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]

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.

[alicornucopia]

And then the baby-minders are cured.

At the Kep Island house, Jensal talks to the requisite people and Ilen the jade baby-minder is ushered into a hastily rearranged cafeteria to take natural form there. The night shift minder does not have this problem, which is good because she's considerably older.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda fixes Ilen in the cafeteria just fine, and takes the night shift minder to the bottom of the world and fixes her, and goes on to the third land-based house and does it again, and then to the iceberg and does it again, and then back to Jensal's house and she casts the time spell. "I have another half an angle. Who should be next? Or would you rather learn about ialdae now?"

[alicornucopia]

"It would be convenient if the other three house leaders were also cured because we're probably going to need to be in conversation with dragons soon. My curiosity can wait."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay."

Back to Kep Island, then.

[alicornucopia]

Where Ludei is quite willing to be taken to the bottom of the world and cured.

[missnicegirl]

"You've caught ialdae too," says Matilda to the rather impressively enormous white dragon. "You might be able to ialdically teleport by yourself now."

[alicornucopia]

Ludei obligingly tries this (after having shapeshifted back to human form). He gets the hang of it presently. Pop.

[missnicegirl]

And on she goes to fix the next two. It only takes about another degree.

"Now what?" she says when she has delivered Quaro back to his iceberg and returned with Jensal to her house.

[alicornucopia]

"No other urgent categories; if I had you starting on the shifted children or something the ones who had to wait for you to come back would complain. Do you have enough time to talk about ialdae? Especially if Ludei has it now too?"

[missnicegirl]

"Yes," she says. "What do you want to know?"

[alicornucopia]

"Apparently it can teleport and cure shrens. This is a diverse skillset," says Jensal dryly. "What else?"

[missnicegirl]

"And conjure water and tell time and change the colours of things and move things and see magic and redundantly do witchcraft and I might be forgetting some stuff," says Matilda. "And it can learn new things, but I'm the best at teaching it. And different people catch it differently. You and Ludei and the babies I saw who caught it, you're all very... shiny with it. You have a lot of magic. The humans I've seen catch it don't have so much."

[alicornucopia]

"What does that let us do, what normally happens if one - runs out?"

[missnicegirl]

"I've never seen anyone actually run out before, but I guess you wouldn't be able to do any more ialdae until you got more. But... have might not be quite right, it might be closer to say you make a lot of magic. It's not just an amount of it that you have until you use it up and then it's gone."

[alicornucopia]

"We're generating more of the stuff? What happens to if if we aren't using it up at the same rate?"

[missnicegirl]

"Well, you keep a bunch - you keep a lot, ialdic dragons particularly I mean - and the rest just..." Matilda makes a handwavy flapping/fanning gesture. "Sort of does the same thing mine was doing when the hole in your magic was throwing it all away. It just gets spilled. And then any ialder nearby can use it, I guess."