peryton

[shesepankh]

Summer vacation elapses, and sees their storefront doing one heck of a business in the Avalon with the help of their griffin employee. There is a suggestion box for new spells they should invent, some of which have to be long-term projects but others of which are converted into new product fairly promptly.

School starts up again. Darren and Bella are both skipping straight into twelfth grade. (Bella looked into just starting college early, but while she does technically have the sort of resume that can lead to that kind of thing, she can't exactly write an essay about how she saved the life of another person and this caused her to have Moral Character, let alone about how she started a small business - so skipping one grade it is.)

They apply to colleges. They both get into University of Washington and get sufficient scholarships to accommodate both going there.

Summer ensues again.

One afternoon, Bella is over at Darren's, and has fallen asleep - in purring fullform - across his lap on the couch.

Comments

[morethanimaginary]

Savannah is the one to answer it. "Oh, hey. Darren's magic nerding it up, fair warning, what's up?"

[shesepankh]

"Magic is up!"

[morethanimaginary]

"Oh, goodie, you can magic nerd it up with my brother," snorts Savannah. "C'mon in."

[shesepankh]

Bella plunks down next to her magic nerd.

"Guess what?"

[castmyown]

Darren is currently buried in magic notes and is drawing out what seems to be three spells at once. "What?" he asks, amused.

[shesepankh]

Bella presents him with the string, pulls out a pair of scissors, cuts it in half, puts the string down on top of his spells, and says, "Watch."

And then she stares down the thread, and it slowly knits back together.

[castmyown]

"What."

[shesepankh]

"Fairy princess magic," she cackles. "I haven't gotten it to do anything else without passing out yet but I can do that and I don't need a diagram!"

[castmyown]

"Oh. My. Gosh, magic fairy princess," cackles Darren, and then he scoops his girlfriend up into a hug. "We need to try things, how does this even work?"

[shesepankh]

Hug! "I have to think really, really small," Bella says. "I've done this specific thread before so I don't have to be an inch away looking at the individual fibers anymore, seems like, but the first time - it only started doing anything when I was, in fact, thinking about each fiber connecting up with its neighbors."

[castmyown]

"Does it work with other things, too? Should we try paper, or cloth or something, or...?"

[shesepankh]

"We should try! This was my first experiment, it might work on all kinds of things, when it worked I came straight here to show you."

[castmyown]

"You're the best girlfriend of all time. Want to do experiments together?"

[shesepankh]

"Yes. Yes I do."

[castmyown]

Darren cackles madly and then goes off to retrieve things to break that his girlfriend can fix. Paper, a shirt he's not attached to, some twigs - he can always get some other things, but these are things to start off with.

"Which would you like to do first?" he asks, grinning.

[shesepankh]

"After we figure out if and how the repairing generalizes," Bella says, scissoring one piece of paper in half and tearing another for comparison purposes, and producing her notebook for experimental records, "I want to see what I can do besides fixing stuff, if anything."

And then she sets about staring at the cut paper.

[castmyown]

"Yeah, but this is good for figuring out the limits of your ability to fix things without passing out immediately after. Once we figure that out we work from there."

Then he gets to watching the cut paper and seeing what it does. For science!

[shesepankh]

Eventually -

Millimeter by millimeter -

The paper knits back together, seamless, good as new.

Bella sits back up, triumphant, and writes this down.

[castmyown]

Darren giggles. "I'm a bit curious - once we're done with fixing things, do you want me to get like - a pen, scribble something, then see if you can change that?"

[shesepankh]

"Yes."

[castmyown]

"Okay!"

And then he goes off to get a pen, and he starts scribbling on the newly fixed cut paper. She doesn't have to do the test right now, but he is prepping for it!

[shesepankh]

"If I can learn to do that quick and without so much focus on the detail work it's possible I could make scrolls happen faster than drawing," she observes.

The ripped paper heals just like the cut paper. She takes a twig and breaks it and starts concentrating on that.

[castmyown]

"Now I'm really excited," he giggles, watching her fix the twig with interest.

[shesepankh]

"This is harder," she observes absently, staring at the twig, but eventually - entire twig.

[castmyown]

"Harder in what way?"