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]

"There's an admiring kind of complaint?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Oh, yes," says Sherlock.

[thaumobabble]

"Like what?"

[calendarofcrime]

"I cannot give you examples," she says. "It was mostly in the delivery."

[allthebrightest]

"You had to know him."

[thaumobabble]

"Fair enough. I had just moved in when he passed away - it was a fairly miserable welcome, the forest grieving all around me - I'm sure it was worse for you. I'm sorry."

[calendarofcrime]

"What brought you here?"

[thaumobabble]

"There's really no better place to be a magician," Bella says, brightening. "I think there's something like a dozen witches in the whole of Linderwall - no permanent wizard residence - there's Little Elfholts in two of the big cities but it's nothing like having a native elf population - there's just not as much to look at, magic-wise."

[allthebrightest]

"That," says Tony, "is very true."

[thaumobabble]

"And I do like to be busy."

[calendarofcrime]

"What are you currently busy with?"

[thaumobabble]

"There's the ongoing immortality project, and on the shorter-term front I'm deconstructing some unicorn magic, trying to convince Kexan to introduce me to his grandmother, setting up a test garden to see which of several spells is better at repelling gnomes and other pests, and - now - I'm going to have lots of notes on the Skyvault and maybe the sword to pore over."

[calendarofcrime]

"What exactly are you doing to unicorn magic? And who is Kexan's grandmother?"

[thaumobabble]

"Kexan's grandmother is the King of the Dragons. I want to convince her to let me have a look at the King's Crystal. I don't expect to be allowed to touch it or do anything to it, but I give myself even odds on being allowed to look, possibly if I spend a month in indentured servitude to her first or something. So far Kexan's on the fence about it."

[allthebrightest]

"Good luck," snorts Tony. "Kazul's an old friend of the family, and I wouldn't ask her for a look at the Crystal."

[thaumobabble]

"I'm at least reasonably confident that Kexan will not introduce me if she'd be liable to eat me," says Bella. "Merely not getting a look at the Crystal wouldn't be so bad; I'm not getting a look at it now. But I have to be gentle and patient - which is hard - about wheedling Kexan, since of course if I annoy him too much he might present me without being sure if I'll get eaten. Dragons can be depressingly casual about people getting eaten."

[allthebrightest]

"I had noticed that, yeah," says Tony. "And I come with a spare."

[thaumobabble]

"...I had not been under the impression that this was how twins work..." says Bella.

[calendarofcrime]

"It isn't," says Sherlock. "Royal families, however..."

[thaumobabble]

"So you think a dragon would think less of eating one of you because the other could carry on questing for a husband and produce an heir," says Bella, sighing. "Yeah, probably."

[calendarofcrime]

"From a dragon's perspective, individual humans don't last that long regardless of being eaten. Human continuity on the level of the family is more comparable to dragon continuity on the level of the individual."

[thaumobabble]

"I think half the reason Kexan is willing to be friends with me is that I take the limitations of human lifespan very seriously as a bad thing that I plan to fix," Bella says, nodding. "I'm certainly not gearing up to produce an heir and he doesn't know my parents."

[calendarofcrime]

"Are you not?" says Sherlock, smiling.

[thaumobabble]

"Gay as a rainbow that is only interested in other rainbows of the same sex," says Bella, gesturing at herself, "so, yeah."

[allthebrightest]

Tony laughs.