Mother of Magic

Temple

The invading witches from Seattle did not complete their new Collins Temple. The damage was bad enough. The baseball field that formerly occupied the current site of the Temple was largely gone. Stephanie's passion project was reduced to nothing. All the games. All the community. All the fun. Gone.

"Witches love fancy entrances," Silena commented as they looked in mutual dismay at the Witchly invaders' new and unwanted Temple from the road.

Le put a comforting arm around Stephanie.

All Stephanie could manage at seeing the replacement of her park was a simple "Fuck."

Standing Bear looked equally depressed. "We had so many good moments here. Collins and the Nation, joined by this game and this facility. The food. The people. The teams."

"I loved that thing your mom makes for her concessions stand booth. The taco-like thing. Fry bread and corn and sausage and stuff. Have to work out like mad to earn it." Silena told Standing Bear

Standing Bear smiled. "She can never make enough. It is always gone by the fourth inning."

"That and a micro-brew? Heaven for an assassin chick. So hard not to be fat these days." Silena said.

"You are not fat." Standing Bear assured her evenly.

"Because I work out like mad! Could not get into my old armor to save my life right now. Not that Bob would let me have it."

"I might, in particular circumstances." Bob told her.

"What are those?": Silena asked.

Bob Rhodes waved at the scene before them, taking in the entrance and all the new decorations along the path up to the Temple door. "If you needed it to fight the people that did this."

"Yeah. My armor would be handy against these ... bitches." It was a snarl. "None of them have the Stephanie whammy. It would actually work for what it was meant for."

"We'd have to fix the Namber on the front." Le told her. "I think I could re-coat the armor with it. Better than it was before even. Plate it on. The same way we control the Namber to laminate bones."

"The attitude shown here. The disrespect. Tearing down something they did understand merely because they needed the space for ... this monstrosity. Or worse, see this as a place of community and tearing the baseball park down to make a point. Everything we see here is an external demonstration of one of my points of conflict with those of my old community. Not that these entrances are fancy. I could not care less. My issue outside the sheer disrespect shown by squatting here is that they made this horrific building and its overbearing entrance out of granite and gold. Layered the entranceway with water features and ornate plants that are not native to this area. Sustained only by how much work it will take to keep them alive. Magic and likely the labor of those needing magic favors. Sick child? We'll help. Cost? Come here every day and tend our ridiculous garden. Stephanie and Le saw the campus of the Seattle Temple. Same thing. The only way all that ornamental foliage stayed alive was legions of indentured labor."

"I don't know much about plants other than some training at the Guild for conversations with rich people whose supreme joy in life is talking about non-consequential things but..." Silena pointed at a particular planter near them "... I am pretty sure that one is tropical and would die in the winter here."

"Indeed. In Seattle, the weather is more temperate. Here many of these things would require an extra level of work to survive. Covers and heat applied around the clock in the winter months. To have these here would be best achieved by having this entrance also be a greenhouse. Something they could easily do. They made that Temple in mere days. A greenhouse would be easy. They did not because then they would not have makework for servitude." Ava let out a lungful of frustrated air. "Everything that is wrong with Witches is on display right here. Clearly, Witches can afford anything. You can see it right here. Yet: going to a temple or a church or whatever it is called in any given place is to beg for magical gifts. Begging because the Witches have engineering in the dependency upon them. Disallowed the things that are here in Collins. Things like knowledge. Things like what Le and Silena create every day in their workshop. All set up to force begging and requiring the payment with high prices. Prices that consist of things magic cannot create. Servitude. Sexual favors. Or this garden. Pure labor that could be easily dealt with in other ways. Witches do not need people to be beholden to them. Witches want for nothing. You can see it here: this godawful Temple is proof. Mere days ago this was a baseball field. They took and destroyed to make a point. They built this insane entrance to make a point. It does make a point. It does not make the point they wish it to. No one in Collins, used to the culture of this place, will see this as anything other than the shallow display of power that it is."