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

[alicornucopia]

"If it has edges no one has found them," says Ehail. "I think currently the thinking is that it doesn't. But it was a while ago that I was in school."

[salus_populi]

"...So it's just... infinitely big? Or is it like - there's a lake outside that door," she gestures to it, "and if you travel far enough away from the lake you find yourself coming back toward it. Your super-alucine could be like that, I guess."

[alicornucopia]

"I don't know about the lake," says Ehail, glancing towards the door. "I would be a little surprised if my world wrapped around like that, but I don't know for sure that it doesn't."

[salus_populi]

"I'm going to have to rethink how I understand people talking about their worlds," she says thoughtfully. "Until now I thought they meant, well, worlds. Collections of alucines, or networks of them linked by portals. But I guess they come in more configurations than that."

[alicornucopia]

"I don't know a lot about other worlds," says Ehail. "I think I probably would have heard about it at least once or twice if most of the ones my world's people know about aren't at least sort of like ours, though."

[salus_populi]

"Your world knows about a lot of others?"

[alicornucopia]

"Sort of? It isn't my field," says Ehail apologetically. "We know that there are a lot of others. There isn't much ongoing contact with any of them."

[salus_populi]

"And what is your field?"

[alicornucopia]

"Er, most of the time I just do householdy magic," says Ehail. "But research-wise I am working on, um, a cure for something. I'm not really getting anywhere."

[salus_populi]

"Oh? A cure for what?"

[alicornucopia]

"...Something. You can't get it. Unless that's not your natural hair color." Ehail shuffles her feet a little. "I don't think you can possibly have heard of it."

[salus_populi]

"Maybe not," she says, "but I'm curious."

[alicornucopia]

"Well," says Ehail with a small sigh, "it's called being a 'shren'."

[salus_populi]

"You're right, I haven't heard of it."

[alicornucopia]

Ehail nods. "So, in my spare time, I work on that. But not very effectively."

[salus_populi]

"I have an interest in solving difficult problems," she says.

[alicornucopia]

Ehail looks at her dubiously.

But she sits down.

[salus_populi]

"What else can you tell me?"

[alicornucopia]

"We're -" There is a moment of guilty pause, as Ehail had not actually quite admitted up until this point that she has the thing she wishes to cure. "Something that happens to dragons. Very like dragons, just not quite. We can't fly, in our natural forms." Pause. "We're contagious. In our natural forms, though, not like this."

[salus_populi]

"We don't have dragons where I'm from," she says. "We do have a lot of interesting kinds of magic that don't seem to be common anywhere else. What have you found out so far about your problem?"

[alicornucopia]

"Not very much. I think we don't have enough magic, that it's a - survival mechanism. A lot of baby dragons just die. But no one is going to let me near a baby dragon to compare."

[salus_populi]

"...Not enough magic?" she repeats. "What kind of magic is this, exactly?"

[alicornucopia]

"Dragon magic. The same kind that's letting me speak your language, and turn into a human."

[salus_populi]

She thinks about this.

She says, "I'm a tephramancer. Do I have to explain what that is?"

[alicornucopia]

Judging by the way Ehail flinches and contracts towards herself, no!