delta v over delta t when there is no t

[ertia]

In a bar, there is a girl.

She looks like she has saved up all of her decadent and slothful impulses for a solid decade and is indulging them all at once. She is sprawled on a couch with a book she's only half-reading, and an ice cream sundae, and smiiiiiiling.

Comments

[taste_tester]

So they all crowd into Milan's room. And Addy seizes him and gives him a chomp.

[first_and_final]

"Ow," says Milan. "Okay, that's fairly painful, but if the whole thing is like this you have vastly underrated my capacity to comprehend agony."

[taste_tester]

"It spreads out. And then concentrates, at the end."

[first_and_final]

"Won't that be fun."

[taste_tester]

"So it would seem."

[first_and_final]

He starts giggling again.

[ertia]

"Lemme know when it's all over everywhere so I can try giving you a break to see if that works."

[first_and_final]

"It's definitely going along, but it's not there yet. ...I'm tempted to run at capacity the whole time just to see how fast it goes up, but after three days running at capacity without any new sorcery to do and while probably immobilized by pain I'm going to be unspeakably bored, especially if the agony is as incomprehensible as advertised. Should've thought that through better."

[ertia]

"Well, I could read you books, but I don't read aloud particularly quickly."

[first_and_final]

"I can just run low the whole time. Then I might not be immobilized by pain, either!"

[ertia]

"And then you could read your own books."

[first_and_final]

"Much more convenient, if less gleefully hubristic."

[ertia]

"A bit, yes."

[first_and_final]

"And I do enjoy being gleefully hubristic. But not if it ends with me bored to death."

[taste_tester]

"I don't know if boredom can kill humans where you're from but it doesn't make a dent in vampires."

[first_and_final]

"It's made some attempts on me, but nothing serious."

[taste_tester]

"What is your exotic pain-related deal, anyway?"

[first_and_final]

"Fairy curse: my pain never fades. Fairy blessing: but no matter how much of it there is, there's always enough of me to deal. Not always comfortably deal, mind you, but I get along. And I can pick whether to run low and be a normal person with normal-person-manageable amounts of pain, or run high and have as much pain as I've actually picked up and a proportional increase in mental capacity."

[taste_tester]

"Oh, now that will interact funnily with the vampire deal, we have roomier brains."

[first_and_final]

"Fun!"

[taste_tester]

"Quite!"

And then Addy engages them both in extended conversation about their respective local magics and learns many fascinating things.

[first_and_final]

Milan has so much shit to say about local magic in his original world!

Also: "Hey, Kithabel, it's got to all of me now, you can try suppressing it. Not for too long, please, it's already starting to stack with itself."

[ertia]

Kithabel tries.

Her person. Her person who should not hurt -

[first_and_final]

"That worked, you can stop now."

[ertia]

She stops. "All right, so I don't have to do the thing when it's my turn, good to know."