Isabella slowly ramps up her working speed, and now it includes researching motion-spells (and an embarrassing amount of falling over, but she's working on that, she managed dagger lessons and she can manage this) and writing letters - conventional mail-oriented letters, she is not sending Path on courier errands again anytime soon - to witches who know about nasty magic. (For all her insistence, Metis isn't a specialist, she just believes in a well-rounded education.)

Isabella's grandmother sends her the clan library's Book of Tattoo Spells. A witch from Brazil sends her a curse that matches the parameters she wrote asking about.

"Hey, Kas," says Isabella, climbing up to the attic after fetching the mail and brandishing the latter. "Guess what Niada Ivakesi sent me."

Author: dark_light	Isabella slowly ramps up her working speed, and now it includes researching motion-spells (and an embarrassing amount of falling over, but she's working on that, she managed dagger lessons and she can manage this) and writing letters - conventional mail-oriented letters, she is not sending Path on courier errands again anytime soon - to witches who know about nasty magic. (For all her insistence, Metis isn't a specialist, she just believes in a well-rounded education.) Isabella's grandmother sends her the clan library's Book of Tattoo Spells. A witch from Brazil sends her a curse that matches the parameters she wrote asking about. "Hey, Kas," says Isabella, climbing up to the attic after fetching the mail and brandishing the latter. "Guess what Niada Ivakesi sent me."
Author: truthwright	Kas and Petaal are snuggling, Petaal in tiger shape, Kas in underwear. "Is it fun?" he asks cheerfully. "I bet it's fun."
Author: dark_light	"Are cluster headaches fun?" she asks, peering between the spell and them.
Author: truthwright	"Sure!"
Author: dark_light	"Then this is tons of fun, I suppose," says Isabella. "The curse is designed to just give you cluster headaches as, you know, a stable feature of your life that will strike randomly as though you naturally had them, but I think I can get it under finer control if I edit the verse a little, and of course I can lift the curse any time."
Author: truthwright	Kas beams. "That does sound fun."
Author: dark_light	"She included a printout of the Wikipedia page," says Isabella, "about cluster headaches. Apparently they are widely considered the worst pain that humans experience. If you ask someone who's given birth unanaesthetized and who also gets these, they will prefer the former."
Author: truthwright	Petaal rumbles happily and nuzzles Kas's hair; he laughs and hugs her.
Author: dark_light	"Oookay," laughs Isabella. "And the nickname 'suicide headaches' is apparently not a joke, so, you know, remember that I can take the curse off in under sixty seconds if you want me to, don't go stabbing yourself through the eye or anything because that's harder to fix. ...And if you're going to operate a motor vehicle or anything, let me countercurse you first. I think the bayleaf tattoo will probably keep you from dying on impact if you crash on cloud-pine because you get a headache, but it's witchcraft and it's not as good at cars. And one of the tattoo spells in my book is one that will inform me if something dreadful happens to you so I'd be able to patch you up. But if you're that enthusiastic about it I can do this right now."
Author: truthwright	"Yes I am that enthusiastic about it," Kas says emphatically.
Author: dark_light	Isabella laughs. "Okay then." She gets wine and assorted herbs from the cornucopia that now permanently lives tied around her neck, tucked unobtrusively under the silks. "This is normally intended for casting on less enthusiastic... subjects... so I don't need you to do anything in particular, but you can watch if you want." Rune rune rune rune rune, and all but the middle one are the same one. Lines of herbs spraying out from the line of symbols in all directions and another line trickled across them. This spell doesn't call for a sacrifice, so Isabella doesn't bother to summon an animal; she just clasps her hands, takes a moment to note the cardinal directions to help her get into the habit, and says a poem that is not in English, except for the second-to last line, which she has changed from its original to "Respite given at my whim" - that's the edit she made for finer control, although she's not terribly confident about mixing languages and the spell might go off as originally designed, thus her caution about motor vehicles.
Author: truthwright	Kas watches all this. ...And then he grins. "Fuck," he says, closing his eyes and curling up beside Petaal, "that's nasty. I love you so much."
Author: dark_light	"I want to test the whim-based suppression thing at some point, say when," says Isabella, sitting down and smirking at him. Goodness. He makes faces.
Author: truthwright	He does. Happy, happy faces. "Come snuggle us first," he says, holding out his arms.
Author: dark_light	Isabella is perfectly content to oblige!
Author: truthwright	Cuddlessssssss. Petaal hugs Isabella with her front paws and nuzzles Kas again; Kas tucks his face in against Isabella's neck and hums happily.
Author: dark_light	Path winds up nestled near Petaal's forepaw and between Kas and Isabella's chests, quite comfortably.
Author: truthwright	Good cuddlepile. Best cuddlepile. A few weeks later, Kas disappears again, the same way he did last time. No goodbye, no note, just gone. He takes Petaal's cloud-pine and nothing else.
Author: dark_light	Okay then. Isabella really doesn't want him to crash; when she notices he's gone she assumes the correct mindset of whimsy and banishes the headaches. Isabella has plenty to work on. She doesn't make much headway addressing the alethiometer herself, although she does carry on studying her dictionary to see how far she can get. But she's got an entire new branch of magic to figure out, and if Kas isn't back again by the time she's run out of avenues of research on that she can always find him. She's probably getting more done, actually, since he and Petaal don't keep distracting her by being so ludicrously attractive.
Author: truthwright	As seems to be his habit these days, he sends postcards. The first one comes from Quebec. Augustine thinks you're hilarious. Love you. K&P
Author: dark_light	Isabella adds it to her postcard stack. Hilarious how, she wonders? She can ask when he gets home.
Author: truthwright	It takes about a month before he sends a second one, also from Quebec: You took away my headaches, didn't you? I liked those!
Author: dark_light	Well, he can have them back when they're not cloud-pining all over creation. She's not that sure of the bayleaf tattoo, and the notification tattoo inside his wrist only tells her when to come looking for him, it doesn't ensure she'll get there any faster.
Author: truthwright	Two days after that: Went to Milliways again. I fucking love my alt.
Author: dark_light	Well. Good for them. Isabella's not planning to have sex with any of hers, but to each their own.
Author: truthwright	Another week, another postcard, this one from Montreal. I think it would be fun if you pretended to be all crazy and possessive and knifey ♥
Author: dark_light	Isabella's question there is: what, right now? but he's not there to ask. They can set something up when he's back. Sounds fun, like writing a story.
Author: truthwright	Two mmore days, Quebec City again. I miss you and I miss the alethiometer. When I get back I'm asking it where the other one is.
Author: dark_light	Heh. She'll probably even cast a summon of it for him if he wants. (But maybe he won't, maybe he'll want to go fetch it himself.)
Author: truthwright	And then, three weeks later, he shows up on her doorstep.
Author: dark_light	"Hallo," she says, greeting him with a kiss. "No headaches while you're gone or otherwise possibly flying, I don't want you to crash. You can have them back now, although mind I don't schedule them and they can easily go away for weeks on their own." Whimsy, change of mind, done. "Did you mean pretending to be knifey and so on right then, or with the whole part including the staking of claim at daggerpoint?"
Author: truthwright	"The daggerpoint thing is hot, I'm pretty sure I've made myself clear about that," he says, grinning and hugging her. Petaal, twined around his neck as a small blue-and-white snake, giggles.
Author: dark_light	"Okay," she laughs. "But let's wait a couple days, you only just came back." Hugs hugs hugs.
Author: truthwright	"Mmkay. Snuggles first," he agrees. "And I wanted to ask the alethiometer about its buddy."
Author: dark_light	"Sure thing. It's upstairs, near the bow I will be brandishing in your general direction at some point in the next few weeks," says Isabella, smirking at him.
Author: truthwright	... He kisses her. Delightedly.
Author: dark_light	She is delighted right back. She is so pleased he is home.
Author: truthwright	Incredibly, so is he.
Author: dark_light	Isabella decides that surprises are probably indicated for the little game they are going to play. (Path, uncertain, confirms with Petaal. Surprises: definitely indicated.) When she's caught up on questions she had in mind to ask the alethiometer - but only just barely, before he'd wonder when to expect the next page of them - she catches him wandering around outside the house, and with an elbow to the chest and a quick, practiced draw of her dagger, she's got him pinned to the wall with a blade against his throat. She makes eye contact, and grins the predatory feral grin she sees occasionally on her great-grandmother or some of the other clan sisters. "Mine," she purrs.
Author: truthwright	His eyelashes flutter; he grins. Petaal, as a lynx, rubs her face against his leg and purrs.
Author: dark_light	"Oh good," murmurs Isabella, keeping up the smile but tilting the knife so only the flat touches his throat and dragging it slowly away from his throat. "Sometimes there's disagreement on that point, but you know it's not wise to anger a witch. We're going to have fun." (This script is taken almost verbatim from great-grandmother's inappropriately graphic description of her acquisition of her third husband. Not Isabella's great-grandfather, the one after him.)
Author: truthwright	"You bet we will," says Kas, sounding a little out of breath and extremely pleased about it.
Author: dark_light	Isabella leans in, tucks her face into the join of his neck and his shoulder. "Good," she whispers. "Let's go inside, and have - some - fun." And she seizes the front of his shirt and pulls him after her without looking to see if he's pressed his feet into service yet or not.
Author: truthwright	She only has to drag him for a few steps; he catches up soon enough. Petaal becomes a glass-winged butterfly and follows.
Author: dark_light	Fun is had by all. Isabella acts quite normally after enough fun is had to be tiring. Crazy witches do, after all, tend to settle into fairly ordinary relationships with their captured sweethearts. At some point he'll slip off and then she'll be acting again, hunting him down, making threats, etcetera. For the time being she can get some work done.
Author: truthwright	Petaal stays butterfly-shaped the whole time. They're gone again the next morning. He leaves a Quebec postcard tucked under the alethiometer where he left it in the attic: Catch me if you can! ♥
Author: dark_light	Heh. (She turns his headaches off. It's supposed to be a game, not a potentially deadly obstacle course.) For this purpose, the alethiometer would be less helpful than one of her own divinations. She sugars her room in runes, sits in the middle of the triangle she's marked, and murmurs repetitive verses until visions pour down on her. (She picked a spell that doesn't need his name. She's not sure "Kas" would work for one of those.) He's in a boat on the ocean, not flying, that's interesting. She can control the visions just well enough to tell them how close in she wants to see; when she's zoomed out enough to recognize coastline she zooms in again. She brings her cornucopia so she can stop on the way and make another check, if he changes direction. When she picks up her cloud-pine to go, she hesitates. Full realism would call for leaving Path home. She wouldn't kill someone she loved in front of Path, and in a realistic scenario, this might come to that. But she thinks Kas will forgive this lapse of verisimilitude. Off she flies, Path clinging to the silks on her shoulder and her bow clenched in her hand parallel and unstrung beside the branch of cloud-pine.
Author: truthwright	When she looks for him, he's in a boat on the ocean cuddling Petaal. When she finds him, he is on the same boat in roughly the same place and Petaal is nowhere in sight. It's just Kas, sitting in the sun and nibbling on a chocolate bar.
Author: dark_light	She lands and stalks forward. "Where's Petaal?" she asks, for all the world like they're having a friendly conversation and not pretending that she might kill him. Casually, she plucks her bow away from her branch and unwinds the string from around her wrist. There's a quiver of arrows on her back. But maybe she's just hunting rabbits. In the middle of the sea.
Author: truthwright	"Hiiii," he says lazily. "My sweetie's on an errand. Don't worry, she'll be back soon."
Author: dark_light	"That's good, because you see, I've caught you," she says, gesturing at the boat and the sea around them, "and we're going to go home, and there will be no more of this little stunt. I'm not unreasonable, you know," she drawls. String goes on this end of the bow. Pull tight, string goes on that end of the bow.
Author: truthwright	"You're not," Kas agrees. He tucks his hands behind his head and leans back, unconcerned—flagrantly unconcerned. Taunting her with the absence of fear.
Author: dark_light	"So since that's understood we're heading - straight - back," she pronounces sharply, emphasizing her consonants. Bow is strung. She lets it dangle from her left hand loosely. She reaches up as though to scratch her shoulder - near her arrows. "Aren't we, dear?" (Even for crazy witches, killing an occasionally wayward lover is not the first resort. She's got a cousin whose first husband ran away six times before she killed him in a fit of miserable fury. A bad time for all involved.)
Author: truthwright	His eyes drift shut, not quite all the way. He smiles. "Take a guess," he purrs.
Author: dark_light	Isabella plucks an arrow from the quiver and looks at him with affected dismay. "I thought we were having fun," she murmurs. (Because crazy witches are sad, too, not only furious, because he hasn't been so openly defiant as for shouting to become appropriate.) "Why would you leave? Why would you do that to me when I love you so much?"
Author: truthwright	"I love you too, sweetie," he says. "But you can't keep me."
Author: dark_light	"But you're mine," she hisses, clenching her bow. "Mine." (Everything about this feels unnatural now. The alethiometer was right, she can't imagine ever actually doing this. Pleading with him, maybe, plotting to shoot him if he won't come back with her emphatically not.)
Author: truthwright	"Nope," he pronounces. "Nobody's."
Author: dark_light	"Oh, you'll be nobody's," she snarls, whipping the bow around to nock and aim an arrow. She only half-draws; if she slips and the arrow looses accidentally it might hit him, but not hard enough to kill through the bayleaf protection if she's quick with the healing. "Last chance."
Author: truthwright	"Sweetheart," he sighs rapturously, untucking his hands from behind his head and stretching out his arms. "You say the nicest fucking things." He opens his eyes, smiles, and beckons. "C'mere, gimme a kiss. One for the road."
Author: dark_light	Isabella's not sure whether to drop out of character yet or not. She compromises, relaxing the draw but holding onto both bow and arrow while she leans forward for a hard, bruising, wanting kiss.
Author: truthwright	He wraps his arms around her and kisses back with equal ferocity.
Author: dark_light	Screw character. The bow clatters to the bottom of the boat. If she wants to drop back in she can pull her dagger. Kisses.
Author: truthwright	"You are fucking magnificent," he breathes in her ear. And then kisses her again.
Author: dark_light	"Mine," she keens back. She bites this time. Her hands are bent into near-claws behind his back, clutching him tight.
Author: truthwright	"Love you," he pants into the brief space between kisses. "Love you so much."
Author: dark_light	"I love you," she says insistently in reply.
Author: truthwright	"I wanna live forever with you," he says, melting into her a little.
Author: dark_light	"Good." That could be in or out of character. She's not clear anymore.
Author: truthwright	"If I belonged to anybody," he murmurs, "it'd be you." Kisses. "And if I was gonna die, I'd want you to kill me." More kisses. "And instead you're gonna make me immortal," kisses, "and I'm gonna love you forever."
Author: dark_light	They are clearly out of character. Isabella abandons musing on the dagger and focuses wholly, utterly on the kisses and on Kas and on how glad she is that her brain works in this way and not in that other awful way that would have him dead now instead of loving her.
Author: truthwright	Kas is glad of that, too. Maybe not the same way, or to the same degree, but he is, he is. He loves her so much. What's taking his sweetie so long? Because they all need to be cuddling right now.
Author: dark_light	Path, clinging to Isabella's silks on her back, hoots a soft agreement.
Author: truthwright	A dolphin leaps out of the water with something golden clutched in his beak. The alethiometer drops into the boat. Petaal shifts to a glittering blue-green dragon and lands on Kas's shoulder, then shifts witch and hugs him from behind.
Author: dark_light	"Hey you," mumurs Isabella, grinning. "You missed the show. Pity I didn't take a little longer about chasing you guys."
Author: truthwright	"So, we should fuck now," Kas announces. "Definitely," says Petaal. She steps around Kas, switching sex as she does, and opens her arms to Isabella. "C'mere, you, I want kisses."
Author: dark_light	"Mmmf," agrees Isa into Petaal's mouth.
Author: truthwright	Petaal hums contentedly. Kas holds out his hands to Path.
Author: dark_light	Path hops onto Kas's hands and nuzzles his wrist without the tattoo on it.
Author: truthwright	He cuddles Path against his chest and kisses the top of his head. Yep, that's just about perfect. Especially given where Petaal and Isabella are headed.