milliways_bar | (no subject)

She takes a deep breath and looks at Nita, but stares more at her ear than her eyes.

"So your world's sevarfrith -- you can't practice wizardry openly. So's mine, and wizards have been practicing there since the beginning of history." Wryly -- "It's easier to hide than you'd think.

"As for the kids thing--" She shrugs. "They might grow up with some extras. It doesn't sound like it'll hurt them."

"But we'll all have to hide and I thought that we could just come here sometimes but I wanted to go back home and get another degree and...too much change..."

"It's not...fair to bring children into a situation where they have no choice."

She sighs. "One of these days, I'm taking you to my world and introducing you to Tom and Carl. It's entirely possible to have a wizardly life and a so-called normal life as well."

That gets her a long Look.

"If you want to have kids that have a choice in everything, you're going to have some trouble having kids."

"Jasin said it sounded like Chase could channel."

And she's able to look at her now because annoyance has pushed away tears.

"How can I have children who are going to have the ability to channel whether they like it or not? In a place where people aren't accepting of differences and where they'll...never be able to have a normal life. I had no choice about who my dad was or what people would do to me to get to him."

She presses her lips together, "I can't do that to another generation. I just...can't."

". . .Oh."

That changes things a little. Nita wonders if Kim knows about the longevity.

But-- "Channelling is recessive, Kim. Unless you gain the ability as well, there's maybe a 25% chance of any of your kids being able to channel."

"But I wouldn't know until they were older and even if none of them had that ability...don't you think that if anyone knew about what Chase could do...and it's bad enough that my dad has to live in hiding, I couldn't take Chase having to as well but I don't know what to do."

"I think if anyone find out about what Chase could do, they either wouldn't believe it, or it would be easy to convince them that they didn't believe it."

She sighs. "Hiding doesn't mean living in a cave and changing your name. It means not being stupid enough to do big obvious wizardries in the public's view."

She nods a little, "But what if you don't age? Someone would...notice that."

"It's easy enough to change your appearance."

She shivers slightly, associating changing of apperances with nothing good.

She sighs. "Kim, I'm sorry. This is a big deal, yes, but I think you're overreacting a little. Trust me, people have been dealing with this on so many worlds for so many millenia.

"But didn't you have a choice? Isn't this...don't people usually have to choose this?"

"Some things you choose. Sometimes. . ."

She shrugs. "There are no accidents."

"I'll think about it," she says after a moment and takes another sip. "Are you okay?"

She sighs silently. "Yeah, I'm okay."

A thought occurs to her. "Actually -- I'm Unbound."

"You are? Does that mean you get to go home and see your family?"

"Yeah, but I wanted to take care of a couple things first -- like setting up a messaging system on your iPod. . .?"

Kim's iPod is sitting next to her and she hands it to Nita, "Will I be able to send messages?"

She accepts it, pulls her manual out of thin air, and starts flipping through it.

"I'll see what I can set up."

Nita's right, she's probably overreacting, so many worries piling up at once that she can't handle any of them rationally.

Overthinking things, she's lived through worse, she shouldn't be falling apart from this information.

Nita seems to be mostly fiddling with the buttons and wheel, murmuring under her breath.

After a while, she flips her manual open to a blank section near the back, and brings the iPod close to it. There's a flash like a really big static discharge with a sharp cracking noise. She puts down the iPod and shakes out her fingers.

"Ow. Here, put the earbuds in, I want to test it."

Kim jumps a little at the sound and the light. "You okay?" She takes the earbuds a little reluctantly.

"Yeah, don't worry."

She picks up her manual and says, "Message for Kim. Testing? End message."

In the earbuds, the iPod beeps, and line of text flashes across the bottom of the screen. Message from Nita.

"Do I...press a button? How do I get it?"