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]

Magic puppy! It's terribly fluffy and soft. And it looooves her.

Back to the recently resurrected in Reverni, now that he's not talking to anyone and remembers them again - he can bring more people back if they're still asking.

[alicornucopia]

They haven't let up; they keep encouraging each other when one of them is inclined to give up.

[aeskhyne]

They want a whole list, something like a dozen in total, but at least it's all in one group - he grabs onto a prayer, makes sure of his count, appears them a note that says Resurrection takes time; I'm working on it now in the local language but signed Teah in Draconic, and dives into the past.

Something like five degrees later, they can have the entire parade of requested spouses and relatives, appearing in one long coiling swirl of mist. And now he'd better check on the rest of the world.

[alicornucopia]

And now they are all happy. The first wisher is a dragon; she reads the name and understands what it means.

A woman in Baveria doesn't want to be pregnant anymore. Narax has managed to get to his wife and rather than continue to argue with the hospital staff he has teleported her to his house in Imilaat, where they are kissing. A boy in Mekand who is not of a flying species wishes to be able to fly. A pixie in Orzon could use a CC boost. Shirra's parents have got ahold of his line rep and heard the news and are currently flying to Corenta. A lady in Rannde wishes it would stop raining.

[aeskhyne]

The woman in Baveria gets the choice of whether or not to cease being pregnant. The boy in Mekand can have wings, Snitchlike in their spare design and ability to lift a weight far greater than their surface area should allow, able to fold up neatly and comfortably to fit beneath clothing. The pixie can have the reservoir's attention. The rain in Rannde can be gently shooed.

[alicornucopia]

The pregnant lady ceases. The boy swoops into the air.

A girl in Larotia wants to get to her music lesson on time. A man in Aveha wishes he hadn't screwed up in his knitting project a hundred rows ago. A lady in Mekand wants a pretty dress for an upcoming party. An old woman in Mryne wishes her singing voice was as good as it was when she was young. A zoologist in Ebrene wants to find one of those butterflies her friend said he saw that doesn't correspond to any known species. A boy in Imminthal wishes there weren't too many jellyfish around to go swimming. A man in Imilaat wishes people would stop closing the main street to have parades when he has places to be.

[aeskhyne]

The girl in Larotia will get to her music lesson on time, courtesy of a rainbow-sparkling teleportation. The man's knitting fixes itself, glimmering with coloured lights. The lady in Mekand receives, after he spends a moment getting to know local fashion and her taste, the dress of her dreams. The old woman receives a solid health blessing and particular attention to rejuvenating her voice. The zoologist can have a little mechanical butterfly, closely resembling the species in question, that 'knows' where nearby members are and will happily lead her to them. The jellyfish are called away on urgent business. The man in Imilaat receives the choice of one rainbow-sparkling teleportation to whatever destination he likes.

[alicornucopia]

That one garnet dragon who loaned him shoes wants - contradictorily enough - all the incomprehensible new magic to slow the hell down, and - his parents back.

[aeskhyne]

Huh. He pulls their history to get a sense of the grievances involved - his direct memory is still very fuzzy about his mortal life - looks up the deaths of the parents in question, and prepares to bestow upon Kaylo his very own flying note: You might wanna go outside. -Teah

Because his parents' natural forms won't fit in the school building.

It takes him about a degree to pull them out of the past and reconstruct them just outside the building.

And just as he's about to send the note and let go of the prayer... it occurs to him that here's someone who obviously has an interest in figuring out magic, and he kind of has a problem with not understanding his own magic on any level deeper than the strictly practical.

He adds a postscript. Feel like helping me figure out how I work? I can't do anything that's not answering a prayer. If you want to talk—want to talk.

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo doesn't get back to him for a while, because he has parents outside to reunite with and catch up on things and complain about his aunt to.

Ten degrees (and numerous small-scale run-of-the-mill wishes from around the world) later, when they are flying to Corenta to have a word with the aunt, Kaylo's back in his room.

"Like this?" he asks the air, concentrating. "Is this working? Testing, testing? Teah?"

[aeskhyne]

"Yep. Hi." He speaks Draconic - it's the most expressive language available, therefore faster to speak in between miscellaneous prayers - and instead of his usual no-human-in-particular whisper, he uses his body's voice, now that he knows what it sounds like. It's a surprisingly comfortable fit. He supposes it shouldn't be surprising.

"Looks like you're not in the loop about some stuff - the human who borrowed your shoes earlier was me, in some kind of mortal incarnation. I didn't know I was him until a vampire hearer - those are legit, by the way, I don't know when the news will be getting out but all the vampires should know it by now - tracked him down through a note I gave her; he didn't know he was me until Keo asked him why he was calling himself 'Teah', and then he collapsed. He's permanently asleep now, which means I'm permanently active; I'm awake while he's asleep, I figured out that much. I can find out plenty about your world's magic just by looking but I get damn little looking at myself, and I want to figure out what the limits are and if I can get around any of them. If I can, I want to be on all the time here and at home. That probably sounds a little like hell to you, but I promise it's possible to get used to me, and I'm not going to keep making huge sweeping changes one after the other forever. That's only because there's so many sweeping changes around here begging for me to make them. Did you hear dragons aren't gonna die of old age anymore?"

He keeps half a proverbial eye on Kaylo's response while he catches up with miscellaneous prayers.

[alicornucopia]

"No, I did not hear that," says Kaylo to thin air. "Can I get a list of what you've been doing - and what prompts it - and any 'prayers' you heard and didn't do anything about and what you know about why - see if there's a pattern?"

[aeskhyne]

"Sure, hold that thought while I take care of some other stuff and I'll come back and give you one."

A couple of ticks later, Kaylo gets a full itemized list of answered prayers and the unanswered ones that he remembers, with notes on motivation and limitations. It's a little terse, but still pretty comprehensive. Also mostly in Draconic, except where he quotes things he said in a different language.

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo starts reading. When he gets a couple dozen items down he says, "Why is it brain stuff is so hard?"

[aeskhyne]

"Complicated, finicky - most other stuff I can fudge some details, brain stuff is all details. Resurrection's actually some of the easiest brain stuff around, because it's just a copy job, but it still takes ages compared to almost anything else."

[alicornucopia]

Reading, reading, "But you figured out dementia as an entire category before? How long did it take?"

[aeskhyne]

"About a month from the first prayer - some planning and figuring and looking at how stuff worked, some waiting for somebody else to make the prayer once I had it. I got lucky with it; it was easier than it could've been."

[alicornucopia]

"So you might have something like that rolled out for depression at some point in the medium-term future?"

[aeskhyne]

"Depression's harder. I've been hacking at it for longer and I'm almost nowhere on it. Cuddly toys are the best I can do."

[alicornucopia]

"I know there's potions some people seem to get better on, so you could look in on that... anyway. What's the complete procedure from when somebody - let's take a simple one, gets a headache - to when you move on from them?"

[aeskhyne]

He discovers that Draconic is flowering with new vocabulary for things he's always needed to express as metaphors even to himself.

"I 'hear' the prayer, I 'grab onto' it, I 'look' to see what the deal is. 'Hearing' means I get the thoughts behind it, not just the words, even if they're saying it out loud too. But that's the only kind of thought I can read. If it's something simple like a headache, I go in and fix it, and then I 'let go'. I can only do things while I'm 'holding onto' a prayer, and only things that are relevant to it, for my definition of relevant, and I can only 'grab onto' it while the person's still praying. Which is why I don't talk to people a lot and get kind of terse and cryptic sometimes when I do, because time spent talking is time spent not doing anything else while prayers keep slipping away. Speaking of which, there's a bunch more little things to go on your list if you want 'em."

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah, just update it whenever it's convenient. Why are you rendering it as 'prayers'? What does a person have to be doing to get your attention?"

[aeskhyne]

The list grows.

"Has to be a wish or a prayer that's - directed outward, not just somebody sitting and thinking about wanting something, and it has to be directed either at me or at something vague enough that I could count as it. Like the mage in Ryganaav who wanted her gods 'or someone kinder', or the Aleists who keep asking 'watchful spirits' for things, or the girl in Erubia who wanted help from 'the saviors'." (He quotes all those phrases in the relevant languages.) "At home people mostly know how to get my attention if they want it, but sometimes they try praying to miscellaneous gods just to see what works, and it seems like as long as the god they're asking for doesn't have a definition in their mind that excludes me, it works. And wishing on things like stars and birthday candles works too, if they're not thinking of the star or the candle as a specific person inhabiting that specific thing, if it's more like a convenient stand-in for Magic Or Whatever or a superstition they're not really thinking about that closely."

[alicornucopia]

"Okay. There have to be millions of people doing things that fit that definition at any given time; what elevated these ones to consideration? Or am I wrong and Elcenians don't do this that often for whatever reason - in which case how do you sift through them at home where it's common knowledge?"

[aeskhyne]

"It's kind of noisy. I can filter them a little - like when I got here, that first item covers like a dozen different prayers for candy, I was looking for easy familiar stuff. When I got the wolfrider and the shren I was looking for high emotional weight. When I'm not filtering I just pick at random-ish, whatever catches my interest in the moment - I tend to try to jump around geographically instead of staying clustered in one place, and when things come up that have really high emotional weight or involve somebody I've helped before, they catch my eye a little easier. That's part of what I mean when I talk about keeping an eye on somebody - that I'll recognize their prayers."