to mortal school I couldn't read verse aloud in any class on literature because something might have happened. The others we have to mean to do something."

"That sounds annoying, not being able to read verse aloud," says Adarin. "But that's very complicated. Though less memory intensive than my magic."

"Some of the spells are very simple. Nursery rhymes, three ingredients I can mix up to fix a headache," shrugs Isabella. "They can get very involved, though."

"Oh, well. That sounds rather nice, then. I do think I'd want to see what it's like when a witch begins a larger spell. For curiosity, since you're going to see me spell something large-scare. Well. Magically large scale."

"Sure, I'll let you watch when I put down the runes for my first draft and try my poem."

He smiles, then says, "Thank you. If you'd want to be there for when I do my spell, you're invited, as well."

"Yes please!"

"Then feel free to watch."

"Will do." Isabella eats the last of her oatmeal, then plunks her drafting notebook onto the kitchen table and starts working on it, Path whispering helpfully in her ear.

Adarin amuses himself with finishing oatmeal, then decides to clean up both oatmeal bowls (and Metis', if she expects Isabella to) simply because he's not sure if it's worth throwing several hours away to get something maybe right when he could wait a little while and get it right for sure. Besides, she made the oatmeal, it feels fair to him to clean it up.

Isabella notes him cleaning up, and says "thanks", but then her attention is back on her spell.

"You're welcome," he replies, "Let me know when you're ready to begin your spell? I'll work on mine some more."

Adarin goes to the attic and does much the same! His daemon follows and offers assistance, something he's realized is quite helpful in spell creation. Time would pass until Isabella lets him know she's ready.

Path flutters up to the attic. "My Isabella is ready to put down runes now if you want to watch," he announces.

Isabella takes a little bow from her kneeling position. Then she inspects her alethiometer, which appears to be in working order, dents or not. "Okay. What do you need to do with this thing?"

"I need to study it a bit, magically. Have to understand how it all... Fits to make the spell work. May I?" he motions to the alethiometer. It's easier to do this if it's being held, but not strictly required if she refuses.

"Sure. Just please be careful with it." She hands it over and grabs her cloud-pine, which she apparently has no qualms about using as a broom to get the worst of the sugar swept up.

"Unless it'll help you to hold onto it. I can't make a lot of headway at doing anything with it until you finish your spell."

"Fair enough. Would you like the one that offers translations for what it says, or the one that does the opposite for you first?"

"The former. They 'talk to themselves'."

He nods, "Then I'll start with that one." He offers the alethiometer back to Isabella. "I'll ask when I need to see it again - I don't want to give you the impression that I'd run off with it, or something."

She tucks it into a pocketlike location in her silks. "Thanks. I wouldn't appreciate it if you did that."

Adarin grins. "I figured. That would get me booted out of your attic or stabbed, I'm sure," he teases. He has no intention of taking her alethiometer.

"At least one of those." She finishes sweeping the sugar into a corner, and wrangles it all into a dustpan and tips that into the trash.

She hands it over.

"I would like to see, yes. A break from magic or from everything?"

"Magic. Hopefully not from everything, that would mean I miscalculated and sent myself into mana deprivation, or killed myself. Which would be bad," he replies.

"What is mana deprivation?"

He winces. "I run out almost entirely of magic in my system, it sends me into a mixture of shock, pain, and illness. It would mean my next few days would be spent in the attic in agony," explains Adarin. "Or wherever I did the spell, but I thought the attic would be best."

"Well, that sounds unpleasant. You're how sure that this won't happen?"

"Almost certain. I'm in the habit of not getting spells wrong, for obvious reasons," he informs her.

"Okay. Let's see it, then."

She takes it and inspects it. "Beautiful. How do I operate it?"

"It'll record everything a nearby alethiometer 'says' - it operates by touch, and organizes everything into numbers at the top for which separate thing it's saying. When it starts getting lots of recordings, to where it's filled up, rub the numbers at the top and they'll fade out to the next set. If you touch one of the numbers it has recorded, it'll look at that one in more detail, and list the symbols said below it, in order and with the number of times it was chosen. From there, you touch the symbol you want the translations for and it'll offer them. Touch another symbol and it'll switch it out," he explains.

"That's fantastic. I'm so glad you landed where I was," says Isabella happily, putting her rock in proximity to her alethiometer.

And of course it is. Isabella immediately starts fiddling with the rock appropriately to interpret the first complete utterance it makes.

"Alone-ness is not required," she says merrily. "But I might not be very talkative."

Teasingly, he replies, "Oh? Should I hang around and be smugly self-congratulatory? Because I can do that very well."

"You are welcome to do so if that amuses you."

"Do you want a baby name book? We could stop at a bookshop on the way to getting you your chamomile," asks Path.

"You don't have to buy a baby name book to just flip through it in the store," Pathalan points out.

"True," replies Adarin, lightly. "But I would still be quite embarrassed. Besides, it's more fun to try and think of something myself."

"Fair enough."

"I can't think of any daemons named exactly that off the top of my head, but it sounds about right to me," says Path.

"I think it has told me that cobalt is blue; if there's any more interesting meaning embedded in this utterance I haven't uncovered it. I guess when they talk to themselves they don't always uncover particularly interesting secrets."

"Awesome."

"I can look up how one goes about laying protections on a mortal - as which you probably count - and you can owe me until I think of something."

"I have no interest in turning you into a maid, especially considering how usefully magic you are. How long are you expected to live?"

"Thank you very much," he says, with a smile. "I'd have to wear the appropriate outfit and I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to pull it off. Age wise - it varies, a little. Four-hundred to six-hundred years, or so? Maybe longer, if I was particularly lucky."

"Not bad. Witches usually get to be about that old before keeling over of boredom. Which I am not planning to do."

"Thank you. But - beg pardon? Witches die out of boredom?"

"Or loneliness. We can live indefinitely - we don't age past young adulthood, we just sort of accumulate patina. But the timing is always suspicious if we die not-of-violence. Somebody's favorite husband dies and his wife follows. Somebody completes their project of visiting every single country once, and then lasts about a week after. Somebody's clan gets wiped out in a war and she's the lone survivor and she sets up the pyre and then dies after she lights it up. Somebody finishes her epic poem, gets her niece to write it down, and doesn't wake up again after she goes to bed that night."

"That is truly unfortunate, but convenient, in a way? From your description, if you pick a project that will take a millennium then you're set for at least a very long time," he says. "Loneliness I can understand, but boredom? No. There's too much work to be done."

"Heaps and heaps! I do not expect to die of boredom, and hope to have immortality figured out for at least the people I most want to keep with the help of this alethiometer and its shiny accessories."

"Yes, you mentioned that," replies Adarin, with a grin. "I approve of and support this goal. Admittedly I wasn't looking forward to the obvious results of living a long life where everyone else doesn't."

"Few centuries very abnormal lifespan in New Kystle?"

"Somewhat," he says, nodding a little. "My mother would have lived over a thousand years if she hadn't died. I inherited longevity from her. Most of the others - if they have any magic in them at all they'd get anywhere from three hundred years to a hundred, depending on how far down they are in the generation levels. Anyone without - normal lifespan, sixty to eighty if they're healthy."

"Even humans often live longer than that here. Dying at sixty is dying young."

"... Ah. Well. I'm trying to improve living conditions. It's sort of working, but it's slow progress."

"What've you been working on?"

"...Some dead animal parts actually work, incidentally. Pig heart valves, off the top of my head, I don't know if there are any others."

"Do they? That's good to know, but I meant, uh... The more ritualistic kind of use. Chop up a rat, put some herbs on it and stuff it in a gaping wound. If that's proper medical practice, and no one told me, then I'll have some apologies to make," he says, dryly.

"Oh. No, that's completely insane. Do you have germ theory where you're from or are you just operating on the 'this has never been observed to help, you idiots' principle?"

"Second one. What's the germ theory, and can I use it in a way that helps?"

"Germ theory has all kinds of useful consequences! If biology and so on works the same for you guys as it does for people here, then: a majority of diseases, including most anything that is contagious - though 'contagious' doesn't include things that just run in families, even if the conditions only show up in adults - are caused by tiny living or not-technically-living things. Tiny tiny, you can't see them without special equipment or possibly magic. You can kill them by making them very hot - which is why fevers exist - and some of them also die if it's very cold - which is why freezing food helps keep it preserved - and you can wash them off of you with pretty much ordinary soap, which is why people who live in unsanitary places get sick more often - and some of them you can also kill or prevent from breeding with medicines or food additives. The tiny things are germs."

"I mean, garbage in the street getting into wells is bad too. Mold can hurt people too pretty straightforwardly, germs can breed in garbage, germs can get carried by bugs and rodents and they can live in water. But somewhat more important than garbage is actually human waste - there's germs in the digestive system that are really important to have where they are which you don't want anywhere else, even in healthy people, and in unhealthy people it's a transmission mechanism for other stuff."

"I am very much tempted, provided you can bring me back without further ado and I'm not overwhelmingly likely to be shot full of lightning bolts. It sounds like you have a lot of low-hanging fruit on the improving things angle. I'm not personally in a position to effectively bring you all the useful ramifications of, for example, germ theory - I know the general idea behind inoculation, for instance, but not well enough to set up an immunization clinic. But I would happily cruise around looking for obvious bad ideas."

"A few days' vacation is doable, I can get Metis to give me time off. Your plane-hopping spell won't do anything irksome like leave Path behind, will it?"

"Not if I tell it not to. I'd have to make some modifications, and maybe stare awkwardly at Path and Vern for a little while, but I have no doubt it's possible."

"Okay. I'm trying to think if there's anything else on the level of 'germ theory' that you might benefit from... not sure if the invention of electrical generators gets you much of anywhere by itself, similar problem with internal combustion and airplanes, you have to be able to do manufacturing... radios might be useful though... what are the useful ramifications of knowing what atoms are, I can't immediately think of any..."

"I'm excited too! I mean, there are parts of this world where things like this would theoretically be useful, but the reasons they aren't being put to use in those places are way more complicated than 'nobody invented germ theory yet'. I can probably accomplish more in a few days in New Kystle than I can anywhere here in the same time."

"I think if you walked around in a city - in this country, at least - you'd have noticed there's serious tech around. I don't imagine you'd have gone home without trying to get your hands on some."

"Fair point. But I doubt any of it would have politely explained itself to me and proposed ideas for helping with my exact goal."

"You might have had to hang out in a public library and read an encyclopedia, but I think you could probably have accomplished a fair bit."

"Okay, fine. But would an encyclopedia have summoned a truth-teller and gotten me to help with a project that involves making everyone immortal? Because I approve of that portion of this, too."

"Oh, no, for that you need me personally. I'm glad you're on board."

"I like having the option of having several hundred years of healthy living ahead of me. Other people should get it, too. Both for the altruistic reason of not liking people dying, and also because I imagine it would get extremely lonely after a while, if no one else could stick around."

"People should definitely stop dying. I'll start with my dad if I get a spell draft the alethiometer approves of."

"Good, uh- do they not work well together?" he asks, not looking judgmental, just confused.

"They're... they get along. It's not like they fight, they get along perfectly well, they should be great friends, maybe they should even date. But being married isn't that good for them. Charlie - my dad - is absolutely glued to this little town near my clan lands. He's the chief of police there and he hates traveling and never wants to move and doesn't do anything interesting in the way that Ranata - my mom - thinks things are interesting. She likes dropping everything on a whim to spend a week on another continent picking her way through a phrasebook and sampling unidentifiable food and trying to get wild animals to eat from her hand without using magic to coax them. She likes spontaneously deciding to take classes on bookbinding or knitting or obscure human religions or martial arts. They work together, but their lives do not work together. They got married young on impulse because they didn't get how deep the differences ran, I think, and they're still together because she's terrified he'll die and she'll regret not taking all the time she had, and he can't let go of her on his own initiative."

"Ah - I'm sorry. I hope it all works out for them. That sounds like a terrible situation to be in, and I wish I had an idea on how to fix it."

"Some problems are fundamentally architected to resist the appropriate deployment of magic, even theoretical, unavailable-in-practice magic."

"When I say even theoretical unavailable magic wouldn't fix it I mean - the problem here is that these two people have incompatible personalities. Changing their personalities would be a worse thing to do than anything that is currently going on there. So it's not fixable per se, you could at best replace the problem with a worse problem."

"I know. I wasn't - that wasn't what I'd meant. I apologize."

"It's okay. Anyway, maybe I'm wrong, maybe even if I make him immortal they'll stay together, who knows?"

Adarin shrugs. "Maybe. Sometimes, I suppose, people are just going to put themselves in bad situations. It's sad and depressing, but... Well. Very obviously better than taking away choice entirely."

"Very obviously. Thank you for not being a badly written villain from a dystopian science fiction novel, I'd be so disappointed."

"The badly-written ones usually don't go into much detail on motive!"

"I cannot recommend either course of action, Adarin, sorry."

"Darn. I guess I'll need to think of a better way to be a villain," he says, in a monotone. "Should Iiiiii.... Take over the world, and then run it really badly? Bwuah-ha-ha?"

"Well, the use of germ theory also can lead to the invention of biological weapons, I'm just going to go ahead and warn you on that one."

"Oh! That's good to know. Thank you, some idiot will try to use that, calling it now."

"So if that starts happening you make the affected population boil everything they are going to ingest, is usually the first low-tech line of defense."

"You continue to be wonderfully helpful. Thank you!" he says, with a little smile. Book of germ theory notes is retrieved, and he writes this down.