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

[withmypowers]

"That is precious."

[incanted]

"I know, right?"

[withmypowers]

She nods firmly.

[incanted]

"When I met him he had never tried any kind of food, I gave him some random leftovers and a banana and he was over the moon about it."

[withmypowers]

"Awwwwww."

[incanted]

"He's very cute."

[withmypowers]

"I can tell!"

[incanted]

"Anyway, I assume you are very busy, I don't want to tie you up talking about how cute it is that my boyfriend eats a lot of pie if you have other things going on and only meant to drop by for ten minutes to see if Lexi and Persica got along."

[withmypowers]

Matilda laughs.

"All right. I'll get back to you about the perfect recall thing," she promises, and Adularia shimmers, and they teleport away.

[incanted]

Bella goes back to her articles on Eastern Europe.

When she is between articles some fifteen minutes later, she decides to try for a Libby again, by brainphone this time. [Testing -]

[prima_sequentem]

[Excuse me?]

[incanted]

[Oh! Cool! You exist! Hi. Uh, I haven't had to explain magic-and-so-on from scratch before, where do you want me to start?]

[prima_sequentem]

[Your name would be nice.]

[incanted]

[Bella,] laughs Bella.

[prima_sequentem]

[Where you know me from, next.]

[incanted]

[I don't know you. I have met four alternate-universe versions of you and only just now thought to check to see if this world had one. And it does!]

[prima_sequentem]

[How are we currently communicating?]

[incanted]

[It's called the brainphone, it is made with offworld magic. It also has a text channel, busy messages, and conference calls.]

[prima_sequentem]

[What exactly do you mean by 'offworld'?]

[incanted]

[I mean, there are lots of worlds and worldsheaves - universes and collections thereof, not planets - of which this one and the dimensions that it is possible to reach with local magic is only one sheaf, and I have been to some more of them and met people from more still.]

[prima_sequentem]

[And these people included alternate-universe versions of me? Who made a good enough impression on you that you then decided to see if you could dig up a local copy?]

[incanted]

[The four of you work for four of me. There are more of me than of you so far, though, although I don't know if anyone else has actually run sweeps of their worlds for copies, the others ran into theirs through more coincidental means.]

[prima_sequentem]

[And what is it that you do?]

[incanted]

[Have you noticed all those bewildered newspaper articles about oncologists being able to take simultaneous vacations all of a sudden? Among other things, but I think that made the biggest media splash.]

[prima_sequentem]

[I mean in the context of me working for you. What is it that you do?]