When he promised his sister he would help her with her science project, he’d been expecting something different.

“I’ve collected all of these crystals to power my snow machine,” she told him, matter-of-fact.

“Snow machine?” She showed him the passage in her textbook that covered the runes required. He frowned, picking it up to look it over. Elementary school had really changed since he was there.

“Where’d you get all the crystals?”

“In the bat fields.”

He sighed. “You know mum will be upset to know you were in the bat fields.”

“It’s why there’re so many crystals there!”

Well, while he wasn’t magically minded, he was okay with engineering. “Okay then. I’ll help you put the shell together, but I’ll leave the runes and crystals to you. Most important.”

“Okay!”

The real question was why she wanted to make a snow machine, but he would ask her about that later.