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]

[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.]

[inourhead]

[There's no mind magic at all except moving souls around where we're from so we don't know how comprehensive strangers you usually meet expect it to be.]

[here_together]

[What I can do to someone else's mind seems primarily limited by my ethics and skill.]

[inourhead]

[Yeah, that could be pretty scary. You seem nice about it though.]

[here_together]

[I try. My limits are pretty much self-defined but I put a lot of thought into defining them.]

[inourhead]

[I guess I'd mostly be worried that you know how minds work but not how souls work and something would be messed up if one of us went all the way asleep. Book was able to move out okay but he was always the most able to fade back and not pay attention.]

[here_together]

[A valid concern. I've never been sure that there was a meaningful difference between a mind and a soul myself, but--unsurety goes both ways.]

[inourhead]

[Yeah.]

[here_together]

[So how do you want to do this? We can put our arms around your waist and you can put yours around our neck, or you could cling to our back, or we could try to rig you some kind of harness for flying in.]

[inourhead]

[Um, clinging to your back sounds... least terrifying.]

[here_together]

[We do have non-irrelevant quantities of metal on hand, we can secure you using that, too, regardless of whatever else; mostly the "harness" option was because some people just plain dislike physical contact.]

[inourhead]

[We don't have that problem.]

[here_together]

[Just checking.] Quicksilver rivulets of metal probably not identifiable to people without considerable metallurgical knowledge or some variety of cheating snake their way out of the dufflebag.