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]

Matilda brings them all to the bottom of the world, and says "Natural forms, please."

[alicornucopia]

One of them does a check in the form of an owl to make sure there aren't any dragons around, and then they space out appropriately and shift.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda looks at the nearest one, and concentrates very hard on exactly what she wants to have happen - let her magic get dragged through and then make it stay and keep this person alive and not go anywhere.

"There, done, you can fly now," she says, after a couple of ticks, and she turns to the next shren.

[alicornucopia]

"...Wouldn't we have just contagioned him again?" asks a shren.

(The first cured is spreading his wings experimentally but doesn't try to take off without this question answered.)

[missnicegirl]

"No," says Matilda. "I put my magic in the place that has the problem and it is staying put."

[alicornucopia]

The cured one takes off.

The others watch enviously.

[missnicegirl]

"You too, go on," she says to the next one, and almost immediately "Now you," to the third. She is getting this down. Her magic is very definitely learning the trick.

[alicornucopia]

Up they go, one by one.

[missnicegirl]

"You've caught ialdae, by the way," says Matilda to Jensal when the last of the volunteers is in the air. "And so has that one," pointing to a flying shren. "People catch ialdae sometimes when it's used on them."

[alicornucopia]

"What does that mean?" Jensal asks.

[missnicegirl]

"It means that now you have the magic and you can do at least some of the things it's learned," says Matilda. "Not everybody can do all the things. And I wouldn't want you to try doing this thing because it would be so terrible if it went wrong somehow. But maybe you can teleport or something."

[alicornucopia]

"I will want to hear more about this," says Jensal. "Later. The babies should be the next priority."

[missnicegirl]

"Definitely," says Matilda. "I guess we don't need to wait for everyone to stop flying around before we," flicker, "go back. Which way are the babies?"

[alicornucopia]

Jensal leads her to the room whence all the screaming.

[missnicegirl]

Oh dear.

She sort of wants to do this all at once because they're screaming but it is very important to get it right, so one by one as fast as possible she points at baby shrens and says "done, done, done, done, done."

[alicornucopia]

Jensal and the baby-minder start flinging babies into the air and exhorting them to fly.

Presently all the screaming is over! Instead there is giggling and flapping.

[missnicegirl]

"I should go to the other houses," says Matilda. "Can I bring you with me to explain me? Would that work?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yes, they'll recognize me."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay."

Flicker. Now they're in the room with the babies at the next land-based house - Kep Island. Matilda starts doing magic and lets Jensal take care of the explanations.

[alicornucopia]

Jensal does an admirable job of explaining matters to the jade fellow minding the babies here. She does this simultaneously with getting the babies to fly (he helps, once he knows what's going on.)

[missnicegirl]

"Good."

Next land-based house. Next round of babies.

Then the iceberg. They appear in a little ice-cave looking down into a watery tunnel.

"I don't know how to breathe water," says Matilda, shivering a little. "How do we get the attention of someone who can show us the babies?"

[alicornucopia]

"I'll do it," says Jensal, and she is a sky-blue merperson, slipping into the tunnel.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda waits. She teaches her magic how to keep her warm.

[alicornucopia]

Presently Jensal comes back up with another merperson (this one turns into a dwarf when Jensal turns into a human) and a quantity of babies in various shades of purple and one shade of silver.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda points at babies. Done and done and done and done and done.

Then: "Okay, are there any more?"