i'm just that fascinating i guess

[self_composed]

The first day Bella spends out and about with her new who's-watching-me powers, she is rather alarmed.

Maybe she's just mistaken about how much time people spend looking at reasonably pretty eighteen-year-old girls. She kills a pentagon to try it on a nearby control - who's looking at that girl over there?

Fewer people. Fewer people are looking at that random girl, and less intently. They're looking at her familiarly - they know her - or casually - they're checking her out.

[I have a spy problem,] Bella says. She makes a faintly exaggerated show of snapping her fingers in frustration and turning around. She's going back to her room to get a mirror and bobby pins and barettes, so she can spy back on the pretense of checking her hair, without making it overwhelmingly obvious that she knows what's going on.

Comments

[self_composed]

[I'm trying to figure out why they yoinked you - whoever did - and why now. It would be a little too coincidental if it had nothing to do with me, but my spy-detection didn't go off at any point, you weren't being watched when I checked, you didn't get yoinked as soon as I appeared where you were at...]

She brings Alice up to speed in a rapid-fire summary with half her overclocked brain while she slips through the magic door back to Stanford.

[nonbird]

Lazarus is briefly distracted from examining his ward.

[Your spy detection only detects nonmagical spying, right?]

[self_composed]

[Yes, but the spot check would have detected magical spying... But if they were only spot checking you I could have easily missed them. And then they wouldn't have been able to see you when I was in the room with you and they panicked and yoinked. Ack, I'm sorry.]

[nonbird]

[Mainly what I'm worried about right now is who exactly 'they' are,] says Lazarus. [I must say, the world of secret magical conspiracies is turning out to be less pleasant than I'd hoped.]

[self_composed]

[Sorry,] Bella says again. [I don't know very much about them. I'm working on inferences from very limited clues. But this so confirms that there's a "they", so I'm not crazy or anything.]

[nonbird]

[I definitely agree with you there,] he says dryly.

[self_composed]

[Any more detail on the ward? Would it, for example, interfere with me turning your shoes into seven-league boots that could let you walk out of the building, or anything?]

[nonbird]

[I'm not sure if my shoes count as 'me' enough, but if you tried, I suspect my shoes would walk out of the building without me, or something similarly unhelpful. It's very clear about the me not leaving part.]

[self_composed]

[Is it attached to the building? Could I vanish the structure and invalidate the wish, or put the walls on opposite sides of the continent each so you could go anywhere in North America...? Is the building itself protected?]

[nonbird]

[...I'm not sure,] he says thoughtfully. [Let me try a few things first.]

[self_composed]

[Try what things?]

[nonbird]

[I want to see what it looks like when I try to leave.]

[self_composed]

[That makes sense.] Bella decides to wish for protection-from-yoinking; it fails for redundancy as expected but she's glad she checked.

[nonbird]

He's quiet for a minute.

Then: [The structure of the building definitely doesn't have anything to do with it. I'm not sure what does, but when it makes me not go outside, it's not referencing the building to decide what counts as outside it.]

[self_composed]

Bella keeps Alice posted.

[The floor area?] she asks Lazarus. [Could I put you above the building or under it, would that do anything interesting?]

[nonbird]

[No,] he says. [I can tell the shape of not-outside, and it's a volume, not an area.]

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice has no good suggestions. Also, he's baking.

He finds the whole thing kind of hilarious, though.

[self_composed]

[Well, could I move it? The volume?] Bella asks Lazarus. [Make it bigger, change its shape?]

[nonbird]

[I don't know how you would do that, if you did. It's not directly an object, that I can tell; it's just part of the structure of the wish. Can you change the structure of existing wishes like that?]

[self_composed]

[I can modify existing things that I did at least - like adding you to the brainphone network.]

[nonbird]

[Well... try it, I guess,] he says. [I don't have any special intuition about whether or not it will work. General pessimism suggests a no, but my pessimism isn't magical.]

[self_composed]

Bella tries to make the box bigger - by a continent, by a mile, by an inch, with a pentagon, with a hex.

[No good.]

[nonbird]

[Damn,] says Lazarus.

[self_composed]

[Rather. Found any people yet?]

[nonbird]

[No. No people, no coins, no anything except mysterious boring unmagical debris.]