Sadde in Pact
Next Post »
« Previous Post
Permalink

The glasses work. It's an inconvenient solution to Sadde's disability, they'll have to take the glasses off to use the Sight instead of just refocusing their eyes, but there's no danger of spontaneous total existence failure.

They have time to draft a seal tight enough to be worth using and simple enough that as many Others as possible can understand it, and run the result by Johannes. And then there's the unexpected obstacle of finding things to use it on. The next council meeting provides a possible target. In among the background noise issues that no one actually cares about but everyone examines responses to, there are reports of animals turning up in various stages of digestion. Since that's not a thing that happens naturally it's clearly worth mentioning here, but it doesn't impinge on the interests of anyone here so they note the existence of an unknown Other and move on.

Total: 705
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

Yes, not totally failing to exist sounds like a very sweet deal, if you ask her.

And about this Other... do the people here care about it at all?

Permalink

Not really, mostly because of a lack of information. It's just another predator as far as the council's concerned, even if being an Other makes it technically "their" "business." Larger magical towns might have designated monster hunters, but this is rare enough here that it doesn't become a problem unless it eats someone's pet or something.

Permalink

And does it at any point seem called for to offer to go investigate?

Permalink

Called for? No. If she volunteers out of nowhere no one would object, though they might be curious about Sadde's motives.

Permalink

Yeah, she'll keep quiet for now and go investigate on her own, anyway, and return with her findings if there are any.

Permalink

It's always better to ask neither forgiveness nor permission. Probably no one knew any more than what was said anyway, just what was found and where.

Permalink

She has been keeping a habit of writing the discussed stuff down on a notebook (if anyone asks, she's doing it in a sufficiently oblique way that it probably looks like fictional worldbuilding), so she notes the what and where and when there.

Does anything else of interest come up?

Permalink

No, just the usual. Behaims and Duchamps jockeying for position over nothing while Rose Thorburn looks inscrutable at them and Mara almost audibly shuns everyone.

Permalink

Of course.

She waits it out.

Permalink

A few of the younger practitioners roll their eyes along with Sadde occasionally. That's pretty much the extent of the agreement from anyone who isn't Crone Mara.

 

The meeting eventually concludes, having accomplished nothing important to most of the practitioners.

Permalink

Of course not. And what time is it again?

Permalink

By now, about 8:30. Late enough that it's definitively after sunset. 

Permalink

Hmm. She doesn't (yet) want to go after Others at night. She goes back home and sleeps.

(Oh, and she lovingly pets Bob before going to bed. Bob is very nice. She likes Bob.)

Permalink

The next day, he gets up early, ducks away from his place, and goes to the last place someone found a half-digested corpse.

Permalink

The remains of a bird, is what he'll find, with its feathers and bones all intact. But it smells worse than dead, and it seems to have shrunk, as the meat has been eaten away. 

No insects or scavengers are to be found. But with glasses removed for the Sight, he'll notice a large ring of stones that have moved, so it's wider than how it looks with. 

Permalink

...huh. Weird. He goes to inspect it a bit more (with the Sight).

Permalink

The stones form a ring several meters across, though there's no sign of why they were there. The bird's not inside it (and neither is he) but they're both of them close to the edge.

While the pieces themselves look like regular rocks, with their sizes from "gravel" to "huge," the connections between them stand out in the Sight and the spirit-world ring slowly grows.

Permalink

...wait, really? It's just—how is it growing, are the spirit-rocks just being dragged or, what?

Permalink

They are sliding not rolling, it's glacially slow, and he almost can't see it at all. The physical stones haven't followed it yet, or they have but they haven't caught up.

Permalink

 

 

He finds a twig somewhere else and throws it in the middle of the circle.

Permalink

And it doesn't respond.

Permalink

He finds a longer twig and uses his glasses to try to poke one of the real rocks from a distance.

Permalink

Then it tips like a normal rock should.

Permalink

And it doesn't roll suspiciously towards its spirit self more than the laws of physics strictly ought to allow it to?

Permalink

Well, not while he's watching. Things need an excuse to match up with their alternate selves. It could have rolled farther and didn't? But moving back needs a plausible cause.

Total: 705
Posts Per Page: