Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming

[whatamithinking]

Edie has mixed feelings about the roses.

On the one hand, magic exists.

On the other hand, ow.

On the first hand, perfect healing.

On the second hand, ow.

On the first hand, flight.

On the second hand, holy fucking ow that one's definitely the worst, yep, ow ow ow.

Comments

[the_greatest_show]

No?

[iamnotpolaris]

It's that thing where when you've been exercising a lot your body gets flooded with endorphins. I get that for most kinds of pain, for some reason.

[the_greatest_show]

Weird. Cool though!

[iamnotpolaris]

Yeah, it's pretty great.

And then she pockets her phone and gets to her next class and writes with a pen that she barely resists the temptation to be as ornate as she can manage on short notice, because if she writes with a different fancy pen every class this is going to get noticed and people will ask questions.

She makes it emit sparkly pink ink, though, because her lecture notes are her own business and she can read it just fine.

[pythbox]

The sparkliness of the sparkly pink ink fades somewhat after the relevant pen vanishes, but the ink itself is still legible.

[iamnotpolaris]

Huh. Good enough.

When she gets a good moment (this teacher just lectures out of the book and it will be easier and faster to just read the chapter later than pay attention) she sees if she can make heads or tails of permanency. With a marble, first, because she doesn't want difficulty of creating the item itself to confuse the issue.

[pythbox]

It is not at all intuitively obvious how turning a marble inside-out is supposed to work.

[iamnotpolaris]

Can she try to turn the twistiness inside-out?

[pythbox]

No.

[iamnotpolaris]

Bah. Well, when she inevitably fails to permanentify an item, does it come out the way she tried to make it only temporary, or does it fail in some more annoying way?

[pythbox]

As long as she doesn't lose her grip on it while she's trying to make it permanent, the rest of the conjuration process still works fine.

[iamnotpolaris]

Well, she'll pretty much poke at it at least a little whenever she tries to conjure something, then. Meanwhile she can go on forcing her other factors more capacious. She can't do much on the volume or mass fronts in class, but her bag can contain longer-lasting more complex things. Have a fabric dust jacket with an absurdly high thread count, random textbook.

[pythbox]

All this practice works nicely for its intended purpose. Her textbooks shall have the fanciest of dust jackets.

[iamnotpolaris]

And when she gets back to her room that afternoon, how much time will it take to generate the sweater from her Perfect Concealing Outfit?

[pythbox]

Not even a quarter of an hour! Well done Emily.

[iamnotpolaris]

Awesome. And now she can go back to practicing telekinesis, too, that's harder to hide on the inside of a book bag. Write on this conjured pad of paper, conjured pen!

[pythbox]

Write write write. Steadily improving handwriting.

[iamnotpolaris]

Conjuring more massive and voluminous items than she could get away with in class! Attempting to telekinese them! Doing a stupid dance of sheer glee in midair because she can fly!

[pythbox]

Objects respond to her will! So many objects!

[iamnotpolaris]

And after another day or two of her revised schedule of classes-while-sneaking-practice-followed-by-retreating-to-her-room-to-practice, when she is poking at the assorted magic doodads in her head, she notices an extra one.

[pythbox]

Its function is not immediately obvious, but reveals itself after a bit more poking: it's a telepathic communicator. Sending only, no specialized receiving function. It's willing to send to anyone she knows well, as long as they're approximately nearby - in the same building, or just a ways down the street.

[iamnotpolaris]

Uh.

Okay.

Anna and Cass do not by any stretch of the imagination qualify as nearby, so she has to get out her phone and open the email app to inquire as to whether this is normal.

[gaincontrol]

Oh, yeah, totally.

[iamnotpolaris]

No pun intended, but did it slip your mind?

[gaincontrol]

Little bit! We don't use it that often.