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]

"You okay?"

[prodigal_miser]

"Yeah, I'm fine. Things just hit me at weird times, is all," explains Adarin, still hugging Vern. "So I am all on board with making death go away. Start with your father, please."

Vern trills sadly. This gets her more cuddles.

[dark_light]

"Yeah. I will."

Pause, and: "Maybe if I do my parents will finally get divorced."

[prodigal_miser]

"Good, uh- do they not work well together?" he asks, not looking judgmental, just confused.

[dark_light]

"They're... they get along. It's not like they fight, they get along perfectly well, they should be great friends, maybe they should even date. But being married isn't that good for them. Charlie - my dad - is absolutely glued to this little town near my clan lands. He's the chief of police there and he hates traveling and never wants to move and doesn't do anything interesting in the way that Ranata - my mom - thinks things are interesting. She likes dropping everything on a whim to spend a week on another continent picking her way through a phrasebook and sampling unidentifiable food and trying to get wild animals to eat from her hand without using magic to coax them. She likes spontaneously deciding to take classes on bookbinding or knitting or obscure human religions or martial arts. They work together, but their lives do not work together. They got married young on impulse because they didn't get how deep the differences ran, I think, and they're still together because she's terrified he'll die and she'll regret not taking all the time she had, and he can't let go of her on his own initiative."

[prodigal_miser]

"Ah - I'm sorry. I hope it all works out for them. That sounds like a terrible situation to be in, and I wish I had an idea on how to fix it."

[dark_light]

"Some problems are fundamentally architected to resist the appropriate deployment of magic, even theoretical, unavailable-in-practice magic."

[prodigal_miser]

"Yes," he agrees. "If there is a 'fix everything with magic' spell I haven't found it, yet."

Awkward smile! "Maybe one day?"

[dark_light]

"When I say even theoretical unavailable magic wouldn't fix it I mean - the problem here is that these two people have incompatible personalities. Changing their personalities would be a worse thing to do than anything that is currently going on there. So it's not fixable per se, you could at best replace the problem with a worse problem."

[prodigal_miser]

"I know. I wasn't - that wasn't what I'd meant. I apologize."

[dark_light]

"It's okay. Anyway, maybe I'm wrong, maybe even if I make him immortal they'll stay together, who knows?"

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin shrugs. "Maybe. Sometimes, I suppose, people are just going to put themselves in bad situations. It's sad and depressing, but... Well. Very obviously better than taking away choice entirely."

[dark_light]

"Very obviously. Thank you for not being a badly written villain from a dystopian science fiction novel, I'd be so disappointed."

[prodigal_miser]

He grins. "Thanks. What would my motivations even be in that situation? Bwuah-ha-ha, I want to kill all adorable animals?"

This is not a convincing villain impression. At all.

[dark_light]

"The badly-written ones usually don't go into much detail on motive!"

[prodigal_miser]

"Right, of course. So I'd just want to blow up the sun, instead. Or maybe invade it," says Adarin, deadpan. "Because there is no way that can fail."

His people have known about the sun being a sphere and really, really hot for a while. They can scry.

[dark_light]

"I cannot recommend either course of action, Adarin, sorry."

[prodigal_miser]

"Darn. I guess I'll need to think of a better way to be a villain," he says, in a monotone. "Should Iiiiii.... Take over the world, and then run it really badly? Bwuah-ha-ha?"

[dark_light]

"Well, the use of germ theory also can lead to the invention of biological weapons, I'm just going to go ahead and warn you on that one."

[prodigal_miser]

"Oh! That's good to know. Thank you, some idiot will try to use that, calling it now."

[dark_light]

"So if that starts happening you make the affected population boil everything they are going to ingest, is usually the first low-tech line of defense."

[prodigal_miser]

"You continue to be wonderfully helpful. Thank you!" he says, with a little smile. Book of germ theory notes is retrieved, and he writes this down.

[dark_light]

"You're welcome. Did I explain vaccination or just mention it...? I think I just mentioned it in passing. People throw off diseases that are caused by germs because there's a thing called an immune system in our bodies that figure out what things are germs - as opposed to just random stuff that isn't trying to hurt us - and kicks them out before they do damage. You might know of some diseases that you can only get once in your life? Chicken pox, maybe? Those are staying pretty much the same, so once you 'learn' what it looks like it never bothers you again. Other diseases change their details so you can get slightly different ones and be just as sick dozens of times. Colds are like that. And it turns out that if you take some germs that you've killed, or weakened - or even germs from a similar but less dangerous disease, in one case I can think of - and then you put them where your immune system can get a good look at it and easily beat it up, it'll know what to look for next time. Also, fun fact, allergies are what happens when your immune system gets the wrong idea about what things are germs and freaks out over nothing."

[prodigal_miser]

Notes are taken. Copious amounts. He's grinning, again, and Vern's excited.

"We do have some once-in-our-life illnesses. Vaccination will help greatly, I think. We've had a few outbreaks already and it's been bad. Do you think there's a way that magic could help the - " he checks his notes for the name. "Immune system?"

[dark_light]

"Witches mostly don't get sick - I mean, we can, but it's highly unusual - so, yes, but not one I actually know about, because mostly it hasn't been researched, because the magic people are all pretty safe and their beloved humans only figured out what immune systems were fairly recently in spell development timescales."