This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
In this room are two women, one gray and sixty years old, one just thirty and red-haired, both wearing elaborate outfits. The younger casts a spell.
In this room is now also a third person. (On whom the elder woman promptly also casts a spell, which she had at the ready.)
Matilda in Elcenia
missnicegirl
Oh dear.
She sort of wants to do this all at once because they're screaming but it is very important to get it right, so one by one as fast as possible she points at baby shrens and says "done, done, done, done, done."
She sort of wants to do this all at once because they're screaming but it is very important to get it right, so one by one as fast as possible she points at baby shrens and says "done, done, done, done, done."
Jensal and the baby-minder start flinging babies into the air and exhorting them to fly.
Presently all the screaming is over! Instead there is giggling and flapping.
Presently all the screaming is over! Instead there is giggling and flapping.
missnicegirl
"I should go to the other houses," says Matilda. "Can I bring you with me to explain me? Would that work?"
missnicegirl
"Okay."
Flicker. Now they're in the room with the babies at the next land-based house - Kep Island. Matilda starts doing magic and lets Jensal take care of the explanations.
Flicker. Now they're in the room with the babies at the next land-based house - Kep Island. Matilda starts doing magic and lets Jensal take care of the explanations.
Jensal does an admirable job of explaining matters to the jade fellow minding the babies here. She does this simultaneously with getting the babies to fly (he helps, once he knows what's going on.)
missnicegirl
"Good."
Next land-based house. Next round of babies.
Then the iceberg. They appear in a little ice-cave looking down into a watery tunnel.
"I don't know how to breathe water," says Matilda, shivering a little. "How do we get the attention of someone who can show us the babies?"
Next land-based house. Next round of babies.
Then the iceberg. They appear in a little ice-cave looking down into a watery tunnel.
"I don't know how to breathe water," says Matilda, shivering a little. "How do we get the attention of someone who can show us the babies?"
Presently Jensal comes back up with another merperson (this one turns into a dwarf when Jensal turns into a human) and a quantity of babies in various shades of purple and one shade of silver.
missnicegirl
Matilda points at babies. Done and done and done and done and done.
Then: "Okay, are there any more?"
Then: "Okay, are there any more?"
"Some are raised at home," says Jensal, flinging one with purple swirls into the air. "We don't know where all those are, but the dragon council would."
"I can call them again," says Quaro, "if you need to know where they are instead of doing - ialdae to it."
"I can call them again," says Quaro, "if you need to know where they are instead of doing - ialdae to it."
missnicegirl
Matilda tries doing ialdae to it. She shakes her head. "I think I need addresses. The magic doesn't know how to teleport to just 'the next shren baby'."
Quaro calls the dragon council again. (Jensal, meanwhile, is not dressed for this weather, but isn't complaining.)
Quaro eventually starts relaying them to her as the dragon councilmember he's talking to reads them off.
missnicegirl
There are few enough for her to just memorize.
"Thank you," she says. "Jensal, can you help explain still, or will it not work as well?"
"Thank you," she says. "Jensal, can you help explain still, or will it not work as well?"
Jensal locates and rings the doorbell. Eventually the door is answered by a lady with snow-white hair. She double-takes at Jensal, and her eyes go very wide as Jensal utters a Draconic sentence, and then she tries to hand Matilda a snow-white baby she collects from the sofa.
missnicegirl
Matilda does magic, and then says, "Fly, fly," and tosses the baby into the air. She waits to see a wingbeat before she takes Jensal to the next address.
missnicegirl
And so does the next one, and the next and the next and the next and the next, and then they are all done and Matilda takes them back to where those volunteers are still on the bottom of the world.
"That's all the babies, right? For sure?"
"That's all the babies, right? For sure?"
"Unless somebody has been doing something flagrantly irresponsible with public health, and illegal to boot, and this hasn't had any dire consequences yet, yes, that is every shren baby who can't shift yet," says Jensal. "There might be an egg or two that will hatch soon."
missnicegirl
Matilda sighs with relief and sits down on the ground. "Okay, good. That's very good. Now I guess I can just fix all the grown-ups whenever they want, except - " She casts her double time-telling spell. "That I need to go to bed in about an angle. But I can come back later."