Chilly Boulder, Saturday Afternoon

[glacial_queen]

So, originally, the plan had been for Karla, Warren, and all three children to show up at Fandom this weekend and do the whole reunion thing. They'd see old friends, show Nyles and Cora the island, and take a ridiculous number of pictures commemorating things that really didn't need to be commemorated. And then, last night, Cora had come into Karla's parlor before bedtime complaining that she didn't feel good. And then had promptly thrown up. Nyles, who had been a footstep behind her, managed to keep down his dinner, but was flushed and feverish.

Long story short, Cora and Nyles had come down with chicken pox. And as much as Karla would have liked to simply Heal them and be done with it, getting chicken pox now meant they wouldn't get worse illnesses later, and so Warren and Karla reluctantly agreed to let them stick it out. And that clearly meant that at least one parent needed to stay with them. But Kayla, being far too young, needed to be kept away. And so, after a spirited game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, (best two out of three, and no, Warren, she didn't cheat), Karla had ended up being the one who got to take Kayla away to the island for the weekend, while Warren and his healing factor took care of two thoroughly miserable children.

On the other hand, now Karla at least had a good excuse to take a million pictures? Like the ones she was taking now, of Kayla smearing vanilla ice cream all over her face as she attempted to spoon it into her mouth. Thank the Darkness for data plans.

Comments

[notmyownage]

"Oh, just a warehouse full of madcap historical artifacts imbued with a previously undiscovered energy that allows them to affect the universe around them in specific ways." She pulled the snow globe out of her toolbelt and looked around for something to demonstrate it on. "That ice cream getting a little too melty there, kid?"

[glacial_queen]

Kayla looked up, interested now, and babbled cheerfully at Claudia. "That's a yes," Karla translated, more because she wanted to see what Claudia could do than because Kayla really needed her ice cream fixed.

[notmyownage]

"Girl after my own heart," Claudia said. She held the snow globe over Kayla's bowl and gently shook it a couple times. Glittering tiny snowflakes sprinkled down from the base, refreezing the melted ice cream and evenly frosting the cup. "Tada!"

[glacial_queen]

Kayla, of course, tried to snatch at the flakes as they fell. "They won't hurt her, will they?" she asked, concerned. "Also, you're going to have to explain how that works, since it looks an awful lot like magic to me."

[notmyownage]

"Just make her fingers cold," Claudia assured her. "And I've got a heat based artifact in here too, just in case." She set the snow globe to one side and started digging into her own ice cream. "Okay, so the entire multiverse is made up of matter and energy. Most science is primarily concerned with the types of matter and energy we commonly interact with on earth, but there's also different types like dark energy that most scientists are only just beginning to understand. Well, people are made up of those energies, too, and we're constantly putting them out into the environment, including into physical objects, usually when we're having really strong emotional reactions. Which is why they make us tired. Once an object is imbued with enough of that energy, it transforms on a subatomic level, and then certain other energy interactions can cause unusual reactions, like this snow globe putting out cold particles and absorbing heat in localized areas. These things can be super powerful and dangerous, so my organization gathers them up so they don't cause global chaos. Or plagues. Or super volcanoes."

[glacial_queen]

"Those were all a lot of words," Karla said, trying to figure out how they worked with what she knew of the world. "With Craft, strong emotions leave traces of the person they came from behind," she said slowly. "Enough that I could, say, touch an item and feel the emotions left behind. If the emotions are powerful enough or the material absorbent enough, I can get more than emotions--I can pick up images or thoughts, for example."

[notmyownage]

"That's probably a similar effect," Claudia said. Because no, she hadn't given up on the whole 'magic is just science we don't understand yet' philosophy. It still followed established, predictable rules, right? So science! "There's a doorknob in our warehouse that absorbed the pain and fear of hundreds of women in a large factory fire, and when you hold it, that pain and fear hits you. Also it burns the shit out of your hand."

[glacial_queen]

Karla nodded. "That's something that you could have happen with Craft," she said. "So what kind of emotion was needed to imbue that globe with cold? Could you make the same thing happen to anything with enough of the right kind of emotion, or does it take something else?"

[notmyownage]

Claudia shook her head. "Every person's energy signature is unique, so so are the ways they affect the objects in their environment. Houdini's wallet creates hallucinations of departed loved ones, but even if Philo Farnsworth were carrying the exact same sort of wallet and experienced the exact same emotions, at best it would create, say, hallucinations of beloved canceled tv shows."

[glacial_queen]

"Who and who again?" Karla asked. "That's an interesting difference. For the Blood, any anger--true, cold rage--could produce the ice in that device. You might get different intensities, depending on how angry or how powerful the witch, but any one of us could do it with the right motivation for anger."

[notmyownage]

"Famous escape artist, inventor of the television," Claudia specified. "A lot of our artifacts are tied to famous historical figures."

[glacial_queen]

"Interesting," Karla said. "Do you think they work because they were famous? Or is it more that the artifacts you find were just saved because they once belonged to someone famous?"

The idea that people could affect items more based on them being more famous brought up a lot of interesting theories about the collective unconscious and its affect on the material plane.

Which she would have loved to explain further, but was sidetracked by yelling, "Kayla, no!" as Kayla decided that the grown ups talking meant it was the perfect time to try to reach for some of Claudia's sundae.

[notmyownage]

"Actually, I was thinking the other way around. That they're famous in part because they have the energy and passion that it takes to create artifacts." Claudia jumped a little at the yell, then laughed. "I do have plenty to share, you know."

[glacial_queen]

Kayla stopped reaching. And sulked. There was no better word for it.

"Yeah, but there's a ton of stuff she's not supposed to eat yet," Karla said. "And she's gonna be buzzing like a bee already with all the vanilla she's had. Let's not add chocolate to that. And besides," she said, looking directly at Kayla. "We know better than you snatch, don't we?"

There were sometimes Arcerian kittens at the estate; they were mentally about the same age as Kayla, but a hundred pounds of teeth and claws heavier. No snatching! was an important rule.

"So, what you're saying is the drive that rockets people to stardom is the same drive that propels their creation of artifacts? It's more who they are and not about who they become?"

[notmyownage]

"Oooo, your mom's got a point, kid." Claudia pointed her spoon at Kayla and made another silly face. "Near as I can figure, yeah. People who are willing to expend that kind of emotional energy are just more likely to be the ones history remembers. I actually got to see an artifact birth once, when a woman saved a baby during an armed robbery. I knew it was going to happen before we even knew what was going to happen. She just had that draw to her."

And Claudia was destined to be a Warehouse caretaker. There might be some "magic" to it all yet, really.

[glacial_queen]

"So, what happens?" Karla asked, intrigued. "How does it happen? It's an all-at-once thing, not an aggregation?"

[notmyownage]

"All at once. The bracelet kind of glowed when it happened. Like when something gets irradiated, you know?" Claudia blinked. "Oh, no, I guess you wouldn't."

[glacial_queen]

"I know a little," Karla said softly, thinking of Edge and Ino's glowing blue eyes. "What did it do?"

[notmyownage]

"Don't know yet. We're not in the business of stealing artifacts from the people who make them. Not unless they're already threatening people."

[glacial_queen]

"You didn't just examine it?" Karla asked. "Sorry, I wasn't sure how obvious these things were. Like if you could just hold them each and feel what they do."

Again, that was often the way Craft worked.

[notmyownage]

"Noooo," Claudia said. "This is science, not magic. We observe the effects in action. We only have a handful of agents, so we're keeping an eye on her and the area in general, but we're not following her around or anything."

[glacial_queen]

"I'm still not entirely sure where that line is, with the things you've been talking about," Karla admitted with a laugh. "Especially since the kinds of Craft that result in similar things are slightly more...explicable?" No, that wasn't quite the right word. "Easier to replicate, maybe," she amended. "Done by any of the Blood with a similar result each time."

Like science!