what brings you here?

[small_magics]

Isibel lives in her enchanted village, in a hollowed and conveniently-shifting great tree. She travels from it frequently, when she has a new enchantment or elfspell designed that will help someone, or when she meets with the leaders of this or that culture to learn more about their needs, or when someone accepts her offer of torching. The population of Thilanushinyel is not as large as that of Origin, and it may even contain fewer political units, but certainly there are more species; she has a steep learning curve and she throws herself into it.

Today, she is at home. She is not in deep meditation, but she might look like it, eyes closed, floating crosslegged in the air, not paying attention to the weight of the clothes on her body or the wreath of sunny yellow-berried blue-leafed holly resting on her hair, just thinking about hurricanes and the most efficient way to prevent them from forming over the sea. (She can channel immense spells. She is not sure how immense, and it would be very dangerous to lose hold of one. She retains some concern for limiting the size of her enchantments.)

When she is busy with something she cannot interrupt, her door is locked. Today it is not. There were no hurricanes when she last checked, and if any form in the next few hours, she will be able to address them on the spot, she knows; this spell is not urgent on that scale.

If anyone needs her they may come in.

Comments

[pythbox]

"How does it work?" he asks, fascinated.

[small_magics]

"I draw on power from the sky, or the earth, or emotion or willpower - which works best depends on what I am doing and what is available - and channel it through my mindscape, in the shape of the spell I wish to cast."

[pythbox]

"Where does it come from? Will it work for anyone?"

[small_magics]

"Enchanting comes from a world called Rêverie. It only works for enchanters; I was not one, but my friends made me one."

[pythbox]

"How do you make someone an enchanter? What's the catch? Is there one?"

[small_magics]

"It cannot be done with enchantment itself, but it can be done with another sort of off-world magic, called minting. There is no particular disadvantage to merely being capable of enchantment."

[pythbox]

"...That sounds like there is a catch somewhere," he says.

[small_magics]

"Losing control of an enchantment while casting it is dangerous," says Isibel. "And, as I mentioned, it hurts for the channeler, unless you can elven-hyperfocus as I do. And minting is not without its own price, which I cannot ignore in the same way."

[pythbox]

"Hmm. Okay," says Lycaelon. "What's minting like, then?"

[small_magics]

"It turns pain directly into small objects which can be used to grant wishes. The mint's own pain, not anyone else's," she adds, because it would not do to confuse her magic with what the Endarkened used to do.

(Her counterparts are mostly secretive about how their magic works. Isibel is not. Thilanushinyel expects magic to be costly.)

[pythbox]

And yet, he inhales a whistling breath.

"Ouch. Okay. ...How much pain to a wish?"

[small_magics]

"It depends on the size of the wish. They come in eight known kinds, the objects different shapes with different numbers of points from three to ten. The smallest two sorts are easy to make. I produce them every day as a matter of course. I would not care to try to make anything larger except in direst emergency; I have a supply, from my friends, but they cannot reach me with more right now and I do not know how long it will be before I can see them again. An ordinary human - or elf - cannot make the kinds with eight, nine, or ten points; the requirements are beyond the limit of what you can feel without some sort of change to how you work. And maintaining the concentration to make a six-pointed coin, let alone a seven-pointed coin, while suffering the requisite discomfort, would take considerable effort for most people."

[pythbox]

"Hmm," says Lycaelon. He looks thoughtful.

[small_magics]

"But I can do the majority of my work with enchantment alone."

[pythbox]

"What can all these strange magics do?"

[small_magics]

"Almost anything. Not literally anything, and not things to do with other worlds unless one goes there first, but almost. If you have a large enough coin or enough enchanting capacity, and know exactly what you want."

[pythbox]

Lycaelon looks thoughtful some more.

[small_magics]

"If I knew your thoughts, I could answer them."

[pythbox]

"I want to be a mint and an enchanter."

[small_magics]

Isibel considers this.

"I hope," she says, "that this is not because you would prefer to avoid asking me directly for some other effect I can produce by myself. I am here to help people, and you are a person."

[pythbox]

He looks at her quizzically.

"No? But look, you're one person - I'm sure you're good at what you do, but it doesn't look like you're hiding a barrel of apprentices behind the counter. And there's only so much that one person can do at a time."

[small_magics]

"That is true. Although I can work very quickly, and on several things at a time. I just - you are not an elf, and attempts to learn elven hyperfocus without being an elf have failed for my friends; and there is no making minting pleasant without certain peculiarities most people do not have."

[pythbox]

"Yes," he says patiently, "I got that impression."

[small_magics]

Well, she can't exactly ask, but she can blink quizzically at him.

[pythbox]

"...What's confusing you, here?"