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]

+I could find one, I bet!+

[incanted]

+That'd be neat, you can look around when us biologicals are sleeping maybe.+

[cardistry]

He giggles. +Sure, maybe I will.+

[incanted]

+Which won't be that long,+ Bella says, noting Lexi yawning out of the corner of her eye. +Haven't you got stuff besides search and transport that's good out of combat?+

[cardistry]

+Not so much. I wasn't really for anything but combat.+

[incanted]

+Can you invent new spells or is that just me?+

[cardistry]

+I can invent new spells!+

[incanted]

+And you didn't for about four hundred years?+

[cardistry]

+I, you know, kind of had other things on my mind?+

[incanted]

+It sounded pretty boring the way you described it, but I guess maybe fighting the control program was very very absorbing?+

[cardistry]

+Boring, lonely, generally awful,+ he agrees. +But I couldn't really get into, like - doing things, because if I started thinking about anything complicated it'd make a move while I wasn't looking. So it's not really that fighting it took a lot of attention, it's that fighting it meant I couldn't give a lot of attention to anything else.+

[incanted]

Bella thinks about this.

+Eesh,+ she concludes.

[cardistry]

+Yep. I mean, I can think of worse ways to pass four hundred years, but they all involve torture.+

[incanted]

+Might depend on how technical you were about what counts as 'torture' but yeah. Uh, congratulations on fighting the incredibly tedious good fight for so long? Inhabited planets everywhere thank you.+

[cardistry]

He laughs.

+You're welcome, I guess.+

[incanted]

+Why is it that powerful magic weapons wind up with minds whether their creators like it or not, anyway?+

[cardistry]

+I dunno, just is.+

[incanted]

+Do you remember being made? Coming to exist?+

[cardistry]

+...Kind of?+ he says. +It was a long time ago.+

[incanted]

+I'd expect it to kinda stand out if you formed memories of it at all,+ Bella says.

[cardistry]

+Not really. It didn't hurt. Most of what I remember from around then is stuff that hurt.+

[incanted]

Bella shudders delicately. +They just started in right away, they didn't even try to convince you?+

[cardistry]

+Well, that's just it, there was a while there when they didn't know what I was like and they were just assuming I'd cooperate, and I don't really remember any of it that well because it turns out that once you start getting tortured it is pretty hard to pay attention to other stuff.+

[incanted]

+I bet. Yeesh. I'm really sorry that happened to you.+

[cardistry]

+...Thanks,+ he murmurs.