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]

"Okay," says magic person agreeably. "So have you had an eventful whimsy-based quest that might or might not yield husbands so far?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Not especially, no."

[thaumobabble]

"No? How long have you been at it?"

[calendarofcrime]

"A week."

[thaumobabble]

"And you haven't run into any mischievous elves or lost panthers or would-be bandits or lost dukes' children from Kasselthwaite? I'm surprised."

[calendarofcrime]

"I'm not."

[thaumobabble]

"Why not?"

[allthebrightest]

"Because when Sherry doesn't wanna meet anybody in the Enchanted Forest, she doesn't."

[thaumobabble]

"Really! Now how do you manage that?" inquires Bella, who will now be narrated with her name despite the fact that her traveling companions don't know it.

[calendarofcrime]

"I go where they are not."

[thaumobabble]

"That seems logical, but how do you know where they won't be?"

[calendarofcrime]

"It is obvious."

[thaumobabble]

"...Is this an obscure royal magic sense, or...?"

[allthebrightest]

"Near as anybody can tell, nope," says Tony. "She's just really good at noticing things. Not that the royal magic doesn't help."

[thaumobabble]

"Huh. You'd have to be extraordinarily good at noticing things to avoid running into anyone in a week's walk through the forest. And that's if the forest didn't decide to throw anybody at you a bit more forcefully than usual. If you were feeling so antisocial how come you came up to my house?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Your house," says Sherlock, "was interesting. And there was that squirrel."

[thaumobabble]

"What exactly did you ask the squirrel for directions to?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Someone interesting."

[thaumobabble]

Bella giggles. "I try to be that, yes."

[calendarofcrime]

"You succeed."

[thaumobabble]

Bella is inestimably pleased by this compliment. "Cricket said you thought I was a witch."

[calendarofcrime]

"Not for very long."

[thaumobabble]

"What gave me away?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Everything."

[thaumobabble]

Bella laughs. "Most people can go on thinking I'm a witch for a long time. Sorceress stuff isn't widely recognized, I have to adapt anything from fire-witches or elves or unicorns till it's unrecognizable, nobody expects a girl to use wizard magic in any form, and everybody uses a dragon spell or two. A witch could do most everything that's left over, and I do dress like one."