“That’s fair,” she said, running the tines of her fork across her plate. “Well, in that case, let’s go back to curiosity. I want to understand how the human mind works. Why we believe what we believe…and whether it’spossibleto change someone’s mind, even if it is by force.”
Rawlins sensed that she was speaking honestly, but that she also wasn’t telling him the whole story. “Whose mind do you want to change?” he asked.
She looked up from her dinner, hesitating, as she appeared to weigh whether or not to say what she was thinking. But eventually, she merely shrugged, apparently deciding better of it. “I don’t know, there are loads of people who won’t listen to reason. I mean, isn’t there anyone whose mindyou’dwant to change?”
He could tell that she was redirecting in order to dodge the question, and he was tempted to press her on it…to assure her that whatever she was thinking, it was better to tell him completely. But his mind went in another direction, as one phrase lodged in his mind sharply, drawing his memory back to his phone call with Max’s lawyer. To her insistence that Rawlins would never persuade Greywall, never “change his mind.”
Suddenly, it was like a chasm of possibility opened before him. The seeds of a plan began sprouting, even as he recognized how dangerous and possibly foolish it would be. But he could not yet speak it aloud, so he muttered simply, “I don’t know…it’s an interesting question.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Ellsbeth said, setting down her fork as she leaned forward. “I’d like to start reading tonight. I’m sure the material is dense, and it might be helpful to have you to bounce my thoughts off.” She paused. Rawlins was staring into the distance as his thoughts wandered, and she apparently took his silence for a retreat, fearing she had overstepped. “Sorry, I don’t mean to impose. You can let me know when you’d like me to leave.”
He looked back at her and smiled in an attempt to reassure her. “No, I don’t want you to leave.” He cupped her face gently, leaned in, and kissed her softly. “Not tonight.”
But it was a single word that came to Rawlins’s mind when he contemplated the question of when he actually wanted her to leave. Unbidden and insane though it might be, it was the same word that he had thrilled at getting her to say earlier.
Never.
From:Storer.Ellsbeth
To:Rawlins.T.M.
Subject:Hello again
Perhaps you’re just not very experienced when it comes to the world of arcane, brand-new, untested writ magic BDSM, but usually after you fuck someone like that, it’s considered polite to message her the next day. Otherwise she’ll just be left alone in her apartment playing the previous night in her head over and over and over again with nothing new to distract her.
x
From:Rawlins.T.M.
To:Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject: Re:Hello again
As the older and supposedly wiser one here, it’s humbling to learn the etiquette, but I suppose I’ll have to benefit from your extensive writ magic BDSM experience. Apologies for my faux pas. It arises, I assure you, from no shortage of thinking about you.
It was delightful to dine together, though the experience left me with more questions than answers. Was it really as delicious as I remember? How did I live so long, oblivious to such a hunger in myself? Can a single person be exactly what I’ve been starving for? What other flavors and dishes might we discover? How could I be so deeply sated, yet the next day, so consumed with wondering: How long until I can feast on you again?
From:Storer.Ellsbeth
To:Rawlins.T.M.
Subject: Re: Re:Hello again
I would offer to cook you dinner (that seems like the charmingly tit-for-tat thing one is supposed to do in this situation), but the best I would be able to offer you is a depressing pasta, boiled on a hot plate and strained in a shared kitchen sink (the miseries of graduate student apartment life). Before you get too big an ego, it’s entirely possible my enjoyment of last night was partly because of how long it’s been since I’ve had a genuinely good meal cooked in a real kitchen. Is it too risky to think maybe we can go out to dinner next weekend? There’s a small Ethiopian place far enough down the hill and pricey enough that students rarely make the trek unless their parents are paying. Abyssinia, do you know it? Maybe we can ask for one of the quiet tables in their upstairs section, and if anyone affiliated with Newlyn walks in, immediately make it seem like you take all of your advisees out to a mid-semester meal to discuss their progress. I’ve only been there once before, but it seems like the type of food one wants to eat now that the weather has begun to turn. Food that warms one from the inside out.
On matters only slightly less important than food, I’ve been going through my notes on Mandressi and had a few thoughts I wanted to run past you. One of the more interesting patterns I’ve picked up on is that the language used to describe obscuration actually reads less like writ magic and more like valuation. Of course, valuation went out of modern use when the calculator was invented (no need to cast a full ritual to count how many coins you’ve amassed in your vaults or whatever when a computer is far more reliable for keeping track of that), but any undergraduate with a basic grasp of arcane mechanicals can manage a valuation ritual. Am I entirely misguided for seeing the way the language is similar? It’s almost as if Mandressi is suggesting (consciously or not) that in order to accomplish an obscuration ritual, you need to “count” your target’s brain first. Of course, it’s not a literal instruction (a valuation ritual on any person’s brain willalways yield the same result: one. One brain. Well done, definitely worth the ingots and the setup time), but I feel like there might be somethingbehindwhat he’s implying.
That in order to achieve obscuration successfully, you need to be able to measure up your target uniquely, as an individual, something to account for the complexity of the human brain and the infinite ways individuals uniquely see the world. A numerical valuation ritual is useless, but maybe there’s another type of ritual in the same field that will allow someone to understand something about someone else’s mind. From there, one could begin to work a writ magic ritual, but I think without that first step—some sort of deeper mechanical understanding of the target, whether it’s using the vocabulary of valuation or not—any attempts at obscuration would slip away like rain off plastic. We need to find the “stickiness” of the target first, so to speak.
Perhaps I’m rambling. I admit, I haven’t slept as well as I normally do, distracted by thoughts of Mandressi and my professor’s fingers insideme.
From:Rawlins.T.M.
To:Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject: Re: Re: Re:Hello again
The mind is a curious thing. The two thoughts that distract you, Mandressi and my fingers, are now linked in your brain. Perhaps someday you’ll be lecturing at a prestigious conference when an attendee asks you a question about the Compendium, and you will instantly make the association. I hope that I am in the audience so I can be the only one present to recognize your brief delay in response for what it is; I hope that your eyes find mine, as you fumble for your words while being mentally transported back to the bed in my guest room, to memories of trembling anticipation and release.
