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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
calendarofcrime
"I can hear them," she murmurs. "Not words, but voices. They are not currently fleeing."
thaumobabble
"I'd be really surprised if a wizard came out to meet you. Maybe Calemar's mom, though."
thaumobabble
Eventually, a woman of some sort - whether she is Calemar's mother or not is not immediately obvious - emerges from the cave with her hands held up palms-front and a terrified expression on her face.
thaumobabble
"Please don't hurt me. Us, please don't hurt us," blurts the woman.
calendarofcrime
"I do not plan to hurt any of you," says Sherlock, "unless you try to hurt me first, which I don't expect is likely. Perhaps you would like to explain what you are doing in my forest?"
thaumobabble
"We thought it'd be safe as long as the royal family didn't find us," says the woman, looking like she'd like to wring her hands but would like to remain obviously unarmed even more.
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"And what do you get out of living in a cave in the Enchanted Forest that is worth the risk that we might?"
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"I see," says Sherlock. "In that case, provided your presence is not destructive, you may stay here under the same protection as any other resident of the forest."
thaumobabble
Bella puts her specs on and flicks the lenses around and peers past the woman into the cave. "They're not absorbing any of the forest magic, I think," she says. "I don't know about other ambient magic."
"I don't know anything about that," demurs the woman, "but we're not hurting anyone..."
"I don't know anything about that," demurs the woman, "but we're not hurting anyone..."
calendarofcrime
"The forest magic is my primary concern," says Sherlock. She addresses the woman. "Please allow the small child to ask squirrels the way home if he is lost again."
thaumobabble
"Oh, you've already found us, the squirrels themselves don't matter," says the woman with a shaky laugh.
thaumobabble
"Do you want me to cruise through the cave and make sure they're not up to anything magically nefarious?" Bella murmurs to Sherlock.
thaumobabble
Bella produces a ball of thread, hands an end to Tony - who's less likely to suddenly need her hands free - and unravels it into the cave. (This is a standard cave precaution if you don't know where you're going.) It's a smallish cluster of caves, not just a single cavern nor yet a node of a large network like the Caves of Chance or the Caves of Fire and Night, and she pokes her head into each of them, not explaining herself to the wizards or their female and therefore nonwizard family members. None of them tries to attack her. She rolls up the thread and comes out again.
"There are some wisps coming in, but it's unused residue, not uprooted useful magic. The same sort of stuff my marble grabs," Bella reports when she's retrieved the end of her thread from Tony.
"There are some wisps coming in, but it's unused residue, not uprooted useful magic. The same sort of stuff my marble grabs," Bella reports when she's retrieved the end of her thread from Tony.
thaumobabble
"...You'll just leave us be?" asks the woman suspiciously. "Are you going to tell the Queen?"