something she can use

[alicornucopia]

Ehail blinks, when she finds the bar instead of her room.

She goes in.

She looks out the window, at the exploding things.

"I don't think this is my planet," she observes to herself, tucking silver hair behind her ear.

~~~

with Elysse

with Lazarus

Comments

[prima_sequentem]

"It's worth something. So - Ehail. Do you want to try making coins?"

[alicornucopia]

"I will if it will help," says Ehail.

[prima_sequentem]

"I will be a lot happier about trying to solve your problem if I'm spending coins you create without much trouble instead of taking them out of my limited and limitedly renewable supply. But once I give you the ability to make coins, I can't take it away again," she says. "So if I do, I'd like you to think very carefully about how else you use it. Wishes can do a lot of things, and it's important to use them responsibly. Does that seem reasonable?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yes, I suppose so. I'm a wizard," Ehail adds. "I'm not a very good wizard, but when I'm at home I can cast spells that can also do a lot of things. Except not this thing. I haven't gotten anywhere trying."

[prima_sequentem]

"Maybe wishes can do something wizards can't. All right," she says. "Coins come in five varieties that I know of. I have them named for the number of points in their shape; the higher the number, the more powerful the coin. Four of them are simple - threes, fours, fives, and sixes."

On each word, a dark purple coin appears in her hand, and she sets them out in a row on Lazarus's coffee table - triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, each with a hole through the centre.

"Sevens are different." She shows Ehail a dark purple seven-pointed star, but vanishes it again without putting it down. "The other kinds of coin are safe to use as far as I can tell, but without special preparation, wishing on a seven can have disastrous consequences. I've heard of things like someone losing the left half of their body, or exploding with enough force to destroy the house they were standing in at the time. I know how to safely use a seven, but because they're the most powerful kind of coin, I try to make sure that as few other people as possible find out."

[alicornucopia]

"That makes sense," says Ehail.

[prima_sequentem]

Libby smiles slightly. "I like to think so. All right. I think the most sensible order of operations here would be to design a wish, see if small change" (she gestures to the row of coins on the table) "will do the trick, and if not, I'll make you a mint - someone who can create wishcoins - and see if you can produce them easily enough to be happier about forking over a seven than my next best source."

[alicornucopia]

"I don't - think I'll be able to tell, if it works, without trying to fly," says Ehail. "If you even want to test it on me instead of someone else. I guess we would have to wait for the door to that place to come back to get anyone else though."

[nonbird]

"I will be able to tell," says Lazarus. "It will be extremely obvious."

[alicornucopia]

"Oh. All right then," says Ehail.

[prima_sequentem]

"In that case... what exactly needs to happen, to complete a dragon? Lazarus?"

[nonbird]

"Well... there's a kind of magic that dragons and most-of-dragons have," he says, "and it comes in amounts. If you have a dragon amount you are a dragon, and if you have a little tiny bit less than that you are most of a dragon, and if you have even less you are dead. And apparently there are dragons with more than the regular dragon amount, but I haven't met any of those. There's also some complicated stuff going on with Ehail's magic besides it being a most-of-a-dragon amount, and I think those are most-of-a-dragon things - it's sort of - continually slurping up something that is definitely not the right kind of magic from something that isn't here, to cover the gap between the amount it has and the dragon amount, and the doing-thatness of it is sticky. You said you're contagious, right?" he asks Ehail. "I think I might understand how. So my guess is that in order to properly make her the rest of a dragon, you'd have to fill in the gap with the exact right kind of magic, and stop the slurping, and ideally also ward against the possibility of someone else's slurping getting stuck on later because it definitely looks like that is how the contagiousness works."

[alicornucopia]

Ehail nods when he mentions contagiousness.

[prima_sequentem]

"I see," says Libby. "All right. I think that's enough to be going on with."

She touches each coin on the table in turn, briefly. Three, four, five, six.

"No dice. Somehow I expected that," she remarks, scooping up the row of coins and returning all but the six to whatever mysterious form of storage she took them out of in the first place. "All right. Still want to try minting, Ehail?"

[alicornucopia]

"If it will help," repeats Ehail.

One might almost develop the impression that she's not in the habit of forming wants for other reasons.

[prima_sequentem]

One might indeed develop that impression.

The six-pointed coin vanishes out of Libby's hand.

[nonbird]

Lazarus blinks.

[prima_sequentem]

"The procedure for making coins is to experience an amount of pain and then move it across your mind," says Libby. "It's also helpful to be thinking about where you want the coin to appear - it will be somewhere in physical contact with your body, but exactly where is up to you. Hands are usually convenient."

[alicornucopia]

"How much is enough?" asks Ehail. "I mean, do I need a knife, or...?"

[prima_sequentem]

"The amount that produces a three is very small - it might not be the exact minimum of pain it's possible for a person to experience, but it's close to it," she says. "You don't need a knife."

[alicornucopia]

"Okay." Ehail pinches her earlobe. In her other hand appears a triangle the same color as her hair.

[prima_sequentem]

"So that seemed to work as expected," says Libby. "Somewhat more than that should get you a four - still not an amount usually associated with serious injury. Fives are about broken-arm level. Sixes are a ways past that. If you don't feel like breaking any limbs, I can probably come up with a magical solution that will let you generate pain more conveniently without damaging anything."

[alicornucopia]

"I don't think you have lights here so it would be inconvenient to have a broken limb if I were going to use it. It's pretty hard to walk on a broken leg or pick up anything heavy with a broken arm." She bites her thumb, just barely not hard enough to break skin, and produces a silver square, then puts both coins on the table.

[prima_sequentem]

"All right." Libby looks thoughtful for a moment, and then a dark purple pentagon flickers briefly into her hand, and in the same moment that it vanishes, an... object... appears on the table. It's a black rectangle with rounded corners, about the size of a pocket calculator, but under the display at the top (which currently reads 0) there are only five buttons, each in the shape of a coin, from three to seven.

She expects that its use is probably self-explanatory, but if Ehail seems confused she can explain.

[alicornucopia]

Ehail picks it up and looks at it. "Do I hold the buttons down or just press them once...?"