writing-prompt-s:

You are a wizard’s apprentice working on a detect life spell. You finish it up and when you cast it you see life on every surface of the laboratory except the surfaces where a bottle of alcohol spilled. You have doubly discovered hand sanitizer and cleanliness.

“So. Apprentice. Can you see anything alive in the places where the spell detected life?”

“No, sir.”

“Is there anything all those places had in common? Perhaps there is some substance we had not yet known to be alive.”

“No positive thing in common between them. Only that they had not been touched by alcohol, sir.”

“So… The areas which had actually all come in contact with the same thing were those the spell proclaimed lifeless.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Then, scientifically, we can only conclude that your spell turned out backwards. The places you assumed it detected lifelessness were actually where it detected life. And we have just discovered that alcohol is actually alive.”

“so… the transubstantiation worked, then?”