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

[or_coincidence]

"That would be nice of you! How would your magic do it?"

[alicornucopia]

"I'd draw a fiddly little circle specifying the spell I want to use - which matters not only because different spells do different things but also because you can't have the exact same spell active twice per caster simultaneously - and then I'd wave my hand like so," he waves his hand like so, "or something, I'd have to look up the exact power pull for whichever spell I settled on, and then I'd say the magic word, while concentrating on aiming at you in particular, and then there you'd be."

[or_coincidence]

"Interesting! What are the fiddly little circles like?"

[alicornucopia]

"Two concentric circles, enough room for whatever you're summoning in the middle, various symbols in between - I'd draw you one but I don't have enough of the stuff memorized."

[or_coincidence]

"And the symbols specify which spell, or do they specify other things too?"

[alicornucopia]

"The symbols don't fully specify which spell - they and the word do, together. Words never duplicate, gestures often do, circles technically can although they usually don't."

[or_coincidence]

"I think I want to learn all about Elcenian magic."

[alicornucopia]

"Trade you."

[or_coincidence]

"It's a deal." She holds up a hoof.

[alicornucopia]

"I have no idea what to do with that," he says of her hoof. "If it were a hand I'd shake it. Do you shake hooves?"

[or_coincidence]

"Yes," she giggles.

[alicornucopia]

So he bends down and shakes her hoof.

[or_coincidence]

It is a very tiny hoof, and... somehow... capable of clasping his hand well enough to shake back.

[alicornucopia]

How convenient.

"So my name's Kaylo," he says.

[or_coincidence]

"Blueberry," says Blueberry. "It's nice to meet you! Should I start figuring out how to send you back home now?"

[alicornucopia]

"Sure, if you want to tell me when to summon you on my end in terms of something suitably non-astronomy-based."

[or_coincidence]

"I don't know..." she says thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, we might not use the same units of time. So any measurement I gave would be pretty inexact. How hard is it for your magic to pass messages between worlds, as opposed to people?"

[alicornucopia]

"I can send you letters and collect them again later, but it's the tedious circle business every time. I can make a decent estimate of time conversions if you can show me something keeping time."

[or_coincidence]

"Hmm. Well, there's the clock."

She points a wee hoof at the clock. It's a little cuckoo clock.

"The long fast pointer goes by one little mark per minute, and there are sixty minutes in an hour, and the short slow pointer goes by one of its big marks per hour, and there are twenty-four hours in a day. And a second is one-sixtieth of a minute."

[alicornucopia]

"The language handled the ratios for me," Kaylo says, watching seconds tick by. "So a second looks to be about a split, aaaand, arithmetic arithmetic, an hour is close enough to an angle to make very little difference in the smaller quantities."

[or_coincidence]

"Okay then. Let's say... half an hour after I send you back, you can bring me to Elcenia? Does that seem like a reasonable amount of time, or should it be longer?"

[alicornucopia]

"It's going to take me longer than that to find, select, and draw a spell, and it could take a couple angles to find a teacher who'll authorize me to do it even if you don't account for the casting part," says Kaylo.

[or_coincidence]

"Hmm... okay, three hours? If it gets to be much more than that I'd want to wait until tomorrow and that seems more complicated."

[alicornucopia]

"Three hours is doable. And once I have the circle I can mostly reuse it without a problem so we can work it out from there. I don't think my roommate wants overnight guests, even tiny unicorn overnight guests."

[or_coincidence]

"I probably wouldn't be allowed to stay overnight in a strange world anyway," she says.