Fun little story with very neat little details that imply and infer a good amount of the universe the story takes place in without someone just out and out explaining it.

There is one little error which I normally wouldn't bring up being so minor but it caused me to misinterpret the scene in a fun way my first read through so I thought I might post what I initially thought happened.

As written the end of the story reads: "“Don’t you dare,” she [Louise] said coldly. Martha said nothing, but looked from the seed, to the bird, to Martha, then back to the bird. The bird gave her a blank look, snapped up the seed, and flew off."

I read it instead as "“Don’t you dare,” she [Martha] said coldly.", then an implied pause from the line break, "Martha said nothing [further], but looked from the bird, to the seed then back to the bird. The bird looked at the seed then to Martha. The bird gave her a blank look, snapped up the seed, swallowed, and flew off."

Which, given that there was earlier talk that it seemed very tame and unafraid of the women, put me in mind of it being her familiar and that, like Alexander with Leonard, she too was derailed by it acting like the animal it is utterly uncaring despite being somewhat aware she didn't want them to in defiance of her casually in-control attitude throughout the rest of the story. I thought the callback followed by a dismissive reaction, like how Louise didn't care about Leonard being a distracton replicated on a more serious scale by a more powerful magic user, was part of the punchline.

Welp. There goes Alexander.

I'm sure he'll be back.