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In a bar, there is a girl.
She looks like she has saved up all of her decadent and slothful impulses for a solid decade and is indulging them all at once. She is sprawled on a couch with a book she's only half-reading, and an ice cream sundae, and smiiiiiiling.
kithabel and milan in milliways
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ertia
ertia
Right then, off they go. Kithabel is, today, doing some healing - a specialist is taking some time off; they can do that - and then placing some magic equivalent of internet relays and conjuring up more to be brought farther afield by faster fliers, and then turning a farm's worth of corn weird colors (mostly for holiday decorations, but some of it will turn into interesting cornmeal) and then bringing in some rain and doing fun things with the lightning and then digging a tunnel through a mountain for a road.
first-and-final
Ooh, fun things with lightning, can Milan do fun things with lightning? Can he catch a spark and make it join his tiny parade? And some snatches of cloud, those too, he can cycle his water from water to mist and back again. He can test out just how much stuff he can colour-change at once on the corn, and he does not mind at all if Kithabel erases his work. He can ask Kithabel if he can try some of the simpler healing cases available. His flying objects can range over a wider area. He can decorate Kithabel's tunnel, and check his working scale again while he's at it.
Being able to do all this stuff merely by being hubristic and meddlesome at it is kind of incredible. But it is also wildly insufficient, because he is not yet effortless master of all he surveys. He should do more things.
Being able to do all this stuff merely by being hubristic and meddlesome at it is kind of incredible. But it is also wildly insufficient, because he is not yet effortless master of all he surveys. He should do more things.
ertia
It's actually sort of hard to decorate Kithabel's tunnel - she made it quite pretty to begin with and there's some lingering willfulness in it - but he can change some colors if he tries. He can do small sparks. He may heal this person's bruise while Kithabel gets everybody else and comes back to finish the bruise for him.
And then they can go back to the palace and sleep.
And then they can go back to the palace and sleep.
first-and-final
The colours of Kithabel's tunnel are largely fine; what he does is split off lots of bits of rock from his pebble parade and shape them into aesthetically pleasing decorations and stick them to the walls in appropriate places.
He is deeply frustrated by his slow progress on the bruise, and immediately resolves to do even more things. Constantly expanding his curse-pain is familiar enough that it takes less of his attention now; maybe, he thinks the next morning, he can push it a little faster - no, that was a bad idea. Okay. He can maintain a steady pace on that and instead push himself harder on manipulating his entourage of objects, and find more things to do. Try to make the sparks dance across his fingers without stinging him. Try to make them dance across his fingers and sting him without dissipating. Come on, can he not be effortless master of all he surveys yet?
Apparently not.
Time passes. Milan continues not to be effortless master of all he surveys. But he figures out new tricks to add to the rotation in his constant halo of manipulated objects, and he gets better and faster at all the things he can do, and he becomes able to do yet more things, and he paces the halls of Kithabel's castle and cares for its gardens and redecorates its immediate environs.
It's really annoying not being effortless master of all he surveys, though.
He adjusts the quantity of sleep permitted by his alarm rock, up to five hours from four. This helps a little, except that it slows him down further. He takes a day 'off' and runs at a mere twice normal speed; this is so atrociously, intolerably slow that he ramps back up to full before Kithabel comes home, and after a few more days he cuts his sleep intervals back down to four hours. That's better.
Despite periodic renewed efforts, he can't quite make himself add to the curse-pain any faster. Sheer willpower can only do so much, and pain does hurt. If it didn't, it wouldn't be any good to him. So he climbs steadily and tries not to be too hard on himself for not going faster.
Five months and three weeks after he first entered this world, he wakes up and instead of appeasing his alarm rock he flings it out of the room. It didn't deserve that. But he is still not effortless master of all he surveys and it is very frustrating and he can't stand to be slow but the cost of speeding up is definitely starting to wear on him. Oh, now he is crying. Crying is not doing sorcery. Do some fucking sorcery, Milan Kosorin, you lazy ass.
He is deeply frustrated by his slow progress on the bruise, and immediately resolves to do even more things. Constantly expanding his curse-pain is familiar enough that it takes less of his attention now; maybe, he thinks the next morning, he can push it a little faster - no, that was a bad idea. Okay. He can maintain a steady pace on that and instead push himself harder on manipulating his entourage of objects, and find more things to do. Try to make the sparks dance across his fingers without stinging him. Try to make them dance across his fingers and sting him without dissipating. Come on, can he not be effortless master of all he surveys yet?
Apparently not.
Time passes. Milan continues not to be effortless master of all he surveys. But he figures out new tricks to add to the rotation in his constant halo of manipulated objects, and he gets better and faster at all the things he can do, and he becomes able to do yet more things, and he paces the halls of Kithabel's castle and cares for its gardens and redecorates its immediate environs.
It's really annoying not being effortless master of all he surveys, though.
He adjusts the quantity of sleep permitted by his alarm rock, up to five hours from four. This helps a little, except that it slows him down further. He takes a day 'off' and runs at a mere twice normal speed; this is so atrociously, intolerably slow that he ramps back up to full before Kithabel comes home, and after a few more days he cuts his sleep intervals back down to four hours. That's better.
Despite periodic renewed efforts, he can't quite make himself add to the curse-pain any faster. Sheer willpower can only do so much, and pain does hurt. If it didn't, it wouldn't be any good to him. So he climbs steadily and tries not to be too hard on himself for not going faster.
Five months and three weeks after he first entered this world, he wakes up and instead of appeasing his alarm rock he flings it out of the room. It didn't deserve that. But he is still not effortless master of all he surveys and it is very frustrating and he can't stand to be slow but the cost of speeding up is definitely starting to wear on him. Oh, now he is crying. Crying is not doing sorcery. Do some fucking sorcery, Milan Kosorin, you lazy ass.
ertia
Kithabel comes to check on him when she finds that his breakfast has not been eaten and loud turtle-originating music has made it through the entire Cantata and into the second act of the Afternoon Opera.
first-and-final
Milan is in bed, burrowed under blankets and pillows with only his eyes showing, sorcerously flinging pebbles against the walls of his room and then fixing both the walls and the pebbles.
first-and-final
"What was your first clue," mutters the blanketlump. A pebble shatters against the wall. Each individual shard picks itself up off the ground and turns a different colour and a different complementary pleasing smell and grows to a uniform size and perfectly spherical shape, and then they all fling themselves at the wall again.
ertia
Kithabel looks at the door out of his room.
She looks very hard at the door of his room.
If it even thinks about not doing what she wants she's going to disintegrate it and replace it with one of a completely different design and rearrange the entire hallway out of spite, see if she doesn't, it had better know who's boss -
She opens the door.
And Milan is flung through the air into Milliways quite unceremoniously.
Kithabel follows him through, so she can let him back into her world instead of him winding up back in his own again.
She looks very hard at the door of his room.
If it even thinks about not doing what she wants she's going to disintegrate it and replace it with one of a completely different design and rearrange the entire hallway out of spite, see if she doesn't, it had better know who's boss -
She opens the door.
And Milan is flung through the air into Milliways quite unceremoniously.
Kithabel follows him through, so she can let him back into her world instead of him winding up back in his own again.
ertia
"Thank you," says Kithabel smugly, and she goes and orders a 'surprise me' and flops by the fireplace.
first-and-final
Milan goes over to the bar much more slowly.
"Hi," he says. "What are my options if I want to stay here for a few weeks but don't necessarily want to pay for it out of my savings?"
"Hi," he says. "What are my options if I want to stay here for a few weeks but don't necessarily want to pay for it out of my savings?"
Kithabel's credit may extend that far. You can sleep on the couch without paying for a room. You can earn a room by taking a job cleaning or at security or the infirmary. You can run up a tab.
first-and-final
"...I think I'll go for cleaning," he says. "I'm better than nothing as a healer but I don't think I'm up to interplanar-bar-infirmary levels. Thanks. And can I borrow a book? Something in the 'sad but funny and with a hopeful ending' category of fiction."
Bar provides, of course.
first-and-final
Milan spends the next two weeks pretty much entirely in his room, emerging only to get food, clean things, and exchange old books for new, during which time he strives not to interact with anyone except Bar, to whom he is unfailingly polite but very taciturn.
By week three he's starting to turn around. He ventures out the back door and fucks around with the landscape and makes some lake water do intricate tricks. He smiles at Kithabel next time he sees her.
By week three he's starting to turn around. He ventures out the back door and fucks around with the landscape and makes some lake water do intricate tricks. He smiles at Kithabel next time he sees her.
ertia
Kithabel is in a hammock in the backyard eating something called an "ice cream bar" and reading a book. "Oh look, you found your personality."
ertia
"You good to go? I'm starting to actually get tired of reading, which I had not imagined possible."
first-and-final
He thinks about it.
"I need another half-day to wrench my sleep schedule back on track. And in case I drop my personality and it rolls under the bed for another week. After that I think I'm good."
"I need another half-day to wrench my sleep schedule back on track. And in case I drop my personality and it rolls under the bed for another week. After that I think I'm good."
first-and-final
"Will do."
He goes back to Bar and gets a short introductory engineering textbook from some world or other and reads it and sleeps for four hours and gives it back to Bar and finds Kithabel again.
He goes back to Bar and gets a short introductory engineering textbook from some world or other and reads it and sleeps for four hours and gives it back to Bar and finds Kithabel again.
ertia
Kithabel has been introducing herself to "movies". But she has a bunch to bring home with her and doesn't mind interrupting her current viewing. "All set?"