+ Show First Post
Total: 1484
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

"You're welcome!"

Permalink

And there is pizza and cake and ice cream and a decorous number of party games and then everyone jokes about leaving Mehitabel to read all her books and shoos.

Permalink
Horace and Andrea stay a little later than most of them!

"Guess what they do!" Andrea exclaims.
Permalink

"I think the watch does the synaesthesia thing! I don't know about the puzzle."

Permalink
"It does! Let me show you how to use it."

The watch: functions as a normal watch, until you switch to one of the various adjust settings modes, at which point you touch the rhinestone that corresponds to the sense you want (yellow for sight, green for smell, blue for taste, purple for touch, red for hearing) to translate, and then whatever senses you want to translate it to, and then you touch the orange one to pick a new sense to translate, and then you use the watch buttons to set how long you want it to last.
Permalink

"This is really well designed!"

Permalink

"Thanks! I've been working on it for a while, actually, and you liked the synesthesia spell so I figured the prototype would be a good present. Let me know if it's buggy."

Permalink

"I will! Thank you."

Permalink

"You're welcome. Grandfather's puzzle makes a sort of wooden doll thing when you put it together, and if there aren't any pieces missing or anything it'll obey rudimentary commands."

Permalink

"Like to pass the salt?"

Permalink

"'Pass the salt' 'hold this object' 'follow me' 'stand there.' Stuff like that."

Permalink

"Doesn't work if there's even one piece out of place, but once it's put together the enchantment makes it really hard to fall apart without being deliberately disassembled."

Permalink

"Is it also puzzle-y or is it easy?" Mehitabel wonders aloud, unboxing it and attempting to put it together.

Permalink

"It's pretty puzzle-y, but not, like, five hundred piece jigsaw puzzle or anything."

Permalink

Put put put.

Permalink

It is puzzling! She can figure out how to connect a given piece of wood with the one that goes in that slot, and then this one goes over here...there are a lot of pieces of wood. This is going to take a few hours.

Permalink

Well, she can do it while holding a conversation. "How do you put a spell on an object?" she asks Andrea.

Permalink

"You have to modify the spell to have an object as its target, and a lot of the time that means defining the object's functions within the spell structure. Enchanting objects actually can't always be condensed from pure ritual form, because of how hard it is to define sufficiently complex targets with just words and gestures. I had to enchant each rhinestone separately, glue them onto the watch and then finish the spell."

Permalink

"Oh wow, that must've taken forever."

Permalink

"I mean, you can condense it some, you just can't get all the way. The actual casting only took a couple of hours."

Permalink

"Well, thank you very much. It's the best present."

Permalink

"I'm glad you like it!"

Permalink
And thus passes the seventh birthday of Mehitabel, Christ Child.



It is not long after that that Mehitabel manages to trip and fall. She's been very careful about not walking too fast - tripping is undignified and painful both - but her luck did not hold and her she is with scrapes on her palm from catching herself capsized on the sidewalk.

...She makes sure no one is looking.

And then she kisses her own hand and tries to make it better.
Permalink
And the tiny wounds...

Slowly...

close.
Total: 1484
Posts Per Page: