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]

"I suppose it's only fair. I know where you grew up," laughs Bella.

[allthebrightest]

Tony giggles.

[thaumobabble]

"Did you enchant Sherlock's armor yourself," asks Bella, "or just forge it?"

[allthebrightest]

"Forged and enchanted!" she says happily. "That's from Dad's side of the family. He was good with metal, too."

[thaumobabble]

"It looks like a dwarf enchantment. I've investigated the magic but it doesn't like me as much as some kinds do."

[allthebrightest]

"I am pretty sure my dad wasn't a dwarf," says Tony. "I guess it's not impossible that he could've had some dwarf in him somewhere, though."

[thaumobabble]

"Dwarf spells are like elf ones - friendlier if you're in the family or some sort of tempermentally inclined but theoretically usable for anyone," says Bella. "I go ahead and wrestle with a dwarf spell whenever I want to work on something metal, but it's not often - I substitute when I can."

[allthebrightest]

"Well, now I know what kind of magic it is, I guess. I never really thought about it before."

[thaumobabble]

"...You were doing magic without knowing what kind it was?"

[allthebrightest]

"It was Dad's kind," she says reasonably.

[thaumobabble]

"He never told you what sort of magic he was doing?"

[allthebrightest]

"He invented most of it himself."

[thaumobabble]

"...Huh. Well, it looks dwarven to me, but I'm not enough of an expert on dwarf magic to say for sure that there's nothing else mixed in there."

[allthebrightest]

"I'll believe you that there's some dwarven, anyway."

[thaumobabble]

"You should. I am a magician and we know these things," says Bella grandly.

[allthebrightest]

Tony laughs.

[thaumobabble]

"Just how fire-witchy are you two? My specs aren't that fine-grained. They just say 'not zero, not all the way', but if there's books on thinned-out fire-witch families I haven't got copies."

[allthebrightest]

"I think maybe it was our... great-great grandma?" she hazards. "And it's been pretty strong in the family since then, we're the first generation with no red hair. But we still do the fire thing and the knowing stuff about stuff thing."

[calendarofcrime]

"And it's hard to tell about the rest, because the royal family of the Enchanted Forest also has a strong natural affinity for magic."

[thaumobabble]

"The fire thing. There's parts to the fire thing - does your hair burn when you're mad? I saw you do an ignition -" She waves at Tony. "And the frost spell bothered you, although you were perfectly talkative and so on so I don't know how much -" She waves at Sherlock. "I'm not getting much of an impression of a temper off either of you - you were pretty calm about the wizard, sword or no sword - do you cry fire? Could you push magic into a wizard's staff and explode it? Thanks for not doing that if that's a thing you could've done," Bella adds, "I've never gotten hold of an intact recently-used staff whose owner wasn't liable to steal it back a few days later before."

[allthebrightest]

"Yeah, Sherry can be a real firestorm if you piss her off bad enough, it just takes a lot to get her going these days," says Tony. "Which is a good thing, 'cause we live in a forest. I dunno about exploding wizard's staffs, I've never tried."

[thaumobabble]

"If you're worried about burning down swaths of forest I could probably make you gear for that," says Bella. "Like my marble, only I think I'd make them out of something else if they were intended to contain fire-witch magic specifically."

[calendarofcrime]

"I have not set anything on fire that I did not fully intend to set on fire since I was nine," says Sherlock. "I believe I am all right on that front."

[allthebrightest]

"What's your marble do?"

[thaumobabble]

"Stores magic. It's like a wizard staff - some of the same basic principles on the storage end - it'll take all kinds, it could store fire-witch magic without exploding but it wouldn't like it - but it's not a thief. It takes runoff from my spells, anything I generate by accident, occasional donations. Then if I ever need a lot of power without a lot of time to prepare, it's there."