Unnatural Magic

by C.M. Waggoner

You couldn’t argue with a blizzard or with Tsira’s mother, but at least the blizzard wouldn’t criticize your logic if you tried.

I said that you were attractive, which is something different entirely. Pretty is what one calls a pair of silk slippers or a potted orange tree. It loses its interest. No one is pretty after one has stared at them for fifteen years over the breakfast table. Attractiveness is a function of personality. Prettiness is lent to you by youth; attractiveness is purchased with experience.”

There is nothing quite as hazardous to the happiness of young girls as a perfect young gentleman.”

“It’s healthy,” he said. “It’s also a girl—and a wizard. I mean, she has innate magical ability, not that she’s living in a freezing garret and complaining about how her research isn’t being funded.”