GLoG 89

[Lost_Deep]

Maple Cabin

"Yeah. Thanks, Sophie. I needed this talk. It's nice to have an idea, if nothing else. Sure, I'll still need to find someplace to vacation, but... an idea is better than nothing," Kate says as she stands up.

[Morty]

[Maple Cabin]

"Well, good luck, either way," Sophie says.

[Earl of Purple]

Near The Lake

It's not just card tricks; there's also the shell game, where a stone is hidden under one of three cups which are then moved around. Natalie knows that, too, and will teach the mundane way of palming the stone and placing it under the one you want it under.

[Cyber Punk]

Near The Lake

Asher keeps missing how to palm the stone correctly. He keeps trying and trying until his face squeezes and he starts to cry. "C-can't... g-get it!"

[Murkus]

[Sapling Cabin]

Brinika giggles, despite herself. Weird as it might be, Cern and Gwydion are adorable.

"It's cool to have two little brothers," she says.

Tuskfang, meanwhile, thinks long and hard about something. You can see gears turning in that little furry head of his.

"Doessat mean they're my cousins?"

"Uh," Damn, Adir didn't see that one coming. Kid's got quite the fine-tuned thinkin' machine between his overlarge ears. "Sure it does. 'Guess I'm your creep uncle now, too."

"We're cool!" Cern declares, throwing his fists up.

"Cern fights wit' his older sister," Gwyd advides, leaning up toward her so he can do a silly little whisper. It's not a very good whisper either. "So be careful."

"Hey!"

[Morty]

[Near The Lake]

Brinika goes to hug Asher again. She herself is doing better, but it still takes time.

"Don't worry, Asher. It's not the kind of thing you can learn right away."

[Sapling Cabin]

Tuskfang squeals and tries to hug Adir. Given his size, it means hugging Adir's leg.

"Yay! I got Uncle Waterstrider an' Uncle Bildut an' now Uncle Adir."

Brinika makes an exaggerated gasp.

"No! Really?"

[Earl of Purple]

Near the Lake

"It took me hours of practice to get as good as I am, and to begin with I didn't have anyone to point out how and where I was going wrong. You're much better now than I was." She used a mirror when she felt confident enough not to watch her hands, and that reversed everything to make it more confusing.

[ThePhantom]

[Main Cabin]

The smell of freshly baked cookies wafts from the kitchen in the Main Cabin. Marley had decided to practice his cooking skills and cookies are an easy thing to do.

[Cyber Punk]

[Near The Lake]

Asher wipes his eyes and smiles when he is comforted by the two girls, then gets to trying it again. Before long, he's doing as good as Brinika is, which is something.

"Yaaaay! D-did you see? I d-did it!"

[Morty]

[Near The Lake]

Brinika ruffles the boy's hair with a grin.

"See? I told you you'd get it right."

[Earl of Purple]

Near the Lake

"You'll be able to pull coins from ears in no time, Asher." To demonstrate, she reaches over to the side of Asher's head and produce a bronze coin with an upraised hand on one side, and a king's face on the other.

Pretty sure it uses techniques she's already demonstrated, just in a new way, so if either of the others are looking they might see how it's done.

[Cyber Punk]

[Near The Lake]

Asher grins back at Brinika.

When coins are pulled from his ears, it takes Asher a second to realize that Natalie just used a sleight-of-hand technique. It doesn't stop him, however, from giggling happily and clapping his hands for the teen.

"Y-you're r-real tah-tal-talen... good! Y-you're real g-good at this!"

[Morty]

[Near The Lake]

Brinika might have noticed, but she's a bit too scatter-brained for such details. She blinks.

"Wow. It's almost like magic, except without... well, magic. But magic can be a lot of stuff."

[Earl of Purple]

Near the Lake

"All it is, is practice. I practice stage magic and my real magic whenever I get, but mostly I practice that in the woods. GLoG has an anti-teleport ward up, which makes summoning stuff pretty hard." Since she's teleporting it to her, across planar boundaries. She knows the woods pretty well, though, since not only does she practice magic in them, but she also explores as monkey, girl and bird.

[Cyber Punk]

[Near The Lake]

Asher tilts his head. "W-what's tel-e-pot?"

Also, he'd like it if he flew beside Natalie as they explored the woods. As cool as she's proving to be, she might not like that, as she's older, or so he thinks.

[Morty]

[Near The Lake]

"It means vanishing and appearing somewhere else right away," Brinika says. "It takes some serious magic to do that."

[Earl of Purple]

Near The Lake

"When I use conjuration magic, I'm teleporting it from where it was to where I am. My homeworld doesn't use personal instantaneous teleportation very often; it's too dangerous. There's a risk of not reappearing at the other end at home. It's fine for short distances, but for anything over a mile there's a risk. Small to begin with, but it steadily gets bigger the larger the distance." After the first mile, it's 1%. After two miles, it's 2%. And so on, until only the desperate teleport over twenty miles.

[Murkus]

[Near The Lake]

Brinika goes to hug Asher again. She herself is doing better, but it still takes time.

"Don't worry, Asher. It's not the kind of thing you can learn right away."

[Sapling Cabin]

Tuskfang squeals and tries to hug Adir. Given his size, it means hugging Adir's leg.

"Yay! I got Uncle Waterstrider an' Uncle Bildut an' now Uncle Adir."

Brinika makes an exaggerated gasp.

"No! Really?"

"Oh, geez, kid, I'm probly not the kinda uncle you wanna go hugging," Adir says, resisting the urge to wag the leg around that Tuskfang is now attached to. His torso leans very slightly in the other direction, and he stares down at the little tyke. What if one of his actual uncles, or worse, his old man came by? "We just met and all, didn't we?" Adir tries with a grin.

"Really!" Gwydion affirms.

"No really!" Cern counters.

[Cyber Punk]

[Near The Lake]

Asher nods as he thinks about what is said. "T-then momma t-telepotted us h-here! An' l-lots of t-the others..." He points upwards. "... t-they tele-pot t-too!"

[Morty]

[Near The Lake]

"I've never been teleported," Brinika says. "But I guess I will be, sooner or later. I wonder how it feels. Is it like flying? I've flown a few times. On hoverboots and Jamie's hoverboard."

[Sapling Cabin]

Tuskfang isn't sure what Adir means, but he steps away, still grinning widely.

"Okay Uncle!"

He then barrels in the direction of Cern and Gwydion on his short, chubby legs.

"Cern. Geedon! We're cousins!"

Brinika, meanwhile, giggles.

"It's normal if siblings fight. I fought with my cousins."

She bit them a lot and was bit in return. It's just what little goblins do. But better not to tell the two fey-kids that...

[Earl of Purple]

Near The Lake

"I've never teleported instantaneously. I've used interdimensional travel, though. That can be quite weird, depending on the realm you're travelling through. That's when you travel from one plane to another and back to the original plane, further from where you started than you travelled and quicker." I think Brinika's done that, too. When she and the other children of GLoG got an invite from Natalie's father to her birthday party a few years ago.

[Cyber Punk]

[Near The Lake]

"I-inta d-d-dye-men-shun?" Asher scratches his left wing. These older kids are using so many grown-up words. As he thinks, he starts to suck on his tongue.

[Morty]

[Near The Lake]

Brinika giggles and tries to poke Natalie in the ribs.

"I think you're confusing him."

[Earl of Purple]

Near The Lake

"It, uh, means world of existence. Like this one." She smiles at Brinika's poke, "Yeah, me too. Sorry Asher." She can't help using long words- her father ran a university in a world where there was very limited publicly available education, deliberately so to ensure that the number of extremely powerful wizards wandering around is relatively small and unable to surprise governments too often.

[Cyber Punk]

[Near The Lake]

Asher nods once and the sucking stops as he smiles, glad he's learnt a new word. He just has to learn to pronounce it well, and he can go on impressing his momma!

"Y-you're real s-s-smart, N-natalie!" The boy goes to hug her again.

[Morty]

[Near The Lake]

"She is!" Brinika squeaks. "She knows lots of words I don't. I have magic, but it's not the kind of magic you learn. I've been sort of figuring it out on my own."

[Earl of Purple]

Near the Lake

Natalie hugs Asher back with a smile. "A lot of this stuff seeps in when university professors come round for supper, and Dad always invited one on Friday and made a point of knowing enough to have an interesting conversation no matter what the professor taught." Natalie's surprised at Brinika's admission, not knowing about that. "I didn't know that, Brinika. What can you do?" She's genuinely interested; her homeworld has no truly inherent magic, though many low-powered wizards and witches are mostly self-taught, and some are capable of feats that the universities believe impossible.

[Cyber Punk]

[Near The Lake]

Asher beams, then lets go. "B-Brinika is cool too! S-she knows music a-and has a p-pretty voice!"

All the talk of words is letting Asher feel slightly more self-conscious of his stutter... then he remembers that he stutters less around his momma. Taking the shiny medallion out of his pocket, he wears it as Natalie speaks.

A blinding light flashes for an instant, and suddenly there's a silver chain around his chest that he tucks into his shirt.

[Morty]

[Near The Lake]

"You haven't seen me do magic, Natalie?" Brinika asks, a little surprised. "I can shape rocks with music. And I once managed to talk to a bird. And I think I can make things darker, too."

[Earl of Purple]

Near the Lake

"You're cool too, Asher. You can talk and fly at the same time; I can't, and Brinika can't naturally fly either." Turning to Brinika, "No, I don't think so. Is it a new thing?" It might have been off-screen, if it happened, as I don't have scenes with Natalie as I should.