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Here is a house.
It is pretty and trim and green-and-cream and really ought not to be able to hold itself up like that, and yet here it is, somehow defying the laws of architecture. It is surrounded by a neatly bordered garden of ornamental and useful plants of all sorts: here vegetables, there herbs, there spell components, there rows of flowers.
There is a sign out front. It says only: Magic. Not, Beware, Magic or Magic Emporium or anything like that. Just: Magic.
Sitting on top of this sign is a cream cat with smoke-dark points of color on each paw, his ears, and his face and tail.
All in all, you could be forgiven for thinking that a witch lives here.
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"We thought it'd be safe as long as the royal family didn't find us," says the woman, looking like she'd like to wring her hands but would like to remain obviously unarmed even more.
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"And what do you get out of living in a cave in the Enchanted Forest that is worth the risk that we might?"
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"I see," says Sherlock. "In that case, provided your presence is not destructive, you may stay here under the same protection as any other resident of the forest."
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Bella puts her specs on and flicks the lenses around and peers past the woman into the cave. "They're not absorbing any of the forest magic, I think," she says. "I don't know about other ambient magic."
"I don't know anything about that," demurs the woman, "but we're not hurting anyone..."
"I don't know anything about that," demurs the woman, "but we're not hurting anyone..."
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"The forest magic is my primary concern," says Sherlock. She addresses the woman. "Please allow the small child to ask squirrels the way home if he is lost again."
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"Oh, you've already found us, the squirrels themselves don't matter," says the woman with a shaky laugh.
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"Do you want me to cruise through the cave and make sure they're not up to anything magically nefarious?" Bella murmurs to Sherlock.
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Bella produces a ball of thread, hands an end to Tony - who's less likely to suddenly need her hands free - and unravels it into the cave. (This is a standard cave precaution if you don't know where you're going.) It's a smallish cluster of caves, not just a single cavern nor yet a node of a large network like the Caves of Chance or the Caves of Fire and Night, and she pokes her head into each of them, not explaining herself to the wizards or their female and therefore nonwizard family members. None of them tries to attack her. She rolls up the thread and comes out again.
"There are some wisps coming in, but it's unused residue, not uprooted useful magic. The same sort of stuff my marble grabs," Bella reports when she's retrieved the end of her thread from Tony.
"There are some wisps coming in, but it's unused residue, not uprooted useful magic. The same sort of stuff my marble grabs," Bella reports when she's retrieved the end of her thread from Tony.
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"...You'll just leave us be?" asks the woman suspiciously. "Are you going to tell the Queen?"
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"Yes, but - are you authorized - to decide that sort of thing?" asks the woman, cringing as she utters the impertinent question.
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The woman backs away a few steps, then turns and hurries into the caves.
"There's some twenty adult wizards, half with wives and a third with one or more kids, as a cursory estimate," Bella says. "What would they be hiding from other wizards for? I don't get it."
"There's some twenty adult wizards, half with wives and a third with one or more kids, as a cursory estimate," Bella says. "What would they be hiding from other wizards for? I don't get it."