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]

"Uh... okay, can you take my word for it about dealing pot to kindergarteners or do we need to actually talk philosophy right now in order to preclude this outcome?"

[cardistry]

"I don't really want to deal pot to kindergarteners, what I want to do is taste new things," he says, gazing sadly down at his empty plate.

[incanted]

Bella tosses him a banana. "Well, look, I can buy you a reasonable number of new things to eat per week - can you even get poisoned, you could probably eat random wild plants, if you don't have to breathe you could go swimming in the ocean and catch all kinds of sea creatures to devour, that sort of thing."

[cardistry]

Banana! He even knows to peel it first!

He has a little trouble with the mechanics of the peeling.

"I bet I can't get poisoned," he says. "Poison is biological."

[incanted]

"Just - here." She takes his banana before he squishes it all over everything, peels it for him, and returns the denuded fruit. "So yeah, we can map out some places where the stuff that's around isn't going to belong to anybody and you can eat anything you find that looks tasty there."

[cardistry]

Nomnomnom.

"Okay," he says around a mouthful of banana. +Bananas, I love bananas, fruit is my second favourite thing after spicy.+

[incanted]

"Bananas are inexpensive, you'll be pleased to note, you can have lots of them when you run out of new things to try and want to go back to your repeats." She pauses, then says, "Okay, now I'm sort of curious if you'd like straight pepper but it feels mean to offer you some and suggest that you try it."

[cardistry]

+Why's it mean?+

[incanted]

"Because pepper is the thing that makes the taco filling spicy, and it only takes a little to make a lot of something quite spicy indeed, and most people would be very unhappy if they ate any significant amount of straight pepper."

[cardistry]

"Most people would probably also be unhappy if they stabbed themselves with a fork," he points out. "Gimme!"

[incanted]

She shrugs and spoons him a spoonful of cayenne.

[cardistry]

...Straight cayenne causes him to make some really interesting faces.

[incanted]

Bella will be observing those interesting faces.

From over here.

"You okay?"

[cardistry]

+Yeah,+ he says, hugging himself. Even his magephone voice sounds a little breathless.

[incanted]

"You are making some - faces."

[cardistry]

+Mmmm.+

[incanted]

"So you like pepper, huh," snorts Bella.

[cardistry]

+Mmhmmmm.+

[incanted]

"Noted." She glances at the clock. "Charlie's gonna be home soon, and there are probably better ways to introduce you than as this random dude in a weird jumpsuit thing."

[cardistry]

"I could be a random dude in different clothes!" he offers, and starts licking his fingers.

[incanted]

"Yeah, you probably want, like, shoes, and go with jeans and a t-shirt like what I'm wearing only cut to fit you if you don't have a better idea," Bella shrugs.

[cardistry]

He shrugs. His clothes glow briefly in the multi-colour of his magic, and the glow spreads and settles into a new shape, then fades away.

He is now wearing tight black jeans, a red belt with a silvery buckle shaped like an ornate spade, and a perfectly fitted black T-shirt with the spectral figure from the Black Ghost Joker printed on the front and the design from the back of the cards covering the back. Oh, and boots. Black leather boots.

"Better?"

[incanted]

"Very thematic," says Bella. "Looks a little like you're going to walk into a goth club or something, but it's less bizarre than the jumpsuit."

[cardistry]

He giggles.

"I can live with that!"

[incanted]

"All right. I'm trying to decide whether to lead with 'Dad, this is Brilliance, he is my magic tutor' or 'Dad, this is Brilliance, he is from another planet' or possibly 'Dad, don't come into the house yet, I have to tell you some things first'."