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]

"Make enough for Brilliance, he eats," Bella tells Lexi. "I'd say polish off the bacon, we bought a lot of it and those last strips'll expire tomorrow."

[lexicality]

"Sure, soup," says Lexi, looking out of the corner of her eye at Brilliance, "can do."

[cardistry]

The deck glimmers.

[incanted]

Bella hangs out in the living room while Lexi starts cooking.

Charlie says, "If he turns into a human, maybe I should know how to recognize him?"

[cardistry]

"Sure," says Brilliance, "want me to change?"

[incanted]

"Yes, do," says Charlie.

[cardistry]

Brilliance shifts form in a brief flare of multicoloured light, ending up in the jeans-and-T-shirt outfit from earlier.

[incanted]

Charlie looks him over.

"All right. Won't panic if I find you in the house," he says. "You stay out of the girls' room unless it's got the door open."

"Dad," says Bella, exasperated.

[cardistry]

Brilliance laughs.

[incanted]

"I mean it," says Charlie.

"Dad, he's a deck of cards."

"Regardless."

[cardistry]

"Whatever," says Brilliance, and he shifts down again.

[incanted]

Bella laughs ruefully and starts outlining a practice plan for working with magic on the pretty sand planet. "Hey, did you figure out what percent of my mana I use on stuff before I went and flew in front of Charlie, Brilliance?" she asks.

[cardistry]

"...nope," says Brilliance. "I forgot."

[incanted]

"Oh. Well, it was very brief, can we get an estimate to work with?"

[cardistry]

"I'll start looking again," he promises.

[incanted]

"Maybe I'll recover to a hundred percent over dinner." The air has begun to smell of frying bacon.

[cardistry]

"Maybe!"

[incanted]

Write-write-write. "Hey, given that you sense with magic, does that give you any irregular abilities like - seeing through things?" she asks suddenly.

[cardistry]

"I could probably make a spell for it, why?"

[incanted]

"I just mean normally. There's nothing I need to see through. I just wanted to know if my notebooks or my clothes or whatever are transparent to you, because that'd be awkward."

[cardistry]

"Not visually," he says. "If you put me down on top of a notebook I could probably, I dunno - count how many pages it has, even though I couldn't see them, that kind of thing. And I can tell what's going on around you when I'm in your pocket. Oh," he adds, "and when you wear your Barrier Jacket I kind of am it, but I don't get any human-style senses from it, just movement and damage levels."

[incanted]

"...You are my Barrier Jacket," says Bella.

[cardistry]

"This is one of those things that's not weird to me but it is to you, isn't it," sighs Brilliance.

[incanted]

"Yeah. Apparently it is. If you didn't get that it might be weird why did you specify that you only get 'movement and damage levels'?"

[cardistry]

"I can see why it's weird to you," he says, "I just don't think that way naturally. And it would be weird even for me if I was being your clothes and I got human-style tactile feedback from it."