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

[incanted]

"How much food can you hold? Because I can unload some more leftovers on you if you want, we have, what do we have, tuna salad, a pasta thing, minestrone soup?"

[cardistry]

"I have no idea," he says promptly, "let's find out!"

[incanted]

"Pff." She gets out the named items, and warms the two that need warming after passing him the tuna and a fork. She explains the mechanics of the fork.

[cardistry]

Brilliance only stabs himself in the face by accident once! And he seems to treat this with the same general enthusiasm, if not the same specific intense enjoyment, that he does any other kind of bodily sensation.

[incanted]

Bella permits herself a little snickering.

[cardistry]

+What are you laughing at,+ he says, grinning around his latest mouthful of tuna.

[incanted]

"You poked yourself in the face with a fork. I have never seen anyone over age four do that."

[cardistry]

+I got excited! You'd get excited too if it was your first time eating food!+

[incanted]

"Which event," Bella says, "happened to me when I was well under the age of four, and involved a spoon in someone else's hand, and mashed sweet potato."

[cardistry]

+Ooh, what's a sweet potato? I wanna eat one.+

[incanted]

"We don't have any around right now. There are thousands of things to eat, I'm not going to just run to the store and grab you examples of every single one."

[cardistry]

+That's okay, I've got lots of free time while you sleep.+

Om nom nom he forgets what he's eating right now but it is delicious.

[incanted]

"Where are you going to get sweet potatoes while I sleep?"

[cardistry]

+No idea! I'll think of something.+

[incanted]

"You're not going to just teleport places and steal them, are you?"

[cardistry]

+...Would... that be bad?+

[incanted]

"Yeah? They don't belong to you."

[cardistry]

+So?+

Nom nomty nom.

[incanted]

"So that's what belonging means, is that you can't take it, it's not yours, it's somebody else's and if you take it they will have grounds to be upset and that would be mean of you. If you find food growing wild you can have that - but you'd have to be able to tell the difference between wild and cultivated."

[cardistry]

+...Okay, but how else am I gonna eat all the food there is to eat?+

[incanted]

"You're gonna spread this project out over a long enough time that I can acquire it for you at a reasonable rate. Or acquire money so you can buy the food, I guess, you could get a job."

[cardistry]

+Get a job how? Don't you need to have, like - human stuff, for those?+

[incanted]

"It'd help to have documentation, but you could teleport to other countries where they're less strict about it," shrugs Bella. "Or find somebody who'll pay you under the table around here if you don't want to deal with currency exchange. I don't think it especially matters if the job's legal as long as it's not unethical."

[cardistry]

+...And how do I tell if it's unethical or not?+

[incanted]

"Uh, you could ask me, if you don't know," she suggests. "Picking fruit, fine, busing tables, fine, selling pot to elementary schoolers, not fine, assassinating people, not fine."