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 bet my sleeves want to be bags. They work more like bags than sleeves anyway - c'mon - you know you wanna be sleeved - c'mon c'mon - deepandwidecapacioussleevealwaysgiveherwhatsheneedsbythepowerofthisspellkeepitallandkeepitwell!" she blurts as fast as possible without losing diction. She peers into the bag. "Sleeved!" she says triumphantly.

[allthebrightest]

Tony scoops up the bag and hugs it. Then she hugs Bella too, for good measure.

[thaumobabble]

Eee, hugs! Bella is pleased. And huggable.

[allthebrightest]

Hugs hugs huuuuuugs.

"You're my favourite magician," she says gleefully.

[thaumobabble]

"Have you met many?" asks Bella archly.

[allthebrightest]

"Nope!"

[thaumobabble]

"That only makes sense. We are rather uncommon."

[allthebrightest]

"It was a magician that did the first spell to keep wizards' greasy paws off our magic," she offers. "Way back before Mom was even born."

[thaumobabble]

"Yeah, I've read about Telemain. Good role model, kind of lousy writer, too fond of his jargon - I understand it now but it was kind of intimidating when I was just starting out."

[allthebrightest]

"Yeah, I remember Dad used to complain about him all the time."

[thaumobabble]

Bella laughs. "The jargon problem, or something else? Were they contemporaries at all?"

[allthebrightest]

"They might've been?" she hazards. "Mostly it was the jargon. He complained about the spell structure on the anti-wizard thing, too, but it was the admiring kind of complaining."

[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?"