a city and a mint who sleep very little between them

[self_composed]

Bella bikes to the airport on Friday. She gets a little reading done on her flight, then sleeps-on-purpose through the remainder of the trip, waking up precisely when the plane touches down. One nice bonus that she didn't even explicitly build into the power is that she can sleep at will in virtually any position; she doesn't have to get comfy if that's not convenient.

She steps off the plane, backpack full of her things over her shoulders, and stalks into the halls of LaGuardia, eyes peeled for Libby.

Comments

[self_composed]

"No," says Bella pleasantly.

[prima_sequentem]

"Why not?"

[self_composed]

"I don't think you'd get along particularly well."

[prima_sequentem]

"See, that worries me."

[self_composed]

"I get along with my friend swimmingly. I would not be friends with anyone who I expected to blow up the world," Bella reiterates.

[prima_sequentem]

"So why don't you think I would get along with your friend?"

[self_composed]

"Let's give my friend a code name and flip a coin to pick a gender, as this is tedious," Bella suggests. "How about Whistle. Bells and whistles, yes?" She digs a dime out of her purse. "Heads, Whistle is a guy - tails - All right then. Whistle's apparently a girl for this purpose. And she does have other characteristics besides being practically unlikely to blow up the world, you understand."

[prima_sequentem]

Libby looks mildly amused.

"And what are some of those characteristics?"

[self_composed]

"Her aversion to blowing up the world is not intrinsic," Bella says. "And I have reasons you don't, to trust it to stay put anyway. And it is out of the question to duplicate those reasons for you."

[I got tired of referring to you as a genderless nameless "my friend" to Libby, so I flipped a coin in front of her to pick an uninformative gender - you're a girl for this purpose - and named you "Whistle", as in "bells and whistles",] Bella informs Alice.

[prima_sequentem]

"I see. Those reasons being, what, the closeness of your friendship? Or some personal judgment of character that you don't think I'll trust? Because you don't think I'd understand it, or because it's flimsy?"

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice, predictably, finds this hilarious and delightful.

[self_composed]

[I thought you'd like that.]

"Trade you for how you came to believe stars dangerous," Bella suggests.

[prima_sequentem]

"I trusted the person who told me so. Both to be telling to truth and to know what they were doing. Your turn."

[self_composed]

"That's not what I meant and you know it. But as a gesture of good faith: your guesses are wrong," Bella says testily.

[prima_sequentem]

"My guesses don't leave a lot of room for alternate explanations," she muses.

[self_composed]

"I'm aware. I'll tell you what you missed - or at least, the accurate thing you missed - if you answer the question I actually want answered."

[prima_sequentem]

"That question being...? Who I learned it from, so you can go harass them?"

[self_composed]

"I don't necessarily need their identity, unless that's the only reason you believe them. I want your evidence. If I told you that you oughtn't use hexes on the nights of the full moon, because doing so would have unspecified bad consequences, you would want to know why I thought that."

[prima_sequentem]

"So my first answer was complete after all. I believe them because I took their word as a trustworthy expert."

[self_composed]

"Did they use a star and lose the entire left half of their body?" Bella asks. "Do they have an informative ingot power? Did they derive it from Bible Code? Did they hear it from yet another person? Did you seriously just believe someone's unsupported statement that you should not use your most powerful coins?"

[prima_sequentem]

"If they made up the warning, they could just as easily have made up some secondhand horror stories to go with it." She smiles slightly. "On the other hand, maybe you're right and I should spend that seven I've been keeping in reserve. I think duplicating my anti-spying wards across all my friends would be a pretty good use for it, don't you?"

[self_composed]

"Wait - no - don't do that - haven't you even got a reason, did you seriously not have a reason so I can just talk you out of caution over coffee by trying to find one, I don't necessarily mean you should use it -"

[prima_sequentem]

Libby shakes her head.

"Relax. I trust my warning. In fact, it did come with horror stories, and one of them involved a mint losing the entire left half of their body. Interesting, don't you think?"

[self_composed]

Perhaps Bella would have done better to make something up from scratch. She touches the rim of her coffee cup, regretting its emptiness, considers ordering another. "Interesting," she agrees.

[prima_sequentem]

"So I'm pretty sure you have independent confirmation, because if you'd talked to this person, I'd know."