ma fête

[beheld_beauty]

Belle allows Jane to handle the guest list, and warns the kitchen that it will be serving many people, and makes sure that the living gardens are behaving themselves about maintaining paths for people to walk along, and she comes up with an enchantment to augment the castle's set of behavior so it can offer up appropriate music at appropriate times. She flies to Luc's village, and fetches him back, and tells him of the coming festivities, and assigns him to develop an introductory description of what enchanting is so that she can delegate tedious repeated introductory descriptions of it to him. Jane gives her advance notice of the nametag conventions, and she considers an enchanting solution but does not think it is best suited; she wishes the system into place instead.

She does like having wishes.

Comments

[manofmyword]

And some Jokers, of whom the eponymous is the first to converge on Beast.

"Hi, you!" he says. "Where's my hug?"

[deslandes]

Laughing, Beast scooptwirls him too, and does the same with Queenie and Ghosty and Alice and Kas and Micaiah in turn. Sue he kisses.

[beheld_beauty]

"Welcome! I am Belle, or Rose," Rose calls to all the arrivals, lifting a few feet into the air so everyone can see her and vice-versa. "Please be aware that you can speak to the serving trays if you have need of something they haven't thought to supply; they do not speak but they listen."

[bellfounding]

"Aegis wasn't kidding about the aura!" exclaims Pattern.

[autokinetic]

"I can't make it work, though," says Aegis, "it doesn't go if I try, it seems like it's not a wishable, just an enchantress thing."

[nonbird]

"Ooh," says Lazarus. "I can see that."

[beheld_beauty]

"Can you?" asks Rose, landing in such a way as to face him.

[self_composed]

"Tell us, tell us," laughs Stella.

[nonbird]

"I see magic," he explains to Rose. "Yours is very different from minting. It's more... hmm, autonomous?"

[beheld_beauty]

"I control spells as I cast them, but as long as I allow my aura free rein it does as it does without my controlling it except in certain details," agrees Rose. "And things like the living castle also have something of a personality. How is it that you see magic?"

[nonbird]

"I'm an ingot. That's my power," he says. "Coins can't wish for personalitied things. They have some decisionmaking power, but it has to be pretty well specified in advance."

[beheld_beauty]

"Interesting."

[dark_light]

"Wait, you just casually enchant personalities into existence?"

[beheld_beauty]

"Personality without intelligence," says Rose. "No great ethical quandary about it. My aura or my castle or what have you have dispositions and they react to the intelligences near them in - lively ways, but they cannot suffer or think."

[nonbird]

Lazarus nods.

[self_composed]

"So wishes are like programs plus gap-filling abilities, and enchantments are like servants minus intelligence?" hazards Stella.

[nonbird]

"Pretty much accurate," says Lazarus.

[beheld_beauty]

"So I suppose none of you are likely to develop aura unless you can yourselves be enchanters and work on it as I have. Or at least wish for skill at it and then perform a considerable number of spells."

[cross_and_bow]

"How d'you be an enchanter?"

[beheld_beauty]

"You find your mindscape, and work from there. I can help you with it, if you have the ability at all - I'm not sure if everyone has. I helped my student find his."

[cross_and_bow]

"Hit me. My murderer's trial is coming up and I would be highly entertained to show up being distinctly spooky," says Juliet.

[beheld_beauty]

Rose nods. And -

"I can't find your mindscape at all," she observes after a moment. "It doesn't - seem to be there."

[nonbird]

"What's a mindscape?" wonders Lazarus.

[beheld_beauty]

"It's a - a representation of one's mind. A beginning enchanter has to meditate into it, although I can now do many things with my eyes open. To channel through someone other than oneself one needs to find the channel's mindscape. Mine is a sphere of rosevines, with flowers on the interior and thorns on the exterior - Sue noticed them, when he attempted to link me. My husband has a castle, something like this one of late but more like the one we lived in before. Perhaps the 'opacity' power prevents me from locating Juliet's." She peers curiously at Juliet, then casts out in search of Lazarus's mindscape instead.

[nonbird]

Lazarus's mindscape is perfectly easy to locate, and it's made of sound and light and texture in an intricately structured but almost incomprehensible jumble.

"Ooh," he says. "What are you doing? Ooh."