extradimensional space

[thaumobabble]

Here is a house.

It is pretty and trim and green-and-cream and really ought not to be able to hold itself up like that, and yet here it is, somehow defying the laws of architecture. It is surrounded by a neatly bordered garden of ornamental and useful plants of all sorts: here vegetables, there herbs, there spell components, there rows of flowers.

There is a sign out front. It says only: Magic. Not, Beware, Magic or Magic Emporium or anything like that. Just: Magic.

Sitting on top of this sign is a cream cat with smoke-dark points of color on each paw, his ears, and his face and tail.

All in all, you could be forgiven for thinking that a witch lives here.

Comments

[thaumobabble]

Bella taps the point of her hat and smirks. "I didn't make it up, but I will take full responsibility for propagating the term."

[allthebrightest]

She giggles some more.

[thaumobabble]

"We're coming up on the lime-flavored river," Bella observes after they've been walking for about half an hour. "There's a bridge, but it doesn't hold still, so I can't tell you how to intercept it."

[calendarofcrime]

"I feel confident that we can track it down."

[thaumobabble]

"Quite probably!" agrees Bella. "We should also watch out for giant watersnakes. They can't get at the bridge itself, but they can and do hang out on the banks of the river."

[calendarofcrime]

"I am duly warned."

[thaumobabble]

"I suppose you must have already crossed this river to find my house, sorry. Unless you went far enough north first to go around the Limespring."

[allthebrightest]

"I don't remember a lime-flavoured river," Tony contributes, "but I also haven't tasted every single river we've crossed, so..."

[thaumobabble]

"It flows from a limestone spring," explains Bella. "Only logical. I get most of my drinking water from a stream that branches off from the river. I made the limeade with it."

[allthebrightest]

"Limestone spring," she laughs. "Gotcha."

[thaumobabble]

Presently they come to the river. No bridge is immediately in evidence. Bella picks a direction to look in and goes left, peering ahead for evidence of the bridge.

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock takes right, for efficiency.

[thaumobabble]

Bella finds a bridge. She's turned around to shout for the princesses to come her way when a watersnake finds her.

Bella's moccasins are not rated for running. She goes sprawling and she's knee-deep in the snake a moment later.

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock only starts running a split second before Tony, but she passes her on the way.

Disinclined to bring out her sword in close proximity to Bella, she instead hooks her gauntleted hands into the snake's jaws and yanks them apart.

[thaumobabble]

The snake makes a godawful noise and thrashes a coil around Sherlock, and Bella drags herself away from it. "Mulagarby-rothwick-ulfrancian-shlerastov," she gasps, and her legs recover somewhat from the teeth wounds and she can sit up and scramble a little more effectively. She's lost a moccasin down the snake's gullet.

[calendarofcrime]

All parts of Bella now being out of the snake, Sherlock draws her sword and cuts it in half.

[thaumobabble]

The snake takes exception to this!

But not for very long.

"Th-thanks," says Bella. "They're usually not that far up the bank."

[calendarofcrime]

"You are welcome," says Sherlock.

[allthebrightest]

Tony arrives, a little out of breath.

[thaumobabble]

"Rothwick-rothwick-rothwick," Bella mutters, holding her hands together until her legs stop bleeding, and then she does her cleaning spell again, and then she says, "Well, I'm down a shoe, I'm not sorting through snake guts for that thing, I'd sooner walk barefoot."

[calendarofcrime]

"I am sorry to report we haven't any spares," says Sherlock.

[thaumobabble]

"Barefoot it is," says Bella, peeling off the other moccasin. "They only work as a pair. I'll make more when I get home, I suppose. Eugh. Bad watersnake. Okay, what do I have to get past the rest of them, what do I have... Sherlock, are you okay? Did it get a chance to squeeze you at all?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Not even a dent," she reports serenely.

[thaumobabble]

"Okay. I don't usually come out this far and the last time I was with Kexan and didn't worry about the snakes, but I have a little powdered mercury-leaf, which I think will make us look like non-food with an associated elf-spell, I'm just not sure about dosage since there's three of us and mercury-leaf is expensive..."

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock has cleaned her sword, but not sheathed it.

"I will deal with any further snakes," she says.