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Bella completes her moccasins. They're easy, but tedious; she's putting tiny parts of the spell on each of the hundreds of glass beads that gets sewn on. Last time it took her a couple of days, but by the end of the process she could do the magic and the sewing at the same time; this time it's an easy rhythm and by an hour after lunch she's got them beaded and pieced and a binding enchantment laid on each of them and the pair together to hold all the beads in a coherent whole. She says her cleaning spell - the castle isn't dirty, but any amount of walking around barefoot leaves dirt on one's feet - and slips them on and gets up and walks around experimentally. Success!
She spends the rest of the time before the delegation is prepared to go sitting outside at the Skyvault, looking at it with various lens combinations and taking fascinated notes, and spending time with her fiancée-and-a-half.
She's ready to leave when the rest of the wizard-visiting party is.
thaumobabble
Despite some pressure by the King of the Dragons, the wizard-visiting party does not include her. It does include one diplomat, a significant escort, and an extra human there to 'represent the interests of the dragons', which mainly seems to mean spying on everyone.
thaumobabble
Off they go! Bella remembers the way, insofar as there is a way to remember within the Enchanted Forest over short distances, so she's in the lead until they find a squirrel to course-correct.
Sigh. Hiking through the forest was more fun with Sherlock and Tony along.
She strikes up a conversation with the diplomat. "Have you worked with wizards before?"
Sigh. Hiking through the forest was more fun with Sherlock and Tony along.
She strikes up a conversation with the diplomat. "Have you worked with wizards before?"
"No," he admits. "No one's had serious diplomatic contact with the Society of Wizards in a long time."
thaumobabble
"There's always a magician or two somewhere working on infiltrating them, for completely undiplomatic purposes of course, but I've never been interested in going undercover," says Bella. "I only know a few things about wizard magic, and of course I have to heavily adapt it to work for me."
"Mm," the diplomat says politely.
thaumobabble
"How're you planning to play the interaction?" inquires Bella.
"Wait and see," he suggests.
"Anything such as...?"
thaumobabble
"Magic of any kind, pretty much, or telling you what I know about how wizards work."
"Didn't you just say you don't know anything about how wizards work?"
thaumobabble
"I said I only know a few things about wizard magic. And the books I learned the few things from had a few notes about the culture, here and there," Bella says, frowning.
"Go on," says the diplomat.
thaumobabble
"Well, the group we're visiting sent out one of the wizards' wives to meet us. Some wizard magical principles can be used by anybody - like me - but in its pure form it only works for boys with wizard fathers. They usually marry each other's daughters but sometimes they're more exogamous about it. They don't mix in a family way with practitioners of other kinds of magic - a few magicians have married them to get an in, but they have to pretend not to know any magic to get any wizards interested. They have a general philosophy that wouldn't make that particularly compatible with the stealing their staffs do. Which is usually automatic, but when I looked last time, all the wizards there had suppressed the absorption. Wizards - at least usual wizards, I'm not sure about these ones - don't think there is a better use for magic than sitting in a staff ready to power a spell a wizard wants to cast. They're kind of paranoid and self-important."
"The paranoid and self-important parts are common knowledge," he says dryly.
thaumobabble
"Yeah, I just mean - that's why they steal magic, because they don't think anybody else has anything much useful to do with it and because they feel it's a matter of personal safety."
"Aha," says the diplomat.
thaumobabble
"That's pretty much what I know off the top of my head. I don't have my books on wizards with me."
"Well," says the diplomat, "hopefully we won't need them."
thaumobabble
"Hopefully," agrees Bella.
With her moccasins on, she can safely read-and-walk as long as she looks up to course correct twice a page. She doesn't attempt further conversation with the diplomat during the journey. And she lets him take the lead, when they reach the wizards; apart from putting her spectacles on she doesn't do anything.
The wizards either don't notice the party standing outside their caves, or choose not to send out an interlocutor this time.
With her moccasins on, she can safely read-and-walk as long as she looks up to course correct twice a page. She doesn't attempt further conversation with the diplomat during the journey. And she lets him take the lead, when they reach the wizards; apart from putting her spectacles on she doesn't do anything.
The wizards either don't notice the party standing outside their caves, or choose not to send out an interlocutor this time.
The various members of the party all look at one another.
Finally the diplomat steps forward and... peers into the cave entrance.
Finally the diplomat steps forward and... peers into the cave entrance.
thaumobabble
There are some wizards, and some wizards' wives, and some children, milling around. There's a smokeless fire with a stewpot simmering on top of it, and an adult wizard is carving a long piece of wood, perhaps into a staff, while a couple of little ones look on. One of the wizards looks the diplomat's way and there begins to be a general whispering among the cave inhabitants and cessation of activity that is not "look nervously at diplomat".
The diplomat... blinks at them all.
thaumobabble
"...Hello?" says a wizard's wife.
Bella comes close enough to the cave edge to see that it's the same one who spoke to her and the princesses when they came this way.
Bella comes close enough to the cave edge to see that it's the same one who spoke to her and the princesses when they came this way.
"I'm... here on behalf of the queen," he tries. "There's, er, no need to be alarmed?"