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

[allthebrightest]

"Anything I'd understand in there?"

[thaumobabble]

"Mmm... I'm not sure. I don't know anything about royal magic. Certainly it's nothing in common with dwarf magic or fire-witchery. 'Anchoring a ward on a tree does nothing to defend the tree, so wards are routinely stacked with the copious application of arbrex charms; it may also help to invert the dimensional identifiers differently with each layer if the wards are otherwise meant to cover the same area'?"

[allthebrightest]

She laughs.

"Nope, totally incomprehensible."

[thaumobabble]

"Sorry," chuckles Bella. "I'll pull a novel next and I can read aloud if you want."

[allthebrightest]

"It's okay," says Tony. "Read what you wanna read."

[thaumobabble]

And so she does.

She doesn't particularly notice when she winds up with her head on Tony's shoulder.

[allthebrightest]

Tony does!

Tony awwwws.

[thaumobabble]

"Hmm?" Bella looks around, expecting something along the lines of a baby rabbit.

[allthebrightest]

"No, the cute thing is you," Tony says fondly.

[thaumobabble]

Bella peers down at herself. "Did reading become cute all of a sudden? Or did I turn fluffy and not notice? Or is it a mystery that will be explained only with cunning graphs?"

[allthebrightest]

"You had your head on my shoulder," Tony explains. "It was cute."

[thaumobabble]

"Oh," says Bella, turning a little pink. "I didn't realize. You don't mind?"

[allthebrightest]

"Aww is not a sound of minding."

[thaumobabble]

"Just checking," says Bella with a soft giggle. She puts her head back where it was, and she smiles, and she turns a page.

[allthebrightest]

Tony giggles, too.

[thaumobabble]

It's about an hour after lunch when they are next in a position to encounter somebody. The somebody is behind a tree over there and he's doing a very bad job of masking his sniffling.

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock stops. Well before the sniffling would be audible to the rest of her party.

"Tony," she says quietly.

[allthebrightest]

Tony stops, too, a few steps behind Sherlock.

She doesn't say anything for a few seconds.

[thaumobabble]

"What?" murmurs Bella, tucking her book into her sleeve and picking her head up from Tony's shoulder.

[calendarofcrime]

"There is a... person," says Sherlock.

[thaumobabble]

"Another wizard, or just some other sort of person?"

[calendarofcrime]

"A child," says Sherlock.

[thaumobabble]

"By themselves?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Alone. Crying."

[thaumobabble]

"You want me to handle it? The window that does the lost tinkers' sons and so on does kids sometime, I can probably help him."