in between moments

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell has not found Milliways by herself since the occasion on which she first met Sherlock.

Today, after eight months, she does.

She makes sure that Sherlock and Tony are both awake, finds that they are but do not want to join her in the bar today unless she finds something interesting, checks her coin supply and finds it sufficient, and steps through.

Comments

[she_sells_seashells]

"My Sherlock does a sort of gray pearly color, and none of the Tonies are mints so I don't know about them."

[pythbox]

"Why not?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"It's not a good idea to make people mints just because. One of the things coins can't do is unmint a person. I trust my Tony just fine, but he doesn't tend to go for jaunts in other worlds like I've been doing lately, he can just ask me or Sherlock for whatever he wants, and also he wouldn't be a particularly effective mint - I have the power so I can make my own triangles and squares new wherever I am, but all my big coins are from Sherlock and the other Bells who are mints get theirs from minted Whistles, because -" Pause. "Are you, like, squeamish?"

[pythbox]

"...Not especially?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"The coins are made of pain," says Juliet. "More of it gets a pointier coin and a bigger wish. Whistles love it like candy; Sherlock liked it enough that it didn't take a lot of magic to get her to hexagon- and star-making on the regular. Most Bells - though not me or Angela, we come from totally nonmagical worlds - have a sort of inborn mental opacity power that won't let anything alter our brains, and even me and Angela don't like the idea, so even we take help where we can get it."

[pythbox]

"...Wow," says Tony.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Kinda fucked-up magic, but so useful," says Bell.

[pythbox]

"Yeah," he says, "I'm starting to get that."

[she_sells_seashells]

"One time I met an alt of me - that was Juliet - and I had just run into Angela, and I gave Angela all my big coins including the hexes, which are how one makes more mints, and including the pentagons, which would've been enough to wake up Sherlock and call her over without losing the door. I shouldn't have done that, Angela has a Whistle, she only needed two hexes to start, not anything else... And Juliet of course did not insist on breaking my arm for the sake of getting magic even though the magic in that cluster of worlds is nasty, addictive, dangerous stuff that she's been advised not to try. So I just visited her for a while and made her a big heap of squares and helped the one Tony install the copied Jarvis and then I went home."

[sailorheavymetal]

[Okay,] says Darcy, [holding this door is getting kinda old.]

[she_sells_seashells]

"Darcy's bored," says Shell Bell.

[Up in a sec.]

"Questions, comments, last-minute anythings?"

[pythbox]

"...Good luck raising the dead?" he says.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Thanks! Bye!"

She teleports up to Darcy. "So - did you pick out a dead person for me to try reviving first?"

[sailorheavymetal]

"...No," Darcy admits. "I don't even know all the names."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Who would be a good person to ask about that? Sif? Heimdall?" These being the only other locals she knows.

[sailorheavymetal]

"Definitely Heimdall," says Darcy.

[she_sells_seashells]

[Hey Heimdall. I may be able to raise the dead; I haven't tried it before because I didn't know anyone recently dead who'd be able to wake up to their pretty much normal life if it worked. D'you have an idea for a good experimental subject?]

[pythbox]

[Yes,] says Heimdall. [Ari Guthrunarson.]

[she_sells_seashells]

[In case this is a just-barely thing, is Ari's body available, so I can try from a short range, or would something bad happen if I attempted to visit it?]

[pythbox]

[Something bad could happen if you were seen to visit it,] says Heimdall.

[she_sells_seashells]

[Will being invisible do the trick?]

[pythbox]

[Yes.]

[she_sells_seashells]

"I'm going to go try Heimdall's idea," Bell tells Darcy. "I'll know if it works or not real quick." And she turns invisible and teleports to the relevant location.

[pythbox]

Dead Asgardian on a slab. Currently unaccompanied.

[she_sells_seashells]

Star?

No dice.

She tries a few wish designs - naive "make him alive", then "restore him to his condition as of just before he died" intending to patch any other injuries with lesser coins, then "reconstruct the mind that used to live here, put it in a new, living body" -

No dice.

[It doesn't work,] she tells both Heimdall and Darcy apologetically. [I'm sorry.]