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Bella stockpiles hexes.
She already has a ridiculous number, but she wants so many that if it seems most expedient to individually do some manner of hex-magic to every cubic inch of space in her dorm room, she can and still have a ridiculous number left. She wants enough that if Libby turns out to be a particularly dab hand at extortion, to the point where paying up is her best bet, Bella can keep gritting her teeth and handing over tribute up until the point where even this person will believe that this is all there could ever be - and still have a ridiculous number. She wants her ridiculous numbers to have ridiculous numbers.
What does she have?
An Alice. She has one of those.
And she can use what she has to get what she wants, late into the night, hexily disassembling her body's dependence on sleep, and till she should start thinking about catching up on the internet and heading to class.
self_composed
self_composed
[Do you think you could watch it go wherever it goes if you were on the lookout for it while making a new wish?]
self_composed
[Have you had more opportunity to consider perfect recall or any of the other possibilities for things-to-do-with-more-hexes? Would Kolya like to not need sleep, maybe?]
self_composed
[Learn to speak Swahili or play the oboe or kick ass at Ultimate Frisbee or cook like a deity or do awesome parkour tricks? Make a neat magic device like my bike, only please nothing conspicuous because I don't want it to be too blatantly obvious to Libby that I'm passing you coins?]
nonbird
[Learning languages with magic feels like cheating,] he reports, after another minute or two. [And the amount of magic a pentagon spends on who-knows-what is the same as the amount of magic a square spends on doing its actual job.]
nonbird
Very, very shortly afterward: [Yes. And looking back at triangles, I don't think they spend any extra at all. But a square spends a triangle's worth of mystery magic.]
self_composed
[It's not contributing to the wish. Is it just... waste magic? Released to no effect at all? A natural inefficiency of the coining process?]
nonbird
[I don't think so?] he says. [I do get a certain sense of... futility from it. But I'm not sure how reliable that impression is.]
self_composed
[Futility,] repeats Bella. [So it's... doing something pointless? Doing a tiny amount of work towards an astronomical task? Doing something that will be undone?]
self_composed
Bella hefts a length of her bandolier. She spends a pentagon to tell her what the rest of the pentagon is doing.
Doesn't go. Hex won't, either. Coins are not very good at directly learning information, or maybe they're not good at recursion.
[What would you need to look at to learn more?]
Doesn't go. Hex won't, either. Coins are not very good at directly learning information, or maybe they're not good at recursion.
[What would you need to look at to learn more?]
nonbird
[I might need to watch more different people doing magic, in case it has something to do with the caster.]
self_composed
[You can come lurk by the magic door and Alice and I can come up with stuff to do,] Bella suggests.