universal star visitor brilliant start!

[incanted]

Eventually Bella and Lexi go to bed - they have to coordinate this; Bella's a reasonably sound sleeper but Lexi's not, so if Bella goes to sleep first Lexi won't be able to drop off with all the random nouns and if Bella goes to sleep second Lexi will wake up when she's trying to sneak around. They get up, and they get ready for school.

+Morning, Brilliance,+ says Bella while she's brushing her teeth.

Comments

[cardistry]

It's hard to tell with all the discs just lying there, but the purple one definitely looks flatter and smoother and with fewer impurities than the other two.

[incanted]

Bella tucks Brilliance under her arm and picks up the blue and purple disks and compares them.

[cardistry]

The purple one definitely has fewer flaws and impurities. Not none, but fewer.

[incanted]

Hmm. She sets them down and makes a red one with the same incantation as the purple, focusing on smoothness and clarity while she speaks the sentence.

[cardistry]

There is still feedback from the spell, silently showing/feeling how the sand comes together into glass. It goes even better this time.

[incanted]

"So there's - either a practice effect, or a focus component that itself has a practice effect," Bella says.

[cardistry]

"Yeah," says Brilliance. "I think you've got saying the spell down right, but you're letting up a little when you do the spell - there's not as much doing with the short-form incantations."

[incanted]

"So - I need to pay more attention, basically, not just let it go be a spell?"

[cardistry]

"Yeah," he says. "You can feel the details happening, right? Those are yours, you're doing that. You have to kind of... work with it."

[incanted]

"Okay." She aims him at the orange section, and repeats herself, and pays attention.

[cardistry]

Under her direction, the glass forms up into crystalline clarity.

[incanted]

"Excellent. This is fun," Bella says gleefully. She hops up and down twice before slipping and nearly thwacking herself in the face with Brilliance on the way down; she catches herself in flight halfway down and hovers in an awkward position. "Whoops."

[cardistry]

Brilliance laughs. "Try not to hurt yourself," he advises kindly.

[incanted]

"Occupational hazard of being me. Maybe I should invent a spell for that."

[cardistry]

"Hey, didn't I say I'd do that?" he muses. "One to make moving around as easy as flying?"

[incanted]

"I think so, yeah. I'd say it'd wind up being like moving in dreams, but I fall over in my dreams, sometimes in front of my sixth grade biology class while holding a tray of muffins."

[cardistry]

"Awwww," he giggles.

[incanted]

"Is there a reason you should invent it and not me? Will that make it mana-cheaper or something?"

[cardistry]

"It'll be mana-cheaper if I put it on upkeep like I am with Safety and Flight," he says. "Who invents it probably won't make much of a difference. But I feel like I've halfway got an idea of how it should work and I'm not sure you do."

[incanted]

"I do not," Bella agrees, scuffing a divot into the orange sand at her feet with one shoe.

[cardistry]

"Yeah. And I don't think it's the kind of thing I could explain properly. I just - it seems like there could be a spell that made it so that every way you can move works like flying, so you get that detailed control and feedback, you know? The only thing is I worry that it would be mana-intensive if you tried to do it on your own."

[incanted]

"Two questions about that. One, if you do it, does that give you weird sensory details about how I am moving, and two, if you ever decide to fuck off to wherever without me after all, and I can't do it alone, am I going to remember how to move the normal way even as well as I do now or am I going to be a sack of cement?"

[cardistry]

"I have no idea if you're going to turn into a sack of cement," he says. "It's... kind of getting less and less likely that I'll fuck off to wherever without you, though. I don't know about the weird sensory details, I haven't done the spell yet."

[incanted]

"Maybe it's worth trying for just a little bit to see about sensory stuff, and then if they're within okay parameters I do some math about likelihood of cement-sackhood and likelihood of fucking off?"

[cardistry]

"Sure," he says. "Okay. So we want a spell that gives you better movement control, but doesn't copy me specific feedback even when I'm hooked in, is that about right?"