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Summer vacation elapses, and sees their storefront doing one heck of a business in the Avalon with the help of their griffin employee. There is a suggestion box for new spells they should invent, some of which have to be long-term projects but others of which are converted into new product fairly promptly.
School starts up again. Darren and Bella are both skipping straight into twelfth grade. (Bella looked into just starting college early, but while she does technically have the sort of resume that can lead to that kind of thing, she can't exactly write an essay about how she saved the life of another person and this caused her to have Moral Character, let alone about how she started a small business - so skipping one grade it is.)
They apply to colleges. They both get into University of Washington and get sufficient scholarships to accommodate both going there.
Summer ensues again.
One afternoon, Bella is over at Darren's, and has fallen asleep - in purring fullform - across his lap on the couch.
shesepankh
shesepankh
She props that up for reference, gets a clean sheet of paper, and draws it, slowly, neatly, carefully. It is definitely slower than drawing.
Then she incants it.
Then she incants it.
shesepankh
"So I can do mending, and drawing, and I'm sort of tempted to start giving myself papercuts to see if I can do small healing without passing out."
castmyown
"Do you want me to sell my finger for science? Because I can, a paper cut's not a huge deal."
shesepankh
"It might be easier to concentrate on if it's not me, but I'll want to try on myself eventually anyway," she says.
castmyown
"Okay. Paper cut, then..."
He goes about trying to make this happen. After a few attempts: "Ow! Okay, got it."
Bella is presented his wounded finger. Look at it, bleeding just a little from a tiny paper cut.
He goes about trying to make this happen. After a few attempts: "Ow! Okay, got it."
Bella is presented his wounded finger. Look at it, bleeding just a little from a tiny paper cut.
shesepankh
"Sorry," she apologizes, and she scoops up his hand in hers and looks.
She looks dizzy for a second - but doesn't fall unconscious - and lo - Darren is healed.
She looks dizzy for a second - but doesn't fall unconscious - and lo - Darren is healed.
shesepankh
"I think healing must be really automatic? It almost slipped into the wrong - mode, but then I concentrated on the details enough and stayed awake and did it."
shesepankh
"I don't know. It does seems suspiciously strange that we would have both needed healing without knowing it right after I turned, doesn't it?"
shesepankh
"But I don't know what else it would have thought was important enough to do all by itself. Or if 'thinking it's important' is even the right metric."
shesepankh
"That I was dreaming," she says wryly. "That I could not possibly have really turned into a winged quadruped."
shesepankh
"Yeah. And I didn't, say, accidentally use sphinx magic to turn myself into not-a-sphinx. So that seems like a dead end."
castmyown
"Hmmm. Yeah, ugh, that's annoying. I have no idea how to solve this problem, I can't math at it to make it go away."
shesepankh
"I wonder if I can trigger automatic mode on anything other than healing. It could come in handy in any situation where as long as I succeed it's okay to nap for half an hour afterwards."