ultimate twin sacrifice motion, set up!

[incanted]

Bella spends much of the flight from Phoenix wishing that she had not been able to convince Lexi to come with her.

Of course it would have been pointless if they didn't both go; the idea is to give Renée freedom of movement, and she'd be nearly as likely to stay home with one daughter as with both. So Bella worked on Lexi, and Lexi agreed, and they presented a united front, and now Bella has to actually move to Forks. At least there's only another year and a half before she can abscond to college and go wherever she wants. (She hopes Lexi will come too, but of course there's no guarantee they'll go to the same college, even though their school grades are about comparable.)

They're in all the same classes here even though they weren't in Phoenix. This is just as well; they naturally divide introduction duties between themselves, explaining each other's nicknames as need be to anyone who refers to the one of them while addressing the other ("No, she goes by Bella." "It's not Alexandra, it's Lexi.") and swap interlocutors when one of them has an interest that matches better up with the other sister. They're going to wind up sharing the same circle of friends, but by the end of the day it's clear that Jessica and Mike are going to be mostly Lexi's, and Angela and Eric are going to be mostly Bella's, and that's assuming they stick to the people who most friendly-like introduced themselves on day one. They aren't allowed to pair up in bio with each other ("you should make friends here!" the teacher encourages), so Bella gets Angela and Lexi gets a random boy who doesn't seem to want to be friends outside of class. In gym, Lexi makes Bella's excuses for her, and Bella is allowed to sit out. Bella wouldn't have wanted to try to explain her issues with gravity and her own limbs without an obviously un-self-interested twin to run interference. She probably would have had to bring in her freaking medical records. Bella spends gym class on a mat stretching and doing bodyweight exercises while Lexi plays basketball. Lexi's not exactly an athlete, but she's not an ambulance ride waiting to happen either.

At the end of class, Bella offers to run both of their paperwork to the office when Lexi says she wants to catch a ride to Jessica's house and get caught up in Government. Bella prefers to work out of the textbook and doesn't want to accompany her; she'll hit the office then drive their shared beat-up old-new station wagon (thanks, Charlie!) home and Lexi can get a ride home in time for dinner from Jessica's mom.

Bella folds up the mat, and a pair of scuffed old playing cards falls out. She picks them up - what, did someone play Go Fish on this mat and never bother collecting their jokers? - pockets them to toss later, and puts away the mat.

Comments

[cardistry]

"The first person who had any magic in 'em. I was avoiding people like you before the split."

[incanted]

"What would've happened if someone like me had grabbed you before then?"

[cardistry]

"Well, for one thing, they could torture me anytime they wanted if they figured out how to use that system."

[incanted]

"Most people don't torture other people given the chance," Bella points out. "Or destroy planets," she feels compelled to add.

[cardistry]

"...That's not a good reason to risk it," he says. "What I'm trying to do right now, that's a good reason to risk it. 'Well, they might not feel like torturing me' really isn't."

[incanted]

"I'm not going to torture you," volunteers Bella, "or destroy the planet."

[cardistry]

"Great," says Brilliance. "Glad to hear it. So when can we go find the rest of me?"

[incanted]

"I told you, I want to see if Lexi can see the special effects before I go around doing anything weirder than talking to a couple of playing cards. Why do you even look like playing cards?"

[cardistry]

"Fuck!" yelps Brilliance. "Forget that, somebody found the rest of the deck! We need to get there right now!"

[incanted]

"I have no idea if I'm sane!" exclaims Bella. "I - shit - there -" There's someone pulled over on the highway; she pulls over behind him. "What do I do, we'll see if this random dude can see it and get going," she says.

[cardistry]

"Pick me up and hold me, I'll do the rest," says Brilliance.

[incanted]

She scoops him up off the dashboard and reaches for the door handle.

[cardistry]

Her clothes glow—brilliantly—in a riotous swirl of every possible colour. The light shifts, morphs, and fades in the course of a second or two, and she is left wearing... different clothes.

Also, the pair of cards has transformed into a sinuously curved staff with a pair of wings at one end that morph into twin embossed spirals running almost its entire length.

[incanted]

"Did you see that?" she shouts at the random pulled over dude.

He nods, white-faced. "What the fuck?" he offers in a high gasp.

"Good. Brilliance, you're gonna have to navigate," she says, slamming the car door shut, "I have no idea what I'm doing."

[cardistry]

"On it," says the staff. "I don't even have to search, the little shit put up a barrier."

There is a many-coloured glow from beneath the car - it seems to be some sort of rotating figure, but the details are hard to make out - and their entire surroundings shift until, car and all, they're sitting out front of Jessica's house.