call me maybe

[from_scratch]

Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.

He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -

with the Joker (kappa)

with Ripper (kappa)

with Darren (Aestrix)

with Minus (kappa)

with Emma (Marri)

with Facility 3141592 (armokGoB)

with the admin (kappa)

with Jarvis (kappa, Aestrix)

with Miles (kappa)

with Hank (Nemo)

Comments

[from_scratch]

"Okay, but you're not going to get sneak peeks of my backstory or anything?"

[queensidecastle]

"It's conceivable but not likely. And if we did, it would be in a form more comprehensible to you than us - if you got a pen for your metaphor, it might resemble some specific pen that's been important to you at some point in your life, but we wouldn't be able to tell that unless you told us. If the metaphor ended up representing some place you've been before, it would show the place but not any events that have happened there, and it might show an abstracted version that's different from the real one. Things like that."

[from_scratch]

"Okay. How long will this take?"

[queensidecastle]

"A few minutes," she says. "I talk to the rock James is holding for a while - if you speak Anglo-Saxon you will be treated to my mediocre alliterative verse - and we see some metaphors, and then the spell settles in and it's done and we can clean up."

[from_scratch]

"That is not one of my languages, alas. Okay, go for it."

[queensidecastle]

Chris nods, and starts talking. Her poetry may be mediocre, but at least her accent sounds nice. She's fairly quiet, fairly casual.

After a few words, the room around them starts to fade slightly. Colours become less vivid, and the walls and floor seem smokily translucent, with a pale blue glow behind them. The only things that stay exactly the same are Cam, James, Chris, and the various rocks and chess pieces on the floor.

Chris keeps talking. The outer ring of stones and fairies starts to fade the same way. Life-size ghostly fairies appear, standing behind their corresponding pieces in the circle; the white fairies are all Chris, with sparkling diamond wings, and the black fairies are all James with wings of glossy black tourmaline. The ring of fairies all reach out simultaneously to hold each other's hands. All of them are wearing identical vaguely wizardly robes, the Chrises in black and the Jameses in white; none of them have their backs turned to the inside of the circle, so how their wings emerge from those will remain a mystery.

The glow under the floor changes from sky-blue to orange-red, and the colour change rises slowly along the walls until it covers even the ghostly ceiling. There is a sense of distant heat. The cadence of Chris's verse changes slightly, going longer between pauses. The circle of fairies all step back, still holding hands, and a formidable-looking stone wall takes shape between them and the spell participants; it's a perfect unbroken circle, without a door, and seems to be made of unpolished granite.

To Cam's left, over the faded angel king, a life-size golden crown hovers in the air. To his right, over the angel queen, a life-size silver sword. Neither one matches the corresponding item on the physical piece.

The red glow coming through floor and ceiling fades to an unlit grey, then to black; the heat fades at the same time. There is the sound of moving water - a river flowing over rocks.

In front of Cam, his own personal metaphor takes shape at last. It's... a quill pen, dark blue like his wings and tail. The writing point of the quill has the suggestion of the shape of a beak, and if he looks at it for long enough, the pen fades and a kind of stylized abstraction of all birds of prey appears in its place, also dark blue. Then the two shapes move apart from each other and coexist normally, with the bird holding the pen in its claws in a vaguely heraldic pose, wings spread and head turned to the side.

Chris says a few final words. The metaphors fade out; reality fades back in. There they are, sitting on an unchanged floor between unchanged walls, surrounded by unchanged rocks and chess pieces.

"All done," she says. "Want us to interpret your pen-bird metaphor for you?"

[from_scratch]

"...Suuuure."

[queensidecastle]

"I've never seen queen-as-pen or queen-as-bird before, mind you. But the pen makes me think of an inversion of queen-as-sword: nonviolence, subtlety over force, precision over power. And the bird makes me think of the queen's movement aspect. Travel, speed, breadth of scope. Together, I'm reminded of your interesting superpower - it only does one thing, but it does it to exacting specifications and with a pretty much limitless range of possibilities."

[from_scratch]

"I gave my queen a pen because I'm kind of obsessive about notetaking. I haven't used a literal pen for most of it in decades, but it works aesthetically much better than my current technological choices."

[neverbeatme]

"The fact that you gave your queen a pen probably has something to do with the fact that you got one, but your specific reasons might not necessarily play into it as much," says James, getting up from her place in the circle and starting to collect rocks. "I definitely agree with Chris that queen-as-pen stands in opposition to queen-as-sword somehow, and that the bird at least partly represents a wide scope - you're the kind of person who has or intends to have a big impact on things. I'd have to know you better before I made a judgment about further details."

[from_scratch]

"Big impact sounds about right."

[neverbeatme]

"I," says James, "am good at getting a sense of people."

[queensidecastle]

Chris starts collecting rocks too. The circle is much quicker to take apart than it was to put together.

[from_scratch]

"Slayer thing, magic thing, personal skill?"

[neverbeatme]

"Personal skill. Absolutely no magic to it as far as I know."

[from_scratch]

"Nice quirk if you can get it."

[neverbeatme]

"It comes in handy!"

[from_scratch]

"Okay. Well, thanks for the spell and the phone." Cam hauls himself up off the floor, re-folds his wings, picks up his coat.

[neverbeatme]

"You're welcome. Happy queening," says James.

[from_scratch]

Cam snorts. "Thank you. Anything else that should happen before I maybe skip town?"

[neverbeatme]

She shrugs. "I don't think so. Have fun, do things, call me if you encounter any obstacles you can't handle with available resources. Or if you want to quiz Chris about magic. I can also put you in touch with a decent demonology expert if you find yourself needing one."

[from_scratch]

"That could be useful, have they got a phone number of their own? For that matter, has Chris?" he asks, pulling out his new cell.

[queensidecastle]

Chris divulges a phone number.

[neverbeatme]

"My demonology expert is shy and skittish and prefers to be personally introduced or have questions forwarded through me. And he doesn't have a cellphone. You've seen him before; he's my source for reports of demon activity. He saw you at the library and then called me."

[from_scratch]

Cam inputs Chris's number. "Does he have a not-cell phone? Should I be introduced? Was he that grumbly fellow who was having so much trouble with his computer?"