odd little alucine

[affodell]

It's never previously occurred to Cayra to put a door across an alucine boundary, but now that she's encountered it in practice it makes sense. It makes it visually obvious and it lets you lock it if you want. This door wasn't locked, and it looked like it led to a public bathroom, not a bar, from the signage, so she's still confused. Still, it's a good idea. She twists open the glass vial pendant around her neck and bends her head to the little blue lily inside to make a note of it; as an afterthought she tries to send it off to her antheomancer-chatcircle, anything to have a decent conversation, but it doesn't go. Her flower doesn't look wilting, but she can put it back in the garden and get a fresher one for the vial later. At least her personal files look okay. She closes up the vial again, giving the flower a touch of antheomancy for its health, and finds a bathroom inside the bar that dominates this little alucine.

And then she emerges into the bar. It doesn't seem to be staffed. Or stocked. Why wasn't it locked?

Hello, anybody here?

with Flynn (ErinFlight)

with Harry (andaisq)

Due to some icon rearrangement errors, some of Flynn's tags appear with an incorrect icon. The correct face for this thread is Rosario Dawson's.

Comments

[erinflight]

Flynn suddenly smiles, bittersweet but genuine, "But if it had to be someone, I'm glad it was me. Most weavers just give up, you know? Go off into the forest and make pretty things until they lose themselves. I'm not going to give up. If there's a way to stop it, I'll figure it out. If there's not, I'll at least do something useful before I go."

[affodell]

"I wonder if you could counter this with a vice. Usually you can't do this with vices - you can't even counter antheomancy's vice, which has an opposite, if you try you're just kind of in trouble - but yours isn't quite a 'mancy. It might just make it worse, though."

[erinflight]

"How does your magic work?"

[affodell]

"Antheomancy is networked flower magic. You basically can't avoid it if you want to learn anything you can't pick up by talking to people, but you don't need much of it; but I like taking notes and reading public petals, so I wound up with a decent amount of it just as a side effect. The vice is extroversion, which isn't all that bad, especially since I started out pretty introverted. Now I need to talk to people every day or I will not be happy, but I can do it on a speakflower and learn things while I do it, so it's not a big deal. Automancy is my other one and it's magic of the self. In advanced forms I'll be able to shapeshift and heal myself, I'm already making good progress on fixing my clumsiness problem, and while it would probably never have come up I should already be thoroughly immune to outside magic that would affect me if I don't want it to. The vice is self-absorption, which unfortunately is probably going to make me very annoying because I started out pretty self-absorbed in the first place, and won't exactly dovetail well with the antheomancy - but I think I can make it work, and the speakflower network is a big place if nothing else."

[erinflight]

"Your magic sounds so much more organized than weaving. I'm jealous." Flynn grins at Cayra, "Extraversion and self absorption really don't seem that terrible of side effects, though I guess any trait would be bad if you had enough of it. Are flowers like books to you?"

[affodell]

"Flowers are - well, there's two major kinds, blue and green, speakflowers and knowflowers. Speakflowers are where you talk to people and keep personal petals, knowflowers are where you keep knowledge. If you're picking up a 'mancy, or something else - woodworking or geography or music or whatever - you use the knowflowers, and if you make an advance you put that information back into the network."

[erinflight]

"Where does your magic come from? Do you just have it? Do the same people make it who make your alucines?"

[affodell]

"I have to learn it, but that's pretty straightforward. I don't have any before I learn how - I haven't touched, say, geomancy, my father has a bit of that but I don't. Anyway, nobody makes alucines."

[erinflight]

"Is this what an alcuine looks like?" Flynn gestures to their surroundings, "Blue sky, distant horizon, clouds?"

[affodell]

"I mean, this looks like part of a decent-size alucine, sure."

[erinflight]

"What gives you guys your light? Do you have little suns?"

[affodell]

"No, it's just, daylight. Is there a big fireball somewhere here that you're seeing?" Cayra squints at the clouds. "I just see clouds."

[erinflight]

"No, but the clouds might be covering it. It would be about this big," Flynn holds up her thumb and forefinger curled into a circle. "Where do the alucines come from? Do you find them?"

[affodell]

"I thought you said it was huge. And yeah, people find or make new portals and those lead to alucines."

[erinflight]

"It's really really far away. That's why alucines sound so strange to live in, I think I would get claustrophobic. I grew up with this gigantic universe, knowing there was infinite space even if I couldn't reach it. But you grew up in a series of boxes. It probably doesn't feel like that to you, but still..."

[affodell]

"Lots of them are huge. And they're all attached to more of them. Aeromancers get claustrophobia and they don't have a problem with normal-sized alucines."

[erinflight]

"Can anyone become a 'mancer?"

[affodell]

"Well, anyone with access to knowflowers, but I didn't bring one, just a speakflower, and I think it's wilted a little because I can't get it to network."

[erinflight]

"I wonder if I could use it? Even if it can't combat my vices directly, it might help me figure some stuff out. My own attempts have not been very effective."

[affodell]

"It won't network but it's still doing personal petals, go ahead and try." Cayra unscrews her pendant and hands over the blue lily.

[erinflight]

Flynn takes it gingerly, "I'm noticing something. I can sort of feel it in my head and maybe put my thoughts into it. Oh!" Flynn jumps back, dropping the flower. "The threads, from my weaving, they gathered when I tried."

[affodell]

Cayra narrowly manages to catch the flower's vial before it hits the ground. "Whoa! You accidentally did magic...?"

[erinflight]

"It was more like the magic noticed what I was doing." Flynn pauses, staring at something only she can see. "Can you tell if I was able to put anything inside?"

[affodell]

"Maybe, if you made it public." She bends her head over the flower. "Yeah, you left a public petal, not that anyone's likely to stumble across it in the network when it doesn't connect to anything."

[erinflight]

"Good! I've never seen the threads react like that before. Maybe it will mean something. Are there any vices in your magic that cause empathy, cowardice, or overthinking?"