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

[alicornucopia]

"Be going to feed you the potion; if the results are good she can follow through, but then so can I - can you manufacture one if I ask or do I have to go to a witch's and buy one? - and memorize a phonetic sentence in Draconic and ask you if you wake up."

[aeskhyne]

"All right." He transmits this information to Leekath. (The list continues to grow in the meantime, although he hasn't been recording his conversation with Kaylo on it.) "Pretty sure I can come up with a potion, but let me look one up and double-check—"

He double-checks, answering a few prayers and updating the list again while he's at it.

"Yeah, I can do that."

[alicornucopia]

"Okay. Give it to her, tell her to wait, I'll go look up what there is in the way of foretelling spells and pick the least stupid one; you can presumably tell her how to ask about the bottom of the world in Draconic and she can get on learning to pronounce it."

[aeskhyne]

He appears Leekath a bottled waking potion with a little tag on it that says 'not yet', and - after observing her collection of music crystals - a crystal with "Which way to the bottom of the world?" recorded on it in Draconic, and a note explaining that if they go through with the experiment she is to ask him this question.

Then he offers Kaylo the choice of a sparkly teleport to the library, answers some prayers, has a quick peek through the library for relevant books, and marks the ones he finds with tiny little fluffy creatures clinging to the tops of their spines. The creatures are brightly coloured, and look sort of like extremely small Snitch-winged bird-feeted pompoms.

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo goes ahead and skips the lift trip, uses conventional library spells to get ahold of the books, picks up a critter, snorts, puts it down, and starts looking through the selection. Eventually he has one picked out. It requires a diagram. "Can I get a stick of summoning chalk? I don't have my own at the moment."

[aeskhyne]

A stick of summoning chalk appears! The library creatures form a tidy little pile on an out-of-the-way corner of Kaylo's table once he has collected all the books that have one attached.

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo takes the chalk, checks out the book, and goes into one of the practice rooms attached to the library rather than all the way back to his room. He starts drawing his diagram.

[aeskhyne]

The library creatures disperse. Teah watches Kaylo, listens to Leekath, and grants assorted prayers.

[alicornucopia]

"All right," says Kaylo, when his diagram is done, "tell her she can go ahead and intend on giving you the potion, now, we'll see how this goes."

[aeskhyne]

The tag on Leekath's waking potion changes its message to Time to be going to use me!

[alicornucopia]

Leekath pockets the potion and gets up and walks towards the lift.

Kaylo, in his practice room, casts his spell.

[aeskhyne]

If Leekath were to go through with her plan, the result would be: a sleeping Teah-body, a purple floor.

[alicornucopia]

"All right, got a clean result," says Kaylo, "you can stop her unless you really want the room to have a purple floor. Looks like you are beyond witchcraft."

[aeskhyne]

"Purple floor would be funny, but yeah, nah." The tag on Leekath's bottle changes to I am harmless but ineffective. "Seems like this kind of thing actually works, though, which could come in handy if we wanted to try anything else..."

[alicornucopia]

Leekath turns around.

"I mean, we could send you a light, but they don't usually wake people up out of sleep," says Kaylo. "I think my next step is to make a custom analysis and see if I can watch you doing things and see if that inspires any bright ideas."

[aeskhyne]

"Sounds interesting. Go for it."

[alicornucopia]

"Okay. It'll take a while." Kaylo leaves the practice room, sends the book back whence it came, and gets some more.

[aeskhyne]

The library creatures seem to be excited by books moving around; they follow them, making soft whiffling noises.

Teah keeps half an eye on Kaylo while he goes and answers more prayers.

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo works diligently, looking things up, making notes and doing scratchwork.

[aeskhyne]

It's mildly interesting to read 'over his shoulder', but it'd be a lot more interesting if Teah could spare the attention to look up what all the bits and pieces mean. He's busy, though. He is always, always busy.

[alicornucopia]

As news of his existence spreads, he gets busier. Several independent people are conducting deliberate experiments. Various people are opportunistically taking advantage to solicit long-held wants of miscellaneous kinds.

[aeskhyne]

He deals with the experiments much the same way he did at home - ignore a lot of people who are praying only to see if it works or find out what he can do, treat meaningful prayers that happen to be occurring in an experimental context just the way he would outside of one, and occasionally give out whimsical results or hurried, nondeliberately-cryptic verbal responses.

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo would probably be annoyed with him stymieing the experimenters if a) he knew about it b) he didn't have a direct line. But he is busily inventing.

[aeskhyne]

Hey, stymieing experimenters is informative in its own way. It informs them that he has better things to do, and an offbeat sense of humour. If he very seriously answered every single experimental prayer, that would just create an expectation that he answers experimental prayers seriously, which would ultimately turn out to be false. (He's been through this logic already back home; in fact he suspects he's been through it more times than he remembers.)

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo takes about two weeks, given that he's still attending classes and also now has parents to call on a daily basis, to complete a draft of the spell.

"Hey, Teah, I have something that should let me see your magic," he reports when he's done.