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]

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.

[small_magics]

"I still communicate with my beloveds, of course. They have been sleeping, but when they wake up I will probably tell them about you."

[wildlymagical]

"What will you tell them about me?"

[small_magics]

"It is reasonably likely I will reproduce all of our conversations in complete detail, if you would not object. They cannot be here in person, but I can keep them up to date."

[wildlymagical]

"No reason not to, I guess."

[small_magics]

"Thank you."

[wildlymagical]

Hug.

[small_magics]

Hug.

"If I have satisfied your non-embarrassing curiosities now, you could continue to tell me about the world and what I can do for it."

[wildlymagical]

"Sure," he says agreeably.

Leaning against her chair and hugging her is reasonably comfortable; he doesn't bother to stop doing those things while he tells her about the moonturns he spent in the Madiran and what he learned there. For the most part, the desert is doing well, but he suggests that its sandstorms could be gently diverted from passing over inhabited areas.

"As long as you don't try to get rid of them completely," he adds. "The desert depends on them too much."

[small_magics]

"Weather is tricky in this way," she agrees. "But I can keep the storms away from people."

[wildlymagical]

"That'll help a lot."

From there, he took a ship to Armethalieh, and then another one to the Selken Isles, where he spent about half a year healing sick and injured people. He recounts everything he can think of about the (mostly human) inhabitants of those islands.

[small_magics]

Isibel nods, and probes unquestioningly for details where his descriptions are incomplete.

[wildlymagical]

One of the people he healed was a man in debt bondage, which is a thing the Selken Isles do.

[small_magics]

Isibel's eyes narrow.

[wildlymagical]

Lycaelon explains as much as he knows about the practice, which isn't a lot. He had his mind on other things at the time; there were a lot of difficult healings to do in those six moonturns.

[small_magics]

"I will need to think of something to do about that. I don't like it," murmurs Isibel.

[wildlymagical]

Lycaelon shrugs. "All right."

Then it was back to Armethalieh, where he spent another little while - as long as he could stand it. Industrial accidents are a big problem in that city.

[small_magics]

"That would be easier to solve with a wish than an enchantment - an enchantment would be likely to throw off the industries themselves unless I knew more about them. Hmm."

[wildlymagical]

"You could get somebody to look at exactly what was going on and suggest more specific ways to fix it, but I'm not volunteering," he says.

[small_magics]

She nods. "I can probably find someone to look into it."

[wildlymagical]

"Good, because I really don't want that job," he laughs.

[small_magics]

"I understand," she laughs softly. "You are being quite useful as it is."

(The hugging is more useful than she'd like to admit aloud. Her parents aren't really huggy, and she doesn't see them that frequently - Liselen is affectionate but it's not really the same with an ungulate - this helps.)