surefooted moccasins

[thaumobabble]

Bella completes her moccasins. They're easy, but tedious; she's putting tiny parts of the spell on each of the hundreds of glass beads that gets sewn on. Last time it took her a couple of days, but by the end of the process she could do the magic and the sewing at the same time; this time it's an easy rhythm and by an hour after lunch she's got them beaded and pieced and a binding enchantment laid on each of them and the pair together to hold all the beads in a coherent whole. She says her cleaning spell - the castle isn't dirty, but any amount of walking around barefoot leaves dirt on one's feet - and slips them on and gets up and walks around experimentally. Success!

She spends the rest of the time before the delegation is prepared to go sitting outside at the Skyvault, looking at it with various lens combinations and taking fascinated notes, and spending time with her fiancée-and-a-half.

She's ready to leave when the rest of the wizard-visiting party is.

Comments

[thaumobabble]

"Yes. I think we shall do that."

And they do!

And then it is lunchtime. Hello, lunchtime. Hello, Tony and Queen Marianne!

[allthebrightest]

Tony is pleased to see them both!

[pythbox]

So is Queen Marianne.

"I've heard you did very well for yourself on this trip," she says with some degree of amusement.

[thaumobabble]

"Oh?" Bella blinks.

[pythbox]

"Why don't you tell me how the visit went?"

[thaumobabble]

"Well, we went to the cave, and no one seemed to know how to start, and so I asked the wizards a few questions and then the diplomat picked up from there and gave them the list of laws and customs and so on," says Bella. "Oh, and unless you object or I have too much else on my plate, I might teach the wizards' wives to cultivate witchwells so they don't have to be parasitic on anyone else for their magical energy, in exchange for some straight information about wizardry that didn't have to be gotten by subterfuge."

[pythbox]

"Very sensible," the queen approves.

[thaumobabble]

"Thanks," says Bella. "I did want to run the witching idea by you, though, since it wouldn't just mean that they wouldn't have to be parasitic, it'd also mean handing them a fair amount of magical power to work with - not just the wizards who'd have witch donors, but the new witches themselves - and I'm not sure how far you want to trust them, even if they have an apparently consistent political philosophy that would put them on the outs with the rest of the Society of Wizards."

[pythbox]

"Also very sensible," says the queen. "But you can go ahead."

[thaumobabble]

"Cool!" Bella pulls her notebook out of her sleeve and writes this down and has at her lunch.

[pythbox]

It is a tasty lunch, even though a princess did not make it.

[thaumobabble]

Good, good.