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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.
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thaumobabble
thaumobabble
Bella doesn't have to look where they're going anymore! She produces a book and looks up at the scenery once a page, and also at princesses if addressed.
allthebrightest
"Whatcha readin'?" asks Tony, who is not well-placed to see either the pages or the cover.
thaumobabble
"Highlights of Elven Theurgy by Raxtus Shadowmusic-Smith!" reports Bella.
allthebrightest
"Is it interesting?" she laughs. "With a title like that it could go either way."
thaumobabble
"It contains fewer things I didn't already know than I'd hoped, but it's very well put together."
thaumobabble
"It's a survey of the coolest parts of elf magic. This section's about wards and other defensive spells."
thaumobabble
"Mmm... I'm not sure. I don't know anything about royal magic. Certainly it's nothing in common with dwarf magic or fire-witchery. 'Anchoring a ward on a tree does nothing to defend the tree, so wards are routinely stacked with the copious application of arbrex charms; it may also help to invert the dimensional identifiers differently with each layer if the wards are otherwise meant to cover the same area'?"
thaumobabble
"Sorry," chuckles Bella. "I'll pull a novel next and I can read aloud if you want."
thaumobabble
And so she does.
She doesn't particularly notice when she winds up with her head on Tony's shoulder.
She doesn't particularly notice when she winds up with her head on Tony's shoulder.
thaumobabble
"Hmm?" Bella looks around, expecting something along the lines of a baby rabbit.
thaumobabble
Bella peers down at herself. "Did reading become cute all of a sudden? Or did I turn fluffy and not notice? Or is it a mystery that will be explained only with cunning graphs?"
allthebrightest
"You had your head on my shoulder," Tony explains. "It was cute."
thaumobabble
"Oh," says Bella, turning a little pink. "I didn't realize. You don't mind?"
thaumobabble
"Just checking," says Bella with a soft giggle. She puts her head back where it was, and she smiles, and she turns a page.
thaumobabble
It's about an hour after lunch when they are next in a position to encounter somebody. The somebody is behind a tree over there and he's doing a very bad job of masking his sniffling.
calendarofcrime
Sherlock stops. Well before the sniffling would be audible to the rest of her party.
"Tony," she says quietly.