at the door

[she_sells_seashells]

The Bells are assembled, except the ones missing into the unknown world.

Shell Bell opens her aura up as far as it will go. (Back in Atlantis, Neptune glows with the spillover, snuggled up to Tinia.)

She reaches for the door.

She gets Atlantis.

She tries again and gets Downside.

"It doesn't look like I can get it," she says softly. "It looks like they're stuck until -"

The door opens, again.

"Thank fucking everything," Aegis says, "hello. Aether, Celo - these are - everybody and then some."

"Tab," supplies Tab.

Meanwhile, Glass staggers in the direction of the bathroom. [THAT IS NOT A NICE WORLD.]

[We fucking KNOW,] says Aegis, [how broke is Jane?]

[Very broke,] says Juliet, [tried a tenner, didn't go.]

[I might be able to do something now you're here,] Stella says, [with aura.]

Comments

[pythbox]

He loves her so much.

He tells her so, in every conceivable way.

[subtly_artistic]

Mmmmmm psychic powers are good to have. Celo is good to have. She has him. More than once.

[pythbox]

He is so there for that right now. Mmm.

[subtly_artistic]

Good, good.

[pythbox]

And eventually, when she has had him as many times as she wants, he can summon another Joker. Corona happens to volunteer.

[subtly_artistic]

Aether goes Downside to collect torchabling (it is on her checklist) and makes a Janegem with a chain that tucks under her hair and hangs on her forehead. It'll look like a psionic enhancer, hanging over the third eye location like that. She reminds Shell Bell that she should find Etty at her earliest convenience, though Glass remarks vaguely that the amount of time it takes to get around to visiting a place doesn't affect how much time will have passed there at the time one arrives, so there's not a particular hurry. She writes a Bellbook entry and learns about the history of the template. And when she has done all of these things, she checks in on her boyfriend's aura progress, since handling it through Corona's supposed to be particularly swift.

[pythbox]

Come see, come see! he says delightedly.

Celo and Corona are snuggling; Corona has his aura turned on low, projecting warm snuggly contentment that makes the whole room a nicer place to be, and Celo...

Nymphs have a divine nature. They can express it if they choose, and glow with the gods' own light.

Celo is doing something very like that.

His aura says that he does not just have a divine nature; he is divine. There's a slight sunny glow rising from his skin, and a hint of his name in the air, the ripe-grain scent and impression of summer heat mingling pleasantly with the comfort/warmth of Corona's aura. And he loves Aether, and his aura tells her so; he literally radiates it, in a way similar but not identical to the way he used to glow divinely when he healed someone.

"My aura," says Celo, "took Mama Kh out of me and put me there instead." He takes a breath. "And I think I figured out how to get my field out of Materia."

[subtly_artistic]

"You did? How?"

[pythbox]

"Jokers do this thing - Sue does it, and Harley did it," he says, "we pick ourselves up and shift worlds. I'm gonna see if I can learn it. And if I can, my field's part of me—I can just pick it up and put it somewhere! I wanna talk to Sue and Harley about it, though, and it sounds like they're both busy. And I'm not sure where I'd put it, anyway. Maybe this world. This world's nice. Would that be okay by the locals, you think?"

[subtly_artistic]

"I can ask Glass for you. This world is definitely nice. I'm not sure how your field's magic would interact with the forest magic if you were inside this country, though, so Glass should maybe stare at you for a while first."

[pythbox]

"I'm fine with Glass staring at me," Celo says cheerfully. Corona giggles and kisses him.

[subtly_artistic]

"Should I call her in here or should we go to her?"

[pythbox]

"Either one," shrugs Celo. "Might as well go to her, I guess."

"Now that the interdimensional thing is up and running again, I'm gonna go say hi to some more Jokers," says Corona. He gives Celo another kiss, and a snuggle, and wanders off in search of the local Janepoint while he thinks about who he wants to visit first.

[subtly_artistic]

"Bye," says Aether to Corona, and she teleports herself (with Celo) back to Glass. "Hi, Glass. If Celo figures out how to transplant his garden can he put it here? Asking both on the subject of permission and magical compatibility."

[thaumobabble]

Glass sets about peering at Celo. "I'll have to consult Marianne about permission but I don't think she'd mind - there's the question of how, if at all, you want the place signposted or warded, since people here won't be familiar with nymph fields - and - There will be magical interaction between nymph stuff and the forest, but I think it will be friendly interaction, I don't expect it to do you any sort of harm."

[pythbox]

"Cool," he says. "What can you tell me about my aura?"

His aura is currently informing her that he has friendly feelings towards her. And is a god.

[thaumobabble]

"It says you're - at some point I should go starred into Alethia and look at some of the angels there for comparison, but I think it's claiming you're divine. Also friendly, at least to me. And if Aether didn't mention it, you're torchable now, do you want to be torchable? You're more - self-contained, now, than you were when I first saw you, you used to be attached to something that wasn't you and now you aren't. That perception power you have turned way down right now is more under your control now, I think, in convenient auraly fashion - aaaaand - did there used to be - things you couldn't touch without hurting them? I don't think that's a thing anymore, I think your divine energy is more about your preferences than categorizations of things as divine or not-divine or anti-divine now."

[pythbox]

"...That... makes a surprising amount of sense," says Celo, "and will come in handy if I ever need to heal a demonblood, I guess. Uh, I'll skip being torchable until I've moved my field, I think. And I might not want it even then - if it's just gonna make this body immortal, well, there's plenty of uses for a nymph corpse and I'll just pop out of my field again anyway."

[thaumobabble]

"Torching in general is more - absolute, than the respawning thing you do. I'd give torching good odds even against the nauseating anti-causality in Materia, I don't think the welcoming committee could have been permanently destroyed there no matter who they bothered - not that I'd advise trying it. Your field would be quite safe here, but if you do hope to be properly immortal that's a lot of time for small chances to add up, and Materia isn't Downsideable. It might make sense to consult the admin to see if there's a way to make your field torchable instead of your body."

[pythbox]

"Good idea," says Celo. "Potentially. What's the admin like?"

[thaumobabble]

"She's - locally omnipotent, kind of apathetic, willing to let us run her afterlife so she doesn't have to do it, quite amenable to requests."

[pythbox]

"Okay, then sure," says Celo. "As long as she doesn't randomly decide to eat me."

[thaumobabble]

"I do not know her to have ever eaten people," says Glass.

[pythbox]

"That's promising!" says Celo. "I mean, not that I've never been somebody's snack, but usually only when I'm having fun or getting paid or both."

[thaumobabble]

"I did not really need to hear that," says Glass pleasantly. "I'll ask Marianne about hosting your field, how about."

[Marianne, new Bell Aether has a Joker who is magically attached to a field. It's not normally transplantable, but he may be able to learn a template teleportation thing that would allow him to move it. Do you think it would be all right for him to put it in the forest?]