Path's on her knee, and her cloudpine is propped up against the tree next to her.
So when he appears in an open area a reasonable distance away from the picnicking witch, he is utterly surprised by the large bird that soon follows on his shoulder.
"Um," says the man eloquently, staring at the bird. His clothes are strange, and his hair's an unnatural color that matches his daemon. Obviously, he's not from around here.
Serenely, the daemon on his shoulder says in a feminine voice, "We have no idea why I'm here."
The man goes and stares at the daemon some more. "... Yes. That- is indeed true. Why do you sound like my sister?"
"I have no idea," replies his shiny new daemon.
"We think it's this plane," says the daemon. "And he's now afraid I'm a security risk to him, since I know him."
Obviously something about this is completely unnerving to the man. He looks at the kagu, as if trying to mentally dissect her for secrets. It's quite a strange way to look at one's daemon.
The daemon on his shoulder nuzzles him. She has to lean down to do it. "I won't tell your secrets, they were questions you didn't know how to ask. Things you didn't know how to say, but you wanted to."
Tentatively, Adarin pets her. "This is the most bewildering plane I've ever been to."
"And she's not very magic, even mortals have them and mortals can't do anything else remotely magic," says Isabella. "And everyone has one, except bears, and you aren't a bear either."
"Good day, I'm Adarin. Pleasure to meet you, you've been incredibly helpful so far. I think I'll need more explanation, though, I'm quite confused," replies the man.
"It really depends. Daemon names are usually a little longer and fancier than their people's names; your parents' daemons are usually supposed to pick something. I'm Isabella - Isabella Amariah - and this is my Pathalan. How in the world do you get along without daemons?"
"And we're separated, so I can go on errands, though that's only because we're a witch," says Path.
Enigmatically, the kagu replies, "If it's convenient."
She looks at Pathalan. "Separated?"
"Well, by default no one can get very far away from their daemon," shrugs Amariah. "If you do it anyway, then you can go on doing it and it doesn't hurt anymore. Witches do, when our daemons' shapes settle - when we're about thirteen. Humans overwhelmingly don't."
"What level of pain are we speaking of?" asks Adarin.
Time for a subject change. While he was planning to separate from his daemon eventually, he wasn't going to try it in front of her. That seemed rude.
"You've mentioned witches before. Are they your magic-users, here?" inquires the kagu, for him.
"For ours, if someone with magic has a child, the child is overwhelmingly likely to have it, too. But it weakens by generation if the line continues to propagate with... Er, mortals, as you call them. Us?" he shrugs. He counts as mortal, he's just not as mortal as other people.
The kagu muses, "Perhaps it would be easier then, though."
This gives Adarin pause. "Perhaps," he manages, after some thought.
"Not as casual as it sounds. I'm something of a special case, which is why I'm here. Our new home's missing a plant used for a remedy that we neglected to bring with us through to our new home. Since going back to Kystle would be suicidal, I did a few scryings and - your world has the plant," he summarizes. "On that note, do you happen to know where a flower called Chamomile is? It looks like a daisy."
"Not to mention," says the kagu, leaping from his shoulder onto the ground, flapping her wings a bit to land gracefully. She manages, flightless though she is. "We would both like to know as much as possible about daemons, now that I exist."
The kagu bobs her head in a nod. "They don't expect us back for a while. We're not risking harm," she explains. "We were heading off a problem at the source, not desperately searching for a cure."
"If you do wind up separating she could just fly out of the way of anybody who tried to - pet her," says Isabella. "If this person wouldn't listen to just being told to back off, that is. How did your magic decide where in the world to put you? Why here, why not the middle of an interstate highway or in the ocean or Antarctica or midair or, for that matter, in a field of chamomile?"
Adarin leans down to pet her, just a little. Pet, pet.
"That's the wording of my spell - If I spent so much power specifying that I wanted to be in a field of chamomile or next to a supply of it, I wouldn't be able to have enough to throw around on safety. Since I have something of a budget, I focused on arriving in a flat, stable place, where no large objects are moving towards me or nothing's likely to kill me on sight," he explains. "If I spent all that I can comfortably use to be next to my goal, I would be defenseless if I missed something."
He thinks. "Aside from that, I think it chose the closest spot that fit the criteria. In comparison to where I was coming from, that is."
He motions around them! "This was, apparently, closest in terms of how easily it could be to get to in comparison to something in my plane. It was more similar, in terms neither of us could fully understand, or at least nothing I could understand, and I've studied it most of my life. There are planes that seem similar to us on the surface, but at the core are utterly, completely different."
The kagu decides to join in with, "It's a complicated subject. No one is quite sure how they work. Some are clustered together, some aren't - some are far, far away from each other but seem near the same."
"Ah. Well. I can do some simple spells for vanity right now, if you want it," says Adarin. Something in the way he's saying it seems he probably wouldn't respect her very much if she took him up on that offer. "On the more practical sense, I can make illusions, or portals from one place to another that will stick around once I've left. If those don't appeal, if there's a problem you're consistently having I might be able to help with it if you explain it."
"The portals are tempting. But what I most want is a solution to mortality. Failing that directly, I want an alethiometer, which I expect to be able to get myself eventually, and the ability to read it, which is notoriously difficult even when studied for a lifework."
"There are no solutions to mortality that I know of," he says carefully, regarding Isabella in a new light. "But I can do a scry or two with little trouble, if you'd like me to help find an... 'Alethiometer.' Reading it I might be able to help with, but I'm not sure. How do they work?"
"An alethiometer is a truth-telling device," says Isabella. "There are a number of symbols around the edge, each of which has a staggering number of meanings. You can ask it a question by turning a dial to the symbols relevant to the inquiry, and meditating on which of the meanings you want and what the grammar of the whole mess is, and get replies in a similar manner."
He nods, thinking about the problem. "I'd have to spell an object to help, since I doubt you want to wait around for me to show up to cast it for you? Paper or stone always works reasonably well in these sorts of situations, but you might want something else. The object would change and show all known meanings for a symbol in writing as you wanted."
"I can do the order, yes. Something to... Hmm. Record every symbol that comes up in the order it shows, then let you search through each symbol's meaning either in order or in whatever order you choose if you're going back to look over it? Does that sound doable?" he asks, curiously. He's smiling a little; he likes this problem. Not only is it interesting, but he likes the reason it's even being solved.
"So if it gave me, say, the alpha and omega and the beehive and the cherub, I'd have a stone that would note that it had given me those symbols, and I'd just have to keep count for each and I could look it up - and your spell would do it correctly and not like Professor So-and-so's guesswork about meaning four hundred and eighty or whatever?"
"If you need it to keep count I can do that, too. But yes, it would do it correctly, if the sources it's drawing from are correct. It sounds like it will only be able to show possibly correct meanings, it doesn't have the intellect to actually translate them perfectly. That would be up to you, I'm afraid."
"Relatively innocuous things, yes. The Alethiometer would be yours, and I'd abide by your rules."
"Then yes. I can't use it literally twenty-four hours a day, even once I get ahold of one. I'm on my way home to my teacher's house and she'll probably let me stash you in the attic long enough for me to invent a spell to find me a missing alethiometer. How long will the spell take once you've got one?"
"The spells, not the objects. Paper would be fine, I'd just have to know what I'm spelling before I begin. I'd recommend keeping the paper safe or putting it under protections since it's flimsier than rocks or something, but other than that it's fine," he explains.
"I mean - there are some allowances for accidents, emergencies. It's not literally a fate worse than death if it's only for a moment. Some little kids, before they're like three, have glitchy instincts about it and will try to grab people's daemons, and nobody arrests them because they're toddlers. But yeah, do take it seriously."
He smiles at her, just a bit. "I was ignoring extenuating circumstances. If it was- say, a toss up between a daemon dying and me touching it, I would go with the obvious choice. I would feel terrible about it, however. I do take it seriously. It seems like a serious matter."
"Ah. Yeah, practice your defenses. I wonder if it'd be redundant with witch-type defenses." She eats the last bite of her neglected sandwich. Path takes off from her knee and up through the trees. "Are you ready to go?" she inquires, picking up her cloud-pine.
"You'd probably have trouble keeping up with a fast cloud-pine anyway even if you were a flying kind of bird. Just - Adarin, sit behind me, your bird can cling to the back of your shirt nice and safe." She sets her cloud-pine hovering in the air and takes up a seat towards the front of it.
"She won't care if you look at her, but she'll be annoyed if you make a big deal about it. Witches don't have any hangups about being naked," shrugs Isabella. "We go around in our silks because mortals care, but as often as not skip it when it's clan lands or our own homes or whatever."
His daemon predictably follows them up the stairs. She finds a nice place to sit and does so!
"Shall I get started on the spelled rocks, then?"
"Aha. Well, there are rocks around outside, if they'll suit. I'm supposed to make dinner for me and Metis and can probably get away with sharing with you, but after that, if the rocks outside won't do, we can go looking elsewhere, and if they will I can start on the spell to fetch one of the missing alethiometers."
"They will, unless the rocks are particularly flimsy or something. Or if you want them to be in some kind of fancier stone?" says Adarin. "I brought my own food, if sharing dinner's a problem. I'd expected this to be a long trip and to not find any witches that would let me borrow their attic."
"Please don't set the attic on fire. You can use the firepit in the backyard when we aren't if you like." Isabella ducks into the fridge for two already-plucked-and-beheaded pigeons and takes them out to the back yard, where she skewers them on the spit. She lights the firepit with a dash of salt from the covered crock next to it; soon the pigeons are cooking.
"I was not planning on setting your attic on fire. I believe I said I wouldn't bother your teacher or interfere? I'm certain pyromania counts as one of those," he says, amused. He goes on the hunt for rocks! This is done by hand, rather than anything showy or magic, because practicality.
He finds suitable rocks! He brings them back and sits down near the firepit. While dinner's cooking, he can plan on how to shape them and actually accomplish it, too. Something this small's pretty easy to do.
When Path arrives, Adarin waves at him. Then, back to staring at the rocks. Fascinating.
His daemon's not so closed off while he works! "Are there any recommendations you have for separating? Anything we should know before we try it?"
"There's a wasteland way, way up north - you'd probably freeze if you didn't go in a ridiculous coat and have something to keep her warm, too - where daemons can't go. That's where witches separate - it's usually the daemon who's more reluctant about it than the witch, so it prevents them from changing their mind while the witch is still able to take steps away. You can do it without, though. I think standard practice for people whose daemons are, say, aquatic, or whose people are special operations soldiers, involves the daemon being held down by somebody else's while the human is driven away in a car."
The daemon manages to make it a fair distance - further than normal mortals - before Adarin starts grimacing and the daemon lets out a little sad sound and immediately comes back. She immediately throws herself at Adarin, who pets her obligingly.
"That far, apparently. I do see what you mean by emotional pain, that was... Strange," he says. "Perhaps if I teleported away it would make it less of a slow growing agony."
"Yes," he agrees.
The daemon makes a sad sound again. Adarin goes back to working on the rock situation, with the kagu still staying close by. Soon enough, he's figured out the specifics of what he wants to do, and casts the spell.
Compared to a witch's magic, it's really not very showy. He says words in a language Isabella wouldn't understand, and then the rocks reform themselves to a nice smooth, round shape, completely flat on two sides - any excess sort of crumbles off. They are the exact same size and shape, with a hole in both for the sake of easily carrying them.
Adarin presents them to Isabella. "Would these do?"
"I actually can change the color of them, if you want me to, now that I think about it. It's pretty easy to do," he muses, looking at the rocks. He's only a little tempted to make them a fluorescent green, but he's supposed to be conserving power for the larger spells he'll do later.
"Of mortals? Yes. What could mortals do about it?" says Isabella. "That doesn't mean everyone took advantage, but if a witch killed a mortal who wasn't under another witch's protection even as recently as a hundred years ago, she could get away with it. These days mortals have enough technology and witches are integrated enough into the general population that it's not like that."
"Security cameras, for instance, so they know who to retaliate against with a wide variety of overwhelming ordnance. Witch magic isn't very good at interacting with manufactured things - we can, it's just harder. And anyone who expects to be a target makes friends with some clan and gets wards put on them too."
"A camera is a device that can record a flat still image of whatever you point it at. A video camera can record a whole sequence of events. And a security camera is a video camera that's set up in a store or on a street or something, to have recorded evidence if anything goes on where it's pointed."
"They've got all kinds of cool things. I have a phone -" She pulls out her cellphone. "I can use this to talk to my dad from across the country, or order food delivered, or summon emergency services, and access the internet, which is basically all the world's non-secret knowledge in a technological library that can be accessed by anybody with a compatible device."
He shrugs, a little, looking sad. "So I have a lot of weight to throw around for fixing things, and no one else seems able to do it. They're all too intent on killing or outmaneuvering one another for power."
He says this is a matter-of-fact manner. It's pretty normal, to him. He's careful, about his drinks and food. He's mastered it the the point of silent spelling. The squab, for example, is free from mind-altering drugs.
Adarin does the same a bit later, once his daemon helpfully nudges him and reminds him he's forgotten to do that important thing called 'sleep.' He goes and does that, in a sleeping bag in the attic. Strange though it seemed at first, he's starting to like having a personified version of his soul walking around.
Then, he has tea. Adarin takes a deep breath after drinking some, and smiles at Isabella if she's present. "You made a portion of oatmeal for me, thank you."
"I got reasonably far in my own spell. I've still got more to do, but I'll probably be able to do it faster with an alethiometer in front of me," he explains.
(Adarin's still nameless daemon lurks outside of the room. She enters, once her person isn't half-dead and tea deprived. She's still not mastered how to properly shadow Adarin without getting in the way.)
"I could say 'light' but I know that more than just light, I need it to act in a certain way and work with something else I'm dealing with. I have to acknowledge it and it's easier if I write it down, or work out a good reminder method so I give every necessary part of the spell the attention it needs to not go horrifically wrong."
"Huh. There's four potential components to the practice of a witch spell and any combination of them can yield an effect if a witch does them. Verse, herbs, runes, and sacrifice. Verse in particular can go off by accident - when I was still going to mortal school I couldn't read verse aloud in any class on literature because something might have happened. The others we have to mean to do something."
Adarin amuses himself with finishing oatmeal, then decides to clean up both oatmeal bowls (and Metis', if she expects Isabella to) simply because he's not sure if it's worth throwing several hours away to get something maybe right when he could wait a little while and get it right for sure. Besides, she made the oatmeal, it feels fair to him to clean it up.
"Here goes," she says, and she slits a little hole in the sugar and starts drawing the runes, occasionally pinching the hole shut to consult her notes.
Finding an out of the way part of the room, her guest sits and watches. This is all quite interesting, and he watches with fascinated attention. He might ask to look at her notes, later, but that'll be for when she's done with the spell. It's hard-coded into his head to never, ever distract a spell-caster that he doesn't want to screw over.
She steps over her runes carefully and kneels in the middle of the circle. (Path remains outside, facing her.)
She inhales, and closes her eyes, and recites an apparently memorized poem:
"Sugar circle, seek and bring
The compass that can, silent, sing.
Find it, bring it, take it here,
From its place to somewhere near,
And in my hands place honesty
And give Alethia to me."
There is a sudden wind and the sugar goes everywhere. The lights flicker. And Isabella is holding a slightly dented alethiometer, which she instantly hugs.
Adarin grins and appreciatively claps, cheering a little. "First try, congratulations!"
Staring at it, he says his own incantation - a memory aid, according to his explanation. Nothing particularly impressive would happen, but Adarin does get a sort of far-off look in his eyes as he stares at it. He's not seeing the Alethiometer. After about a minute of very intense staring with little to no blinking, he's found what he needs to know and is released from the spell. He rubs his dry eyes, a bit.
"Alright, it's really complicated so I'll probably need to look over it again, but I have the basic idea of it now. Would you like it back?"
He will be at this for a while, and a few hours later will come by again to ask to look at the alethiometer again.
Another few hours later, he returns, and says, "I think I've got the first spell ready. You wanted to watch, right? I'm afraid it won't be as showy as yours, and I'll need to take a break for a few days after I finish it."
He winces. "I run out almost entirely of magic in my system, it sends me into a mixture of shock, pain, and illness. It would mean my next few days would be spent in the attic in agony," explains Adarin. "Or wherever I did the spell, but I thought the attic would be best."
Then, he starts speaking. He was absolutely right when he said it wasn't as showy as a witch's spell, but as he chants, the attic quiets itself. Birds outside seem quiet and far away, or decided now was not the time to sing. Even the air around then goes more still, leaving only what he's saying. There is a look of absolute focus on his face as the spell continues, interrupting would be bad. There is a slow, subtle crescendo of the sound of her own heartbeat, and the blood in her ears as he reaches the end of the spell - it's not painful, just noticeable if she pays attention.
Finally, he says the final word and it all just ends. All sounds return to as they were. Adarin and the spelled rock are almost exactly as they were - except there's silvery etchings on the rock. Not to mention Adarin is very obviously not dead or going into shock.
He grins, just a bit triumphantly. "Your index, Isabella," he says, and holds out the rock to her.
"It'll record everything a nearby alethiometer 'says' - it operates by touch, and organizes everything into numbers at the top for which separate thing it's saying. When it starts getting lots of recordings, to where it's filled up, rub the numbers at the top and they'll fade out to the next set. If you touch one of the numbers it has recorded, it'll look at that one in more detail, and list the symbols said below it, in order and with the number of times it was chosen. From there, you touch the symbol you want the translations for and it'll offer them. Touch another symbol and it'll switch it out," he explains.
"Should I leave you alone with it? I won't be put out if you'd rather listen to the perfect-truth teller while my magic recuperates," he says, amused. He understands her excitement, of course - but since he can't ask it anything yet, he'll hold off on asking to borrow it.
Absently, he says to his daemon, "I still need to name you. Any ideas?"
She shakes her head.
"Ah, well. I'll think of something, I'm sure," he shrugs.
Her person snickers. "Not to mention if I brought it home it would start an entire fuss and people would start taking bets on who I impregnated. Also- hey, magic talking bird," he says, with obvious affection. "I thought you were supposed to be on my side?"
She giggles, a little. "I just said I wouldn't give away your secrets."
"Oh, heavens," says Adarin. "Yes, you're definitely my daemon. Only something part of me would get to that level of scrutiny for your words."
Absolutely none of this conversation is said with any heat. Look, they're bonding!
A little while later, Adarin asks, "Is Vernaia a 'daemony' name?"
She snickers, a little. They're in a good mood, for now. It helps that she knows the reasoning behind the name. "It's agreeable."
"Oh good, I was fond of it," says Adarin, and then the newly named Vernaia goes and pokes him for cuddles. He accepts, amused. "In that case, Path, Isabella - I would like to properly introduce my daemon. Vernaia."
"Or, more likely, just Vern," says the daemon.
"That too."
He hopes she can gather why, from the explanation earlier.
While he doesn't expect Isabella to be the type to try and weasel him into a corner with 'owing her a favor,' he continues to be paranoid. He likes her, certainly, but it will take more than just that to break his habits.
"Or loneliness. We can live indefinitely - we don't age past young adulthood, we just sort of accumulate patina. But the timing is always suspicious if we die not-of-violence. Somebody's favorite husband dies and his wife follows. Somebody completes their project of visiting every single country once, and then lasts about a week after. Somebody's clan gets wiped out in a war and she's the lone survivor and she sets up the pyre and then dies after she lights it up. Somebody finishes her epic poem, gets her niece to write it down, and doesn't wake up again after she goes to bed that night."
"That is truly unfortunate, but convenient, in a way? From your description, if you pick a project that will take a millennium then you're set for at least a very long time," he says. "Loneliness I can understand, but boredom? No. There's too much work to be done."
"Somewhat," he says, nodding a little. "My mother would have lived over a thousand years if she hadn't died. I inherited longevity from her. Most of the others - if they have any magic in them at all they'd get anywhere from three hundred years to a hundred, depending on how far down they are in the generation levels. Anyone without - normal lifespan, sixty to eighty if they're healthy."
He pauses. "I live a busy life. This is a vacation."
"Do they? That's good to know, but I meant, uh... The more ritualistic kind of use. Chop up a rat, put some herbs on it and stuff it in a gaping wound. If that's proper medical practice, and no one told me, then I'll have some apologies to make," he says, dryly.
"Germ theory has all kinds of useful consequences! If biology and so on works the same for you guys as it does for people here, then: a majority of diseases, including most anything that is contagious - though 'contagious' doesn't include things that just run in families, even if the conditions only show up in adults - are caused by tiny living or not-technically-living things. Tiny tiny, you can't see them without special equipment or possibly magic. You can kill them by making them very hot - which is why fevers exist - and some of them also die if it's very cold - which is why freezing food helps keep it preserved - and you can wash them off of you with pretty much ordinary soap, which is why people who live in unsanitary places get sick more often - and some of them you can also kill or prevent from breeding with medicines or food additives. The tiny things are germs."
"I'll have to make soap a bigger priority, then," he says, once she's finished and he's done writing. "I thought general hygiene was nice to have but I was more worried about rotting garbage in streets getting into wells and such."
Vern decides to pipe up. "Most of the things you mentioned are true in our plane. Fevers, freezing food, so on."
"Thank you," says Adarin, smiling.
"I mean, garbage in the street getting into wells is bad too. Mold can hurt people too pretty straightforwardly, germs can breed in garbage, germs can get carried by bugs and rodents and they can live in water. But somewhat more important than garbage is actually human waste - there's germs in the digestive system that are really important to have where they are which you don't want anywhere else, even in healthy people, and in unhealthy people it's a transmission mechanism for other stuff."
"Alright. I'll keep that in mind, too - thank you. When I'm done spelling your rocks, I don't suppose you'd like to visit my plane? You'd know issues better than I would, though I've been using common sense. Your plane has better technology," he offers.
"I am very much tempted, provided you can bring me back without further ado and I'm not overwhelmingly likely to be shot full of lightning bolts. It sounds like you have a lot of low-hanging fruit on the improving things angle. I'm not personally in a position to effectively bring you all the useful ramifications of, for example, germ theory - I know the general idea behind inoculation, for instance, but not well enough to set up an immunization clinic. But I would happily cruise around looking for obvious bad ideas."
"That being said, anything you can do to help would be wonderful. I'll bring you back in one piece without any issue. You might have to stay for a few days, before I can manage it safely, though."
"Okay. I'm trying to think if there's anything else on the level of 'germ theory' that you might benefit from... not sure if the invention of electrical generators gets you much of anywhere by itself, similar problem with internal combustion and airplanes, you have to be able to do manufacturing... radios might be useful though... what are the useful ramifications of knowing what atoms are, I can't immediately think of any..."
Vern trills, a little far away, looking happy and energetic. Adarin cackles a little, practically dances over to her, and scoops her up for a hug. Fluffy kagu daemon hugs. She is maybe twirled around a little before he neatly puts her back down and returns to Isabella, huge grin still on his face.
"I am," he states, "Very excited."
"I'm excited too! I mean, there are parts of this world where things like this would theoretically be useful, but the reasons they aren't being put to use in those places are way more complicated than 'nobody invented germ theory yet'. I can probably accomplish more in a few days in New Kystle than I can anywhere here in the same time."
He looks kind of like he wants to hug her, but he's too polite to while Path's on her head and without her permission.
"I like having the option of having several hundred years of healthy living ahead of me. Other people should get it, too. Both for the altruistic reason of not liking people dying, and also because I imagine it would get extremely lonely after a while, if no one else could stick around."
"They're... they get along. It's not like they fight, they get along perfectly well, they should be great friends, maybe they should even date. But being married isn't that good for them. Charlie - my dad - is absolutely glued to this little town near my clan lands. He's the chief of police there and he hates traveling and never wants to move and doesn't do anything interesting in the way that Ranata - my mom - thinks things are interesting. She likes dropping everything on a whim to spend a week on another continent picking her way through a phrasebook and sampling unidentifiable food and trying to get wild animals to eat from her hand without using magic to coax them. She likes spontaneously deciding to take classes on bookbinding or knitting or obscure human religions or martial arts. They work together, but their lives do not work together. They got married young on impulse because they didn't get how deep the differences ran, I think, and they're still together because she's terrified he'll die and she'll regret not taking all the time she had, and he can't let go of her on his own initiative."
"When I say even theoretical unavailable magic wouldn't fix it I mean - the problem here is that these two people have incompatible personalities. Changing their personalities would be a worse thing to do than anything that is currently going on there. So it's not fixable per se, you could at best replace the problem with a worse problem."
"You're welcome. Did I explain vaccination or just mention it...? I think I just mentioned it in passing. People throw off diseases that are caused by germs because there's a thing called an immune system in our bodies that figure out what things are germs - as opposed to just random stuff that isn't trying to hurt us - and kicks them out before they do damage. You might know of some diseases that you can only get once in your life? Chicken pox, maybe? Those are staying pretty much the same, so once you 'learn' what it looks like it never bothers you again. Other diseases change their details so you can get slightly different ones and be just as sick dozens of times. Colds are like that. And it turns out that if you take some germs that you've killed, or weakened - or even germs from a similar but less dangerous disease, in one case I can think of - and then you put them where your immune system can get a good look at it and easily beat it up, it'll know what to look for next time. Also, fun fact, allergies are what happens when your immune system gets the wrong idea about what things are germs and freaks out over nothing."
"We do have some once-in-our-life illnesses. Vaccination will help greatly, I think. We've had a few outbreaks already and it's been bad. Do you think there's a way that magic could help the - " he checks his notes for the name. "Immune system?"
"Witches mostly don't get sick - I mean, we can, but it's highly unusual - so, yes, but not one I actually know about, because mostly it hasn't been researched, because the magic people are all pretty safe and their beloved humans only figured out what immune systems were fairly recently in spell development timescales."
"I'm going to have to invent like five new types of scrying just to figure out if mine can do it or not," he says, amused. "It's a good thing I like challenges, isn't it? If your magic can help, or fix it, then that would be fantastic, but I'll try mine. Since it's rather hard for me to test yours."
"It's not hard for witches who focus on magic - like me - to invent variants on spells that have been done, like when I brought the alethiometer I based the design on another summoning-an-object spell. But completely new things are harder. We have spells to cure diseases - witches get attached to mortals more than often enough to encourage that - but there's nothing for me to start from for boosting immune function unless it's brand-new and hasn't made it into my clan library yet."
"Oooh, that's handy. We haven't managed any spells to cure diseases, but broken bones and stab wounds and such some of us can do. Not me, personally, but I know a few who can. I have a bit of training, but apparently my teachers decided healing was not the kind of thing I should be able to do," he explains. "It's another thing I'm working on."
Isabella bursts out laughing. "Well. If you want to hug me I won't stop you, and you have already showered me with an alethiometer accessory that puts objective truth at my fingertips. So you and your excellent taste in people need not consider yourself too indebted when I tell you that witches avoid using money per se."
"There's more than one missing alethiometer, incidentally. I could see if I can nab a second for you - if it turns out it still works in your world, which it might not. We can ask it what it thinks when the second thingamajig is done."
"I'm just going to need to stop being surprised by you being you, aren't I?" He decides to tease, once the hug has ended. "Is a thingamajig the proper technical term for a tremendously complicated magical item? I would have thought it would be 'doohickey' or a 'whatchamacallit.'"
He makes a face. "They don't even make a look-alike replica that's useless for truth-telling to replace it with? That way the alethiometer could still do something of use, but they can show off what it looks like? That's stupid. As the creator of the thingamajig, I'm going to veto anyone trying to put it in a museum if there aren't more thingamajig pairs than there are alethiometers."
"I doubt it has any practical value, but it might amuse you. There are museums of modern art where the idea of 'modern' is so opaque and divorced from attempting elegance or appeal of form that it's literally possible to mistake janitorial equipment for an exhibit."
"It's possible you should read an encyclopedia. Not cover to cover - maybe not even a paper one. I could take you to the library and you could go cruising through Wikipedia. Start with things that are in common use where you're from and proceed to whatever it says supplanted them."
"I have no idea what that is, but I agree that it'll be helpful!" he grins, then adds, "I'm going to get absurdly wealthy off of borrowing ideas that other people had and then using them to my own benefit, aren't I? That's completely diabolical, you're fantastic."
"I would certainly hope so. There's still a little issue getting places to put the portals on the other ends, so I'll have to quiz the alethiometer and/or mine clan connections to various state or municipal governments, but it's definitely a doable project and every witch in the world will think I did it myself. I'll be able to get them to listen to anything I want to say between them guessing and me contradicting them."
"To be fair, the people that tried the first attempt summoned someone from another plane without speaking to them prior, based off of the vague notion that that particular race had magic and they wanted it. I came here after a large amount of scrying to at least check to see if this plane had anything close to an invasion force," he explains. "And if it went horrifically, terribly wrong, then I'd be the only one doomed. Everyone else would be fine."
Awkward head scratch. "Large buildings - I was amazed at your cities, I checked up to see if you had magic and the answer was yes. Then I checked for armies or a possible invasion force, and found out that there isn't anything particularly organized set up world-wide, though I'd have to avoid getting on any nation's bad side. Then I found out the people present weren't an utterly different species, but human, so if necessary I was going to do a bit of infiltration."
"The scry wasn't that specific, unfortunately. I did not know about the bears. The bears were a surprise," he says. "New Kystle is tide-locked to the sun. You can get either eternal day, or eternal night, or if you're lucky you can live in the area that's eternal twilight. Most of the government is living in the eternal night portion, because we're using the twilight and habitable day-parts for farming. So, no sun."
"That sounds really inconvenient. I am pretty sure I can't unlock your planet, and even if I could I imagine it would destroy whatever ecosystem the place has and cause unpredictable changes to weather and so on. But I can do some things that affect temperature. Unfueled fires? Permanent ice? Scaling up enough for you to build a city around the one or on top of the other would take a while unless the day side has a lake for me to start with, but it could help."
Pause. "Did that all make sense?"
"No, but it came close enough to drop down my priority inquiries list. But at any rate you could have landed someplace less hospitable, or thousands of miles from anywhere you could get chamomile and not near any friendly people with shareable vehicles either."
"I will try to explain it when I can think of a better way to explain it without taking hours to explain the explanations," he says. "Shareable vehicles I wasn't too worried about, I can both walk and teleport, but I had some very specific contingencies in place to be sure that I landed somewhere that wouldn't kill me, and would be out of the way. Honestly it's a miracle I landed near anyone at all. If I'd been somewhere thousands of miles from where I could get chamomile, I'd do some scrying to find out where it is and then make another spell to get there. Scrying inside a plane is far, far easier than scrying a plane from somewhere else entirely."
"I looked up everything that had given anyone else any trouble in teleporting in the past, wrote those down, brainstormed for a while for other possible problems teleporting could cause and based my parameters on a combination of both. Part of that was telling it to go to a place that no one owned, or had any claim to."
"Yeah, that part's annoying. Honestly my magic works much better when I know all of the unknowns, but it can cope with having a ton if the user's got some power to work with and is willing to sit down and think about all of the options. It's a wonderful intellectual exercise."
"I highly doubt it, sorry. I mean, I could give you the basic idea of what to do when you want to cast a spell in Kystle-magic, but - it seems pointless to teach you all of the principles behind a system for magic you don't have and can't get, especially when you've got your own wonderfully functional magic right there," he says. Then, he shrugs. "If you wanted me to, I could give it a try, though."
"I have absolutely no idea how the tests are done. You can put it on your list of things to consult Wikipedia about. For some reason the types are A, B, AB, and O, with each coming in 'positive' and 'negative' for some other parameter, and if I recall right, which I might not so you'll want to check Wikipedia, you can get blood from anybody who has the exact same or strictly fewer of things than you - with 'things' being A, and B, and positivity for the parameter. So AB+ can get blood from anybody, O- can give it to anybody. There are probably exceptions with rare blood types that crop up in only a handful of people. I have no idea if your people will have the same kinds of blood types."
"I'll have to cast it on you, but yes, it will. Sorry, I'd forgotten to tell you, I've gotten used to it and it's not the kind of thing that draws a lot of attention to itself," he says. "It just felt like talking normally, after practice. I hope my accent hasn't been too bad?"
He looks amused, and then says something in his language. It sounds rather pretty, and neatly displays how his accent works with his language. It's not anything immediately familiar, for obvious reasons, but it certainly sounds like it works well enough in itself. That being said, it is completely incomprehensible to her.
"Some, but not particularly huge ones. I did teach myself a second language though, so I could remind myself parts of a spell and not worry as much about anyone listening and being able to figure out a counter-spell fast enough to matter," he says. "Apparently my accent in that one is absolutely atrocious."
"I made a really big shield, and held it for as long as I was physically capable of doing. My sister went out to collect as many as she could, and bring them back to the shield. I hit mana deprivation at some point three days in and I don't remember much after that. After the fact, I heard that other mages worked together to do the same thing I'd been doing, and some others managed to make a portal, and we ran."
Adarin relaxes, just a little, in the hug. He looks at Vern and Path curiously, then laughs a bit when he sees them cuddling.
(He smiles a little, when she plops her head onto his shoulder. Hugs continue to be returned. Adarin seems comfortable just hugging, apparently.)
"Or a firefly. A dragon or a firefly," says Path.
"Or a firefly, but I would have been so annoyed if you'd been a bug. They're decorative but they can't do anything."
"I liked to glow. But I like being an owl, too."
"I like being a kagu. I think I might have liked to fly, but this feels right," replies Vern. She makes a happy noise and cuddles Path.
Adarin tilts his head to look at the pair. "Fair enough. I do think owl suits you, Path. The small adorable fluffiness is a plus."
"I am travel-sized," asserts Path.
"And soft," says Isabella, though since he's currently snuggling Vernaia she doesn't pet him to punctuate this assertion.
In order to see pictures now he would have to stop hugging her. He doesn't want to. Hugs are nice, especially when the rest of him is cuddling adorably as a bird.
Vernaia giggles a little, and nuzzles Path. "Very," she proclaims.
"Well, neither did phones, recently enough. It's even pretty recent that you can use them without them being connected by physical wires the whole way. If you see wooden pillars by the sides of roads with wires strung between them and branching off towards houses, those are called 'telephone poles', although I think some of the wires are for electricity and other utilities that are carried via wire."
"I mean, sometimes they're unreasonable, but usually it's pretty straight forward. I was just thinking of the people I have to deal with most often, and... Eeeugh. If they didn't have magic I have no doubt they would be completely useless. Some of them manage to be completely useless to the world even with magic, and I'm not even sure how they pull that off."
"Being use to general decadence and expecting nothing less even now, even after barely getting out alive. A large number of them are used to getting their way, and don't have moral issues with trying to get what they want now. Thus, why I have to check my food and drink for drugs regularly," he says, a little bitterly.
"The average one is usually pretty boring, some have some original inhabitants but not all. If I barely missed a statistically unlikely friendly omnipotent people then I'll just have to console myself with one that has pocket libraries, objective truth-tellers, and helpful witches."
"The impression I have of your world is a bunch of loosely organized people trying to retain status they can no longer realistically maintain and otherwise running around haphazardly, but is there some formal political structure? Like, I'm formally subject to the queen of my clan, and also the democractic republic and its appointees of the United States and whichever of those states have a particular claim on me - this one is Maine and my legal residence is in Washington - plus wherever I am at any given time, like when you found me I was in Canada, a neighboring country."
"Your impression is reasonably accurate. There was a more formal system set up, but most of us don't recognize it anymore considering many of the people who ran it died with my mother. We don't have any countries set up, but my sister's - you recall how she quit the political field? She'd won over a large number of people by saving their lives so when she left they went with her. I can try to explain the political structure that used to be, if that would help?"
"Well. They'd set up a sort of... Puppet monarchy when I was a child, but I later learned it was actually run by an oligarchy made up of older and more powerful mages. They did not all get along, but they'd agreed to not kill each other, and try to make some decisions for mutual benefit of mages present."
He sounds rather sad. "And... Well. I'm one man. They outnumber me. Maybe if I were the murderous type I could just try and conquer the mages and say, 'I'm in charge, do what I say' but that hardly solves the problem. Not to mention, I'm not murderous."
"So - radios, let's learn how radios work and get everybody radios. Somebody starts throwing power around over here, and all six other locations he was planning to hit hear about it and have time to melt away. Maybe not the first place he tries, since he can teleport presumably - but the other five. And he can do property damage and scoop up stragglers, but it'll be harder and slower and everyone will do whatever they can with warning. Radio you, maybe, or any other sympathetic mages."
Adarin thinks, a little. "I think the problem might be in giving the mages the idea that I was trying to take over the world. They're notoriously bad at working together, but someone having a good chance at ruling everyone else usually gets them to try."
"True, but I'd like to avoid antagonizing anyone in charge in your plane. If I need to in order to prevent large-scale death or something, I will, but if it's something simple - I can just throw money at the problem until it goes away. That's what I make it for."
"The ostensible point of intellectual property law is to allow people the profit motive for making their ideas available without fear of those ideas getting stolen. So if you feel bad about it and you have the money to throw - after whatever conversion process into local currency - you could also buy radios and whatnot. The problem is that modern ones will require more sophisticated infrastructure to maintain and repair. You'll run into this problem with most things - we're using improved versions of everything that requires materials science and software engineering and robotic assembly lines just to get the parts spat out of a factory."
"Aha. So I'd have the basic, no longer in use versions and need to upgrade if I want New Kystle to match your plane. That sounds like I should just do what I can with simple versions until things are stable enough to start getting an infrastructure set up. That works for me."
"Hmmm. At some time in the future, would you like a spelled mirror? They work across planes."
"Two-fold. First, find something people will pay for here - partially mooching off of your portal system income for a bit, then using that to pay for something else I could do that would make money and saying you did it, or something. Once that's set up, I find something to convert my currency to this one. Bricks of gold is a method, but they're heavy. I might buy expensive jewelry and try selling those, if it seems like those would have a good return value."
"It's actually pretty hard to resell objects like that. You might be able to find someone to take them, but off the top of my head the only ideas I'm having are businesses designed to take advantage of people who need liquid cash yesterday and are willing to part with their grandmother's necklace or whatever to get it."
"I can set up permanent interplanar portals, on the caveat that I'm a little nervous to. I can break a portal entirely if I want, but I don't know of a way to monitor what goes through them without spending hours a day scrying. So, something nefarious from either side could get by, and I wouldn't know. Perhaps I could set up security to check, but uh... A large number of mages could rebel if I tried that, considering how the last time we had extraplanar relations went."
"Ah. That's a pretty understandable concern. If it helps, they don't actually want me dead. If I die, then they have to deal with Zeviana if they want my bloodline to be salvaged at all, and if they didn't they would have had my mother killed when she was a child," he explains. "They seem to think I'm the easiest to deal with of my family."
He thinks about the logistics necessary. "I can place a marker here, teleport to my plane alone, wait for a little while for my magic to be ready for a portal, then let you know on a mirror and you can just come through then?"
He laughs, softly. "Well. Okay, yeah, it wouldn't have factored in for the theoretical snuggle evaluations that would have taken place. Who else would have factored in to these theoretical snuggles? A few people have little to no personal space inhibitions, but I've never wanted to snuggle any of them."
"Okay, I explained video cameras, right? Imagine aiming one at a theatrical production. Now, take away the audience, record every scene as many times as you want, and remember you can go back and edit the recording later to put in things that you can't easily do in real life. Movies!"
"Okay, lemme see what's on today." She unsnuggles just enough to pull out her phone and hold it so he can watch her make the search. "Harry Potter's still out in a couple places, but that's a sequel. Star Trek is... connected to a preexisting series, but this one is a reboot, so it shouldn't be that much less comprehensible than any other science fiction. I think the Wolverine movie requires more background knowledge. I'm not seeing anything that's an obvious good look at what it is actually like to live here, these are all what if we had weird technology or weird magic."
"At the risk of sounding exactly as extremely foreign as my accent, is the 'Wolverine' movie about a literal animal? I'm not sure I could take it seriously, if so. But I do like the idea of seeing something with weird technology or magic! It should be interesting, and considering the both of us have just been introduced into a literal 'Weird magic has been dropped onto your lap' situation... Fitting?"
"Oh! No, it is not about a literal animal. It's about a guy with superpowers whose code name is Wolverine. I don't even know why; his actor's daemon is a dog they made up to look more like a wolf and in the comics it's not a wolverine either, I'm not sure what it was there. Harry Potter is actually about weird magic being dropped into one's lap but the movie that's out now is the sixth. Tomorrow we could get the first one out of the library, though. In Star Trek it is advanced technology, not magic, and the characters are pretty used to it."
"You go sit in a dark room and it plays. Theaters traditionally sell popcorn and candy and sometimes other food. People there on dates sit in the back and make out. If you have a pocket library you have to turn it off, because everyone will be mad at you if it makes a noise during the show."
"Hm. If the point of being in a dark room to watch a movie is to do exactly what the description for watching a movie is, then why spend the time making out? That seems..." says Adarin, looking a bit embarrassed, "Like it would be better done somewhere else."
"That also helps. Thank you, Isabella. I'm probably going to think about the silly cultural stereotype sometime during the movie, but at least I know I won't hear it," he says. "If you were wondering, I've been in that situation before and it was extremely awkward."
Isabella collects her daemon, her cloud-pine, and a little packet of assorted herbs. "Now, since I don't have any actual money, what I'm going to do is offer to do a spell for the theater or for anybody with the authority to give me a voucher. This usually works on the first try, but it might be that we have to try a second theater."
She does a spell to climate-control the lobby for them, which takes fifteen minutes and will undoubtedly save them hundreds of dollars in both air conditioning and heating for as long as the spell lasts, and receives a voucher for any non-ludicrous quantity of movie theater products she may desire over the next yearlong period. She waves this at the correct people to get herself and Adarin tickets to Star Trek, a large popcorn to split, sodas, and boxes of Milk Duds.
"May as well make it the works," she explains as they head for their screen.
Adarin is fascinated by just about everything in the movie theater. While Isabella's busy getting them permission to see a movie via spell payment, he wanders around the lobby looking at posters, looking utterly charmed. Tickets are gotten, and he grins at her as they go.
"Makes sense. Magic has wonderful, wonderful benefits; I feel spoiled already."
"I'm so glad you approve. Now, before the movie starts, they play some boring crap advertisements that you will probably find intensely fascinating, and then they play enticing snippets of movies that haven't come out yet to get us interested in seeing them when they do, and then we get our movie. You can talk a little during the commercials and the previews if you need to ask questions but it's rude during the main event. You could, however, write down anything you want to ask me about later."
"Sure, I have no doubt I'll be fascinated by everything. I'd like to avoid being rude, but I don't think I'll write down my questions. If I did that, it could be hours of just me asking curious questions. Then asking questions about the answers to the previous questions - a thing best settled when we go to the library."
(He doesn't mean that, but he is having so much fun.)
Adarin's going to end up so fascinated by movies that he'll probably forget to eat popcorn. But during the lull of trailers and commercials, he'll have some! He will get to the candy, but cool things on the screen takes priority.
When the next trailer comes on, he begins fascinated staring at animated cartoons. This is literally like nothing he's seen before! Stare stare stare what is this candy you speak of there's cool things he's never seen before up there. Stare.
"I will have so many questions by the end of this," he says softly, amazed.
He tilts his head a little at the romantic comedy preview. After some consideration, he deems it 'cute' and smiles at it. He's a little embarrassed by public displays of affection, but it's obvious this isn't that. Adarin doesn't think it's his kind of thing, but he can deem it cute. Maybe if he saw it he'd like it, but just the preview doesn't appeal.
Trying not to laugh, he asks, "Did everyone just wait until it was raining to shout? Is that a thing? That seems like a strange thing."
The military action movie actually makes him a bit uncomfortable. He suspects he's not the type of person this is aimed towards, considering that part of his home's history where a very, very large percentage of a world was killed or worse in an invasion. Adarin makes a bit of a displeased face, but otherwise doesn't react.
Distractions with candy! He tries the Snickers bar, because its name amuses him. He approves! It makes a nice distraction.
And here is the opening sequence of Star Trek. All of the alien characters have their daemons made up or CGI-adjusted to look like alien creatures; the humans have Earth animals. These aliens are upset! This Federation ship is in trouble! There is a heroic sacrifice! A baby is born and his daemon appears in a swirl of golden light and he is named James Tiberius Kirk!
So far, he approves! Not of death, but of storytelling. He's been to plays before, so he's not going to judge this by real life standards.
Now James Tiberius Kirk, daemon changing with frantic excitement on his shoulder, is recklessly driving!
Oh goodness. Recklessly driving. Adarin doesn't think he approves of the apparent protagonist! Your dad made a heroic sacrifice, at least try to not act like a twat.
Kirk (now possessed of a lynx) gets into ill-advised bar fights, daemons scuffling in parallel with their people. He is convinced to attend Starfleet Academy.
Quietly, he finds the look into daemons fascinating, along with the various advanced technology scattered everywhere. It's a nice outlook into how this plane views daemons, one he hasn't been exposed to before.
During this part of the movie he improves and can actually enjoy it a little! He's still kind of rooting for Spock. Lots of things he can relate to, with that guy. He dislikes Kirk, but whatever, he'll put up with him.
And it is. Well, mostly, but the things that aren't have nothing to do with her, and she didn't cause any of it. He doesn't even consider it the movie's fault - he's pretty sure a world getting destroyed wouldn't be something anyone here has experienced before, and is sufficiently out there that it can just be dramatic and not invoke bad memories. For everyone but one particular visitor.
Isabella gets a somewhat comforting hand pat, then it's back to movie.
He snickers a little, and nods. Candy and Vern are collected, along with his drink. It takes a bit of juggling, but Vern helps by transferring to his shoulder.
"Hm. You know, I lost track. Perhaps I should have written them down, after all. I'll think of more, I'm sure," he muses. "Mostly I was wondering why Kirk was the lead character. He was not very good at long-term planning and only made it out through luck, or in the end, didn't. Also, black holes don't do that. They'd all just be dead."
"Well, like I said, it's a reboot - the old Spock guy? He played Spock in a television show a long time ago. There was also a Kirk but he didn't reappear in this movie. So Kirk is the main character because Kirk is the main character - I haven't seen the TV show so I don't know that much about whether he was any better then, though. And sci-fi takes a lot of liberties with how things like black holes really work."
He's mostly just nitpicking. Overall, he liked it, aside from the obvious part where he didn't.
"Astronomy is a science, and you can avoid learning about it if you don't go reading astronomy books or paying close attention to the sky - this adds up to 'astronomy things are sciencey'. The people who write this stuff are writers, not scientists, and they vary pretty widely in how much they care about verisimilitude."
"Witches don't do any scrying on stars and such, do they? Because we don't think of astronomy as a science, it's... a hobby? Cataloging? A fascinating and beautiful thing to occasionally look at and go, 'Oooo, a star getting eaten by a black hole, terrifying and gorgeous.' You can get a job in it, I guess, but it's like map making except less applicable to things."
Isabella looks up a picture of the earth from space, waits for it to load, and shows it to him.
"That," he says, "Is both interesting and useful. What kinds of spells invoke their names? What sorts of effects does changing them have?"
"A whole bunch, and it depends - I mean, sometimes it won't work, if you cast a death spell you need Yambe Akka and nobody else will fit in the surrounding verse. But if I were illuminating an area I'd get different kinds of light if I replaced Segaard Oskei with Amariah Lytess."
"Hmm, a lot of common recreation is ruled out for me because I'm too clumsy to go bowling or ice skating or whatever... library is still closed, tomorrow it will be open though... I guess we could just loiter around Metis's house until it gets dark and then I can glow rocks with various goddesses' light and then we can go to sleep but maybe I'm just failing to think of something."
"Anything specific you'd like, or should I just figure it out myself?"
"I thought you were smarter than that, certainly. Not to worry. The next time a magic user from another plane arrives in order to find a flower and meets you by sheer luck and circumstance, then agrees to cook - you know to trust if he or she feeds you dish soap. Especially if it's lemon-scented."
Rummage rummage - oh look! Food items. He shall use these mystical things to make dinner.
Isabella sprawls in a chair. "It is warm today and the stove isn't gonna help, and if you don't have stove or oven related plans for that potato I have to reevaluate how similar our species can possibly be, potatoes are no good raw. You gonna be bothered about it if I get naked?"
"If you want to look at me that is fine, I have roughly the same opinion on that as I do about, say, admiring my hair, if my hair were interesting enough to admire. Nudity is not a thing of consequence for a witch. If you expect me to be horrifying to behold and that's why the potatoes will be preferable in comparison, I think I'll just put an ice cube on my neck or something, though."
Happy eating, nom nom. Vern gets some, too, because she is his daemon and that seems like the appropriate thing to do in this situation.
Vern makes a sad sound when Isabella brings up separating. It earns her a soothing pet. Adarin replies, "I'm not sure. We... Still need to, but honestly I'm not much looking forward to it, now. It's nice to have her just around."
Isabella is the one who answers Adarin: "It's... Possibly entirely mythical; the sort of thing you hear about obscure poorly-understood tribes doing to manufacture slaves or religious sacrifices or whatever. But in theory it'd be not just stretching but actually cutting the person-daemon bond. The daemon would still exist but wouldn't be part of the person anymore."
(Path stops fanning her; she picks him up and holds him close to her chest.)
When he gets the explanation, he winces, and picks up his daemon to deposit onto his lap and pet, soothingly.
Softly, Adarin says, "That sounds - barbaric is the best word. Inhumane, too. Just from - being here for a few days, I'm going to have to give an emphatic no."
"It's not dark enough to see the light effect from goddess's magic, is it. I'll have to wait," he says, after a peek to a window.
"Aren't you trying to be more patient?" asks Vern.
"Trying, not necessarily succeeding."
Then he realizes and coughs, a bit. Second time he's caught off guard by witches, today. His odds aren't in his favor.
"Uh. I'm likely to be around for around a week or so, with occasional visits in the future," he begins delicately. "But no, no - 'claiming at daggerpoint' or anything. I'm not really - I wouldn't like getting forced to, anyway? I'd just leave and that would be that."
Well.
"I continue to be on board for 'let's not be horrible to the opposite sex' - it'll catch on eventually."
He doesn't ask about the dating. If she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to. That would be that, except - Vern nudges him and gives him a meaningful look. She's right, of course. He'd regret not knowing.
"Any particular reason, or just no interest...?" he asks, gently.
Out she goes. It's started to cool off with the sunset. She finds seven rocks of roughly the same size, with a little looking between herself and Path, and lays them out on a windowsill. "I'm going to do the same spell seven times and change nothing but the goddess name and the tweaks on that line necessary to make it continue to scan," she says. "One of them won't light up at all - Kas Petaal is the goddess of the new moon, which gives no light. The others will be all different kinds of light."
The spell isn't English, but his spell will pick up the meaning - it scans and rhymes prettily, in the original:
"Segaard Oskei's light I call,
Brightness for me to see by,
Shine from that which I hold."
The rock starts to glow with an intense, warm yellow light.
"Sunshine," says Isabella. "That's the brightest version, and the most commonly used."
She picks up the second rock. The first line is slightly modified to accommodate the syllable change:
"Kas Petaal, it's your light I call,
Brightness for me to see by,
Shine from that which I hold."
This rock does, to all appearances, absolutely nothing.
She puts it down and repeats the procedure:
"Evisa Iannakara's light, come..." (The rock shines, like a firefly, faintly bluish and organic in character, not nearly as bright as the first.)
"Yambe Akka's light I call..." (The rock is speckled with faint yet attractive dots of starry light.)
"Farakhel Nimah's light, come here..." (The rock behaves like the waxing moon, a sliver of glow expanding until it covers the rest of the rock - and then it goes out.)
"Amariah Lytess's light is summoned..." (The rock lights up with gentle silvery moonglow and holds steady.)
"Memma Belir's light I call..." (This one is the reverse of Farakhel Nimah's; it starts like Amariah Lytess's and then slides into darkness.)
"The first one's probably the most practical, but the others are extremely pretty. Does the effect last indefinitely, or do they eventually go out on their own?"
"It's not complicated." She takes the rock inside and gets a little bowl. She mixes one part each vinegar and orange juice with a drop of rosewater and sprinkles oregano on it, drops the rock into the result, and then dumps the whole thing out in the sink, catching the still-glowing rock before it rolls down the drain and rinsing it before handing it over.
"Technically, I could, but - destroy whatever the portal's on or move it extremely significantly and it breaks. Air is extremely mobile and a portal would be unstable and not last very long. I was going to be sneaky and put your portal up in the air against, say, a sheer cliff, or something similar. It doesn't have to look like a portal, we just usually make it do that because it's more convenient."
"My birthday is September thirteenth. There are twelve months in a year, September being the ninth, and most months have thirty or thirty-one days in them but February gets shortchanged - twenty-eight, except every four years it gets an extra to correct for inexactitude in the approximation of the solar cycle."
"Well. We seem to have made the collective decision to just ignore New Kystle's year and day time frame, and just keep using what we've used before. Since uh - no seasons, no days, and therefore years don't matter much in terms of anything but measurement. It's easier just to use a system that we know works rather than making a new one and trying to convince everyone to use it. Maybe we'll come up with something better, eventually."