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In a bar, there is a girl.
She looks like she has saved up all of her decadent and slothful impulses for a solid decade and is indulging them all at once. She is sprawled on a couch with a book she's only half-reading, and an ice cream sundae, and smiiiiiiling.
kithabel and milan in milliways
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ertia
first-and-final
Things that might happen to someone who enters a magic include: growing extra limbs, losing all of your limbs, turning permanently purple, becoming deaf, gaining the ability to hear sunlight, vanishing into thin air, dropping dead on the spot, sprouting wings in inconvenient locations, turning into a goat with snakes for legs...
There is Milan! He is just coming in the back door, accompanied by a sixteen-year-old human who is in fact reciting this very same list to him.
There is Milan! He is just coming in the back door, accompanied by a sixteen-year-old human who is in fact reciting this very same list to him.
makeyourselfuseful
"...learning to braid moonbeams but that's from a folk tale and doesn't sound especially plausible, having your head replaced with a frog's which is also from a folk tale but does, having the air above your head rain puffed rice on you wherever you go, having your voice replaced with the sound of geese honking, growing to twice your normal height, growing scales all over your body, I wouldn't be surprised if someone walked out of a magic looking like you..."
She notices Kithabel approaching and breaks off with a little curtsey-like gesture. "Hello."
She notices Kithabel approaching and breaks off with a little curtsey-like gesture. "Hello."
ertia
"Nice to meet you. I'm not immediately thinking of a good way to limit the effects of magics to the good ones that has a nice consensus definition of 'good', but they seem entirely too charming at least in potentiality to just eradicate altogether."
makeyourselfuseful
"Well, I don't know what-all your fancy godlike powers can do, but if you just made it so that no one could go into a magic who didn't mean to go into a magic that would help a lot."
ertia
"Fencing is definitely the simple option. But it might be nice if someone who wanted Milan's extra limbs but not the risk of being a snake-goat could have that. I could just make them turn out specified results, but that loses the charming whimsy altogether. Maybe I can make them present an option list, with 'nothing' always being an option."
makeyourselfuseful
"Sounds pretty charming to me. What would that do for all the actual goats that wander through them?"
ertia
"I'm not sure. How inconvenient are the results when animals get turned into things?"
makeyourselfuseful
"Usually more amusing than anything, but once in a while you hear about a fire-breathing bear."
ertia
"I think I can define 'dangerous' out of the options for nonsapients. Should I do that for people too, do you hear about firebreathing humans causing trouble?"
makeyourselfuseful
"I wouldn't expect firebreathing humans to be that much more trouble than the regular kind," she says. "And some people might get some use out of breathing a little fire."
ertia
"All right. So harmless nonsapient results, and chosen results off a list with 'nothing' always on it for people."
ertia
"I was thinking mentally. Would you like to be a goat with snakes for legs, would you like to sound like geese, would you like puffed rice to rain from above your head, would you like nothing."
makeyourselfuseful
"None that I can think of right away! Try not to get yourself turned into anything inconvenient," she says.
ertia
And Kithabel omnipotences the heck out of magics present and future, leaving their present decor intact for color.
And then she warns Milan that she is going to test them, since it is safer for her to do it than anyone else, and she zooms in among a patch of flamingos with their feet rooted to the ground, under a floating manatee with polka dots, between the cheese tree and the tree made of assorted colors of wire and with wagon wheels for leaves.
She is offered a list! Would she like to be a coconut which can screw open and closed and will contain pearls or decks of playing cards missing all their sevens every time it is opened anew? Would she like to be a book which consists of translations into 479 local languages of a certain bawdy poem? Would she like to grow grass instead of eyebrows? Or would she like nothing?
She would like nothing. She departs. "Done!"
And then she warns Milan that she is going to test them, since it is safer for her to do it than anyone else, and she zooms in among a patch of flamingos with their feet rooted to the ground, under a floating manatee with polka dots, between the cheese tree and the tree made of assorted colors of wire and with wagon wheels for leaves.
She is offered a list! Would she like to be a coconut which can screw open and closed and will contain pearls or decks of playing cards missing all their sevens every time it is opened anew? Would she like to be a book which consists of translations into 479 local languages of a certain bawdy poem? Would she like to grow grass instead of eyebrows? Or would she like nothing?
She would like nothing. She departs. "Done!"
first-and-final
...Milan has to try this.
He flies into a magic (and restores an extremely uncomfortable-looking snake to a state of having zero legs, and firmly outside the borders of the magic he also manipulates a vast complex arrangement of rocks and water bubbles and breezes and puffs of smoke and alchemical essence spheres encased in alchemically neutral glass and tiny fruit trees).
He flies into a magic (and restores an extremely uncomfortable-looking snake to a state of having zero legs, and firmly outside the borders of the magic he also manipulates a vast complex arrangement of rocks and water bubbles and breezes and puffs of smoke and alchemical essence spheres encased in alchemically neutral glass and tiny fruit trees).
The magic offers him choices! Would he like his scaly bits to be real, actual silver? Would he like to sing with a choir of a thousand voices? Would he like to swap the locations of his nose and left eye, his right hand and right foot, and his left ear and belly button? Would he like to make any salt he touches turn into sugar, and vice versa? Would he like nothing?