Why We Do Not Drink and Cast

The house was originally some sort of warehouse south-southeast of Austin, outside the original flower child impact crater, but it was still handy to the colleges. Therefore, a good number of college students filled the place at any one time. Not all of them were there just to study in their university fields, though.

Marigold and Sānti were passing around the cakes and ale after the annual Lammas not-a-foot-race (with a high that afternoon of 32.5 °C, most of them just moseyed through the park) and a lovely barbecue. The couple were not the most traditional of hippies, nor were they considered traditional teaching mages. Their circle of journeyman mages had settled in to watch the sunset from the roof deck on top of the garage.

There were only two of the Untouched living in the house this summer, and both of them had gone off to visit family during the university break. So with the wards up, the talk had been pretty open by the time they were on their third or fourth round of beers. Ilsa set the tray of green eggs and prosciutto on the table, enjoying the serene onset of twilight.

Then somebody did the most dangerous thing ever known to do around mages, especially when they had been drinking.

They asked a question.

“What I don’t get,” Marigold said, dropping his lean frame into the hammock chair, “is why brooms?”

“Brooms? We don’ need no stinkin’ brooms!” Alexandra said, lifting her feet for the little sweeper robot that lived on the deck. She had built several of the things, all of them assembled without her extra touch as a techmancer, for her advisor to review. But the longer they were active around her, the more they acted like cats, nudging for attention when you were involved, but wandering off when you wanted to interact with them.

“Nah, nah, nah - I mean the whole thing with witches riding brooms,” Marigold paused, sipping his shandy. “Howcome it wasn't something more comfortable, like a chair?”

“Wait, I actually know this one!” Rudi tumbled off the lounger, his enthusiasm overbalancing him, while managing to not spill his drink. “Okay, okay, so - the whole thing ties into that thing with the reason in objects existing, like why it’s easier to get a stronghold blessing to take on a brick building instead of wood-frame.”

“Like to like, but why would there be a difference between a, say, rush-bottom chair and a broom?” Sānti asked.

“Aha!” Rudi crowed, managing one of his odd leaps from being cross-legged on the ground to standing upright, “This gets into the original intent of the object and the symbolism.” Everyone groaned, expecting him to get into one of his weird lectures stemming from his studies in social anthropology. “No, hear me out! So the first piece, which is availability, is kinda covered by both, because if you have enough house to have a chair, most households would have had a broom of some sort, right off.”

“Okay, so they were readily available,” Marigold shrugged, “Why -”

“Sh!” Rudi held up one finger, “Only one part! Secondly, you have to ask, ‘what is the primary purpose of the object?’ and this isn't the end, either.”

He is going to make a great professor, Ilsa thought, as long as his professors don’t run him into the ground. “Primary purpose of a seat of any kind is to support a person,” Ilsa gestured with her shandy glass, to keep her train of thought moving, “but you’re running with the broom, which is very dangerous, your mother is going to yell at you, so anyway - the purpose of a broom is to clean.”

“Yes!” he pointed at her, “and the third part is the symbolism of the purpose.”

Al, who had been watching her sweeper move back and forth to get the crumbs from the cakes, murmured, “Support is symbolized by the solid earth, but cleansing is a function of the wind,” she blinked up at him, “so the chair is always going to be too heavy?”

“Now, there’s some woodcuts in one of my textbooks that has someone riding a bench, like it was a horse, but the brooms in the air are more preler-,” he too a deep breath, tilting his head back, “pre-va-lent, so I’m guessing that if you didn't like flying, you could make your dining set into a string of racers and have a go a Manor Downs.”

“Explain the mortar, then,” Clinton said. The literature major did not mention the old hag’s name, as his grandmother had taught him to be cautious. Ilsa thought he was probably also plastered, if he was addressing Rudi so directly. Clinton did not speak up in groups that often; he seemed content to sit on the sidelines and observe.

“Agh,” Rudi visibly winced at the sudden turn in the conversation, “Yeah, her - so, your granny tell you what she was?” When Clinton shook his head, relief on his face, probably because Rudi had not spoken the name.

Rudi gestured with his pint glass, “That is something that is still up for debate, what with the legends of her fence of bones and all. Someone so powerful that they could be ostentatious about putting functional giant chicken legs on their izba and not care what the neighbors said?”

“You’re saying she was strong enough to make anything bend to her will?” Al tilted her head, thoughtfully, before she sagged sideways after it to settle on the arm of the lounger.

“Could be,” Rudi shrugged, “that’s not my area of study,” but then Clinton spoke up again.

“Babulya wouldn't even guess what she was, but there’s one set of tales that say she wasn't human, just a forest spirit who decided it didn't need to be that accurate when it was pretending to be human.” He blushed under the increased notice Rudi took of him. “I mean, if something is strong enough to tell the laws of physics to take a hike on a regular basis, it kinda makes sense that it might be outside the usual frame of reference. Her appearance could have been so bizarre that the storytellers knew they had to describe something that the listeners could imagine. There might even have been the ‘somebody else’s problem’ effect involved, and she actually only looked humanish to people who couldn't deal with seeing a leszachka.”

Ilsa considered that, and wondered if Rudi’s smile meant he had at long last gotten on the clue bus, finally noticing that Clinton only smiled when the sociology major noticed him.

“So, when are you going to publish you lazy so-and-so?” Marigold grinned at him, and the conversation turned to how to publish grimoires so the university would pay for it.

The next morning, Ilsa woke up at sunrise with a raging hangover, meaning she did not drink enough water before going to bed. As she was not in her bed, this was not a big surprise.

Finding herself out in the middle of a hayfield, however, was.

Sitting up, she was relieved to find she was still dressed, though barefoot, and a forlorn beeping sounded behind her. The little robot vacuum that usually cleaned the upstairs floors trundled forward, nudging her hand.

She picked it up, and after a few moments of squinting at the flashing light sequence, she figured the dust cup must be full. After she emptied it, it chirped happily.

Looking around, Ilsa was not entirely sure if her roommates would be nearby. When she stood up, the robot sang out its ready to sweep sequence and flew out of her hands, swooping under her backside, and lifting her up to just above the treetops surrounding the field. Ilsa squeaked, reflexively grabbed the sides of the robot under her butt, and concentrated on not throwing up.

When she looked down, she saw why the dust cup had been full. There was a crop-circle design centered on where she had apparently landed last night.

“Okay, little one, I hope you know the way home, because I don’t recog-” and the robot shot off towards the hazy clouds north of their position.

Once she got used to the motion, she realized the breeze in her face made her headache clear up, and she did not feel nauseous anymore. Still, it was quite a few moments before she realized she needed to cloak themselves, and another couple of minutes to remember the cantrip.

>>>>

The old farmer was not enjoying the tea his wife insisted on getting him instead of coffee. He loved her, but her incessant babbling on about the health benefits and such as she cleaned up after breakfast made him miss his coffee even more. He took the mug out on the back porch, intending to move out of sight of the window to pour it out.

A movement above the back forty caught his attention, and as he watched, what he thought was a plane resolved into a girl flying across the fields, but when he blinked, she was gone.

He went back into the kitchen, “Betty, where did you say you got this tea from?”