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Veron is installed in a nice house in Seattle with the help of Isabella's staff.
The colony gets big enough that Isabella sculpts herself an ice crown and applies permanency to it so it won't melt. She makes Adarin one too out of cypress branches, wired into shape, magicked to stay alive and shaped like that, and then freed of the wire. She wears hers on Earth sometimes, as well as on the colony. Her queen elects not to comment.
Various people are resurrected. Isabella hires more people to sort more requests; she's not going to be able to handle this via descending on charities. (She extracts longer-term promises of help - and nonviolence - from the clans she shares this spell with, though.) She opens an office near San Francisco, puts a lot of poultry in the back yard and makes a deal with an egg producer to save the otherwise unwanted males till adulthood for the purpose in future months, arranges regular deliveries of all the necessary herbs and ashes, and has someone carve out an enormous stencil of all the runes to speed up the process: the diagram may now be drawn with a broom, as long as it's still a witch doing it. (She also has stencils of the immortalization spell made.) There is always some witch in residence, working off their favor to her a few hours at a time, and a security team to prevent unruly demands, interference by religious protestors, and a receptionist or two to make sure the people coming in actually have appointments (or standby arrangements, in case of no-shows) to collect loved ones.
She gets into a bit of an argument with the United States military about resurrecting fallen soldiers. While she originally had no intention of discriminating against soldiers, she insists that resurrected ones be considered honorably discharged and that their re-upping be optional, and absolutely refuses to approve any systematic preferential resurrection of people who are just going to pick up guns and walk into war zones again.
Normally, there would be some clan with access to the spell who'd cut a deal.
On this occasion, with this particular Olympic witch having come up with three (really two, but the portals are still officially credited to her, with everyone understanding now that she's proprietary about the process and capitalistic about the disposition to fund her anti-death projects) revolutionary spells in fewer years than that, they're a little concerned that they won't get a look in the next time she publishes, if they do things she doesn't approve of.
Isabella threatens to move her resurrection office to New Zealand. The military backpedals. Resurrections proceed.
(Isabella does open a second resurrection office in New Zealand. And one in Finland and one in India. There are witch clans all around the world and they are all beholden to her.)
Insurance companies freak out, then remake their actuarial tables and throw lawyers at their contractual language and calm down again. Isabella's insurance company of choice has a small head start. Isabella's insurance company of choice loves her.
Luzia gets her son back. She dithers for a bit about the husband. She gets the husband back. The husband is kind of taken aback by Luzia's activities since then but decides that Zeviana "doesn't count" as cheating. It's up to Zeviana whether she wants to call that close enough and continue carrying on.
Isabella and Adarin have no such problems. They continue to be deliriously happy.
Then, there's a relatively slow day. Isabella flops across her husband's lap on the couch and says, "Want to start looking for places to plague with utopias?"
dark_light
come_midnight
Iobel looks away, frustrated, and picks up Cricket again from where he's been following at her heels.
royal_obligation
This is going to be a long day. This is why he was delegating, with easy problems.
"The ambassadors are to try and coax a trade route out of Lathalind - that's where the roads would be going if we can manage it," he tells her, because he is going to at least try to work with her.
"The ambassadors are to try and coax a trade route out of Lathalind - that's where the roads would be going if we can manage it," he tells her, because he is going to at least try to work with her.
come_midnight
"...and Lathalind in particular is irritated, apprehensive, skeptical of our ability to produce useful trade goods, what?"
royal_obligation
"Apprehensive and skeptical that we are a safe place to travel and trade with. I think several members are irritated, but not the country as a whole."
come_midnight
"Safe as in controlling the risk of highway robbery or safe as in not planning to declare war on them or safe in some other sense or all of the above?"
royal_obligation
"In the sense that they are worried they will randomly lose their property to the crown, but highway robbery is a problem, too. I am also trying to fix that, but that's more of a long-term thing."
come_midnight
"As in - seizure of loads of this or that on the road. Is the current plan to be handling all of the trade expeditions under the direct auspices of the Crown? I would imagine that given most conditions of the prevalence of bandits and public confidence in your ability to keep your hands off random cartsful of dye and rice and candles some private traders would be inclined to take the risk and then the leadership of Lathalind would risk nothing in particular by encouraging the road unless they expected you to actually invade them by it."
royal_obligation
"It's not, but I'm having trouble finding private traders of Marlatia that are not terrified of royalty. So."
come_midnight
"Okay. I'm willing to talk to them as long as I go in having an idea what I can and cannot commit to over the course of the conversation."
royal_obligation
Edarial nods. "I can give ideas of both. That would be extremely helpful." Pause. "Thank you."
royal_obligation
And then it's back on to fixing things. Obsessively. There are a lot of problems with one country.
come_midnight
Iobel is deficient in experience and detailed background information. And occasionally tact.
But not in other requisite attributes.
After a while she sends Cricket to talk to the visitors, since he can and he promises to be cordial and no one else will be able to eavesdrop effectively if they speak his language, and ask about the fungibility through interworld trade thing.
Cricket comes back with a list of recognizable herbs that Isabella is willing to trade pretty much arbitrary things for in large quantity.
But not in other requisite attributes.
After a while she sends Cricket to talk to the visitors, since he can and he promises to be cordial and no one else will be able to eavesdrop effectively if they speak his language, and ask about the fungibility through interworld trade thing.
Cricket comes back with a list of recognizable herbs that Isabella is willing to trade pretty much arbitrary things for in large quantity.
royal_obligation
Edarial takes a bit to adjust to her competence, but once he does, he starts laying out problems with requisite detailed background information and his potential solutions and their effects, and works from there, rather than being patronizing. He is no slouch in other requisite attributes, either, but he tends towards thinking economically and politically rather than branching out a bit more. Iobel turns out to be helpful in several situations, though many he's got covered and just handles.
He is less awkward and distant when running a country. Actually, he warms up to Iobel a bit as they work, though not to 'flaunting' levels. It's progress, though. Some.
He is less awkward and distant when running a country. Actually, he warms up to Iobel a bit as they work, though not to 'flaunting' levels. It's progress, though. Some.
come_midnight
Iobel's focused almost absolutely on the tasks presented and not on Edarial at all. She relaxes a little, around the shoulders, in her voice, when the patronization goes away. It streamlines the conversation; she no longer has to fight down the feeling that she's being actively goaded. It would be premature to describe her as "warm".
come_midnight
She's not really speeding up his work at this time. There's too much time spent on filling her in. But she's taking notes and will probably be less time-consuming to have around on future occasions.
royal_obligation
Edarial does get time investment, logically. It's a thing he supports, even. So he manages to be reasonably patient with her and fill her in every time it's necessary, he just - has to force himself to slow down and explain for her. He's not used to actively going slow, he's used to multi-tasking large amounts of things and bouncing between then as they gestate. It quietly bothers him, but he does like having someone to actually talk to about work, so he deals with it and slows down. Though she will probably have to remind him a few times.
royal_obligation
That works. He answers them, gives reasons for why he does what he does, and then moves on to the next problem. Occasionally his actual top speed shows a bit, but he slows down when she needs him to. Obviously he is actively trying to help her with being a queen.
come_midnight
That is good of him.
It's not so much that she does any given thing very slowly, it's only that she needs to do more steps than he does. Including the notetaking. She refers to things she wrote down earlier in the conversation once in a while.
And, every once in a greater while, the questions she asks lead to clever sideways - cheats, sidestepping part of all of a problem or subtask.
It's not so much that she does any given thing very slowly, it's only that she needs to do more steps than he does. Including the notetaking. She refers to things she wrote down earlier in the conversation once in a while.
And, every once in a greater while, the questions she asks lead to clever sideways - cheats, sidestepping part of all of a problem or subtask.