Most Likely A Refuge

[whatamithinking]

It was probably safe.

The bar was...unusually reticent, in the lower layers of her mind (and she hadn't pried further; she wasn't sure if she'd be noticed; she wasn't sure if offending would get her kicked out, and regardless of whether it was actually safe it was safer than anywhere else she'd been for the past...three years?) so she couldn't be sure this place wasn't really a trap of some kind, but the higher layers gave a plausible explanation that didn't involve being a trap, and whatever else it was warm and dry and had food. Her guard was probably a full 25% down. Positively trusting, these days.

Comments

[onceandforall]

"I guess that could work too."

[whatamithinking]

"Yeah."

And then she has nothing more to say for the moment.

[onceandforall]

Bella sits down at Bar and asks for a recommendation and puts the resulting bottle of beverage into her shield.

[whatamithinking]

And eventually Cerebella comes out of the mirror. "I think it should be fine," she reports.

[onceandforall]

"I'm not going to second-guess you but I'm curious about what makes you confident of that."

[whatamithinking]

"...Part of it is that she's not likely to resort to unethical things when she has better options, part of it is...she thinks she can work up to a resurrection spell at some point, at which point she gets to answer to her version of Dad for any nonconsensual mindreading she did and Dad isn't fond of it either. Like, a lot of her terrible decision making is predicated on 'nothing can ever be okay again' and now she has evidence that it is theoretically possible for anything to be okay ever again, and damn is the inside of her brain a depressing place."

[onceandforall]

"Gotcha."

[whatamithinking]

"She's me gone horribly wrong, but she's still me. Which makes her unusually easy to figure out, if nothing else."

[onceandforall]

"I stayed here a long time, last time, but didn't run into any alts."

[whatamithinking]

"That's a shame."

[onceandforall]

"Yeah. I finally left when I noticed a drop in muscle memory for some of my basic witch-fighting routines."

[whatamithinking]

"How long did you end up staying?"

[onceandforall]

"Two and a half months."

[whatamithinking]

"And then another loop is a month...and it's been four months for me."

[onceandforall]

"It's nice to see you again."

[whatamithinking]

"Yeah, same."

[onceandforall]

"What've you been up to?"

[whatamithinking]

"Schoolwork. Magical Girling, both of the rescuing-people-thwarting-villains variety and the networking-for-future-plans variety."

[onceandforall]

"Any progress on the future plans you want to brag about?"

[whatamithinking]

"In the wake of one of the rescues, I actually ended up talking to Prismatic Waterfall Legend about my ideas, and she's a Middle Eastern immigrant to the US, so she's been dealing with that level of social bull, and she said she could probably get me in touch with Mystical Mirror Madchen, who's from a family a lot like mine in the sense of 'recent ancestors came over because German Jewish and Holocaust,' although I think hers got out beforehand whereas apparently Grandpa Jake had a number tattooed on his arm. Anyway. It was suggested that I'd have more effect if I started out working on one issue and made some significant ground on it before trying to organize a major intersectional group rather than just running around talking to people with nothing to back it up. So with any luck I'm going to talk to her soon and we can discuss strategy for dealing with anti-semitic problems--you probably haven't had this happen yet, but there's some really scary shit going down in France-for-example--and I haven't actually met her yet so I can't plan out for sure where exactly it goes from there."

[onceandforall]

"My attention has not been drawn to France, but I haven't actually been there, my last fuck-it-I'm-vacationing-in-Europe loop was Italy and then after that it was Scandinavia. What's wrong with France?"

[whatamithinking]

"There's been rioting and attacks on Jewish businesses and synagogues."

[onceandforall]

"That sucks."

[whatamithinking]

"So incredibly. You'd think the Holocaust would have finally put an end to this bullshit, at least, but nope."

[onceandforall]

"I wonder what the motive feels like from the inside."