Well... it's an evocative image, but we've seen what happens to retired witches (at least in Britannia) both in OWaW and one of the manga series, and it's... not that. One of the stories in The Sky That Connects Us (the manga set between the first and second TV series, which as far as I know is still canon, unlike Maidens in the Sky) involves Wilma visiting Lynne in Paris not long after the first series, and it's pretty strongly implied that when she retired from combat the RFAF just sort of... kicked her out.

Of course, that has its own whole set of strange, kinda-unsettling implications--for instance, one of the artbooks maintains that she almost immediately married a former superior officer much older than she is and started having his children, which... doesn't sound like the Wilma from One-Winged Witches to me, but anyway—but it doesn't involve being confined to a sanatorium.

I could see something like you describe happening to witches who had to retire prematurely because of some line-of-duty injury, probably extending to the kind of thing that happened to Mio in Strike Witches II (where the last of her magic was wrung out of her in the most traumatic fashion possible by the Operation Mars Yamato refit's core), but it doesn't seem like it would be the usual approach taken with those who had to hang it up because of slow burnout. They just get pensioned off with a letter of thanks and, usually, a lot of not-so-subtle social pressure to get started on the next generation.

Keep in mind that, at this point, most of the world still assumes that's a natural process and not the result of a chronic metamagical injury; only Zauberschule initiates really understand that part yet. That is to say, witches who suffer the traditional "Witch's Fate"-style progressive magic failure aren't thought of as "wounded" by the establishment. Their superiors, the official doctors, and even a fair number of the superannuated witches themselves think that's what's supposed to happen.

That said, it does provoke thought, and I may get a chance to look more closely at the themes it deals with later on. It's certainly something to keep in mind as the Zauberschule movement spreads and the rest of the world does or does not adapt.

>We all
>obeyed the rules, and all we got was laughed at by a braying scarecrow
>and his chums.

I'm sorry you had to go through that. It's crossed my mind more than once that these times were already strange and terrible enough for anyone before the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.

>So I've been thinking about nursing homes, and how they
>suck the life out of you, and how powerless they make you

Mm, that's been on my mind a fair bit too. That, and the whole getting-old thing. I might muse on this tangent a little more elsewhere, or I might not, I'm not sure. For now, and for here, suffice to say I get where you're coming from.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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