exploratory kidnapping

[alicornucopia]

In this room are two women, one gray and sixty years old, one just thirty and red-haired, both wearing elaborate outfits. The younger casts a spell.

In this room is now also a third person. (On whom the elder woman promptly also casts a spell, which she had at the ready.)

Comments

[missnicegirl]

"Yay! Okay, now you try going back to the room," she suggests.

[alicornucopia]

They try.

Annei gets it first; Sarsia follows soon after.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda poofs back into the room, still with that distinctive little flicker of light.

"Congratulations!"

[alicornucopia]

Annei is giggling her head off; Sarsia's pleasedness is more restrained.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda is definitely on the giggly side here.

[alicornucopia]

Sarsia writes down that they've gotten ialdae to do this on a little pad of paper.

[missnicegirl]

"So what sorts of things can mages do, besides put out burning buildings?"

[alicornucopia]

"It depends on the kind of mage, but basically their element does whatever they want," shrugs Annei. "And they have to almost die to activate."

[missnicegirl]

"I would not like to teach ialdae that part. That would be really inconvenient! And scary!" says Matilda. "But I might want to teach it the other stuff."

[alicornucopia]

"It's not too bad for air mages, all they have to do is fall, they don't land," says Annei. "It's pretty scary for the other kinds, I think, but they can take knockout potions first."

[missnicegirl]

"Well, if ialdae learns how to mage it shouldn't learn that."

[alicornucopia]

"Can you stop it from learning that?" asks Terali, who is supervising this lesson from a corner of the room.

[missnicegirl]

"I don't know. I don't exactly know how I'd try. But so far I think ialdae has been very good about only learning nice things when I'm the one teaching it."

[alicornucopia]

"So far," says Terali. "Where is it getting all the niceness from? Will it keep it?"

[missnicegirl]

"Well, I guess it's getting niceness from me," she says. "Because when I teach it, it learns nice things, and when Miss Trunchbull taught it, it learned bad things instead. As long as nobody tries to teach it bad things, maybe it will keep learning just the nice ones."

[alicornucopia]

"It got all of witchcraft at once, though," Terali says. "If it does that with wizardry or magery there will be dangerous stuff in with firefighting and telling time."

[missnicegirl]

"It hasn't done that with wizardry, though. And it didn't really do it with lights either, it picked up the sparkly healing ball but not all of its limitations. What kind of dangerous wizardry stuff is there?"

[alicornucopia]

"Wizardry can do just about anything, and there's wizards all over the place with lots of ideas. Do you really want me to list things? It might give ialdae ideas," says Terali. "Or give you bad dreams."

[missnicegirl]

"You don't have to," says Matilda.

[alicornucopia]

Terali nods.

[missnicegirl]

"I wonder," muses Matilda, "if I could teach ialdae to do magic that doesn't really exist, out of books and things. I think maybe I can. I'll try it."

[alicornucopia]

"My little cousin spends all his time pretending to be a conjurer from a series of fantasy books," says Sarsia. "Like that?"

[missnicegirl]

"Like that. Earth has lots of books with magic in them and none of it's ever really existed."

[alicornucopia]

"That would be amazing," giggles Annei.

[missnicegirl]

"Yeah!"