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]

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.

[aeskhyne]

They're a busy couple of weeks, as documented in Kaylo's list, which grows every time Teah manages to consider it relevant; after a couple of days it turns from an increasingly hefty scroll to a small book.

He eradicates every disease in the world that lights can't touch, and plenty that they can. He interferes extensively in Ryganaav as Kindness, mostly to save lives, in varyingly subtle ways. He's so charmed by the library creatures that he keeps including some whenever they are remotely justified, and soon many people have helpful little flocks of fluffy bird-feeted Snitchlings ranging in size from 'large pea' to 'small grape', with the ability to pick up and carry objects hundreds or thousands of times their own weight. It's tremendously cute. Speaking of tremendously cute, the world's first magical puppy kicks off a bit of a fad, and a couple of enterprising individuals ask him for an assortment of interesting dogs capable of growing up and making more dogs. He provides.

He checks in with old petitioners every so often, but happily, most of them don't seem to need him for anything.

When Kaylo gets his attention, he finishes a few prayers he had his eye on and then says, "Cool! How's it work? Want me to update the book to see if you can see it?"

[alicornucopia]

"I can actually see a little even when you just talk, but yes, please - and if you make me a sophisticated map that displays even extremely tiny to-scale replicas of what you're doing or have done, it should work on that too."

[aeskhyne]

"Huh."

The book updates. It looks like a wash of shimmering, sparkling multicoloured light racing over the pages where he records more things.

"I'll have to think about the other thing a little..." which involves going off and doing a tick's worth of other prayers, and coming back and updating the book again. And putting a library creature on top of it to see if Kaylo sees persistent Teah-magic (answer: yes, the library creature is extremely shiny and throws little rainbows as it dances around on top of the miracle index and flutters its little wings).

[alicornucopia]

"What are these things for?" wonders Kaylo, coaxing the library creature onto his finger.

[aeskhyne]

"They carry stuff! I mean, originally I just thought I might as well look for useful books and might as well mark the ones I found and they were the first thing I thought of to do that, but they're library creatures. You can ask them to fetch stuff or put it away. They could probably carry you if you asked, they're pretty strong. And they're little and fluffy and cute!"

Teah is so proud of his library creatures. And their littleness and fluffiness and cuteness.

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo shoos the library creature off his finger. "Okay. So I can see stuff you did that persists autonomously - I wonder if magic things like that in your world persisted after Korulen and whoever it was summoned you? - and I can see things you're actively doing and if I'm understanding the rest of this correctly I can see what you're paying attention to if I squint at least within this room, I need to revise that part if I do another draft..."