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cut like a jewel
Turning eventually concludes
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Days slowly elapse.

Yvette continues to not have a very good time, and her method of dealing with it doesn't change. It's a way to pass the time, at least, which is... something. Not much, but something.

James gets more breaks to visit Aurene, usually spurred on by Yvette screaming at him to get away from her and leave her to suffer, or how she hates him and she'd rather deal with her asshole of a brother, or the like. It varies. She changes her mind and calls him back near immediately, of course, but if one reads between the lines from how much she tells him she hates him and wants him to go away, Yvette seems to prefer having her husband at her side over her brother. Even if she is incredibly mean about it.

Aurene has forgiven her father by the next time he visits her, and the second visit is less combative than the first. She is absolutely still a biting, petulant little gremlin, though. Even with both of her caretakers trying to keep the damage to a minimum, it's kind of clear that keeping blood off of the furniture was the least of this furniture's worries. Lots of things acquire little infant fingerprints, embedded into the wood or the metal or the stone. At least she tends to take out her tantrums on furniture, instead of structure of the overall house, and doesn't seem to want to break things just to break them. It has a purpose, or it happens incidentally as she tries to accomplish something else. The worst she does is make a couple of infant sized holes in walls; to have speedy escape routes that the adults can't follow her through. Because she's smart enough to notice that they don't want to break things to catch her, of course. Evading the adults is a fun game.

 


Eventually, Yvette's heart starts to speed up.

"Oh—of—fucking—course—it's going to end in a climax," she hisses, writhing in James's grasp and clawing uselessly at her chest, "How incredibly narratively—augh—!"

Okay, actually, that's too much pain to speak through, and instead she makes a horrible pained keening whine and thrashes harder instead.

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"Almost done, you're almost done my love, just a little more—"

If he had a heartbeat it would definitely also be speeding up.

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It is no longer talkative Yvette time, this is just for screaming and thrashing.

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And then, of course, it ends, and her heart gives a last, shuddering stop.

She bursts out of her husband's arms and lands several feet away in a neat crouch, freezing in place with surprise.

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...okay that went from awfully anticipatory to intensely hot.

"Love?" he asks, keeping his arms by his sides in a relaxed "they're not a weapon" posture that should register well enough to her new instincts.

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She lets out a small huff of breath, and turns in place to look at him. Even to a vampire's senses, the time to see her brilliant smile is short...

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... because in the next instant she has pounced and has him pinned beneath her and he gets to see the brilliant smile from up close.

"Hiiiiiiiii," she purrs.

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Which of course knocks the wind out of him. "Light of my life this is incredibly hot but I think we should find you food before anything."

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Okay, that one actually annoys her a little. Hss!

"Mmmmmno. I am the one with super strength here, I am the one who just had my pain tolerance ripped open and then put back, and so I will be the one declaring whether or not I'd like to eat first."

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"........I'm sorry, can you repeat that? It sounded awfully like a lot of self-control you should not by all rights have."

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"There is something I very much want and it is not what you seem to think it is!" she says, in a cheerful sing-song, getting to taking off his clothes. ... Without actually ripping them off, she's leaving them intact. "I love you very much and I'm very sorry for being such a bitch while I was turning! I would like to make this up to you immediately, and also being stronger than you is fun."

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"...with the understanding that I will have to dismember you in case you go and, uh, start acting like a normal newborn at any point during this...

"...yes, carry on."

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“Ha! You could try, love,” she banters, but it’s clear this is part of the game they’re playing, not actual hostility.

 


She is a quick study about how to be a vampire. She doesn’t know her own strength, but she knows that, and if she’s thinking about it, she can in fact avoid breaking anything she doesn’t want to be broken. This is mostly in reference to his clothes, she’s a bit more rough with him personally, and sometimes even by accident. His wife is very apologetic about any accidental roughness, and also all of the screaming, and also the insults, and…

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… eventually she decides she’s done, smugly pressing a kiss to his neck.

“Okay, blood now,” she says firmly, in her same teasing tone. “Then you fetch me clothes so I’m decent.” She was much less kind to her own, already very ruined clothes. There wasn’t much point, so she didn’t bother. “And then I go meet our lovely daughter. Sounds like a plan?”

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"Give me a second or twenty to recover here, love," he says, lying face up with a dazed grin on his face.

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She giggles, then gives a dramatic sigh and settles in for cuddles. And waits. She guesses. Ugh, terrible.

“I wonder if I’m a witch,” she muses, because she needs to distract herself with something.

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"Feeling any new senses? I will be very envious if all three of you are witches."

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“Mmm. Don’t know, too annoyingly figure out right now. Hunting? …Please??”

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James sits up and grins at her. "Of course, my love. Let's find you something to eat."

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Yes!“ she says, with a childlike enthusiasm, hopping to her feet. “No humans, check for humans, I bet I can kill something but I don’t want it to be a person.”

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"There are definitely no humans, you would have noticed them by now."

Onto his feet and out to hunt.

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"Ooo, okay, I was trying not to think about it too much. Seemed like bad senses to fall into without a spotter."

Okay, yes, hunting! Having him to supervise her is apparently all she wanted, because now she can figure this whole 'hunting' business out on her own. She can, if she tunes into her senses instead of her shifting whims, pick out a nearby critter's heartbeat. It is a deer. That deer dies. Messily.

"Wow, okay," she says, making a face over its drained corpse. "Ew, and also, the instincts really do not handle table manners, do they."

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"They certainly do not," he says, eyeing her blood-covered (and not much otherwise-covered) body with naked lust. Again.

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She spots his gaze, giggles and winks, and then bounces on the balls of her feet.

"I'm going to try to do better," she declares, and then she darts off to eat another critter.

This one, she catches, pins, and then breaks the neck of before draining. She seems vaguely dissatisfied with this outcome, but it's definitely an improvement in the cleanliness department.

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Bouncing while naked is. Sure something.

James follows after her, still grinning. "So, while that works, one good thing you need to keep in mind that your instincts won't tell you about is that you do not actually need to react to most things your prey will do. Our instincts seem more tuned to fighting other vampires, when it comes to anything like fight or flight, but with animals you can just pin their limbs and then not move at all, even if your instincts say that you should do something about their squirming."

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“Oooo,” she says, delighted, and turning back towards him once her kill is drained. “That’s interesting! It makes sense that I can just not do anything about it, that didn’t occur to me. I actually wanted to skip pinning it and kill it right when I got to it in a neat way where it doesn’t suffer or have long enough to really feel fear, but that seems like it varies a lot from animal to animal.”

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"And sometimes you will get animals who, just from their shape and size, will in fact inflict some damage to your... well, not now, but whatever clothes you are wearing at the time, if you don't take that into account and try to pin them first."

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Giggle.

“Right, that makes sense. I’ve just been killing harmless herbivores that couldn’t do any real damage to anything I’m wearing. If I were wearing anything. … do all animals taste this bad, because. Wow this is bad. If I didn’t know better I’d think that I’d be sick from them later.”

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"None of them taste good but herbivores tend to be the worst. Carnivores are the least bad."

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“Eugh. Okay. I guess I’m glad I set my baseline that low to start.” Then, to herself: “It’s for the horrible burning sensation, not the taste.”

Off to kill and drain more deer, in rapidly improving efficiency and neatness! She is going to be so good at killing deer, and then also have to learn the precise efficient way to kill other animals all over again.

 


After deer number five she makes another face. “Yeah, no, I’m good. Do you know where I could wash up while you go get me some new clothes?”

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"Stream that way. ...I'm not sure how much I trust your amazing supernatural self-control here if you do smell a human and I'm not around to stop you, though."

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“That is very fair! You can take me there, and I won’t breathe while you’re away? Do you trust my amazing supernatural self-control that far?”

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"...yeah, sounds good."

That-a-way!

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She follows! After a large newborn-strength leap to catch up to him so she can hold his hand while they run. Because she wants to, and she can.

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James grins at her when she does and squeezes her hand—oh, look, he feels neither cold nor unyielding, not that she hasn't already had extensive opportunity to explore this fact, but handholding is "new"—and leads her to said stream.

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Stream! Where she can wash up! Presumably!

"Last chance to get me messy before I send you off to fetch clothes," she teases brightly as she begins cleaning up.

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...well he can bridal-carry her if he takes her by surprise, he bets. "That so?"

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He can! She gives a surprised squeak that is very reminiscent of the same sort of sound she made when she was human, and then giggles.

"Mmhmm! When my clothes are on I will then have to be terribly responsible with them. So."

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They can be messy one more time, then. Or... maybe multiple times.

Being a vampire is nice like that.

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Yvette is delighted with this state of affairs!

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... but she is nonetheless the one to gently wind things down, teasingly dancing out of his arms after she's finished distracting him.

"I love you," she sighs fondly, giving him her gorgeous vampire smile. "But! My dearest darling, we are still parents."

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Hooookay he needs a second or two here to recover, laughing.

"And you need to meet our gorgeous, amazing, perfect daughter," he says once his brain is back online. He looks at one tree they damaged there as he gets back onto his feet and starts putting his clothes back on. "I shall be back soon."

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"I will wait, breathless, for your return!"

And then, obligingly, she sits down on the ground, folds her hands on her lap, and waits.

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James is good on his word—almost like he didn't even have to look for clothes for her and had already separated them out beforehand—and is back soon.

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Clothes! And then they can go see their daughter!

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Blair brings their daughter out of the house, because this is probably not an indoor activity, and he was informed of his sister finishing her turning by James showing up for her clothes. He would have checked on them if they took another day to come back, or something, but. Kind of more important to keep eyes on their little gremlin.

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Little gremlin: excited to meet her mother! She leaps out of her uncle's arms and directly at her mother to express this excitement!!!

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James is still in high-alert newborn mode, despite everything, and he tenses a bit at Aurene's sudden movement—but Yvette has incredible self-control so maybe—

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Yvette freezes with surprise, but there isn't a trace of defensiveness in response. Then, she carefully catches her very small, very comparatively breakable daughter out of the air like she's handling the most delicate and precious relic in all of the world.

"Hi there, sweetness, aren't you bigger than when I last saw you..." she coos.

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Predictably, Aurene finds and bites her hand, affectionately.

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This earns a tiny wince, but nothing else.

"Somebody has picked up some bad habits while her mother was away, hasn't she, hmmmm?"

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"Picked up? As I understand it she has been doing that since she was born."

Maybe Yvette's witch power is insane self-control.

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Blair lets out the breath he was absolutely holding and... attempts to relax a little. It's a good thing his heart has already stopped, or that might have given him a heart attack.

"Yep," he says, a little weakly. "First thing she did, not even out of the womb, was bite me."

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"Oh I see, so we did make a little gremlin," she sighs, rolling her eyes. "With sharp teeth and such cute little toes."

The toes accordingly get kisses.

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This elicits giggling.

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"We absolutely did," laughs James. "So, Blair, I think Yvette is a self-control witch."

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"I absolutely agree, yep," says Blair, still kind of recovering from the not-heart attack there.

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"Ha! No," she snorts. "Aurene, dear, it's not nice to bite people without their permission. May I please have my hand back?"

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.... Aurene gives a sad little whine. But biting is fun.

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"Would you appreciate it if I bit you?"

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.... grumpy negative hum, followed by a release of the hand. And some pouting.

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"Thank you, dear, that was very mature," praises Yvette, kissing the crown of her head.

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"Anyway, no, I am not a witch of self-control."

... something about that phrasing has some implications, though, and she has quite a smug smile.

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"It's okay, sweetheart, you can bite me, I don't mind," he tells Aurene, hopping over to her to hover around her. "And if it's not a witch power I don't know what it is. I think even when people are turned by their mates they don't act... like this."

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"Eee!" says Aurene, and accordingly she bites her father. She looks very pleased with herself.

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Yvette pets her daughter's hair, fondly.

"Mmmm. I think I have a number of advantages most people don't have. One, knowledge of vampires and a fairly complete understanding of the species' psychological quirks before venom ever hit my system." She stops petting her daughter to bring up one finger, in easy sight of her daughter. "Which gives me context and lets me brace for what I needed to prepare for, instead of being caught off guard and swept up in the current. Two," second finger, this is now a counting game, "as a human I absolutely had a temper, and have real ingrained practice about how to handle it." Third finger, "And three, I know and love everybody here, if my instincts are telling me to hurt them they're wrong." And then Aurene gets a kiss.

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"Maybe that's all it is, then," he says, still looking down at his daughter and grinning at her.

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"I bet other humans with forewarning and practice at emotional regulation would also do very well, it's just no one's given them a chance to, and all context with their life as a human is removed and they kind of have to start over. I'm going to give you to your father, okay sweetie? Your mummy is still very new, and I don't want to accidentally hurt you. I love you very much."

Aurene is veeeeery gently shuffled into her father's arms. Yvette stays nearby and does keep touching her (it is back to gentle hairpetting, now) but this is much less terrifying.

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Aurene is a little pouty about this, and bites her father slightly harder over it, but does not resist.

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"Aww, honey, you'll have lots of opportunities to be with mommy when she gets more used to her strength."

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Pouty whine!!!

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"Awwww. I will work very hard so I can safely snuggle you," promises Yvette, giving her daughter another kiss. "But it is the most important for you to be safe."

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"... are neither of you going to...? Okay, fine. What are you a witch of, then?"

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"Caught that, did you?" teases Yvette. Smugly.

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"If she has figured it out she hasn't told me," shrugs James.

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"I figured it out while you were gone! I was bored, what else was I supposed to do."

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"Aaaaaaand...?"

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Yvette leans down to pick up a small twig, and holds it up for everyone to see.

And then (in small little sections, one after the other) she turns it from wood to stone.

"Transmutation," she says. Smugly.

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"Holy sh-izzzzzzz."

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"I know!" she cackles. "Aurene, would you like to join your mummy in maniacal cackling, I find it very fun."

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Okay!! This little bab just wants to be included, she's not very good at maniacal cackling but she brings enthusiasm.

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YESSSSS SHE HAS TAUGHT HER SPAWN TO CACKLE MANIACALLY THIS IS ALL SHE REALLY WANTED FROM MOTHERHOOD.

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"Oh, no," sighs Blair, quietly.

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He loves both of them so much.

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Yvette reaches an appropriately good end point to maniacal cackling, gives her daughter several affectionate kisses, and coos, "You are very talented, good job."

Then: "I have an iiiiitty bitty space that I can stretch out, and copy materials from. Then I have it copied forever and can push things I've copied into the space.'

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"'The space'? Is it, like, a little... spherical volume, or?"

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"Volume, but not spherical. I can do spherical, but I can change the shape to whatever I want. The overall volume seems to stay the same, though. There will be," she sounds kind of excited, "a lot of experimenting."

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He laughs and plants a kiss on her forehead, and then on their daughter's forehead too because he is just full to the brim with happy feelings.

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"We are so absurdly overpowered as a family," says Yvette, smugly.

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"....Yeah. We are," says Blair, after a long pause. He doesn't sound... entirely happy about the idea, for some reason.

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"Oh shit."

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"Shit!" repeats Aurene, who is thrilled at this new and easy to pronounce addition to her vocabulary.

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Yvette makes a pained face, but is a bit too concerned by her husband and brother's reactions to try to... do anything... about that.

"Uh?"

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"The Volturi," James breathes. "Blair was... skirting on a technicality, I feel, they have Demetri. But the two of you..."

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"Who see the future and can transmute objects, respectively," murmurs Yvette, softly. She was already beside her husband, but now she can actually hug him, looking at their daughter with concern. "Uh. How. Much do they like collecting witches, exactly?"

She thinks she knows the answer, and she doesn't want to.

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Aurene is little and confused and doesn't understand.

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"Officially? Everyone joins voluntarily. But..." He looks at Blair. "They have at least one witch who can straightforwardly manipulate people's relationships."

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"If I ruled the world for a millennia, because I wanted to," says Blair, "I would not let someone with literal foresight go. Transmutation? Maybe, it's not immediately obvious how that could be used to depose someone, though it's useful, don't get me wrong. But foresight?"

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Confused infant is confused and concerned??? Why are all of the adults suddenly looking so worried, what's going on?

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He starts bouncing and rocking Aurene and offers a finger for her to bite if she wants. "I would be surprised if they wouldn't want to just get the whole package just for ease. They are not... hurting for resources, to keep a whole coven. I'm the only one without a witch power here and even if," he does not look at Aurene at all, "foresight is the crown jewel I doubt they would want—oh—unless—they call her an immortal child."

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"Oh, God," whispers Yvette.

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Aurene does not nibble on a finger, she is in fact completely uninterested in doing any nibbling, she is looking anxiously between her adults and trying to figure out what's going on.

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"I expect that if we show up at Italy, and present ourselves to them, and explain the circumstances and how it was an accident—with your actual proof that it was, because mindreading—they will accept us with open arms and invite us to join them and we will, ultimately, be... fine." Mind controlled, with their privacies constantly violated, surrounded by systemic murderers and forced to jump when the Volturi say jump, but. Alive.

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"And if instead they run into us before she looks... adult enough... Coin toss, I think, on whether they try to convert us all alive or just take her. Assuming they even notice she is not an immortal child at all and just use that as an excuse."

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Okay the baby has given up trying to figure out what's going on, clearly they have the right of it and it is crying time now.

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"Oh, sweetheart..." murmurs Yvette, leaning around to kiss Aurene gently.

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"—let's have this conversation when she's asleep," he says, in a pitch that is definitely too high for the half-vampire. "It's okay, sweetheart, it's nothing you need to worry about right now," he tells her, resuming the rocking and bouncing. "I'm sorry we scared you."

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Aurene is skeptical, she feels the grownups are not telling her things, and she is going to cry about it.

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"Auri, Auri, hey, hey, shh. Don't you want to show your mummy how you catch birds? You're so good at it!"

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Blair gets a look where Aurene can't see.

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He ignores it. "C'mon, it'll be fun, she'll be so impressed. And your daddy can throw you!"

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Sniffle, sniffle.

Skepticism continues.

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"I can absolutely throw you. Bet I can throw you higher than uncle Blair can."

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... He makes a tempting offer to this three day old infant. Higher does sound like so much fun.

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"Really," sighs Yvette, at the too-high-for-the-baby pitch.

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"She is absolutely more durable than the ground she would theoretically fall on if I failed to catch her," he replies using the same pitch. "Come on, sweetheart, what do you say? Birds?"

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Yvette doesn't grumble, but she does look a little grumpy. .... She starts transmuting a bit of her sleeve in a fit of pique.

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Wibble, wibble.

".... Birds," Aurene eventually agrees, after a couple little sniffles. She is a simple half vampire half human baby with unprecedented witchcraft, she can't really pass up being tossed through the air to menace innocent birds.

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And since they've just been standing there outside all this time like the weirdo vampires they are, it is easy to go find birds to throw Aurene at.

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Predictably, this is great fun!

She has some ability to steer herself by turning her body this way and that, and wow she is pretty good at it. James does need to aim, but if he gets it close his daughter can totally adjust in mid-air to catch a bird.

Which, of course, she does.

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Why does her small infant child have this much practice at this.

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But then, yes, okay, it was impressive, focus on the impressiveness to coo at the baby so she doesn't cry again.

"That," says Yvette, seriously, "was very cool."

.... it was, admittedly, pretty cool. Even though no seriously why does a three day old infant have that much practice at being thrown, steering, and catching and killing birds.

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Yay!!!! She's very talented!!

Aurene eats her bird, of course.

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"Our daughter is amazing."

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"Eee!" agrees Aurene, who can absolutely recognize praise when she hears it, and loves attention.

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"Yes she is," agrees Yvette, kissing her amazing daughter on the head.

"Blair where did she get all of that practice," she says tightly, of course out of her amazing daughter's hearing.

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"She's a quick study! It's not my fault that the half-vampire, half-human bone breaking baby needed creative solutions to boredom!" he replies brightly.

Where Aurene can hear: "Do you want to go again?"

Okay, that one is definitely just to needle his sister.

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"Eeeeee!"

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Yvette focuses very hard on how much she does not want to rip Blair apart in front of her daughter, and keeps herself from doing so. Even if he does actually deserve it.

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James on the other hand has been entirely convinced by Blair's line of logic by now and is more than happy to indulge his daughter in her not-actually-dangerous-at-all bird catching past times.

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Look, it's really more of the principle of the matter. She is this child's mother and Blair absolutely just did a social wizardry to outplay her, and she sees what he's doing and she's grumpy about it.

While Aurene is flying through the air and far too distracted to notice, she detaches a bit of her mutilated sleeve and transmutes it into an extremely rudimentary facsimile of Blair with clever use of transmutation. Then she rips its head off while staring directly at him.

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Blair snorts, and replies (in a pitch Aurene can't hear, naturally) "Somebody's mad about lying in the bed she made for herself. Don't want your brother to throw your kid? Have a normal one!"

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"I hate you, you're the worst," she sighs, but she continues to not rip him apart. "... But thank you. Really."

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"Never, ever do it again," says Blair, sagely.

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"Yeah, that's physically impossible."

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"Exactly!"

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Meanwhile Aurene is having herself a lovely time and is so proud of how many birds she's caught, look, look, everyone! She got another!!!

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Aww. Okay, this is admittedly pretty cute. In a slightly terrifying murder child sort of way.

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Honestly they're all slightly terrifying murder people here, stones and glass houses and all in his opinion.

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Aurene is extremely delighted to be the center of attention for all of her grownups for as long as possible!! Fortunately for her, the grownups are all content to just play with their small, slightly terrifying murder child for a little while.

Then, at about 8 PM, she goes out like a light. One moment, she's perfectly awake, and then the next, bam. In a sleep so deep she could plausibly be dead to the world, if they couldn't hear her fast heartbeat and steady breathing.

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"Awwww, baby," coos Yvette softly, charmed.

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"Right on time." At Yvette's confused expression, he explains: "She does this every night, exact same time. I can't tell if it's a half vampire thing or an Aurene thing." Clearly, he is charmed either way.

Blair was the latest one to have been holding her, so he can go tuck her into her bassinet.

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"Being a half vampire had to have some drawback," James reasons, moving to hug Yvette. ...a bit tightly. He maybe is still feeling somewhat terrified.

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Yep! Tight vampire hugs, because they are both feeling somewhat terrified.

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Blair gets Aurene sorted, and then he returns, his expression back to a business-like chill.

“So,” he says, and that is all he says.

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Sigh.

"A while back," he says, pulling away from the hug but keeping a firm hold of Yvette's hand, "when I just started being vegetarian, I mentioned that most vampires are loners and most covens don't get larger than three or four people... and that eating animals dampened that instinct a fair amount. The Volturi have... many more people than that... and still eat humans. As a piece of evidence."

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Whine.

“Achieved via copious use of mind control? How charming.

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“It’s probably also perfectly comfortable for all members on a material level, and I can’t imagine they’d have lasted very long if any of them were really mistreated.”

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“I do not want to raise my daughter surrounded by unrepentant murderers with a lot of reason to want her to like them very, very much. Instead of letting her form her own opinions.”

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"And... our own opinions, too. I am not sure we would feel as strongly about that once Chelsea had had her way with us."

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“No. But we don’t have many options, here.”

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“Blair, are you saying you think we should pack up and go make friends for our own safety?”

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“No. Well, yes, sort of. I’m weighing options honestly, here. Cooperating on our own means they won’t want to use full force. It is objectively the safest option, even if some of the specifics are… uncomfortable.”

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"...I think we might disagree here on the full extent of the... discomfort," says James, one step below a growl.

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“We’re on the same side, here,” sighs Blair. “This is a big deal. I want us to think it through carefully and honestly without getting swept up by protective emotions to thoughtlessly charge forward to do something stupid based on just how we feel.

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“There is no possible future where I would ever accept my daughter spending her formative years being manipulated by thousand year old mind controlling megalomaniacs,” says Yvette, flatly.

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“Reasonable! That is probably extremely bad for a child’s development, just look at what happened with Jane.”

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“… I do not actually know what happened with Jane.”

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"...for what it's worth I think she might have just been that way since always, given that... I think she was turned before joining them." To Yvette: "Jane is one of the two fourteen-year-olds I mentioned. She and her twin are... very powerful witches. Her twin can completely shut down all of your senses, including the sense of where your limbs are or how to control them; if you touch his mist you are as good as knocked out. Jane herself can... project pain. Debilitating pain. Which, to a vampire...

"I have also heard that she enjoys doing it."

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“And is allowed to run rampant with it and uses it liberally, like it’s her favorite toy,” says Blair. “Responsible for making her like that, maybe not, responsible for letting the eternal fourteen-year-old become the stuff of vampiric nightmares? Yes. Which is more in line with what I mean, here.”

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Yvette hisses.

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"I am not sure the three could control her if they wanted to, I think they might be stuck between enabling her and killing her."

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“Yes, but we see which way they flip, there. It’s been millennia. You're telling me they couldn’t have found another option? Another witch to replace her, someone more palatable? Instead they kept her, and enabled her. And Auri is a unique, bitey little gremlin.”

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"Yes, I... am not disagreeing with what this seems to mean, here."

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“No. It’s. A very good point. Even if I hate it.”

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“Thank you,” says Blair, just a little tartly. He feels like the over emotional parents have been treating him too much like he’s the bad guy here, when he is trying to help. “So. Probably best to stall regardless of which way we decide to flip. And if I’m not mistaken, I think her opinion is the deciding factor for all of us, here.”

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yeah. So we just have to... lay low... until she grows up."

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“Yeah. Which I think we could pull off, considering how fast she grows. So. I vote that, and decide further later, when she can weigh in. But it’s our lives we’re risking, there.”

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“Obviously, yes, I would risk death so my daughter can have a childhood,” says Yvette.

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“Figured. James, have you ever met Demetri?”

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"I have tried to steer clear of the Volturi, all my knowledge here is secondhand. No, I have not, why?"

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“Then I don’t think he can cheat with magic to find us!” says Blair, cheerfully. “I’m a tracker, obviously when left to my own devices, I wanted to compare how I measured up to the gold standard. I had some lovely chats with some folks and the way I hear it, he can track anyone he’s ever met anywhere in the world.”

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How sure are you of that?”

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“Eh. It’s a theory, I wouldn’t bet my life on it. It’s probably at least partially motivated by pride. But I would bet my life on no one knowing to send him at all if they have no idea any of us exist or what our powers are. And if furthermore he doesn’t know anything about any of us, even the oldest and least risk averse member, that’s just icing on the cake.”

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"I suppose not being a witch has had its advantages," James sighs. "—sorry about snapping earlier. It was not at you, it was—at the situation."

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"Apology accepted and appreciated. High stress situation, I get it."

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".... You're a very good big brother and I love and cherish you," admits Yvette softly, who then goes and hugs him. "Sorry for uh. Making life complicated?"

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"No, you're not," replies Blair cheerfully, hugging her back. It is a much nicer version than the last time he said it.

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"We'll be fine. There's a whole ocean between us and the Volturi and I hear they don't really leave so much."

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"Eh. It's less about the ocean and more about how we have foresight, tracking, and transmutation for whatever arbitrary material objects we want. If we can't avoid attention with those combined, we are not trying hard enough."

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Yvette snorts, and releases her brother from hugs so she can turn to her husband, and cross her arms and raise her eyebrows.

"Also, never, ever say that again, James. 'We'll be fine' is just asking for the narrative to just get turned on its head, don't you read."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Or have pattern recognition. I'm sure something along the lines of 'it'll be fine' was how Auri happened."

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"No, that was a bit more along the lines of—"

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"—Never tell me."

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Yvette giggles.

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James laughs and hugs his wife.

"Fine, fine, no tempting fate."

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Hug!

"Thank you, dear. This is for your own good."

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Nope no getting sappy on his watch. He is interrupting.

"So, I vote we stick around here until Yvette's good around humans, pick a new and less populated place to move to, and then probably burn the house down before we go. Tiny little handprints in things is suspicious, and all."

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"Sounds like a good plan to me."

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"You came up with that plan way too quickly."

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"What can I say, I like not leaving suspicious trails of evidence behind."

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He doesn't repeat "it will be fine", but he does think it.

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It is, at least for the next few days. Aurene continues to be out like a light at around 8PM every day, and continues to resume her little gremlin activities early in the morning. Her parents take their time to be properly mated full vampires when she's asleep, and Blair takes that time to be as far away from them as he possibly can during those times. Daytime is then dedicated to playing with Aurene, fixing the house up, fiddling with their witchcraft (in the case of Blair and Yvette), and the occasional sparring match.

James is... kind of terrifying in combat. Even just sparring, his self-confidence when Yvette had him pinned down when she turned was entirely earned, it is very clear he could in fact have dealt with her if he needed to (which he doesn't, not now, her preternatural self-control holds). He teaches the two of them, anyway; Yvette still needs a while to get used to her superstrength, her eyes are still intensely crimson from being a newborn and her enhanced newborn strength comes with that, but even a lot of introspection and attention does not really overcome James's years of experience and practice. Hands-on, too; he explains he has once had to help deal with a newborn army in Mexico, and since then he has also met with many teachers around the world, including the sole (well, plus her mate) vampire inhabitant of Ireland who from his tone is his hero ("She could singlehandedly take on a full coven of vampires. She has. She's keeping the entire island for herself on that alone.").

Still, there's... something. There's something else, something that doesn't quite translate. Not to Blair, anyway, there's something missing in this picture.

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".... Hey, James," says Blair thoughtfully, while Yvette has Aurene. "I want to test something."

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"Witchcraft stuff?" he guesses, walking over to his brother-in-law.

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"Yeah," he agrees blandly. "Close your eyes, then run a mile in that direction," he points off into the secluded woods, "and then turn around and come back. Eyes still closed. It's fine if you break some things, yeah, we're in the middle of nowhere."

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"...okay," he says, and does that.

He does not break any things.

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"So, have you been that route before?" he wonders, when James comes back. "Have it all memorized?"

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"Uh, I don't think so? I mean I have probably been around this place enough times I could reconstruct the entire route in my head if I tried..."

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"Did you, though? Try?"

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"...no, are you trying to turn tracking into something else here, what does this have to do with your power...?"

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"Absolutely nothing at all," he says, brightly. "See, I could maybe manage that, if I spent a while carefully mapping out where each and every tree in this area was. If I knew it so well that I could say without a shadow of a doubt where every single tree, bush, rock, hill, or anything else that might be in the way was. But it'd be a massive pain to figure out."

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"Manage... running? I mean, can't you, you know, hear stuff around you?"

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"Running without knocking into anything? Hear every single object on that path, moving or no, living or no, every rock and dead tree and ditch? No, James, I cannot hear things that do not actually make sounds. I could run just fine, but I'd leave a trail of destruction in my wake."

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Slow blink.

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"My tracking power," he continues, "gives me a perfect idea of where every single person I've ever gotten to know is, in respect to me, at all times. Neither you, nor Yvette, nor our favorite little gremlin could manage to sneak up on me, ever. Probably not even if I were gravel. And your situational awareness beats the hell out of mine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...so, what, are you saying I also have a tracking power? A power to... track things?"

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"Or something! I don't actually know, I was following a hunch."

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"A hunch. Okay." He closes his eyes. "You're saying you... don't know where things are with your eyes closed."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not without figuring it out, no. And not to the degree of accuracy you seem to have."

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"I figured... it was just a matter of enhanced senses." He turns around and then leaps up to hang from a tree branch which he then uses to push himself up even higher. He turns a few times in the air, catches himself on another tree branch, then lands safely on the ground again.

All with his eyes closed.

He's grinning like a child.

"But it's not."

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"Nope. Congrats. We're all witches here."

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He gives Blair a bone-crushing hug then runs back inside to tell Yvette about it.

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Yvette is making things with and for her daughter, with transmutation! Aurene is demanding and then receiving the cutest clothes, carefully pulled out of a tub of water for the substance to transmute from.

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"Daddy!!" says the little baby, when her father shows up.

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"Hi, love," says his wife, looking up from where she's making a shifting pattern of blue and green, to match her daughter's eyes. Yvette notices her husband's glee and raises her eyebrows, looking amused.

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"Hello, my beautiful witch," he says, planting a kiss on Yvette's lips before grabbing Aurene and twirling with her a couple of times at insane speeds before kissing her forehead and saying, "And hello to you too, little princess."

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"Eee! Hi!"

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"I thought you and Blair were sparring for a while," says Yvette, amused. "Did you miss us that much?"

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"Every second of my existence away from you."

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"Oh I see, so the smugness is finally being back in our presence, that makes perfect sense."

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Aurene is feeling affectionate, and she is allowed to bite her father, and so she does. Nom of affection.

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Adorable bitey gremlin.

"Also it turns out I'm a witch," he adds as an afterthought.

Permalink Mark Unread

"And you didn't notice this over the century of your life. Of course you didn't. Well, okay, what thing did you not notice that you had in all of this time?"

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"I am not sure exactly what it is yet but I seem to have... enhanced spatial awareness, of some sort? I know where things are, around me, even with my eyes closed. I thought it was just enhanced senses but..." Shrug.

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"... Huh. To how far, to what degree of detail, is it even when you're not paying very much attention...?"

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"About..." He shuts his eyes. "One and a half the volume of this house, in a sphere. I can count the blades of grass—I can count the ants on the blades of grass—the edge fuzzes out rather than being sharp but it's not a very thick shell of fuzz. It seems to just—be a sense I have, like sight and sound, I may not be paying attention to all of it all the time but vampire memory still works."

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"Hm! Can you change the shape of it like I can change my set volume? Can you spread it out further and get less absurd detail...?"

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"Mummy, clothes," cries Aurene, releasing her affectionate bite.

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"Oh. Yes. Sorry, dear, mummy got distracted."

Back to making clothes!! Very important job, this.

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They're vampires; they can multitask.

"It seems to just be a strict specific distance from me, like a regular sense. I don't... know how I would even go about messing with it, I only just noticed I have it."

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"Well you also just have sight and smell and hearing, but you can focus less on those and move your attention to something else, can't you? Would you say that your range of sensing is the same when you focus versus when you don't?" she wonders, as she carefully continues the pattern of blue and green. "And anyways, it's magic, why should it work that way at all?"

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"Well, even when I'm not paying attention to everything I'm sensing I can still remember it later, smells and sight and so on." He frowns. "Is that a just me thing? I'm starting to question all my assumptions about how vampires work here."

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"That is not just a you thing. But I also can't... follow trails after the fact in memory, things have to be closer and more obvious for me to notice them at all if I'm not paying attention. Like, for smell, if I notice something when I'm there smelling it, I can follow the trail. But I might not pick up on it then, because I wasn't paying attention. Whereas if I just go over it later I can notice it, but can't do anything about it. Which ultimately makes the range of sensing lower."

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"Yeah, okay, that tracks. I think... well, now that I'm actually paying attention to the difference between this and sight and sound it seems to work more like I'm constantly paying full attention to everything even though I'm... not? It's a bit confusing."

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"Huh."

She finishes the little dress she was making for Aurene, and hangs it up to dry. There are others, drying on a line beside it, made through the same method.

"What do you want the next one to look like, sweetheart?"

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"Mmmm... Purple!"

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"Okay! Light purple or dark purple? Any designs? Maybe some ruffles?"

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She considers these questions with utmost seriousness.

"Both," she declares, imperiously. "Yes ruffles."

This seems to be the extent of her highness's decrees, she gives a firm nod and nestles closer to her daddy, looking very pleased with herself.

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"Of course, dear," agrees her mother, and she gets to starting the next little dress.

"So I obviously think you should mess with it, relentlessly," she says to her husband. "Be like me, love! Poke it every way you can think of, and see what it does!!"

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He laughs and kisses the top of Aurene's head again. "Well, I suppose I can try. I have no idea where to even begin, though."

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Ee! Kisses! Okay she can bite him again, her mummy is back on track and she is happy. Nom.

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His wife hums thoughtfully. "So at the very least you might want to give it priorities, or, or. Something to alert you if it notices something important, like another vampire, but you aren't watching it. 'Strange thing has showed up in your radius, James pay attention!' or something."

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Cute bitey gremlin.

"I might... have that one already? In retrospect I think I was using that in the boat to make sure I would be there to steer it whenever I needed to."

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"... Okay, homework, then," she snorts. "Compare what you have now to what you had when you first turned. Has anything changed, or has it always been exactly like this?"

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James laughs again. "Homework?"

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"Love, you clearly need your wife to tell you how to figure out your witch power. I'm just giving you some kind of structure, here. So, yes, homework."

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"Well, how long am I meant to spend on the assignment? Thinking about it I cannot tell of any way it has changed over the past century and a half."

Permalink Mark Unread

"When you feel you have properly ruled it out. This homework is ultimately for your benefit. But you seem to be thinking of it like it's an immutable thing that you have, when I think it might be more like a part of you that you haven't figured out how to wiggle. Like your ears."

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"...you can wiggle your ears?"

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"Well. Not me personally, Blair's the one who figured that out, for some insane reason, but. You see my point, yes?"

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Aurene is here to help her daddy wiggle his ears. See! She can reach up and wiggle them. She's helping!

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He grins at her. "Well I guess I can wiggle my ears, now, too, thank you princess."

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"Mhm! You're welcome!" says Aurene, grinning back.

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"Even if the equivalent of ear wiggling doesn't work, surely there's, mm. The equivalent of stretching. Pay attention to something at the very edge of your range, and take a step back, but try to keep hold of it. Or something," she muses.

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"...huh, that could be possible. Maybe."

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"I'm going to have to personally coach you on every single new possible way to poke it, aren't I," sighs Yvette, sounding amused and a little fond.

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"I am clearly not amazing at figuring out how the inside of my head works."

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"You're lucky you're cute."

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"My most important quality."

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"Nu-uh. Daddy!"

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"... She has you there, love."

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"She absolutely does," he says, hugging her close to him and nuzzling her nose.

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"Eeeee!" Snuggles.

"Play?" she wheedles her father, with big sad eyes. She has been trying to follow her parents' conversation, but it's so complicated, and she's bored.

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"Anything you want, sweetheart."

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"Yay!"

She wants to go play outside, and be thrown at things! She's getting so good at climbing trees, she'll be the best.

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"I guess I'm done for the day," says Yvette from inside, amused. She finishes the final hem of the ruffled purple dress, and hangs it up to dry. "I'll be playing with my witch power, love. Remember that you can play with her and do other things at the same time too, hm?"

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"Yes, ma'am. I think I am going to enjoy this whole 'teacher' thing you've got going on, there."

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"I'll be sure to make a pair of fetching glasses while I'm messing around. Complete the look for later."

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"I have the best wife in the world."

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"You do, it's true."

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It's a couple of days later when James suggests: "So, we should probably start getting you used to humans."

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Yvette goes very still.

"Uh. Not just by putting one directly in front of me, right, just. Borrowed laundry or something?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. We should do it slowly, start with something like you said, borrowed laundry, until you're fine with that, then move on to more difficult things."

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"Right. Okay. ... Probably it can be actual laundry, I'd be fantastic at getting tough stains out. This is a weird thing for me to focus on but nonetheless it's what came up."

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He laughs. "Sure, that can probably work."

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"I am not actually all that invested in doing laundry with magic, I'm just trying to find every single opportunity to practice witchcraft in every possible aspect of my life right now. Parenting and being a newborn vampire with a mate and cool powers is a lot to juggle, okay, even as a vampire!"

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"Ah, yes, of course, and you absoutely hate having a lot to juggle like that."

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"Hush, you." Kiss. "While we're getting me used to not eating people, do you think it would it be a good idea to test how Aurene responds, too? Even though she's very young? Not with actual humans, with laundry and the like. Just so we can know how she'd even react."

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"Yeah, probably. Given that she can even eat actual solid food, I suspect she will be less tempted than we are."

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"I expect so, but I'd still like to keep her away from any actual humans until she's got more impulse control."

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"Absolutely."

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"Good," says Yvette, nodding. "... Want to go get something for me to smell now? I'd send Blair to go play fetch instead, but for some reason he seems to think the minute that Aurene's asleep he needs to make for the hills yesterday."

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"Wonder why he would think that," he says, grinning. "Sure, I will be right back."

Zip.

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"Bring interesting things for me to copy to my library while you're out, if you can!" she calls after him, then she settles back in to try and get a better feel for transmuting air into something else. It's perfectly easy to transmute things to air, but whenever she starts pushing a solid or liquid material at air, it destabilizes and she can't get anything of any real neatness. Maybe it's just a matter of practice, or working in smaller sections than usual...

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He returns shortly.

As soon as he appears, though... there is a scent.

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It is rather like inhaling the most delicious scent in the universe, that also happens to set her throat more than a little on fire.

Well. That’s uncomfortable.

She wrinkles her nose, but doesn’t stop breathing. It’s probably good to get in practice now. Her mouth fills with venom and that is uncomfortable too, no matter how much she tries to swallow it, it won’t really wash away … She transmutes the venom to water, which she then drinks. That works better.

“… huh,” she observes, blinking. “I can transmute liquids into other liquids. I just did venom into water to clear it out a bit, but. Presumably I could just directly turn it into blood.” Pause. “Also, this is uncomfortable.”

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unreasonable self-control strikes again. You probably don't want to turn your venom into human blood, though." He extends the hand that is holding a T-shirt. "Closer is worse, probably."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's really not unreasonable. The vampire instincts are operating entirely illogically, there is no way I can actually follow the scent to its owner without getting ripped to pieces. You'd stop me. It'd just be unpleasant for everyone involved. It's a dumb urge that I feel, but don't want to act on. You're more tempting than the shirt, I could actually get somewhere with you."

She tentatively takes the shirt, and brings it to her nose to sniff. Yvette makes a face, and lets out a tiny hiss of displeasure. "And now it is very uncomfortable. James, love, if one of us has unreasonable self-control, it's you. Considering I was human and we made Aurene anyway. I can't imagine an actual living breathing human with a beating heart and blood in their veins would be less uncomfortable than this."

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"Well, no, an actual living breathing human is a nightmare compared to this, but I had a century and a half to practice. At least you weren't my singer."

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“Singer? What’s that?”

She inhales more smell of human, faint expression of discomfort still on her face.

Permalink Mark Unread

"People vary in how appealing they smell and taste to vampires, and there are some people who—it really is a whole new level, some people smell so enticing most vampires will just actually slaughter an entire room of people just to get to the one person. And it is said their blood sings to you."

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“That... Is… Needlessly terrible, really. I mean, I guess not if you eat people, but. Augh.”

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"Mmhm. So, yeah, I think that one will be basically impossible to test for, but hopefully once you are used to regular humans you will be able to resist a singer."

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“I suppose I could just spend a lot of my time not breathing, but. Mmm. I do like the sensory information.” She looks at the shirt in her hands. “Even if it comes with flames. Just not the murder. I’d like to skip the murder.”

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"'Twould be ideal."

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“I have to set a good example for our daughter,” she agrees. “You know, I do hope I can handle being around humans quickly, it’s very annoying to have other people bring me singular objects instead of just walking around poking everything, getting copies of all materials I can interact with. Instead of just ones that are small and wouldn’t be easily missed.”

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"Like this lighter," says James, grabbing the object he did take with him from his pocket.

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"Oooo!" says Yvette, and she takes the lighter and copies it. "Want me to indulge in some pyromania at some point, love? We're all very flammable, you realize."

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"Not a problem while we're still mobile," he shrugs.

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"This is true. Fortunately, if there are any accidents, I've copied every inch of you, myself, and Aurene. I guess this just means I need to get Blair to hold still so I can copy every inch of him too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"—you have? When?" He sounds delighted.

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"Hm? Oh, when we were cuddling, mostly. I did it in sections, I didn't have to do it all at once, I can remember where I left off. Aurene was much trickier, but fortunately she is also very small, so there wasn't as much to copy. Less fortunately she grows very quickly."

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"I do wonder how their healing works. Half-vampires', that is. Since they have a heartbeat and all."

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"Yeah, me too. I suppose I could experiment with copied bits of Aurene and see how they go back together, but." She makes a face. "I am more than a little uncomfortable with doing mad science experiments with copied pieces of my daughter. I probably should, more knowledge is better than none, but."

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"And it is better than finding out too late."

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"Mmmm." Face: still being made.

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James hugs her.

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She hugs him back.

"I should probably try to get over it, it's just. Mad science experiments with witchcraft. Bits of my daughter. Copied bits, but still."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I feel the same, my love." He tightens the hug and kisses her forehead.

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Snuuuug. "I'll. I'll work on it. She's an extremely unique baby, knowing details about her biology could turn out to be very important, later. Mad science experiments with witchcraft to understand and help her as much as possible. Just. Probably in small sections with lots of cuddles in between."

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"I am happy to provide said cuddles."

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"I would be quite astonished if you flinched away and hissed instead of cuddling me."

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"Maybe I got vampire rabies."

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"That is absurd and as far as I'm aware impossible." She nuzzles him. "... Mmm. Distract me?"

Permalink Mark Unread

He can do that. They have most of the night.

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Typical mate activities are so nice for getting oneself away from unpleasant mental states.

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Blair, meanwhile, is working on his witchcraft.

It feels unrefined, to him. For some reason, he is reminded of being out of shape when he was human. It's the same type of annoyance. The same kind of 'I am not leveraging myself as well as I could, I could be better.' To remember this feeling, but not his own father without prompting is definitely something. Human memories are so weird.

He can use it to find people, and not just ones he's met before. He can ask it for people that meet certain criteria, and sometimes, it'll oblige. Other times it will give him false positives that are often various flavors of odd and unhelpful. He doesn't understand why this happens at first, but it starts to become clear that it is better at finding people that are passionate about something. Some sort of strong moral or philosophical reasoning for them to care about whatever vague topic he's searching for. They might not personally know anything that could possibly help him with whatever goal he might have, but they will care about it if he brings it up in conversation. That's... odd.

Witchcraft is supposed to be an extension of the witch's personality, and Blair cares about people. The whole thing is based around getting to know people. After some thought, this turns out to include getting to know people secondhand. Asking someone to talk about someone they know can get the spoken of person to register to his tracking, even if he hasn't met them personally a single time. He knows a bit about them, and this turns out to be enough.

He sweet talks and bullies it into giving him a 'find all' function. From there he claws himself something that tells him where people are in a certain radius of himself, even if he hasn't really met them first. Woefully smaller than he'd like, and he's pretty sure James has him beat on range, but whatever. He is becoming a better tracker, and also keeping very distracted during the Forbidden Aurene Sleeping Times, which is important.

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James also works on his witchcraft, although he does not have a dedicated Forbidden Aurene Sleeping Times uninterrupted slot like Blair does. He mostly does it while multitasking, and it's really most effective while he's sparring (especially when he occasionally 1v2 Blair and Yvette) and has reason to actually pay attention to his surroundings; otherwise it is intensely boring.

Range is the bit of his power most amenable to change, but it's also pretty much just a grind; puuuuush and keep pushing and it slowly goes, like molasses. It's not very intellectually stimulating, but also not very hard to do while doing literally anything else so he's basically always got it in the background.

His power is also very helpful towards telling him when a vampire—well, does anything, but especially when a vampire walks into his range, but it needs to be coaxed into telling him about other things. He seems to need "categories" of things that he wants to check for, like animals or buildings or "things that make a sound" or whatever. If he can focus on one such category enough he can sort of install a "trigger" in his power that permits him to immediately notice as soon as they do something interesting—like move, or enter his awareness, or leave his awareness.

That last one is intriguing, because how can he notice that something left his awareness exactly if it's not just a combination of remembering that it was there a milisecond ago and then seeing it's not? And it's not just that, he can almost actually see the things beyond his range when he's paying attention to them and they leave. He feels like there's something there that he's not getting, some other mode of awareness, but it's really difficult to figure out what and very specific.

He keeps working at it, though. Being a witch is really cool.

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Predictably, Yvette spends just about every possible free moment poking at her power. She has a library of expanding materials and the ability to push them onto other materials, and absolutely nothing will stop her from figuring out the ins and outs of it as much as possible! Transmuting wildly different materials is harder than transmuting similar materials, and she works on doing that faster. Her library starts out with no organization system to speak of, but she decides very quickly that this is offensive and she won't stand for it. So she gives it one. How would it really be her witch power if it didn't let her categorize, organize, and compare copied materials and sort them into different tidy systems depending on what she's looking for. That's just obvious.

There are some constraints she still has to work under, though. She needs to actually copy materials into her library, for one. For another, all transmutation space has to be directly connected by touch in some form, but she can make a super thin line of it and then blob it out later to make something like reach. Intermittently, she tries to pinch the thin line to nothingness to get a transmutation space that is completely divorced from her body, but that keeps not working. Instead she expands it from more than just her hands; she'll transmute with her toes, with her elbow, with her ears. Neither hair nor nails work, unfortunately, but she'll live in hope that she can push it at some point. The hardest is trying to expand the size of her transmutation space, which is very hard and actively uncomfortable on top of being boring, but she takes a page from her husband's book and makes the attempt whenever she's not doing anything else. Even though: augh, it is very annoying, and not nearly as much fun as everything else.

So, in summary, she works on approximately every single thing she can think of, every single moment that she possibly can. She got a great witch power and she's going to do science to it!

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And if Aurene works on her witchcraft at all, it's not obvious where or how she does it, or how any of it works.

But one night, just before she goes to sleep, she tells her mummy, "Don't worry! You'll do great."

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.... Her mummy is very confused, but okay. She looks questioningly at James.

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—James laughs and smiles fondly at his daughter. "Well, we've been getting you more and more used to humans lately, right, so I figured you are about ready to actually go be around one, in person."

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"Oh. Oh I see. Um. I'd ask if you're sure I'm ready for that but." She looks down at their daughter, too. ".... But apparently I am???"

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"I would say so, yeah."

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"Okay. Well. What's the plan, then? Is Blair in on it and luring a human somewhere?"

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"Naturally."

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"That does not answer my first question, love," she snorts. "I assume I'm following you somewhere."

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He laughs again. "Yes. Come with me."

Humanwards!

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Blair: is hanging out with a human at a pre-determined, picturesque location! They're having a lovely chat about life, and also some alcohol. Not that Blair can get drunk, but the booze is perfectly drinkable anyway.

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Yvette stays beside James, and looks very nervous. She holds her breath until James gives her a go ahead to change that. And furthermore she'd like to hold his hand.

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"You can breathe," he says when he notices she was in fact not doing that. "It's fine."

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His wife gives a little nervous whine, but then breathes.

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It is like inhaling flames. Worse, she can tell that delicious, soothing relief is right there. To call it 'unpleasant' is to say 'drinking lava is unpleasant.' Every breath is agony, and she knows deep in her very soul she could make it stop, and it'd be so easy. Some part of her notes that it probably wouldn't be, probably James would actually rip her to shreds to stop her from killing someone, but it feels like it'd be easier than just standing here, breathing in the inferno.

But she has a lot of reasons not to go kill someone just for her personal relief, and having her husband beside her makes it easy to remind herself of all of them. She has a point to prove, about how vampires do not have to kill people. She has a daughter that she needs to be a good example to. She has a husband who did several impossible things, including somehow having sex (multiple times!!!!) with her while she was human, and honestly it'd just be embarrassing if she immediately slipped after he managed that. She is who she chooses to be, and she does not choose to be a killer. She wants her family to be proud of her, to be impressed with her, and to have such an obnoxiously perfect record that she can be as smug as she wants.

The next breaths do not get easier, precisely, her tunnel vision for her potential prey and the pain she's in and the possible relief stay the same. But she does knows what to expect, and has proof that she can resist. She can keep resisting.

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James looks: extremely, totally, intensely smug. That's his wife, y'all, he gots her.

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She works her way up to looking away from where the delicious human is, and spots his very smug look. She snorts. Her husband being pleased with her is an appropriate distraction for breathing horrible flames.

“You look proud.”

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"Oh, who, me? Don't mind me, just thinking about how I have the best wife."

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She winks at him.

"You do! Okay, I think I'll go have a deer, and then we can be out of my poor brother's earshot, hm?"

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"Thanks ever so," says Blair, at a pitch his human drinking buddy can't hear.

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"You don't want to go meet the human?" teases her husband.

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"Ha. No." She leans up and kisses her husband. "I think I'd suck at pretending to be human right now, thank you. And I don't want to risk it. Whisk me away from the terrible smell?"

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"Your wish is my command, my beautiful witch."

Up she goes in a bridal carry and he can leap away.

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She is perfectly cooperative, and buries her head into his chest to breathe air that smells like husband instead of like human. That is much, much nicer.

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And then they can eat stuff that smells and tastes so so so much less good than humans!

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It's fine! It's kind of awful, but it's fine!!

And then they can do mate activities because she's so pleased with herself.

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"And you were calling me smug."

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"I am extremely smug!" she confirms, without a trace of shame.

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"Perfect track record. You deserve every inch of smugness."

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"I will be insufferable after I've had a couple decades of practice!"

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"I can't wait to see that."