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

[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?"

[small_magics]

"Whether you have this peculiarity yourself, or wish to acquire it, or simply are very motivated to help me, or if something else I do not recognize is going on."

[pythbox]

"...yeah, I think it's a something else," he says. "It's not exactly about helping you, personally - this isn't part of my Mageprice or anything. The week I'm going to spend telling you about half the world's problems covers that. But look, I'm a Wildmage. Fixing things with magic that can't be fixed any other way, or can't be fixed as well, is why there are Wildmages. If you say you've got new kinds of magic that can do almost anything and the only price is that they hurt, well, I've done plenty of hurting without getting any magic out of it and never minded that much. I mean - I wasn't going to ask you outright yet, we barely know each other, but you wanted to know what I was thinking and now you do."

[small_magics]

"I will think about it."

[pythbox]

He shrugs. "Okay."

[small_magics]

"I do not think you being an enchanter would be particularly useful. Even those of my friends who actively enjoy pain do not attempt to control significant spells while channeling through themselves, and I would not make a good channel for someone else. But a mint - perhaps."

[pythbox]

"And depending on how well I mint, there might not be much reason not to make me an enchanter," he shrugs.

[small_magics]

"That is true. Making you an enchanter would be a hexagon - as would making you a mint - but enchanting unlike minting comes with a component of skill, so there would also be a great deal of reading or a pentagon or both."

[pythbox]

"I don't mind reading," he says cheerfully.

[small_magics]

She smiles slightly. "Perhaps at some point you would like to borrow my enchanting library - although I fear being able to read it would require several pentagons more. It is none of it in any language found in Thilanushinyel."