A Good Place to Put Your Feet Up

[whatamithinking]

There is a woman at the bar. She's drinking some sort of coffee beverage, and grading papers.

Comments

[whatamithinking]

It's like...
It's like every other mind in (range) the world is a (bright/solid/Obviously There) point. There are obvious things about each one--Elspeth receives a comparison between hers, Jake's, an averaged "composite human" and a composite of another category of person that presumably exists in Edie's world but which she doesn't happen to name.
Not reading minds isn't effortful, exactly, but it's not a standard default anymore than keeping your eyes closed is. She's in the habit of keeping her metaphorical eyes closed, now, but the sense of not-quite-natural remains.

Minds are easy to reach out and (touch). To read (surface thoughts or projected transmissions or one delicate thing), or to transmit to, or to (wraparound/guard/protect).

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I don't mind if you read my mind. Jake prefers to reserve same for pack and in principle me. That having been said, I contain the unabridged memories of a lot of other people, some of whom are alive to object, and while keeping those genuinely private is a lost cause by now it'd on the whole be better if you didn't look at any memories that aren't mine in the first person."

[whatamithinking]

'Looking only at specific things is not difficult.'

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Cool."

[whatamithinking]

If she has permission, she's going to sift through the top layer of surface thought. "In principle you, meaning you can't but if you could he wouldn't mind?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Right." (He's her wolf, he loves/trusts/needs her with a devotion that is quite beyond reason, this is complicated but for them the complications are long enough ago to have settled into the background, it is quite unlikely that there are any forms of intimacy-with-her that he would not want.)

[whatamithinking]

"You are closer to someone than I am with my sister. Congratulations, I don't see that every day."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I'm not sure if it's a 'congratulations' sort of thing. It just happened." (She was five. She was scared. As imprintings/matings go it wasn't so bad -)

[whatamithinking]

"...Your world is kind of messed up."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Yes, I know."

[whatamithinking]

"The immortality thing seems decent, though."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Yes. I can't turn you into a vampire from here, though, there's a procedure - if you really want it you can come back to my world and hope you get a door out to go home again, though."

[whatamithinking]

"...I think I'll skip it. I think I caught something about genetic changes...?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Yes. Vampires have more chromosomes. The originals remain as-was though."

[whatamithinking]

"Hmm. My telepathy is genetic, and I have it because of genes other than the one that activates it--" '(impression of how the X-Gene works, granting powers according to the information in seemingly useless and unrelated genes)' "--and I really do not even a little want to risk losing it."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"We have a precog, if that's the issue." (Aunt Alice, can't see wolves or hybrids but could see a human and probably an X-Gened one too.) "But I don't mean to be a pushy salesperson, it's just explaining the pros and cons of becoming a vampire is literally my job."

"In addition to 'Princess'," Jake puts in.

[whatamithinking]

"Ooh, a princess."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Well, that's what happens when one's mother usurps the shadow government."

[whatamithinking]

"Nice. My world doesn't have any governments that definitely need usurping at the moment or I'm pretty sure my parents would have done it."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"This one needed it." (The Volturi -)

[whatamithinking]

"...This Chelsea person is already dead, right, it's not feasible to kill her again?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Yes. She's dead. Although Mama's general dislike of things that remind her of Chelsea might make her unfavorably disposed if you did apply to be turned, so I definitely can't guarantee results. It doesn't help that you're from another world and would probably wind up outside her jurisdiction eventually."

[whatamithinking]

"I would never do anything like that," she says vehemently.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I understand. And she has exceptions. My father reads minds less voluntarily than you do; she's careful about making sure no one is in his range without being okay with that, outside of extreme circumstances. But she might decide you'd make a dangerous vampire she'd have no hope of containing if it came to the necessity. You're much stronger and more general and longer-ranged than Chelsea was, and you don't work by witchcraft so Mama's immunity might or might not cover you."

[whatamithinking]

"That's--fair. And I don't want to be a vampire anyway, I'm not planning on asking...I'm curious enough I'm tempted to ask your precog aunt, but I don't think I'd actually go through with it even if your mother had no objections."