faderift | [OPEN] there is a light that i leave on

[They are related questions under the first initial inquiry, thank you very much. Were someone to outline them, they might fall beneath the primary point's umbrella. In fact, that's exactly what she does as she takes notes in a looping, delicate hand there in the margins. Ravens, coyotes, porcupine...--]

A spirit? Like the ones found here? Do they cross from some other... plane where you're from as well, or are they part of your world's nature, I suppose? Though that's not even really the case here, is it? But you know what I mean. Is there a Veil and Fade equivalent where you come from?

['It's still me,' she'd said, which yes. That much is undeniable from just the texture of the air about her, the distinct lack of enchantment lingering in her skin and hair and the grass about her. Wysteria pauses thoughtfully, pen rising from the page. A moment's thoughtful consideration, then--]

That dress looks well on you, by the way.

Not like the ones found here.

The spirits - things? That we have in Brazil are like. They're real. And they can cast illusions but sometimes humans know they're there.

[She looks at her dress.]

Yeah, it does. Thanks.

You're welcome. It's a very pretty color.

[Smoothly switching gears, as if the two tracks of this conversation have any relation to one another whatsoever:]

But they are distinct creatures, then? When I hear spirit, I always think of ghosts and the glorious kingdom of the afterlife and all that nonsense. --Uh, not that the whole idea is nonsense. Only I've never seen a ghost.

[She leans back a little.]

Ghosts are ghosts. I've seen a few, but not many.

But yeah, I mean. Spirits aren't the right word, but I don't know what the right word would be.

[Her hand pauses in its note taking.]

You've seen a-- no, never mind. If we get into this, we'll be here all afternoon and I regrettably do have things I ought to be doing. Spirits. [She shakes her head and takes a hard left turn back to the most primary subject at hand.] Have you always been able to do it? To change, I mean. Or it it an ability you developed later in life?

My first shift was when I was six. I don't remember not being able to change.

[Casual-like.]

Oh, six. It's certainly early, but not so very young really. [This seems to almost be a note for herself, murmured absently as she jots it down into the margin of the herbal guide.] There are magicians at home who come into their Talent as young as that. Ten is more common, of course, but very powerful skills have a habit of making themselves more obvious earlier, don't they? I don't think anyone realized what I could do until sixteen. Isn't that funny-- the things you live with and never occur to you as being a skill until someone else points it out.

[None of it really sounds at all like conversation she means to be carrying - something she expects Luana to have some part in. Rather, it's Wysteria thinking out loud as she jots a few more notes down on the page.]

--oh, there's a thought. Is this talent common where you come from? You said other people changed into different things, but can most people change? Or are you rare?

Not common. Rare. There are only like, ten lobo-guara in Brazil.

[Well, of the ones that turn into humans.]

What do you do?

Only ten! My, that's very rare.

[She seems wholly and completely delighted by the whole idea. Only ten. How marvelous. And here Luana is, rolling about on the grass and tumbling down the stairs as if there's nothing at all particular or magnificent about herself. What would any of the scholars in residence at Somerset say to such a thing? That she should be taken in and seen to and observed at regular intervals and have her behavior and talent recorded and indexed, to begin with. How charming.

As she writes:]

Me? Oh, nothing much at all. I have some minor Talent, but nothing at all like yours. Only you musn't say anything about it beyond the Gallows, of course. Though I'm sure you got the same talking to as I did. Ten. My word. --Are you certain? How do you know there are so few lobo-guara?

[She makes a valiant effort at the pronunciation.]

That's what the Caipora said, and it doesn't lie. I have three teachers, and then there's my father, and a couple of people go out and scout, and I think that Aluisio has a kid or two.

[She shrugs.]

It's a secret if you keep this one, too.

[She takes her necklace off. It's a small charm of a figa, and it looks like a closed fist with the thumb protruding out from between the index and middle fingers.]

That's magic. The caipora made it so when I transform I keep my clothes.

[Shifts closer to get a better look, she examines the necklace as one might a very strange insect. The caipora is written blindly in slanting letters over the margin then Wysteria sets aside pen.]

Could I hold it? Just for a moment.

[She hands it over, easily.]

Don't do any magic to it. I really hated whenever I ended up naked in an alley.

I promise not to break it.

[Her notes temporarily forgotten, Wysteria takes the pendant in both hands and turns it about slowly between her fingers. Here, at last, she thinks she senses something strange. It's a clever little thing, isn't it? There's no faint hum to give away it's enchanted, no low pulsing heat. But she touches it and she knows immediately that it's more than what it appears to be, whereas Luana herself is simply-- herself, as if there is no trace of magick in her at all.]

It's a very strange kind of magick. Nothing at all like what I've seen before, here or otherwise.

[The itch to take it apart is incredible.]

It's a shame you don't have a second one. I'd like to see how it's done, but I'm not sure I'd be able to repair it after.

If I ever find a caipora here, I'll make it tell you.

[That's easy enough. She reaches for it back, because she's worn is so long that she feels naked without it.]

It's not like the kind of magic that the mae-de-santo do. They do like. Witchy things. I don't know. The stuff here doesn't make sense to me.

[The necklace is passed back without question. Well, no. Technically it's handed back with lots of questions:]

No, I can't say it makes much sense to me either. --See now there's something I know. Witch, I mean. But I'm afraid you've lost be again on mae-de-santo. [Oh, Wysteria, that's a tragic bit of pronunciation. She tried.jpg.] Is that just the word you use for witch, or are they a particular subclass? Or order? Or a church maybe?

They're priestesses. For a religion, but they're witches too. Not like witches in other places.

[She considers this for a second.]

You're from, what, England, right?

[That's what she thinks, anyway. She speaks all fancy.]

Kalvad. Have you heard of it? It's sometimes called the Summer or Brass Isle - something about the color of the cliffs on the coast, I believe.

[It seems doubtful. She's never heard of any of the places Luana's mentioned and though her grasp on geography is less than flawless, it certainly isn't so dreadful as all that.]

--What kind of witch priestesses are they then? If they're not like witches here.

It's.

I don't know. More religious.

Well. That's fair enough, I suppose.

[Fetching up her pen, she sticks it back behind her ear again. Or in her hair? It certainly seems to disappear completely.]

I'd be interested to meet a witch here, actually. I've read some about them - hedgewitches - but every talented person I've heard of here has been some kind of proper mage. With some kind of education, I mean. Witches seem like a very particular kind of practitioner in Thedas.

I don't think you can use magic if you're not trained back home.

The Orishas would probably just consume you or something. Well. Humans.

[She considers something.]

One day I'll tell you the creation myth that I got told that kind of breaks it down.

Orishas--

[She's just itching to reach for her pen again, but that at least has distracted her. She'll need more than the margins in a gardening book to make notes in for an entire creation myth.]

Oh! Please do! Not here, I don't think. I'd like to be able to take notes, I think. Oh, but that would be lovely. --Have you told anyone else here it yet? Not that it matters really, only I think it's strange that the Inquisition doesn't seem very concerned about any of it. You think they would be. Though I suppose there's lots of things they're rather busy with already.

It's a story I can only tel on the full moon.

There are stupid reasons.

[Squint.]

...Religious reasons?

[Wysteria, don't jump straight to equating stupid reasons with religious ones. It's very gauche.]

Sort of?

[She shrugs.]

If you tell it on a night that isn't the night for it then there's...stuff that might happen? I don't know if it can happen here. You basically are testing fate and this one really annoying spirit.

[OPEN] there is a light that i leave on

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