You know honestly I can't say I expected this

[poll_the_stars]

Inavet hisses a creative curseword, and slams the door shut, and reaches for her magic. The door to the building she's hiding in becomes to all appearances an ordinary wall. It'll take her pursuers time to find it - none of their arcanists are any good at crystal craft, from what she can tell. It won't buy her enough time, but it'll buy her some, and every second counts.

She starts trying to patch herself up while she looks for an escape route they're not covering. Blood craft's not her best, but she's gotten a lot of practice at it, lately. Enough to stop herself from bleeding out from the wound in her side (because of course it's deep) and keep herself from collapsing from exhaustion. Too slow - one of these days it'll kill her.

But not yet, she thinks, as she spots a window to an alley. Out go her magic senses - no one's alive and breathing in that alley but a cat rummaging through the garbage.

She dumps an illusion over the alley, to appear exactly as it was before she entered it. She can't get the cat right in a rush, but she doesn't need this to hold out for very long. Just long enough to get away. Song disguises the sound of the window opening and her scrambling out of it. She's conscientious enough to close it behind her. Easier than another illusion. Maybe they won't notice the blood.

Which way? Mm. One that way, two to her left, three are - oh look they found the door, she needs to hurry. She takes a right, and runs.

And comes face to face with - a snake? With a mirror for a head? What, how in the -

It's very fast. She was not expecting it. She didn't even sense it, like it appeared from nowhere, she raises her knife but she's not fast enough -

And then there is darkness.

Darkness and pain.

She'd scream, but the air's sucked out of her lungs in a whoosh. She snaps her mouth shut and flails, lashing out with something, anything - but she feels nothing around her. Nothing at all. Not even air. It's like a pressure, on all of her, but instead of pressing in it's pulling out -

Is this how she's going to die? Some Ministry snake monster thing?

Not. Likely.

She isn't the best at blood craft, but she knows enough to keep herself alive. She knows enough to snap her eyes shut and cover her nose and mouth and push magic at herself so her body doesn't shut down. It's hard - there's so much to monitor, she has no air... But she can keep herself alive. If she doesn't move and she focuses near entirely on self preservation. For - for a little while, anyway. Not forever.

Time crunch, then. Well. She was always good at those.

Her lesser crafts won't do her any good here. No way to make sound with song, no air to ignite in fire with heat, no time for aura anything, nothing to move and change with breath. Forget stone and metal, even when she's not in a crisis she's awful with both, not to mention there's nothing around for either.

But she is good at crystal, and crystal deals in light.

If she's not the brightest fucking beacon the world has ever seen, it won't be for lack of trying.

Maybe someone will find her. Or maybe she'll blind the bastards who put her here. Either way, it won't hurt to try.

Comments

[warpfairy]

Much of it works how you've seen; I'll set aside some. She does this. Please don't fiddle with the console over there. Here's your language PADD. Rectangles: apparently PADDs. I'll be up in about eight hours on my own but you can barge in and wake me if you need to.

[poll_the_stars]

Sure. Thank you. I shouldn't need to, and I will not fiddle with the console over there.

[warpfairy]

Good night, then.

Isabella disappears into her bedroom.

[poll_the_stars]

Inavet studies language.

She hits a brick wall and gets a little sick of it. She goes and gets food.



And ten minutes later she finds herself sobbing into her pasta.

Well. That's. That's a thing. That's a thing that she's doing and can't seem to stop. How does she feel about this?

... Lots of emotions. Vague despair, worry, guilt, self-recrimination (She could have been faster and not been eaten) the weight of the sheer amount of being out of her depth, having nothing useful to do, nothing but learning a stupid boring foreign language so she can even begin to tackle the overwhelmingly large galaxy of strangers with strange cultures and strange spaceships and strange telepathy and strange fucking ears. Fuck.

She lets herself cry. Isabella's asleep, she's pretty quiet about it, she doesn't want to stifle her emotions (and, in fact, doesn't know if she even can) and she cries. She thinks about how she will cope and what she will do and why she is very fucking justified in crying.



Hours and hours later, she washes her face (puffy and red) in the bathroom, and goes back to learning languages. She needs it in order to do anything else, boring or no.

Eight hours after Isabella went to bed, this'll be how she'll find her, dutifully learning English.

(There might be more tears later, but she thinks she got the main emotional cocktail out of the way and dealt with.)

[warpfairy]

Isabella gets up, and hazards a question in English: "Do you need anything?"

[poll_the_stars]

"Clothes, please," she says, in accented but intelligible English, looking up from the PADD. "Mine are - ... Blood covered." She lacks 'blood-stained' in her vocabulary, but blood and covered are both present.

[warpfairy]

"Of course." Isabella eyeballs her size and goes back into her room and comes out with a set that should only be a little short on her. Trousers, long embroidered shirt with elbow-length sleeves, long socks.

[poll_the_stars]

"Thank you," she says, smiling a little. "I'll - give back."

[warpfairy]

"We'll dock in a few days and you can get something that fits you."

[poll_the_stars]

She understood the general idea of that sentence. She nods. "Thank you," she repeats.

[warpfairy]

"You're welcome."

That taken care of, Isabella isn't especially chatty on her own; she sits in her chair.

[poll_the_stars]

That's all right.

... More language practice is the opposite of appealing right now. Ugh. She's been at it for hours.

Well. She's got other things she can practice.

"May I - magic practice?" she asks. "Safe. Just - bored."

[warpfairy]

"If you're sure it's safe."

[poll_the_stars]

"It is," she assures. "No... Fire or metal. No harm. Just lights."

[warpfairy]

"Okay. Lights."

[poll_the_stars]

She smiles a little, and then goes riffling through her somewhat meager items. She's got a few crystals on her, along with some seeds of her more difficult plants and her ever-present knife.

Crystals. She said just light, so - just light.

She gets up, puts a crystal on the other side of the ship, and walks away from it. Then she sits down (facing away from it; she's also honing her magic senses while she's at it) and begins fiddling with its fellow. She wasn't able to make an illusion of the cat under pressure. That's a weakness she'd like to work on. Crystals make this sort of thing easier, but they're not really required. But for helping her hone her reflexes, they're good. They make it easier.

Fiddle fiddle.

And then a slightly smudgy cat leaps out of the crytal on the other side of the ship, swishes its tail, and licks a paw.

[warpfairy]

Isabella's watching.

[poll_the_stars]

Inavet isn't. She has closed her eyes and is holding a crystal and is focusing.

The cat gets less smudged. It scratches at an itch that assumingly doesn't exist, and starts investigating the room. Occasionally it gets a little bit more smudgy, but it steadily becomes clearer and clearer. Even the shadows are correct.

For fun, Inavet adds a jingle ball, as if it dropped out of the ceiling, and takes the opportunity to practice song craft at the same time. It jingles convincingly when it hits the floor. The illusion-cat notices. The jingle ball moves as if by a wind (there isn't a breeze) and jingles a little bit more. The illusion-cat stalks its prey. Stalk stalk. (The ball doesn't move.) Stalk stalk. Butt wiggle. Will the illusion-cat pounce?

What kind of question is that, of course it will. Like so.

The bell jingles convincingly then, too. The cat even thumps as it lands on its unsuspecting jangly prey.

[warpfairy]

"Can I touch it?" murmurs Isabella.

[poll_the_stars]

"Illusion," she says. (The cat smudges some more, talking takes concentration.) "Not there. Sorry."

[warpfairy]

"Can I try?"

[poll_the_stars]

"The magic?" she asks, blinking. "Need to do - ... thing, procedure, to magic, first."

[warpfairy]

"I meant try to touch the cat, but I'd like to try the magic too."

[poll_the_stars]

"Sure, to cat," she says, and the cat ambles over to Isabella and meows at her. Convincingly. Though it's still smudgy. "Magic is..." Handwave. "... More difficult," she decides. "Later, maybe. Here not good for procedure."

[warpfairy]

Isabella tries (and of course fails) to touch the cat. "What's the procedure like?" she asks, watching her hand pass through the illusion.