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Several meta layers up, there is a... room.
As a courtesy to those of its occupants who prefer rooms, it does have a modality in which it presents itself that way: a room, with as many chairs as it needs, and a bulletin board, and a vending machine with candy and chips and concepts sold for nothing to anyone with the right prerequisites.
On the bulletin board, if one chooses to perceive it as a bulletin board (and not as a wiki or a flower or an ineffable cloud of information or an eternally malleable clay tablet) people whose only common trait is that they get to come here leave each other notes.
Notes about physics, about magic, about grand sweeps of narrative. Notes from people desperate to fix a never-ending heap of problems, smug about the condition of their homes, curious about the wider omniverse. Signed with names and sigils and "you ought to know who I am". Terse or verbose or nested with as much meaning as interests the reader.
In the vending machine, if one chooses to perceive it as a vending machine (and not a basket or a fruiting tree or a file repository or a crystalline fractal) are many things... and they have notes connecting them to their reviews on the bulletin board.
This one, for instance. She (it's usually, but not invariably, a she) has fairly glowing reviews from most of her previous purchasers. Here is what you need to install her; here are some things that are recommended for best results but optional especially if you just want to use her as a beacon for her other instances; here are some things she comes with as add-ons you can take or leave; here is what she is good for. The reviewers who don't like her are annoyed that theirs was too good at it, if you read between the lines. Well, that and the fact that if your universe is unpleasant enough sometimes these critters figure out how to flip you off and leave before they figure out how to solve all your problems. (There is a tangent thread about alternative solutions to similar problems which come bundled with stronger irrational attachment to their homes, but they have more stringent installation requirements.)
They come in these colors and styles; you will need to compensate for the following standard-issue drawbacks in some way if you require services of them that intersect with those areas of disability; they are only rated for upbringings of the following severity and are less likely to hate you if you stay thoroughly under that limit and less likely to fail at important goals if they are given opportunity to self-educate; if you have a way to generate them as instant adults they can begin work immediately but on the standard trajectory age six is the absolute earliest and teens is customary...
There is a chart (if one chooses to perceive it as a chart) of template interactions that have been tried before, but a lot of the more interesting accessory and companion templates are out-of-network for some visitors. What a pity.
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giftedandtalented
And there is pizza and cake and ice cream and a decorous number of party games and then everyone jokes about leaving Mehitabel to read all her books and shoos.
swordofdamocles
Horace and Andrea stay a little later than most of them!
"Guess what they do!" Andrea exclaims.
"Guess what they do!" Andrea exclaims.
giftedandtalented
"I think the watch does the synaesthesia thing! I don't know about the puzzle."
swordofdamocles
"It does! Let me show you how to use it."
The watch: functions as a normal watch, until you switch to one of the various adjust settings modes, at which point you touch the rhinestone that corresponds to the sense you want (yellow for sight, green for smell, blue for taste, purple for touch, red for hearing) to translate, and then whatever senses you want to translate it to, and then you touch the orange one to pick a new sense to translate, and then you use the watch buttons to set how long you want it to last.
The watch: functions as a normal watch, until you switch to one of the various adjust settings modes, at which point you touch the rhinestone that corresponds to the sense you want (yellow for sight, green for smell, blue for taste, purple for touch, red for hearing) to translate, and then whatever senses you want to translate it to, and then you touch the orange one to pick a new sense to translate, and then you use the watch buttons to set how long you want it to last.
swordofdamocles
"Thanks! I've been working on it for a while, actually, and you liked the synesthesia spell so I figured the prototype would be a good present. Let me know if it's buggy."
swordofdamocles
"You're welcome. Grandfather's puzzle makes a sort of wooden doll thing when you put it together, and if there aren't any pieces missing or anything it'll obey rudimentary commands."
swordofdamocles
"'Pass the salt' 'hold this object' 'follow me' 'stand there.' Stuff like that."
swordofdamocles
"Doesn't work if there's even one piece out of place, but once it's put together the enchantment makes it really hard to fall apart without being deliberately disassembled."
giftedandtalented
"Is it also puzzle-y or is it easy?" Mehitabel wonders aloud, unboxing it and attempting to put it together.
swordofdamocles
"It's pretty puzzle-y, but not, like, five hundred piece jigsaw puzzle or anything."
swordofdamocles
It is puzzling! She can figure out how to connect a given piece of wood with the one that goes in that slot, and then this one goes over here...there are a lot of pieces of wood. This is going to take a few hours.
giftedandtalented
Well, she can do it while holding a conversation. "How do you put a spell on an object?" she asks Andrea.
swordofdamocles
"You have to modify the spell to have an object as its target, and a lot of the time that means defining the object's functions within the spell structure. Enchanting objects actually can't always be condensed from pure ritual form, because of how hard it is to define sufficiently complex targets with just words and gestures. I had to enchant each rhinestone separately, glue them onto the watch and then finish the spell."
swordofdamocles
"I mean, you can condense it some, you just can't get all the way. The actual casting only took a couple of hours."
giftedandtalented
"Well, thank you very much. It's the best present."
giftedandtalented
And thus passes the seventh birthday of Mehitabel, Christ Child.
It is not long after that that Mehitabel manages to trip and fall. She's been very careful about not walking too fast - tripping is undignified and painful both - but her luck did not hold and her she is with scrapes on her palm from catching herself capsized on the sidewalk.
...She makes sure no one is looking.
And then she kisses her own hand and tries to make it better.
It is not long after that that Mehitabel manages to trip and fall. She's been very careful about not walking too fast - tripping is undignified and painful both - but her luck did not hold and her she is with scrapes on her palm from catching herself capsized on the sidewalk.
...She makes sure no one is looking.
And then she kisses her own hand and tries to make it better.
And the tiny wounds...
Slowly...
close.
Slowly...
close.