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Post by demikara on Oct 4, 2018 7:26:43 GMT -6
"I can make them so the kiddos can't take them off." She held Quinn close trying to keep him warm. "The reserve is pretty safe. We can get you a place to live, though finding one tailored to you may be a bit more difficult. There's also plenty of babysitters of people who can't leave the preserve for whatever reason, so you shouldn't struggle too hard to find a keeper for your whelps, though I'm sure Rahal would be able to help there." She didn't quite know what the other was looking for. In the meantime, she considered things. "Let's head back to my clearing and I can get started."
She could anchor the illusion to some sort of stone. Tourmaline for grounding, or moonstone for stability? Which to choose. Maybe a necklace with both? Three would be better, obviously. Maybe a third stone? Obsidian or hematite. Obsidian would be a mirror style stone she could use to distort the image of the kids, but hematite was another grounding stone. Two grounding stone and one for stability, maybe with stability in the middle? That could work well. Molly led the way back to her clearing, thinking it over. She had some in her supplies. She was pretty sure she had enough for each, and a bit of magic could make them...maybe feather shaped? All three colors could represent protection in that feather color.
That would work. Now she just had to uncover the supplies she had and change the stones to feather shaped. Maybe just raw magic? It was just shape changing, not property changing, and transfiguration for shape was basically the easiest transfiguration out there.
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 4, 2018 11:18:02 GMT -6
Flynn stands and looks into the water torquing slightly to see Thebus, "Our flight feathers are complex they will not come in until they are older. We don't wear the human jewelry reachers make real from our dreaming it will just fall off. Babysitting is a strange word we do baby floating while the egg hosts grow."
After rooting through wet hairs Flynn gripped Thebus by the armpits with two knuckles convincing him to clamber through feathers to her breastbone, "They have to be fed until someone incarnates a whelp. secondborn yellows can be a handful for nonwilled. I do not know what Thebus develops but mine was as a bloodwrit was a watersplit transfiguration. Drunken whelp turning sweetwater to fireballs!"
Toe-claw clacking along with Molly the saurid walked along with Thebus clamped and dripping on the ground now given Flynn's normal posture. Thick arms inflated and split dense feather layer revealing heavy moving strands in a helical wrap around her arm. Feathers squirted out through small pores like a coral. Then retracted inside as Flynn finished stretching them.
Flynn shrugged her cross-anchored pack into place, "I don't have much to pay with for things but service. I do not think you will take our ganblood coins here I only have one in my field pack."
Shiny black pearls of eyes flipped in the third eyelid as the eyeshine and iris reappeared. Claws carefully flip through her journal entering a section densely packed of numbers and sigils. Most sigils written in the dialect of wood fae, sylvan, though others in draconic for the arithmancy. Their own language a cursive logographic composed notes as well not one clearly with no strictures for straight lines of sentences.
She held out the journal page, "If you can writ this enlargement spell on me I can fly you for an hour or two."
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Post by demikara on Oct 4, 2018 15:37:47 GMT -6
That sounded like the coolest thing she had ever heard. Molly bit her bottom lip and looked to the spell, longing very clear. It would be the coolest thing she had ever done, and it would be as fun as hell. The temptation was real.
It would also get her in more trouble than she could think of.
Better not.
Gently, she pushed the journal back to the other. "I wish I could, but the Warden would be incredibly angry with me, and with her coming off of a call like she had, I'd not like to chance it." Still, she didn't much want to let the other go without making certain the family would be okay in the new world. Plus, she had basically been told to get them settled, whether it was at their home or this plane. "If we can figure out some way for the glamour stones to stay on them, it would be best. I understand it would be difficult, but if they ever are to leave the reserve, they have to look human. It's a law." You had to appear human if you wanted to live off the reserve, whether you used a glamour or didn't. It was a terrible truth, but it was one they were used to, and even with the humans more in the know, as far as Molly knew they had yet to find the reserve or put two and two together that the unseen contained more beings that looked inhuman that it did those that could pass.
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 4, 2018 18:09:55 GMT -6
Flynn rumbled a fluted growl deep in her throat, "RrrrRrRrt Your Warden needs to learn the value of flying watersplit rounds! Just don't wait too long or I'll be wobbled!"
The blue feathers of her tail fan exposed fluffed twice, "I can give you of my pin feathers if you wish to send messages. If you can blood cast. I do not have a silver bowl for the inkwell though."
The saurid predator eyes looked at a hot red bird she'd seen in the trees which with a loud chirp of alarm promptly fled from hiding, "Your other fliers are too small for me to husk. We knew humans dislike other than themselves but is it that bad? I can husk someone shaped well from the reservation. It is a pity the willed need so much effort to bond their shape! I could make a reacher's shrine to husk Rahal when I need to leave. Healthier than the other I husked."
Tic-Tacs of toe-claws follow from behind her Flynn's tail swishing back and forth as she walked, "Do you have any others like my kind?"
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Post by demikara on Oct 5, 2018 7:27:25 GMT -6
"Blood magic is...strongly discouraged here. I don't think I'd get in trouble, since you're willing, but I'm not sure. It's not illegal though. Just discouraged." Necromancy was illegal, but most other magics weren't. "And I guess...dragons? Maybe? There's not to many of those left, but they'd be closest. We had dinosaurs, that looked a lot like you, a long time ago, before there were humans. But all we have of them now is bones." Still, the other had asked a question.
"Humans don't even like humans who look different then themselves." Molly shrugged. "It's why I choose to look like this. Pale skin and blond hair will get me much farther than how I actually look." And she could fake it, and fake it well. It wasn't right, maybe, but it was what it was. There wasn't a lot the sergeant could do about it, other than continue to hide, for her own safety. She saw what happened to people with darker skin. Even being a cop wasn't really enough to keep you safe.
"I don't know if Rahal would let you husk him. He's...well, he may consider it okay, but there'd be lots of rules. He's kind of important in the community so it wouldn't really be a low profile glamour at all." It would be noticed very rapidly and questions would be asked.
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 7, 2018 11:02:50 GMT -6
Flynn grabbed a bit of a flowery plant along their path, "All our reagents have to be smuggled out since just after I hatched. A long time ago. Clutch Mother dominates the gardens of the first city. You are lucky you have the option! I can get some from the dreaming but it takes more from me to make them real than they get from casting. It took horticulturalist reachers decades to get viable seeds out of the dreaming."
She discarded the flower to one side of the path, "RrRffIf Rahal is a colony warden then husking him is more trouble than it's worth! There are many humans then? I can't husk a dead thing and Dragons are too large to husk. There are many that dislike the reachers too I am used to it but better than it used to be when my quadruplets were young."
Life was different for a reacher as their dreaming had long since had its sense of time eaten by Grandfather Teeth. Some reachers fell apart when they returned having run out of rations and eaten things they could not make real. Others vomited out their lungs breathing not-air. Their town-lives always lived in slow motion and their dreaming lives in fast forward. Months spent in the dreaming for just an afternoon or the inverse. Flynn didn't know how long she'd lived by human time but she should likely be venerable not endlessly stuck at maturity. No pale feather respect for her and Didi was still too young. Reachers good and strong enough could survive the dreaming but veterans often found themselves implicitly accepted by Grandfather Teeth as made enough of his own ectoplasm. Though they still died by misadventure Grandfather Teeth ran their path backward. Flynn was lucky only that it did not make her sterile or unable to heal by sear for doing do. An ominous cloud in itself shadowing her that it had something to do with the Yellow's tampering.
"Do you have twitch that study the Dinosaur bones?", she asked, "Perhaps I could trade blood to them for income? Or errand for Rahal if he is watching my whelps."
Flynn huffed and stared into the distance her crest slacking, "I'm a reacher; work is life. It's how I outlived my Didi. She is almost the age when I met her on her last life. I was healing at her feasthall then and I am unchanged. I hope she will reincarnate again after she is old. I will find her and raise her again until she can wield the words of her self."
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Post by demikara on Oct 7, 2018 11:22:58 GMT -6
"Colony warden fits. He's in charge largely of the kids part, but he helps us, the cops, out too." She shrugged and smiled. "There's like, billions of humans. Seven billion I think?Something like that." She shrugged. "Of that about seven percent are unseen. And of that, only about 100 have power like Rahal does." She shrugged. "Catherine, the warden, is one of them. It's why I don't bother her all that much, if I can, and partly why I listen to her." She smiled and took a seat in their clearing, now that they were back and pulled a small bag from her pocket, before she reached int and pulled out six stones that should not have been in the empty bag. "Are you sure I can't get your whelps some jewelry? We can make it an anklet that they can't get off, or a necklace they can't remove. It lets you put them in day care or something, if you're going to stay. There's people who make legal documents for members of the unseen who need them for whatever reason."
Trading blood though. That.. "The trade in blood may not be a good idea. We're Unseen after all and that could get you pin serious trouble, even if we are, well. Even if humans now know of some of us." Though not all of them by far. "Errands for Rahal may be better though. If you plan on staying we can get some kind of position for you, though you may need, um, classes on the culture first." The other used a lot of terms no one else would be able to follow. ESL classes would help, even if the other spoke english well. Her idioms were just terribly off. "I know you can get some of those for free." Molly grinned. "And you can probably find a human, a mundane one, in decent health you can husk."
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 7, 2018 12:05:41 GMT -6
Flynn nodded laying on her side in the dust tail idly thumping clouds in the dirt. She sniffed at a patch of grass as a set of eyes paid rapt attention. Thebus leapt from his position among her feathers and started sniffing the grass too. Clutch mother was interested in it but it didn't seem like food. He was still on the back though and in instinct of setting foot on dry land started wildly thrashing back and forth spraying wetness everywhere.
A closed eye and a open palm tried to shield Flynn from the spray as the fluff slowly turned lime in the sunlight, "D♭GB♭! Agh I forget the whelps do that. 100 strong of billions? I can't think of how large your world must be. Rahal is like my clutch mother Yellow. Then yes if there are so many it is best they have an anklet. They will spin off loose jewelry the first time they get."
The lime fluff dried quickly in the sun a blooming lime flower in rising strands wicking droplets out of the ends. Thebus edged forward starting an enthusiastic chew on the grass.
Flynn shooed him off her brow raised spread black teeth and chittered, "ReReRe Don't eat that. It's not prey but think I will have to worry that you will see human babies as food. Fine, no blood trading. I will keep my coin hidden too then."
The blue veined eyes looked in the distance looking for some looming human monster, "Well I will treat this place as if it had Children of Man instead of Grandfather Teeth. I will need a twitch to teach me if I am to pass myself off as you among them. I am not familiar with needing papers to travel we do not produce anything but the coins."
The saurid looked at Molly with small darts of head movements to look at her more discerningly, "Our records of you have riding animals and wearing metal or hides. We are more obsolete than I thought. I can write and read some human languages but I can't speak english well without a spell tongue. With what I hear my speech without tongues will sound archaic. Most lesser shades we see of humans are too broken to speak clearly anyway."
She gripped her throat with two fingers quelling tongues against, densely singsong accent notwithstanding, ably pronounced latin, "Manus manum lavat. Omnium rerum principia parva sunt."
Flynn grabbed Thebus' tail without looking at him arresting a scrabble to chase a butterfly nearby, "A good husk is a knowing willing one! That Bill would have had a bad influence on me if I stayed in his husk too long."
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Post by demikara on Oct 7, 2018 13:56:27 GMT -6
Molly nodded and pulled leather cords out of her bag as well and set to work, thinking through the steps she would need to handle this. "That's latin. No one speaks that anymore, not outside of like, church at least." Molly shrugged and smiled. "I can almost read it, but not well." It had been a elective after all, and a while back. She arranged the stones, then rearranged them, then arranged them how they were before and pressed them in her hands, closing her eyes and focusing hard on how she wanted them to be shaped.
It was not how transfiguration was traditionally done. But Molly didn't use magic in a traditional manner. She focus a bit longer and then set them down, six small feathers. "Okay that's the shape..." And now she was hungry again. Annoyed, she fell back and grumbled to herself, then spoke to Flynn. "You can probably find a willing husk. And Children of Man is right. That's what humans are after all. But there's classes and stuff, for people who have english as a second language. And there's probably something culturally for non-humans to pass among humans? I'm not sure. You can ask Rahal. He knows basically everything." As far as Molly was concerned.
As for a husk, well. Someone wouldn't mind, it was a matter of finding who. Preferably someone healthy at least, and not super important, or maybe someone from another community who wouldn't mind pretending to have a twin. "Ugh, magic is hungriness. How does anyone do intense workings?" Magic she wasn't as familiar with took so much more energy than the stuff she knew well. She sat up and pressed the stones to the leather string and the string held them tightly, as if the stone were part of it.
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 7, 2018 14:32:28 GMT -6
The saurid watched her work occasionally picking up her notebook to make her minute writing on a free page. Thebus snuggled in to Flynn's chest making a lime pompom of himself and she curled her tail around between her legs to cover him with a spread tail-fan. A soft breezy sleeping soon came and Flynn snuffled at him once shortly after. Quinn was doing the same on molly's chest but clung tightly even fully passed out. Body holding itself rigidly to whatever it was gripping to as not to fall or be wedged off.
Flynn shrugged from her position on the ground, "The twitch use an ichor well if you have things for it to rot but I don't have a silver cord to transduce for you from the stone even if we had time to build one. Assuming my notes are enough to line one and ignite the bloodwork anyway. Blacken rot replaces with any strong digester horticulturalists say a blood artifice of nature is not choosy."
One hand tugged at an imaginary cord on her collarbone, "The Far and Deep use brigades focused and tethered to a circle of bloodwrit since the blacken rot is too strong there from their defensive line. More wasteful than ichor wells but purer and higher circle. The moots cannot store their consumption but eat a lot of fresh food. Not all might be used."
A gentle touch against the sleeping whelp sent trills from fluff as Flynn's crest raised, "I will learn whatever I need of your casting and world to so Didi can see her new Whelps. Rahal sounds like a useful keeper he could know somewhere I can make use of myself until I can pass the humans. It will come in time but the most open Far and Deep are more suspicious of humans than a Reacher can ever be. Unless Yuri proclaims an alliance."
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Post by demikara on Oct 7, 2018 14:43:02 GMT -6
"I have no clue of almost everything you just said." Molly admitted. She sighed and eyes the anklets she had made already then began to rapidly move her hands, twitching her hands rapidly as she wove the glamour for the two kids, careful to keep them normal and toddler seeming. Two healthy young boys, about two years old, she focused on the glamour, focused on making it carefully. It took her several minutes, during which she worked around the fluffy pompom on her chest. It was easily done, given she didn't have to support him and he seemed to cling tightly well enough.
Several minutes later, she was finished and she eyed them carefully, then worked harder for a few minutes and then smiles, satisfied. "There's a safety ward too. They'll be nice and safe and no one will be able to hurt them." She assured the other and held out one of the anklets to Flynn for her to put on Thebus. She looked down to Quinn and looked amused. "I may need help getting this one off so I can put the anklet on him. But only you'll be able to take them off. I locked them to blood, and since you're the mom, that's only you."
She grinned, thinking over what the mother had said. "Rahal's pretty useful yeah. He can probably find you a job of some sort until you can pass, and we can work together to make it so the whelps can make it home with you."
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 7, 2018 15:08:02 GMT -6
Flynn made a lateralized singsong alarm the human larynx would find physically distressing to pronounce. Quinn's eyes shot open his hindbrain hearing his mother and sniffed at molly though in unblinking stillness before the brain hup to. Rapidly blinking Quinn looked for Flynn then with a strong pulse from his tiny feet leapt at his mother. It was a call to return one would normally use for the few predators that still plagued them and wired hard into the whelp psyche. Pranks similarly involved it with magic point sound sources, a keeper, and a creche full of hundreds of whelps. Flynn held her hand out in the air and caught Quinn with a free hand whom then tensed tightly to attach himself to her knucled down hand. Other hand freed from underneath detached the whelp's leg from her wrist. A small blue drop spatters against earth from a small pinprick gained by her whelp's rapid arrival.
Flynn extended a clawed finger, "Their instincts are still strong now. The leg is pliable until I put him on the ground."
While Molly worked the toddler that was Thebus slept peaceably in his overalls not having awoke at all during the adding of the anklet. Small boots and a pale lime shirt set against smooth pink skin. Calmly breathing in and out head buried into Flynn's feathery chest.
Flynn's slit-eyes dilated as she poked Thebus, "It's so fluffy! Human babies are a little misshapen but I they are so cute! They squish like a comfy sleeping pillow the skin is so warm. It is good that they are safe as long as I can keep the world safe from them. Hungry predators until they find words."
Cantering her head a moment Flynn reconsidered how to explain in practical terms for nonreachers, "Ah, and ichor wells make organic refuse rot quickly and store the energy. Eventually it fills with ash and must be quelled. We use blood but never bodies to keep the ichor lit or voidbrood pop out. Like a furnace and a air blower bloodwrit extract magic from it so the ichor does not boil over and contaminate. Willed take it from us or shape their powers on to us for use. Far and deep power making tools by linking each other to the artificer. They eat for him."
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Post by demikara on Oct 7, 2018 15:35:46 GMT -6
Molly stuck the anklet on his leg and smiled. "There we go. And yeah, human babies are cute as it gets. You should probably stick them in an unseen daycare facility if you think they'll get bite-y with the other kids. They have staff trained for the predator kids." She said and shrugged. The kids set up a hierarchy fairly quickly, and in the end minimal blood was shed. That was as good as it got, really. Molly listened to the explanation on ichor and nodded.
"I don't think we have that or if we do then it isn't known to me. I don't know everything after all." Molly didn't consider herself well educated in the unseen at all, never mind she had somehow been made a specialist. As far as she knew that was because she was a hell of a ward breaker. Not infallible but definitely one of the best. She was also willing to commit to working only on the legal side of things and not also on the illegal side of things like most ward breakers. If you couldn't catch them in the act, they were a hell to persecute and that was simply it.
"Rahal is probably a good source for answer on these two at least." She said, more amused than not. Molly may get the child cases, but she didn't actually do a lot of the child care. The woman grinned. "We need to find a willing person for you to husk though, don't we? That way the three of you can stay together and we can get your registered as a legal family. It will keep your kids from being taken from you, probably." So long as she didn't mistreat them which was easily done.
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 7, 2018 16:31:42 GMT -6
Flynn stood back up and Thebus perked up immediately at the movement whereupon the toddler body wobbled, windmilled, then fell down on his bum. A second time standing up made an able run straight into Flynn's feathered leg. He hung on to her feathers as the pudgy face flickered between caucasian and african for a moment. His inner fire synchronous with the nature of the spell contorts it until stabilized back on dusky haired caucasian. Thebus kept staring at his own hand then promptly stuffed it into his mouth.
"EEEn!", came the cry then he looked at mom and extended up the hand with a U of small red marks whining at her, "Aaaaa! AAaa, Aa!"
Flynn looked at Thebus and stuck her tongue at him, "Serves you right. Those hands are not food! Don't eat any that aren't yours either! Quinn, come on, get down."
Hands hung at her side a huge toddler clung to them upside down with a death grip. Quinn had a pair of jeans on and set of velcro shoes. His curly black hair and freckled face had a worried expression but stayed where he was. Flynn scruffed him by his tiny sweater and plunked Quinn down on the ground. He moved one foot, then the other, a loping pace quickly revealed to be stepping on rocks as he went over to Thebus. Then Quinn looked at his hand and wiggled his fingers. Thebus quickly grabbed Quinn's hands and pushed his forehead back as Quinn started chomping teeth at his fingers. Quinn offered his hand to Thebus who shook his head to refuse gingerly guiding it down to Quinn's waist.
"They aren't so good at seeing themselves in mirrors either yet. Maybe they will be okay with humans if they have to remember not to bite their own hands", Flynn lamented to Molly.
Flynn stumped her feet to gain the whelps' attention and they looked up with green eyes full of attentive concern, "You break standing spells? I am fire support sometimes when I am not a reacher. Far and deep pay well for fireballs from above and I get all the sweetwater I can drink, ha! I do need someone to husk and maybe make anchors for the shrine. Then I will not need them present to husk again just visit sometimes. Where is Rahal's home in your massive world? He sounds like he is full of answers and ideas. Our children are happy on the move they can travel with me until I find a home to leave them in so I can work."
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Post by demikara on Oct 7, 2018 17:02:48 GMT -6
"Standing spells is a good way of calling them. Here we call them wards. And yeah, I do a decent job of it too. I have to, for my work." she grinned, amused. "I got good enough at it that the warden has wards specifically against me on her office. She got a bit annoyed." Okay, so according to the wards, more than a bit annoyed, but it was better to under sell that bit. No one really needed to know how much of a nuisance Molly could be.
Molly checked the kids over and nodded. They looked fine and the glamours were complete and thankfully physical. "Rahal does fire support here, if by that you mean fighting. It's what he's trained in, but we don't have a lot of it. I think that's why he works with the kids." Molly didn't know. "And he's outside of Dallas, I think, but doesn't like surprise visitors. I can probably take you in to the edge of his ranch though. It's got a bunch of shrines that are super well tended, so we should probably be able to find it." If not, well, she could still get them closer to Dallas.
Molly smiled and tousled the whelps hair. "And they'll learn not to bite themselves. Probably. And probably not to bite others even." That one was less certain, but they seemed like bright kids, so they would more than likely be fine. "Definitely going to want the unseen daycare though, since you mentioned they're strict carnivores. Mundane ones are picky about what they feed kids. They want it to be balanced between food groups."
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