This Is Less Of A Shock Than It Could Be, Really

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Daphne is not in the relatively safe areas of her hometown or college campus, so it isn't really all that surprising when she suddenly is in a random forest instead of walking back to her car.
It's a little surprising; normally she is permitted to enter random forests of her own will. But not that much.
She starts walking, looking for whatever inane plot she will be required to participate in/thwart this time.
Eventually she sees a cottage. She makes for that--random houses in the woods are prime weird shit locales.
She knocks on the door. "Excuse me! I don't know what's going on here but I'd rather get it over with sooner rather than later so I can go home!"

Comments

[imeanforever]

For practical reasons, Promise would like to as much as possible abridge rituals into actions she can often perform even while under heavy orders, such as blinking, breathing, and various actions that are part of keeping her balance.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

...Actions like that introduce a risk that she might do magic accidentally, but if they're careful and creative she can have something like breathing to a certain rhythm instead of speaking, and blinking in a pattern. Does she anticipate relative freedom of facial expression while under heavy orders?

[imeanforever]

Usually. Some people like their vassals to smile.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

If orders to smile only apply to her mouth, she can put a gesture into a peculiar eyebrow movement. Can she wiggle her ears? Can she roll her tongue? Are either of these likely to be prohibited?

[imeanforever]

She can't wiggle her ears. Rolling her tongue will be noticed; irregular breathing won't. She could usually tense muscles that didn't complete visible motions of their own? Clench her jaw, say.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"...Huh. I never noticed you can't roll your tongue without opening your mouth. You can clench your jaw, but if you were in the habit of doing it otherwise you'd need to break it; if a gesture means magic to you then it will do magic whenever you do it. That's one reason most magicians prefer grandiose gestures and nonsense words; you're unlikely to do those without meaning to. Your situation is different, of course, but that does mean you'll need to be more careful."

[imeanforever]

"Maybe the entire stealth idea is worthless anyway. If someone clever gets me I'll be under a general order that won't let me do magic regardless."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"If it looks to be more trouble than it's worth then by all means we can skip it, but it sounds like it's possible that that order might not be applied, and it might be valuable to be able to pretend you're doing your sort of magic when you're not."

[imeanforever]

"Maybe I should wait until I've picked a complete spell I want available under those conditions and assign shortcuts to its components then. Everything else can be a word or a gesture."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"That makes sense."
In the meanwhile: ritual! This one was selected more for ease of performance than usefulness; it will turn things different colors. It also is made up almost completely of common components that feature heavily in more useful spells.

[imeanforever]

And Promise can just do it the long way for now, right?

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Right. Also, even if you have abridgements of many of the steps of a ritual, it's strongly recommended that you do it completely the long way at least the first time you do it.

[imeanforever]

So, painstakingly, carefully, she changes the color of her dress, green to red.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Excellent.
He knows some rituals that seem like they might be useful--invisibility, temporary partial intangibility, a silence ward.

[imeanforever]

The silence ward is potentially very very useful.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

The silence ward is incredibly complicated. If you do it just as a ritual it can take up to a week to do. But you can abridge things indefinitely if you work at it enough--these steps are all abridged as gestures and these gesture sequences are abridged as words and these word sequences are abridged as another gesture. Most magicians are limited by their ability to create and remember distinct abridgements. If she works very very hard and is good at remembering things, she could eventually cast a silence ward by clenching her jaw.

[imeanforever]

...and how long is Little Bird willing to hand-feed her leaflet visitor?

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Little Bird is outraged by the fact that Thorn exists. Besides, it's not that onerous a chore. She can do it while studying.

[imeanforever]

That is very nice of her.

Promise is a very diligent student.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

And within a week Overbite's brother shows up. He looks very similar to his sister, down to the length of his pale blond hair.
"Hello," he says. "You may call me Jacenty. How are you currently being taught, and what progress have you made?"

[imeanforever]

Promise shows him her notes on magic and explains Jawbreaker's didactic habits.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"Hmm. It may be for the best for him to stay on, at least in an advisory role. My own library of spells and shortcuts is far superior, but I am not an experienced teacher."

[imeanforever]

"All right. I self-taught sorcery from books, but that meant no one but me was spending time on it."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"In my experience self-teaching is adequate; a proficient instructor is invaluable. Of course, many instructors are sufficiently incompetent as to give one the opposite impression."

[imeanforever]

"Finding teachers in Fairyland would have been too dangerous."