if i got three wishes, first i'd find out all about how wishes work

[self_composed]

Bella brings two blank notebooks to school the next day. Her old one is safely computerized and boxed up with its predecessors.

At lunch, she sits with Angela; Jessica and Eric and Lauren sit at the same table but mostly talk to each other, and Mike is nowhere to be seen.

Bella is just about on time to gym, thanks to an overnight icing that means she has to pick her way with extreme care across the slippery grass or the slick sidewalks. The second time she falls down, she gives up on attempting any dignity at all, and, cradling her thwacked elbow, scoots the rest of the way to the gym on her rear. This leaves her with damp jeans but no further injuries, and they were a little damp anyway from the falls.

She doesn't have time to do more than smile and wave at Alice on her way to get her mat and get out of the way of careening balls. She spends the class doing the subset of her safe activities that won't stress her elbow.

Comments

[self_composed]

"Nah," Bella says. "It would only escalate to creepitude if you started swatting me without me signing up for that - whether you were doing it because it's hot or to try to steal the coins or because I annoyed you or whatever."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Okay, good. 'Cause it's kinda hot when you do that."

There it is! As he predicted, under a couple of shirts that he kicked aside while he was clearing a path to the desk for Bella. He holds it up triumphantly, then swings by the desk to grab a pen.

[self_composed]

Bella cranes her neck slightly so she'll be able to see what he writes, but if he's not interested in showing her she's not going to make a fuss.

[edgeofyourseat]

"What, you wanna watch?" he asks, following the movement. "Sure."

He looks between the desk and the bed for a moment, and then takes option c) none of the above and sits on the floor at her feet.

[self_composed]

"Mm-hm. If you don't mind." Bella peers over his shoulder.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Nah, go for it," he says easily, tipping his head back to grin at her upside-down. "That's the point, right?"

At the top of the very first page of the notebook, he writes: but why is it hot?

[self_composed]

Bella mulls over whether to be helpful. He doesn't have any practice at this yet. "Would it be hot if I did the same things and no coins happened? Or if the coins happened some other way?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"...yeah," he says. "But not as hot, either way."

So that's two lines dropping down from the main topic. At the end of one he writes: you were laughing; at the end of the other, his pen pauses. Then he goes back up and draws a third line. The two other subpoints, apparently, are it hurt and you're gonna take over the world.

He goes back and crosses out 'laughing', replacing it with having fun for a more general case. Then he circles 'you're gonna take over the world' and draws a question mark beside it.

[self_composed]

Bella grins and supervises. The next question is whether those things, too, are hot in themselves - and whether they all add up to the correct amount of hot - but maybe he's got a different idea, or he'll come up with that one himself.

[edgeofyourseat]

"I'm not sure about this one," he says, tapping 'you're gonna take over the world' with the end of his pen. "I mean, it's true and it's hot and it's obviously related but I'm not sure it's exactly the right thing. You know?"

[self_composed]

"Mm-hm," Bella agrees. She thinks, tapping her cheek with one forefinger. "Maybe that I can now take over the world, or that I'm the sort of person who really might, or something about what you think I'll do with it once it is all mine?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"I have no idea what you're gonna do with the world when you've got it, that's like half the fun," he says with a laugh. "But I think it's more the first one. Like..."

He crosses out that item and writes beneath it, you have magic powers!

[self_composed]

"Would any magic powers do the trick?" Bella laughs. "If I were a Japanese cartoon character and I changed into a frilly costume by saying something like, I don't know, 'luminous star mysticism awaken!', and then I could use the Japanese cartoon equivalent of a Care Bear Stare..."

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice cracks up.

"That would be hilarious. And also kind of hot. But not as hot. By the way, if I ever get magic powers of my very own, you are getting Care Bear powers."

But he draws a little arrow out from between 'have' and 'magic' to specify that the magic powers are also: (sexy!)

[self_composed]

Bella snickers. "Please be careful trying to give me extra super-abilities, even if they're just silly things. Elias concentrated his warnings around the stars, but the hexes can apparently go wrong too if you don't know enough about what you're doing."

She turns her attention back to his notebook. She wants to see what he does next.

[edgeofyourseat]

"I promise not to turn you into a Care Bear," he says cheerfully, and looks down at the page again. After a thoughtful moment, he circles 'it hurt' and 'you were laughing having fun' and draws a double-ended arrow between those two.

[self_composed]

"Perhaps disappointingly, I don't have your kink," Bella tells him. "I'm pretty darn sure of that. But triangle- to square-level pain doesn't ruin my sense of humor, and even fucked-up magic powers are still magic powers."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yeah, I know," he says. "But it matters that you were getting hurt and having fun at the same time even if you didn't like it the way I would."

[self_composed]

"Huh, okay," says Bella agreeably. "Anything else?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Mmmm." He drums the pen against the paper. "Dunno."

[self_composed]

"You seem to like it when I have opportunities to decide things," Bella remarks. "Magic powers - not to mention taking over the world - both provide more of that. Any magic power would provide that, but the wishes are flexible - and I have to choose to make a tradeoff to get them each time, not just buy them in rolls from the bank and decide how to spend 'em."

[edgeofyourseat]

"...huh," he says. "Yeah. I mean, not the tradeoff thing exactly, but part of what makes them sexy magic powers is that you can do anything you want with them. And the fact that they're made of pain is a pretty nice bonus."

Something occurs to him.

He rips a corner off the page, reaches into Bella's backpack, grabs a triangle, and wishes the tiny scrap of paper on fire.

"Okay, so apparently it doesn't matter if you give me the coin or I just take it," he observes, putting it out. "That's probably good to know."

[self_composed]

"That does matter," says Bella, frowning and pulling out her notebook. "I'm going to make a long, long list of nice generic things to do with coins of all sizes, and find some way to wear them on my person at all times, so if it looks like I'm going to get mugged I can deplete the supply, usefully and instantly." She shakes her head. "But I have to sleep - at least until I have a hex to drop on making that go away - and should probably try not to keep too many of the big ones around. Someone who doesn't know what they're dealing with won't likely think to wish on a random glowing coin, but if they do, anything good-sized could be trouble."

[edgeofyourseat]

"How big a coin would you need to lock up your backpack so only you can get into it?" he wonders. "Or, like, a box or something."

[self_composed]

"I'm not sure. Possibly a pentagon, but it might take a hex - I don't know how Elias did the secret room, but I don't need quite that much sophistication necessarily. I don't want them in my backpack, though. They have to be touching me so I can use them, and I'd like them accessible in an emergency - if my car skids on the ice, I want to undo that right then, rather than dig around for a square in my bag in the backseat. I need a necklace or a bracelet or something."