[Closed]

[oldtonew]

Who: Carlisle and Kettara 
What: Two nerds discuss magic. 
Where: The lake
When: Current
Warnings: Fantasy racism?

The lake feels more like home to Kettara than anywhere else in the city. The cold she can accept, adapt to. It's been said her mother's people once lived in a very cold place, atop an active volcano so that despite the snow and ice, the soil was fertile and produced strong crops year after year. They were a proud people, those Frostwolves of old. She tries to emulate them now, as best she can. The layers she wears over her armor might not be furs, but they keep her warm. She had adapted. 

She hopes her mother would have approved. Of this, at least, if not her other choices. 

Kettara kneels in the snow, hands pressed flat to the sand. She has taken a student. The ancestors are surely judging her for this, taking a human apprentice. Perhaps she has been foolish. Perhaps it was the honorable choice. She doesn't know. The spirits have been quiet, refusing to answer when she calls for them. But there are other ways. She closes her eyes and exhales, feeling for life below the frostline. The water has frozen over but life remains. Little fish and the water itself, listening, and ever curious as she reaches out. 

Out there in the dark, something sighs. Then, gently, it reaches out through its own power to touch hers. Playful, almost. Kettara laughs. For a moment she simply enjoys the feeling of connecting to another elemental spirit, even if she cannot hear the voice. But then she senses something else entirely. A barrier, gently rebuffing her power. 

How strange. 

She stands with a frown, sniffing. It's not in the water.  She would have felt that. But it's nearby. She can sense roots stretching down, taking nutrients from the earth. 

There's a small house not far away, with a garden. And around the garden --

How strange. 

Kettara approaches the barrier curiously, kneeling down for a better look. She's never seen anything quite like it before. 

Curiously, she presses her hands flat against it. "What are you?"

Comments

[tongueamok]

As she attempts to touch it, Kettara's hands pass right through, accompanied by a tingling sensation akin to a sleeping limb. It's nothing shocking or too alarming -- not nearly as alarming as someone's hands coming through the barrier to begin with. Thankfully, Carlisle has had time to get used to people just coming up and attempting to see how sturdy his magical dome is, placing a hand -- or their face, or their rear end in one case -- upon it to see if it would hold their weight.

It doesn't, of course. It's not made for that. Though not nearly as large as the one around his garden in the park, the one here at his house has all the same qualities, right down to the semi-opaque nature of the dome's curved wall -- all the plants and the house itself appear from the outside as only vague shapes, and within the dome, all beyond it are but shadowy silhouettes, unfortunately indistinguishable from one another. The shape he spies is too short to be Glacius. Perhaps it is Poison, he thinks, coming to investigate his latest work -- she is quite good at sniffing him out, somehow. Maybe it's a neighbor, or an obnoxious elf. The voice he hears tells him his visitor is none of those, so he heads over to give an explanation. He is rather proud of his ingenuity, after all.

"This," he says as he steps through the translucent, magical wall, "is an abjura..."

However prepared Carlisle may have thought himself, he couldn't have been ready to find himself face-to-face with an Orc, his expression immediately shifting somewhere between alarm and awe. He's not sure if he should be honored or afraid.

"R- ration. Abjuration wa- what are- I'm sorry, I." A nervous smile curls one corner of his mouth. "I've never met one of your, um. Kind? Any of the bestial peoples, actually."

[oldtonew]

Kettara steps back, rising to her full height. A human has come out of the barrier, likely the mage who created the thing in the first place. Magic isn't precisely rare in Hadriel, but almost no one does it in a form that Kettara recognizes. At the very least, none of these people follow the shamanistic path.

It might be the first time that someone has recognized what she is, though.

Kettara puts her ears back. Her voice is incredulous. "What did you call me?"

[tongueamok]

"Er."

Carlisle realizes his faux pas immediately, seemingly shrinking where he stands as his smile falters. Right, what might be a polite colloquialism in his world could be terribly rude in another, if her expression is anything to go by, and he'd rather not get on the bad side of someone with fangs.

"A Troll?" he guesses. "Ogre? Orc. No, Halfen? Is guessing rude? It's rude, isn't it? I apologize, I just- I have only heard tales secondhand of your people, and I- I never thought I'd actually meet one. And here, of all places."

[oldtonew]

At least he knows what an ogre is, which might be a first for Hadriel. Kettara huffs, putting her hands on her hips. "Orc. I am Kettara, shaman of the Earthen Ring."

And he looks human. More or less.

She narrows her eyes, gesturing at the barrier.

"You made this thing?"

[tongueamok]

Kettara, shaman, Orc, he files away mentally, committing those details to memory. His uncles had met a clan of Orcs once, but in his world, they live so far away that they might as well have been on another planet when it comes to a homebody like Carlisle. To hear she is a shaman is even more of a surprise, given what he knows about the Orcs of his world. Is such a position as rare in others? Is she considered nobility among her people? Is it rude to ask about that, too?

He can practice his own manners once he's done answering questions of his own. "Oh, ah, yes! Yes, yes I did. An abjuration ward to protect my plants. A- a bit like a greenhouse, really. But magical. You can step inside if you'd like."

And he does so, as though to demonstrate, his form passing right through the translucent barrier with ease. "It won't hurt you, I assure you."

[oldtonew]

She wonders briefly if he means to trick her, or impose a trap, but dismisses the worry: regardless of outcome, she will not show fear before a human. She takes a breath, straightens her shoulders, and steps through.

It does not hurt her.

"....curious. Is this magic common to your world?"