Mother of Magic

Time to Go

Ava held up her new lodestone garment. It was not the original vestment now repaired. It was much more of a garment than the vestment had been. "The Mother brought this to me last night. Has leggings and a longer coat-like top to replace the vest. The overcoat has a closure to keep it tight around my body. The Mother added a belt." Ava held up an ornate belt with large, perfect lodestones set all the way around. "With this, I can stay in your world a little bit longer."

Stephanie pulled the hem of the jacket up to look at it more closely. "Wow. These are amazing. Perfect lodestones. Woven into this silver mesh. Like thousands of tiny settings."

Ava explained the new design. "As I understand it, the silver forms an important part of the way the garment transmits and forms a protective Ward-like field around me so that I am not drained. It is not pure Silver but an alloy of some kind. Part of the reason it Is woven like this is because the metal itself is more brittle than pure silver. Has to be to work with the Namber. How you bring magic into a non-magical world, however briefly. The belt goes under the jacket. I close the jacket so that it is in contact with the belt lodestones. That way they add magical power to the silver mesh. They take up part of the brunt of the hostile universe draining the small lodestones. All told this is more than three times the power of the the first garment that got me there and the three of us back to here. Now it will be three there and one back. How many makes no difference to the drain. That is purely about the size of the protective Ward. I might be able to pull it in tighter and save some of the wear on the lodestones, but it sort of does not matter. Once I get back, this outfit will never work again without replacing the lodestones. I know from working on the original garment how long that would take. The Mother's magic that creates this is beyond me still. Maybe someday."

Stephanie caressed the mesh. So smooth it felt more like fabric than a metal and stone network. "I can't even imagine how long it would take to make this by hand."

"Not to mention the time to source these perfect lodestones. Either that or to take imperfect ones and somehow process them to be perfect." Le commented. He paused and decided to mention how it had felt to be connected to the Mother and his theory about it. "I think being incarnate in our world is difficult for The Mother. Maybe that is why she does not appear often. I don't know what a life form created out of pure magic looks like natively, but I doubt it looks like she does when she appears. She may not look like anything. Pure magic organized into life would not need arms and legs and stuff like that. I think she picked that aspect to appear in to make humans more comfortable with her. I felt some of that when she was manipulating the Namber in the Witches. Like she was leaning on us to stay in form. Opinion and a feeling. Not a scientific fact."

Ava folded her fine mesh garment over her arm and laid it on the kitchen countertop of the cabin. "I agree with all of that. It has long been a theory of the Witch community that it is hard for her to appear. To be physical. In her pure form, whatever that is, she is connected to and made from Magic. Her connection to us is via that magic. A strong connection. Strong enough she understands and hates abuse of the gift. We use magic to create physical things, but the prevailing idea is that one reason she is translucent and sort of ephemeral looking is that becoming fully physical might limit her in some way. Maybe make it even harder to return to her pure form. She takes our form but she does not speak. Her connection to our minds is via magic. Images and feelings and intent. Not words."

"That makes sense. It is like the current theories of the Big Bang... how the Universe formed" Le hastened to define his term at Ava's look of incomrehension. "In short, there was a hot start to the Universe. It rapidly expanded and cooled, and as it cooled, matter cascaded out of energy. Matter is cooled energy. Getting it to return to energy is very hard and also releases a lot of energy. Radiation. To be physical, at least when we are talking about baryonic matter, is to cool. Does the same thing occur to magic? To get back to pure magic requires a lot of energy."