"well" she said, swirling the glass of cheap spirits round "I don't know why you all spend all that money on rare materials, Mandrake root dragged from the ground under the light of a full moon, the hair of the mane of a Unicorn, The sweat of an Angel,And a huge dressing up mirror, it's all tremendously expensive"

she took anouther mouthful

"Now those ingredients in the right time of the moon, in the right proportions get you alife extension artifact that'll take years off your age. and you complain that because my recipe for the first stage of my spell uses everyday items and only results in taking a decade off your age rather than 25 years that the expensive stuff does my work is shoddy"

"Now let me tell you ladies, you don't know what you're talking about"

she said forecfully, a thin finger pointing at everone else around the circle.

"An amount of flour, some sugar, some butter, some mystical spices, and a few currants and combine them all with the proper incantations into the correct runic shape. and pretty soon you've summoned the second part of the spell. sometimes you don't even need to do the first part, Move to an area with enough stepmothers, and they'll supply the second parts materials for you. O.K. the second part tends to be messy and involver much work for the meatcleaver, and you do have to watch out for woodcutters, they tend to mess with the rituals."

She downed the glass and got up to walk out, shaking her head

"Shoddy, just because I don't use royalty in my ingredients"