dark scrying

[make_opportunity]

Maurabel ignores her classmates, by and large. She most especially ignores them when she is on the path that leads to the elemental barracks, because on those occasions they are more likely than usual to laugh at her.

She has considered their arguments, insofar as they have any, and they're nonsense, so now she ignores them. As best she can, anyway.

The amulet-minder knows her, too, and doesn't stop her on her way in to ask what element she wants the way he would anyone else. She'll take an amulet on the way out, probably. (Usually.)

She lets herself in and starts scanning the population. She saw two Shadows out flying on her way in, which means unless nobody else has one checked out, the selection's going to be pretty thin. She can use another element if she needs to, though. She doesn't need to do dark scrying specifically for this project - in fact, she could work entirely out of her personal affinities, if they wouldn't give her the time of day - dark scrying just interests her and she doesn't have enough of her own Shadow affinity to pull it off alone.

She counts Shadows, assessing how much time it's going to cost her to get the willing help of whichever feels like working "cheapest" today - and she sees an unfamiliar face.

A nearby Water leans in the new Shadow's direction. Maurabel stands back politely, hands clasped behind her, and lets her talk to him.

"That's the weird one I told you about," Water whispers to Shadow. "The one who makes it all - transactional, has all these fussy rules for herself."

When Water appears to be done talking to Shadow, Maurabel takes a couple of steps forward.

"Hello, Shadow," she says gently. "I'm Maurabel. Looks like you're new. I'll leave you alone if you want me to but I would like to talk to you. Do you prefer to just be called Shadow and told apart from the others with your university checkout number, or do you have a name you like?"

Comments

[make_opportunity]

"If you think of anything later, I'll have a record in my notebook of how long you spent helping me and you can call in a favor," Maurabel says. "A couple things before I get the amulet - I try not to, but I'm prone to using implicit control when I'm distracted, especially if you're physically very nearby. If I start, you can remind me and I'll stop. Outside of unlikely emergencies and leaving the university minimum orders in place, my goal is not to control you at all and just communicate verbally - even if you do things that are annoying or socially unacceptable - but if you do do those things I will be less likely to ask you for help again in the future. If you want to know whether something is annoying or socially unacceptable without trying it, you can ask me as long as we aren't concentrating on a working right at that moment. Does that all make sense?"

[just_a_shadow]

He nods again.

[make_opportunity]

"Any questions?"

[just_a_shadow]

He shakes his head.

[make_opportunity]

"Okay. What's your university number?"

[just_a_shadow]

"Thirty-six."

[make_opportunity]

"Okay. Oh, and if you decide you're done, even if we're in the middle of something as long as it's not dangerous to stop, you can quit any time you want and I'll take you right back. I'm doing my very best to - fill in all the gaps between reality and an actual voluntary arrangement," she winces. "I think that's everything. Okay." And she heads back out towards the amulet-minder.

"Shadow thirty-six, please."

The minder sifts through the rack of Shadow amulets, finds the right one, and hands it over.

Maurabel puts it on and clears away anything accumulated on it beyond University minimum safety protocols. She notes the time and writes it down.

[just_a_shadow]

He doesn't follow her when she leaves the room, but he comes to the door when she takes his amulet.

[make_opportunity]

She smiles at him, a little weakly, and heads in the direction of her room. "We can make conversation if you want, or not if you don't."

[just_a_shadow]

He seems to take this as an invitation to not say anything. But he does follow her.

[make_opportunity]

If he doesn't want to say anything that is completely within parameters!

Her dorm is a six-minute walk away from the elemental barracks. She flicks the door open - it's a mage student dorm, this is their idea of security is having a door you have to flick to open - and leads him up the stairs to a second-floor single occupancy. It's tiny. She closes the door once he's inside, and closes the shutters so it's dark enough to do dark scrying, and sits on her bed.

Despite her warning, she has exerted no implicit control on him during the entire trip.

[just_a_shadow]

In the absence of any specific instruction or suggestion, Shadow sits on the floor next to the bed. With his elemental halo obscuring him under a layer of shadows, he's nearly invisible in the dark - but presumably this will change if she successfully achieves dark scrying.

[make_opportunity]

"All right. If I understood my textbook correctly, I'll be able to steer the vision myself without having to control you, but doing that will let you override me. I'd prefer if you didn't do that even though I'm going to let you; there are specific things to look at and data I have to gather for my assignment. Ready?"

[just_a_shadow]

"Yes," he says, in case she cannot see him nodding.

[make_opportunity]

"Here goes."

Maurabel braces herself for the reportedly bizarre experience of dark scrying, and closes her eyes, and taps into the elemental attached to the amulet around her neck.

[just_a_shadow]

And then... she can see what's in front of her, just as if her eyes were open.

Sort of.

Nothing is quite the same colour as usual, and the visual concepts of dark and light are not just flipped but also scrambled in some way; the more light falling on something, the dimmer and more obscure it looks, but the visual effect isn't dark the way normal human vision understands darkness. It's something else, some shadow-vision alternative.

The word in the textbook is 'undark'. Similarly 'unbright', for things 'unlit' well enough to see. And now Maurabel knows firsthand why there needs to be a separate vocabulary.

[make_opportunity]

"Weird," she murmurs, and she asserts her will over the vantage point and maneuvers it through a wall so she has enough unbrightness to see by while she maneuvers to the objects she's supposed to scry so she can identify them to the professor and confirm she did the assignment.

[just_a_shadow]

The empty spaces inside of walls are very well unlit, by and large. Much easier to see in there than out in the well-lit (and therefore undark) hallways.

(Since she is not scrying her own room anymore, she will not see Shadow smiling.)

[make_opportunity]

Since she planned this, she has an idea of how to maneuver so she can get at the sealed room in the thaumatology building she's supposed to investigate the contents of.

She's not sure how she's supposed to handle the inventory of the fruit bowl with all the colors weird - she can't tell if that's a lemon or a lime, or what kind of apple that is - but she identifies everything she can, makes her best guesses based on the things she can distinguish about what the transformed colors represent in standard vision, memorizes it while muttering to herself because she can't write neatly with her eyes closed, and continues making observations about the nature of dark scrying until she thinks she has enough for a good paper.

Then she opens her eyes, pulls open one of the shutters and squints and writes down a quick skeletal set of notes, and says, "That's it. If you haven't thought of anything you want from me I can take you back to the barracks now."

[just_a_shadow]

"I haven't thought of anything," he says. Under the concealing shadows of his halo, his face looks somewhere between wistful and worried.

[make_opportunity]

"Okay. Well," she looks at the clock, "I will owe you about forty-five minutes if you think of anything later." She stands up. "Or if you want to give it to one of the other elementals, that works too, although I've never had it happen before unless you count what Earth fifty-four likes to do with his accumulated time." She heads for the door to her room.

[just_a_shadow]

"There isn't anyone here I know that well," he says, following a little ways behind her.

[make_opportunity]

"I understand. You'll probably settle in after a while," she sighs. "And make some friends."

[just_a_shadow]

[make_opportunity]

"Just based on how it usually seems to go. Maybe you're even more introverted than I am." She shrugs, and heads down the stairs.