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]

Bella scoops him up, then pauses. "Would you rather fly there yourself? I don't know how you feel about being picked up in general."

[cardistry]

"I feel okay about you picking me up," he says.

[incanted]

"Not Lexi?" hazards Bella, heading for the stairwell.

[cardistry]

He shudders a little. "Not Lexi."

[incanted]

Bella goes down the stairs, one hand around Brilliance and the other on the banister. "I'd get a lot of attention if I took you to school and tried to talk to you there," she muses. "Hey, Lexi, I don't know if you were going to, but don't pick up Brilliance, okay?"

[lexicality]

"I wasn't gonna touch it. Him," says Lexi. "I don't even want limitless power anyway. You're carrying him."

[incanted]

"I -" Bella shrugs, summarizes. "Don't count." She tucks Brilliance in a space on the bookshelf between one of Charlie's photobooks of fish and the DVD copy of The Wizard of Oz.

[cardistry]

"Comfy," says Brilliance. "If you wanna talk to me not-out-loud, there's a way to do that."

[incanted]

"What is it?" Bella asks, plopping beside her homework-occupied twin on the couch.

[cardistry]

"You just... want the words at me," he says. "Like you're going to say them, but instead of speaking you send them with magic. Barely costs a sneeze of mana, you'll regenerate a little slower if you do it all the time but you couldn't run out that way if you tried."

[incanted]

"A sneeze of mana," snorts Bella. "Okay... is this something I could do by accident? Like if I were just thinking about talking to you, forming plans and intentions about it, but wasn't definitely ready to do it right then?"

[cardistry]

"I dunno," he says. "I've never heard of anybody doing it by accident, at least not any more than people say things out loud by accident."

[incanted]

"Okay."

+Testing.+

[cardistry]

+Yep!+ says Brilliance. +Got it in one! Unless you made more tries I didn't hear, I guess.+

[incanted]

+Nope, just one try. Can I talk to Lexi like this too? Other people? Or is it strictly device-and-wielder?+

[cardistry]

+You can talk to anybody you want, but I can hear you if you do,+ he says.

[incanted]

+Thanks for warning me about the eavesdropping. If Lexi talks to me and I don't answer her you can't hear that, right? And you can't read my mind in general?+

[cardistry]

+You can think of it like this magetalking thing is, I don't know, a phone call,+ he says, +and I'm your phone. Mind-reading doesn't come into it any which way.+

[incanted]

+If you're my phone does that mean Lexi can't talk to me, lacking a phone?+

[cardistry]

+I'm not totally sure,+ he says.

[incanted]

+Hey Lexi. See if you can talk to me like so. Mind Brilliance'll be able to hear you.+

[lexicality]

+...Hi? This is weird. Oh hey, we can cheat on tests!+

[incanted]

+We are not going to use telepathy to cheat on tests. Not because the tests matter, but because there are better things to do with our time,+ says Bella.

[cardistry]

Brilliance giggles.

[incanted]

+Does this get any more multimedia than phones do? If I want to send a picture or a wordless idea...?+