friendly door

[her_imperial_radiance]

Elspeth gets a door.

It's been so long she reels for a moment, and then she throws herself forward and almost lands in a peal of Bells. Yes, there's Shell Bell, there's Juliet and Aurora, there's Glass, there's some Matilda she hasn't seen before.

"Elspeth!" exclaims Glass.

"How long has it been?" Aurora asks.

"Seventeen years. Shell Bell - I need you to help me find Harley," says Elspeth.

Comments

[incanted]

[The repealing effort ran into Elspeth and we had to go rescue Harley from a nasty world. Had a local Bell and a Joker. Wanna come participate in the aura part of her checklist with him?]

[cardistry]

[Sure,] he says. [Wait, which him? How old is Harley now?]

He appears just the same, though.

[incanted]

[Nasty world one. Corona. Harley's in a state. He's seventeen - or, at least so, not clear how much time passed in Tab's world since he's been there - and we haven't asked him if he wants to help.] She greets Brilliance with a kiss.

[cardistry]

Kiss. Snuggle.

To Milliways!

[incanted]

"Brilliance, Corona. Corona, Brilliance."

[cardistry]

"Hi," says Brilliance. Just for the hell of it, he turns on his aura. Colourful flares of light glint from his skin and hair and clothes. "Lemme guess, Aurora put you in that?"

[pythbox]

"You're pretty," Corona says admiringly. He touches the hem of his T-shirt. "I have no idea who put me in this, I just woke up like two minutes ago, I'm still kind of dealing with not being dead. What is that?" He reaches out a hand, and a pink glimmer tucked into a curl of Brilliance's hair brightens into a tiny sun.

[cardistry]

"It's my aura," laughs Brilliance. "You can have one too, but I bet it won't be this pretty."

And first he is going to hug his new friend!

[pythbox]

Snuggy hugs!

Brilliance's aura wraps around both of them, and the colours flare brighter and more vivid than usual.

[incanted]

"Yeah, I put him in that, he apparently died naked," says Aurora, "and I'm the only person repealed so far who has a Joker in, you know, a personal sense, so I didn't expect anyone else to think of an outfit before I did."

[pythbox]

"Thanks!" says Corona cheerfully from the middle of the lightshow. "Aww, I wanna hug you forever, we're so shiny."

This last is presumably not directed at Aurora.

[incanted]

Aurora does not deign to suppose that it might. "You're welcome."

[her_imperial_radiance]

Meanwhile, Elspeth is speeding along Tab's introduction while she deprograms Harley slow-and-sure -

[giftedandtalented]

- and Tab is putting the finishing touches on her very limited deviations from the Bells standard wish set. (She's taking something halfway between standard flight and Aegis's version.)

[pythbox]

Eventually, Corona lets go of Brilliance, although not without a promissory grin.

"So are we gonna go do something or what?" he asks the general crowd.

[giftedandtalented]

Tab is super-fast now and flipping through the end of the Bellbook. "We're going to go to Glass's world and I'm going to cheat at aura-getting with her enchanted forest."

[thaumobabble]

"You can pick up an aura there too, if you'd like," Glass adds to Corona, heading for the door. "And Harley too, if he recovers enough while we're there. The forest likes the extra magic; Marianne has taken to low-level channeling almost all the time."

[pythbox]

"Sounds like fun. What's channeling like?" he says curiously.

[cardistry]

"Fun!" beams Brilliance, his aura swirling with colours.

[thaumobabble]

"It hurts for the channel - sort of a stinging stretchedness? - and lasts awhile, if the channel isn't the same person as the enchanter." Glass opens the door. "Jarvis, please tell everyone who might care to know that we've found a new Bell Tab, a new Joker Corona, and a grown-up Harley, and we're stopping in for aura purposes." (Jarvis is handy for filtering for people who are likely to care to know, and he is better at timing than her previous strategy of "indiscriminate immediate brainphone".)

[her_imperial_radiance]

"We can go to Chronicle, or back to Aurum, or stay here," murmurs Elspeth to Harley, who she's still holding.

[poeticterms]

"Will do. Welcome, all," says Jarvis.

[pythbox]

As the rest of them pile through, Harley clings to Elspeth and cuddles her wordlessly.

[her_imperial_radiance]

In the absence of a decision from Harley, Elspeth follows the crowd.

[giftedandtalented]

"...Hi, Jarvis," says Tab shyly. "So, um, I have enchanting all wished up, who's channeling for me first?"