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

[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?"

[shesepankh]

"The twig has more structure to it than the paper or the string. I'm doing all of this consciously above about the cellular level, it's really concentration-intensive."

[castmyown]

"Aha, so if it has more to fix, it's harder to do," muses Darren. "Interesting."

[shesepankh]

"Which doesn't explain how I manage to do comprehensive healing," she says. "That's definitely not conscious."

[castmyown]

"Yeah, that's - hmm. It's almost like there's two modes? One where you do it yourself and stay conscious and another one where you don't but pass out."

[shesepankh]

"Which is really weird."

She heals all the objects intended for healing - then, thoughtful, cuts along part of the hem of Darren's supplied shirt, lines the edges up, and stares them down.

She manages to reunite them with a sort of chevron pattern in the visible stitching.

[castmyown]

Her boyfriend watches with fascination. "You know, if not-Hogwarts fails you can always take up tailoring," he deadpans.

[shesepankh]

"I'll keep it in mind when I take my career aptitude test."

[castmyown]

"By day, magic teacher. By night, best tailor of all time."

[shesepankh]

"Where in there do I get my beauty sleep?" she snorts. "Do you want the embroidery on the shirt or should I put it back?"

[castmyown]

"Obviously you will run entirely off of coffee. And magic. Don't worry about the shirt, it's not my favorite one in the world, feel free to embroider it."

[shesepankh]

"Cool." She cuts a stripe entirely out of the left sleeve, and very slowly manages to turn that sleeve into a swath of embroidered whitework attached to its original location. It's not especially pretty embroidery - she is not, despite fairy princesshood, a seamstress - but it is sort of visually interesting, and, of course, magic.

[castmyown]

"I like it," pronounces Darren. "I declare this to be test subject shirt, do whatever you'd like with it."

[shesepankh]

"Hmmmm."

Bella stares at the shirt.

A splotch of green slowly spreads from the collar.

[castmyown]

Darren grins madly when he sees this. "That means - you can probably do designs, too. Or, more practically, runes. Do you want to try runes? We can pick a simple spell and see if you can use magic fairy princess magic to do even more magic?"