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

[eversomuchfun]

"Thank you," Sherlock murmurs.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Do you need something to put it on conjured or do you have it?" Shell Bell asks.

[poeticterms]

"...If you could conjure some hard drives, that would speed things along," he says. "How thoroughly do I need to specify the requirements?"

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell bites into the side of her cheek and hands a small handful of squares to Tony. "He can probably do this better than I can," she says. "Wishes are pretty smart and they're good at copying stuff - if there's one that's already around that's exactly what you want, that's easy - but probably better for Tony to do the wishing."

[toblameforit]

"If I ask it for something it can't give me, does that waste a wish?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"No, if it can't do it, it just doesn't disappear and nothing happens," Shell Bell says. "It's useful."

[cross_and_bow]

"Compared to magic in my world, which apparently tries to kill you or drive you insane every chance it gets, that's saintly," snorts Juliet. "Good sweet wishcoins."

[she_sells_seashells]

"They're very nice, except for where you have to get them," agrees Shell Bell, "and obviously there's a nice loophole to make that not a problem."

[luminous_regnant]

"It's possible I should ask Stella to mint me the next time I see her - or you when you've got more coins, Shell Bell, or Angela maybe if I meet her first. Just for the triangles and squares. Perhaps pentagons. Being a vampire doesn't do anything directly to my pain tolerance, but the boosted brain capacity makes it easier."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I'd be happy to do it if I only had a hex," apologizes Shell Bell.

[luminous_regnant]

"I understand. I'm not criticizing you, I understand how it happened."

[cross_and_bow]

"But you managed your empire without anything but your opacity," says Juliet, "didn't you."

[luminous_regnant]

"My opacity and family and friends with their own talents. Mine was important - I was the only person immune to several of the Volturi's most dangerous weapons - but not sufficient."

[toblameforit]

While this back-and-forth is going on, Tony is making hard drives.

He keeps grinning.

"Be right back, guys," he announces, and leaves the room.

[cross_and_bow]

"That sounds like it might be an interesting story," says Juliet to Golden.

[luminous_regnant]

"It might, but Elspeth is better at telling it than I am," says Golden. "She has also written pamphlets on the subject, although they're abridged sketches so as not to turn into novel-sized illustrated histories."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Do you like having a kid?" Shell Bell asks.

[luminous_regnant]

Golden opens her mouth as though to deliver a stock answer of some kind, then closes it and glances between Bell and Juliet thoughtfully.

"I'd say it's like having my soul walk around outside my body," she says instead after a moment, "but given that Amariah exists, perhaps that's not the right comparison; Edward is like having my soul walk around outside my body in the sense that we can operate like extensions of each other and neither of us can function without the other's safety. Elspeth is more like..." She's stumped. "I stopped notebooking before she was conceived, let alone born; I know what it's like but I haven't put it into words."

[cross_and_bow]

"But she's desperately important and beloved and you can only direct her to act like it a limited amount?" tries Juliet.

[luminous_regnant]

"She's not reckless or helpless. She keeps Jacob with her, she can incapacitate or obliterate anyone outside of a couple dozen inoculated people by thinking about it, I believe she's safe at home and when she's in Milliways she doesn't walk through the door with anyone who she can't sincerely tell Jacob they're harmless. But she's been through more than she should've been, and she grew up so terribly fast, and I love the person that she is but she's not who I would've designed if that were how children worked. I'd never have wanted my baby to go on to casually discuss murder and mental rearrangement and torture as things that she's seen and experienced and gotten accustomed to thinking about."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I'm not planning to have kids any time soon even now," says Shell Bell, "but I definitely was planning to never do it before I took over the world. Panem was no place for them."

[luminous_regnant]

"I wasn't originally going to have her that early," says Golden. "At the time I didn't expect her to be in danger, and it would have been problematic to wait. And we were ready as parents. But society, at least supernatural society, was as you say - not fit to have a child in then. I miscalculated, badly, and paid for it, and five years later she did too."

[cross_and_bow]

"I must not have reached some relevant stage in my life-cycle," says Juliet, glancing between the other Bells.

[she_sells_seashells]

"I think you're a little younger than I am," Shell Bell says. "And I think Golden is the oldest, even though she looks about your age plus Diamond vampire stuff."

[luminous_regnant]

"I'm forty-three," agrees Golden. "Chronologically. It's a matter of some debate, to what extent development is relevant or even frozen at all in someone who turns in their teens. Turning small children, though, is forbidden for a reason. But I was just barely eighteen when Elspeth was born."