||event|| Deus ex Machina, but without the box

[rowan_narrators]

Over the next few days, you may notice slightly odd things happening in Jhelbor. Sometimes you think you see wild colors in the corner of your eye, only to turn and see nothing. Sometimes rooms will be clearly illuminated at night without candles or sorcery. And if you're observant, there are a lot of small spiders scuttling around in the corners

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[tenuefarfalla]

Cho reactivated the light when it went out and brought it closer to her work. Her carefully drawn lines and even spacing and perfect columns. Right, time to start. She began filling in the very top row with the given variables, and grew dismayed as she watched the ink bleed out in an uneven line. No one else would notice. No one else would care. Everyone else was used to it, but she saw, and it bothered her. It bothered her every time she sat down to write something. Just like every other time, her mind wandered to a polished wooden box, and the pen inside it

[rowan_gods]

A soft thunk sounded beside her, as if she had accidentally knocked something off her workspace and onto the floor. Even though of course she hadn't; her writing area was just lovely, really, all clear and neat.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho stopped moving and held her breath in the silence. Had she woken Kale up? She wasn't sure how she could have. SHe was being so quiet, and her new guest room was even further from the main room than Ianto's had been. No, there was no more noise. Then what had

[tenuefarfalla]

The best way to test this was to try it again, right? What had she been doing? Cho sat up straighter, took her old pen in her hand, and placed her hand on the paper of her journal. Sitting just like this, and... she'd thought about the pen, without even meaning to.

Cho took a breath, cleared her mind, and (still trying to keep the focus on the work) thought of her laptop, of how much easier all this would be with the proper software. She thought of the softly rounded edges, the glowing silhouette of an apple on the back of the screen, even the power cord snaking out of the machine and into the wall. She thought of her programs and her personal files, and more than all the other thoughts, she wanted it.

[rowan_gods]

A most peculiar form; but it's quite clearly conceived, both form and function, in generality and particulars. Very well.

The computer crashed onto her desk from a few centimeters above it with a dull, clunking clatter. It was already on, the program she had imagined using already open on the screen. The power cord scrolled out behind it and ended inset directly into the stone of Cho's wall. Unsurprisingly enough, it was nevertheless running on battery power.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho jumped and absolutely did not scream when the laptop landed in front of her. Not possible. Just plain old not possible. Except... there it was. Cho placed slightly shaking hands on the keyboard and began inputting data, her fingers flying over the keys, her calculations being faithfully recorded.

Her mouth fell open. It was her computer, exact in every detail. She minimized the program and opened another. Perfect. It was perfect. Her eyes followed the path of the cord to the wall, and she was out of her chair and crawling to the plug almost instantly. "Oh my God." She took hold of it and pulled it from the wall, just barely having time to register the three holes neatly punctured in the stone before the cord began to writhe and hiss. Cho yelped and dropped it, and it continued to wiggle around on the floor until she once again grabbed it and pushed it back into the holes, and then it became just a plug.

What the fuck was going on here? Cho got to her feet quickly, looking around the room as though she actually expected to see

[rowan_gods]

Ah. She understands better now.

And the printer was there, neatly hooked up, already stocked with paper - although it was rougher, Rowan parchment, rather than the bleach-white machine-smooth paper Cho was used to.

After a moment, the original computer cord yanked itself out of it's grooves in the wall and nudged the new cords, wiggling gently. When they didn't move, it slumped slack once again and stuck itself back into its makeshift socket, seeming almost sullen.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho watched the cord, all alone, and... did she feel bad for it? She must have, because now she was thinking of another computer. Not hers. Bigger, boxier, different operating system and setup, and the cord that snaked out of the back of it. Snaked, like a snake, like her cord. Snaked. It shouldn't have to feel alone. Assuming it could feel. Where was the brain? Right. No. Cho closed her eyes and really really thought about a wiggly, twisty little computer friend.

[rowan_gods]

I made all that already it's not interesting.

Not interested.

Nothing happened.

[tenuefarfalla]

Huh. Had it stopped working? Cho thought of another cord, and this time the long, thin line formed in her mind first, and the digital camera it was connected to formed after. Camera always by her computer, it was a logical leap for her mind to make. Snaking cord. That was also important.

Unless it was broken.

Or maybe she just wasn't thinking clearly enough? "Camera," she whispered to herself. "Camera camera camera camera camera. I want my camera. Please. Camera camera camera..." She just kept on going, and if she felt a little foolish, well, there was no one to see her. Better than even odds she was dreaming, anyway.

[rowan_gods]

...but she knows how to do it right now. Why would she make something wrong when she could make it correctly?

The cord appears first, furling out from it's port on Cho's computer like a plastic tendril of some strange plant. And it's just a cord, utterly generic, almost adamantly so, like an archetypal, Platonically perfect form of of an electronics cord.

Camera camera camera. I hear the word. Of all mortals, I expect a sorcerer to be more specific.

The camera that emerges looks exactly like the image in Cho's mind of her own Camera, but makes odd noises on occasion and glitches frequently.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho is a little sad to see the cord showing no interest in playing with the other cord. Dead. Why would she think of it as dead? They can't be dead. They were never alive. She picks up the camera anyway, because this is really extraordinary, and flips through a few pictures before there's a whirring, grinding sound and the screen goes dark. Her camera never did that. Cameras, yes, but not hers. Huh.

She sets it back on the table again, and stares at it, then she looks around at her empty room again. She thinks of the camera, not of a new one, exactly, but of a fixed one. She imagines taking picture, seeing it on the screen, hearing no noise from it at all. She imagines the zoom and the macro features and all the little things that made her camera the best when she bought it. 'This is the right way,' she thinks. 'This is how they're supposed to work.' The computer was perfect, but she'd thought of every detail. The cord shouldn't move, and now she can't get one that does. So maybe... "Digital camera, zoom and flash, functioning

[rowan_gods]

The camera already in her hands hums, feeling warm against her skin. Then it starts to glow, with a rich, smooth yellow glow. And then it is just a camera again.

Fascinating device. It is correct now.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho turns it on again, and flips through the pictures, takes one of her desk. "Incredible," she whispers. This can't be magic. It can't just be magic. Can it? "I can't get something I already have." Right? Best to test that, just to be sure. Cho thought of a pen, of her grandfather's pen, actually. Another Mont Blanc, another polished wooden box. Not the same, but similar. She thought of every specific detail she could remember, which was damn near perfect, and nothing happened.

"Right. All right. What about..." Cho tried to force her mind away from familiar things. Did it have to be something she'd owned before? "A sandwich." Cho could think of food in great detail, and she constructed the perfect BLT in her mind, focusing on details right down to the pattern of the plate, and explaining them quietly to herself as she did.

[rowan_gods]

I am the regnant deity of luminescence. All that exists is illuminated through the glory of my light. I not a scullery maid. Make your own sandwich.

Cho's camera shone bright white and vanished.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho's fingers closed around the empty air. "No. Wait. I'm sorry. Please. Nothing--" What, exactly? She was figuring this out as she went. "Nothing boring. Nothing normal. Please bring it back. Please?" There had been pictures, she'd seen them, before it had vanished. Pictures of people she cared about. Pictures of people she would never see again. She needed something good to trade. Was that even how this worked? She had the distinct impression that she'd offended somehow.

Something strange and massive that she couldn't make herself, something Rowan had never seen before. "A hummer." A hummer for her camera? Most of her knowledge came from movies, but she still knew the basic shape, the camouflage paint jobs and green netting as they went rumbling through the desert half a world away. The interior, bare and basic and-- Cho realized she was attempting to reconstruct a military vehicle in her mind, and quickly backed against the wall, staring at the ceiling. What was wrong with her?