Milliways Again

[her_imperial_radiance]

It lurks. Oh how it lurks.

Comments

[prima_sequentem]

"It's nice sharing multiple languages with somebody, though. Me and my aunt speak English, German, and French."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I know... maybe a few hundred words of French, and I could probably fake more than that if I had to," muses Orfeo. "There's a stationary branch of the Imperial coven in Québec so I hear it in my head and we go there sometimes, but I've never systematically tried to learn it. I don't know a lick of German. Except, like, 'ja' and 'heil' and 'schadenfreude'."

[prima_sequentem]

Libby giggles. "Not a bad start. You can learn them with magic when I take you home," she offers. "Although I'm not sure it wouldn't be more fun teaching you the long way."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"It sounds like you do a lot of stuff with magic," he observes.

[prima_sequentem]

"I didn't use to. Then Bella happened," she says, smiling. "And now there's a palace on the moon, a rapidly expanding city on Mars, and little things like installing a whole language in somebody's head are starting to look comparatively trivial."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Huh. What do you do while she's doing all that?"

[prima_sequentem]

"My specialty is personnel," she explains. "When I said I had a lot of friends, I may or may not have meant I run an extensive international organization full of useful people of all varieties. Not unlike your empire, from what I can tell. Whenever Bella needs someone to run the Mars immigration office or her magic bank or something, I find the right person for the job."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Cool. That doesn't sound like something you'd just fall into, how'd you get into this?"

[prima_sequentem]

She looks nostalgic for a moment.

"It's a long story. I'll tell you later," she says. "Oh, and I'm a mathematician, too."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"What kind of math?" he says, with the air of someone who just about knows that there are kinds.

[prima_sequentem]

"Lots of kinds. I'll spare you the boring incomprehensible details." She grins. "Unless you like boring incomprehensible details, in which case I can tell you all about infinite-dimensional vector spaces."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Well, I wouldn't listen to anyone else talk about infinite-dimensional vector spaces, but," he shrugs.

[prima_sequentem]

"I'm sure between the two of us we can come up with a subject that you like on its own merits. How about motorcycles, do you like motorcycles? I have a motorcycle."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I like motorcycles," he agrees. "Can't have one because we move around the world all the time, but I learned to ride one anyway; there's some stashed in some of the imperial garages."

[prima_sequentem]

"I'll get you a motorcycle," Libby decides.

[her_imperial_radiance]

He beams at her.

Elena makes a noise in the back of her throat and sweeps out of the blue guest house.

[prima_sequentem]

Libby also decides that nothing terrible will happen if she sits beside Orfeo. So she does.

[her_imperial_radiance]

He goes right on grinning.

[self_composed]

Bella runs out of things to look at in the kitchen. She sidles back in. "So what's the deal?" she asks.

[prima_sequentem]

"If we can manage it, Orfeo is going to move worlds," says Libby. "I intend to manage it. Would you be willing to spare a star to see if it'll fix the unpleasantness of being a wolf with no pack? I'll start in smaller denominations, obviously, but I'm not sure a hex would be enough."

[self_composed]

"As a one-time thing, sure. I suppose if we have a mass immigration the problem will solve itself," Bella says. "Does this not seem sketchy to you? I mean, I realize it potentially cannot be helped, but it seems sketchy to me."

[prima_sequentem]

"Sketchy in what sense?"

[self_composed]

"A dude has just not-particularly-voluntarily had his motivation structure hacked and now whatever he was going to do next week is on hold so he can follow you home?" Bella says. "And your request was something other than 'Bella, can you see if a star can undo that'?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I don't want you do undo it," exclaims Orfeo. "I mean, unless Libby wants you to, but she doesn't seem to."

[prima_sequentem]

"Observe my reasons," she says, gesturing to Orfeo. "Not-very-voluntarily hacking his motivation structure again in the other direction isn't going to reduce the amount of sketchiness going on here. And imprinting is immune to magic in this universe, so even if we could reverse it with a star, I don't know that it wouldn't have long-term negative effects. Which I don't want."