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]

"Nope."

[incanted]

"Why not?"

[cardistry]

"That went away when I ripped out the control program."

[incanted]

"Fair enough. Is it going to be a problem that you don't know how to unwielderify me? Like, it would suck if that turns out to be fatal, or something, I would really rather live forever. Speaking of which if you happen to have tips on designing a spell for that I would be much obliged."

[cardistry]

"Uh," he says. "I don't think being my wielder would be fatal. Why the hell would that be fatal?"

[incanted]

"I mean ceasing to be your wielder, since if I understand right you don't exactly have any way to know either way given how your last relationship in that category ended," Bella says. "If we try to hack together something to detach you from me so you can go off doing whatever, the detachment sounds like it might in theory not be great for my health, although I am pretty much just making paranoid guesses - actually, I'm not clear on what me being your wielder does besides give me some ethically dubious access privileges and a Barrier Jacket?"

[cardistry]

"...Access privileges in both directions is pretty much it," he says. "And the Barrier Jacket. And the stuff we can do with those access privileges, like unison."

[incanted]

"I would really like to know what access privileges those are, especially anything you can do to me and anything I could conceivably do to you by accident."

[cardistry]

"I can engage unison, put your Barrier Jacket on, put your Barrier Jacket away, and if I'm in staff form or unison I can draw on your mana to cast spells," he says. "I don't think there's anything you could do to me by accident. You could torture me but you'd have to be trying."

[incanted]

"Trying as in really, sincerely trying trying or do I need to be very careful about managing fits of pique?"

[cardistry]

"I don't know," he says, "do your fits of pique usually involve wanting people to suffer? I mean really wanting it, wanting it the way you have to want to fly in order to fly, specifically."

[incanted]

"Fleeting moments of it. Nothing deliberate, nothing I ever let go anywhere, but going anywhere usually means, you know, moving, speaking, not just wanting a certain amount. I think you're safe if it's like wanting to fly. I'll be careful."

[cardistry]

"There's an incantation too," he says. "But I don't really wanna tell you what it is."

[incanted]

"Not something I'm likely to say in casual conversation and spook you into wrecking the planet?"

[cardistry]

"I don't spook that easy," he says. "And it's not a hugely common word or anything, it's not, like, 'pants'."

[incanted]

Bella giggles. "Okay."

[cardistry]

Brilliance laughs, too.

[incanted]

"It would be weird if it were pants. Although for that matter, why would any of your original spells be incanted in English? You've only been here like a hundred years, you said."

[cardistry]

"They're not," he says. "But I pick up languages by magic, and part of getting a language is knowing what all my incantations translate to."

[incanted]

"Whoa, can I learn to do the languages thing too or is that strictly a Device thing?"

[cardistry]

"No idea."

[incanted]

"Well, can you tell me about how you do it?"

[cardistry]

"...Magic? It's not a spell I cast or anything, it's just part of being me."

[incanted]

"Cool," says Bella enviously. "What other perks do you get?"

[cardistry]

"...I dunno," he says. "I don't exactly keep a list of things I can do that might make humans jealous."