Maybe, yes.

She's curious nonetheless and, well, this is as good a time as any to get to know Cally, she's been meaning to.

"Hi, there. You're Cally, right?"

"Yeah. Hi. I think you're in my math class...?"

"I am! I'm the girl with the weird name, my name's Sadde."

"Sadde. Sadde. Hm, yeah, that's a pretty weird name. No offense."

"None taken, I never did get to ask my mum why she chose it."

Cally shrugs. "I knew a guy named Escobar once. Like the drug cartel guy. And that was his first name, not his last. People give people weird names sometimes."

"I think Escobar isn't actually that uncommon in Spanish, but I'm not sure. Mine's totally just made up though."

"I wouldn't know Spanish names, I'm from this town in Maine and it's like 95% white guys."

"Guys, in particular? Must suck."

She gives a snort of laughter. "95% white people. Guys as generic people-referencing word."

She grins. "Yeah, that wouldn't be stable at all, unless they were all gay. Now there's a thought, a whole town full of gay men."

"You mean a military base? Minus the gay part."

"How sure are you of that?"

Eye roll. "Minus the all gay part. I've got to get to class, talk to you later maybe."

She grins. "Later."

Cally goes to class. Showing absolutely no subtle signs of an injury.

Mmhm. She'll definitely look into that later.

Class is uneventful, if you don't count gossip and rumors.

Ooh what gossip?

Cally's whole family goes camping trips almost every weekend and there is speculation that she's part of a cult or something.

...that's kinda mean.

High school gossip, kind of mean? Shocking. Truly shocking. How else do you explain - various small quirks that are not particularly culty.

She is very unimpressed with their inference skills.

Cally is strange sometimes, that's all they're saying. Wandering around the town at night for example.

Oh no. Does she perhaps have other harmless hobbies, like knitting or playing video games?

Wandering through graveyards!

...okay she admits that's a bit weird, but how the heck does anyone here knows this if they weren't wandering through graveyards too?

Ivan heard it from Sam who heard if from Alice who says she saw Cally going into one.

Ah huh.

The gossip mill disperses in response to the teacher glaring in their direction.

And she can pay attention to class.

Later, there's gym class. Cally is in it with Sadde.

And Cally is so uninjured she can even participate in it alright, right?

Yeah, though she has to demonstrate a bunch of wrist exercises to the gym teacher before he lets Cally do anything.

Cool.

Gym!

Gym. Volleyball Week is the current activity.

Cally's pretty good at it.

Yeah she'll definitely want to catch Cally after class.

"...Hi again. Sadde?"

"Hello. You're really good at that!"

"Volleyball? I guess so, I do lots of sports stuff, you know?"

"Yeah. Fast recovery with the wrist thing, too."

Cally hesitates. Then, "Oh, this again? It looked worse than it was. Just a dislocation."

Uh huh.

"Makes sense. I'm not very good at sports, myself, but mostly because I don't really practice and don't have extremely athletic leanings."

"Aww, sports are great! If you don't have the time or the body for it, though, yeah they can be bad."

"Oh I don't dislike them, it's really just a matter of never having really dedicated myself much."

Nod, nod. "I thought, 'I'm going to be a professional athlete' - a soccer star, olympic gymnast, whatever, when I was a little younger. But it's just not going to happen, you know? Unless you're the second coming of Michael Jordan or something."

"Yeah. I aim lower than that—just total world domination."

With a wry smile she asks, "Perhaps you need to attend a realistic goal-setting class?"

"Yes, that sounds like a good idea. When I take over the world I should be able to coach people on how to best achieve their goals."

"This whole taking-over-the-world business seems like it might undermine the ideals of democratic elections a bit, doesn't it?"

"Well, maybe my plan is to become a country's president and be so good at it that everyone else will want me, too!"

"If you're superhuman enough to get elected president of multiple countries, perhaps you deserve world domination. Though I do think it seems a bit unlikely."

Shrug. "Aim for the Moon, because even if you miss, you land in the middle of hard vacuum and are half-cooked-half-frozen... I forgot where I was going with this."

"Do you read sci-fi? I - well, I like sci-fi."

"That sounded a bit more complicated than just liking it."

"We as a species need to put humans on the Moon, and Mars, and in asteroid habitats, and on interstellar voyages, eventually."

"We definitely do, but given that most of our problems with using the space we do currently have on Earth are logistical in nature..."

"Malaria in something-istan is bad, sure, sure. I'm going to worry about nuclear war or gamma ray bursts or something anyway, though."

"Oh no I'm mostly talking about, like, the way we have more food than we need to eradicate hunger but we can't get it places effectively, or just in general how we're very bad at allocating resources sensibly, so trying to build a spacefaring civilization would probably fail terribly."

"The Moon would be as metaphorically far away as America was in the 18th century. So maybe we'd end up with a Lunar Independence War... I see the point, but I'm not actually sure this means we shouldn't colonize places."

"No I don't think we shouldn't I think we need to shape up so that we're not horribly bad at it."

"People are sometimes crazy. Governments often have bad incentives. And governments are big. You'll need a big lever."

"You have an idea of a lever to do it?"

"Not really. Money seems to do the trick, sorta."

"Only sorta, but if money was the only barrier I think this would be a solved problem."

"People being crazy and bad governments."

"And generally a lack of coordination and knowledge and the problem is genuinely difficult..."

"We're not even out of high school yet, anyway. Time to worry about learning stuff, not saving the world. I'll see you tomorrow. You're fun to talk to."

"Same to you. Seeya."

Cally goes to her next class, one of the many she doesn't share with Sadde. 

She's nowhere to be seen when school ends. Doesn't take the bus, apparently.

Nowhere to be seen as in not even among the students or leaving the building?

Well, there are multiple exits.

But only one people usually exit through after class, that being the front one.

No?

No.

Huh. Back home, then.

...and she's gonna go out for a late night walk.

There's nothing obviously unusual about the night air, though it's chilly.

Where does she go?

Oh, perhaps in the general direction of the graveyard.

The graveyard gate is locked. It's a medium-size one adjacent to a church with a high stone wall around it. Mostly small gravestones, but a few larger monuments and mausoleums.

Hmm. Can she climb the wall?

Not this part of it, not easily. If there was an overhanging tree or some strong vines or loose stones to use as leverage somewhere along the perimeter it would be plausible.

Sure, she was definitely going to circle the perimeter anyway.

A more crumbly section of the wall is easily clamberable.

Clamber clamber.

This...

...Is a graveyard. It's dark. Seems neat and tidy, pretty well cared for. There are bouquets or lone flowers here and there. Even some flowers in flowerbeds, ivy of some kind climbing up one of the mausoleums. Kind of hard to see everything since it's so dark though.

Well. She'll go for a nice stroll, then.

There's someone in this graveyard with a flashlight.

She can be in this graveyard behind a tree, then.

Flashlight person has stopped walking, next to one of the mausoleums. How much Sadde can see depends highly on how close she gets.

Well how close she gets depends highly on how likely she is to be caught.

Sadde can observe that this person is about the right build to be Cally. She's wearing disguise-clothes - a hoodie or a long coat of some kind.

She goes into the masoleum after messing with something near the entrance for a bit.

—huh. Weird. She'll watch from a distance for a bit.

And then the Mysterious Person comes out of the mausoleum and heads for a different mausoleum.

Are they—holding anything, did they take stuff, or leave stuff, did they lock it on their way out...?

They're holding the flashlight and something else about hand-sized. They did lock it on the way out.

Hmm... She's going to follow them very surreptitiously.

The lurker freezes suddenly, listening. 

She bolts, sprinting for the crumbly section Sadde used to get in, as the door to the adjacent church opens.

...It's surprisingly quiet for what looks like a dead sprint.

...yeah if she runs she's gonna make a racket, she's just gonna hide and watch.

Father Samuel steps out with another flashlight. "Those raccoons. Why they feel the need to desecrate a holy resting place..."

He mutters in this vein as he walks toward the gate.

She waits.

And then he does a circuit of the outer wall, checking random graves with the flashlight, before finally walking along the line of masoleums.

He stops and looks at the one that the Mysterious Figure went into, then shakes his head and goes back inside.

Okay what's up with that mausoleum.

It's pretty clearly been opened recently, there's a track in the dirt clear of leaves and debris where the other ones don't have it. That's probably what the Father noticed. Actually, it looks like this door is opened relatively regularly, the worn-in footpath kind of extends itself to the door.

The masoleum itself just says 'Giovani Family Grave - Built 1907'

Well she also knows how to pick locks.

The lock declines to be trivially picked. She might be trying for a while.

Hmm. She'll try for a while.

The lock is opened eventually. It's a quality lock, but not invulnerable or magic, apparently.

The interior of the mausoleum... Rows of coffins, moss on the walls.

And is there any clear path in the dirt where she can see where whoever it was came?

Not really. The whole place is pretty clean aside from the moss and cobwebs at the back, there's no clear sign of where Mysterious Person went in here.

The coffins are neat and tidy - nothing like a lid being slightly off as if someone was looking inside.

Any coffins with less dust...?

The one with the least amount of dust still has a lot - and looks almost new otherwise. No handprint in the dust or anything.

Hrrm. Bizarre. Very bizarre. She supposes she should go back home, then.

Nothing conspires to prevent her from doing this.

The next day has school again.

There's the traditional slight tittering at how he's changed his mind again.

Nothing's new under the gossip mill.

Yes yes he changes his mind every couple of days this is not news to any of them.

His new friend visible anywhere?

Cally is here, acting unremarkably. Being slightly inattentive in class and loudly chatty in the halls as usual.

"Hiya!" he greets her when he gets the chance.

"Hi...? Oh, right, Sadde!"

"That would be me, yes. Boy version."

"Well, you won't see me in reverse drag soon. But whatever floats your boat."

"Yeah, it's better than not doing it," he shrugs.

"Hm. About the world being broken some places, I read some political science stuff last night. Trying to figure out why North Korea doesn't implode."

"Reach any conclusions?"

"Starving peasants aren't good at being rebels?"

"I suppose that makes sense."

"There's got to be more. What about, like, mid level bureaucrats, how do none of 'em backstab? It's got to be stressful, being a dictator."

"Maybe they all drink the Kool-Aid? Or, more likely, enough of them do that you can't safely bet on any one of them not, so it becomes extremely hard to form a resistance."

"Hm... But other tyrants don't operate as stably as North Korea, you know? There's also people who drank the Kool-Aid in the middle east. What's the secret sauce?"

"I mean, there's probably cultural forces at work and given what I've read about, like, fascism, it looks like this kind of government works or falls to work for mostly idiosyncratic reasons and by reaching local optima."

"You'll have to tell me what you read about fascism later. For now," dramatic sigh, "Class."

"Class," he agrees with an equally dramatic sigh.

And class proceeds.

Cally... Might be more tired and slow than usual today, during gym class. But it's not obvious.

Could be just his imagination.

Could also not.

Looking at it from that perspective, probably not just imagination. But people can be tired for all sorts of reasons.

Yeah, they can. Hmm.

People can anxiously look into their backpack and then look relieved several times a day for a variety of reasons...?

"Lose something?" he asks the next time he's conveniently close enough to her when she's looking.

"...No, it's still there. Present for my sis."

"Oh, is it her birthday?"

"Nah. I just saw it and said, hey, Angie'd love this." She takes a bracelet with some kind of felt leaf decorations around it out of her bag to show him.

"Oooh that's pretty! Where'd you buy it?"

"The internet." Shrug.

Snort. "Anywhere more specific than that?"

"It was basically 'ebay for art-type-things'?"

"Fair enough."

"I'll try to remember to look it up again and write it down if you really want to know."

"Nah, it's alright, I can probably find it if I ever feel like it. What's your next class?"

"I got math. How about you?"

"English," he says, making a face.

"Wherefore art thoust meaningful insight in such prose as this? ...Uh, yeah, goodluckbye."

"Thanks."

Class, woo.

Cally is not present at the buses again. It turns out she walks home every day, apparently.

How queer.

That evening Sadde is in the graveyard again.

There's no mysterious lurker today. Though the Father does occasional circuits still.

Oh well. He returns earlier today then.

...and he will walk to school tomorrow.

Sadde sees Cally along the way, in a fast jog that is not directly towards the school. She waves cheerfully before continuing her run.

Oh cool she jogs. Sadde waves back and goes to school.

Nothing particularly out of the ordinary happens at school. Except Cally shrugging off a fall that looked kind of bad in Gym class, again.

"You're really good at this."

"Thanks! Gym's the best part of school, we actually get to get the blood pumping, ya know."

"The best part, really?"

"Kinda, yeah. Like, science class can be cool, but I could also just go to a library if I didn't have to go to school?"

"By that token you could also just run in the park."

"But then where would I get hundreds of teenagers to be better at sports than?" This is probably sarcasm. "Also, sports equipment."

He snorts. "Both good reasons."

Nod, nod.

She gets back to the day's activity.

She is really athletic and perhaps he's just being overly paranoid.

She is not obviously superhuman, here.

Anything more interesting happen during the day?

Not really.

So that night he'll pay the graveyard a visit again.

What do you know, Mysterious Figure is skulking around again.

She enters the same mausoleum as before. There are scraping sounds from inside this time.

Ah huh. Anywhere he can look into the mausoleum from without being spotted?

There's a little drainage grate, but it might not give a particularly great view.

Hmm... how does he get access to it?

By going up to the side of the thing and laying down in the grass and peering in.

Hmm... How silently can he do this?

It's not like he has to crawl through a bush, he can just tiptoe up through grass.

She has super hearing though.

He'll try anyway. Veeery slowly.

The scraping continues.

From his new (still limited) viewpoint, she appears to be scraping large quantities of the moss growing on the back wall of the masoleum and collecting it into a big bowl.

...what. Why.

Also, the moss seems to be glowing softly yellow.

What the duck.

Is it all the moss or is it just the moss she collects or...?

It starts glowing as she collects it. The bowl is awash with light.

She stops scraping, tilts her head as if listening.

He holds his breath and holds as still as he possibly can.

After about fifteen seconds, she seems to decide to cut and run. She is almost but not quite as silent as last time as she makes for the exit.

Can he watch where she goes while making as little sound as he possibly can and remaining hidden?

Probably not, this would require turning around and standing up on the grass!

Okay he can just wait then.

She's gone.

A finger-size piece of the gold glowing moss was left behind in her hurry to leave.

Well then. He wants to collect it.

And try to collect some not-gold not-glowing moss to see if it turns gold glowing.

The gold glowing moss continues to glow when he picks it up. The non-glowing moss stubbornly continues to not glow when he scrapes at it.

...is there any possible indication of why it may be glowing? Is it any different than the non-glowy moss in any way other than, you know, glowing?

Nope!

...weird. He... wasn't expecting to be holding glowy moss so he doesn't have a container but he can store it in his backpack for now and start back home, being careful to be quiet and lock the place.

When he gets home, he notices that he's not tired. At all. It's like he's had four cups of coffee in the last hour or something.

...well then.

He has an old microscope kit, the kind kids have to play with, somewhere. He's quiet enough while he searches for it and eventually, there it is. Any detectable differences between the moss?

The sample he scraped up himself is just the body of the moss. The glowing one has some kind of undermaterial.

Also, the glowing moss seems to be slowly stopping glowing.

No no no no what's the undermaterial—

The undermaterial looks like... Dirt... Or roots?

And the non-glowy moss doesn't have it?

Nope. 

The glow continues to, slowly, fade. It might last an hour or two at this rate.

What does the non-glowy moss have instead? And he can Google glowy moss while he examines the two things, any other differences—?

It just ends, scraped off improperly, apparently.

Some mosslike things glow blue sometimes. Some moss looks yellowy-glowy, but Schistostega doesn't actually make light just reflects it weird.

And can he figure out what species this one is...?

Nope? This is either a bad sample of moss that doesn't match up to the pictures on the 'net, or some weird subspecies that isn't easily found. It more resembles leucobryum glaucum than any of the other New England natives, but the little bristles split much more, to incredibly tiny, fuzzy levels.

Well. He guesses he'll collect more tomorrow. He tries examining it and the internet some more for anything else he might've missed.

The internet thinks it's a little weird that any moss was growing inside a crypt. But it's not a lichen or a mold, it's definitely a moss of some sort.

A little weird? Is there precedent?

It could be some kind of cave moss? They can deal with low light and stone walls.

The glow has faded completely. He's still not tired like he should be having just pulled an all-nighter, but he no longer feels like he's on half a dozen cups of coffee.

...hmmmmmm.

Hmm.

He bites his thumb. Not hard enough to bleed, just hard enough that it should hurt.

It hurts.

Normally? It doesn't hurt less perhaps? Or stop hurting faster?

Not really. Not clearly enough to definitely be a magical effect and not wishful thinking, at any rate.

Darn.

...he can't go there again, can he, it's very late and his father will complain...

He goes to school the following day.

School's mood today is: Thank god it's Friday! The only juicy bit the gossip mill produces relevant to Cally is that her father had an argument with someone at the sporting goods store. Not at all clear if this is in any way relevant.

...argument about what?

Something about the forest preserve nearby?

...huh. The rumors know anything more specific than that?

Kevin's dad didn't want to talk about it and Kevin didn't want to push the issue. Best not to get too interested in them, the father said.

...he thought they were new in town. Do they have—history?

They have money.

...yes, lots of people do.

Kevin's dad doesn't want to piss off rich people, apparently. And Kevin himself is looking annoyed.

Alright, thanks for the info, Kevin.

"Sure. Please don't try to follow them on one of their wilderness trips or something. Follow the strange new folk in town on their camping trips they don't like to talk about? That just sounds like a slasher movie."

"...I wasn't planning to, that's creepy as heck."

"I mean, lots of people go camping. But who does it like every other weekend?"

Shrug. "I dunno, I don't like it. Don't like the damp and all the—nature."

"Heh. Yeah, that's what houses and air conditioning are for."

"Exactly!"

"Well, bye? I'm gonna go eat lunch with my friends."

"Bon appetit."

Where's Cally?

She's eating a health nut's packed lunch, alone, methodically and very fast.

Plop. With regular food. "You very into healthy stuff?"

"Hm? Oh, hi Sadde. I try to eat right, yeah. Ya don't put slop grease in your car, and your body's more important than your car."

"I suppose that makes sense. I have good metabolism though. And don't like food much."

"To each their own."

"I guess." He peers. "Is that good?"

"Eh. There's a bit of an art to making stuff healthy and also good. And you kinda develop a taste for it. I'd probably retch if I tried to eat something from McDonalds, now that I'm used to eating good stuff."

"...well now I'm curious."

"You want a bite?" She indicates a block of something that appears to be mostly vegetable.

"If you're okay with it?"

"I'll steal a few sips of juice in return and call it even."

"Okay, then." Bite.

It sure does taste... Healthy. Better than bland steamed veggies, there's some kind of spice in it, and they're all mixed into a sort of gelatin that's still relatively pleasant to chew on.

"...different," he declares after a bit.

"Yeah. Different. Not pizza-and-fries-ish at all, is it?"

She takes his juice and pours a little bit into her already-empty cup.

"Not really," he admits. "But I could learn to like this, I'm sure. Is that a you thing or a your parents and you thing?"

"My parents and me. They're trying to get my brother into it, but the lure of ice cream is too powerful and custard doesn't taste the same apparently."

He snorts. "I'm afraid it doesn't."

Shrug. "Maybe he'll come round when he's not six anymore."

Giggle. "It is pretty hard to convince six-year-olds to give up on ice cream. Is it just the food or—well I guess it isn't, given how much you like to run and do sports in general."

"Yeah. I just love feeling like a well-oiled machine."

"Is your family, like, doctors or something like that? Or did you all just take this up as a hobby?"

Cally shrugs. "Dad does something something architecture, Mom does... Professional being a supportive friend to rich people? That's what it sounded like anyway."

He sporfles. "Being a supportive friend?"

"Ahem. 'They talk to me because they know I won't turn out to be carrying a camera in my purse, or want them to sign my babies, or have an interesting idea for their next investment...' I'm not really sure about the details though? She probably just has a lot of rich friends, even if we're not super ultra rich-level ourselves."

"And they pay her for it?"

"Eh. Not directly. A car mysteriously appears, a contractor who's already been paid to repaint a room shows up..."

"Sounds lucrative."

"Yeah." Cally gives him a bit of an odd look. "You're not gonna go all googly-eyes and hope to get free trips to the city and stuff are you?"

He laughs. "Nothing like that, no."

"Good, I hate it when my friends get dollar signs in their eyes. Almost as much as I hate the ones who whine about not being able to go to Hawaii this year because their golf club meets too often."

"You have friends who like golf?"

"That was sarcasm, but yes. I do."

"Wow. That sounds mind-numbingly boring."

"It's... No, I can't really defend it. Yeah, it's pretty boring."

He giggles. "Have you told your friends that?"

Shrug. "They have a hobby I find boring. I could never convince any of them to run with me, so what? They're still my friends."

"I'm not saying 'stop being friends with them,' I'm just saying 'point out that standing still for several hours watching little white balls run' is dreadful."

"Oh, they totally have their phones out and gossip while the next guy hits."

"Okay that makes more sense I guess."

"Yeah. Anyway. I'm gonna go to math early, enjoy your lunch."

"Have fun with math!"

The remainder of the school day is not terribly interesting.

That evening he's at the cemetery again.

Nothing seems out of place, and as far as he can tell there's no mysterious skulker other than him tonight.

In that case he wants to try to scrape some of that moss himself, this time being careful to get the roots if possible.

A few moments after he goes into the crypt the door shuts behind him. "Okay, who are you and why- Sadde?!"

That's Cally. Or someone who sounds a lot like her.

"Oh, hi. How're you?" He grins.

"What the hell-" She sighs. "You're going to ask a lot of questions now, aren't you? Seem like that kind of person."

"You could preempt me and answer them before I do," he suggests cheerfully.

"I-" She glances behind her. "Naw. You've got to get out of here before- Before. I'll meet you at the school's running track tomorrow and we can talk then, swear to God."

He peers at her for a couple of seconds then shrugs and nods. "I'll take you up on that. See you!"

"Right, just hurry out of here." She follows him out and disappears into the dark graveyard.

The next day she fabricates some flimsy excuse to not be at her house and goes to the school track.

Cally is doing sprints, at an Olympic-hopeful's level. She even has some kind of setup that looks like it's timing her.

Sadde's not surprised. She waits to be acknowledged.

She does two more runs, then stops to say, "Hey again. Mind if I stretch and cool down while we talk?"

"Go ahead."

Cally starts walking around, pausing to do various stretches, still breathing heavy. "So, questions?"

"We can start with the 'what the duck' part and then go to the more specifics once that's clarified."

"Yeah, I uh. Really don't know how much to tell you. How much I wanna tell you, can tell you, depending what you already know."

"Magic moss that at the very least works like several cups of coffee minus the crash, possibly accompanying healing and long-term benefits to health and physical status..."

Sigh. "The moss is just magic coffee. I'm not on magic steroids, this body is the result of hard work."

"Mmhmmmmm?"

"No, screw that. I'm not a damn doper. Not anything stronger than Lumi moss anyway."

"No no I'm just curious about what else. Like, I refuse to believe the world is a perfectly orderly physics-abiding one except for this one patch of moss growing in this one crypt."

"Hmm. If you get too much curiouser you might run into trouble. There's other things. Other plants."

She fixes her gaze on Cally for a few seconds then asks, in all seriousness, "Are you a fairy?"

"A fa- No. I am not a fairy. I am also not sure I could convince my mom not to disappear either us or you if she knows you know about magic."

"So she doesn't need to know," Sadde reasons.

"If you poke around she will find out. Oh, and don't bother trying to grow that moss somewhere else - haven't fully figured it out yet, but I think it only likes graveyards and battlefields and the like."

"I won't poke around if you tell me!" she explains brightly. "I will poke around if you don't though."

Sigh.

She seems to be done stretching. "You know what, no. I like you but you're not my best friend forever or anything. And it's your head. Unless you can convince me otherwise I've said too much already."

She drops the cheerful act. "At least explain to me why not. I'm not sure what I'm even arguing against, here, to me it looks like there's this well of resources that could be used to, I don't know, cure cancer or eradicate malaria for all I know and it's secret. That sounds like an absolute, absurd waste."

"You might not think about caution since all you've seen is that fluffy moss. Oh, it grows in graveyards, that's weird and slightly creepy but harmless. Sure. Other magic stuff is usually slightly creepy, but not usually harmless. Want to start an unquenchable forest fire by accident? I nearly did that once. Mom literally knocked me unconscious to stop it. Magic is scary. My parents are... Scary. I'm not actually sure how much their precautions are paranoia and how much are them defending against other magic users. Or magic things."

"So there's a whole conspiracy preventing this from being exploited for the common good, great," she grumbles.

"I don't know if it's a big conspiracy. I just know you don't want to mess with my old man, and maybe you don't want to mess with whatever... Monsters in the woods he tells stories about."

"Okay but I do want to learn magic and use it usefully. This sounds like, like all those rich people who have so much money and don't donate even ten percent of it to charity and when they do they do it to one of those charities that give a dying kid their last wish, like, how ineffective can you get?—not that, like, it's bad to make a kid happy, there are worse ways to spend your money, but still."

"No, I get that. But we're both kids. Teens, I mean."

"And the adults don't seem to be doing much of anything, do they! Not that I plan to do anything right now, but it's a previously unknown resource, how am I supposed to factor it in?"

"It's... Ugh. I don't know. Magic plants are finicky enough that you'd have trouble doing big things with them? I think? Even if you knew more."

"But there are other things than magic plants?"

"I don't think so. I think it's just plants and animals and doing things with plants and animals."

"Animals, too?"

"Maybe? Never actually seen one, but Mom says they exist."

"What other kinds of things are there that can be done?"

"Uh... It really depends on the plants. You're not going to try and sneak into our garden or anything right?"

"...what? No of course not."

"We both snuck in that graveyard. And mom too. Hm... Silencefruit. Eat one and you can be super quiet and sneaky for a while, but it makes you kind of a coward, too. Moonleaf. It glows white like the moon looks, and you can make a potion that someone will pay Dad a good chunk of money for with it. I don't know what exactly it does though."

"Well the graveyard isn't technically private property," she reasons. "But wait back up, this stuff messes with your personality?"

"Silencefruit - well, when you eat one you know you're being sneaky, and you know you're being more prone to running and hiding, and you know it'll wear off. And it does, after about an hour."

"...okay..."

"Mom uses it too," she shrugs. "I don't think she would if it had long-term effects like that."

"But there are plants that do?"

"Wouldn't surprise me. Which is why you act careful with magic unless you're insane."

"Okay. Careful's the word, sure. I can do careful."

Cally shakes her head. "Yeah. Well. Bye?"

"—wait, but I still wanna know. Look, I just—why not?"

"Cause being secret about it has been beat into my head since I was like six? And I have a hard time just dismissing that entirely when I don't really have a reason to think my folks are stupid or evil?"

"But that's been blown already, I already know. And I don't mean to say your parents are evil or stupid, just that most people aren't as—ambitious, or idealistic, I guess, as they could be with their resources."

"...Well, maybe I'll end up asking mom some probing questions. And maybe I'll come to a decision you like more in a couple of days."

She beams widely. "Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you!!"

"Maybe."

She nods many times. "Yes, yes, I understand. I'll be very careful and won't go looking for trouble."

"And so help me I already told you, like, at least a tenth of everything I know about it," mutters Cally as she packs up her timing setup.

...wow that's disappointing as heck. But alright. She nods again, more slowly this time. "Thank you. Really.—and hey, if you find anything that does temporary medical transition, that'd be grand even without all the other stuff."

She almost answers, but then hesitates and instead says, "You weren't supposed to hear that last bit. And I'll keep it in mind."

She nods and smiles at Cally.

"Yeah, yeah, go on and taunt me by being happy and excited. Write up a fantasy fic where you save the world with glowing flowers or something tonight. See you in school."

She giggles. "I'll try to be less happy. See you."

Well. That's one mystery solved and more created.

It's the weekend, so Sadde has the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday to get too curious for her own good, unless she resists the temptation.

Oh he's good for his word. By Monday he has not tried to look for any magic! So much self-restraint!

At school on Monday, Cally passes him a note at the first reasonable surreptitious opportunity.

Mom won't give me a straight answer yet. Please wait.

He writes one back:

I'm very patient.

(Or, well, he can be.)

Don't worry about it. And really, thank you. And also magic aside I still wanna hang out with you, you're cool, so unless you think it's awkward I'm still gonna.

K. Both things. No more notes, teach knows what's up. Talk in gym?

Sure.

Cally eye-rolls at him. She said no more notes.

She folds up the one they were using into her bag and pays attention to class.

He grins then goes back to... well, not paying attention in class because really who does that.

Cally's clearly thinking hard about something, at least. The focused look is unusual for her.

He has hypotheses and hopes.

Come gym class she shakes off that funk and plays sports just as enthusiastically as ever.

She tells Sadde in semi-secret, "Ix-nay on the agic-may. I'm starting to think you don't have a secret bone in your body. If we talk about it in school or anything call it, I dunno, our gardening hobby."