[Fic] "Theory and Practice" -- Enchanted Forest Chronicles
wistfulmemory said: If you don't mind another prompt, I'd like one of Morwen's cats and Telemain, Fundamental Particles, and the cat's thoughts on Telemain's work. (1,350 words)
Note: I am six months late with this (mea culpa), but it's done at last! (Also, this makes my second completed line on my Genprompt Bingo card. Small victories!)
[ETA: the AO3 crosspost is now up!]
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Theory and Practice
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Since Mendanbar's imprisonment and the stalled war with the wizards, Telemain had taken to popping over to Morwen's house every week or two -- nominally to borrow her library, trade spell ingredients, or ask her opinion on his latest experiments, but in reality more to cadge cider and biscuits, complain about wizards, and exchange gossip about their respective neighbors. Morwen didn't much mind. It was tricky to maintain enough of a forbidding reputation to keep idiots from knocking on her door at all hours without turning into a complete recluse, but friendships with other magic-workers neatly avoided that issue. Besides, Telemain made a mean rhubarb pie.
Today, though, he was actually using her library, looking up obscure theories as part of his ongoing effort to analyze and reproduce Mendanbar's elegant transportation spell. Morwen had helped him find his chosen books and suggested a handful of others, after which she'd left him to it and gone to tend her garden.
She was muttering irritably at the apple tree's new trick of whipping its branches out of reach of her pruning shears, when Fiddlesticks and Miss Eliza Tudor trotted around the side of her house, tails held at a disgruntled angle.
"Morwen! Aunt Ophelia and the magician are arguing in the library. They woke me up from my nap!" Fiddlesticks said plaintively.
"You should do something about it if you don't want blood on the carpet," Miss Eliza added, before lying down beside the violently pink rosebush Morwen was attempting to trellis up the back wall, and washing her left shoulder with an offended air.
Morwen sighed and set her shears into her gardening basket. The apple tree waved its branches smugly. "Don't think you've won," she told it, and then walked through the back door into her kitchen.
She closed the door, concentrated for a moment, and opened it onto her library. In the reading nook beside the sunny window, Telemain sat in her second-best armchair with a foot-high stack of books beside him on the end table. Aunt Ophelia, a rather spiky tortoiseshell cat, had pinned a sheaf of notepaper under her body and was making herself heavy in his lap. Both were speaking at high volume.
"--don't know where you learned algebra, but no matter how many variables you cram into an equation you still need to carry the one when you multiply factors, unless--"
"--keep telling you I can't understand a word you're saying, and if you'd just let me up for a moment, I could--"
Morwen stuck two fingers into her mouth and whistled as loud as she could. Both Telemain and Aunt Ophelia fell silent and stared at her in obvious annoyance.
"Thank you," Morwen said. "Now, what has you so worked up that you drove Fiddlesticks and Miss Eliza outside to escape your company? Aunt Ophelia first," she added when both cat and man began to speak simultaneously.
Aunt Ophelia licked one front paw for a second, to show she wasn't following orders. Then she settled more firmly into Telemain's lap and said, "He's acting like an overexcited kitten. I'm making sure he doesn't explode your kitchen because he won't double-check the math on his latest attempt to copy the king's transportation spell. But it's hard to convince him of his errors when all he hears are yowls and hisses."
"I see. Telemain?"
"I am trying to run a small practical experiment to test the validity of my latest theory about Mendanbar's transportation spell, but your cat refuses to move and I have no idea what her objection is!" Telemain said, stabbing the air with his pen by way of punctuation. "She may be surprisingly well-versed in magical theory, but do you know how frustrating it is to attempt an in-depth discussion of experimental design through a communication barrier as fundamental as human to feline? We've worked out a rough yes-or-no code, but that's far too slow to be of practical use and since she won't let me up or give back my notepaper, I haven't been able to make a letter board to allow her to spell out her thoughts more precisely."
"I see," Morwen repeated. "Well, I can't solve the underlying translation problem, but I can tell you her current objection. She found an error in your math that will lead to an explosion."
"Oh." Telemain looked down at Aunt Ophelia. "Why didn't you simply point out the relevant equation instead of stealing all my papers? That would have been far more efficient."
"I did point it out. You ignored me," Aunt Ophelia said. "So I figured I'd try a more direct approach. If you keep on ignoring me, we can move on to teeth and claws -- mine aren't as big as Kazul's, but they're just as sharp." She yawned, then flexed her front paws.
"She pointed it out but you ignored her," Morwen translated.
"I did no such--"
"You most likely did," Morwen said. "We both know how you get when you're caught up in a theory. It sounds to me like you need a reliable way for Aunt Ophelia to get your attention."
Telemain waved his pen dismissively. "Merely another stopgap. Surely in all the years witches have associated with familiars someone has developed a universal feline translation spell?"
Morwen shrugged. "There have been various efforts in that direction, but nobody ever completes them."
Telemain frowned. "Technical difficulties? I can't think why, when there are plenty of animals who speak human languages on their own and your cats certainly aren't any less magical than random squirrels or rabbits."
"We're far more magical than squirrels," said Aunt Ophelia. "Even Fiddlesticks."
"It's more that any witches who have familiars themselves are inevitably reminded that cats see no reason to respect human ideas of manners. I would drown in pointless arguments if my guests could understand everything the cats say about them," Morwen said. "But if you don't mind being casually insulted, I can dig up some articles about the theoretical foundation of a universal translation spell."
"I'd volunteer to test it," Aunt Ophelia said. "I'd enjoy knowing that you understand when I yell at you. Also no cat has ever published an article on magic theory. I wouldn't mind being the first, even if I have to have you as a co-author."
"Aunt Ophelia is willing to be your test subject," Morwen translated, leaving the rest for the two of them to work out on their own time.
"Morwen, that's wonderful!" Telemain said. "Obviously any abandoned theories will need refinement, to say nothing of the tweaks necessary to move a translation spell from theory to practice, but I'm sure I have something useful in my notes about the speech-to-magic translation matrixes necessary for enchanted windows and mirrors that might-- ouch!"
Aunt Ophelia withdrew her claws from his thigh. "Math first. Then you can start a new line of research."
"Translation, please?" Telemain asked, still wincing.
"She says you should check your math and finish your current experiment before starting a new line of research, which sounds perfectly reasonable to me," Morwen said. She closed the library door and walked toward the reading nook. "What is your latest theory, anyway?"
"A bunch of nonsense about wave-particle duality and the indeterminacy of the king's position relative to the Forest as a whole since they're linked by the sword," Aunt Ophelia said. "He's completely wrong, but the test should be harmless once he fixes his math."
"I may not be able to understand your words, but I can hear a negative tone perfectly well," Telemain said to Aunt Ophelia. "Morwen, pay no attention to whatever she just told you. It occurred to me last night when I was rereading my old notes on windows and mirrors that the behavior of light might in some ways be analogous to--"
As he fell deeper into his monologue, his free hand began to stroke absently along Aunt Ophelia's back, coaxing out a grudging purr.
Morwen settled down in her best armchair and listened to her friend explain his research, with occasional clarifications and disparagements from her cat.
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End of Fic
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And now I can start serious work on my next overdue project: namely, last year's Fandom Trumps Hate fic. *headdesk* At least I have an outline?
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