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]

"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?"

[alicornucopia]

"Some are raised at home," says Jensal, flinging one with purple swirls into the air. "We don't know where all those are, but the dragon council would."

"I can call them again," says Quaro, "if you need to know where they are instead of doing - ialdae to it."

[missnicegirl]

Matilda tries doing ialdae to it. She shakes her head. "I think I need addresses. The magic doesn't know how to teleport to just 'the next shren baby'."

[alicornucopia]

Quaro calls the dragon council again. (Jensal, meanwhile, is not dressed for this weather, but isn't complaining.)

[missnicegirl]

Matilda waits, not very patiently, for addresses.

[alicornucopia]

Quaro eventually starts relaying them to her as the dragon councilmember he's talking to reads them off.

[missnicegirl]

There are few enough for her to just memorize.

"Thank you," she says. "Jensal, can you help explain still, or will it not work as well?"

[alicornucopia]

"These ones won't know who I am, but I can still help - if nothing else I can speak Draconic."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay."

In that case, Matilda teleports them to the first address on the list.

[alicornucopia]

Jensal locates and rings the doorbell. Eventually the door is answered by a lady with snow-white hair. She double-takes at Jensal, and her eyes go very wide as Jensal utters a Draconic sentence, and then she tries to hand Matilda a snow-white baby she collects from the sofa.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda does magic, and then says, "Fly, fly," and tosses the baby into the air. She waits to see a wingbeat before she takes Jensal to the next address.

[alicornucopia]

The baby flies.

[missnicegirl]

And so does the next one, and the next and the next and the next and the next, and then they are all done and Matilda takes them back to where those volunteers are still on the bottom of the world.

"That's all the babies, right? For sure?"

[alicornucopia]

"Unless somebody has been doing something flagrantly irresponsible with public health, and illegal to boot, and this hasn't had any dire consequences yet, yes, that is every shren baby who can't shift yet," says Jensal. "There might be an egg or two that will hatch soon."

[missnicegirl]

Matilda sighs with relief and sits down on the ground. "Okay, good. That's very good. Now I guess I can just fix all the grown-ups whenever they want, except - " She casts her double time-telling spell. "That I need to go to bed in about an angle. But I can come back later."

[alicornucopia]

Jensal nods. "In that angle can you prioritize the shrens who have been looking after babies? If we get caught having shrens look after babies who are now dragons there will be trouble. This should only be another eight to ten people total."

[missnicegirl]

"Oh. Do they count as dragons now? I wasn't sure about that. Okay, that shouldn't be hard. Um, should we take everyone here back to your house now? Only they won't fit like this..." She gestures up at the flying ex-shrens.

[alicornucopia]

"Come down, we're going back!" Jensal hollers up. They don't all hear her, but the black opal one in the small crowd does and collects the others, and soon they've all landed and turned into their humanoid forms again.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda gets up and dusts herself off and teleports everyone back to Jensal's shren house.

[alicornucopia]

Jensal introduces Matilda to the local baby-minders, day and night shift.

"We may have a problem at the Keppine house. The day-shift baby minder there is what's called an 'inside shren'; he can't go outside at all. But he might be young enough to fit into one of the larger rooms inside the house in natural form."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay."

Presumably if either of these ones had that problem, Jensal would have said. Matilda takes them all to the bottom of the world. "Natural forms, please," she says to the baby-minders, and once they have complied she does magic. Ialdae is very definitely getting the hang of this trick. It's getting easier and easier.