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Eliot straightens up and feels his back crack. Another late night scribbling equations until he nearly passes out from exhaustion. It's probably not a good sign that he's getting used to waking up smelling like scotch and chalk dust, but at least he's managing to make himself presentable for shifts at the Archive. At this point the aggressively nonsensical nature of city records is almost a relief, and he's been surprised to find that he actually enjoys the mundane office work.
He knows somehow that there's probably an easy solution to his magic dilemma, that trying to brute-force the math is about as reasonable as searching an entire beach of keys one at a time for one in particular. But he's never been inclined to do things the easy way. So he's run the numbers on calculating Planck's constant three different ways, determined that no, this earth shouldn't be any larger or smaller than the one he knows, and tried a dozen other approaches without finding what he's looking for.
Eliot switches to water at midnight, slumping on his uncomfortable couch as he examines the charred remains of an oak leaf. Blue's power boost has helped, certainly, as well as attuning to the ley line for his sense of a cardinal direction, but what spells he's tried are still liable to just end explosively rather than doing exactly what they're supposed to. It shouldn't be this much work to transmute materials. He sighs and closes his eyes, letting his mind drift in a free-association haze brought on by low blood sugar, probably. He thinks about turning carbon to gold, and how gilded leaves would make for nice autumnal decor, and how if he were home he'd probably be well into costume planning in his continued efforts to get Fillory to celebrate Halloween. He thinks about gold leaf and Mycenean treasures, lost caches of ancient kings. He thinks about computer code as archaeological strata. A name drifts up from the depths of his subconscious. Schliemann.
He sits up too fast, his head suddenly throbbing, and frowns as he reaches for another leaf from the pile on the coffee table. he holds it in one hand while gesturing with the other, adjusting the movement of his fingers and trying to keep the metaphorical image in his mind. The incantation, a Cycladic dialect pronounced more musically than he'd done before. He doesn't reach as deep, doesn't feel the prickle of static in his hands. There is only a faint shimmer around the leaf in the moment before it grows heavier and changes from red to gleaming gold.
He grins, and sets it down with a soft metallic clink before firing off a series of texts.
He knows somehow that there's probably an easy solution to his magic dilemma, that trying to brute-force the math is about as reasonable as searching an entire beach of keys one at a time for one in particular. But he's never been inclined to do things the easy way. So he's run the numbers on calculating Planck's constant three different ways, determined that no, this earth shouldn't be any larger or smaller than the one he knows, and tried a dozen other approaches without finding what he's looking for.
Eliot switches to water at midnight, slumping on his uncomfortable couch as he examines the charred remains of an oak leaf. Blue's power boost has helped, certainly, as well as attuning to the ley line for his sense of a cardinal direction, but what spells he's tried are still liable to just end explosively rather than doing exactly what they're supposed to. It shouldn't be this much work to transmute materials. He sighs and closes his eyes, letting his mind drift in a free-association haze brought on by low blood sugar, probably. He thinks about turning carbon to gold, and how gilded leaves would make for nice autumnal decor, and how if he were home he'd probably be well into costume planning in his continued efforts to get Fillory to celebrate Halloween. He thinks about gold leaf and Mycenean treasures, lost caches of ancient kings. He thinks about computer code as archaeological strata. A name drifts up from the depths of his subconscious. Schliemann.
He sits up too fast, his head suddenly throbbing, and frowns as he reaches for another leaf from the pile on the coffee table. he holds it in one hand while gesturing with the other, adjusting the movement of his fingers and trying to keep the metaphorical image in his mind. The incantation, a Cycladic dialect pronounced more musically than he'd done before. He doesn't reach as deep, doesn't feel the prickle of static in his hands. There is only a faint shimmer around the leaf in the moment before it grows heavier and changes from red to gleaming gold.
He grins, and sets it down with a soft metallic clink before firing off a series of texts.
