maskormenacelogs | now i've freezing hands and bloodless veins.

WHO: Anathema Device & you
WHERE: A bunch of places
WHEN: Throughout the month
WHAT: Catch-all; one open prompt plus closed starters in the comments. Will match prose/brackets!
WARNINGS: nah

OPEN TO ALL.
Over the course of the month, one might be able to find printouts taped to various lampposts and bus shelters, scattered throughout the Porter cities:

CALLING IMPORTS WITH MAGICAL ABILITIES
FELLOW MAGICAL STUDENTS WANTED FOR TRAINING, SPECIALIZING IN PORTALS, TELEKINESIS, ELEMENTAL MANIPULATION &c.

And there's an address attached in easy segments to rip off, which leads people, if interested, to Small Mediums at Large in Jeopardy. If you stop by, you'll find a small, cluttered Victorian parlour of a psychic's shop. The bell over the door chimes upon entry and Anathema perks up from her seat: a dark-haired woman surveying you over her glasses, with a polite smile and a stack of mouldering books in front of her.

"Need your fortune told, missing items or people scried for, help with a haunting, or something else entirely?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The tapestry metaphor makes sense to Sypha, who sips her wine a bit more reservedly than Anathema. She is not used, yet, to the headiness and sweetness of the alcohol here, or its ready access outside of taverns.

"I am from Eastern Europe," Sypha says. "A country that is now part of Romania." She had avidly read through the several chapters of history of Eastern Europe in the encyclopedia that she had borrowed on her first day at the library.

"Pre-Christian belief in my country was much more dictated by duality," she tells Anathema. "Light and dark, sun and moon, day and night. But I have heard of the Fates... though only as stories. I did not know that this place has - had - gods."

A silly statement, if she was an earnest believer in the Church's line, but Sypha is not and frankly, though she admits the existence of the Christian god, she is not entirely certain his jurisdiction extends outside of the reality of Wallachia. Probably blasphemy, but nowhere in either Testament did it concretely suggest that there were other planes of existence besides heaven, and Sypha isn't interested in that.

"So you are telling me that Jeopardy is the centre of an unstable magical field?"

"Pretty much everywhere is, these days. But Jeopardy a little bit moreso than the rest, yes." Another sip of her drink; Anathema's curled up into that armchair, almost boneless, ready to let the weight of the day slide right off her. She tilts her head in curiosity, though, hearing Sypha describe her origins.

"I've some familiarity with those dualities as well, so I might know a bit of what you mean. Light and dark. Angels and demons. Antichrist and armageddon. You said you had magic back home, too?"

Comforting, Anathema. So very comforting.

"Yes, although magic is not practiced openly. I am a member of a tribe of wandering Speakers; we are scholars and gatherers of knowledge. We study magics and some of us specialize in training our will to manipulate the world around us."

Sypha conjures a small flame, balanced in the palm of her hand that is not holding the wine glass.

"This can get me burned for witchcraft," she remarks. "And so usually, Speakers are taught not to share our knowledge or reveal our magics to outsiders unless in extreme circumstances."

She extinguishes the flame and takes a sip of wine. "There are a few richer men who pursue alchemy and the knowledge of spellcraft from books. And there is usually a woman in each small village skilled with herbs who serves as a healer, but they tend to fly under the radar, unless they provoke the wrong man."

She is happy to be able talk so freely about magic with interested persons here, worlds away from the Church. "Do you have magic, where you come from?"

Upon seeing that conjured flame, the look that crosses Anathema's face can only be described as gleeful. She's grinning over the edge of her drink now, perking up a little, paying attention and watching that flickering fire before the other woman dismisses it.

"Oh, yes," she says, and snaps the fingers of her own free hand. Her own little spark of flame appears on the tip of a finger: it dances along her fingers and knuckles, meanders down her wrist, spins back to her palm. She's gotten better with practice, in managing this delicate elemental conjuration.

"It wasn't quite this flashy back home, though, so I think this world boosted my abilities. Back home, it was mostly— mm, intuitive? A better, more attuned way of sensing the world. Reading people's auras, reading leylines, following threads of power. Here, I can do more, with the elements or some levitation.

"'Gatherers of knowledge' — I like that. My own family gathered and studied prophecies."

Anathema's reaction to Sypha's little flame fills her with a warm glow. She is so used to having people react poorly whenever she pulls out a bit of elemental magic - though, to be quite honest, a lot of them would be the type of people who had provoked her to pull out the flames as a weapon in the first place.

Anathema conjures her own small spark, and Sypha watches, entranced, as it snakes its way around her fingers, down to her wrist, and back up again. That is not something she has ever tried to do. It is flashy and utterly impractical and Sypha wants to know how to do it very badly.

"It sounds as if your magic back home is more akin to the astrology of magicians of the Orient," Sypha remarks, "with herbal lore. Which I am no good at!"

"We gather knowledge, yes, though every Speaker has an area of speciality. I am better at languages and spellcraft," Sypha shrugs, with a lopsided smile. "I can tell you which plants on the roadside you should not eat, but beyond that..."

"Languages and spellcraft sound delightful, though." The spark of fire winks out and Anathema shakes off her hand, and considers the other woman sitting across from her. Cheerfully approving: "At the risk of counting my eggs before they're hatched: it sounds like I'm really going to enjoy living with you, Sypha. Also, I've been trying to get people together to practice and learn from each other spell-wise, since every world's definition of magic is going to vary so much. If that's something you'd be interested in."

Unabashed, no hesitation or anxiety in suggesting it; it's not that Anathema is an extrovert, but she doesn't flinch away from corralling what she's interested in, even it means recruiting a near-total stranger.

"Likewise," Sypha rejoins; Anathema's amiability is infectious. The people that she has met in this new world are generally much more cheerful than Sypha is used to, and it is a welcome change.

"I would be very interested," Sypha tells her, and indeed she is extremely intrigued. This woman does not mince words, but neither does Sypha; another trait of her new roommate that is appealing to Sypha.

"How many magicians - magic-users" - she corrects herself - "do you know here?"

"Oooh, gosh. Some of them have left over time, so let me think about who's still around."

Anathema starts counting off names on her fingers, glancing up at the ceiling as if for divine inspiration. "Sal. Adam, he's one of our other roommates. Harry and Wanda, they're a married couple. Klaus counts, sort of. Ruka. This guy at another tarot shop. Two people who answered my ad about magic training. So maybe about nine that I've interacted with directly, although there's more out there? There's a lot of imPorts with abilities that are similar to magic, too. Is that kind of like the Speakers, numbers-wise?"

"That is about the size of my grandfather's caravan, yes," Sypha answers Anathema. "But there are many groups of Speakers, so I cannot say exactly how many of us there are. Though all Speakers know and study magic, we do not all practice it, however. I do not know how many other practical magicians there are scattered throughout Wallachia, but if there are perhaps an average of three or four per caravan, that would put the number at about twenty?"

She drinks some more of the wine; she is getting used to it, and it is very good.

now i've freezing hands and bloodless veins.

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