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]

"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."

[pythbox]

"Of course not," he snorts.

[small_magics]

"If you had more questions, I could answer them as well," says Isibel after a brief silence.

[pythbox]

"Yeah, you're a strange one that way," he says, grinning. "You know, I still don't know how much it hurts to make polygons; that would probably go a long way toward figuring out if I'd be a worthwhile mint."

[small_magics]

"I can show you, if you like," says Isibel. "It goes up in powers of ten, in units we call triangles. I have a wished power I used when my beloved was still here to help him produce coins."

(She refers quite freely to her beloved. No one will be alarmed that she has a dragon.)

[pythbox]

"Sure," shrugs Lycaelon.

[small_magics]

"The smallest amount necessary to make a triangle is this." One, just for a pinprick-burst of time, 'plain'. "Squares begin here." Ten, delivered the same way. "Pentagons begin at one hundred, if you would like me to go on."

[pythbox]

He nods agreeably.

[small_magics]

One hundred.

"Hexagons begin at one thousand, if you would like me to go on."

[pythbox]

"Pentagon's not bad," he comments, apparently unfazed. "About like a broken arm. Sure, let's have a thousand."

[small_magics]

One thousand.

"Stars begin at ten thousand."

[pythbox]

At the one-thousand, he makes a face. "Wouldn't wanna do that all day. Not so bad for just a squeak's worth, though. How long does it take to make a coin?"

[small_magics]

"Only as long as I have been demonstrating, to make a single one at that level. It is possible to speed up slightly if one goes above the minimum threshold for a given coin size. But it is necessary to retain enough concentration to perform the mental action associated with creating the coin, which is not automatic."

[pythbox]

"And you can't make hexagons at all?" he says wonderingly.

[small_magics]

"It may be that I could. One of my friends who is more like me than like you in this respect managed it, once, when she was gravely injured and did not have another source. I would not choose it unless the need were immense. I do have some left. My friends could return at any time."

[pythbox]

He shakes his head.

"I could sit around making those for an hour," he says. "I mean, it would be boring and uncomfortable, but it wouldn't be an only-in-emergencies-thing."

[small_magics]

"This makes good hearing."

[pythbox]

He laughs.

"Good."

[small_magics]

Isibel smiles.

[pythbox]

"Who are all these friends, anyway? How did you find them?"

[small_magics]

"Many of them are the other worlds' versions of myself. Many others are other worlds' versions of my beloved. And their own friends from their own worlds, who are not copied here. There is a thing that happens to doors, sometimes, not when mages will it but at seeming random barring a few exceptions. I found such doors on a couple of occasions and went through them to a place where all worlds meet, and found one alt of my beloved, and later found another, and the second called his alt of me in to meet me. I was not well at the time. They healed me as best they could, and gave me my magic."

[pythbox]

"What kind of not well?" he wonders.

[small_magics]

"I did not adapt well to my dragonbond, having my beloved constantly in my thoughts. I underwent a sort of mental deterioration over the first moonturns I spent Bonded, and by the time I met my friends, I could no longer think clearly because it hurt when I tried."

[pythbox]

He frowns sympathetically. "I wouldn't even begin to know how to heal that."