No One Here Would Understand As Well As Me

[here_together]

It's probably harder for most people to stay off the grid than you would think, but when you have unusual enough (and useful enough) talents, there's always someone willing to help you out, in exchange for something only you can give them. (Incentives. Supply and demand. The carrot is so much more useful than the stick--and so much less likely to get you hurt in return.) And their magic (it has to be their magic, even when they're a her instead of a they, otherwise the investiture would just fall apart) is uncommonly useful.

Right now they (definitely a they, right now) are kicking back and relaxing in a little no-tell motel. There's free wifi, at least, and the employee who discretely got them a room in exchange for clearing up a few issues also snuck them some decently filling snacks, so they're pretty much good to go until they decide to do something else. Or something interesting happens.

Comments

[inourhead]

"And you do a thing with them?"

[here_together]

'Yes. When you invest your heart in something it becomes a magical artifact; when you invest your heart in someone they get powers.'

[inourhead]

'What kind of things do the powers and artifacts do?'

[here_together]

'Well, I can talk to you like this. Emily has this nifty magnetism thing.'

[inourhead]

'That's cool.'

[here_together]

'And one of the things about a spherical planet is that it has a magnetic field.'

[inourhead]

'I don't really know anything about magnets.'

'Me either.'

[here_together]

'Well what it mostly shakes out to is flying and metallokinesis.'

[inourhead]

'Cool.'

[here_together]

'It's pretty great. What can you do with your thing besides not sleep and change the colors on stuff?'

[inourhead]

'I'm pretty good at magic! If we weren't stranded on a round thing I'd be going to do it professionally one day moving souls into cohabiting bodies and stuff. Uh, sleepiness isn't the only thing you can put in a mouse? I killed a different demon by putting all the heat in an entire tree into a leaf so the leaf would catch fire because that kind of demon dies to fire.'

[here_together]

'All of it?'

[inourhead]

'Yeah, I kind of hurt ourselves doing that and killed some of the mice. I'm going to need more mice, can I get them here?'

[here_together]

'Oh, probably. I'm sure we can figure something out. ...Do you need a doctor or did you take care of that, I imagine being in the vicinity of a tree at absolute zero would be, um, really not fun.'

[inourhead]

"I didn't kill all the mice. They're dealing with it."

[here_together]

'Okay. We think you can get mice at pet stores, but you probably shouldn't tell whoever's working there what you plan to do with them.'

[inourhead]

'...What else do you do with mice?'

[here_together]

'Some people think they're cute and fuzzy enough to keep as pets.'

[inourhead]

"Huh. We try not to get attached to them. But I can pretend, I guess. Also this is a travel cage and they shouldn't have to live a dozen in this space if I'm not hiking through the woods, if they get sick or they're always asleep I can't use them."

[here_together]

'They shouldn't expect you to gush over the fuzziness, just don't overtly mention planning to make them sick or anything.'

[inourhead]

"Okay."

[here_together]

'When do you need the new mice by? I usually trade in favors these days so I don't have a lot of cash on me, and finding a pet store with an employee that needed something I could give them could take a bit of time--finding someone willing to pay me for something like that would probably take less time, actually. Anyway there aren't any soul-stealing sleep-demons here so if you want to sleep out of childhood nostalgia or wanting to ration the mice or something that wouldn't be problematic.'

[inourhead]

'We don't want to sleep. Even if it weren't a terrifying idea! What a waste of time!'

[here_together]

'Just checking. Anyway, timetable on the mice?'

[inourhead]

'We can probably stay awake another five or six suns easily, ten if we have to, without any. But sooner's better.'