population

[dark_light]

Adarin is shaken awake one morning by a fiancée who is about five thousand times perkier than she usually is at odd, dark-outside hours.

"Wake up wake up wake up!"

Comments

[headunbowed]

"Thank you! Can I hug you? I want to hug you!"

[dark_light]

"Sure, why not."

[headunbowed]

Hugs! Celebratory hugs!!

[dark_light]

"Use your time well."

[headunbowed]

"So I shouldn't go on a mass murder spree. Huh. I'll have to change my plans for next Tuesday."

[dark_light]

"Yes, thanks, much obliged."

[headunbowed]

Zeviana keeps a straight face for a few more seconds, then bursts out laughing. She was joking.

[dark_light]

Isabella kind of assumed, but doesn't think it was that entertaining. She meanders back Adarinward and drapes herself on him. "I'm gonna find my mom and teach her the spell," she says. "And the queen. And then I am going to hire a public relations organization."

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin is perfectly happy to be draped on. He snuggles her, smiling. "Sounds lovely, my dear. I can follow you around, keep you company? Or be - I think the term was 'eye candy'? I can be that."

[dark_light]

"You are delicious eye candy, and you may follow me or go home without me as you prefer."

[prodigal_miser]

"Well you're adorable when you're excited about getting immortality out to the world, so I would like to follow you."

[dark_light]

"All right, then, come along."

And Isabella gives her mom a copy of the spell - she ran off a few copies of the instructions before even waking Adarin - and then gives the queen a copy and has an excited personal conversation mostly about Charlie with the former and an excited technical conversation with the latter. The queen wants more copies to distribute to the clan and agrees that Isabella can of course share this with friendly clans immediately, though she'd like a few days to think about the less friendly clans. The fact that the spell applies only to mortals makes her more open than she might otherwise be, but it's still a significant decision.

And then Isabella flies her fiancé to the portal, to the hub, and to home, and starts researching public relations.

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin is delighted with her the entire time. He listens to the excited technical conversation out of purely academic interest, missing most of what's going on but getting the general gist of it. Though he still spends a large portion of his time on clan lands looking at clouds. Because, clan lands.

He's not sure how helpful he'll be with helping with public relations, but he will certainly try!

[dark_light]

"I want to get this distributed efficiently in a way that either discriminates effectively in favor of decent people or is at least resistant to disproportionate exploitation by non-decent people," she explains while she researches. "Telling the clans works reasonably well because none of them are in such dire straits that they'll do it for favors if it goes against their better judgment and mooooost of them have okay judgment. I expect it to go mostly to witches' husbands and sons, which doesn't skew noticeably. But for everyone else I want some kind of nicely crafted - ad campaign, some way to funnel people in past witches who are willing to help."

[prodigal_miser]

"Hmmm," says Adarin, considering. "You could open a charity, recruit volunteers for helping Africa or something, they help, and as a bonus they can also get immortality?"

[dark_light]

"...Oooh. Okay, I will still need to advertise that, but I like this angle. The trouble is that it requires me to design a charity that arbitrary mortals can effectively contribute to so maybe I should see if I can co-opt an existing one. ...Or several. I could just drop on charities with a small army of witches like a ninja and immortalize all their volunteers. Participation goes up everywhere, nice people get immortal."

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin giggles. "Ninja witches - I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the visual, it's funny. You could offer witchy services to various charities, then use that as a springboard for good recruits for immortality?"

[dark_light]

Isabella unties a piece of silk from her leg and ties it vaguely ninjalike around her head.

"That's not quite what I was thinking. It's mildly difficult to get the services of witches - I'll be able to get a period of help from a few witches from a clan each time I teach them the spell, I can be like 'I'll teach you my immortalizing spell if you do a one-year part-time stint with me immortalizing people' - adding to the plan more spells needing witches or worse me personally to cast makes it less workable. I'm thinking, anyone who is currently volunteering at a soup kitchen is probably more likely than a randomly chosen person to be nice, so I show up and surprise a soup kitchen, and then every soup kitchen in the country thinks maybe it's next. This gets lots of soup kitchening and some immortaling done without overtaxing my ability to call on the services of witches."

[prodigal_miser]

"Hmmm. Okay, works for me. Net gain in charity, plus people become immortal. However, there might be a problem when dealing with families - some might not want to be immortal unless their spouse or children were too, for example."

[dark_light]

"We'll stick around the soup kitchen long enough for people to run home and get their relatives. The spell takes a while anyway."

[prodigal_miser]

He smiles and moves to snuggle her. "Good. Though there might be a stampede of people claiming to be relatives or people asking you to wait two hours for their husband to get off of work, or something."

[dark_light]

"The stampede is why it's a surprise, and two hours is well within the time frame I had in mind. Maybe I keep a few cooperative witches in reserve for second swings by each target to cast on anyone who is legitimately part of the intended scope but couldn't make it."

[prodigal_miser]

"Mhmm. But overall, I like the plan. And not just because it started as my idea, either," he teases.

[dark_light]

"You're very clever." Kiss. "I'm sure there will be details to figure out once we're underway, but this is probably solid enough to bring to some professionals who know how to launch charitable campaigns like that."

[prodigal_miser]

Kiss!

"Yup! Happy to help, my dear." Snuggle, snuggle.