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]

"Monarching is boring," says Tony. "I take after Dad; I'd rather drink, flirt, and tinker with magic artifacts."

[thaumobabble]

"Oooh, magic artifacts," says she-who-has-not-yet-been-asked-for-her-name. "What kind of artifacts?"

[allthebrightest]

"Please tell me you've heard of the Skyvault," says Tony. "Otherwise I might have to take away your 'Magic' sign."

[thaumobabble]

"Of course I've heard of the Skyvault," says she-of-the-"Magic"-sign dreamily. "If I thought arbitrary visitors were allowed I'd have hiked all the way to the castle just to look at it."

[allthebrightest]

Tony laughs. "You can come to the castle and look at it if you want!"

[thaumobabble]

"Will I be allowed to touch it - get a really good look?" asks maybe-a-witch, bouncing in her chair. "Or does it repel people who aren't members of the family, or something?"

[allthebrightest]

"You can't mess with it," she cautions. "I mean, no casting spells on it, no hitting it with sticks. But you can walk up and stare at it to your heart's content."

[thaumobabble]

"And can I wear my funky magic-seeing glasses while I look?" she says. She leans over and opens a drawer and gets them out; they're black metal and multicolored lenses that can drop down in front of the wearer's eyes in arbitrary combinations. "Some big enchantments are shy and don't like it when I do that."

[allthebrightest]

"The arch isn't really an enchantment," says Tony. "It's a... well, anyway. Funky magic-seeing glasses are fine. How do they work?"

[thaumobabble]

"Oh, I'm very proud of these! They're something like window enchantments actually - the easiest way to do something new is to pivot from something that already works; you wouldn't believe the thousand ways you can modify the average dragon spell - this lens here actually borrows from a bit of wizard magic, although I was very careful to source its power ethically, I have dragon friends - and this lens does sorceress-sight, and this is my very best attempt at turning fire-witch item-reading into a visual format that someone who's not a fire-witch can use - and this one is a unicorn spell, originally designed for use on pools, but glass is so receptive, it'll take almost anything I can think of to throw at it, I love glass - and these two lenses are both elven, but this one is boosted with some squirrelish properties, wasn't that a trick, took me weeks to figure out, that's to make it easier to trace a complex bit of magic I'm looking at - this one and that one are both witchcraft, but this one is with-cat and that one is without-cat, I could go on about the differences that makes all day -"

Maybe she is not a witch.

[calendarofcrime]

Of course she isn't.

[allthebrightest]

"That," says Tony, "is awesome."

[thaumobabble]

"Yes!"

[allthebrightest]

She grins.

[thaumobabble]

"So the Skyvault's not shy, then?"

[allthebrightest]

"Nope!"

[thaumobabble]

"Excellent! Let's see, it'll probably take four days to get there, longer if I bring Cricket, but it's possible I can get a ride from Kexan and then it's down to hours, but Kexan won't have the patience to watch me stare at it for hours so I'll still have to plan to hike back..." She puts her spectacles back in their drawer, closes the drawer, opens it to reveal not spectacles but a stack of notebooks and a heap of pens, and starts writing.

[allthebrightest]

"Kexan...?"

[thaumobabble]

"A dragon friend. He can occasionally be convinced to fly me places if I ply him with sufficient pancakes."

[calendarofcrime]

"What volume of pancakes does he consider sufficient?"

[thaumobabble]

"It's a truly ridiculous number, and he also likes there to be a variety of kinds, but it takes less than four days to make that many," laughs why-has-no-one-asked-for-her-name-yet-it's-not-going-to-occur-to-her.

[calendarofcrime]

"I volunteer to assist in creating pancakes," says Sherlock.

[thaumobabble]

"Well, he needs them hot, and it may not be convenient for him to come over for the next day or two, so you could help me with some of the prep work if you'd like to, but the finished pancakes themselves just sort of get continuously tossed into his mouth over a three-hour period as they come off the griddle, and none of this is relevant to your quest so I wouldn't expect you to still be here."

[allthebrightest]

"...No," says Tony, "see, I will take you to see the Skyvault. Is what I meant."

[thaumobabble]

"Oh!" Pause. "I don't understand! You're busy and Kexan knows where the castle is!"