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]

[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.

[inourhead]

Hooray! They're helping!

[here_together]

And then they have money in the form of a bundle of green rectangular pieces of paper.

[Neither of us really knows how much mice cost but this should be fine,] the twins judge.

[inourhead]

[It's weird that the money is paper. I guess it's easier to carry around if you can't put the weight in something else.]

[here_together]

[It's also pretty low in volume. Why, what do you use?]

[inourhead]

[Coins. They're called suns.]

[here_together]

[We use coins for very small denominations. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters.]

[inourhead]

[Why not just more paper?]

[here_together]

[We don't know.]

[inourhead]

[Where do we get mice?]

[here_together]

[Once we get to a larger town we can look up local petstores.]

[inourhead]

[Okay.] Sigh. [We have a fox, but we lost track of her while the demon was chasing us.]

[here_together]

[What was she for?]

[inourhead]

[She was just a pet. We don't keep pet mice but we do foxes.]

[here_together]

[Oh. Foxes aren't generally pets, here.]

[inourhead]

[Why not?]