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--- campaign:carve:2023-11-14 [2023/11/14 23:28] – created pinkgothic
+++ campaign:carve:2023-11-14 [2023/12/05 21:54] (current) – pinkgothic
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 His far away voice echoed in her ears, and she had to repeat what he'd said in her head a few times before it really surfaced to the top of her mind. Such was the effect of what she had done, what she had wanted to happen, and allowed. One must never forget that she had asked for this. "Does it need to be bandaged?" she asked, though even her own voice sound strange to her.
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+**pinkgothic**:
+"Shouldn't be necessary," he said. "The runic residue is quite sticky, so it closes the wound quite efficiently. It promotes healing and is quite adaptive, so your blood circulation should go back to normal quickly, too. Might still feel lingering pins and needles for up to another half an hour, though."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+Nodding quietly, she listened to him explain about the unnnecessary need for a bandage. "That's handy at least," she murmured, perhaps too soft to be heard. A little out of it for the moment, she looked down at the wounds on her arm, intrigued by the process that was currently going on there. After a few moments, she added, louder, "So that was sorcery... It sure is... it sure is something. Strange, but fascinating..."
 **pinkgothic**:
+She could feel him nodding behind her, even as he started to peel away, his luminescent fingers wandering off to the side like a ghostly light and disappearing behind her for a moment as he rearranged himself, sitting down beside her instead.
+He brought the fingers up to his face, touching his right cheek, making his expressions clear. "Arranging the runes... it's best thought of as an engineering task. It can get arbitrarily complex. This spell is one of the simplest - even beginners usually don't get it wrong. But you can see how there is a certain handicap to getting it right. The pain and discomfort are quite distracting. Once you're healed up, you should try the spell again, this time of your own accord. I'll watch, of course, but you should review the spell structure and then try it yourself. It's fine if you mess it up, as long as I'm there to un-mess it up."
 **Nymphetamine**:
--->
+Still staring at the wounds like a fascinated child, she heard him, and the words registered, but she didn't immediately respond. He was speaking wisdom, of course. This was not something that she should do alone, ever, and it wasn't something that she should do without him. Glancing over to where he sat, she managed a thin smile. "I don't think I'm that cocky to try this shit without you, to be frank," she said as if that was mollification for her asking for sorcery lessons in the first place. Her opposite hand prodded a finger at the wounds, her expression still stuck in one of wonder. "How long before I can try again?" Though it appeared that the wounds were already beginning to knit themselves together. "And uh, do they leave scars? Should I always wear long sleeves after this?"
+**pinkgothic**:
+"They won't leave scars unless you mess with the healing process. I don't mean 'pick at scabs' level of interference, though," he assuaged, sucking on his lower lip for a moment. "Like... trying to push your finger in, or put in a paperclip or something like that." The paperclip example sounded just about specific enough that some sorcerer might have tried that exact thing in the past. "But it will be visible for up to a day, so recommend a long-sleeved shirt for the next twenty-four hours."
+It was hard to tell in the pinched light of the spell, but the trace wounds seemed to have a vaguely golden colour, somewhat pale, appearing gelatinous in texture. It wasn't too hard to see why someone would want to poke at the substance with a little more vigour, especially a scientist.
+**Nymphetamine**:
+Her head turned to him sharply, eyebrows raised in mild surprised amusement. "Lemme guess... You stuck a paperclip in there once, didn't you?" It was just specific enough to be anecdotal. "I'll try not to mess with it... Might be hard. But don't want anyone catching onto what we're doing here..." With great reluctance, she pulled down her sleeve over the wounds so she wouldn't be tempted to do exactly what he warned against.
+**pinkgothic**:
+He arched a disappointed brow at her, the gesture acutely visible in the pinched light. "I'm sorry, did you see a scar on me?" he popped her theory. "But no, it's one of those cautionary tales from early sorcery." He shook his head in emphasis. "The substance rapidly attunes to the structure the healed flesh should have, within the first five minutes of settling; if it's disturbed after that, that's a bit like poking into your own flesh, even if it doesn't feel or look that way at the time, hence the scarring."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+She shrugged at his indignant response, whether he meant it deeply seriously, or just a return tease for her. Leila felt like she could make a snippy comment in return about having never seen the man nude, but that seemed a little too risque for her at this juncture in their friendship. "I see. That makes sense..." she said of the cautionary tales. Sticking a paperclip into an open wound seemed like a bad idea no matter how it was made. "I will not stick a paperclip or anything else into the healing marks." It was added with as much solemnity as she could manage in the moment. Still, she had performed a little bit of sorcery, or at least had made her first forray into it. It was worth celebrating, she felt.
+**pinkgothic**:
+He nodded mildly, evidently pleased with her assurance. "To answer your earlier question, you can again in about two days. One and a half if you're really pushing it, which I don't recommend. Usual sorcerer practise is three days wait, just to be sure."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"Is that just for the same arm? Or do you mean at all? I'm sure my handwriting would suck if I tried it with my other hand, as I'm not ambidextrous but could you do the other arm, if you were pushing it? Or is the body just not able to handle that?" There were so many questions roiling about in her mind that she could easily throw his way.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"You do //not// want to try writing with your non-dominant arm," Mateo shook his head. "Messing up the glyphs isn't a recoverable error. I can certainly write for you, if what you want to practise is the arranging, but you want to learn arranging with your dominant hand anyway." He paused with a look of contemplation. "To be honest, I don't know if the body could handle it. I don't see why not. It'll be a strain for your heart if you do it before normal blood flow to your fingers is restored on the left arm, but otherwise?" He shrugged - the motion was almost invisible in the pinched light, but the secondary motion that rippled through his body made it clear, regardless.
+**Nymphetamine**:
+It was just as well that Mateo warned her about this, or she would have been too tempted to try it. Though, she definitely needed his guidance, so perhaps she wouldn't have. While she might be overly ambitious in their covert sorcery lessons, she certainly wasn't going to try stepping out of the restrictions that he was giving her. They were, after all, for her own safety, and she should respect these warnings as they were delivered to her. Nodding in return, she signaled her understanding. "Gotcha, gotcha. Good to know. Too bad there's no primer on the runes, or like... just the basic rules written down somewhere. Maybe I should be taking notes..." Leila looked around for her tablet to do just that, but the light was faint. She could barely see him, looking for her tablet would be impossible just then. She wasn't even sure she knew where she had left it. "I'll write up notes later."
+**pinkgothic**:
+"I could give you a light," Mateo quipped, half-seriously, half-jokingly, drumming his luminescent fingers against the table they were sitting at as though to indicate that he was itching to do something useful with them.
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"Oh! That would be useful. Maybe you could help me draw runes on the tablet so that I can start memorizing, or is that not how it works?" There was so many questions she almost felt like she had to apologize for the surfeit of them.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"The best way would be that I start sharing the papers with you," Mateo said. "So you can learn the nomenclature for the rune shapes. They're usually not visualised in the papers, in case they leak into the black market." No word about the fine detail that Leila was technically in said black market, and deliberately being leaked //to//. "It's not much of a protection, but it helps a little bit."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"'The papers'?" There was a question there, obvious and bold in its face. They were both aware that the scenario he described was the exact one that he was supposed to be avoiding, and yet instead was indulging with her. "That sounds like 'Papers' with a capital P. Very official and important sounding..." And then, a pause as she considered the implication of what else he said. "Is there much of a problem with leaks and people... well, I guess people like me."
+**pinkgothic**:
+"Academic papers?" Mateo clarified, tilting his head - or rather, the outline of it, in the artificial darkness. "It depends on what you mean with 'problem'. As far as I'm concerned, the buck stops when you start carving up other people nonconsensually or under duress to do your spells, doubly so if you mess it up and consign your victim to a death sentence. That's usually what the laws want to prevent, same way you can't just call yourself a medical doctor in most places and get away with it. But yeah, academic papers leak. Given the small number of sorcerers, it didn't happen often; back on Earth the chance someone could trace the leak back to a particular country and then from there to their likely only appointed sorcerer was pretty high. But it still happened, and they only stopped about a third of it. Though for all I know, the other two thirds of reported cases are all from one particularly clever person." A pause, then, deadpan: "It's not me, just in case you were wondering that."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"Oh." The vowel was formed as if duh, she should've thought of that herself. Listening to him as he explained, her nose wrinkling in distaste as he mentioned the fact that some people //could// or //did// use people against their will to perform their spells, or to experiment with new spells. She frowned at that, brow knitting together. "That's abhorrent," she murmured, her head shaking sadly side to die. "I getcha now." The leaks seemed a lot more traceable on Earth than they would be on Mars, and as long as they kept their shenanigans under wraps, they wouldn't have much of a problem, it seemed. She laughed a little at that flat remark, denying that he was the clever person leaking the various papers on the subject. "Well. Maybe not //two thirds// of it now... it's not even a real leak. Just a little trickle..."
+**pinkgothic**:
+Mateo scratched lightly at his chin with the luminescent fingers, making for an eerie display of light. "I guess this is a leak?" he said, sounding slightly uneasy about it, albeit on an intellectual level only. "I mean, it doesn't feel that way. I'm not just dumping some information on you and have no control what you do with it. I'm teaching you sorcery, properly, with all the ethical constraints that the job comes with."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"That is true. A very good point." Leila seemed to have picked up on the fact that he was mildly discomfited by the idea of being a leak. So she was definitely going to be reining in that verbiage. "Well. In case it wasn't clear, I'm awfully thankful that you agreed to teach me. I've always been fascinated by it..."
+**pinkgothic**:
+The fingers swerved as part of a larger gesture of friendly dismissal that disappeared into the darkness. "As I've said, it can only be a good thing if more Martians know how to spellcast. The usual constraints that apply to a randomised society don't apply if every single crew member here has been hand selected. No one here is going to be some kind of crime lord."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+Her grin hitched a little higher at his remark. *She* had no intentions of telling anyone what she was doing, or was learning, let alone was going to do it to unwilling subject to spare herself the pain. The nerve blockers helped, but there was still a far away sense of pain when they had been drawing the runes into her skin earlier. "How did you know I wanted to become a crime boss?" It was a joke, a tease, there was playfulness in her voice as she asked, tongue in cheek.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"Don't even joke about that," Mateo said, flatly, although not quite short enough in tone to suggest that he'd taken offence. Probably just nipping that kind of humour in the bud. Her illegal apprenticeship aside, he seemed rather insistant on being law-abiding, especially the spirit of the law.
+**Nymphetamine**:
+It was not a long, suffering sigh, but a sigh nonetheless. "C'mon, you know I'm just joking. What the hell kinda crime boss is a botanist?" Already her brain was working to debunk that theory too on its own: cocaine and marijuana both came from plants, after all. Mushrooms. Peyote. "Okay, okay, I get your point..." she added after a moment when her mind came up with a whole bloody list of plants that could be used for criminal purposes.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"I appreciate the enthusiasm," Mateo said, gently. "And the levity, since it means that you're evidently not traumatissed by today's exercise - uh, unless these kinds of jokes are your coping mechanism, I guess?" A mostly-invisible shrug. "But I'm sure we can agree that we want to help Mars prosper with this knowledge. Right?"
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"Not //too// traumatized." That was a promise. While it had been weird to basically self harm and carve foreign and strange runes into her arm, making herself bleed to perform magic, she was more intrigued in a scientific way than she was disgusted or afraid of the dimmed pain. "The jokes are just half and half a coping mechanism. The other half personality, I think... now that I'm getting to know you better... if it bothers you, please just say something." At his final remark, she nodded, also unseen in the dimness of her tiny apartment. "That would be the goal, of course." Assuming she could ever do it in front of other people. Right now, their clandestine master/apprentice relationship was not one that she could discuss with any aside from him.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"'Bother' is a strong word," Mateo dismissed lightly. "It's a cheesy cliché, but it's also true: With great power comes great responsibility. I discourage the jokes because it's important to keep that in mind. This isn't a recreational sport, it's a powerful tool that can do serious harm to you and others." A soft sigh. "I'm sorry if that sounds condescending."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"It doesn't. But I understand the point you're trying to underscore here. It //is// dangerous, and dangerous things like this should be respected, if not feared just a little, you know?" she said in reply, apparently unbothered by how he had spoken. Maybe it was a teensy bit condescending but she understood, as she said, the importance of taking it seriously.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"Exactly," he nodded, the motion partially visible as his fingers hovered near his face. The eerie light illuminated a growing smile and friendly eyes - despite everything they'd said, despite the friction of the mismatched jokes, he clearly trusted her to do the right thing, revealing just how deeply his conviction ran: //It can only be a good thing if more Martians know how to spellcast.//