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

[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.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice tilts his head back and watches her upside-down.

This is a poor long-term strategy, though, so after a minute he turns all the way around.

[self_composed]

It is a short book, and Bella does read fast.

"Well," she says. "I think Harlan Ellison was terribly annoyed with being hurried along - and I think he would have written a different story if his circumstances were instead prone to leaving him waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for someone who didn't care about his wasted time."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Probably, yeah. But I like the way he wrote it," he says cheerfully. "So yeah, I wanna make a rain of jelly beans."

[self_composed]

"Property damage," Bella says. "Possibly injury or death, if there are too many of them. Certainly disruptions of schedules, some of which are actually important - there is a reason ambulances are allowed to speed. Gosh, with results like that, who wouldn't want a rain of jellybeans?"

[edgeofyourseat]

He sticks out his tongue. "Ruin all my fun, why don'tcha. Well, it doesn't matter that much to me if I rain jelly beans on people or not. I could rain jelly beans in the middle of nowhere and confuse the hell out of the next hiker."

[self_composed]

"You'd probably do some damage to the local ecosystem, but at that point I'm just nitpicking," shrugs Bella. "But... The combination of you having this kind of idea and how impulsive I have seen you be doesn't add up to 'this person definitely needs magic powers'. I don't think raining the jelly beans in the woods was your first idea. I might want to extract some kind of agreement that if I give you a hex to turn into coinmaking abilities you run anything pentagon-sized and up by me first."

[edgeofyourseat]

"...Okay, but we'd better make some kind of magic instant checking-my-stupid-ideas-with-Bella system, because if I'm off in Nevada or whatever and I have an idea I like that much, I'm not waiting for you to answer your phone. I'm just not."

[self_composed]

"Sure, you can make us some hexes and bam, instant telepathy," Bella says lightly.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice blinks.

And smiles, slowly.

"Oh, I like it," he says.

[self_composed]

"Purely communicative telepathy," Bella says. "At least as concerns the contents of my brain departing it. Select notebook contents are it in that department; my thoughts are mine."

[edgeofyourseat]

He waves a hand in a gesture of agreement/dismissal. "Sure, but you'd be okay with you reading my mind, right?"

[self_composed]

She blinks at him.

"If that's something you want to hand me, I'm not going to complain about it," she says slowly. "Provided you word it in such a way that we don't wind up creepily sharing dreams or anything - I want to be able to put that sort of thing on pause, is what I'm saying."

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice laughs.

"No shit," he agrees. "My brain is definitely a place you'd wanna be able to back out of in a hurry. But I mean, it's the same as the notebook thing," he lifts his up and wiggles it a little, "but better."

[self_composed]

Bella nods cheerfully. She taps her own notebook with her pen and starts writing Charts of her own, for ways to quickly use up any coins that are in danger of being stolen, and depleting excessively tempting stashes. Me able to read pinball wizard's mind, is one of the items under "hexagon", along with "flight" and "no need for sleep" and "todo: look up list of X-Men".

[edgeofyourseat]

"Whatcha doin' up there?" he wonders.

[self_composed]

She shows him the list in progress. The pentagon list has "languages (various)" and "musical talent" and "(after masochistic magic-generator exists only) remove clumsiness?" and "cook like Hilary!".

[edgeofyourseat]

"Wolverine," he says when he gets to the entry about X-Men.

[self_composed]

"That's the one with the retractable claws? Do you really want to go around with claws in your arms all the time?" Bella asks.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Well, that would be kind of cool, but I was thinking more the healing factor," he says. "So you can just hurt yourself over and over and not use up a bunch of wishes fixing it afterward. ...I guess maybe I want that more than you do."