Lucy sat idly in her favorite reading chair, watching Betsy observe a strange looking globe with lots of rings around it. The witch had been fiddling with it for a while at that point. A notebook full of equations was set next to her as she used a very small screwdriver to nudge a bolt inside of the device. The former camper had only seen things like it in movies or mentioned in books. Without any context, it looked like a normal brass globe with continents, but was hollow anywhere the ocean was. Lots of rings with orbs of metal on them moved around the globe, at least when it worked.
It had been broken for a day or so. The aliens had thankfully been quick to help replace the parts, but Betsy had insisted on repairing it herself. A number of gears were worn to being nearly disks, and she had to wind the coil again. With the help of magic, it would perpetually wind itself for perpetual motion. It needed to start moving to begin the cycle, though. After watching for ages, Lucy witnessed her wind the coil on the base of the instrument, and it began to move. The globe began to rotate on its axis lethargically, and the planets even lazily.
The horse-witch let out a satisfied sigh, then put her tools away. She was getting up to wash her hands whenever Lucy spoke up. She was curious now that she saw it moving.
"So I guess it's like a little planetarium, right?" She asked, looking past the witch.
Betsy thought for a second. It was basically that, however it was a more simplified version. She held up a finger so she could go wash her hands first. Lucy watched and waited patiently for her to clean herself up. Her fingers were covered in the oil used to lubricate the tiny mechanisms, so it made sense that she'd need time to scrub her hands. Once she returned though, Betsy pulled up another chair to the desk, motioning for her pupil to come over.
Lucy shut the book on her lap and set it on the side table. Once she was over there she had a seat, looking around at all the tiny tools that were on display. Minuscule screwdrivers, wire cutters, washers, small tubes of grease and oil sat on the desktop. Most of it was put away since she was done and the device finally worked. The witch pointed at the globe with her wand, a tiny red light appearing on it, like a laser pointer. It focused on where they were, in Massachusetts.
"This globe is sorta like the ones you know about, but it's also a clock, and a calendar." She began to explain.
"Well that's not all too useful, we've got watches and calendars already. And if you've got a PDA, you've got like... both." Lucy commented, feeling like that was a lot of work for not much payoff.
Betsy chuckled and pointed at the circular rings, and the orbs that moved ever so slowly around the model. "Well then let me finish, silly. You're sorta right that we mostly have a great idea of exactly what time it is, and what day it is. But keeping track of the planets is way harder, especially if you live in the city where so much light blocks out the stars and planets. So there's this device... it's got a lot of names. An Armillary sphere, spherical astrolabe, so on. Rather than manually calculate where the planets are gonna be, you wind this thing up, and it goes. If you aren't magic, you have to wind it every day, like a watch."
Lucy observed the way that the planets were oriented around the earth, squinting at them slightly. "But the planets totally aren't actually moving around us though... so, that's not very accurate, right?"
"Yes and no, my young pupil." She said, then pointed at one metallic arm that came out of the side of the device's base. It bent ninety degrees, and at the end was a brass sphere labeled with a dot inside a circle. "This is the sun... and much like the moon itself, we can tell how visible a planet will be to us because of its orientation to us. Whether it's full, waxing, waning, or maybe we can't even see it."
Lucy was no dummy, so she put two and two together in her head. "So... basically, it tells you how much light is reaching earth that's bouncing off those planets? How much we can see them and stuff?"
Betsy reached out and poked the aardvark's nose playfully, nodding. "Precisely, my student. This is extremely important for astronomy and astrology alike. One's a field of science, one's a type of magic."
Lucy figured that she should've guessed it had something to do with the witches and how they did their magic. She'd seen Hedgehog and Betsy training during the summer with symbols relating to the planets. Of course Lucy didn't have that much interest in magic back then, but recently it had really been fascinating her. There was so much lore, history and symbolism to it all. Maybe, she could stand to sit there listen to Betsy talk about it some more. She was about to ask, but before she could, Betsy stood up again, yawning.
"I think I'm gonna turn in, Lucy. You should head back to your cabin, okay? Get the heater turned up again so you can sleep without freezing your toes off."
Lucy continued to sit there, watching the globe turn. After a moment, she stood up to leave. She had a new things she wanted to learn for once. Not just Math, science, geography... but something a bit less rational. A bit more esoteric. A lot less logical. She wanted to learn what magic was.