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

[cross_and_bow]

"Some of me would be all over you. I'm not one of them," Juliet says. "After we've brought Tab up to speed we're headed for Origin. We can drop you off there with some other stray Jokers if you don't have anywhere else in mind."

[pythbox]

"I don't really care where I go as long as it's not back and you scrub Chelsa off me first," he says. "And I get to hug Harley. I wanna hug Harley."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Probably he will let you at some point," says Elspeth, looking down at Harley who she's holding so he doesn't have to support his weight, who doesn't currently appear to harbor any intention of ever letting her go.

[giftedandtalented]

Tab is now reading a copy of the Bellbook eagerly.

[pythbox]

Harley clings to her some more.

Corona smiles fondly at them.

[incanted]

"One of the things on Tab's checklist is acquiring an enchantress's aura. This requires a helper. The helper hurts," says Aurora. "I dunno where you are psychologically; if it's not good I can lean into my world and get Brilliance instead, but you're more convenient."

[pythbox]

Corona shrugs. "I can do hurting."

[incanted]

"Okay. Depending on how much hurting, this is gonna take at least an hour. I maybe should get Brilliance anyway for the taking of breaks." She leans around him to get the door. [Hey Sunshine?]

[cardistry]

[What's up?]

[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."