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]

"A bit, yes."

[prodigal_miser]

"I actually can change the color of them, if you want me to, now that I think about it. It's pretty easy to do," he muses, looking at the rocks. He's only a little tempted to make them a fluorescent green, but he's supposed to be conserving power for the larger spells he'll do later.

[dark_light]

"Black goes with everything," says Isabella.

[prodigal_miser]

Obligingly, Adarin turns them black. It's easier than shaping them, and barely takes any planning at all. He says something else she wouldn't understand, and they are then black.

"Better?" he asks, holding up the now appropriately colored rocks.

[dark_light]

"Perfect."

[prodigal_miser]

"Oh? So you don't want them to help you with the alethiometer?" he teases. "They're perfect as they are?"

[dark_light]

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin laughs. "Right, right. That will get me booted out of the attic or stabbed. Or possibly both."

[dark_light]

"I won't stab you for not helping me," snorts Isabella. "Witches can no longer get away with murder."

[prodigal_miser]

"You could, before?" asks Adarin, somewhat surprised.

[dark_light]

"Of mortals? Yes. What could mortals do about it?" says Isabella. "That doesn't mean everyone took advantage, but if a witch killed a mortal who wasn't under another witch's protection even as recently as a hundred years ago, she could get away with it. These days mortals have enough technology and witches are integrated enough into the general population that it's not like that."

[prodigal_miser]

"That makes sense. Sad to say it's something of the same in my world, though few do," he replies. "And... What sort of technology do they have to defend themselves?"

[dark_light]

"Security cameras, for instance, so they know who to retaliate against with a wide variety of overwhelming ordnance. Witch magic isn't very good at interacting with manufactured things - we can, it's just harder. And anyone who expects to be a target makes friends with some clan and gets wards put on them too."

[prodigal_miser]

"I have absolutely no idea what... 'security cameras' are," he informs her. "But I can't say I'm sorry that casual murder is more difficult to do."

[dark_light]

"Do you want me to explain security cameras?"

[prodigal_miser]

"That would be fantastic, thank you."

[dark_light]

"A camera is a device that can record a flat still image of whatever you point it at. A video camera can record a whole sequence of events. And a security camera is a video camera that's set up in a store or on a street or something, to have recorded evidence if anything goes on where it's pointed."

[prodigal_miser]

"Oh, alright. That all makes sense," he says, agreeably. "But you said mortals don't have magic? So I'm a little confused."

He does not have matching technology in his world; Isabella might be realizing that.

[dark_light]

"It's not magic, it's - okay, what non-magical thing was most recently invented where you're from?"

[prodigal_miser]

"Hmm," he says, stopping to think. "The one I know best is two pieces of glass that go in a frame to change what a person sees and can be used to correct vision."

[dark_light]

"So you have spectacles. Okay. That's pretty cool, right? And it doesn't take any magic to make. It turns out there are a lot of non-magical things to invent and we have a few hundred years' head start on you guys."

[prodigal_miser]

"... And they can get the equivalent of a type of scrying through technology? That's... Both nice to hear and somewhat unsettling."

[dark_light]

"They've got all kinds of cool things. I have a phone -" She pulls out her cellphone. "I can use this to talk to my dad from across the country, or order food delivered, or summon emergency services, and access the internet, which is basically all the world's non-secret knowledge in a technological library that can be accessed by anybody with a compatible device."

[prodigal_miser]

"Nevermind. I take it back. That's amazing and I want a pocket library," he says, almost immediately. He coughs, right after. "I mean uh. That's interesting."

[dark_light]

Isabella grins and puts her phone away. "I'm pretty sure you couldn't get 'pocket library' service where you're from. Requires a lot of elaborate technological infrastructure."