Leesha is bored and / has the day off, so you get / multi-pup haiku!

[mendanddefend_archive]

Humanoid gerbil
Reading Blake and drinking chai:
A moment of bliss.

* * *

Osaka is out
By the lake shore, skipping stones.
(She's not very good.)

* * *

Tourism brochures
Surround the Guardian as he
Munches on his chips.

* * *

Grumpy oracle
Frowning at his crystal ball--
Something's not right here.

Comments

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"Interesting. In my own world, it would more likely be the latter, but around here, one can never tell."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"I know. I need to start researching other people's worlds so that I can actually make sense of what I scry here..." He finally looks up at Morwen. "Hi."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"Hello. I don't do much scrying myself - in most cases it's somewhat tiring, so I save it for emergencies. A friend of mine tried enchanting some windows to make the work easier, but I remember those having a tendency to explode when the spell got overtaxed."
Oh, Telemain and his wacky wacky experiments.

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"Sounds like one of my girlfriend's coworkers," says Dominic with a smirk. "He specializes in metaphysical magic and likes to add Chaos to everything just to see what'll happen..."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"Telemain just wants to know how everything works. I've had to forcibly remind him to eat and sleep before." There's a bit of fond exasperation in her tone.
"I'm sorry, I ought to have introduced myself. Morwen, of the Enchanted Forest."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"Dominic Deegan of Callan." He extends a hand to shake. "Pleased to meet you."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

Morwen returns the handshake. "You as well. What were you looking for, if you don't mind my asking?"

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"A friend of mine was... well, I suppose 'abducted' would be the best word, from the grounds behind the Bar last week. I'm trying to find out who did it, and how."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"...I'm not here very often, but patrons disappearing at random certainly doesn't sound normal. Has the person been recovered?"
Were she at home, she'd suspect wizards were behind it, particularly if the person in question were still missing. Here, though, such vocabulary-based assumptions do little good, so she avoids them.

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"Yes, but not after he'd been trapped on another world for fifty years, according to his personal timeline."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"Fifty... oh, dear. Given that, he's probably lucky he made it back alive."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"And that's the other weird thing," says Dominic. "He didn't age a day in all that time."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

Morwen has to consider that one for a bit before even trying to answer.
"While I can think of a few spells to that effect, most of them are so nasty that only wizards would bother to try them. One of them does involve a forced abduction of sorts, but the person on the receiving end isn't aware of the passage of time, so far as I remember."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"He thinks it might be alchemical in nature, because he worked in an alchemy lab for a while when he first arrived... if that's the case, then I for one would like to know what the hell he took."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"You and no small number of other people, I should think. Then again, if he wasn't aware of the matter, the exposure was probably accidental. Or it might have been something that happened here - this place is certainly odd enough to allow for the possibility."
Random abductions, random lack of aging... certainly, they're no worse than the random earthquakes were.
"Do you know if anyone else has disappeared?"

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"I don't know yet. That's next on my list."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"If they have, it would be worth asking whether the other victims also stopped aging."
Which Dominic probably knows already, but Morwen still thinks it's worth noting.

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"Exactly. God only knows why that would happen, but..."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"Quite. If this place weren't such a mix of people, I'd be tempted to chalk the whole matter up to wizards. The abduction part, at least, sounds like something the wizards in my world would do just because they could."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

Dominic raises an eyebrow. "What, don't mages on your world have better things to do than kidnap people for shits and giggles?"

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"Witches and magicians do, yes, as do most beings with innate magic. Wizards, though, are a rather unscrupulous lot - they siphon magic off anything and anyone in the area. They also have a tendency to stick their noses into politics, which usually means trying to rig leader-selection trials or kidnapping whoever's in charge. It's rather annoying, especially when they keep making moves against good friends of mine."
Morwen sighs. "And sadly, melting them only gets rid of them for a few days."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"That does sound unpleas--wait, melting them??"

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"Yes, melting them. Water with soap suds and lemon juice does the trick - a friend of a friend discovered it quite by accident. Telemain's been trying to work out what he calls a less sloppy method since he found out about it, I think."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"...wizards in your world must be very different from wizards in mine," says Dominic. "Otherwise I'd have been melted every time Mom made me do the dishes as a kid."

[ofthisnonsense.livejournal.com]

"I've found the use of the term varies from one world to the next. And my world is, as far as I know, the only one where wizards melt."
Unless Telemain got to experimenting on other patrons of the bar and didn't tell her, but even he tends to have more common sense than that. (That and she told him as soon as she thought he'd absorb it not to melt people first and ask questions later.)