barring emergencies

[the_very_best]

Bella's not sure where she has wandered. She thought she was about to walk into a shop, but this appears to be an unattended bar. With none of the windows associated with the shop she thought she was entering. It could be an elaborate psychic assault of some kind, but it doesn't feel very... assault-y... and she was in the middle of a town and doesn't think any humans want to sic their 'mon on her. It's strange. She approaches the bar, looking around warily, hand hovering near her belt.

with Max (Benedict)

with Earth and Lightning (kappa)

with Ann and Sabrina (kuuskytkolme)

Comments

[katrea]

"Okay. Next question. Are you a plant?"

[pythbox]

"I'm an Earth. I'm not a plant, but my wings and halo are."

[katrea]

"Okay. I didn't think you were entirely a plant, but it seemed politer to ask than to check any other way I could think of. I'm a plant," she volunteers, "I don't tell people that at home but this is sufficiently bizarre that I don't think it can possibly hurt anything."

[pythbox]

"You look more like a human than a plant to me," Earth observes. "But stranger things have happened."

[katrea]

"Yeah, I don't know, like, why I am a plant, since I turned up on Chris's doorstep mysteriously when I was like three and had amnesia, but I perk up in the sunshine and have to avoid salt and if you prick me I do not exactly bleed."

[pythbox]

"Well then. I guess you're a plant," he says. "Did you know I've seen two other people here with almost exactly your face? I'm told that's been known to happen, but I am not told why or what it means."

[katrea]

"Huh. Who told you that's been known to happen?"

[pythbox]

"The bar." He points. "She's very helpful. Communicates through napkins."

[katrea]

"...Okay. The plant approaches the bar. "...Hello."

Hello. Can I interest you in a beverage? First drink is free.

"Not right now, maybe later... there are people who look like me?"

Several.

"Why?"

In the case of the ones Earth met, they're your 'alts', or alternate universe versions of yourself.

"Huh. Are they plants?"

The ones who visited recently were not, no. I cannot guarantee that you are the only plant out of all of your alts anywhere ever.

[pythbox]

"And there's another one attending the university at home, but I don't know for sure that she's an alt of yours," says Earth. "I suspect so, though."

[katrea]

"Well, what's she like?"

[pythbox]

Earth considers this question, then settles on, "Unusually nice."

[katrea]

"Huh. I don't really consider niceness my defining feature. My sister's better with people than I am. The other ones you met here, the bar says they're my alts, did you talk to them enough to guess if they're hers?... I'm assuming althood is transitive. Bar?"

Ordinary forms of althood, yes. More exotic forms of parallelism exist but are not at play in what I've observed here.

[pythbox]

"There seems to be a certain commonality," he says. "I don't think niceness is a defining feature of Maurabel's either; I think it's a product of her environment."

[katrea]

"What do you mean? Oh, also, what's your name, I'm Katie."

[pythbox]

"I don't have a personal name. You can just call me Earth," he says with a slight shrug. "In my world, humans can capture elementals and force us to do magic for them. There are entire industries built on the practice. Maurabel is one of the few humans around who sees something wrong with it. I don't think I'd consider her unusually nice if it weren't for the contrast."

[katrea]

"Most people don't see anything wrong with that? Where I'm from slavery's been illegal for a long time."

[pythbox]

"They don't call it slavery when it's elementals. They don't call it anything in particular. It's just how things are done. It's what we're considered to be for," he says, shrugging again.

[katrea]

"Um."

[pythbox]

"Yes," agrees Earth. "Maurabel has just about the same reaction, but she can't do much about it except treat us as much like people as she possibly can."

[katrea]

"Is she planning on doing something?"

[pythbox]

"I'm sure she is. She hasn't told me if she's thought of anything specific, besides buying an elemental from the university when she graduates."

[katrea]

"And - are there free ones? Is that magically possible? I don't know how this works."

[pythbox]

"We start out free. Many of us still are. Humans find us in the wild and capture us and bind us to amulets. It's possible to break an amulet, but I've only ever heard of it happening by accident."

[katrea]

"But she's got to be planning to do that, right, not just buy one and keep them?"