ghost

[shesepankh]

Kindergarten teacher Renée Higgenbotham Swan (36) was killed in a car crash one mile from her residence in Phoenix, AZ, January 9, 2005. She is survived by her daughter Isabella (16). Her service will be held at -

Bella has the entire obituary pasted into a page of one of her compilation notebooks but tends not to re-read past the first lines. It's repellent. The concept of obituaries is repellent. The funeral is over. Renée's vibrant brief life has been summed up over the course of a paragraph, and is also over.

Bella pretends to sleep on the plane. Her neighbor is talkative and she doesn't want to say shut up, my mom just died, because - what if it doesn't work? What if this news doesn't have the power to bludgeon everyone else into stunned silence the way it does Bella?

Charlie collects her. Charlie hugs her. Charlie doesn't make her talk. Good wonderful understanding quiet Charlie does not say a word. He takes her home. Her room's where she left it last August.

It's raining.

Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn. First class is English. Okay, whatever.

The teacher wants her to introduce herself. Bella wants to yank on the skinny end of his tie until he regrets making her.

She stands at the front of the room and says that her name is Bella Swan and she's moved here to live with her dad. The teacher makes an impatient go on gesture and she stands there for a moment before robotically saying the same thing she produced at the beginning of the year in her old school in Phoenix when they were doing go-around-the-room-and-share-facts. "I'm one of those people who actually likes Shakespeare."

He lets her sit down.

She sits.

Comments

[shesepankh]

"I'm usually allowed to go places on my own, but I suppose the Seattle Avalon might be a little different than going with a school acquaintance to Port Angeles to find a decent bookstore."

[steppingup]

"Just a bit different, yeah."

[shesepankh]

"Okay, so, significant scheduling projecty thing. How fast can we fly? Or is it likely to be the same...?"

[castmyown]

"I think we can manage to be faster than a bus, since we can just go straight there and don't need to make stops. But - parental figures, I'm not sure I can carry my dad."

[shesepankh]

"I'm reasonably big in fullform but I don't think I want to try carrying a person either, yeah. Especially not as a novice. But I meant just swooping around for fun, how fast are you, in miles per hour, and is my speed likely to be alike?"

[castmyown]

"You know I've never actually measured it? It's hard to, considering that I work to get up speed. But um - pretty fast, I think. Your speed's likely to be similar to mine, so you will also be pretty fast."

[shesepankh]

"Okay. 'Pretty fast'. When we do flying lessons I'm getting you a stopwatch."

[castmyown]

"All right! I find it a fun thing to do every now and then, but not a major method of travel, so I never bothered."

[shesepankh]

"Is invisibility a possible magic?"

[castmyown]

"Maybe? But I haven't learned it, so I can't teach it. I think it's possible, though."

[shesepankh]

"Are there textbooks or what? For that matter, what is the - basic procedure for magic-doing? Chanting? Burning incense? Drawing pentagrams?"

[castmyown]

"Drawings and chanting are both present. Natural talents you don't need either but if you want to do it the hard way, you need to draw diagrams and chant a spell."

[shesepankh]

"How much of this is gotten from ancient scrolls and how much can you figure out with - the magical equivalent of a dictionary and stoichiometry?"

[castmyown]

"Some from ancient scrolls, but since, self-taught - lots of what I do is with the magical equivalent of both of those. I mean between the two I'll take my method, even if it's less easy, because I understand the concepts behind what I do."

[shesepankh]

"Yeah, agreed, more - modular, I'm imagining."

[castmyown]

"Kind of. You can apply some concepts to other concepts but I don't think you should reuse things too much unless it's the exact same kind of thing. It could end badly if you forget the concepts behind the modular stuff and it looks like it does one thing on the surface but beneath that it's not going to work with something else and then - bad things happen."

[shesepankh]

"Right, so, heavy heavy dose of theory, no cosmetic pick-and-mix. Sounds up my alley."

[castmyown]

Darren grins. "Then you will probably enjoy magic. I do, certainly."

[shesepankh]

"Yaaaay new hobby besides reading old fiction and notetaking."

[castmyown]

"I recommend Dungeons and Dragons, if you're looking for another hobby. Just homebrew the creatures, the Monster Manual is racist."

[shesepankh]

"...Oh my god, tell me all about how the Monster Manual is racist, this sounds hilarious."

[castmyown]

"Perytons are always evil. No exceptions. That's just the one that personally applies to me, there are tons of races that they deem to just always be evil and therefore okay to brutally murder. A large portion of them are sentient, but no, they are all evil, every single one, so they get to die horrifically at the hands of an adventurer."

[shesepankh]

"Are there ways to be evil and non sentient?" asks Bella, resting her chin on her forepaws.

[castmyown]

"Probably not, now that I think about it, it's a conscious choice not a - if you aren't sentient, if you can't comprehend that there is even a choice to make between good and evil then you don't fall under the category of evil. It can do evil like that, certainly, but at a basic level the creature is innocent because it doesn't understand what it's doing. It's entirely possible that it could be helped, taught to do something that isn't evil, because it can't make the choice itself. So, the Monster Manual's racist in that sense, too."

[shesepankh]

Bella giggles. "What's it have to say about sphinxes?" She wants to have a tail. She acquires it and lashes it, as lashing is what one does with a tail.