“I don’t think anyone has harnessed lightning, no...” She was going to continue with a comment about how unpredictable it was when Eilidh reminded her she was an elemental. “And I am not immune to it as you are. I think I might fear what would happen if I stood in the middle of a field with an umbrella during a storm.” Knowing her luck, she would be electrocuted within moments. “I do love to watch it, though. Even when I was little. We all used to press our faces to the window to try and see the sky better.” Even her brother, who took after their father and appreciated it far less. If they just ignored the thunder then they had to admit it was beautiful. “Just a coffee. A normal coffee. Or maybe a cup of tea. The only time I tried espresso I think I must have pulled the most awful face from the taste.” She was sure her mother had wished she had had a camera. ‘Sugar and caffeine should not be sprung on a fae at once.’ Don’t start.
‘Not for Eilidh.’ If Layla heard that she was going pluck her familiar and turn her into a hat like those people she had seen on the television wore. But it was true and the one thing the osprey had heard the most complaints about was essentially how often she voiced the truth at inappropriate moments. It was not inappropriate if she had been asked first. Still, the witch shook her head, unsurprised that her manner of viewing things might surprise others. So many people just labelled things as ‘weird’ and did not bother to put much further thought into them, if any at all. “I’ve been told I sometimes see things a different way to other people -- or maybe I just think about them more. Maybe it is all of the psychic.” She was not going to dwell on how, if that were the case, her brother had literally knocked sense into her. “Although I cannot imagine meeting someone who looked twice my age but was not even a third of it being anything but a little odd.” Her mind was trying to put the scenario together and failing quite spectacularly, really. Of all the things, that was the detail that came across as a little too outlandish. Not the fact the glamour on her bracelet was permanent. Oh no; that just made her eyes saucer-wide. It was probably much easier a thing for Eilidh to do than it was for Layla to hide her scars or change the colour of her hair or eyes, but that was not the point. “I love it how it is, really,” she assured with a bright smile. This was how it had been given to her and she could be hopelessly sentimental about some things. “Thank you.” Not that she would ever stop Eilidh from toying with her own glamours -- they all fascinated her and she was suddenly certain she could find or write a spell that would preserve the grass. She really needed to stop smiling like a fool, though.
“I think I’ll stick with the likes of sandwiches,” Layla remarked, arching an eyebrow at Moonshine’s grumbling about how bugs were boring and that Flicker would never make it past the water’s surface. Sometimes her familiar needed to be quiet. A lot of the time, actually. Now... was what she watched real? Layla spent a moment chewing her sandwich, not fully realising what Eilidh was asking until she got to the end of what she was saying. “No. It’s--Most of it is fiction, acted out by real people like at the theatre, but shown on the television. The show you’re talking about is... animation. Pictures in motion. Like those flick-books where the corner of the page shows a stick-man doing... something, only far more refined...” Now she felt bad. “The news is real?” Which was never going to make anybody feel better.