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

[calendarofcrime]

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

[thaumobabble]

"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."

[calendarofcrime]

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

[thaumobabble]

"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."

[calendarofcrime]

"I see. That is curious."

[thaumobabble]

"It is! There could potentially be an entire class of effects similar to cats and cats are just the one witches have noticed due to the usefulness of having cats," shrugs Bella. "It's an interesting puzzle, but not a priority for me; I can translate Cricket as needed."

[calendarofcrime]

"And I suppose if you solve mortality you will have plenty of time for the rest."

[thaumobabble]

"Yes, exactly! There's so much to do! I can barely stand to specialize even the tiny amount that I do. If I were immortal that would solve that problem, and replace it with the far lovelier problem of things to do appearing at a rate per year that would overwhelm anyone's ability to do that number of things in a year."

[calendarofcrime]

"...Things to do such as...?"

[thaumobabble]

"Everything! I'm oriented around magic, myself, but there's other things to do in service of that - I know wee bits of Elvish so I can talk about the magic in a language designed to handle it; I've traveled, but only to look at magic things, not just to go places and have a look at them; I know how to craft some objects - like the specs and so on - but only so I can enchant them. And there are certainly other things people do besides magic! I bet some of them are even interesting! If I had a few more lifetimes to cram it into I could get more than serviceable at cooking, and learn how to speak Elvish properly and read books in it, and go see the Pendasi Sky-Islands which aren't even slightly magical but are reputed to be beautiful, and there's all kinds of social activism that needs doing, and stuff to be invented, and people to meet."

[allthebrightest]

"Suddenly my life feels so much more boring," Tony remarks.

[thaumobabble]

"What, don't you do things? You're a princess, I'm sure you get to do things - politics sounds fascinating, I'd probably move to one of those newfangled democracies and play with it if for some reason I couldn't be a magician," says Bella. "And even if that's not to your taste, you've been sent on a pretty open-ended quest, you could go just about anywhere and claim that you might find a husband while you were at it."

[calendarofcrime]

"If either of us liked politics, our mother would not be quite so desperate to marry at least one of us off to someone who did."

[thaumobabble]

"If the quest doesn't pan out are you at risk of being set up with some more or less disagreeable neighbor prince?" inquires Bella.

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock smiles thinly.

"No."

[thaumobabble]

"Why not?"

[allthebrightest]

"Because if I have to marry somebody I don't actually like, I'll pull a Cimorene," says Tony, "and if Sherry does, she'll set him on fire."

[thaumobabble]

"Cimorene was - hang on, not a historian - Cimorene was queen alongside King Mendanbar, right? Did she run away at some point from someone? That's reasonable. Setting him on fire sounds extreme. He might be nothing worse than spineless or otherwise not equipped to run away himself, after all."

[allthebrightest]

"Cimorene got to King Mendanbar by running away from Linderwall, where her parents wanted to marry her to a disagreeable neighbouring prince, and being Kazul's princess for a while. Which is where the family friendship thing got started. I love Cimorene, she's my favourite ancestor."

[thaumobabble]

"I have no interesting ancestors. That must be nice to have some," says Bella. "Cimorene sounds like she must've been neat. Did you already scope out the neighboring princes yourselves?"

[allthebrightest]

"Yeah. And actually I'm pretty sure Mom wouldn't want me to marry any of 'em."

[thaumobabble]

"Why not? Are they bad at politics?"

[calendarofcrime]

"They are bad at most things that don't involve hitting one another with swords. And I am better than most of them at that."

[thaumobabble]

"I don't really understand why that's supposed to be a princely skill. Strategy maybe, if you expect to get into wars, but actual swordfighting? Why would anybody in line for the throne be on the front lines as a matter of course?"

[allthebrightest]

"Rescuing princesses?" suggests Tony.