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]

"And I'd ask what happens if somebody bent or tore a card but if you might decide to go check out Mexico City or some completely other planet any second now," she says, putting her pencil down, "that's not where I wanna start; it's pretty generous of you to stick around at all now that the world is apparently no longer in danger of losing structural integrity. So what I want to know about is scaling. Can I give magic-ability to other people?"

[cardistry]

"Nope," says Brilliance.

[incanted]

"But I can find other people who already have it with search spells, that's a parameter it can do."

[cardistry]

"Yep!" says Brilliance.

[incanted]

Bella is taking diligent notes. "What'll happen if I run out of mana, besides my spells quitting on me?"

[cardistry]

"No idea! Probably won't kill you, probably won't be fun."

[incanted]

"Do you know why my Barrier Jacket didn't appear when I tried to do that on my own?"

[cardistry]

"I'm not even sure that spell's possible without a device. I don't know why, besides that it's just - devicey."

[incanted]

"Oof. Okay. How much mana does it take, relative to what I've got, to travel to other planets - and are they habitable to me?"

[cardistry]

"You could do it," he says. "I don't know what your limit's like, but you've got a round trip in you and then some. I don't know what makes a planet habitable to you, but there's plenty more worlds with humans on 'em."

[incanted]

"How does one aim that kind of thing if one has not been to other planets before?"

[cardistry]

"No idea," he says. "Me, I just use random dimensional transfers and then store the coordinates of anywhere I wanna go back to, but I don't know how to give you those."

[incanted]

"I've seen your teleport spell now, so I should be able to do it; what are the parameters that need to get specified there?"

[cardistry]

"Um... where-ness?" he tries.

[incanted]

"I mean can I input things like 'the easternmost point of North America' or 'an unobserved part of a randomly chosen ice cream parlor that's open right now' or 'wherever Renée is', or do I have to know - latitude and longitude, or do I need to have been there, or do I need to know how far I'm going in what direction from my starting position, or what?"

[cardistry]

"Uh, okay," he says. "Short-range teleportation spells will take criteria like those first ones - I did one to take us as far from people as possible. But they won't take you to another planet; I'm not even sure they'd get you to another continent. Dimensional transfer and long-range teleportation need something more precise. Coordinates aren't relative to your starting position. I can feel coordinates, and I'm pretty sure you can't, so I genuinely have no idea how to get you to work a dimensional transfer spell that's not random. And the random ones will take some environmental parameters, but I don't know what all the parameters are for an environment that won't kill you on the spot."

[incanted]

"Has to be close to one atmosphere of pressure - not sure how close - and within a certain temperature range and have oxygen and nothing toxic in the atmosphere and not be too full of radiation and have enough room in my landing spot for me to physically fit. Ideally it would also not blind or deafen me with excess light or noise or tear me apart with wind or projectiles or anything like that. I probably don't want to trust my life to my ability to list those sorts of things completely. What about 'has humans present' - or, no, if I can't do a nonrandom one I might never get home again, right?"

[cardistry]

"I don't have a random dimensional transfer spell that'll teleport to somewhere with humans," he says. "Doesn't mean one doesn't exist. I wonder if you could make a shield that'll cover for the environmental stuff? I bet you could."

[incanted]

"Do you think I'd have to come up with an exhaustive list of 'environmental stuff' or is magic smart enough to cover for little gaps?"

[cardistry]

"I think a shield could cover for the little gaps much better than a random dimensional transfer," he explains.

[incanted]

"And I guess I could stress-test it against some conditions by hopping to, like, Antarctica, or the upper atmosphere, where I can teleport or fly out if I have sudden reason to regret my decision. What's my mana recovery rate like?"

[cardistry]

"Well, you're not back up to what you had before the fight yet," he says, "but you probably will be by tomorrow."

[incanted]

"Can you by any chance express that in terms of a percentage or made-up units of some kind?"

[cardistry]

"I could if I'd been paying more attention. If I see what your full mana level's like and remember it, then I can start talking in percentages."

[incanted]

"Well, hopefully you'll still be here tomorrow when it's back up to baseline," Bella says. "I'll try to avoid doing any but the most critical-to-supervise experiments till then. Much as I'd like to just draw a barrier around myself and go flying just for fun."