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]

The sand forms up into a castle, and stays there.

This one takes a lot of fine control in the 'doing' stage, more than making glass and much more than just sorting sand into a rainbow.

[incanted]

Bella pays close, devoted attention. She's glad she picked a simple castle.

"Is this taking ongoing mana to stay up?" she asks.

[cardistry]

"It's kind of... tapering off," he says. "There, it's not drawing anymore."

[incanted]

Bella walks up to the castle and pokes it gently to see how it's holding together.

[cardistry]

A little bit of tower crumbles away where she pokes it, but most of the structure stands firm.

[incanted]

"Huh. It doesn't feel wet or anything, it's just hanging out. Neat."

[cardistry]

"Yeah, pretty cool," says Brilliance. "Matter manipulation is supposed to be tough stuff."

[incanted]

"So am I a genius or are you just throwing a lot of mana at the problem or what?"

[cardistry]

"No, it's not takes-a-lot-of-power tough, it's takes-a-lot-of-attention tough," he says.

[incanted]

"Well, that's why I paid attention."

[cardistry]

He laughs.

[incanted]

"So, I'm good at magic?" she asks, smiling.

[cardistry]

"Guess so!" says Brilliance.

[incanted]

"Awesome!"

[cardistry]

Brilliance glimmers. It's much more visually obvious in staff form.

[incanted]

"You think I could pull off a sweet potato yet or should we do some more intermediate stuff?"

[cardistry]

"Try conjuring something else first," he says. "Something with a really simple structure. Like, I don't know, a grain of sand?"

[incanted]

"Okay." Bella picks up a grain of green sand, peers intently at it, and then incants: "I command a new grain of green sand to come to exist."

[cardistry]

A new grain of green sand comes to exist.

In the moment that it does so, Bella is aware of its entire structure down to the molecular level.

[incanted]

"Whoa, that is a rush," breathes Bella.

[cardistry]

"Seriously!" says Brilliance.

[incanted]

"How much mana does it take to make brand new sand out of nowhere? Are we going to - experience whatever happens when one runs out of mana, if I try to make an entire potato?"

[cardistry]

"New sand didn't take that much," says Brilliance. "We're still way above half. I'm not actually sure about the potato."

[incanted]

"So maybe I should try - say, a kernel of corn first? Is it a size thing or a complexity thing, would filling a bowl with sugar be easier because it's molecularly pretty simple? I think?"

[cardistry]

"I'm not totally sure," he says. "I think that once you've got the hang of doing one of something, scaling it up to a bunch doesn't take nearly as much mana. But I'm not sure how much the size of the first thing factors into it."