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 follows along cheerfully. She does mostly understand why grown-ups are so frequently concerned about parental permission, even if it is a very silly thing to be concerned about in her particular case. They don't know that and it is usually not worth the bother to explain to them.

[alicornucopia]

Their house is a couple degrees' walk away from where Matilda joined them. They pass shops and many tall, roomy houses with a lot of windows arranged in circles around yards. Their house is in such a circle. Kheeeahh opens the door and ushers the children in.

"I'll let her look at me," pipes up Leekath.

Her father looks at her.

"So no one else will have to sit quiet for her."

"Very well."

Leekath pushes her hood back and sits on a couch in the living room. Her brother runs up the stairs, her sister out into the backyard; her father goes into another room on the same floor.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda sits next to Leekath on the couch.

"Do you want me to explain the things my magic finds out, when it does?" she asks.

[alicornucopia]

Nod, nod.

[missnicegirl]

"Okay."

She looks at Leekath and concentrates on understanding.

[alicornucopia]

Leekath is a vampire. She last ate five days ago, and the person she bit was an elf, solidifying her lifespan's tendency to float at around three hundred years give or take.

Leekath can hear things. They never lie.

[missnicegirl]

"Oh!" says Matilda, blinking. "You have a whole extra kind of magic that isn't anything to do with your lifespan at all. Do all vampires have that? The hearing thing?"

[alicornucopia]

Leekath shakes her head.

"Not most of them."

[missnicegirl]

"Oh. Well, it's neat," says Matilda. "Do all my clothes and things sound strange because they're from a different world?"

[alicornucopia]

"They sound like normal voices, but they're saying strange things," says Leekath. "That's why I asked where you were from."

[missnicegirl]

"That makes sense! Okay. I can also see the lifespan magic but the other thing was a surprise. Let's see..."

She peers contemplatively at Leekath, and through her at the lifespan magic. It's pretty straightforward.

"It just does exactly what you'd think, makes your lifespan average out with the lifespans of whoever you bite," she says. "I don't think there are any weird surprises here like with dragons and how their magic kept running away on them. Do you want me to try changing it so your lifespan is forever instead of three hundred-ish?"

[alicornucopia]

Nod nod.

[missnicegirl]

"Okay!"

Matilda fiddles with the magic, sending ialdae to wrap around the lifespan counter and tell it that the number it wants is infinity, none of this nonsense about limitations.

Then she giggles.

"Wow, that's the fastest I've seen anyone catch ialdae who wasn't a dragon!"

[alicornucopia]

"Catch ialdae?"

[missnicegirl]

"When someone has ialdae done to them, sometimes they become able to do it themselves," she explains. "But I only did a little bit to you and everyone else who's caught it had a lot more. You caught it a lot, though. Do you want me to teach you how to use it? It can do all kinds of things, like teleporting and sorcery and lightcraft but better than the way those things work in ordinary Elcenian magic, and witchcraft but mostly exactly the same as the ordinary Elcenian way, and changing the colours of things. And seeing magic. It's getting really good at seeing magic."

[alicornucopia]

"I want to learn it," nods Leekath. "But I'm not sure Fheeil will let me. It was hard to convince him to let me go to wizard school."

[missnicegirl]

"...What do you mean?"

[alicornucopia]

"I go to a wizard school but it's on a break right now. Fheeil - that's my father, the one who's in the house, not the other one - didn't want me to go at first. I got Aaihhhi to help me convince him though."

[missnicegirl]

"Well, maybe your aaihhhi will help convince him about this too," says Matilda. She doesn't appear to have any trouble with the word. "Why didn't he want you to go to wizard school?"

[alicornucopia]

"He thinks I need to be kept at home because I'm a hearer. And I'm not sure Aaihhhi will be as interested in me learning to do ialdae as wizardry. Wizardry will let me work for him when I grow up and ialdae might not. How did you pronounce that?"

[missnicegirl]

"One of the things I did while I was doing things with dragons was give myself an ialdic version of their language magic, so I can speak vampire as well as a dragon can," she explains. "My first set of parents didn't want me to go to school either, but I convinced them eventually. And then I found Miss Honey and got her to adopt me because my first set of parents weren't very good and she is much better. Why does your fheeil think you need to be kept at home because you can do neat magic?"

[alicornucopia]

"He thinks hearers are crazy and it's not magic," explains Leekath.

[missnicegirl]

"Well, that's silly," diagnoses Matilda. "So I don't think you need to listen to him about whether or not to learn ialdae if you don't want, since he only has silly reasons."

[alicornucopia]

"But he might not let me."

[missnicegirl]

"Can he stop you? People mostly can't stop me doing things now that I have lots of magic," says Matilda. "They had some trouble even before that, but I had to hide and sneak around more."