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rae "sunshine" seddon

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Summer is well and truly over, and the autumn cloud-cover isn't ideal for practicing a complicated new spell. So she is making do, having settled on the sand along the edge of the Caribbean inlet, where the tropical sunlight is still strong and warm. Her concentration is on the mostly horizontal trunk of the bent palm tree that hangs out over the crystal-clear shallows. Upon the top of the tree trunk - sometimes no more than a suggestion of a shape, other times almost solid, the sunlight shining on its fine, black feathers - is the shimmering form of a large bird.

Sunshine's concentration wavers as she impatiently tucks a stray lock of sweat-dampened hair behind her ear, and the indistinct bird-shape gives a rough, reproachful croak. Its form solidifies again as her attention hurriedly turns back to it - she thinks she has it.

Now she must find out if the spell can be used to send a message...

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Dr. Hannibal Lecter is out walking at the far edge of the lake, a small figure barely identifiable to Rae.

It's chilly enough on the majority of Milliways' grounds that there are few people who have ventured outside. Volunteers aren't exactly presenting themselves eagerly.

There is someone, though, Rae can see. Her eyes can barely make out any detail over the distance, but there is something in his posture and his stride, the way her Dark Sight still sees no movement in the man's shadows, only more shadows.

Well, she has hardly any better options. A connection - though how it galls her - for the spell to travel along, a relatively nearby target to aim at, and someone who will - again, galling - likely be honest about the experience of receiving the message.

Why the hell not.

Rae stands and puts her hands out towards the spell. The flickering almost-raven, sometimes almost solid and sometimes hardly there, gathers into her hands as a light, cold and blue and small. Really, after years of communicating with Con through their connection, it took hardly any energy at all to send the message. It's a message she hardly has to think about, anyway. Her head down, eyes closed, Rae flings the spell away from her as though flicking water droplets from her fingers. It disappears.

On the far side of the lake from the magic-handler, the wind freshens suddenly, gusting enough to shake the leaves still clinging to their trees. A great raven - shiny black feathers sometimes shimmering into insubstantiality - alights on a branch near Hannibal Lecter and peers down at him with one beady eye. In its gaze lies this:

... nt you to know that you are the lowest, most despicable, toxic, cancerous, kali scum of the earth, Hannibal Lecter. Other scum can rest easy, knowing just how much worse it could be and knowing that they are not it, not you....

It goes on in this vein for some small length of time before the spell begins to unravel, the raven disintegrating into nothing with a last croaking ruffle of feathers.

From the far side of the lake, Rae might see Dr. Hannibal Lecter waving his arms at the raven until it disintegrates. Then, he starts purposefully walking around the lake towards her.

Rae looks over in time to see the spell-raven disappear amid the man's waving - hmm, she'll have to see whether she can make it last longer - and Dr. Lecter's determined stride along the lake shore.

Well. The message has been sent and successfully received, from the look of things. Nothing left to do but sit and wait for the report.

And pour a couple of cups of tea in the meantime. The breeze from the more Scottish landscape carries quite a bit of its chill into the warmth of the Caribbean inlet.

"That was the most magical philippic I have ever heard delivered," Dr. Lecter says, calmly, as he walks into her earshot.

"How many other magical harangues have you heard?" Rae can't help asking, offering a dry smile and a cup of lavender and lemongrass tea. "And do you know what spell they used? I'm still figuring this one out."

She is quite glad to hear that the message reached him successfully.

"Never a magical one before, as far as I can tell," Dr. Lecter says, accepting the tea. "So I have been your test subject. Glad to be of service. Why do you need to do this, though?"

"I appreciate you choosing to take a walk when you did - otherwise the experiment would have had to wait until I could find someone else suitable," she says, stirring her own tea briefly before setting aside the silver spoon and taking a sip.

"A friend of mine needs to send a message, and writing a letter isn't an option. So long as I get the spell right, sending the message along his connection to the recipient would be faster, safer, and more likely to arrive intact."

"So you used the connection that still exists between us," Dr. Lecter says, with a little smile.

"It was convenient to do so," Rae says with a slight shrug, blowing over the surface of her tea briefly before taking another sip. "I've used similar connections to reach Master Vampires before."

Alignments are useful, even if you don't want them.

"The messenger looked like it arrived pretty well instantaneously after I sent it, which is good. It shouldn't have to cross the intervening physical space. Was the message clear?"

"The use of the term kali as an adjective gave you away," Dr. Lecter says, sipping his tea. "This is really good -- thank you!"

"Curses, foiled by slang," she replies, cheerfully. "I'm glad you like it - this is one of my favorites when it starts getting chilly outside."

"When you received the message, were you able to tell if the message was audible to your ears, or just in your mind? I was aiming for the latter - less chance of it being intercepted that way."

"Purely in my mind," Dr. Lecter says. "It was a very well-done spell."

Rae nods a little, pleased. "It's coming together, little by little. I need to work more on the messenger itself - the book I was taking direction from focused more on ethereal forms, but I don't want someone other than the recipient to see the messenger and be able to peg it as magic. It needs to be more solid."

"As archetypes go," Dr. Lecter muses, "I'd say you'd need to infuse the spell with a drop of your own blood, to give the messenger earthy solidity. Would you like me to walk to the far side again and try over?"

"I would be more likely to do more research first than just try something, not knowing its effect or if it would even have any effect," Rae remarks, dryly.

She doesn't send her blood to just anyone. Or anyone at all, really.

"I had been focused more on spirit messengers in my research, since I'm not spelling a real creature. There may be books I've not searched yet on magical constructs, where I could likely glean some more usable information on making solid forms."

Edited 2015-10-09 20:16 (UTC)

"Be bold," Dr. Lecter says. "Sometimes, you have to try and change a recipe without consulting a cookbook first."

"Oh please," her brief, quick exhale is the dry shade of an even drier laugh, "Who are you even talking to? I invent my desserts. I've had to invent half my own apprenticeship and made a poor second career out of going into situations where I have no choice but to be out of my depth."

The working conditions, hours and pay are even worse than being a baker.

"Where I have the choice in whether I wade in blind or I go in knowing something of what to expect, excuse me if I arm myself with knowledge first."

"Aren't people waiting for your magic to work?" Dr. Lecter asks.

"Then I had best find out what works, shouldn't I?"

Edited 2015-10-09 22:27 (UTC)

"Yes," Hannibal says. "Would you like to experiment on me again?"

"I would, yes, when I am ready to construct the spell again," she replies, looking at him over her teacup.

And to think, when she had asked Hannibal if he would like to be a guinea pig in her experimentations, all those years ago, she had at the time only meant for her baking.

Little had they known.

Hannibal finishes his tea, and then walks off again, briskly.

Rae finishes her tea more slowly, taking her time in soaking up the sunlight. Quite a bit of effort had gone into that one spell, and as ever, conversation with Dr. Lecter brings its own sort of tiredness.

When she has sipped the last of her tea, Rae gathers the cups and thermos, and heads back indoors. There is more research to be done.

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