« Back
Generated:
Post last updated:
ma fête: eventually extracts herself
Permalink Mark Unread
Belle allows Jane to handle the guest list, and warns the kitchen that it will be serving many people, and makes sure that the living gardens are behaving themselves about maintaining paths for people to walk along, and she comes up with an enchantment to augment the castle's set of behavior so it can offer up appropriate music at appropriate times. She flies to Luc's village, and fetches him back, and tells him of the coming festivities, and assigns him to develop an introductory description of what enchanting is so that she can delegate tedious repeated introductory descriptions of it to him. Jane gives her advance notice of the nametag conventions, and she considers an enchanting solution but does not think it is best suited; she wishes the system into place instead.

She does like having wishes.
Permalink Mark Unread

Amariah eventually extracts herself from the deck of Jokers and returns to the main party to find Pattern.

Permalink Mark Unread

Pattern is over here with a stray Sherlock!

Permalink Mark Unread

Stray Sherlock gets a random hug, but Amariah's mostly here to talk to Pattern. "The Jokers want to help you enchant Saturn," she says. "Just to get a lot of enchanting done to get neat auras in a hurry. The rest of us Bells might want to get in on it too. Saturn's big."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's a good idea," says Pattern. "Saturn's huge. Slipstick hasn't gotten back to me about an architect, though, I pentagoned enchanting and I think I still have to have some idea what it ought to look like."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If the point is to do a lot of enchanting," says Sherlock, "does it matter terribly much if you have to pull the whole thing down and start again after they fuck it up once?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Disenchanting is much fiddlier than enchanting," says Pattern. "You basically have to be a better enchanter than whoever did the original enchantment. Which has obvious problems if you do your own. Some spells are pretty amenable to editing, or come with unraveling mechanisms, but I don't want the habitability of my colony to be readily unravelable - for all we know, enchanting could be contagious, like Matilda's magic - and editing can only do so much if there's something the matter with the core."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aha," says Sherlock. "So find an architect."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, Slipstick said she was on it. I wonder if she's made any progress." Pattern looks around for her personnel officer.

Permalink Mark Unread

Over there!

Permalink Mark Unread

Talking to one of the Eos crowd!

Permalink Mark Unread

Over there Pattern goes!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hi," says Slipstick. "I found an architect!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cool!" says Pattern. "What kinda architecture do you do? I need a framework according to which I can turn loose a pack of Jokers and a peal of Bells on Saturn and get something enchanted habitable."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do magic architecture," says Sandy.

Permalink Mark Unread

"That is obviously the best kind," says Pattern. "I mean, do you have some kind of portfolio I could look at?"

Permalink Mark Unread

He squares up an illusion of Amalthea, in full detail.

Permalink Mark Unread

Pattern peers at it, and wishes up sharpened vision to get a closer look. "I like what you've done with the place," she decides. "What would you do with Saturn?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I dunno yet," he says cheerfully. "I've never been there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Well, I don't think mine is going to be any different from Stella's as they stand right now, so there's probably no need to arrange a field trip to Origin. Will you let me know when you have an idea?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Great! Thank you - both," Pattern says, including Slipstick with a gesture of her head.

Permalink Mark Unread

"All in a day's work," says Slipstick.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sandy grins.