A Margaret in Fabulous
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"I like the sleeve, but it's the only asymmetrical element you have and it's not enough of a statement piece for that to work," he says. "Can you think of anything else you'd like to unbalance?"

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"Maybe I could unbalance my horns, but that could hurt my neck . . . One leg as one arm, for harmony. Oh, it looks like my spell has opinions! How about a legging?" She extends one leg of her shorts out from under her skirt and into her boot. "Hmm, that helps, but it looks a bit plain right now. . ."

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"Your spell does costume consultation?" says Nelson, bemused. "You could lace-ify the legging too."

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"My spell does seemingly random true statements from nowhere, of varying levels of usefulness." She lace-ifies the legging, first in the same pattern as the sleeve and then in a slightly denser one.

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Both kinds of lace are about the same. Nelson asks, "How'd it react to those versions?"

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"No real difference between the lace patterns, but having it be lace at all is good."

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"That might mean that this lace is better, but matching is also important so it's giving you a bonus when it's the same as your sleeve, and updating the sleeve to something more like this would be an improvement."

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"Could be!" Shifting the sleeve and the legging through lace patterns in sync? 

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Matching is definitely better and the magic liiiiikes - ooh, that one!

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"Oh, you were totally right, matching them is better! This pattern works best of the set; think it could benefit from some gems like the sleeve has?"

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"Probably, makes it matchier. I think maybe you want the gems a little smaller so they don't overwhelm the lacework."

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Little tiny gems on the sleeve and the leg!

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Yay!, says the magic, metaphorically.

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"Excellent!" says Margaret, literally. "Say, what are your thoughts on decorative boot buckles? Yes, no, tongues shaped like tiny dragons . . .?" She inquires of Nelson and the magic at the same time.

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"Have you tried metal filigree to match the lace? You could also go harder on the dragon motif, but you're not overall shaped very much like a dragon even though that's the obvious extension, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of synergy out of it unless you wear a lot of little dragon symbols. In general unless you're walking a particularly difficult razor-wire of minimalist elegance whenever you ask 'should this be less plain' the answer is yes."

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"I guess what the magic reads as dragonish isn't the same as what a random human does, huh." Filigree metal buckles down the outside of each boot, in a pattern that matches her chain bracelets! And she can probably push the heels a little higher now, too; she's gotten better at using her wings as a balance aid rather than an encumberance.

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The magic likes all these things, though it's less impressed by the high heels than the filigree.

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What if she makes the heel itself out of metal filigree, huh, what then?

"Filigree's good, going to see if I can push that a bit . . ."

(She leaves it dense enough not to collapse under her weight, but that isn't much of a constraint if she goes for aluminum with the blue opal as a color layer.)

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If she makes the high heel out of filigree that's good!

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She takes a few steps back and forth to confirm that the weight is how she likes it, then adds "That helped!" to Nelson.

How about a single little sapphire in one of the holes of the filigree on the back of each heel? Or a couple? She turns around and points so Nelson can see what she's doing, and says, "Trying some gems, not sure how to arrange them."

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"Hm - my first guess would be in a swoop along here, and then one strung onto the metal here, and the corresponding swoop on the inside."

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She has to turn around and watch his hand gestures to get clear on what he means, but then: that.

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The magic thinks he has a good eye, apparently.

"You might want to do more variety of setting like this elsewhere, see how that takes."

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"Nice! And more settings sounds good . . . " Margaret doesn't really know that much about how to set gems, does he have example descriptions or pictures or anything?

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Nelson shows her some different gemstone settings. "And that's for conventional manufacture; you can also make the stones improbable, fragile shapes and anchor them to underlying materials in hidden ways."

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