picknicking

[dark_light]

There's something unutterably pleasant about landing in a bit of woods in the middle of Nowhere, Manitoba, removing a sandwich and an apple from her backpack and having a picnic before she's ready to move on. She could eat in midair, but it makes it too likely that she'll drop something and find it unrecoverable.

Path's on her knee, and her cloudpine is propped up against the tree next to her.

Comments

[dark_light]

"I don't know off the top of my head where to pick it wild. Will dried do?"

[prodigal_miser]

"Quite well, yes. Do you have some with you, or is there a place that sells it dried?" asks Adarin, smiling at his luck.

[dark_light]

"Not with me, but I could get it. Are you just going to take some chamomile and go home and never come back, is that the plan?"

[prodigal_miser]

"Well, if it's easy to come by then I'll probably be back in the future. Best to choose the plane you know rather than bumble into one you don't," he explains. "And I wasn't planning on leaving immediately, I would hurt myself so soon after travelling here."

"Not to mention," says the kagu, leaping from his shoulder onto the ground, flapping her wings a bit to land gracefully. She manages, flightless though she is. "We would both like to know as much as possible about daemons, now that I exist."

[dark_light]

"...Oh, perhaps you don't know - you mustn't let anybody else touch her. Or while you're here touch anybody else's daemon. Ever."

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin goes rather still. "What will happen?" he asks, gravely. It's obvious he's taking this seriously.

[dark_light]

"It... well, it's never happened to me, so I can't describe it exactly, but it feels - bad. Sometimes married couples do it and if they're close enough then it doesn't hurt, but you'd have to be really sure."

[prodigal_miser]

"Ah. I'll refrain from touching any daemon without being absolutely certain it's alright," says Adarin, with absolute seriousness. He peers at his kagu. "I will need to practice my shields, while I'm here. Lenora will no doubt try to pet you."

The kagu bobs her head in a nod. "They don't expect us back for a while. We're not risking harm," she explains. "We were heading off a problem at the source, not desperately searching for a cure."

[dark_light]

"If you do wind up separating she could just fly out of the way of anybody who tried to - pet her," says Isabella. "If this person wouldn't listen to just being told to back off, that is. How did your magic decide where in the world to put you? Why here, why not the middle of an interstate highway or in the ocean or Antarctica or midair or, for that matter, in a field of chamomile?"

[prodigal_miser]

"She is likely to not listen," says the kagu, gravely.

Adarin leans down to pet her, just a little. Pet, pet.

"That's the wording of my spell - If I spent so much power specifying that I wanted to be in a field of chamomile or next to a supply of it, I wouldn't be able to have enough to throw around on safety. Since I have something of a budget, I focused on arriving in a flat, stable place, where no large objects are moving towards me or nothing's likely to kill me on sight," he explains. "If I spent all that I can comfortably use to be next to my goal, I would be defenseless if I missed something."

He thinks. "Aside from that, I think it chose the closest spot that fit the criteria. In comparison to where I was coming from, that is."

[dark_light]

"...In what sense is this spot closer? Are you from another planet and it happened to be in that direction," she points straight up, "or is there something else going on?"

[prodigal_miser]

"It's... Somewhat hard to explain. Planes aren't directly next to each other, like, say, I am to my daemon. I'm technically from another planet, but it's more accurate to say that I'm from another plane. There are some places that are closer to others because of how each plane works - in basic terms, one plane can have any number of quirks to it that bring it closer to other planes in some senses, but further away from others in another sense. In the physical sense, this specific part of the world isn't any closer to any part of mine."

He motions around them! "This was, apparently, closest in terms of how easily it could be to get to in comparison to something in my plane. It was more similar, in terms neither of us could fully understand, or at least nothing I could understand, and I've studied it most of my life. There are planes that seem similar to us on the surface, but at the core are utterly, completely different."

The kagu decides to join in with, "It's a complicated subject. No one is quite sure how they work. Some are clustered together, some aren't - some are far, far away from each other but seem near the same."

[dark_light]

"Huh. Well, this is kind of the middle of nowhere. I flew here; does your magic let you fly?"

[prodigal_miser]

"Extremely short distances, but I'd fall out of the sky in about ten minutes if I tried flying now," he says.

[dark_light]

"I can prrrrobably take a passenger. But here's the point where I start wondering whether there's anything in it for me if I usher you to civilization and show you where to buy chamomile."

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin seems amused by this! "Well, I'd be happy to either pay you for your services, or help you in some way through my magic. I'm not sure what kinds of things you'd need, though."

[dark_light]

"And witches avoid using money per se and I don't know what your magic can do that mine can't, apart from moving you from plane to plane."

[prodigal_miser]

"Ah. Well. I can do some simple spells for vanity right now, if you want it," says Adarin. Something in the way he's saying it seems he probably wouldn't respect her very much if she took him up on that offer. "On the more practical sense, I can make illusions, or portals from one place to another that will stick around once I've left. If those don't appeal, if there's a problem you're consistently having I might be able to help with it if you explain it."

[dark_light]

"The portals are tempting. But what I most want is a solution to mortality. Failing that directly, I want an alethiometer, which I expect to be able to get myself eventually, and the ability to read it, which is notoriously difficult even when studied for a lifework."

[prodigal_miser]

"There are no solutions to mortality that I know of," he says carefully, regarding Isabella in a new light. "But I can do a scry or two with little trouble, if you'd like me to help find an... 'Alethiometer.' Reading it I might be able to help with, but I'm not sure. How do they work?"

[dark_light]

"An alethiometer is a truth-telling device," says Isabella. "There are a number of symbols around the edge, each of which has a staggering number of meanings. You can ask it a question by turning a dial to the symbols relevant to the inquiry, and meditating on which of the meanings you want and what the grammar of the whole mess is, and get replies in a similar manner."

[prodigal_miser]

"That sounds like an utter nightmare," he says sympathetically. "I could make a spell that would bring up all possible translations for each symbol every time it's brought up, but I doubt that would help with the problem. I'll help how I can, however."

[dark_light]

"It would be an incremental help, certainly - there are dictionaries, but they go only a few hundred meanings deep per symbol, and increasingly speculatively."

[prodigal_miser]

He nods, thinking about the problem. "I'd have to spell an object to help, since I doubt you want to wait around for me to show up to cast it for you? Paper or stone always works reasonably well in these sorts of situations, but you might want something else. The object would change and show all known meanings for a symbol in writing as you wanted."

[dark_light]

"Either paper or stone would work well for me - can it do them in order? The alethiometer stops a specific number of times on the relevant symbols. If you can get them to work in order..."