faun

[shesepankh]

Saturday morning sees Bella with her notebooks about magic all in her knapsack, her medallion safety-pinned by its chain to her bra just in case she trips the wrong way, waiting with Charlie for pickup for the Avalon trip.

Comments

[shesepankh]

Bella snorts. "If you just mean you want to be the headmaster and not that you also plan to grow a wizard beard, participate in the government, orchestrate a defensive war, and have inexplicable involvement in child custody arrangements, then you might have a tussle on your hands unless you plan to share."

[castmyown]

"I will share if you are being intelligent about its use," says Darren loftily.

[shesepankh]

"Do you expect anything else?"

[castmyown]

"Honestly? No. But I am leaving myself room in case I'm wrong, because this is too important to be casual about. I mean, people's lives are hypothetically at stake."

[shesepankh]

"If you think I'm going to do wicked things you should probably not have started teaching me magic. I mean, institutional power should also be kept out of the hands of bad people, but I question your timing on the seriousness and suspicion."

[castmyown]

"Fair. But I don't think you are going to do wicked things. It's mostly just me worrying about the future. I mean, a magic buddy to share secrets with it one thing. A person to run a hypothetical Hogwarts with is another."

[shesepankh]

"Maybe I will found Hogwarts by myself. I mean, you already have a project."

[castmyown]

"Okay, then if you run Hogwarts well I will send kids to you and we can team up with multiple world-helping projects running concurrently."

[shesepankh]

"Yaaaay!"

[castmyown]

He giggles. "I'm excited."

[shesepankh]

"Me too."

Spontaneous hug!

[castmyown]

Surprised return of spontaneous hug!

[shesepankh]

And then Bella traipses off to see if there's anything worth having in this library.

[castmyown]

Darren's just going to stand here surprised for a few seconds before he goes back to reading.

There are actually several books worth reading! Most of them aren't very useful to learning magic, though. But there are books on various mythical creatures and their habits. It's probably quite useful for Bella to get acquainted with the critters that she's unfamiliar with.

[shesepankh]

Bella assigns herself a miniature curriculum on critters and gets on completing it.

[castmyown]

There are lots and lots of mythical critters. It will take her a while if she wants to learn all of them in-depth, but she can get a lot of the basics in a short amount of time. Darren's earlier analysis of 'if it exists in mythology just assume it exists' seems to be generally correct. There are exceptions, including unicorns and vampires, but everything else - they're probably running around. Somewhere.

[shesepankh]

There are also kinds of lots of things, which Bella at first assumes is a property of gryphons and tries to memorize just like the more general categories, then realizes are a feature of most of the more populous species - there are even kinds of perytons; Darren and Savannah are less birdy than some of these illustrations.

Bella tries to avoid looking like she's taking unusually careful notes when she gets to sphinxes. (There are kinds of those too. She's pretty sure she's "Grecian".)

Once she is pretty sure she won't be confusing fauns for satyrs or harpies for garudas, she sets about looking up things that aren't exactly critters in the same way. Angels. Demons.

Lava monsters.

[castmyown]

Angels are mostly undocumented; there are a few mentions of them here or there, but they don't seem to be the type of creatures that stick around and answer questions. They show up, they fix a problem, and then they go.

Demons have much more background information, though a large amount of it is conflicting. They come from hellmouths, they can possess people - but for a lot of the details of how, of why - those are lost. It's generally agreed that they're unkillable, and can only be banished to their home dimension. 'Killing' them or destroying hellmouths slows them down, but it doesn't stop them.

After some research, the lava monster is identified as a cherufe, from Chile. It's known for volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and general disasters. The book notes that it's powerful and deadly, but it's weak to large amounts of water and it's not the smartest creature.

Of course, that brings up the question of why a creature from Chile came all the way to Forks to come after Bella.

[shesepankh]

Bella goes looking for Darren again.

"Found something."

[castmyown]

There he is, in his sanctuary of too many books.

"Oh? What'd you find?"

[shesepankh]

She shows him the lava monster.

[castmyown]

"... Huh. Chile? That's - strange, how did it get here? I mean at least now we know, but still."

[shesepankh]

"There aren't really volcanoes around here, even if its limitation to Chile in particular were a fiction."

[castmyown]

"Right, that's true, too. It's still - weird. It seems like there would be better options to come after you with that isn't so - exotic."

[shesepankh]

"Such as?"