Finders Keepers

[all_too_familiar]

Sometimes witches have powers before they turn. But this is rare, uncommon.

More often, a potential witch displays almost nothing out of the ordinary at all. Just, say, a little more skill with people, a little more natural charisma. An extra dose of something that could almost be called luck, if one were paying attention and on the lookout for witches.

There is one such maybe-potential, right over there. He's not from around here, but he is fluent in Italian and French and German and he professes that English is his first language and laughs when people call him a liar because of his perfect accent. He might not be the most powerful, but a polyglot witch could be useful for something. And who knows, maybe there's more to it.

Maybe someone would care to find out.

Comments

[poll_the_stars]

"I like knowing all of everything about a topic I'm working on, and having - I suppose control over a situation. Thinking out all of my options, making a neat little to-do list, planning everything out and making sure whatever I'm doing is going to go as well as possible. I can sometimes get stuck, moved to inaction because I feel that I don't know everything or that I might mess up." Pause. "... Now that I've said that all out loud the problem with the size of the transmutation area makes sense."

[taste_tester]

"I thought it might. Do you think you could transmute something you already knew very well faster?"

[poll_the_stars]

"Yeah. ... Now I want to see if I can speed up transmutation by studying the copies I made a bit more carefully."

[taste_tester]

"That sounds promising."

[poll_the_stars]

Nod.

She retrieves a bit of gold from her brother, transmutes it to diamond for the sake of seeing how fast she can do it without studying it, and then she transmutes it back. Then she studies her copy of diamond.

The next time she transmutes it, it's definitely faster. Not incredibly fast, but the speed of the transmutation's improved.

Yvette smiles a little, and pronounces, "Studying them looks like a step in the right direction. ... I bet with how I work I can wrestle my power into helping me study what I copy."

[taste_tester]

"Maybe if you get it into the right kind of feedback loop you'll be able to work at the speed of thought."

[poll_the_stars]

"Maybe!" she sounds delighted by the thought. "It has a lot of room to grow, I think."

[taste_tester]

"Oh, I quite agree. It's one of the most promising I've ever run into, and I make it my business to run into many."

[poll_the_stars]

Yvette grins.

"I promise to practice obsessively. Are there more - obvious things that are sticking out to you?"

[taste_tester]

"I think you can get faster, I think you can get the area larger... I wonder," Addy muses, "if you can get range beyond touch. It doesn't seem to want it, but it's often possible in touch range powers. I also wonder if you could learn higher-level information about the nature of things you copy than just their physical structure - read books by touching them at some normal reading speed, say."

[poll_the_stars]

"That'd be nice," she agrees. "I'll see about working my way up to it."

[taste_tester]

"Getting range beyond touch sometimes involves tricking yourself into thinking you might as well be touching things. Your trick to work through water could be a stepping stone."

[poll_the_stars]

Nod. "Makes sense. I'm not very good at tricking myself, but - I mean, obviously I'll try."

[taste_tester]

"Mm - not so much tricking yourself, per se, as tricking the parts of your logic that gave rise to the power. If you can think, all the way through yourself, 'this is stupid, it should work like this instead, it would only make sense that way', you're halfway there."

[poll_the_stars]

She considers, then nods. "That's a bit more doable."

[taste_tester]

"Isn't it just? I don't know why more people don't bully their magic into working better."

[poll_the_stars]

Yvette shrugs. "Distracted by shiny new vampirism? Just thinking that's how it works and not questioning it? Thinking they have all the time in the world and then never getting around to it?" Pause. "I am not very good at this, I was playing with my power ten minutes after I finished turning."

[all_too_familiar]

"And after she finished cackling."

[taste_tester]

"I often work with human witches, who only have the second excuse."

[poll_the_stars]

"Hm. I don't know, then. This is an alien concept to me, flinging myself into magic gleefully just seemed the obvious thing to do."

[taste_tester]

"I'm so pleased."

[poll_the_stars]

[all_too_familiar]

"Personally, I was a bit busy," says Blair. "I had a coven to plan to kill and then had to figure out how not to murder people randomly and then needed to get you vampirism and my witch power seemed a bit less important in comparison to all of that. I'd poked at it, but hadn't seriously sat down and figured out how to make it better. I imagine that someone could get into a similar situation and then just never pick it up again."

[taste_tester]

"Incidentally, you'll be pleased to know that for as long as I held on to your power I did restrict myself to meals I doubted you'd get along with very well."

[all_too_familiar]

"Thank you!"