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Sometimes witches have powers before they turn. But this is rare, uncommon.
More often, a potential witch displays almost nothing out of the ordinary at all. Just, say, a little more skill with people, a little more natural charisma. An extra dose of something that could almost be called luck, if one were paying attention and on the lookout for witches.
There is one such maybe-potential, right over there. He's not from around here, but he is fluent in Italian and French and German and he professes that English is his first language and laughs when people call him a liar because of his perfect accent. He might not be the most powerful, but a polyglot witch could be useful for something. And who knows, maybe there's more to it.
Maybe someone would care to find out.
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Neither is Blair, actually. He already knows Addy doesn't care about people very much. And that she disagrees with his 'every person counts' statement.
"But seriously. Thanks."
"But seriously. Thanks."
poll-the-stars
Yvette prods at her power a little bit more with Addy's help. She wrestles a better copied-item organization scheme, and this helps her get faster with everything else, but a lot of it's just going to come down to practice. Her power is very stubborn about being touch based, though Yvette is optimistic about persuading it to work from her nails and hair instead of just her skin.
Eventually it is nearing the time that humans will cease sleeping! There's more work to be done on Yvette's power, but she seems to have the right sort of mindset and has already proven to apply herself from the beginning to improving it. She and Blair depart.
Yvette goes back to Oxford, because gosh, she has got some more chemistry to learn while she plays with her power!
Blair does not go back to England. There is another witch who might want to improve his power a bit more. Maybe get himself an off switch.
Knock knock, Cullens, guess who's there?
Knock knock, Cullens, guess who's there?
honey_twining
"I don't think so," Edward says when he opens the door.
"Welcome, Blair," says Esme, with a hint of reproach for Edward.
"Come in," Edward says, "but I don't think I want the copy witch to know I exist, if she's as you're thinking."
"Welcome, Blair," says Esme, with a hint of reproach for Edward.
"Come in," Edward says, "but I don't think I want the copy witch to know I exist, if she's as you're thinking."
"Hello, Esme," says Blair, amused.
Inside he goes. "She is exactly how I'm thinking. Not wanting to see her is fair; I haven't mentioned you at all. ... But I do think that if you can you should work on your power a bit, I get the impression that a lot of them can really grow if you put in the effort. And then if you don't, it's stuck like it is forever."
Inside he goes. "She is exactly how I'm thinking. Not wanting to see her is fair; I haven't mentioned you at all. ... But I do think that if you can you should work on your power a bit, I get the impression that a lot of them can really grow if you put in the effort. And then if you don't, it's stuck like it is forever."
honey_twining
"Is there some particular expansion...? And I've been a vampire longer than you have, anyway. It may already be stuck."
"It also might not be. If you have the time I think it's worth the effort. And - I don't know, if you could prod your power into going in a direction, what would you want from it?"
Blair thinks 'the ability to turn it off' is a pretty good idea, because always-on mind reading sounds really obnoxious when you don't want to hear everyone's thoughts.
Blair thinks 'the ability to turn it off' is a pretty good idea, because always-on mind reading sounds really obnoxious when you don't want to hear everyone's thoughts.
honey_twining
"It's not so hard to ignore, unless someone happens to think of someone called Edward. And we've avoided close calls before by having me attentive even when I might not have wanted to be if I had an - off-switch."
"Edward, most covens manage all right without a telepath. You can have a break from looking out for us," Esme says.
"Even so."
"Edward, most covens manage all right without a telepath. You can have a break from looking out for us," Esme says.
"Even so."
Blair is mildly disappointed in Edward's creativity. An off switch could be person-dependent but still universally always on for everyone else, such that he could avoid getting, say, Rosalie's thoughts all the time but still pick up everyone else. Or he might be able to persuade it to get his attention when something alarming happens and he won't have to personally pay attention, and just get little alerts. Or more distance faster, or - a number of other things, he hasn't thought a lot about how to upgrade mind reading because his privacy invasion power is of a highly different flavor.
But it is ultimately up to Edward, and he will shoo if Edward doesn't want to try it at all. If he does, though, he's got Blair's help.
"That's not the only thing possible," he points out, for Esme's benefit, "if you don't want an off-switch."
But it is ultimately up to Edward, and he will shoo if Edward doesn't want to try it at all. If he does, though, he's got Blair's help.
"That's not the only thing possible," he points out, for Esme's benefit, "if you don't want an off-switch."
honey_twining
"I don't think I can get my power to do any filtering for me, and increasing my range would be more curse than blessing."
He doesn't know the specifics of how Edward's power works, but it might be possible to have intentions instead of direct thoughts be louder? To tell from a - not a glance, but from the mind reading equivalent of it if a person's thoughts are worth paying attention to, if they might be dangerous or not.
But Blair can't really get a good idea of what direction his powers might go if pushed, what are Edward's thoughts on why this is his witchcraft?
"Stop me if this is getting annoying and you'd like me to stop bugging you about it."
But Blair can't really get a good idea of what direction his powers might go if pushed, what are Edward's thoughts on why this is his witchcraft?
"Stop me if this is getting annoying and you'd like me to stop bugging you about it."
honey_twining
"I was always very good at reading people. I don't remember it very clearly, but... I could tell if they were lying, distracted, angry, manipulative. And now I get more detail and more distance. It's already a remarkable stretch. I suspect it doesn't go any farther and that it's incompatible with the nature of the power for it to only work when I try, because social reading is so automatic."
It's magic. Nothing's a stretch. Sure it's based around personality, but it can grow from there. His started as a vague personality-teller and loved-ones tracker and weird bizarre plot device finder, and now he's pretty sure he's better at tracking than Demetri.
So personalized off-switches got rejected and an ordinary off-switch got rejected and filtering's a bust and range is a bust and extra detail seems to not be a thing Edward wants to aim for, social, social -
(He is getting the impression that Edward seems to want to be a bit tortured by his power, and this seems like a thing that might be mildly unpleasant and like something that Edward might like to stop, Blair is kind of confused.)
Ah-ha. Okay. Hear him out. Social is more than just reading other people. It's not just a thing that happens automatically. The thing about social is that it's communication. Proverbial reading goes hand in hand with proverbial writing. They are literally using this for communication right now. What's stopping Edward from gaining the other side of this social interaction? That is, telepathy. Or if that's too far, figuring out how to word things so that Edward will be easily understood.
He clarifies that he is brainstorming and that if Edward thinks there is a direction his power can jump, then they should definitely do that.
So personalized off-switches got rejected and an ordinary off-switch got rejected and filtering's a bust and range is a bust and extra detail seems to not be a thing Edward wants to aim for, social, social -
(He is getting the impression that Edward seems to want to be a bit tortured by his power, and this seems like a thing that might be mildly unpleasant and like something that Edward might like to stop, Blair is kind of confused.)
Ah-ha. Okay. Hear him out. Social is more than just reading other people. It's not just a thing that happens automatically. The thing about social is that it's communication. Proverbial reading goes hand in hand with proverbial writing. They are literally using this for communication right now. What's stopping Edward from gaining the other side of this social interaction? That is, telepathy. Or if that's too far, figuring out how to word things so that Edward will be easily understood.
He clarifies that he is brainstorming and that if Edward thinks there is a direction his power can jump, then they should definitely do that.
honey_twining
"Oh, I did try sending messages back, when I was new and didn't know quite what I had. It didn't work."
honey_twining
"You seem very fixated on this," Edward remarks. "I 'hear' thoughts, but it's synaesthetic; I composed messages in the same medium and tried to aim them at people. Nothing happened."
Blair doesn't quite understand why Edward isn't fixated on this, but Blair has a way to possibly improve Edward's life permanently, he would like Edward's life improved, why wouldn't he? They're cousins. It's the obvious thing to do. He'll shoo if Edward wants him to shoo but if this doesn't bother him hell yes he's going to stand here for two hours brainstorming how to improve Edward's power. Longer, probably, he's got nowhere to be. Why wouldn't he?
Also, Blair has ideas for why that wouldn't work. Edward's getting thoughts in his synaesthetic format. But thoughts don't work like that, there isn't a universal thought language. Some people think in the color of music or the texture of trees or a number of other things, just shoving what Edward gets at people in the same format doesn't seem like it would work, it seems like Edward might need to know who he's talking to. That just makes sense for social interaction, it's all translation from all of the different ways people think, and language is just the major medium used.
Also, Blair has ideas for why that wouldn't work. Edward's getting thoughts in his synaesthetic format. But thoughts don't work like that, there isn't a universal thought language. Some people think in the color of music or the texture of trees or a number of other things, just shoving what Edward gets at people in the same format doesn't seem like it would work, it seems like Edward might need to know who he's talking to. That just makes sense for social interaction, it's all translation from all of the different ways people think, and language is just the major medium used.
honey_twining
"Yes, believe it or not, I know that people think differently, Blair. It was more complicated than what you're thinking; verbalizing it is simply challenging in a language that was not designed for discussing all the possible flavors of telepathy. It still didn't work."
Okay, fair enough. He apologizes for assuming that Edward's simplified explanation was the whole story.
Uhhhhh meta power for guarding his own social equivalent of 'body language'? Protect himself against other mind readers? ... That's damned impossible to test, not the best idea.
Ferrying thoughts he gets to other people? Something to get the general feel of a crowd without having to personally read every single mind present? Not that this is a problem, he's a vampire, nevermind there. Range extension for people he knows? Blair almost thinks 'way to tell if they're vampires or not' and then recalls that Edward wouldn't have the same problem he did, so he quickly skips over that.
... Is he sure he doesn't want to try for the thing that lets him turn it off for certain people of his choice? That seems just useful without the stated downsides he's mentioned so far.
Uhhhhh meta power for guarding his own social equivalent of 'body language'? Protect himself against other mind readers? ... That's damned impossible to test, not the best idea.
Ferrying thoughts he gets to other people? Something to get the general feel of a crowd without having to personally read every single mind present? Not that this is a problem, he's a vampire, nevermind there. Range extension for people he knows? Blair almost thinks 'way to tell if they're vampires or not' and then recalls that Edward wouldn't have the same problem he did, so he quickly skips over that.
... Is he sure he doesn't want to try for the thing that lets him turn it off for certain people of his choice? That seems just useful without the stated downsides he's mentioned so far.
honey_twining
"If my power wanted to orient defensively I could try it against you," Edward points out. "But it might be a drawback if the Volturi visit. Wouldn't want to look like I have something to hide. My range for people I know did grow over time. Though it's hard to disentangle from my knowledge of people growing while the span of possible ranges was fixed, I suppose. And - emergencies are seldom, but if I had been giving Carlisle privacy when he found Rosalie, I would not have been able to warn you and Yvette. As an example."
Oh right, he is a test for that, isn't he, with his privacy invasion power. It's easy to forget, it's sort of just part of him now. Even as he practices it at least two hours a day. If Edward wants to test it with him, they can.
Blair gets the implication that the thing to worry about for the Volturi is not them thinking he has something to hide, but them thinking that they would like him to join them. And if he makes a defense, assumingly he could drop it, in which case, they'd see it as a sign of trust. ... Of course, he could always figure out how to just hide certain things, make everything else look ordinary... Bad Blair, don't go thinking of ways to subvert the Volturi, that is how you get set on fire.
Personalized off switches unless a person thinks his name? He doesn't have to use it if he doesn't want to, but there might come a time when he would like to, and it'd be a shame if he couldn't.
Blair gets the implication that the thing to worry about for the Volturi is not them thinking he has something to hide, but them thinking that they would like him to join them. And if he makes a defense, assumingly he could drop it, in which case, they'd see it as a sign of trust. ... Of course, he could always figure out how to just hide certain things, make everything else look ordinary... Bad Blair, don't go thinking of ways to subvert the Volturi, that is how you get set on fire.
Personalized off switches unless a person thinks his name? He doesn't have to use it if he doesn't want to, but there might come a time when he would like to, and it'd be a shame if he couldn't.