Not a Doctor

Response: Right now.

'I'm going to do some experimenting now,' you say. 'Um - do we need permits for this?'

Allan waves off your concern. 'Absolutely not.'

'And... do you have extra rocks?'

He laughs. 'Do we?'

It turns out they have a lot. He disappears into a shed and returns with a bucket of small rocks. 'Come back if you need more - you'd be doing us a favour.'

You eye the bucket warily. 'Should be plenty. Thanks so much.' You wait until Allan turns his back, then lift the bucket with a grunt - a career in street magic and bookkeeping has done nothing for your arm strength - and every step you take swings it into your shins.

Lex winces. 'Do you want me to -' Without waiting for an answer, they take the bucket. 'I thought this would be heavier.'

'I don't use my arms a lot,' you say defensively. 'My legs are fine, though. Because of the stairs.'

'Mine are better,' they say with a snort. 'Come on, let's go.'

--

Lex ignores your offer to take turns with the bucket, and swings it at their side with ease all the way to your front yard.

You beat them to the gate and swing it open. Lex walks up to the porch and sets the bucket down by the door. 'It's still not that heavy.'

'Not where my skills are.' You pluck a stone from the top and make it disappear behind your hands with a flourish. 'Still got this, though.'

They cheer.

--

You open the front door and let Deema know what happened at the garden and that you'll be playing with sigils on the porch. She grumbles a thanks for the warning, and for making sure she would also be able to manage the sigils once they're installed.

'But you'll need a way to clearly distinguish which stones are part of the sigil and which aren't. At the very least, a distinguishing stone to switch out.' She brings Reginald out to watch you, then retreats back indoors. You wave at him, and he falls to his right.

You scratch your chin and mutter to yourself, 'If I were a kid, I'd want to keep the stone that looks very different from all the other ones. Might have to make them all the same colour or something.'

You lay the stones out in a larger sigil on the front porch to keep it on the weaker side, and after holding your hands on top of it at different points, settle on two rows of rocks to make the lines more consistent.

The inconsistencies in sizes still sets you back, until you figure out you can re-balance the sigils by changing the lengths of the spokes around them. Having the spokes set to different lengths goes against everything you've learned about sigils, but you guess this is just part of breaking the rules once you know them.