IWUAaDNW: Party 5.6

I spent the rest of the day waiting and watching as things moved around me through my various eyes. I kept some of my attention looking through the eyes of Narcia, Kamella’s pet pixie, as the middle-aged woman practiced. The ritual, it seemed, was some sort of choreography; the instructions were a pretty long incantation, as well steps and poses––which Kamella called sigils––all timed to some rhythm. The whole thing made me think a bit of ballet; it was all wide and graceful movements, and the addition of the rhythm made the whole thing look incredibly taxing for the village elder. For now, Kamella was only focusing on the steps and sigils. Maryll had been co-opted to serve as metronome, and she clapped her hands along to that rhythm.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four…” she was saying.

Finally, Kamella made a mistake that tangled her feet together, and she nearly fell before Maryll caught her.

“Thank you, dear,” the village elder smiled, wiping her brow on her sleeve. “Oof,” she sighed as she settled in a seat of stretched leathers. “That… was harder than I remember it being. I must be getting old.”

[...]

But this ritual was supposed to be very hard, were we really going to leave it up to a beginner? What if Maryll damaged the scroll?

Well, that last part didn’t really matter, because I had memorized the whole choreography already; pixies, it turns out, were pretty good dancers, and my pixies were good sports about me using their bodies to simultaneously practice multiple parts of the ritual at the same time. If need be, I could teach them with illusions.