so there was this deck of cards, right

[lexicality]

Jessica's house is cute. Lexi could see doing a lot of her homework here, listening to the calming chatter of gossip and getting help from Jessica on math (Bella's no help there) and helping Jessica on English. Forks isn't so bad. She doesn't mind the rain as much as Bella does.

Jessica goes to pee before they even start their assignment, after just introducing Lexi to her mom and dad as "one of Chief Swan's kids", and Lexi doesn't want to do work by herself or she wouldn't have come over in the first place. She sits on the couch and plunks her bag down and waits. There's a random deck of cards over there; she picks it up and flips through it. She's been trying to learn to bridge-shuffle.

Comments

[cardistry]

"Not really," he says, his cardboard surface still trembling a little.

[incanted]

She puts him on her side of the two-chaired desk she and Lexi share. "What's wrong?"

[cardistry]

"I really don't like it when people talk about me like I'm a - thing," he says. "I really don't like it."

[incanted]

"...So, male pronouns, then?"

[cardistry]

"Sure," he says. "I don't really care which ones as long as they're ones you use for people."

[incanted]

"The rest-of-you looked like a guy and the voice you have sounds like a guy's," Bella observes. She shouts down the stairs. "Hey, Lexi, Brilliance says he's a he!"

[lexicality]

"Whatever!" Lexi shouts back.

[cardistry]

"Thanks," snorts Brilliance.

[incanted]

"You're welcome," sighs Bella. "Were you going to tell me how quick healing spells are? Or don't you know?"

[cardistry]

"I don't really know, and I think it depends, and I don't really know what it depends on."

[incanted]

"Okay, I guess I've got a research project. What's the simplest spell you can think of that I might conceivably want to do here in my bedroom, so I can practice doing magic at all without you - doing whatever it is you did?"

[cardistry]

"Um... Shield, maybe?"

[incanted]

"Okay. I just - try saying it and wanting it, to start?"

[cardistry]

"Yep!"

[incanted]

Bella shuts her eyes, and wants. She learned her lesson from the flying, so she's very specific; she wants a shield to appear just exactly here.

"Shield."

[cardistry]

And there it is, in Brilliance's glowing rotation of colours.

[incanted]

"Does all magic look about like this?" she asks.

[cardistry]

"...Huh?"

[incanted]

"The colors, the design. It's pretty. Why does it look like that, or can't you see when you're a deck of cards?"

[cardistry]

"Oh," he says. "The colours are mine. I guess you picked that up from me. People's mana colours sync to their devices sometimes, or the other way around, if the match is good. The design is mine too, but that comes with the spell; if we learned a spell with a different style, we'd get whatever its design was when we used it."

[incanted]

"Where does one get spells? Are they so easy to make up that I don't need to worry about it or does it make sense to trade spells with other - magic people? What am I exactly?"

[cardistry]

"You're a magic person, I guess," says Brilliance. "I dunno."

[incanted]

"What, there's not a word for magic people? And what about where I get spells, do you not know?"

[cardistry]

"I don't know what you mean by where you get them. I know where I get them - I make them, or somebody installs them, or I copy them from somewhere - but you're not a device, I don't know if you work the same way."

[incanted]

"Well, I can clearly do a shield, did I just - download all your spells when I was dressed up or something?" she asks quizzically.