self-devising bejeweled minds!

[incanted]

Bella stays with Brilliance as long as he needs. She has one or two conversations with politicians by brainphone at the same time, but she doesn't leave till he tells her he'd like to be alone, and then she goes. (She tells Lexi that she may have sourced her a Device.)

Comments

[incanted]

[Maybe. I mean, maybe you are unlike the other Libbies and do not wish to be somebell's personnel officer. Just thought it was worth looking.]

[prima_sequentem]

[If you came bearing another Libby to back up your claims, I would find your offer a lot more tempting.]

[incanted]

[I can't produce one right now because Jane is down, and she's the one who does on-demand interworld travel. Unfortunately, she also does interworld time synchronization. This has happened before, although then the error message she threw was a lot less worrying; it could be hours or years before she comes back, I got lucky last time but some other places were spun off for over a decade. The old-fashioned way involves an interworld bar that appears according to thus-far-unfathomable whim. If you open a door and it goes to a bar instead of where it was supposed to go, have a look in the backyard and you'll see the Belltower; you could go in there and leave a note saying that if Stella, Juliet, Golden, or Pattern happens to see it you'd appreciate them forcing the door to Rainbow to introduce you to one of your alts. I'll let you know if I find a door, too.]

[prima_sequentem]

[Thanks for the tip.]

[incanted]

[No problem. I can produce, like, illusory displays of all four of them, and mostly-secondhand information and snippets of conversation therewith from talking to other Bells about them, and common knowledge about the template from the Friends Of Bells book we maintain, but I haven't made close personal friends with any.]

[prima_sequentem]

[By all means, produce those things. But not right now. Say, tomorrow?]

[incanted]

[Sure, whenever, I don't sleep and I don't have any meetings until Thursday.]

[prima_sequentem]

[You don't sleep,] she repeats.

[incanted]

[Yeah. Standard Bell superpower that gets slapped on with everything else cool when we get access to the offworld magic. I can sleep, I just usually have better things to do.]

[prima_sequentem]

[You know what would also make your offer more tempting? If I could get some of this lovely magic you're throwing around.]

[incanted]

[You just want me to standard-no-sleep you? I can do that.]

[prima_sequentem]

[That would be nice of you.]

[incanted]

Hex. [There you go.]

[prima_sequentem]

[Pleasure doing business with you.]

[incanted]

Bella snorts. [I can be freer with this kind of magic than most of my alts for reasons I'd rather not get into at this point in our relationship, but you will eventually run out of freebies like that except for the part where as far as I know you live on Earth and I'm on an Earth-improving spree.]

[prima_sequentem]

[And the magic in question is not easily mass-produced...?]

[incanted]

[Depends on what you mean by "mass" and "easily".]

[prima_sequentem]

[I mean, it wouldn't be feasible for you to produce enough of whatever magic wand you just waved at me to do the same thing to the entire population of Earth. For example.]

[incanted]

[I don't have seven billion of the thing I just did. I could do the entire population of Earth by using a bigger magic wand which can do more at once, but it would be kind of hard to get everyone's permission to magically mess with them in that way.]

[prima_sequentem]

[I would like to know more about these magic wands.]

[incanted]

[I'm sure you would. They're not wand-shaped.]

[prima_sequentem]

[Go on.]

[incanted]

Bella laughs. [They're wishes,] she says, [how's that?]

[prima_sequentem]

[I'm sensing a hint of evasiveness.]

[incanted]

[Yeah, I mentioned I haven't actually gotten to personally know the other four Libbies? I know you can probably be on board with my projects, but since I don't have a Libby Who Is Someone's Personnel Officer available to send to your house with a gift basket and literature on how awesome Bells are, and since I know sometimes Libbies have done slightly sketchy things before being in the employ of miscellaneous Bells, there is some evasiveness. Not a lot, I'll tell you most stuff, but I will not be telling you about what happens in place of a mommy wish and a daddy wish loving each other very much this very minute.]