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]

"Wanted to know if she needed to cover for me with the cops if your family reported you missing, more like. Please rest assured that I'm not going to attempt to claim you or anybody at daggerpoint. I actually don't - date at all."

[prodigal_miser]

Oh.

Well.

"I continue to be on board for 'let's not be horrible to the opposite sex' - it'll catch on eventually."

He doesn't ask about the dating. If she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to. That would be that, except - Vern nudges him and gives him a meaningful look. She's right, of course. He'd regret not knowing.

"Any particular reason, or just no interest...?" he asks, gently.

[dark_light]

"Essentially - I do not know why this is a thing witches do or what it might feel like from the inside to want to, so it seems safer to give the potential impulse a nice wide berth."

[prodigal_miser]

"Fair enough. That's very noble of you, I think."

[dark_light]

"Eh, we'll see if my resolve holds up when I'm a fifty-year-old virgin or whatever. Though I'm crossing my fingers that the alethiometer can help, I'm not sure if it'll be clear enough to act on."

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin nods. "Good luck. I hope that it's not something about witches, just a cultural thing."

[dark_light]

"It's not so easy to tell. I haven't detected sharp object related impulses in my psyche, but that could just be because I haven't been testing myself with live ammunition, so to speak."

[prodigal_miser]

"Makes sense. If you decide to eventually test with 'live ammunition' - would you like me to try and protect whoever it is from daggerpoint claiming?"

From his lap, Vern is giving him a look. Adarin just keeps petting her.

[dark_light]

Path is kind of giving him a look too.

"I'll keep the offer in mind - it's very kind. But maybe the alethiometer will tell me I'm being silly and it's not in my head to be found at all, wouldn't that be nice?"

[prodigal_miser]

Little tiny smile. "Yeah, that would be nice."

Ignore the look from his daemon. Ignore it. No, he's smiling for alternative reasons, what are you talking about you crazy bird.

[dark_light]

Path laughs softly and gives Vernaia a significant glance.

[prodigal_miser]

Vernaia returns it. She makes a little, soft, hopeful trill.

[dark_light]

"Time and thingamajig will tell."

[prodigal_miser]

"Hopefully so, and the alethiometer's helpful."

He is not, in fact, this dense. He's just shy, and used to being paranoid towards anything that involves romantics. Habits are hard to break, even when he's not home.

[dark_light]

Well, Isabella's not going to push it, not today.

She looks out the window. "I can start magicking rocks if you like."

[prodigal_miser]

"Ooo!" he says, brightly. "I would like!"

Adarin's glad she's not being pushy - he's very slow and deliberate, with his choices.

[dark_light]

Out she goes. It's started to cool off with the sunset. She finds seven rocks of roughly the same size, with a little looking between herself and Path, and lays them out on a windowsill. "I'm going to do the same spell seven times and change nothing but the goddess name and the tweaks on that line necessary to make it continue to scan," she says. "One of them won't light up at all - Kas Petaal is the goddess of the new moon, which gives no light. The others will be all different kinds of light."

[prodigal_miser]

He follows! He sits at an appropriate spot to look at all the rocks, looking interested. "Very systematic of you, I approve."

[dark_light]

Isabella grins, and picks up the first rock, and starts speaking over it.

The spell isn't English, but his spell will pick up the meaning - it scans and rhymes prettily, in the original:

"Segaard Oskei's light I call,
Brightness for me to see by,
Shine from that which I hold."

The rock starts to glow with an intense, warm yellow light.

"Sunshine," says Isabella. "That's the brightest version, and the most commonly used."

[prodigal_miser]

"Pretty," he pronounces, smiling at it. "I doubt this spell's anything secretive, but I do feel I should warn you; the translation spell I understood - most of that, I missed part of the first bit."

[dark_light]

"That's fine, the language isn't anything like a well-kept secret. I haven't bothered to learn it because writing spells in English works just as well, but I could if I wanted and so could you."

She picks up the second rock. The first line is slightly modified to accommodate the syllable change:

"Kas Petaal, it's your light I call,
Brightness for me to see by,
Shine from that which I hold."

This rock does, to all appearances, absolutely nothing.

She puts it down and repeats the procedure:

"Evisa Iannakara's light, come..." (The rock shines, like a firefly, faintly bluish and organic in character, not nearly as bright as the first.)

"Yambe Akka's light I call..." (The rock is speckled with faint yet attractive dots of starry light.)

"Farakhel Nimah's light, come here..." (The rock behaves like the waxing moon, a sliver of glow expanding until it covers the rest of the rock - and then it goes out.)

"Amariah Lytess's light is summoned..." (The rock lights up with gentle silvery moonglow and holds steady.)

"Memma Belir's light I call..." (This one is the reverse of Farakhel Nimah's; it starts like Amariah Lytess's and then slides into darkness.)

[prodigal_miser]

Watching and listening with fascination, Adarin notes all of these effects. The translation spell is incredibly helpful, here - he likes understanding everything that's going on. Once Isabella's finished with the demonstration, he grins, looking pleased and impressed.

"The first one's probably the most practical, but the others are extremely pretty. Does the effect last indefinitely, or do they eventually go out on their own?"

[dark_light]

"This will wear off unless I dunk the rocks in a potion. Do you want a glowy rock?"

[prodigal_miser]

He snickers. "I think so, yes. Not for any practical purpose, I can just make lights myself, but none of those are quite this pretty."

[dark_light]

"Do you want all the ones that still have light on them or just one or what?"