This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Everyone pops in. All the Bells, all the Jokers - except for the Joker, who is missing for some reason - and the Bells immediately, without having to speak, divide their tasks amongst themselves. Stella and Angela and Pattern and Cam start brainstorming solutions - not implementing them, yet, just generating ideas that might work depending on what they're dealing with. Golden, as the one who's actually had her mind read by a loved one - albeit under more controlled circumstances - is working with Shell Bell, the other previously broken-beyond-recognition Bell, on coming up with a plan to help walk Isibel through recovery after they fix this somehow. Cam eventually folds into this conversation from the other since he's the one with a talking notebook; if they can find Isibel's old books they might be able to turn them into something that could help more actively. Rose is peering into Isibel's mindscape, looking for visible damage that she can just heal directly. Amariah's popping back into Milliways and forcing the door to the elf's world so she can drop a Janepoint in the cave to keep it temporally synced, then coming back and joining Juliet and Aegis in interrogating the demon and the waking dragon about what exactly they have done to Isibel.
"That sounds really inconvenient," Aegis hollers before the elf can go anywhere, "do you want us to fix it for you?"
Aegis doesn't really want to shout either; she conferences everyone including the unicorn on a brainphone call. [Do you want us to fix the virgin thing, because that sounds really inconvenient?]
[Well,] says the unicorn, [thanks, now I'm totally distracted from my original point. Um, my original point being that - I'm not even sure, I thought I would figure it out when I got here, but it still doesn't make sense, how were you going to steal magic from the elves?]
[How were you going to copy it, that doesn't make any sense either!] exclaims Liselen. [You know what, first person who talked to me who sounds weirdly like Isibel, absolutely fix the virgin thing, maybe if I can actually talk to you people face to face instead of through this other weird magic thing I also don't understand then you'll start making more sense.]
[It's not like she has special virgin-thing-fixing advantages,] Pattern says. [I don't even know if she is, I might be the only one who is.]
[In the very most technical of technical senses, which may mean yes or no,] says Aegis archly.
[Oh, poor thing, and you had yours for how long - you must've just been too wrecked, I bet he never even thought of it - anyway, who's doing the wish?]
[He asked for me, he can get me, I'll do it,] says Aegis, and she wishes on a pentagon, fails, tries a hexagon, succeeds. [There, how's that?]
"...Whoa," he says. "That's... that's new."
He looks around at all the assembled Bells, particularly Amariah and Cam, and then he walks between the artistically arranged seats and sits down next to Cam, folding his legs neatly under him. His sleek black fur gleams; his pearly white hooves and horn shine; the golden socks on two forelegs and one rear leg nearly glow. He is, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing in the clearing.
"I," says Liselen with immense smugness, "am a unicorn. And since being around you is not making me feel like my bones are melting, you can totally pet me if you want!"
"Would I normally make you feel like your bones are melting? Because I thought you said itchy," Cam remarks, and he pets the unicorn.
"'Itching' is a metaphor," says Liselen, leaning into Cam's hand a little. "'Bones melting' is also a metaphor. I don't think other species have the right senses to ever invent proper words for what being around nonvirgins - used to feel like, and doesn't anymore, because somebody here is really great, thank you, one of Isibel's mysterious and variously specied twins! Um, right, the elf magic thing."
"Uh, exactly how much of our sexual histories can you discern, here, like, Angela's obvious but she's not the one you sat next to," says Juliet.
"It's not really exactly your sexual history, it's - this is really hard to talk about," says Liselen, twitching his tail. "Um," he nods at Golden, "I can tell you've never given birth, which makes me kind of curious now...?"
"Why in the world," says Golden, "would that strike you as an appropriate question?"
"Vampires can't get pregnant without magic that we didn't have back then, but before Mama turned into one she had some eggs taken out and I was conceived in a dish and kept frozen till she found a human friend who was willing to gestate me," volunteers Elspeth.