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]

"Mm." Bella makes no further audible protests as they move on.

[calendarofcrime]

After some time, she asks, "Are you troubled about the wizards?"

[thaumobabble]

"Troubled about them? Not really - not in either sense - not specifically. Troubled about - death. It's awfully permanent."

[calendarofcrime]

"Yes," she agrees. "But difficult to thoroughly avoid."

[thaumobabble]

"Yes, well. I'm working on it."

[calendarofcrime]

"Good luck."

[thaumobabble]

"Thank you."

[allthebrightest]

"Are you getting anywhere?"

[thaumobabble]

"I'm ruling out a lot of things that won't work," says Bella, brightening some. "At quite an impressive clip, if I do say so myself."

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock laughs. "A fine start."

[thaumobabble]

"I have some time left to work on it, after all, even if I don't manage the trick anytime soon. I'm only nineteen."

[calendarofcrime]

"Do let us know if you figure it out."

[thaumobabble]

"Oh, I'll pretty much tell the entire world," says Bella placidly.

[calendarofcrime]

"How helpful of you."

[thaumobabble]

"Rather," agrees Bella merrily. "But at any rate, people I do not know who are less deserving than a wizard trespassing in the Enchanted Forest die on a regular basis, so I am not troubled specially about him."

[calendarofcrime]

"I see. That is good to know."

[thaumobabble]

"I do wonder what he was doing there. We haven't been walking long enough to get out of range of my usual haunts even considering that I don't have a magic carpet yet, and I've never seen a wizard around this close to my house. Occasionally near where my mother lives, one time where my father lives, but never here."

[calendarofcrime]

"Where do your mother and your father live?"

[thaumobabble]

"Linderwall, both of them, but not the same town anymore."

[calendarofcrime]

"Why not?"

[thaumobabble]

"Well, they got divorced, in large part because Charlie's very attached to his town and Ranata doesn't like it there. She moved."

[calendarofcrime]

"I see."

[thaumobabble]

"It's a perfectly nice town, but small and sleepy and unremarkable," shrugs Bella. "I don't really want to live there either, not for any significant length of time."

[allthebrightest]

"What's it called?"

[thaumobabble]

"Tines. And Ranata in Phoenix. Why?"