blood sweat tear

[imeanforever]

He's moving her to a different court to see if it'll improve her attitude. She's allowed to fly. It's been a long, long time since she was allowed to -

She is only allowed to fly to her destination, not anywhere else. She notices that she is not where she should be, that she cannot progress to where she was told to go, and she careens out of control when her wings won't flap anymore, and she crashes.

---

with Miles (kappa)

with Minus (kappa)

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

"Um, let me think," he says. "What's the error margin on names? It's surprisingly difficult to come up with something off the top of my head that bears no relation to my name whatsoever..."

[imeanforever]

"If - on purpose or by accident - I entertain the hypothesis that your name contains a syllable, I'll know if it does or not and if it does that's it. But by default when you talk I'm not paying any attention to sounds, just meanings."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...One moment while I curse the human tendency to name things after people," he says, blinking. "So no fictional characters whose name isn't mine but might be someone's, in case you run into such a person and accidentally - vassalize them. A remarkable number of towns and geographical features also out of the running for similar reasons. Um, um. How about 'Silver'."

[imeanforever]

"Didn't click into place, you're fine."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Although I probably should first have asked what specific criteria qualify a particular collection of syllables as being one's name."

[imeanforever]

"The first name you are given. I don't know very much about mortal naming customs to go into much more detail than that."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...Well that's a potentially fascinating experiment that is in no way worth the risk..." he mutters.

[imeanforever]

"I don't want to hurt anybody, but I don't blame you for not wanting to try it."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I would like to minimize the amount of irrevocable magical servtude that exists," he says.

[imeanforever]

"Names aren't irrevocable. I'd forget them eventually. It would take me a long time, though, probably longer than a mortal usually lives."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Irrevocable from the perspective of the mortal, then. Anyway." He gestures vaguely at the corridor of guest rooms.

[imeanforever]

She looks at them. She picks one. She swallows a painkiller and flops onto a bed and sighs deeply.

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'll be around if you need anything," he says, and goes back downstairs to put the pastries away and maybe question his sanity a little.

[imeanforever]

She sleeps for a few hours.

[thisvorlunatic]

By which time her host has not quite decided whether or not he should call his mother. If Promise looks for him, she will find him playing a fast-paced colourful holo game on a comconsole downstairs.

[imeanforever]

She does look for him. She blinks at the holo. It's so holographical.

She's a pretty quiet flier; he might not notice her until she accidentally flexes her hand and hisses.

[thisvorlunatic]

"That didn't sound good," he says, looking up from his game. "Did the painkillers help at all? ...How do you know your magic doesn't work here?"

[imeanforever]

"It's not supposed to work in the mortal world. I don't know why. I guess I've never been here before." She tries making a fairylight.

[thisvorlunatic]

The fairylight: works.

"That sure looked like magic to me," says Silver.

[imeanforever]

She blinks at it in surprise.

Then she makes more of them, in layers, grids about a foot square -

"This place is flat," she says indignantly, black eye disappearing and hand straightening out. "It's flat and all the books said it was impossible to cast here!"

[thisvorlunatic]

Silver experiences a brief intense collision of competing trains of thought.

"—So," he says when he's sorted himself out, "I'm glad you can conveniently heal yourself, I wonder why your information about the mortal world was so wrong and what implications that might have, and is that just a fairy thing or could I learn how to heal myself that conveniently?"

[imeanforever]

"It'd take a while."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Depending on how long of a while, I might still be interested," he says. "I have - well, the short version is I was poisoned as a child and it fucked up my bone development and the reason I yelled when you landed on me is that in my experience unexpected impacts usually lead to broken bones. Being able to un-break them on the spot would be very useful. Is there something I could trade you for - magic lessons? How long would it take to get that far?"

[imeanforever]

"Years. Maybe longer with no books - maybe not as long with flat harmonics - if it's flat here I can probably just gate to my tree, I don't know that I need anything from here..."

[thisvorlunatic]

"You might not need anything, but you might like some things," he says. "I'd have to find a way to censor out all the names, but mortals have produced vast amounts of media, I could send you home with enough music and literature and holovids to keep you entertained for the next several thousand years even if you find you hate ninety percent of it. As the first example I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more."