on a lark

[alicornucopia]

She combs and combs the world aside and there is another world, just ahead, and she steps in.

The combed-away hole closes behind her. She puts her comb in her pocket.

Thanjen (Unbitwise)

Blueberry (kappa)

Hivers (Rockeye)

Comments

[wind_on_my_face]

“Now if you wanted to you could make something like that chair; each tile is mainly supported from the glass on the rock, with a little bit of range to move and crosslinked with the ones next to it.

“There's just one more basic element of forcepatterning. You can make connections that slow things down. This is how you make devices to collect energy.”

Here is another chair. He sits in it, and it inconveniently sinks slowly to the ground. He stands up, and it returns slowly to where it was.

[alicornucopia]

"What do you do with the energy, when you've collected it?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“You use it to move things, including to create forcepatterns that start out pushing rather than holding things still. You haven't needed any because you've been pushing on the glass with your muscles, so you had that much to work with. But you need the stored energy to move things without touching them, or to do things that would be too much effort at once, like flying.”

[alicornucopia]

"Where does glass keep energy?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“I'm not a physicist, but I think that's a misleading question? Like, if I throw something, it now has more kinetic energy, but it doesn't keep it anywhere in particular, it just has it. It's the same with stored energy.

“It is sort of spread out in the glass, or whatever, though, and you can concentrate or move it if you want, and there is a limit to how much you can store per mass.”

[alicornucopia]

"Can you do things with it besides move the stuff it's stored in?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“No, but motion powers machines, so that isn't particularly a limitation.”

Left bird hands him some wire and other metal bits, which he reshapes along with some glass. Now there is a little science-fair-style electric generator (spinning) and light bulb (glowing), except there's a glass globe around the entire assembly instead of the light-bulb part.

[alicornucopia]

Nod, nod.

[wind_on_my_face]

“I think we've covered all the basics. What's left is practice and techniques. After you have some practice to make sure your control is good, you should claim the rest of your own body, so that you can reinforce and move it.”

[alicornucopia]

"That sounds useful," she agrees.

[wind_on_my_face]

“Is there anything in particular you would like to try to do, or make?”

[alicornucopia]

"I'm not sure. Is it usual to make everything out of this stuff?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“Some materials can't be reshaped, like wood. Some kinds of fine detail are easier to make with tools. And if you need a lot of something, it's faster to use machines to make it than to have someone claim all the materials first. But if there's no reason not to, then you do.”

[alicornucopia]

"Can you make stuff smaller?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“Depends on what you mean by smaller.”

The empty glass globe from a previous demonstration rises up, then shrinks to the size of a tennis ball.

“This is all the same matter in a smaller space, but the glass is thicker and the air is compressed. It would burst if it weren't reinforced.”

[alicornucopia]

"Do you own the air too?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“No, it's just trapped. It's really hard to keep a claim on air because it moves around all the time.”

[alicornucopia]

"Can't you make it attach to things?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“—I don't actually know. Let me check.”

Pause.

“Apparently nobody has fine enough control to slow down the air enough to keep it, and if you could anyway you would just have liquid air, because that's the difference between a liquid and a gas anyway.”

[alicornucopia]

"I thought the difference was how cold it was."

[wind_on_my_face]

“It's the same thing. Heat is what we call individual molecules moving around or vibrating.”

[alicornucopia]

"So it wouldn't be safe to touch, either? If you held air still."

[wind_on_my_face]

Pause.

“Instant frostbite, at the least.”

[alicornucopia]

She looks at her pencil and glass. "You didn't tell me this was so dangerous."

[wind_on_my_face]

“This was just what if someone could stop air. Nobody can actually do it. But did you mean in general?

“Yes, there are ways that you can hurt yourself. But there are more ways you can hurt yourself if you don't have control! You could stumble and hurt your unreinforced ankles and be unable to travel out in the wild like this!”

(Pause. Deep breath. Stop complaining about the entirely unreasonable situation (he has been not-thinking about what is going on here, because the evidence is accumulating in the wrong way, and even that doesn't make sense, not really) to the person in that situation. Don't scare the kid.)

He sits down on the rock.

“Sorry. I'm just worried a— for you.”