in which the narration is suggestive, yet vague

[subtly_artistic]

Neckrubs become a more regular part of Bella's life. And she does not tell him to stop until she is good and done. There is hugging. There is snuggling. There is kissing. There are some impressively sappy looks from his end, some fascinated mindreading from hers. The semester wraps up, Bella goes home for a week, and she comes back (now signed up for Utility Psionics 2, Intro to Mental Healing, Arcane Defense, Intro Cognition, and her survival credit, a lecture entitled "Wilderness Triage" (subtitled: Quick And Dirty Mechanisms For Identifying The Lesser Of Several Evils).

She missed Celo! She seeks him out at once. Hugs.

Comments

[subtly_artistic]

"Science doesn't - work here. It's fantasy. You can't do it." She swallows. "Are you sure Jane is still working?"

[autokinetic]

Aegis goes pale. "Jane," she murmurs. "Jane, say something -" [ - Jane -]

[mind_game]

[autokinetic]

"What did your emossing nuzhnik of a world do to Jane?"

[dark_light]

"Shit."

[subtly_artistic]

"I'm sorry!" exclaims Aether. "Etty didn't have - tech like you! She had fewer gods to worry about than I do, maybe, but I didn't realize my world was - I didn't realize the entire universe was a wonderful science fantasyland except my little part of it!"

[lifes_sake]

"Okay, well," says Cam, "Jane's been down before, we just need to find a door and hope time doesn't unsync too bad at home. I've never tried Speeching a door into existence but maybe it can be done; maybe tenners can do it, we've all got a few of those; maybe Shell Bell or Sue will come rescue us any minute now."

[autokinetic]

"Hope time doesn't unsync - I have stuff to do at home, what am I supposed to do, pretend the assassination attempt stuck but only after a few months' delay? I have a political campaign to prep for, I can't disappear! What about Sue, you brought yours with you but mine and Ama's are left in the cold!"

[dark_light]

"It's okay, it'll be okay," soothes Amariah, patting Aegis's shoulder, "we can figure something out, with four of us working together I bet you there's a cheat available."

[subtly_artistic]

"Whoa," says Aether, "no, hold up, don't start talking about cheating, you can't cheat, that's not allowed, hubristic tendencies whoa -"

[autokinetic]

"...Did you just use the word hubristic? Unironically?"

[subtly_artistic]

"Keez, is this what I turn into unfettered by constraints on my ego - yes, I used the word 'hubristic' unironically! It will get you killed if you go too far! I thought we were just going to hang out and swap life stories probably Jellybean and Celo would have sex, I didn't think you were going to show up talking about science and cheating."

[lifes_sake]

"We've got a lot of magic," says Cam, "not just tech stuff - we actually carry almost no tech stuff except for the Jane-gems - we don't use technology to confront gods and so on except insofar as Jane usually lets us coordinate," says Cam.

[subtly_artistic]

"I didn't say tech wouldn't work - I said science doesn't work!"

[dark_light]

"Okay, but," says Amariah, "this isn't like when Shell Bell died and woke up Downside stripped of magic. We all walked in here, I think Jellybean's been talking in the Speech the entire time, our auras are working, my brain's still boosted, I heard Aegis try the brainphone and it behaved."

[subtly_artistic]

"Sure," says Aether, "for now those things are behaving - if you get attention from a god, or a fae, or a greater dragon, or a demon, or a sufficiently powerful anything, I wouldn't count on it staying that way! You can't do big stuff, you can't cheat, you can't assume that if something little and local like a neat aura that you're showing off to a couple of people still works you'll be able to do anything major!"

[lifes_sake]

"So when you say science doesn't work here," Cam says slowly, "you mean it literally - induction doesn't work here, experiments aren't reliable here."

[subtly_artistic]

"Yes," breathes Aether, "yes, that's what I'm saying, maybe you come from the settings of epic novels where heroes can use the regularities of the cosmos to bend reality to their will but here we have to rely on things that are intrinsically unreliable for anything remotely big."

[dark_light]

"But - but -" Amariah gestures around at the room. "Look, this still looks, you know, habitable to me, this is a decent standard of living, how do you have mass-produced pillowcases and -" She gestures at Aether's jeans. "Denim?"

[subtly_artistic]

"If something works one way one time it'll often work that way other times. You just can't start - cheating. I have denim because denim is nonthreatening. Denim doesn't antagonize faeries or gods or dragons. If I read everything there is to know about the characteristics of one of those things - if I could magically know about everything dragons have ever done in the history of always - and then I came up with a way to use denim to kill one without being personally staggeringly powerful such that it would be appropriate for me to beat a dragon, that seems like it would still make sense based on all that, then it might work, but only if the universe was in a good mood or if the dragon was due, and I probably couldn't do it twice."

[autokinetic]

"But we are staggeringly powerful!"

[subtly_artistic]

"If you're going to say shit like that can you at least not do it near innocent bystanders?"

[lifes_sake]

"Are you kidding me?"

[subtly_artistic]

"Okay, talking's probably safe if that's all you do, but - I'm paranoid about this, I have hubristic tendencies."

[dark_light]

"Of course you do. Bells, given enough resources, tend to take over their worlds. Oh, you poor thing, what a terrible place for you to have wound up. What were you going to do with yourself?"