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

[self_composed]

"Why that, though?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Not sure," he says. "'Cause you used magic, and you used it to do something useful and cool?"

[self_composed]

"In that case, I wonder how long it'll take for you to get tired of reminding me," laughs Bella. "Okay, I have one hex left on here." Necklace-heft. "I think I have enough symbols and I can presumably add more with pentagons if I'm getting too many black squares - meaning 'other'. Let's see, what am I trying to neglect?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Huh?"

[self_composed]

"What would I smack myself on the forehead for not thinking of, if I wished without taking however long it would take to come up with it?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Oh. Not a clue. But then, I don't know what you have thought of."

[self_composed]

"Your signals, and my input stream and how I can manipulate it," Bella says. "And an image compression algorithm of sorts. Should I be able to poke around in your memories? Should I be using something other than a naive magical heuristic for generating the words - like, should the power be consulting you to determine what words you'd attach to a thought if prompted?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yes," he says after thinking about it for a moment, "and... I dunno, actually. They're my thoughts, but you're the one who's reading 'em."

[self_composed]

"So I need an interface for sorting through memories - browsing some organized representation of the whole shebang? Searching by keythought? Picking them out of an index by date?" She closes her eyes. "Man, wishes do not make everything simple, do they. How about - if you could produce a word for a thought, then that one, otherwise if I could produce a word for it if I was having it, then that, and otherwise, a first pass at a naive magical translation - and otherwise a symbol. And I'll color-code 'em."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You are smart," he sighs, happily.

[self_composed]

"So," Bella says, "let me guess - you think in thoughts, and also, you remember in memories?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yup."

[self_composed]

"It's almost like your brain's fundamental architecture is not as much on board with this project as you are," Bella comments. "I think I'll see what I can do about a mixed strategy - category sorting and search and date organization as much as that's possible, and then if I can't find what I'm looking for I can try another way. And let's represent that thusly -" She expends another square to repeat the "abstract contact", a shade cooler, like she's just come in from the snow and her hands are cold. "Good?"

[edgeofyourseat]

He smiles. "Sure!"

[self_composed]

Bella closes her eyes and carries on thinking about how she wants to interface with Alice's mind until she's got a very clear mental picture of what that might look like and how she might poke things when she pokes them. Right before she's about to expend the hex, she remembers to include an option to manage scroll speed and how big everything looks, and then she has to take another couple minutes just to make sure that's the only thing she forgot.

Finally, she says, "Here goes," and makes one extremely complicated wish.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Well, did it work?"

[self_composed]

"Hex is gone," Bella says, peering at her necklace. "I'm all out of 'em now."

She closes her eyes again, and reads.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Want me to make some more?" he asks, smiling reminiscently.

Bella may choose to smack herself in the forehead for not including any kind of censoring in her scheme, if she likes. Even as a mental thumbnail, his memory of last night's shower is pretty graphic.

He passes by it quickly, though, instead thinking of turning on her stove and whether he could use a triangle (maybe a square) to make it heat up faster. (The coins are represented by a visual of their shape plus the feeling of black glass under his fingers, cross-referenced to the ever-present weight of the necklace.)

Also, he likes the sensation of her reading him. It was nice before, but now that it's connected to the reality, it induces a happy shivery kind of mostly nonsexual pleasure.

[self_composed]

"This thing might need a safe-search," Bella remarks. "Of course, then I'd probably get roughly nothing."

[edgeofyourseat]

...He cracks up.

"Oh man, did you not think of that? You didn't think of that. I love you."

Because the idea of not thinking of that is completely foreign to him.

[self_composed]

Bella watches the words appear in her vision a little before he speaks them. "Somehow, I failed to think of that," she agrees. "But I suspect I'd get sufficiently incomplete results trying to read your mind without any... let's call it 'mature content'... that it could hardly be called mindreading at all, so I'll see if I can't get used to it."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Okay," he says, grinning. "Sorry." (Sympathy, and not a second's regret for the contents of his head.) "Anyway, do you want more hexes?"

The stove is right there! He could just... he catches himself before actually trying to triangle it on.

[self_composed]

"Using a triangle to save yourself the trouble of waiting four minutes would be slightly frivolous," Bella remarks. "You could make some more hexes. That's probably a good stress test of my ability to handle what your brain does."

[edgeofyourseat]

"But" (honey, sweetheart) "Bella, I like being frivolous," he says, leaning over slightly and turning a knob.

[self_composed]

Bella decides she cannot very well chide him for thinking unapproved endearments. "Well, if you like it," she says, "by all means carry on, I suppose."