strictly professional

[luminous_regnant]

Golden consults her Imperial Minister of Temporal Affairs about when to visit Eights. She asks Jane to check in with Eights to confirm this time - dropping by uninvited even at the best time to do so is not a habit she wishes to cultivate unnecessarily, and might get them off to a bad start.

Presuming acquiescence, she appears in Eights's house at the appointed time.

Comments

[lookingforwardtoit]

Eights has a lot of house. Currently she is in the foyer.

"Oh, huh," she says when Golden teleports in. "Hi."

[luminous_regnant]

"Hi," says Golden. "I believe you've met my minister of temporal affairs. In some form, anyway. I'm Bella, or Golden when there are several of me under discussion."

[lookingforwardtoit]

"I remember Timer," Eights says fondly. "What's his live name again, Nathan? Him. He's fun."

[luminous_regnant]

"Nathan, yes. He's a good friend. You're probably wondering what I'm here about, unless Jane explained of her own accord?"

[lookingforwardtoit]

"I am wondering what you're here about!" she confirms. "It's a mystery. A mysterious mystery."

[luminous_regnant]

"Yes, well. You're aware that the person Nathan is mated to works for me as a mint, right? Do you know what that consists of?"

[lookingforwardtoit]

"Grapevine says it hurts," she offers.

[luminous_regnant]

"Yes. But the Joker can do all the requisite hurting without involving me, because the process generates coins, not direct results. The peal of Bells has recently added a new sort of magic to our supply that also hurts but doesn't come in - battery form, so to speak. And unlike my counterparts I do not have quite the flexibility to ask my mint-assistant to also serve as an enchanting-channel, given how he would interpret the entire business if I did. I'm told that you don't have this issue?"

[lookingforwardtoit]

She blinks twice, decoding this.

"You mean, can I let you hurt me without either minding or wanting to have sex with you? Yeah, sure."

[luminous_regnant]

"What sort of compensation would be in order?" asks Golden. "We are estimating that it will take about a day for us to collectively achieve the results we have in mind - we're going to be enchanting an instance of Saturn."

[lookingforwardtoit]

"Pff," says Eights. "A day? Not a long-term thing? I'll do it for free."

[luminous_regnant]

"Well, it's always possible I'll want something else enchanted, but in that case I expect to get someone else to perform the spell in its entirety. The reason I want to do a day's worth of enchanting at all is because there's a side effect called aura that comes of doing enough of it. The day is a guess; it took the original enchantress Bell a few years of less continuous enchanting to achieve hers. And this is a full day - twenty-four hours. None of us sleep when we don't want to. I don't sleep at all. At any rate. Do you have schedule constraints I should be aware of?"

[lookingforwardtoit]

"Nope."

[luminous_regnant]

"All right. I'll let you know through Jane when we've got architectural plans for Origin Saturn and a date set."

[lookingforwardtoit]

"Sure," she says agreeably.

[luminous_regnant]

"Later, then," says Golden, and she taps her Jane-gem and she's gone.