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]

"Hi! It's nice to meet you! What sorts of times can you give me language lessons?"

[alicornucopia]

"I have school from right about when I get up until ninth-and-twelve," says Fena, "but after that I'm free except for Saanen afternoons."

"Saanen is a day of the week, and it was yesterday," Terali says. "Today is Sinen, and from there it goes Fenen, Lunen, Chenen, Inen, Arnen, Saanen."

[missnicegirl]

"Oh, we have seven-day weeks on Earth too! Ours are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Today is Thursday."

She does some calculations in her head, and then proposes a schedule to Fena that satisfies her constraints and doesn't conflict with the witchcraft lessons. Matilda is going to have a busy month.

[alicornucopia]

Fena takes the notes on this and then convinces Terali to teleport her to school, and Terali agrees, disappears with Fena, and comes back alone. Matilda is then free to continue studying witchcraft while the anthropologist supervises.

[missnicegirl]

Witchcraft! Yay!

[alicornucopia]

Witchcraft lessons continue in a fairly predictable fashion; the next day, of course, she also has language lessons with Fena. This time when she is summoned she does not get a translation spell.

Fena says, "I've never actually taught somebody a language beyond just a few words before. I think they picked me because all the other dragons in the country have, like, jobs."

(Her English is flawless and her accent precisely Matilda's.)

[missnicegirl]

"I think you will probably do fine," says Matilda. "Tell me about Ertydon!"

[alicornucopia]

"There's a few countries that speak it, I guess you want Linnipese Ertydon since this is Linnip and you're talking to Linnipese people. Uh... okay, hello is rai."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay." She writes this down. "Let's see, what's the alphabet like?"

[alicornucopia]

"Oh, yeah, duh, sorry." Fena writes out the alphabet, and names all the letters, and produces their nearest English equivalents.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda extracts more words from her, along with their spellings. Then sentences. It is a very productive lesson.

[alicornucopia]

Fena seems pretty okay with being steered around by Matilda's opinions on what's next.

[missnicegirl]

And Matilda is perfectly fine with learning languages from someone who has no idea how to teach them! Everyone wins.

[alicornucopia]

Lessons continue. Raha is generally more impressed with Matilda's progress than Fena is (Fena turns out to be well over a century old and very vague on the concept of having to learn a language; she notes that the other girls at her school seem to have more trouble than this when they're studying Leraal or Vansalese or Munine or Kida, but seems to chalk it up entirely to smaller humans being better at language acquisition.) Raha gets through all the ingredients featured in the introductory recipe book, quizzes Matilda on them, and then lets her start working on the potions in the book. They're very assorted. She could make soap or confectioner's glaze or a headache cure or sunscreen or plant food or glue that will only set in the presence of a second potion and then bond permanently.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda frequently makes reference to chemistry when she's learning witchcraft. She explains that it is an Earth thing and gets a simple book on it for the anthropologist. She has great fun making potions. She brings them home with her and verifies that their magic still works on Earth, but proves unable to teach anyone how to do witchcraft on Earth, or to do witchcraft on Earth herself. She progresses by leaps and bounds in Ertydon, and is mostly able to carry on conversations about witchcraft without a translation spell after a few weeks.

And then one day when she is summoned for her witchcraft lesson, she is clutching her notebook and bouncing excitedly.

[alicornucopia]

"You look very pleased about something," comments Terali, after she's been translation-spelled.

[missnicegirl]

"I did witchcraft on Earth! Well, not exactly," she says. "It didn't work quite the same way. But it was definitely magic! Now I want to test if I can do the same thing here! I hope it doesn't mess up learning real witchcraft, but it's still really exciting!"

[alicornucopia]

"Didn't it not work on Earth before?" blinks Terali, escorting Matilda to Raha's lab.

[missnicegirl]

"It didn't! Potions always worked at home, but making them never did! But then this morning I decided to try something again, and it worked! Except when I do it on Earth it feels more like when I do what you call sorcery. So I think it's my magic, or Earth's magic, I'm really not sure how distinct those things are yet. I think my magic learned how to do witchcraft."

[alicornucopia]

"Your magic can learn how to do things!" exclaims Terali. "That's amazing. I've never heard of anything like it. Do you think it could learn to do more things?"

[missnicegirl]

"Probably! I want to learn more magic now!"

[alicornucopia]

"Well, that certainly seems like it's worth a try, doesn't it? Do you know yet whether you'll be able to share your magic with anybody else?"

[missnicegirl]

She shakes her head. "I have one friend who learned to fly after I made her fly around, but so far nobody else can do anything, and she's not the only person I flew around. And she can't move things that aren't herself."

[alicornucopia]

"Did you make her fly around differently in any way?" asks Terali. "Or more? Or was she maybe different somehow to start with?"

[missnicegirl]

"It wasn't any more and I don't think it was very differently. I think either she was different to start with, or it's because she's my best friend. If it's just about how good a friend somebody is, though, Miss Honey should be able to do some magic and she can't..."