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]

[Yes it is.]

[inourhead]

[I'm not sure we have that many in all the countries in my world, even counting people instead of bodies.]

[here_together]

[What happens to the bodies that get...moved out of?]

[inourhead]

[Burned, usually. When there's no one left in them; Book just left us ours. Didn't even take any traits, he just found a cohabitor he liked the look of enough without.]

[here_together]

[Traits?]

[inourhead]

[What usually happens is people who think they'd make good cohabitors compromise on how they want to look after. If you always hated your nose you use the other person's nose, that sort of thing. It happens pretty often that people want to move into bodies of the other sex, too, like Book, and then they have to find a cohabitor who's shaped how they want. You can do this other times too, though, if you and somebody just want each other's eye colors or whatever,] says Holly.

[here_together]

[We hadn't even thought of that application for troporting. What would you have done if Book had wanted to keep something?]

[inourhead]

[There's a couple things he might have wanted but he didn't ask. And we like how we look and Book knew that so we wouldn't have wanted anything from Lightning.]

[here_together]

[I am so curious how this all works genetically, but I don't think you probably know.]

[inourhead]

[No idea, sorry. We look like our parents? And parents are pretty much always cohabiting adults.]

[here_together]

[So do you have--how many parents do you have?]

[inourhead]

[Four, of course.]

[here_together]

[Two's the norm here, since people don't generally cohabit. Considering how many fundamental differences our worlds seemed to have, four seemed like a good guess but we didn't want to assume.]

[inourhead]

[Well, only two of them actually decided to have a kid and got us, the other two have other spouses.]

[here_together]

[That sounds...really complicated.]

[inourhead]

[I guess? They're not awake at the same time as their cohabitors, there's only ever two of them at a time.]

[here_together]

[Yeah, but--you can't move somewhere else easily because you'd be dragging someone else along that you can never directly talk to, if they wanted to move with you they'd have to negotiate with their spouse's cohabitor as well as their spouse...logistics kind of stuff.]

[inourhead]

[Oh. Yeah, people don't move very much, especially not once they're of an age where somebody's married.]

[here_together]

[We don't think it sounds fun, being stuck like that. Not saying your way is worse, or anything, but--that sounds like a downside.]

[inourhead]

[Well, they don't do it for fun. We wouldn't want to be separate though. ...We do sort of wish we could fall totally asleep if we wanted.]

[here_together]

[Sleep's nice. I could try sending one of you to sleep if you wanted, my power goes pretty far beyond just talking.]

[inourhead]

[It's not that sleep is pleasant, it's, um, I have a crush on somebody and Holly doesn't at all and it's awkward. But he's not here. But it might happen again one day, I guess, even if we can't get home.]

[here_together]

[Sending you to sleep the once to try it would be a lot easier than making you able to do it. I could try, but...that seems like the kind of thing where I'd have to spend a lot of time observing more of your minds than most people are at all comfortable with to have a decent shot.]

[inourhead]

[We don't really know enough about your magic to know if we'd want you to try.]

[here_together]

[I have...mind magic comprehensive enough that I try to avoid letting strangers know how comprehensive it is so I don't get mobs with torches and pitchforks after me.]