The Kylie Coven System
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AotS Chapter 42.e - Enchanting Play
🕑 Added 2024-01-06 01:53:20 +0000 UTCAcceptance of the Self
Book 1: Attunement of the Hearts
Chapter 42.e - Enchanting Play
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Ellie
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[ - Monday, September 16, 2019 - 8:19 am - Anderson Game Room- ]
Anne’s voice flows through my thoughts. Concentrate on your breathing. In, and out. In, and out.
Our physical body lies quietly on the sofa. No one’s fronting at the moment, we’re all focused on internal activities. My mental body stands calmly inside the library floor of my headspace tower, Anne standing across from me. In my mental, manicured hand is my focus object: a hot pink pen with golden trim and my name written on the side in cursive golden ink.
I do as my teacher bids, concentrating on my imaginary lungs, feeling them swell with air before exhaling it all in a soft woosh with each ‘out’ Anne says. It grounds me more firmly to my mental body, pulling my attention away from the physical world.
I’m five breaths in when she says, That’s it, keep going.
I comply, spreading my arms wide. My task is to shape the energy around me into an enchantment and then compress that enchantment into my focus object, imbuing it with even more of my will and even more power. In this case I’m enchanting the pen to fine tune its ability to slash open a hole in space and time to whatever part of headspace I want. I’ve already got the hole-slashing-open part, now I need to work on the seal-shutting-close part. Anne had shown me what I needed to do just a moment ago.
I’m paying special attention to how I heal up the rifts, close the gateways. The portals need to be self-healing, so that I don’t have to worry about them after I use them. Maddie says this is a no-brainer and has no problem closing portals with a thought, but I had decided to ask Anne for more help because I was worried about leaving gates half open. She had been happy to devise a lesson for me on the spot.
That has evolved into this whole exercise to imbue my pen with healing energy to close the portals behind me.
I concentrate on seeing a rift in spacetime closing up smoothly. I decide the healing energy will bleed out along the edges of the rift when the pen creates it, and after at least one being has entered the portal the healing energy along the rift’s edges will automatically activate to close it up behind the traveler.
I concentrate on maintaining this idea in my head clearly, while also allowing part of me to focus on relaxing my mental body in order to better channel the energy of the spell. I carefully shape the energy around my imaginary body with my will, imagining swirls of golden light all coalescing around the pink pen until it’s blindingly bright.
I twirl the pen around in my fingers in a way I’d never actually learned to do in physical reality and imagine all the enchantment energy, all the golden light, soaking into the pink and gold surface of the pen until it burns hot with power.
With the pen in my right hand I crouch down and focus, holding the pen like a dagger with tip brandished, I carefully wedge the pen’s tip into the space between realities and cut open a rift to my desired destination: drawing a huge circle in the air from between my shins to above my head and back. All the while I have the firm intention in my mind to open a portal to Maddie’s headspace, and as the portal swirls into existence within the confines of my drawn circle, that’s exactly what I see: the inside of Maddie’s lighthouse sanctuary. The image is wrapped in shadowy wisps that swirl clockwise around the vision of my headmate’s world, and those wisps are in turn surrounded with a soft green glow from the healing energy I’d bled into the rift while making it.
I realize a moment later that something’s very different about my love’s place through the portal: it’s covered in a layer of colorfully chaotic stuffed animals, lego and imaginext sets in various states of assembly, and various other toys I recognize from our youth. I can just barely see lulu on the right side of the portal, playing with a stuffed Twilight Twinkle pony.
Ellie, focus! Anne says.
I scramble to keep hold of the spell I’m casting, forcing myself to carefully picture the green healing energy I’d imbued the edges of the portal with glowing brighter.
Now I need to trigger the self-healing part of the rift, and for that I just need something to pass through. As long as the caster isn’t intentionally holding the portal open for more people, it will close after one being or object passes through it.
I summon a small stuffed black bunny into my hand and lob it through the rift, where it passes through soundlessly and sinks softly into a small mound of other plushies.
Once ready, I carefully will the tear in reality to close up behind the bun. The green healing energy begins swirling faster in the opposite direction that the portal is swirling: slowing the portal down and shrinking it at a swift rate. I watch and concentrate as I will the rift to heal, and soon it’s a vanishingly tiny point of blackness and greenness. A moment later the portal vanishes from view entirely.
Great job, now tie it off, Anne instructs.
To finish off the spell, I imagine bands of rainbow light wrapping around the pen, trapping the energy inside it in the pattern I’ve programmed it to have. I imagine the rainbows tightening around the pen until they sink into it completely, sealing the enchantment inside.
I open my eyes to find Anne smiling widely at me. “That was a great first try for an enchantment spell Ellie! Your pen shouldn’t have a problem closing up rifts behind you now.”
I smile at her. “Thanks Anne, that was really wild!” I reply.
“You did a great job coming back from the distraction of Madelaine’s room’s colorful state, directing focus like that’s a very difficult skill to master and you show great promise,” Anne praises.
I rub the back of my imaginary neck. “Aw it’s no big deal, I have to direct my attention like that all the time when people interrupt my daydreaming slash writing planning.”
Anne looks at me with renewed interest. “Is that so?” she asks curiously.
I nod. “Yeah, after the interruption is over I have to scramble to write down what my threads of thought were from before I was interrupted,” I explain. “Keeping hold of the spell was kinda like that. And I knew the energy around me was still working with me, thanks to your lessons, so I didn’t lose hope on the spell and was able to kickstart it back into gear.”
“Excellent work, I’m glad you’re able to learn from my techniques,” Anne says.
I glance back at where the portal had been, hesitating. I realize suddenly that I really want to see lulu playing and happy, like she was in Maddie’s lighthouse just now.
“Can we go join lulu and Maddie?” I ask Anne hopefully.
She blinks in surprise, but her face quickly breaks out into a smile. “I think that’s a wonderful idea, would you be a dear and open us a portal to Maddie’s sanctuary?”
I smile. “Absolutely,” I reply.
I once again crouch down and use a combination of physical and mental probing to determine where to wedge the tip of my pen to get to the correct reality I’m aiming for, then I draw a big circle counterclockwise from my starting point, stretching up to just above my head and then back down to my shins. It feels kind of like pushing the pen into parchment paper, and it leaves a very faint black line in the air where the tip of the pen traced. As soon as I complete the circle the whole thing ignites with wispy tendrils of shadow swirling clockwise while the center of the circle whirls with colors that quickly crystallize into an image of Maddie’s lighthouse.
“Well done Ellie,” Anne says with a smile.
“Ellie!” lulu calls from the other side of the portal, where she’s visible about ten feet away seated atop a mound of My Tiny Equine plushies. “Come and play!” she exclaims, throwing both arms up into the air excitedly.
I’m so touched by the sight I have to stop myself from crying.
“Okay kiddo, I’ll be right there,” I assure her with a teary-eyed smile.
I make a sweeping gesture towards the portal to Anne, and she obligingly steps through the vortex first.
I practically leap through the portal right after she does, and it seals up just fine behind us.
---
Anne dilates time for the four of us while we all have fun in Maddie’s penthouse lighthouse mindspace, which is filled with all manner of plushies and toys from both sides of the binarily gendered toy aisles.
I end up embroiled in a make-believe battle with lulu using imaginext and lego figures and vehicles, me with medieval knights and a castle and her with a few elven archers, a big crane, and some sci fi lego star ships. Maddie ends up joining in with an army of My Tiny Equine figurines and plushies that they conjure up on the spot.
Anne hesitates, watching us for a while and learning the rules of our childhood play, before she too joins in with a set of carved wooden animal figures from her own childhood. There are wolves and deer, but also more exotic creatures like manticores and sea serpents among her collection, and she role plays with them just like the rest of us are doing.
“My crane busts down your castle doors!” lulu states triumphantly, pushing the yellow crane forward and swinging its attached grey boulder into my black-and-red castle wall’s plastic front door. The two flimsy tan plastic doors crash inwards, revealing the small army of armor-clad lego knight figures that I’ve assembled on the other side of the castle wall.
“My magical girl knights attack your crane and try to cut down its boulder!” I reply enthusiastically. I pick up my two favorite figures and have them leap up to try and strike at my younger self’s makeshift battering ram.
“Not so fast! I freeze your knights in place with Twilight Twinkle’s magic!” Maddie exclaims, placing their unicorn figurine on top of my wall and spreading their fingers wide to mime the magic spreading out across my forces.
I let my hands drop to my sides as my knights crash to the ground, unable to move. “Nooo!” I exclaim playfully.
“Never fear, the forces of nature are here!” Anne says delightedly, having her two wolf figurines rush out of the woods behind the castle wall and stand between my aggressors and all my fallen warriors.
“Thanks Anne!” I say.
“My elf archers can talk with the wolves!” lulu says excitedly, pointing at Anne’s figurines. “They explain that we’re just here for a party! The crane was supposed to knock politely but the hedgehog driver got a little too carried away and, uh, busted down the doors.”
Anne narrows her eyes suspiciously. “lulu, is that true?” she asks.
lulu nods her head firmly. “It is!” she exclaims.
Anne looks to Maddie, who’s kneeling on the far side of my castle wall suppressing a smile.
“I was making sure nopony got hurt,” Maddie explains, “lulu here decided to invite you to the party with a wrecking ball and I couldn’t talk her out of it.”
I smile from my position sitting on the hardwood floor behind the castle wall and all our fighters.
“Well if there’s a party in the works, you know I’m there!” I say in a sing-song voice, bringing out a small pink pony figurine from behind me that I’d been saving for just such an occasion.
I set the deep pink maned and tailed pony down atop the castle wall in front of my forces, and declare, “The castle is open for partygoers!”
There are cheers from lulu and Maddie, and Anne smiles joyfully.
We continue pretend-partying for what feels like hours, until Anne eventually calls a halt to our festivities to let us know she needs to leave to get back to her home world in time for her system’s arrival at the first free people’s village along their route.
The four of us end up opening a rift back to our main mental tree house on the island with the brown root bridge to Anne’s mind, and we congregate on the shore in the sand near said bridge.
“I’ll be in touch once we’re settled in at the village,” Anne says confidently.
“Gotcha,” I say, as the reality of our respective situations crashes down upon me once more.
“We’ll be sure to contact you if anything goes more wrong over here,” Maddie adds.
“No more wrong!” lulu declares.
Maddie, Anne, and I all smile down at her for a moment.
“Hopefully you're right," I tell her.
“So long Anne, hope the village visit goes well!” Maddie says with a wave.
“Goodbye Madelaine, Ellie, and lulu,” Anne replies with a small wave of her own. Then she puts a finger to her chin and narrows her eyes. “Say, is there a name you’d like me to use to refer to all of you as a system? Like how we’re all collectively Anialah but we have our individual names too?”
I meet Maddie’s gaze, and a flurry of thoughts passes between us.
What do you think? they ask me and lulu privately.
I think we should pick a system name, but I’m not sure what’s appropriate? Do you two have any thoughts? I inquire.
We could go with the Ellie System, simple and easy and you’re the one fronting at least half the time, Maddie suggests.
I feel heat rising to my cheeks as the salty sea air gusts through my long brown hair. I cross both my arms and hold them at the elbows.
booo! lulu comments, we should go with a cool name, like Anialah!
What is a ‘cool’ name to you, lulu? I ask curiously.
The Wyvern System! or oh! Elliddilu!
I give her a confused look. Wyverns I understand, we had a childhood fascination with them, but the other word parses as gibberish to me for a moment. Elliddilu? I ask.
Yeah! Ellie plus Maddie plus lulu! Although I guess that wouldn’t work if we end up having more people wake up in our head, lulu explains.
Ah, yeah that’s a cute idea lulu but I think we should make sure it’s a name we all feel comfortable identifying with. Elliddilu is a bit too frou-frou for me, Maddie says.
I think making it related to a shared interest of ours makes sense, like the Wyvern System? What about something like the Fairy Tale System? I suggest.
Yeah but none of us really identify with wyverns or fairy tales anymore, those were both deep but relatively early in life obsessions, Maddie points out.
we’ve always liked video games a lot, lulu says, and playing pretend!
Hmm, true, maybe something to do with video games and role-playing? I say.
What about past Dungeons & Dragons characters we’ve played? Maddie asks. Any names in there that stand out to you two?
Oh wow uh, I can’t even remember them all right now, I admit. There’s Serana I guess but that was a one-shot. Obviously our main campaign with Tyler’s group is Raven Nightingale, but that doesn’t feel right to me.
i wasn’t around for any of those games, lulu pouts.
True, I’m sorry lu, Maddie says kindly, are there any video game character names that you like?
i like Lara Croft! lulu says, she’s super strong!
I think what I’m hearing is, we need to take some time and think about this before we can come up with an answer we all like, I say to Maddie, lulu, and Anne, bringing the latter into the conversation.
That’s perfectly reasonable, Anne replies without missing a beat: the conversation between lulu, Maddie, and I had happened in mere seconds.
Yeah, so uh, raincheck on that question: we’ll get back to you later, Maddie adds.
As I said, no problem, take all the time you need! Anne says.
“We will,” I say verbally in headspace on the beach, “take care now Anne, we’ll talk soon!”
We part ways and Anne poof!s herself out to the very end of the root bridge back to her mind of origin. She plunges into the mists as Maddie and I both look down at lulu, who has grabbed hold of one each of our hands in hers.
“More playing now!” she says excitedly.
“Not so fast little princess, we need to get back to the real world now because all our friends are out there and they need us,” I tell her with an apologetic smile.
“Awww,” she complains, but she follows us off the beach and into the viewing tree.
As soon as we enter the tree I feel my connection to our physical body strengthen, and I’m immediately hit with an emergency alert that our bladder is full to bursting.
“Dangit,” Maddie grumbles.
“I’ve got bathroom duty,” I say with a smile, stepping into the front and getting on with our day.
End of
Chapter 42.e - Enchanting Play
