Send­ing a mes­sage is such a te­dious task. Cer­tainly not one you’d do on im­pulse–so, re­ally, not some­thing you’d nor­mally do.

The magic-free way is much sim­pler. You can send an email–or, bet­ter yet, a text–in sec­onds.

But it does­n’t use magic, and as such, is quite sus­cep­ti­ble to tam­per­ing through magic.

Just not se­cure enough.

You scrib­ble down the note.

You tell her he will be vis­it­ing. The Fa­ther.

You wish you knew why he would be vis­it­ing, but you aren’t the source of ul­ti­mate truth; you aren’t an or­a­cle. You just see tiny glimpses of the fu­ture here and there–or of pos­si­ble fu­tures.

“Deny every­thing,” you say.

That sould be easy for her. It’s her job.

You place your hand on the pa­per, and there is a flash of light. Older meth­ods lacked the flash, but then how would you know it worked? How would you know your mes­sage was sent?

This, of course, led not only to mes­sages that needed send­ing re­main­ing un­sent, but also mes­sages that should only have been sent once be­ing sent mul­ti­ple times.

Much bet­ter with the flash.

Now you have to dis­pose of the pa­per.

You con­sider burn­ing it, but it may be too sen­si­tive for that; burned doc­u­ments can eas­ily be re­formed.

On an in­pulse, you de­cide you’ll just put it in your front pocket.

You have a good feel­ing about that. You think it’s im­por­tant.

You don’t know why. You’re not an or­a­cle.