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Here is a house.
It is pretty and trim and green-and-cream and really ought not to be able to hold itself up like that, and yet here it is, somehow defying the laws of architecture. It is surrounded by a neatly bordered garden of ornamental and useful plants of all sorts: here vegetables, there herbs, there spell components, there rows of flowers.
There is a sign out front. It says only: Magic. Not, Beware, Magic or Magic Emporium or anything like that. Just: Magic.
Sitting on top of this sign is a cream cat with smoke-dark points of color on each paw, his ears, and his face and tail.
All in all, you could be forgiven for thinking that a witch lives here.
thaumobabble
thaumobabble
"Excellent! Let's see, it'll probably take four days to get there, longer if I bring Cricket, but it's possible I can get a ride from Kexan and then it's down to hours, but Kexan won't have the patience to watch me stare at it for hours so I'll still have to plan to hike back..." She puts her spectacles back in their drawer, closes the drawer, opens it to reveal not spectacles but a stack of notebooks and a heap of pens, and starts writing.
thaumobabble
"A dragon friend. He can occasionally be convinced to fly me places if I ply him with sufficient pancakes."
thaumobabble
"It's a truly ridiculous number, and he also likes there to be a variety of kinds, but it takes less than four days to make that many," laughs why-has-no-one-asked-for-her-name-yet-
thaumobabble
"Well, he needs them hot, and it may not be convenient for him to come over for the next day or two, so you could help me with some of the prep work if you'd like to, but the finished pancakes themselves just sort of get continuously tossed into his mouth over a three-hour period as they come off the griddle, and none of this is relevant to your quest so I wouldn't expect you to still be here."
allthebrightest
"You want to see the Skyvault. I think you're cute, so I want to show you the Skyvault. If you just show up there on a dragon, Mom might decide not to let you look at the Skyvault."
thaumobabble
"Oh. And that would be a terrible pity." Beat. "All right, should I call Kexan right now and mix up pancake batter and pack or - I don't know what your questing schedule looks like."
thaumobabble
Not-witch flies into action. She opens a cupboard, sharply informs a mixing bowl that "pancakes!", goes through her back door to a bedroom and starts stuffing changes of clothes and toiletries down her sleeves while the mixing bowl collects other implements and ingredients, comes back into the kitchen, closes the door and opens it to an alcove with a magic mirror, and says, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, I would like to make a call."
"What party are you calling, please?"
"Kexan."
"One moment, please." The mirror plays soft music and Not-witch goes to survey her pancake ingredients. She picks up a paring knife and an apple and tells the knife, "Peel, core, slice, neatly, then move on to the next, repeat four times," and then she starts scooping large amounts of flour into her giant mixing bowl. "Do you want to chop up the chocolate or something?" she asks Sherlock.
"What party are you calling, please?"
"Kexan."
"One moment, please." The mirror plays soft music and Not-witch goes to survey her pancake ingredients. She picks up a paring knife and an apple and tells the knife, "Peel, core, slice, neatly, then move on to the next, repeat four times," and then she starts scooping large amounts of flour into her giant mixing bowl. "Do you want to chop up the chocolate or something?" she asks Sherlock.
thaumobabble
She supplies Sherlock with a cutting board, a non-enchanted chef's knife, and a bar of dark chocolate. She then sets blueberries to a regimen of self-rinsing, adds sugar and baking powder and a handful of bran, and gets eggs out of the same cupboard that until recently appeared to hold a pitcher of limeade. "Hmmmhmmhmm," she hums. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what's the status of my call?"
"The other party has not yet come to his or her mirror. Please wait."
"Hmm."
"The other party has not yet come to his or her mirror. Please wait."
"Hmm."
thaumobabble
"Three humans can make a reasonable dent in a portion intended for a greedy dragon, although I'd be inclined to put everything away except the apple slices and just dip those in honey, if Kexan's not going to answer the mirror. Mirror, mirror, over there, have you a message you can share?"
"The other party has not left a message."
"Hmm." She snaps her fingers. "Oh, I remember! Kexan's visiting his uncle, all week. I wrote that down but I didn't think to check my notes. Drat." She flicks the paring knife; it finishes apple number two and then sets itself down.
"The other party has not left a message."
"Hmm." She snaps her fingers. "Oh, I remember! Kexan's visiting his uncle, all week. I wrote that down but I didn't think to check my notes. Drat." She flicks the paring knife; it finishes apple number two and then sets itself down.
thaumobabble
"Yes, sorry." Notwitch starts snapping her fingers imperiously at all the implements, and they put themselves away. The still-dry pancake mix finds itself a lid and tucks itself into a cupboard. "It looks like it's a hiking trip after all. Will Her Majesty also not let me look at the Skyvault if I arrive not-on-a-dragon?"
calendarofcrime
"The dragon is not significant. The presence or absence of another member of the royal family is. We are each capable of showing you the Skyvault on our own authority."
thaumobabble
"Well, it seems like it would put you much farther out of your way to hike there with me for four days. I have this awful phobia of brooms ever since a temperamental one kicked me off of it, and I'm still saving up to order a carpet to enchant..."
calendarofcrime
"Do not consider it going out of our way," says Sherlock. "That would imply far too much planning and coordination on our part."