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Ehail blinks, when she finds the bar instead of her room.
She goes in.
She looks out the window, at the exploding things.
"I don't think this is my planet," she observes to herself, tucking silver hair behind her ear.
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nonbird
"Well... there's a kind of magic that dragons and most-of-dragons have," he says, "and it comes in amounts. If you have a dragon amount you are a dragon, and if you have a little tiny bit less than that you are most of a dragon, and if you have even less you are dead. And apparently there are dragons with more than the regular dragon amount, but I haven't met any of those. There's also some complicated stuff going on with Ehail's magic besides it being a most-of-a-dragon amount, and I think those are most-of-a-dragon things - it's sort of - continually slurping up something that is definitely not the right kind of magic from something that isn't here, to cover the gap between the amount it has and the dragon amount, and the doing-thatness of it is sticky. You said you're contagious, right?" he asks Ehail. "I think I might understand how. So my guess is that in order to properly make her the rest of a dragon, you'd have to fill in the gap with the exact right kind of magic, and stop the slurping, and ideally also ward against the possibility of someone else's slurping getting stuck on later because it definitely looks like that is how the contagiousness works."
prima-sequentem
"I see," says Libby. "All right. I think that's enough to be going on with."
She touches each coin on the table in turn, briefly. Three, four, five, six.
"No dice. Somehow I expected that," she remarks, scooping up the row of coins and returning all but the six to whatever mysterious form of storage she took them out of in the first place. "All right. Still want to try minting, Ehail?"
She touches each coin on the table in turn, briefly. Three, four, five, six.
"No dice. Somehow I expected that," she remarks, scooping up the row of coins and returning all but the six to whatever mysterious form of storage she took them out of in the first place. "All right. Still want to try minting, Ehail?"
"If it will help," repeats Ehail.
One might almost develop the impression that she's not in the habit of forming wants for other reasons.
One might almost develop the impression that she's not in the habit of forming wants for other reasons.
prima-sequentem
One might indeed develop that impression.
The six-pointed coin vanishes out of Libby's hand.
The six-pointed coin vanishes out of Libby's hand.
prima-sequentem
"The procedure for making coins is to experience an amount of pain and then move it across your mind," says Libby. "It's also helpful to be thinking about where you want the coin to appear - it will be somewhere in physical contact with your body, but exactly where is up to you. Hands are usually convenient."
prima-sequentem
"The amount that produces a three is very small - it might not be the exact minimum of pain it's possible for a person to experience, but it's close to it," she says. "You don't need a knife."
prima-sequentem
"So that seemed to work as expected," says Libby. "Somewhat more than that should get you a four - still not an amount usually associated with serious injury. Fives are about broken-arm level. Sixes are a ways past that. If you don't feel like breaking any limbs, I can probably come up with a magical solution that will let you generate pain more conveniently without damaging anything."
"I don't think you have lights here so it would be inconvenient to have a broken limb if I were going to use it. It's pretty hard to walk on a broken leg or pick up anything heavy with a broken arm." She bites her thumb, just barely not hard enough to break skin, and produces a silver square, then puts both coins on the table.
prima-sequentem
"All right." Libby looks thoughtful for a moment, and then a dark purple pentagon flickers briefly into her hand, and in the same moment that it vanishes, an... object... appears on the table. It's a black rectangle with rounded corners, about the size of a pocket calculator, but under the display at the top (which currently reads 0) there are only five buttons, each in the shape of a coin, from three to seven.
She expects that its use is probably self-explanatory, but if Ehail seems confused she can explain.
She expects that its use is probably self-explanatory, but if Ehail seems confused she can explain.
prima-sequentem
"While you hold down a button, you get the minimum amount of pain required to make the appropriate coin. The number says how much that is, on a scale where one is the minimum for a three. I've never bothered to find out the exact proportions before, so I decided I might as well make it show them while I was at it."
"Okay." Ehail holds the triangle, confirms that it reads '1', and then proceeds up through the other buttons, one at a time. "It goes up by powers of ten," she says, lining up a row of stars on the table calmly.
prima-sequentem
"I see that," Libby murmurs.
She scoops up the silver sevens and vanishes them to wherever her coins go.
She scoops up the silver sevens and vanishes them to wherever her coins go.
prima-sequentem
A moment later, she produces a silver star, holds it for a moment, and then shakes her head and puts it away again.
"It didn't work. But... hmm."
"It didn't work. But... hmm."
prima-sequentem
"Trying to - complete you, with a seven. But it occurs to me," she says, "that it's very unlikely that anyone has ever tried making the next coin bigger than a seven, if you'd need ten times a seven's worth of pain to get there. So there might be such a thing, and I wouldn't have heard of it. And if there is, and you can make one, it's certainly worth trying."
She produces a second gadget. This one has a sixth button - an octagon with a slightly raised outline and a question mark embossed in the centre, since if there's such a thing as an eight-pointed coin, Libby doesn't know what it looks like.
She produces a second gadget. This one has a sixth button - an octagon with a slightly raised outline and a question mark embossed in the centre, since if there's such a thing as an eight-pointed coin, Libby doesn't know what it looks like.
Ehail puts down the first pocket calculator gadget and picks up the second one and pokes the octagon button.
This one's enough to get her to stiffen a little, but she makes a pointy silver... thing... and puts it on the table. And then another and then another.
This one's enough to get her to stiffen a little, but she makes a pointy silver... thing... and puts it on the table. And then another and then another.
