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Time passes.
Isabella's robot army cleans up the remaining robotic forces of their hated enemies without casualties, obligingly repurposes themselves for helping with infrastructure and explaining what she finds in the computer systems, and is generally convenient and helpful.
Adarin finishes the armor silk spell. Isabella's set are cosmetically special - mostly black, but with forest-green twining over the fabric and edged with pale blue as though she's been accumulating frost. In them, she looks almost more like a witch-garb-inspired runway model than a witch, but she loves them and promptly switches to wearing them all the time. (He asked if she wanted to wait till Christmas. She said no, and then teased him that he'd have to think of something else for Christmas.) He makes more, but doesn't pretty them up; they're for other people.
The portal network and the personnel helping with it expands. The hub building is operational on schedule and the surfaces with portals in them are moved there after being temporarily closed on their far ends. The price point starts dropping. Isabella's staff starts making progress on getting the necessary permissions to put portals in foreign countries. Isabella acquires ludicrous amounts of money; she's waiting for slightly more ludicrous amounts before she pays back her loan, though.
Zeviana and Luzia continue to get along famously without that much in the way of Serious Relationship Conversation. Zeviana does useful things for the clan and makes friends and generally fits right in. Ranata shows her interesting places on the Earth; with the help of her nepotism-based access pass to the portal network, this is mostly within the United States to start, though teleportation makes other continents more convenient to get to than they might otherwise be. Still, most of her time is spent on clan lands, which makes it at best inconvenient to scry on her from New Kystle.
Path continues to touch Adarin occasionally, briefly, especially if Isabella's off somewhere; he seems to do it mostly for a sort of check-in with the comfort it provides. Sometimes and apparently for separate reasons he will solicit extended petting, which seems to be more recreational than soothing (it's possible to tell mostly because of the way Isabella will go limp and smiley and heavy-lidded wherever she is in the room when this occurs). Vern doesn't touch Isabella again. Isabella is unbothered; she doesn't expect it.
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dark_light
dark_light
"Not unless the evidence suggests differently," she says, snuggling up.
"This is the most hilariously cerebral romance of all time," comments Luzia.
"This is the most hilariously cerebral romance of all time," comments Luzia.
headunbowed
Zeviana snorts with laughter. "I was kind of expecting it from him."
dark_light
"You're not really much like your mom, are you, Isabella?" says Luzia.
"I actually have lots of traits in common with both parents. They just combined really strangely."
"I actually have lots of traits in common with both parents. They just combined really strangely."
headunbowed
Zeviana makes a face. "You make it sound clinical! I don't want to know what I've got in common with my parents, my mom was terrible!"
dark_light
"I didn't say anything about you! I'm talking about me. I made a chart one time, I think I was fourteen."
headunbowed
"That's kind of weird. Adarin, your girlfriend is kind of weird."
prodigal_miser
"I like her just fine as she is," says Adarin loftily. "Besides, charts are organized."
headunbowed
"... Please tell me you did not make a chart about things you've got in common with our parents."
prodigal_miser
"I suspect I don't have enough information about either to properly compose a chart."
dark_light
"I mean, the situation's different, I was principally raised by both of my parents, cooperatively," says Isabella. "I'm sure I resemble them more than you resemble yours."
dark_light
"...I'm now wondering if you've run into information on genetics, though..."
prodigal_miser
"Our society does kind of obsess over bloodline purity. Speaking from what I've read on Wikipedia, we're not as advanced, but we do get the general concept of it."
headunbowed
"Bleh. People think our entire family's bonkers and we got it from mom."
dark_light
"Well, there's caring who you're related to and there's, like, understanding Mendelian inheritance, which is different from how your magic dilution thing works."
headunbowed
"I don't know what that means, but I'm going to try to guess. Is it if a parent's weird or got something strange their kid could have it, too? Or like - if their grandparent's got the crazy they can get it?"
dark_light
"Not exactly. People have - well, the sorts of people studied by Earth science, anyway, maybe you have fairy dust or something - people have two copies of instructions on how to make all their parts. Some of it's really complicated, but some of it works like: there's an instruction for blue eyes and an instruction for brown eyes. The brown eyes instruction is loud and shouty, so if you have one of each, your eyes will be brown. But you could give either one to any given one of your kids. So you could have two brown-eyed parents, who each had a blue and a brown instruction, and then a quarter of their kids would have two blue-eyes instructions and blue eyes. But you will never have two blue-eyed parents with a brown-eyed kid. Like that."
headunbowed
"Yeah, I've got no idea what that is, but I will take your word for it."
prodigal_miser
Adarin listens intently. "Hmm. Interesting. When I have time I will have to look that up, I'm - kind of interested in learning about genetics, now."
dark_light
"Yeah, fair warning, most of it is much more complicated than eye color Punnet squares and even those are fantastically oversimplified when I explain it like that because people have more than exactly two kinds of eye color, but it's interesting."
prodigal_miser
He nods. "Right. It'll be added to my ever-growing list of 'things I should know.' If I ever run out I won't know what to do with myself."
dark_light
(Luzia coughs. Isabella gives her a look.) "I doubt that will be a problem for the foreseeable future."
prodigal_miser
Adarin raises an eyebrow, but doesn't comment. "Yeah. There's a lot to learn."
He doesn't think he actually likes Luzia. She doesn't seem to be the kind of person he can get along with, though he doesn't hate her. If Zeviana likes her, he's perfectly happy to not get in the way of their - whatever it is they have. That doesn't mean he wants to remain in Luzia's company, though.
"Shall we go find the queen, then?"
He doesn't think he actually likes Luzia. She doesn't seem to be the kind of person he can get along with, though he doesn't hate her. If Zeviana likes her, he's perfectly happy to not get in the way of their - whatever it is they have. That doesn't mean he wants to remain in Luzia's company, though.
"Shall we go find the queen, then?"
dark_light
"I think she's probably getting food. She skipped breakfast, I heard," says Luzia.
"Cool, thanks," says Isabella. Floatified is the cloud-pine.
"Cool, thanks," says Isabella. Floatified is the cloud-pine.