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]

"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."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You could make it, like, invisible to people who aren't you?" he suggests. "And if I get powers and you end up buried in hexes, you can keep those all locked up in one place."

[self_composed]

"Invisible necklace," agrees Bella. "Yes, that's a good idea. I think I can do that with a pentagon. If I can't, I'm in trouble, since I don't have a hex."

[edgeofyourseat]

"But if it turns out that making the necklace invisible doesn't make stuff you put on it afterward invisible too," he continues musingly, "you'll be kinda screwed what with the glowy red things hanging from your neck on an invisible chain. It's a shame you've only got the one pentagon or you could just try it. See? This is why I should have magic powers."

[self_composed]

"I think I saw something about..." She scoops out Elias's book again, and flip-flip-flips, and stops. "Here. If I wish for something that my coin of choice isn't big enough to handle, it just doesn't work. If I wish on a pentagon for a chain that I can make coins appear directly on and that will extend invisibility to those coins, then I'll either get that or it won't work." She taps the book a couple times. "I wonder if that's why stars fuck up so much - they are big enough for anything, so people don't have to be thoughtful about the exact wish?"

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice draws a little heart on the bottom of the page, separate from previous material, and writes you're smart beside it.

"That makes a lot of sense," he says.

[self_composed]

"I think having the invisible chain is pretty important. If I haven't thought of something more important, or a better solution to the same problem, by the time I leave here today, then I'll use the pentagon for that."

[edgeofyourseat]

'You're smart' gets a little arrow pointing to the addendum, you think of things, which in turn gets another little heart.

"Sounds like a good plan," he adds, somewhat redundantly, out loud.

[self_composed]

Bella smiles. She is not immune to flattery and has never troubled to render herself so.

[edgeofyourseat]

He looks up at her, spots the smile, and grins.

[self_composed]

Bella picks up her backpack and starts counting the coins. She has one pentagon, and three of the squares and two of the triangles. She wonders if she can get heaps of the triangles just by putting a lot of pepper in her food.

Just to see if it would work, she tries wishing for her invisible and invisibling chain on a square. It remains where it is. "Okay, so that is going to take a pentagon," she says.

[edgeofyourseat]

"The necklace?" he hazards.

[self_composed]

"Yes. I don't doubt I could make a plain chain with a square, but the permanent invisibility power is apparently a big deal."

[edgeofyourseat]

"It would be," he says, shrugging.

...A thought strikes, and he giggles.

"Does the book say anything about what kind of coin you'd need to wish for, like, a bunch of small things at once?"

[self_composed]

Bella flips to the Helpful Charts section and scans it.

"Elias seems to prefer a strategy of handling small things one at a time with small coins, like his rat bites," she says. "But if you need to do a lot lot of small things, you probably want to cover that with a permanent skill or power from a pentagon or hexagon. And if they're really small, you might be able to handle a bunch in one shot with a square. Why?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Read the book first," he says. "I don't wanna spoil it. You'll know when you get there."

[self_composed]

"Are you aware," Bella says, "that I don't like mysteries?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"It's a really short book," he says. "You could probably get to the right part before the cake's even done."

[self_composed]

Bella looks at him, and then puts the magic book away and pulls out Alice's favorite instead. She opens it up again and begins to read.