Isabella Mariel Swan ∀ &quot;Glass&quot;

"Kexan's grandmother is the King of the Dragons. I want to convince her to let me have a look at the King's Crystal. I don't expect to be allowed to touch it or do anything to it, but I give myself even odds on being allowed to look, possibly if I spend a month in indentured servitude to her first or something. So far Kexan's on the fence about it."

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"Good luck," snorts Tony. "Kazul's an old friend of the family, and I wouldn't ask her for a look at the Crystal."

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"I'm at least reasonably confident that Kexan will not introduce me if she'd be liable to eat me," says Bella. "Merely not getting a look at the Crystal wouldn't be so bad; I'm not getting a look at it now. But I have to be gentle and patient - which is hard - about wheedling Kexan, since of course if I annoy him too much he might present me without being sure if I'll get eaten. Dragons can be depressingly casual about people getting eaten."

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"I had noticed that, yeah," says Tony. "And I come with a spare."

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"...I had not been under the impression that this was how twins work..." says Bella.

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"It isn't," says Sherlock. "Royal families, however..."

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"So you think a dragon would think less of eating one of you because the other could carry on questing for a husband and produce an heir," says Bella, sighing. "Yeah, probably."

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"From a dragon's perspective, individual humans don't last that long regardless of being eaten. Human continuity on the level of the family is more comparable to dragon continuity on the level of the individual."

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"I think half the reason Kexan is willing to be friends with me is that I take the limitations of human lifespan very seriously as a bad thing that I plan to fix," Bella says, nodding. "I'm certainly not gearing up to produce an heir and he doesn't know my parents."

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"Are you not?" says Sherlock, smiling.

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"Gay as a rainbow that is only interested in other rainbows of the same sex," says Bella, gesturing at herself, "so, yeah."

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Tony laughs.

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"I mean, that's probably a relatively minor technical issue if I worked on it, but it's not a priority at the moment, I don't have a kingdom to hand down."

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"...Relatively minor?"

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"Well, I don't know really, I haven't looked into it, but it doesn't sound hard, not like living forever without turning into a rock or getting other people to understand one's cat."

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"Is the cat thing really up there?"

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"So, so up there," laughs Bella, "it's kind of ridiculous, it's so easy if it's your cat as to be barely a spell and so hard if it's not your cat - some people manage it for like a minute at a time, and then it fizzles."

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Sherlock laughs.

"That is bizarre."

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"I know. I think it's something about the cats themselves interfering, but attempts at observing anything emanating from Cricket beyond witchcraft I deliberately channel through him have turned up zilch."

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"Perhaps," says Sherlock, "it is precisely the cats themselves interfering."

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"I don't think they're consciously obstructing the attempts. They have enough variance in personality that I don't think they could simply all be lying about wanting to help, and generally they don't object to being translated manually."

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"Then perhaps it is in their nature, and does not emanate because it is not having an effect in the world beyond the cat?"

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"But a great many visible effects don't have results beyond the thing they are on, so it would have to be special in at least one other way."

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"I see. That is curious."

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