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

[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."

[incanted]

"Stop me if this is a personal question, but you have all these magic-based senses - what does it feel like to be all the three shapes you can be? I just can't even imagine it but maybe you can describe it since there's three of them? If they're different to you, maybe they're not."

[cardistry]

"It's different," he says. "I get a lot of extra information when I'm, uh, dude-shaped. Staff form is kind of halfway in between - I get the finer details on my magical senses, but not the complex tactile stuff."

[incanted]

"You seem to prefer the deck of cards for just sitting around in," Bella observes.

[cardistry]

"Deck of cards is easier to fit places, easier to hide as, and it doesn't get uncomfortable," he says. "And I can't directly use most of my big destructive spells like this, so for a while there I stayed this way as much as I possibly could, just to keep that extra step in there."

[incanted]

"Solid plan, I approve," says Bella. She peers at her question list; it's dwindling and he said he'd stay overnight. "...Hey, um, is there any lingering damage from most of you getting blasted like twelve times? You sound fine, but you're being all deck-of-cards shaped, so I don't really know how to tell. I don't even know if I'd be able to tell if you were being dude-shaped, maybe you don't have automatic body language or anything."

[cardistry]

"Nope, I'm fine," he says cheerfully. "I mean, it hurt, but magical damage is good like that, it can hurt and knock you out and you'll be fine in ten minutes."

[incanted]

"I... guess that's convenient? I'm sorry it hurt."