when's it my turn | Glowfic Constellation

k-shut-up-now

Cymbeline of Loegria ♔ "Cymbeline"

Since Cyllene's first (licit, chaperoned) visit to the surface, she's visited enough times to watch it get warmer, and colder, and warmer again, over the course of many (illicit, solo) trips. She's gone close (though never that close) to the shore and watched the humans from afar, seen their strange, straight caves, and the coverings on their bodies, and the way they move about on the surface floor upright.

She's seen ships, the things humans use to make there be a surface floor on the ocean, one that moves around. Humans swim, sometimes, but, as far as she can tell, never while as far away from land as ships go.

She's also seen ships below the surface, far below it. But she's pretty sure that's not because the humans wanted them that way; the whole seafloor around them were filled with strange, seastar-configured skeletons. She's pretty sure that swimming in the open ocean is for humans about as sure a death as wriggling her way far onto the surface land would be for her.

She's learned a lot about ships. They are usually in this range of sizes, and sometimes they lower nets and catch fish in them. (Cyllene has attempted to replicate nets, as if they were her idea, and got a pretty good start on it. One of her sisters dismissed the idea as being human-like when shown a swatch of knotted seaweed, and Cyllene has to be intensely careful that no one suspect her of having upward sympathies. She has a real net, human-made, in her secret grotto, and she can see that its purpose is the truly beautiful thing about it, but for now... it will remain solely decorative. It has to.) There tend to be kinds of ship, ones that do the fish-netting and ones that don't, really.

This ship, she thinks, is not one of the kind that does the fish-netting. She hopes she's right, because as much as she wants to know about humans, she does want more to not be netted.

She approaches from underneath, runs her hands along its belly, and then - heads for the surface.

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aetheling

"Yes, though possibly not till tomorrow, it might be a long conversation."

k-shut-up-now

Cymbeline of Loegria ♔ "Cymbeline"

Nod. (She can't give him a goodbye touch.) ....Wave.

aetheling

Wave! And he's off.

k-shut-up-now

Well, magic book time.

Magic (the book isn't aware that there are other kinds) is like sculpture. You touch an object, and you add or remove features of it - not, as in literal sculpture, extremities of its shape, but properties like color or injury or weight. You need somewhere to put them, in order to remove them, and somewhere to get them from, in order to add them. Little glass spheres that have had a lot of their properties removed are particularly convenient receptacles for this, and then if you break them the property comes out and attaches to the nearest convenient target, which can be used as a weapon and introduces some storage safety requirements.

k-shut-up-now

Eeee. And how do you, like, do it.

The introductory exercises involve touching things - it recommends a sphere that has and one that has not had its properties removed, for a particularly clean example, but you can use almost any objects - and trying to feel their properties and how they could be divorced from the object itself. It warns that this may take months to start to get the hang of. There are meditations and mantras and imaginative exercises that help some people.

k-shut-up-now

Sheeeee does not have those right now but she'll try some preliminary meditations and mantras and stuff!

They do not yield immediate results.

k-shut-up-now

As expected. - She wonders if she can get in making a magic eraser rag before dinner. She ties her existing one in a knot and tells it to thoroughly stick particles of this size and this material to itself. For a few but not that many hours.

Jane brings her dinner at dinnertime.

k-shut-up-now

Yum! After Cyllene writes 'Thank you!' it erases perfectly cleanly in one light swipe.

"You're welcome, miss."

k-shut-up-now

After dinner she tries some more Thinking About Human Magic, and after a while of this she catches herself nodding off in the middle of a meditation. She..... makes eye contact with Jane about this? Blearily.

Wow her sleep habits are weird. Jane gets her changed and loads her into the wheelbarrow and totes her to bed.

k-shut-up-now

Good and correct. What a good Jane she has.

She's up not crazy early but a bit earlier than the day before yesterday.

As long as it's not crazy, Jane will be there and ready to get her started for the day.

k-shut-up-now

.....This is maybe going to be offensive but Cyllene wants to know.

Why do humans wear uncomfortable and comfortable clothes instead of just comfortable ones?

"Nightclothes aren't presentable for company, miss."

k-shut-up-now

What makes clothes presentable?

(Wow, it takes so many fewer seconds for her to wipe off her slate. This was such a good idea.)

"They have to be modest and appropriate to your station."

k-shut-up-now

That is not illuminating but it seems bad to keep pushing. She nods.

Breakfast this morning is an omelette and bread.

k-shut-up-now

Cymbeline of Loegria ♔ "Cymbeline"

Yum. (Whennnnnn is Cymbeline coming by. Is he going to do that or is she going to be brought before the king and queen for evaluation. When. When. He did say 'tomorrow' and not 'in the morning'....)

aetheling