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]

"Well," she says, stuffing the not-yet-eaten biscuits and the contents of a cupboard apparently dedicated to leftovers into her capacious sleeves one by one, "I can be all packed for a four-day hike in just a few minutes. Cricket, d'you want to come?"

"Mow."

"All right, you stay vigilant about that gnome infestation, I'll be back in just over a week, you know how to get into the emergency kitty nibbles if you run out of mice and minnows." She scratches the back of Cricket's neck and he purrs at her, and she goes bustling around her house, disappearing things into her sleeves.

[allthebrightest]

"Okay," says Tony, "your professional opinion as a magic person - how easy is it to get a witch's-sleeves thing going on something that is not a sleeve and doesn't belong to a witch?"

[thaumobabble]

"Well," says the magic person, "there are degrees of not being a witch; how not-a-witch and what not-a-sleeve do you have in mind?" She packs a sack of oranges and then reopens that cabinet and takes some sampling jars. She also retrieves her spectacles, but these she puts in a pointed black hat she produces, rather than in either sleeve. "Hats are easy. Bags are doable. I could probably figure out how to do a wooden box, but it would be hard."

[allthebrightest]

"I keep trying it on bags," she says, "but it's not my natural medium and I get exactly nowhere."

[thaumobabble]

"What manner of not-witch are you? I know fire-witchery runs a little in the royal family, but you're not redheads, so you've probably only got a faint talent for it if any. Fire-witch, even a little bit of one, is easier to work with than completely nonmagical, though." She reaches into her hat, puts on her spectacles, flicks the lenses around, and peers at Tony.

[allthebrightest]

"We've got some fire-witch going on," she says. "I mostly use it in the forge, Sherry mostly doesn't use it at all."

She does indeed have some fire-witch going on, and she is also a member of the royal family of the Enchanted Forest. Those are definitely both true.

[thaumobabble]

"Hmm. Why a bag and not a sleeve or a hat?" Magic person flicks her lenses around some more. "I could sleeve you a hat."

[allthebrightest]

"I don't wear sleeves," she says. "Or hats. Hats get lost, sleeves catch fire."

[thaumobabble]

Magic person puts her spectacles back in her own hat and her hat back on her head. "Do you have a bag on you that you'd like worked on? I can poke at it while we travel."

[allthebrightest]

Tony offers up her - very full - backpack.

[thaumobabble]

"...I have to work on it while it's empty. I can start now, and then you can pack everything up when we're ready to start hiking, or we can start first and I can start when we've quit for the night, what's your preference?"

[allthebrightest]

"Hmm... start when we've quit for the night," she decides. "Less total packing and unpacking that way."

[thaumobabble]

Magic person nods. She flits about her house a bit more, putting things in her sleeves and a few of the more fragile items in her hat. "Do you want to go soon or not-so-soon?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Soon," says Sherlock.

[thaumobabble]

Magic person tosses a few last minute things into her storage space. "Well, I'm set whenever you are," she says.

[allthebrightest]

Tony puts her bag back on.

"Good to go," she says.

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock starts for the door.

[thaumobabble]

The door obligingly leads to the outdoors.

When they are all outside, magic person snaps her fingers and says sternly to the doorknob, "Broom salesmen are not your friends, they cannot come in for just a minute, you will stay closed till I am back."

The doorknob wiggles a little in what might be an acknowledging fashion. Magic person pats it and sets out through the path that leads between her herbs and her vegetables.

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock takes the lead when they reach the forest.

[thaumobabble]

"Anything else I should peer at while I'm in the environs of the palace?" inquires magic person. "Other less famous fascinating magical artifacts, other adorable childhood graphical models of things?"

[allthebrightest]

"If Mom really likes you, she might let you look at the sword."

[thaumobabble]

Magic person looks like she might be about to swoon. "Tell me how to get her to like me, please?"

[allthebrightest]

"The ways of Mom are mysterious," says Tony. "Be nice to her offspring, employees and subjects, don't break anything that didn't need to be broken, and at least she probably won't dislike you."

[thaumobabble]

"I'm very nice," says magic person. "I wanna look at the sword." She sighs like she has been carrying on a long distance pen pal romance with the sword.

[allthebrightest]

"Are you sure looking at it is all you wanna do," snorts Tony.