chalk

[alicornucopia]

In Paraasilan, Esmaar, a pair of roommates are about to break a rule that, compared to the one about running in the corridors or even the one about unlicensed teleportation, is there for a good reason.

In unison, they complete their shared spell.

~~~

with Adarin (Aestrix)

with Ekador (kappa)

with Brilliance (kappa)

with the admin (kappa)

with Teah (kappa)

with Katran (lambda)

with Hall (kappa)

with Joy (kappa)

with Kalinda (Christy Hotwater)

Comments

[aeskhyne]

"Sheets do sound useful," he concedes. "Sheets and toiletries. And maybe some stuff."

[alicornucopia]

"Okay. Oh, and clothes, I guess."

[aeskhyne]

"Clothes! Clothes totally qualify as stuff."

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah. Okay, I know places to get the basics, at least."

[aeskhyne]

"...Oh, and shoes," he adds, looking down at his bare feet. "Shoes would be nice."

[alicornucopia]

"...Oh, yikes, I didn't even notice. I dooooon't think I can carry you into town shifting or no shifting. I could maybe try to find a pair to borrow that would fit you long enough to get into town?"

[aeskhyne]

He shrugs. "It's not that big a deal. If you know somebody you think would lend me shoes, though, then sure."

[alicornucopia]

Korulen squints at his feet. "I mean, the roads are generally pretty clear, but it's kind of a long walk. I don't usually pay that much attention to how big people's feet are... I guess I can try Min, and Lutan's boyfriend, and Kaylo, and after that I'm kinda out of ideas, my dad definitely has bigger feet than you and I think Daanten has smaller."

[aeskhyne]

"Okay," he says cheerfully.

[alicornucopia]

Korulen redirects the lift, knocks on several doors, and eventually gets answered by one of her intended targets, a boy with red eyes. "Is it important?" he asks. "I'm busy trying to figure out how many of the - miraculous surprises - can be written off as hoaxes."

"Um, he needs to borrow shoes," Korulen says, pointing at Teah.

[aeskhyne]

...Teah giggles. "How many miraculous surprises have there been?"

[alicornucopia]

"I don't know. There are the big sweeping ones, those I doubt the reporters missed any, but people are reporting little things too and some people could have easily kept their mouths shut about extras."

[aeskhyne]

"What kinds of little things? Because I'm pretty sure this is my world's magic doing its thing, and I could tell you what sounds like its style."

[alicornucopia]

"...The news did not mention the suspiciously timed appearance of an offworlder? Tell me everything?" says Kaylo.

(Korulen snorts a little.)

[aeskhyne]

"Kinda her fault," he says, indicating Korulen with a gesture. "Not sure about the 'how I got here' part, I was asleep for the getting here and half-asleep for the explanation, but from what I've been hearing all the sudden weird magic stuff sounds like it'd fit right in back home. Basically: if you wish or pray for something, sometimes you get it, but nobody's sure exactly why you do or don't, except that there's periods of time when it works and then it doesn't and then it does again, usually pieces of a day. And you don't always get exactly what you were asking for, but you usually get something that more or less covers it, or at least helps, sometimes with weird extras but they're nice weird extras or at worst inconveniently silly. A lot of the time there's candy. There's some old stories that say if you ask for something really nasty you could end up with donkey ears or food screaming every time you eat it or something, but I haven't heard of that actually happening to anybody for sure in the last, like, fifty years."

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo looks at Korulen.

She winces.

"Myyyyy roommate talked me into co-casting a summon with her. An old enormous summon."

"At about the right time?"

"Yeah," she says. "Pretty much exactly. I guess his magic's contagious."

"Where you're from," Kaylo asks Teah, "is there anything like a serious study or even just a statistical analysis of how all this works or is that literally all that's known?"

[aeskhyne]

"I mean, people have tried studying it, but it's kind of hard. I guess somebody somewhere's probably done some statistics, but I guess they didn't figure out anything interesting, 'cause it would've been all over the news for sure. Uh, I remember somebody tried to figure out what languages it could speak, and they got lucky, and the answer was 'all of them' as far as anybody could tell. But I only read like two sentences about it somewhere, it didn't say how they checked."

[alicornucopia]

"This is going to completely confound every result ever about all other forms of magic. It seems useful, but awfully contrary to the project of figuring out how things work under it."

[aeskhyne]

Teah shrugs. "Pray for answers?"

[alicornucopia]

"That is entirely contrary to the point of the enterprise!"

"Look, I'm sorry that me and Saasnil got weird offworld magic in your nice clean theory, but hasn't it been doing important, good things?" says Korulen. "Maybe more important than untainted studies about Tah Roie rhythms or whatever?"

"I reserve the right to complain!" exclaims Kaylo.

[aeskhyne]

"So what's the point of the enterprise, then?"

[alicornucopia]

"Systematic bottom-up understanding. Exploration, discovery, not just asking a capricious wad of foreign magic for the answer key from the back of the book."

[aeskhyne]

"Oh well," he says serenely.

[alicornucopia]

"Oh well," snorts Kaylo. "What's your shoe si- oh, you don't know local units probably - well, here, try these." He digs up a pair and hands them over.

[aeskhyne]

He tries the shoes. The shoes fit! Not perfectly, but well enough. "Thanks! Sorry about your science!"