we are invariably pleased to welcome tourism

[cross_and_bow]

Sherlock is usually very puncutal. He's only one minute late, but that's still not quite as punctual as usual. Bella peers out the window, not yet allowing herself outright concern.

Comments

[cross_and_bow]

"It... seems to have given you a superpower, so what are the dire and ooky drawbacks?"

[pythbox]

He gets out his cloth and starts cleaning his glasses again.

"It killed a friend of mine," he says shortly. "When I was not much older than you. We got involved with forces we didn't understand, or didn't care to, and he paid the price."

[cross_and_bow]

"I'm sorry," says Juliet.

[dark_light]

"Damn, I wish I could teach my witchcraft," murmurs Amariah, picking up Path from her shoulder and petting his feathers. "Much better deal - what were you doing, then, if you'll talk about it?"

[pythbox]

"Summoning a demon to get high." He puts his glasses back on. "And I am now done talking about it."

[cross_and_bow]

"I'm really sorry about your friend," says Juliet.

[dark_light]

"How in the world does summoning a - right, done talking about it, right," says Amariah. "Well, now we know why you can see me through the notice-me-not and it's not going to be common, I imagine. I hope."

[pythbox]

"There are perhaps four other people alive who share this distinction," he says with a gesture indicating the upper part of his left arm, "and last I saw any of them was in London."

[cross_and_bow]

"Sunnydale is in California," Juliet supplies to Amariah before Amariah can ask.

[dark_light]

"So not near London, then. Okay. Existing precautions adequate."

[pythbox]

"Glad that's settled," mutters Giles.

[cross_and_bow]

"...I promise never to do any magic that's primarily motivated by recreational psychological side effects," volunteers Juliet tentatively.

[pythbox]

"Thank you," he says, looking away.

[cross_and_bow]

Right. Done talking about it. Books and notetaking and setting a timer on her phone to get home before curfew.

[dark_light]

Amariah works alongside her. They take such similar notes, there's no reason not to divide the work.

[pythbox]

Giles watches them with a certain amount of curiosity. Dimensional alternates is new.

[dark_light]

"...Do you want to quiz me about my home dimension, or something?" Amariah offers. "I mean, I can also take notes, but she's got to read them to know the contents anyway, it doesn't save as much time as it looks like."

[pythbox]

"...You've mentioned that your magic isn't teachable," he says. "How did you come by it?"

[dark_light]

"I'm a witch. It's a species where I come from. Sort of, I mean - witches are all women, if we're going to make more witches we pretty much have to find mortals to cooperate, so my dad is just a human. Our sons are mortal, our daughters are witches. I've been doing simple nursery-rhyme level spells since I could talk, although I didn't start learning systematically until I could fly." She has her cloud-pine with her; there's enough scary stuff in this town that she wants to be able to put Juliet on it as a passenger and zoom out of wherever she's at at two hundred miles an hour without having to retrieve it from somewhere. She gestures with the branch. "When I was not quite six."

[pythbox]

"I see," he says. "That's... fascinating on several levels. Does 'mortals' imply what I think it does?"

[dark_light]

"Well, in my case, it does, but our alt Angela kept saying 'mortals' too and she just means people without wings and boasts no special lifespan herself, so good on you for asking. Witches live until we - well, there's not an exact understanding of how it happens, but it looks like barring death by violence we live until we're too bored or too lonely."

[pythbox]

"Not a bad deal," he muses.

[dark_light]

"Well, it means that we tend to last until we've gone through about four husbands, which takes a few centuries but not literally forever. I'm just planning to find a way to make my boyfriend immortal instead."

[pythbox]

"Good luck," he ventures.

[dark_light]

"Oh, I'll be able to do it. We have these devices -" she gestures to indicate the size. "That dispense objective truth in complete - sentences, so to speak, although it has to talk through symbols, they're really not very well designed, and the device says I can. I just have a research project to complete first."