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

[wildlymagical]

"...Is Ghosty," he inquires, "by any chance a ghost?"

[small_magics]

"Yes. Of her own sort, though. We don't know of any who are the same kind of ghost."

[wildlymagical]

"...Really? I was expecting a... world full of ghosts, or something."

[small_magics]

Isibel shakes her head. "She died, and became a ghost, and there is no sign of other people who have died in her original world doing the same thing. Her world is attached to the same afterlife most of us use, now."

[wildlymagical]

"That is bizarre," says Lycaelon.

Hmm, he still appears to be hugging her. Well, she seems all right with that.

[small_magics]

She is all right with that.

It's nice.

"Yes," she agrees. "Most Jokers live in their original worlds. With their Bells."

[wildlymagical]

"...'Their' meaning...?"

[small_magics]

"The ones from their worlds." Pause. "Generally romantically entangled. Pattern, the Bell from Origin, is the only Bell we know about who was born in a world with a Joker and did not wind up that way."

[wildlymagical]

"Oh," says Lycaelon, almost elvishly.

[small_magics]

"Perhaps you have heard about how elves find soul-sympathy."

[wildlymagical]

"...I haven't, actually."

[small_magics]

"Ah. It is a subtle - fitting, between two souls, almost like a lesser dragonbond. It is difficult to detect until it is already firmly in place. If you have heard a relatively unadulterated story of Idalia and Jermayan, she initially spurned him because she feared dying before he did and leaving him unable to get over her loss - this was based a misunderstanding of the phenomenon on her part; he was already committed. I found it for my beloved shortly after I was through convalescing."

[wildlymagical]

"Oh," he says again, this time without so many questions attached.

[small_magics]

"Hopefully that addresses your curiosities."

[wildlymagical]

"Some of them."

[small_magics]

"If you have others, you may describe them."

[wildlymagical]

"Some of them are embarrassing."

[small_magics]

"Ah."

[wildlymagical]

He laughs.

[small_magics]

"It would not do for you to be embarrassed."

[wildlymagical]

"Yeah," he says.

He is still hugging her.

[small_magics]

He is. This is all well and good.

[wildlymagical]

Good! Because he likes hugging her, but he would not like to hug her if she wanted him to stop.

[small_magics]

That is the correct attitude for a hugger of her to have.

[wildlymagical]

Perfect.