i believe i can fly

[self_composed]

Alice eventually goes home for the evening.

Bella goes up and sits in her room.

She has five hexes.

Five.

That's rather a lot of hexes.

She gets out her notebook, with the lists, and she makes some wishes.

And then she goes to bed, grinning.

In the morning it will be time to make plans.

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

"Awesome," he says brightly, letting go and spinning around to survey the space. "Read me?"

[self_composed]

Bella does so, amusedly puzzled.

[edgeofyourseat]

Well, first of all, there is how much he loves her, which is: lots.

Second of all, it is easier to get a second opinion on furniture placement when he can just—see things where he thinks they should go, instead of having to point and chatter. Like, say, a kitchen table. Over there! Supplied with chairs!

[self_composed]

Bella shrugs; she's got lots of squares and he'll thrust more upon her at the next opportunity. She follows him around and conjures up furniture out of his thoughts, edited where necessary to have useful properties like "enough legs to not fall over" and "does not clash horribly with wall".

[edgeofyourseat]

He ends up with a bed of maximum comfiness, more storage space in the sewing room than absolutely anywhere else, and a single big squashy armchair in one corner of the main room with a little table next to it.

"Yeah, that'll do it. Thanks," he says, dropping the 'hon' that wants to attach to the end.

[self_composed]

Bella smiles and twirls her necklace around her fingers. "You're welcome. Do you have the time? I haven't gotten a new phone yet."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yeah," he says, digging his phone out of his pocket and showing her the time display.

[self_composed]

"Probably time to start the pot pie with the leftover chicken," Bella says. "Homeward!" And she flies up the stairs.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice zooms after her. Flying is fun! Whee!

[self_composed]

Bella's invisible before leaving through the rock. She tests out her top speed. And gets above the trees and loops till she's dizzy.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice hovers for a second or two on the outside before he decides that not getting caught is probably a good plan and settles to the ground to walk back.

[self_composed]

Bella dives and comes up short near Alice. "You could learn to be invisible too," she points out.

[edgeofyourseat]

"I could!" he agrees. "Ooh, y'know what else—"

That thing they were thinking of earlier, about some way to run his bad ideas past her without waiting for a phone. It doesn't need to be related to telepathy at all, but if they had some way to talk at arbitrary distance without being overheard, it would make invisible flying excursions that much more convenient.

[self_composed]

Bella designs a magic mental phone system, controlled entirely by mental action. It will be expansible, because why not; she and Alice will start as the only two nodes, but if she wants to throw in Charlie or somebody, or add an interface for Alice's sewing machine, she will be able to do that with only a pentagon. It will allow any number of nodes to talk to each other. There will be magic voicemail, in case someone does not want to receive a communique at a given time. And the whole thing can be compressed to text in either direction, in case one is in a loud environment or wants to send mental ASCII art.

She turns over this design in her head a few times, and then spends a hex to put it in place. [Like so?]

[edgeofyourseat]

[I love you,] he says happily. [How's it work? Besides the obvious.]

[self_composed]

[Like a phone, basically. You wanna talk to me, you can, unless I have a busy message up, and then you can leave magic voicemail.] She switches to text, and the words "Works this way, too," march across his vision. [And I can add more people later, if desired.]

[edgeofyourseat]

"Whoa," he mutters out loud, and then adds by mage-phone, [You're awesome,] although the words are probably redundant next to how hard he is thinking it.

[self_composed]

[You can put up the busy message manually and according to whatever algorithm you want. Mine'll automatically be up when I'm asleep, f'rinstance,] Bella goes on happily.

[edgeofyourseat]

[What if I have a really bad idea while you're asleep?] he wonders. Operating on the assumption that brain phones don't ring, because why would they: [Guess I'll call you the normal way.]

[self_composed]

[Right. Once I get a new phone. I don't think I want to try to deal with the headache of trying to connect a conjured phone to any existing cell service.]

[edgeofyourseat]

Although he expects that she could totally do it, because Bella is amazing, he also expects that it would be exactly as much of a headache as she seems to think.

[Yeah, good plan.]

[self_composed]

They reach her house. Bella unlocks the door so Alice can let her in.

Inside, she starts working on the pot pie (with occasional directions for assistance from Alice), and, while cutting up the chicken, she pauses, shrugs, smiles, and wishes herself cooking skills on a pentagon.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice helps out as directed and basks happily in how much he loves her and how awesome she is.

[self_composed]

Bella enjoys that as she starts fucking around with her pot pie recipe. She's a little more careful not to get too much of the original sauce in it, because it won't go that well with the gravy. At least she saved the chicken drippings when she cooked it the first time around. Those are essential.

She likes being magical oh so very much.

[edgeofyourseat]

It's not any one thing, but something in the general tone of her cooking has him asking, "Did you pentagon yourself?" after a little while.