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Time passes. Canada is cooperative about portals and now there's one each in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, on a second floor of the hub with customs agents Isabella is tolerating for the time being as long as they're well-behaved. Japan and Australia and the UK all follow suit at roughly the same time, so then there are portals in their big cities, too, a couple new ones per week. Other nations are slated to trickle in as they handle their red tape to deal with sudden new national borders that don't have the built-in delay of airplanes. Some of the parking garages are being replaced with custom-built installations. Isabella pays off her loan, renegotiates for the continued use of her shiny credit card, and has reason to be grateful for her retained law firm, which is kept busy by frivolous lawsuits by airline companies. She's not appreciably cutting into their traffic yet - sure, the price point is dropping, but they're still competitive. They can just smell their own demise coming from a mile away.
Five witches besides Isabella ward the colony site. Robots guard the site of the portal, obligingly letting colonists through during scheduled trips and reporting to Isabella by mirror if anybody else shows up. Other robots help the colonists with setting up their farms and houses in the warded area. It'll hold a city, no problem, although another transfer of silks and bags to pay for warding a second site is going to be called for before they get literally everyone across, since in addition to city they need farmland, and since they can't build vertically as effectively as fully industrialized Earthlings or the deceased aliens.
One day:
"It's been exactly a year now since you crashed my picnic. Let's go to a fancy restaurant and celebrate."
dark_light
dark_light
"...Well, that would work great if at least some fraction of mages didn't know me to be immortal, wouldn't it?"
silkhiding
"... You should not advertise that. Not right now, not when the relationship is comparatively new and they need to settle into accepting that killing you is not the best solution. Who did you tell?"
silkhiding
"That'd be the Liandrils. Okay, they probably told their family and some cousins, but I don't think they would mention it to everyone. I certainly didn't know. They'd want to keep some cards in reserve and waste their rival's chances for action by not giving them all the facts. They'd try the wait you out approach and waste their time. I mean, it's going to get out eventually no matter what you do, but the longer you two are together and obviously not breaking up the better off you will be."
dark_light
"We are not breaking up," says Isabella. "This is useful advice to have - Adarin, perspective?"
(Isabella demonstrates the use of the faucet in the bathroom while she speaks.)
(Isabella demonstrates the use of the faucet in the bathroom while she speaks.)
prodigal_miser
"Um," says Adarin, finding his voice again in this incredibly awkward topic. "On - which part?"
dark_light
"Is she talking nonsense, is there some mitigating factor she doesn't know about - sweetie, we do not have to get married if you don't want even if it would in fact send ideal signals to horrible people, I'm just curious if it would in fact do that."
prodigal_miser
"She isn't speaking nonsense. It's... Not a method of thinking that I'm used to, I wasn't - seeing marriage as a way to stave off people trying to get between us. I just - don't factor it in to how I think."
He fidgets, a little. "I never said that I didn't want to get married, though."
He fidgets, a little. "I never said that I didn't want to get married, though."
dark_light
"Well, we don't have to get married soon even if we do want to," shrugs Isabella. "Please tell me how to make this less awkward for you, I was trying 'deliberate casualness' but it does not appear to have helped."
silkhiding
"... Um. I will go be - not here, while you talk," says Seraphina, nervously - and then she flees.
ofthefallen
(Xiara has already lost interest in the conversation and is messing with the bedside lamp while absently talking to ghosts.)
prodigal_miser
"Um. Well, do you want to get married? I'd thought it wasn't very important to witches?"
dark_light
"I don't have any really strong feelings about the 'married' part. I want to stay with you for the foreseeable and indefinite future."
Kiss?
Kiss?
prodigal_miser
Kiss!
"Well. I kind of - don't like the idea of marrying you for the sake of idiotic mage politics, it's like giving them a - weird place in our relationship, and I am kind of protective of it. But I'm not against the idea of marrying you itself."
"Well. I kind of - don't like the idea of marrying you for the sake of idiotic mage politics, it's like giving them a - weird place in our relationship, and I am kind of protective of it. But I'm not against the idea of marrying you itself."
prodigal_miser
He laughs, a little, hugging her. "If I knew that one I would have presented it with a victorious flourish. As it is - I'm not sure. On one hand, getting married right now might help with your personal safety. On the other - it would probably bother me to get married because of them and not because of us."
dark_light
"It's not like it's hard to figure out that witches are immortal, so I'm not actually sure how the balance on my personal safety works out."
prodigal_miser
"True," he agrees. "Then I suppose we can just - focus on if we want to, or not. And just not let the bastards factor into our relationship any more than necessary."
dark_light
"Yep. Okay, I'm gonna show the visitors how the lights and room service work and leave 'em a mirror."
Isabella finds the lightswitches for all the room's light sources, demonstrates their use for the mage women, and explains how to order off the menu if they don't want to wander off and try restaurants. She hands each one a key card and gives Seraphina a mirror from one of the spare sets, the other end of which is in her portal bag.
Isabella finds the lightswitches for all the room's light sources, demonstrates their use for the mage women, and explains how to order off the menu if they don't want to wander off and try restaurants. She hands each one a key card and gives Seraphina a mirror from one of the spare sets, the other end of which is in her portal bag.
silkhiding
"Thank you," says Seraphina. "Um. How will we pay for restaurants? Will they just - know to charge you, like the hotel did, or...?"
prodigal_miser
Adarin, meanwhile - retrieves his bird, apologetically extracting her from Path if it's required, and then starts quietly talking to her. About things.