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

[cardistry]

"Differently than coordinates for places inside worlds. Inside a world, you have the dimensional coordinates of the world and then the physical coordinates of your location in the world. In interdimensional space, it's - measured almost a completely different way; physical location coordinates only apply inside dimensional pockets, and the locations of dimensional pockets in interdimensional space don't work the same way as the locations of worlds, and in different parts of interdimensional space, coordinates for dimensional pockets work a different way than other parts."

[alicornucopia]

"That sounds complicated. Any established way to map it?"

[cardistry]

"Probably lots, but I never learned any. I have a built-in coordinate sense. I don't do it by numbers, I do it by feel."

[alicornucopia]

"Fair enough. That a Device thing or a you thing?"

[cardistry]

"A me thing, I guess. It's not a Device fundamental - it's built in, but it could've not been built in. So probably there's other Devices who don't have it."

[alicornucopia]

"So there's this bunch of loosely clustered worlds that are all sharing magical regularities, and then you got pulled here, but you're still working. That's lucky, you realize, if someone had made something like you as a wizarding construct -"

A paper-pale girl with black hair and black eyes approaches Kaylo and taps him on the shoulder. He looks up at her, then says, "yeah, go for it," and tilts his head.

She doesn't do anything in response to this immediately, though; she's staring at Brilliance.

[cardistry]

"...Hi?" says Brilliance, uncertainly. That is a weird look she is giving him. He is confused and mildly alarmed.

[alicornucopia]

"You're interesting," she asserts. "And you have a hhikiiia."

"Oh, grand," mutters Kaylo.

[cardistry]

"Huh?"

[alicornucopia]

"This is Leekath - you I never got your name - Leekath believes that she can hear the 'voices' of inanimate objects, because this is a delusion that affects some members of her species," sighs Kaylo. "Leekath, why don't you just bite me and then go do something else -"

"I want to listen to him," Leekath says.

[cardistry]

"Brilliance," says Brilliance, in vampire since that is the language that contains the word whose definition he's still unclear on and Leekath evidently speaks it. "I have a voice, I'm talking, last I checked nobody had to be delusional to hear me, do you mean listen to me a different way?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yes," says Leekath.

"And I'm Kaylo - apparently she's under the impression that you count as an inanimate object. Leekath, if you keep loitering like a creepy person I'm rescinding permission, there's an entire waiting list who want to get their fangs into me."

Leekath sighs. "May I?" she asks.

"If you're quick about it."

She sinks her fangs into Kaylo's neck.

[cardistry]

"I still wanna know what kind of listen she means," says Brilliance. "...Also, looks like you're ice cream."

Speaking of which it has been way too long since he tasted something and he is just gonna fix that right now.

[alicornucopia]

"I'm not ice cream, I'm a dragon," says Kaylo. "Dragons are tasty, to vampires. She means delusional kind of listening, was I not clear?"

Leekath makes a disgruntled noise around Kaylo's jugular vein.

[cardistry]

"I mean Leekath is reacting to you like I react to tasty food," says Brilliance after he has had a small bite of ice cream. "Not like anybody else seems to react to tasty food. Delusional kind of listening isn't an answer, if somebody's looking at me like that and 'listening' I wanna know what they're hearing, whether or not it's their own brain making it up."

[alicornucopia]

"Dragons are really really tasty," elaborates Kaylo. "If you're going to talk about vampiric inanimate audition with her maybe I'll come find you later - you'll be around, right?"

[cardistry]

"I repeat: they give me food," he says, grinning.

[alicornucopia]

"Right then."

When Leekath detaches, Kaylo gets up and leaves. She sits down, listening intently.

[cardistry]

"What are you hearing?" he asks.

Currently it's physical specs - his dormant form is a box of such-and-such dimensions, bearing the Bicycle logo in red and blue, containing fifty-four cards including one ace of spades, one ace of clubs, one ace of hearts, one ace of diamonds...

[alicornucopia]

"You can be a box this big," she gestures, "with cards that aren't like local cards, in it, when you're dormant, but you could change the details of what it looks like..."

[cardistry]

"Soooo you're not crazy," he says. "Why's Kaylo think you're crazy?"

[alicornucopia]

"Everyone thinks I'm crazy. Me and all the other hearers."

[cardistry]

"Aren't there things where you could just show them? I guess not everybody walks around with their alternate form specs hanging out, but still... it's just weird, that other guy was so insistent, he even got mad about it, but he's totally blatantly wrong. I mean, I guess there's a chance you were just spying on me earlier. I dunno, tell me something else."

[alicornucopia]

"Well, I think a lot of us do go crazy," says Leekath frankly. "Your name is whatever word means 'brilliance' in the language you're speaking and you can do them all even Draconic as a native feature of being your kind of thing and you picked it yourself and you can also be a staff that's shaped like this -" She wavers a hand through the air in the correct curve.

[cardistry]

"Yeah, you're totally reading my specs," he says. "That's weird. I wonder if that guy will write me off if I tell him he's wrong about the hearing thing. He was kinda fun to talk to about magic stuff. I guess this is magic stuff, I don't know what else it could be."