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

[alicornucopia]

"Because now I can cast a spell on myself that will let me write a letter in it. It might come out a little funny, but it should be readable." Kerah casts the spell, and starts writing.

"We can just send this along after we send you back," says Terali. "You don't have to wait. How long should we give Miss Honey to write a reply on the back of the letter?"

[missnicegirl]

"I think an hour would definitely be enough."

[alicornucopia]

"How long is an hour?" asks Terali.

[missnicegirl]

"Well, an hour is sixty minutes and a minute is sixty seconds, but I don't have a clock with me..."

[alicornucopia]

Terali casts a spell; now there are numbers in midair. "The fastest-moving number is splits, then ticks. Is a second close to one of those amounts of time?"

[missnicegirl]

Matilda peers at the numbers. "It looks like a split is about the same thing as a second."

[alicornucopia]

"Okay. Then we'll give you an angle and a half to leave plenty of time," says Kerah, "and then take the letter back."

"Ready to go home?" asks Terali.

[missnicegirl]

"Okay! Where will you put the letter?"

[alicornucopia]

"It'll just land right in your lap," says Kerah.

And Terali casts something and Matilda is back where they got her from.

[missnicegirl]

Well, that was interesting.

She puts her book away and goes to find Miss Honey.

[alicornucopia]

It will take a couple minutes before the letter lands in her lap.

[missnicegirl]

By that time she has found Miss Honey.

"An interesting thing just happened and I'm not quite sure how to explain," she says.

"Well, start at the beginning," Miss Honey prompts.

"I was sitting in my room reading, and then I was on the floor of a strange room with a glowing ceiling and two grown-ups looking at me. They said I was in a world called Elcenia and they brought me there with magic, which they called 'wizardry', because they were looking for other worlds with interesting things in them. I told them a little bit about the things I can do, which I think probably count as magic for their purposes. They said there's a kind of magic there that they think I can learn, it's called witchcraft and people make headache cures and shampoo with it."

And then the letter appears on the floor in front of her, and she picks it up and opens it. "This is a letter from the wizards."

[alicornucopia]

The letter says,

Dear Miss Honey,

Apologies for any incorrect spelling or grammar in this letter resulting from the translation spell. We apologize for any inconvenience resulting from our summoning your daughter; we didn't seek her out specifically. We are potentially interested in an ongoing exchange of information and magic between our worlds. We will summon this piece of paper back in about an hour if you wish to render any reply.

It is signed in not-the-Latin-alphabet.

[missnicegirl]

"And I said that if they give me witchcraft lessons, I'll tell them when I find out how people get magic here."

"Well, all right then," says Miss Honey.

She finds a pen and writes on the back of the letter: I know Matilda would love to learn more about your world. Is there some better way for us to communicate than these letters? How should we arrange the schedule for Matilda's magic lessons?

And she signs it Jennifer Honey and puts it down.

"Their time system seems to work in multiples of five," says Matilda, "at least in the smaller units, but they didn't show me a clock for long enough for me to verify it with the bigger ones. I want to learn their language too."

Miss Honey postscripts: Matilda would also be interested in language lessons. Really, she likes learning just about anything.

Matilda giggles at the accuracy of this statement.

[alicornucopia]

After about an hour, the letter disappears.

A new one reappears right in front of Matilda some ten minutes later.

Dear Jennifer Honey,

The letters are the least intrusive way to communicate, but we can also summon you in addition to Matilda. We are acquainted with a witch who has agreed to give her lessons; scheduling may prove challenging if your days are not the same length as ours, which seems likely. Language lessons are also possible. We may be able to secure the help of a person with the native magical ability to speak any language to help with that.

This is again signed in Ertydon characters.

[missnicegirl]

After some consultation with Matilda, Jenny replies:

If Matilda could bring a clock to your world and look at it together with one of your clock spells for a while, she could learn how to convert units of time between worlds, and then if you gave her a calendar she could work out a schedule. Matilda is very good at working with numbers.

[alicornucopia]

The next letter says:

Then certainly she can bring a clock. We think an hour is fairly close to one of our angles. When should we resummon her, and do you want to come along?

[missnicegirl]

The letters have been coming and going fast enough now that Jenny feels confident in replying: We will be ready half an hour after you sent this letter. I'd like to come too.

[alicornucopia]

And in half an hour, Matilda is resummoned and translation-spelled into the same room, again with Kerah and Terali present.

"Before we summon your mother," says Kerah, "there's a few things we need to check on to be sure that it's safe to bring you to meet the witch and everything. I'll ask you a few questions and all you need to do is answer them yes or no, okay?"

[missnicegirl]

"Okay, I guess," says Matilda.

[alicornucopia]

"Are you a human?" asks Kerah.

[missnicegirl]

"Yes."

[alicornucopia]

"Can your magic do anything besides move things around?"

[missnicegirl]

Matilda has recently read a physics textbook, and is not entirely sure that there is anything her magic might be able to do even theoretically that could not be described as 'moving things around', since matter and energy are things and all they do is move around in different ways.

But even without that, while she suspects her magic might be able to do more than she's done with it, so far the least moving-things-around-like thing she's managed is Lavender's ability to fly, which definitely qualifies as moving even on the macro scale.

"No," she says.

[alicornucopia]

"Do you have any intentions to hurt anybody or anything while you're here?"

(Terali has a vaguely conspiratorial aren't-these-questions-silly look on her face.)