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

[here_together]

[I'll let you know if either of us see anything obvious; we're not as familiar with the practical applications for your abilities as our own.]

[inourhead]

[Basically she can move properties between things she's touching. Either make it so they have each other's, or so all of the property goes from one into the other, but like she said not all properties do both versions.]

[here_together]

[We still don't have years of habit looking out for stuff like that], Edie points out, [but noted.]

[inourhead]

[You're being really helpful. We really appreciate it.]

[here_together]

[We've never met anyone like us before. And we're a bit lonely, truth be told. We appreciate your company while it lasts.]

[inourhead]

[We've never met anybody like us before either! Even at home where everybody's got cohabitors it's one at a time.]

[here_together]

[Oh--Emily nudged me to warn you--we're not always like you.]

[inourhead]

[No?]

[here_together]

[Sometimes we sort of--melt together, so we're functionally one person for a while.]

[inourhead]

[We're always two people...]

[here_together]

[Yeah, we don't know why we do it. It just sort of happens sometimes.]

[inourhead]

[We can hear each other thinking and we're always a little awake, especially Holly, so we can switch off for each other pretty well. But it's always been that we were separate. We got mad at our parents calling all three of us Holly when we were little.]

[here_together]

[Even when we're one person we don't like the name we were born with for casual use. We didn't really mind when our parents called us that, though,] she says, a little sadly.

[inourhead]

[Book picked himself a name and Holly picked one for me. She was awake most often so we all thought of her as having the name they gave us.]

[here_together]

[Neither of us can really imagine using the name we were born with. I mean, the aesthetics aren't great, but it would feel like--like one of us was the "real" Elaine Xavier and the other was just a voice in her head. Or like we were inviting other people to think that, anyway.]

[inourhead]

[Maybe it was different for us because it's usual to have people sharing bodies.]

[here_together]

[That seems likely.]

[inourhead]

[How'd you pick your names?]

[here_together]

[Edie was our grandmother's name. Emily thought that name was pretty, and she liked that it started with an E to match. My name and our birth name and our mother's name. It was Erika.]

[inourhead]

[Cute.]

[here_together]

[Cuteness is often what happens when small children name things!]

[inourhead]

Giggle.

[here_together]

A small handful of people would like metal objects repaired via magnetism. No one wants their memory refreshed via telepathy.

A couple of people would like things troported! Mostly colors.

[inourhead]

Colors are easy; Crystal can do them.

[here_together]

Well, then this lady can get her dress in a color that wasn't in the catalog and this teenager can get his toy in black instead of "playskool" (whatever that is) orange, and since troportation is unknown here they get a good bit more money for this than if it were known how trivial colors are.