witch

[shesepankh]

Bella drops the Spanish major. It's tempting to explain to her confused teacher, in fluent Spanish, exactly why, but she refrains. Now she only has classes a few days out of the week, and if she loads up next semester and the ones after she should be able to get out of college in three years - though she's increasingly unsure that she needs any of it. It's not like anyone can teach her to teach magic, and she doesn't even know what age group she's going to target with her school, yet - the professors mostly don't have education degrees because if you're interacting with adults, even young adults who are there to learn from you, this doesn't require specialized training. And the universe has gotten so big and college feels very - small.

But for the time being she's still enrolled, though she tends to neglect her homework in favor of working on spell designs to do useful things - to cover gaps in the peal of Bells's capabilities, to sell, to prove interesting theoretical points - and working on her fairy princess magic.

She's blocked on getting her fairy princess magic to produce any non-physical results, like verifiable luck or a ward. She's currently manning the store, rolling dice to see if she's gotten luck to behave this time. (Her luck charm, which would confound the results, is out of her hair and on the counter beside her so as not to interfere with the experiment.)

Comments

[morethanimaginary]

There's a bit of coordination between Mrs. Adams and Savannah - both have something the other needs. Mrs. Adams doesn't know how to get to the apartment, but Savannah does. Similarly, Savannah doesn't have a car, but Mrs. Adams does. So, the answer is for them to carpool.

Darren's out at class, when they arrive in the storefront.

[shesepankh]

"Hi, guys," says Bella when they come in. "Should I close up and show you to Pantheon?"

[morethanimaginary]

"Hi! Yes, please!" says Savannah, brightly.

"Agreed," says Mrs. Adams, looking more - impatient. Haunted, is also an appropriate word. "Hello, by the way."

[shesepankh]

Bella goes and puts up the "Closed" sign and locks the door, and shows them up the stairs to the portal. She collects her mirror to Ice, and leads them through to the Pantheon hub, and calls her alt.

[dark_light]

Who presently arrives through the Chamomile portal.

"Yep, that's a Lynn," she confirms. "Hi, Savannah, nice to meet you. I'm Isabella but you can both call me Ice."

[morethanimaginary]

"Hi! Nice to meet you, too. You're all witchy, it's super cool."

"You're the one with resurrection?" asks the Lynn.

[dark_light]

"That's me. And I have enough stuff with me to get started on fetching your daughter right away, and all I need from you is her full name. I should warn you that the spell does not behave completely predictably with respect to non-humans, at least non-humans who aren't witches like me. The first time I cast it on a mage, he came back without his magic and left a separate ghost, since mage ghosts more or less are their magic. His sister had to kill him so I could do it over again with a revised version. I don't have any good way to figure out in advance how the spell will work on Medallion critters unless a Medallion critter wants to visit my world and let my alethiometer look at them - and in my world, if you go there, your soul emerges from wherever it usually lives and turns into an animal." She gestures at Path on her shoulder. "Which has its own side effects, and the consensus seems to be that it's not worth it unless you're going to move there. So there could be some unanticipated side effect - or the possibility that it won't work at all - with your daughter."

[aestrix]

"What are the - downsides of having an animal soul outside of my body? Because I'm willing to have one if it means that my daughter won't - have any unanticipated side effects," says Mrs. Adams.

[dark_light]

"Unless you separate - which can be done with teleporting and then it doesn't hurt much, and which thirteen-year-olds of my species routinely manage the long way around within a few tries - your daemon will have to stay close to you at all times, within a few yards. You don't control what kind of animal you get; most of them are mammals or birds, but it is not impossible that you will get something like an insect, or - more immediately dangerous - a fish. If the daemon is hurt you are too, if he or she dies so do you and vice versa. If anyone besides you, other daemons, or in some cases extremely intimate partners touches your daemon it is incapacitatingly painful. And of course if you don't outright move to Chamomile, no one will know why you have whatever kind of creature following you around and your daemon will not be able to do his or her parallel socializing job." Ice pauses, then says, "You might not actually get one. In my world there are talking bears, and they don't have daemons, although they say that their armor is their souls. So you might be not-human-enough that Chamomile will let you not have a daemon."

[aestrix]

Mrs. Adams considers this.

"I'll go. I'd rather pay a price I know now, then find out later that she paid one because I was afraid."

[dark_light]

"If you're sure. This way."

Ice leads her to the portal that leads to Chamomile.

[aestrix]

"I am." She follows, and steps through the portal.

A creature that looks to be a Tasmanian tiger appears in a shower of golden light next to her.

"I'm guessing that's my soul animal?" she deadpans.

[dark_light]

"Looks like," says Ice, reaching into her portal bag for her alethiometer. "I think he's a thylacine, I've never seen somebody with one of those before."

"You'll need a name," Path tells the thylacine.

[aestrix]

"I feel like a special snowflake," drawls the thylacine. He is male. "I can wait on the name, how long does the alethiometer take to answer a question?"

[dark_light]

"It's pretty quick about getting me an answer. It is not necessarily quick about getting me a coherent one." She peers at her thingamajigs. "Bugbear possess human soul. Well, obviously, he's right there..." She formulates a new question.

[aestrix]

"We'll wait," shrugs Mrs. Adams.

"Is there anything I need to do now that I exist? Besides having a name," asks her daemon.

[dark_light]

"Are you going to stay close to her or separate so you aren't around all the time?" Path asks him.

[aestrix]

"... Probably separating. Being around her all of the time would be very noticeable."

[dark_light]

"Can you teleport?" Path asks Mrs. Adams directly, as his witch is busy with the alethiometer. "That's the fastest way to get it over with. The other way hurts."

[aestrix]

"No," says Mrs. Adams, shaking her head. "The other way?"

[dark_light]

"Physically moving away," says Path. "Zeviana and Lecasryn did it on ordinary ground, but witches usually do it in a wasteland up in the North where daemons can't go. The daemon's usually the one to change their mind, if one of them does. So that makes it easier to get it done on the first try."

[aestrix]

"... Lovely. It sounds like it's not fun," says the daemon.

[dark_light]

"It's not. If you go a little away from her you can see how."

[aestrix]

"Sure," shrugs the daemon. Then he does. Soon enough, Mrs. Adams grimaces and he makes a little growling sound.

"Charming," mutters Mrs. Adams.

[dark_light]

"Possibly you should get a mage to teleport you," says Path.

Ice is still fussing with her thingamajigs, muttering to herself.