He expected her to blow off the question and tell him that badgers aren't magical (and there's a sentence he wasn't expecting to think today). "All animals?" he asks. "Really? So even, say -- a dog who can't quite grasp the concept of stairs and thinks that his squeaky toys are going to eat him, he'd have wild magic and you could talk to him?"

This Badger god business is also quite interesting. "Is he normal badger size?" he asks. "And is there -- I dunno, is there a The Sparrow, or The Skink, or are badgers special?"