Paracosm
I love winter. The cold in the air makes everything feel crisp, clean, and fresh. It's like the whole world is being put through a gentle blessing, chasing off old knots of tangled intent. We're getting another chance to do it all right.
I hate winter. Even at this hour, the carriers are wing to wing cramped and smell vaguely of last night's overindulgences and blackwater fumes. If I wanted to smell that, I'd go to the office holiday party. At least my kit will be dry at work.
Paracosm
Progress at work. There's something thrilling -- and quietly terrifying -- in watching spells cast themselves, lines of power unfolding fractally from their housings. There's no intent to it, no intellect. I tell this crystal "draw this line relative to yourself, then that. Put this glyph here. Fetch that reagent from this shelf, deposit it on that space." And then after a thousand such small instructions, the scrying window opens, without me evoking it.
Paracosm
And yet, it feels at every turn as if there were an unseen intelligence following my will. At times it seems benign, cleverly interpreting my words when I unexpectedly say the right thing the first time. At times it seems dull-witted and slow, when I fail to explain myself clearly enough for it to make sense of my instruction. And yet at every stage, I'm the only one casting any spells, second-talon and via proxies. If the spell fizzles, it's my poor commands, not "the ritual's."