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]

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.

[self_composed]

"Yup!" says Bella. "It was on my list."

[edgeofyourseat]

He loves her.

[self_composed]

Bella hums and assigns him to chop up carrots and celery. She whisks flour into butter on the stove, for the gravy.

A fair amount of work later, the pot pie is in the oven, and Bella has spontaneously decided to make tea.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice observes the tea!

His mind wanders a little while it is in progress. He wants to hex himself invisibility powers, but doesn't feel any particular urgency about it, so resolves to wait until it comes up or until the next time he makes a bunch of hexes. He really likes the way Bella's butt looks in those pants.

The thought of more hexes links to the thought of Bella being attractive; he considers the notion of her hurting him. She probably won't want to do it the messy way. Directly wishing pain on yourself doesn't make you anything but hurt, and he has no idea whether that holds true for wishing it on other people; you can wish up something to hurt yourself with, though, so why not a superpower? That would be hot. And really, really convenient. No more burning himself on her stove; he can do it on his when he's in the mood.

How 'bout it? he wonders, not bothering to mindphone her because he can feel her listening.

[self_composed]

She decides the tea's done steeping. A triangle chills it; she pours it into glasses and stirs in sugar and squeezes in lemon. [As a practical tool, that one's worth testing on a smaller scale first - and as a superpower, that one definitely has corrupting potential, although interestingly less than a general mindreading power because hurting people appeals to me less than learning things. And as an interpersonal interaction, we are still just friends, however convenient and periodically adorable you may be.]

[edgeofyourseat]

He is happily listening and considering her words right up until she gets to the 'just friends' bit, at which point he becomes confused and kind of worried.

It goes something like this: just friends? As opposed to what? What's the difference? Wait, are just-friends not supposed to do stuff together that one of them might get off on? Because that sounds completely terrible and is almost functionally equivalent to never doing anything fun at all.

[self_composed]

[...What working definition of "just friends" were you using?] Bella inquires.

[edgeofyourseat]

He wasn't! Until now it has genuinely never crossed his mind to define their relationship according to rules other than direct observation of what Bella does and doesn't seem to think is okay!