for as long as stars do shine

Response: Right now.

'I'm going to do some experimenting now,' you say. 'Um - do we need permits for this?'

Allan waves off your concern. 'Absolutely not.'

'And... do you have extra rocks?'

He laughs. 'Do we?'

It turns out they have a lot. He disappears into a shed and returns with a bucket of small rocks. 'Come back if you need more - you'd be doing us a favour.'

You eye the bucket warily. 'Should be plenty. Thanks so much.' You wait until Allan turns his back, then lift the bucket with a grunt - a career in street magic and bookkeeping has done nothing for your arm strength - and every step you take swings it into your shins.

Lex winces. 'Do you want me to -' Without waiting for an answer, they take the bucket. 'I thought this would be heavier.'

'I don't use my arms a lot,' you say defensively. 'My legs are fine, though. Because of the stairs.'

'Mine are better,' they say with a snort. 'Come on, let's go.'

--

Lex ignores your offer to take turns with the bucket, and swings it at their side with ease all the way to your front yard.

You beat them to the gate and swing it open. Lex walks up to the porch and sets the bucket down by the door. 'It's still not that heavy.'

'Not where my skills are.' You pluck a stone from the top and make it disappear behind your hands with a flourish. 'Still got this, though.'

They cheer.

--

You open the front door and let Deema know what happened at the garden and that you'll be playing with sigils on the porch. She grumbles a thanks for the warning, and for making sure she would also be able to manage the sigils once they're installed.

'But you'll need a way to clearly distinguish which stones are part of the sigil and which aren't. At the very least, a distinguishing stone to switch out.' She brings Reginald out to watch you, then retreats back indoors. You wave at him, and he falls to his right.

You scratch your chin and mutter to yourself, 'If I were a kid, I'd want to keep the stone that looks very different from all the other ones. Might have to make them all the same colour or something.'

You lay the stones out in a larger sigil on the front porch to keep it on the weaker side, and after holding your hands on top of it at different points, settle on two rows of rocks to make the lines more consistent.

The inconsistencies in sizes still sets you back, until you figure out you can re-balance the sigils by changing the lengths of the spokes around them. Having the spokes set to different lengths goes against everything you've learned about sigils, but you guess this is just part of breaking the rules once you know them.

"sick bitch, play a trick, bitch, on a fake d----"

Response 1: Do you want to go to the garden?

Response 2: How are you feeling?

You wait until you've reached the top of the stairs before steeling yourself and asking, 'How are you feeling?'

Lex stiffens and asks, voice carefully flat, 'What do you mean?'

'You just seemed... um... pretty upset back there.'

You walk the length of a few blocks in silence.

'If you don't want to talk about it -'

'Got a bad feeling about where the next witch meet's going to be.'

'When do we find out?'

'I don't know. Soon.'

You almost ask them to elaborate but one look at their hunched shoulders makes you rethink that decision. Instead, thinking of how they warmed up when helping with your experiment, you say, 'I'm going over to the community garden now. Do you want to come?'

They consider the offer, then say, 'Sure.'

--

The only volunteer you recognise is Allan, and he smiles when he sees you and Lex. 'Brought a friend!' he says.

'Lex, this is Allan. Allan, Lex.' You wait for them say their hellos then say, 'So, I was talking about the heat stones with my mentor, and I think they would make the warmth too concentrated? If we set up a bigger sigil around each garden bed they'll be less intense and distribute heat more evenly. But I don't know about plants.'

'It turns out sigils don't work if weather witches don't complete them,' Lex says with a trace of amusement. 'So you'll need something that can be deconstructed and put back by a weather witch.'

'I like the idea of a big one around the bed we can remove,' Allan says thoughtfully. 'But... it would create a tripping hazard.'

You breathe out a sigh of frustration. That hadn't come up when you were playing with seaweed.

'Can you work it into the path?' Allan asks.

The three of you look down, where little stones have been used to pave walkways around the garden beds. They're wide, reaching almost to the sides of the beds. You remember Deema and her friend's art installation - little paths of stone formed into part circles. This would just be bigger. 'I can.'

Lex squats down and digs their fingers into the path to pull out a stone. 'Obviously don't want to make pulling them out a habit, but...' They toss the stone up and catch it. 'Just one from the outer circle needs to be removed, right?'

'Yeah. As for the rest of it...' You remember Deema's warning about carving sigils in, but does this count if it's removable? (But honestly - you'd rather not ask her how to do the exact thing she's told you to not do.) 'I have to work out if I need to scratch something in, or if I can just put them close together.' You hope the latter works - switching out a stone can still be managed by Deema.

You try to remember how close the stones were at the art installation, but the details escape you. So more experimenting it is.

ALIEN ROMULUS