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Cam studies. He studies madly. The next week elapses with him having very little sense of individual days. He doesn't want anyone to know anything special is up, so he goes to a movie with Renée and to a friend's house after school to play Nintendo games and Charlie gets his weekly phone call and he shows up to his classes and gets his homework adequately done. But other than that he studies. He wants to be fluent in this thing inside three months if possible. It's easier than Spanish, he's motivated, he can use it in everyday conversations as he asks passing animals and convenient plants how smart they are (dogs: smarter than goats; squirrels: about goat level; his friend's hamster: dumb as a rock; shrubs: way dumber than trees; indoor potted rosemary: just a step above grass) and chats with Grace, he's basically dropping himself in an immersion course with some inconvenient English here and there so he can interact with humans. He thinks three months is ambitious but reasonable.
He's not actually doing that many spells. He does wheedle tofu into tastiness on a nightly basis, and when he feels a cold coming on he looks up a spell about that, but he wants to know what he's doing before he gets going on what he most wants to be doing, because he wants to be doing big things. He swore to oppose death. He meant that.
Today he is preparing to oppose death in his backyard. It's threatening rain and he doesn't want to be all the way down the street with Leafy if the clouds open up. The jerk tree doesn't talk to him if he doesn't talk to it and it's perfectly serviceable as something to sit under, anyway.
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lifes_sake
"Probably talking through," says Jellybean. "There might even have been a rock named Iggy once, that it was impersonating."
lifes_sake
"I suppose I should actually scope out my backyard and see if there's still a rock hanging out under Jerk Tree."
Matilda shrugs.
lifes_sake
"Does Iggy tend to attack you? Since you keep swiping wizards it's trying to kill?"
"We're pretty hard to kill," says Jellybean.
"I think it's mostly given up," says Matilda.
"I think it's mostly given up," says Matilda.
lifes_sake
"Are you dripping with wards like the ones I started doing or did you come up with a shortcut?"
"I have wards," says Matilda. "But tighter than yours."
"I just convinced my body to keep being itself," says Jellybean. "Can't do it to anybody else's, though, I tried."
"I just convinced my body to keep being itself," says Jellybean. "Can't do it to anybody else's, though, I tried."
lifes_sake
Cam briefly considers Jellybean's approach, then turns to Matilda. "Tighter? What do you mean?"
She explains!
It gets very, very technical, very, very fast.
It gets very, very technical, very, very fast.
lifes_sake
Cam listens, and Grace interrogates the manual about the technical details on his behalf, and she spits back something Cam can understand.
"All right. I'll put together something more like that. Is Iggy the sort to go after bystanders? Are my parents or school friends or anybody in danger?"
"All right. I'll put together something more like that. Is Iggy the sort to go after bystanders? Are my parents or school friends or anybody in danger?"
"It might threaten 'em," says Jellybean, "but it doesn't just assassinate people because they hang out with somebody it doesn't like."
lifes_sake
"So I don't have to convince Renée to hold still while I convince her person to forbid a long list of nasty eventualities. Or at least not because of Iggy. I might want to find a way to do it just because she's all mortal and stuff."
"We warded Jenny," says Matilda. "But, yeah, not because of Iggy."
"More or less," says Matilda. "To both those questions."
"She adopted me when I was six," says Matilda. "I'll call her my mom in casual conversation, because it's mostly accurate, but I think of her as just Jenny. And we've told her that magic exists, and some stuff about it, but mostly she doesn't ask."
lifes_sake
"Fair enough. I bet Charlie would mostly not ask. Renée on the other hand would totally ask."
"Is that bad?" asks Jellybean.
lifes_sake
"Not especially. I should probably tell her. She might write me notes to get out of school and stuff if I explain and tell her I'm off doing wizard things. Just sounds like a weird conversation."
"You'll get used to those," says Jellybean.
lifes_sake
"Sounds like an occupational hazard, yeah. Can people who haven't found a manual and said the oath and everything ever learn Speech just for conversational purposes? Talk to stuff but not cast spells?"
"Yeah," says Jellybean.
lifes_sake
"Renée will find that really fun, I bet," laughs Cam. "But it might start being impossible to talk her out of getting a pet."
Matilda giggles.