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

[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."

[beheld_beauty]

"I'm just looking, I won't touch, I can't read anything personal without a separate spell," says Rose. "...It's very confusing-looking. I'm not sure I would know how to channel through you even if I wanted to."

[nonbird]

"I can imagine it would be," he says. "Also, ooh."

[cross_and_bow]

"On the opacity spectrum I'm one of the more opaque - me and Golden are the ones Sue can't link," says Juliet. "You might be able to check some of the others."

[jovahs_heiress]

"Me, for example, I have no native defense," Angela offers. "If you can't actually read my mind by doing this..."

[beheld_beauty]

"I can read my husband's mindscape, but it required me to cast a spell first," Rose says. "I will be able to see what shape the mindscape takes, but not know what thoughts are moving through it." She backs away from Lazarus's mindscape and peers at Angela's, then reports, "Furnished - caves, of sorts, in a mountain, and background music."

[jovahs_heiress]

"The Eyrie," concludes Angela, smiling.

[manofmyword]

"Ooh, do me, do me," says the Joker from where he is snuggling Beast.

[beheld_beauty]

Rose, obligingly, has a look.

[manofmyword]

The Joker's mind is a dirty, run-down city on a smallish island-and-a-half, bordered by water on every side.

[beheld_beauty]

"A city," says Rose, unable to come up with polite terms for the condition of said city. "On two islands, one smaller than the other."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I've been to the Eyrie, and it's big, but it's not city-sized," says Shell Bell. "Does that mean anything?"

[beheld_beauty]

"There's no - sizes in mindscapes," says Rose. "They all go down to arbitrary levels of detail. The seeing-presence can always take in the whole thing as though it were tiny or the smallest piece as though it were enormous. The real city, if it's a real city, may well be larger than the Eyrie, but the dreamworlds that resemble them are not meaningfully larger or smaller than each other."

[manofmyword]

"I'm Gotham," he says, laughing.

[gunpowdergelatine]

"What about me?" says Queenie.

[beheld_beauty]

Rose checks Queenie too.