Thimble-Flash: Beating Around the Bush

[lilfluff]

Title: Spider Weed
Fandom/'verse: Original fantasy
Summary: Tira goes to find out why Daven missed classes at Magic School
Prompter: aldersprig's Thimbleful Thursday Prompt for 4 September 2014, Beating Around the Bush
Triggers/Warnings: None spotted
Note: Mostly unedited.
Words: 549 (just barely within the 450-550 word goal)


Tira glanced past Daven at the wooden spider. At least she thought it was wood aside from the metal joints. It wasn't really a spider, almost more like the downy ball of Puffball weeds, but those didn't walk across rooms and up bookshelves.

"Daven, have you been okay, you seemed distracted yesterday and you missed all your classes today."

Dressed in the same robes as yesterday, if the food stains spoke true, Daven lifted his head from the notes he had been scribbling and gave a tired smile. "Never been better, Tee."

"Do I have to hit you again? Don't call me Tee." The spider weed crawled across the top of Daven's bookshelf, while the boy's head started to drift back towards the desk. "If you've never been better why haven't you washed up. Or slept?"

"Huh?" Daven stared up at her his eyes slowly widening. "All of them?"

"Yes, all of them. As well as breakfast and lunch. What were you thinking, at least half of the professors will demand a week of detention. Each."

"I didn't mean to. I just got started and everything worked, maybe not the first time but even then I could see what to do, I just had to finish it before her ideas escaped from my head or someone else did it first!"

"Her? Who her's ideas?"

"You know, the girl who we certainly wouldn't be talking about because she certainly wasn't here last month? That girl. After the fight with the giant I saw one of her runic devices's was damaged and offered my help as runesmith. Tee, none of the things she used were magic."

"Daven, she was flinging lightning bolts. Even if she was using something as silly as a jar of lightning bugs that would still be magic."

"Well the source was some kind of inate magic, which she swore wasn't really magic, but all the stuff she was carrying? You could build and use it in the worst of empty fields. It's all static power and tiny wires and crystals, which she swears aren't being used for arcane purposes, and centuries of applied knowledge. And we got to talking and her people cracked how the brain works and have made devices to mimic them."

"What, thinking devices? Sounds more like they're just confused about possess – " As she spoke the wooden spider weed started crawling up the side of his desk, "Um Daven..."

"No! And it's so complex people miss the simplicity at the core. It's all connections, a net or mesh, a tangel of connections getting stronger and weaker, building patterns as you learn. She said they'd actually made electric calculation devices before – "

"Daven!" Tira thrust a finger at the spider weed. "Just get to the point and tell me what that is!"

"Why didn't you just ask? I'm calling it a Runic Bush. It's one of her people's ideas, called something like a Roe Bottle Bush. Each leg's engraved with runes and splits in three on each end. The smaller fingers likewise, and likewise a dozen times."

"Why would... What... How are you controlling so many legs?"

"I'm not. Half the runes make an arcane learning web. It's moving itself."

"But how do you tell it what to do?"

"I don't. It just does."