miracle crystal dancing jewel, spin!

[incanted]

Bella goes to bed, happily exhausted. She can make stuff! Not a lot of stuff, not yet, but still. She will be able to solve Brilliance's food problem and if she can figure out how to scale up she will be able to solve the world's food problem.

The next day is, alas, also a school day. She bids Brilliance good morning while she brushes out her hair. +Hey you.+

Comments

[incanted]

She pockets him and grabs her bag and hops into the passenger seat. She copies Lexi's math (judiciously introducing three mistakes and correcting two over the course of the translation) on the way to school.

School ensues.

[cardistry]

Brilliance comfortably occupies Bella's pocket.

[incanted]

School ends.

+I can't keep copying Lexi's homework indefinitely or I'll start making a fool of myself in classes, I should do, like, an hours' worth sometime this afternoon and if I put it off I'm just going to get distracted by magic,+ Bella tells Brilliance as she gets in the driver's seat with Lexi in the passenger on the way home.

[cardistry]

+Sure,+ he says agreeably.

[incanted]

Bella and her sister do homework at the kitchen table, chatting companionably in half-sentences interpretable only to each other. Eventually Bella does what she deems to be enough, and she puts her schoolbooks back in her bag. "I think I'm gonna go," she tells Lexi.

[lexicality]

"Gonna go do magic, learn to save the world?" asks Lexi wryly.

[incanted]

"Gonna go do magic, learn to conjure potatoes," amends Bella. "Saving the world might be trickier. But yeah, something like that. I'll see you later."

[lexicality]

"Right, well, see you later," says Lexi, "um, thanks for not instantly taking off?"

[incanted]

"No problem," Bella laughs.

+Poof?+ she asks Brilliance.

[cardistry]

+Poof!+ he says, and they poof back to the Planet of Sand.

[incanted]

"Device first or corn first?"

[cardistry]

"Device first!" he says, shifting to staff form and hovering beside her. "Pick some sand, make some glass."

[incanted]

Bella picks up a little handful of sand between the bands of blue and green; it averages to a lovely aqua. She pools it into the middle of one hand and picks up Brilliance with the other and commands the sand to melt smoothly together into a droplet without heat. (And she pays attention.)

[cardistry]

The ensuing blob-with-a-hole-in-it is very pretty.

"Awesome," says Brilliance. "Okay," he shifts human and holds out his hand, "gimme."

[incanted]

She hands over the droplet.

[cardistry]

He sits down in the sand and wraps his hands around it and closes his eyes.

It's not very interesting to look at.

[incanted]

Bella clicks her heels together and murmurs "flight" and goes zooming about while he works.

[cardistry]

+Got it!+ he says after about half an hour.

The finished product is just the same blob of glass, but with a glint of multicoloured light somewhere in its depths.

[incanted]

Bella lands next to him. "Will it talk at all, or just - be itself?" she asks. "Also I completely forgot to bring something to string it on, hmm."

[cardistry]

"It's not gonna talk," he says, holding it out to her. "You can just shove it in your pocket for now, I guess, but try not to let it fall out. Okay, ready?"

[incanted]

Bella reaches out and touches the droplet. "Yeah - like so?"

[cardistry]

"Close enough," he says, and incants: "Motion."

The device glimmers. A glimmer passes over Bella, too, but it doesn't stick around; this has to be a stealthy spell, after all, if she's going to use it all the time.

Brilliance passes her the droplet and takes his hand away.

[incanted]

Bella tucks it into her pocket.

Then she stares at her arm.

Then she grins and breaks into a heedless run, and leaps into the air, and spins, and generally capers around like a baby goat crossed with a droplet of water on a hot griddle.

[cardistry]

Brilliance laughs.

[incanted]

Bella's laughing too, breathless with it, breaking into random dance.