trade my soul for a wish [Steel] | Glowfic Constellation

"That'll work. I might need new flying leathers for winter, but that can wait. Thank you, by the way."

from_scratch

"Hey, no problem." He hands her a new shirt and turns his back, whistling.

She walks down the other side of the slope a ways, and is back a couple of minutes later. "Will it hurt at all?"

from_scratch

"Not directly. It'll feel very weird, and if your nocioception is wired atypically it might make you tense up enough to hurt that way. I can sedate you if you're concerned."

"Unless your sedatives can wear off in five minutes, I'll take my chances. I am confused about what you might want as payment, since you could just make a mountain of Silver Circles."

from_scratch

"I usually work for book recommendations, but I do not need any today. I just plan to be here long enough that this amount of work is nothing compared to your ongoing goodwill, you know? Say when."

She closes her eyes. "When."

from_scratch

It feels really, really weird.

The wings appear folded heavy and soft against her back, but she can move them as soon as they appear.

"...Huh. I was watching the bluestream as you did that. I could tell you were doing something, but no further detail than 'something'."

The wings extend. "And this is pretty strange." They flap a couple of times, in a way that does not get much lift. "I like it. Gonna get used to them a little more before trying to fly, though."

from_scratch

"Flying might take some work. You can catch yourself if you flub it, I guess."

"But if I catch myself out here I'll get tired and weak, which likely does not make for good flying. I'll wait till there's a road, and I can fly with bluestream if I fuck up doing it with wings. They're very pretty, though, and I'm getting proprioception. Convenient. Thanks again. I've no interest in a tail, though."

from_scratch

"Suit yourself." Wag. "I like mine, but they're not universal even in Hell."

She goes back to pacing around her circle, presumably doing magic to the space within it. The wings flare once in a while as she gets used to balancing with them, and accounting for the extra drag on normal movement.

"Are you going to be particularly bored if I finish my experiment before going somewhere less wilderness-y? I predict two, maybe three hours."

from_scratch

"Recommend me a book," shrugs Cam. "Actually, recommend me a library, more efficient that way."

"Eh. Fiction or non?"

from_scratch

"Do separate libraries have those?"

"A whole library is a lot of books, and I don't want to be responsible for including things you'd be bored by. Alright, try Opri Grande's main library. It's a university for shapers."

from_scratch

"Cool, thanks." Cam makes a bizarre stick-shaped device, which appears in his hand and proceeds to project light in a square beside it.

"That is not a library. That is not a book."

from_scratch

"No, it's my computer. With the library on it on top of everything else usually stored there. Demons can do format conversion just fine even if translation evades our magic."

"I have to assume it's some sort of incomprehensible technology. Are all five thousand-some books written inside that somewhere, ridiculously tiny?"

from_scratch

"It's... more complicated than that. Sort of, though. Five thousand, really? That's an entire library here?"

"Well, it's the school's main library, which is kept pretty tidy generally and doesn't include all the specialties. I was concerned about the size of five thousand books, let alone a hundred thousand. If you want all the books just go grab Capitol Spire's library, archives and all. They'll have five of anything Opri does."

from_scratch

"But now that I've already made the computer I have to make an entire separate object for that," he says, making an entire separate object and wedging it into a space in his computer.