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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
Notwitch giggles. "I had a look in the pool once. It's pretty useless to me. I already know what things I want, and it doesn't dispense advice on getting them."
thaumobabble
"Well," says Notwitch. "It doesn't give you a complete rundown of everything you want - just the most indispensable heartfelt desire. Which is another reason it's not that practically useful. But since you're curious - I got a picture of me sitting in my study, with Cricket on my lap and a book in my hands - and the calendar displaying a date some nine thousand years in the future."
thaumobabble
"Well, I'd miss him," says the not-a-witch. Cricket leaps to the table in front of her, purring. "Yes, I would, I'd miss you," she tells her cat. "I told you this when I got back from the pool then, don't you remember, silly creature."
"Mrrrow!"
"I love you too, Cricket."
"Mrrrow!"
"I love you too, Cricket."
thaumobabble
"Mew," says Cricket to Tony.
"Be polite," says notwitch to Cricket. "Yes, I know she can't understand you, that doesn't make it less rude."
"Be polite," says notwitch to Cricket. "Yes, I know she can't understand you, that doesn't make it less rude."
thaumobabble
"He says you only think it's cute that I'd miss him if he died because you don't have a sufficient conception of nonhuman personhood. It wasn't phrased quite that gently, though."
allthebrightest
"What," she says, "no, the cute part is you saying 'I love you too'!"
thaumobabble
"Mew."
"He apologizes. Resentfully."
"Mrrow meow meow."
"He thinks you wouldn't think it was cute for me to tell him that I love him too if he were not a cat."
"He apologizes. Resentfully."
"Mrrow meow meow."
"He thinks you wouldn't think it was cute for me to tell him that I love him too if he were not a cat."
allthebrightest
"One, he's wrong. Again. Two, cute things are cuter when there is more fluffiness involved, I have graphs."
She grins.
"But apology accepted anyway."
She grins.
"But apology accepted anyway."
thaumobabble
Cricket begins licking his paw, affecting unconcern.
"It's just as well no one has ever figured out how to persistently make their cats understood to other people," sighs not-a-witch.
"It's just as well no one has ever figured out how to persistently make their cats understood to other people," sighs not-a-witch.
calendarofcrime
"She is completely serious about the graphs," Sherlock puts in. "We did research when we were six."
allthebrightest
"They are at the castle! You can see them. At the castle," says Tony.
thaumobabble
"That sounds lovely," says she who has not yet been prompted for her name.
thaumobabble
"Well," she says, stuffing the not-yet-eaten biscuits and the contents of a cupboard apparently dedicated to leftovers into her capacious sleeves one by one, "I can be all packed for a four-day hike in just a few minutes. Cricket, d'you want to come?"
"Mow."
"All right, you stay vigilant about that gnome infestation, I'll be back in just over a week, you know how to get into the emergency kitty nibbles if you run out of mice and minnows." She scratches the back of Cricket's neck and he purrs at her, and she goes bustling around her house, disappearing things into her sleeves.
"Mow."
"All right, you stay vigilant about that gnome infestation, I'll be back in just over a week, you know how to get into the emergency kitty nibbles if you run out of mice and minnows." She scratches the back of Cricket's neck and he purrs at her, and she goes bustling around her house, disappearing things into her sleeves.
allthebrightest
"Okay," says Tony, "your professional opinion as a magic person - how easy is it to get a witch's-sleeves thing going on something that is not a sleeve and doesn't belong to a witch?"
thaumobabble
"Well," says the magic person, "there are degrees of not being a witch; how not-a-witch and what not-a-sleeve do you have in mind?" She packs a sack of oranges and then reopens that cabinet and takes some sampling jars. She also retrieves her spectacles, but these she puts in a pointed black hat she produces, rather than in either sleeve. "Hats are easy. Bags are doable. I could probably figure out how to do a wooden box, but it would be hard."
allthebrightest
"I keep trying it on bags," she says, "but it's not my natural medium and I get exactly nowhere."
thaumobabble
"What manner of not-witch are you? I know fire-witchery runs a little in the royal family, but you're not redheads, so you've probably only got a faint talent for it if any. Fire-witch, even a little bit of one, is easier to work with than completely nonmagical, though." She reaches into her hat, puts on her spectacles, flicks the lenses around, and peers at Tony.