Private Friends of the Flame

"Tinkerer huh. An actual one, instead of a very casual hobbyist like me. It's nice to see science is still alive in this island where everyone doesn't play by the rules," Adelaida said, leaning over to see if there was any more tech on the person. It was always interesting to see the weird things developed by people here.

She sat down at the bonfire too, on the opposite side of Felicity. "So you a casual or a hardcore pyromaniac? For me personally I have to set fires off like once a day to function."

Adelaida looked at her hands. They hadn't been blackened in a long time ever since she digitized her spell-writing process, and she missed the mess of all manual a little. "I'm guessing your affinity for fire's not a magical thing like mine is if you're able to keep it quiet with charcoal... I mean it smells nice and all but it's... charcoal."

She stuck her hand closer to the bonfire, and started poking at it. "In my case, there's this annoying voice in my head that's constantly just telling me to burn things. Every now and then I comply just to shut it up."

Ooh. Adelaida felt a sort of odd kinship with this stranger, mostly because of their shared affinity with fire. Where she heard voices in her head, this person saw things in the flames.

"Well, there's not really much difference on this island... if you're seeing something on here, nine times out of ten it's really there no matter how weird it is."

Something about this girl's seemingly scientific approach to her pyromania - and her seeming knack for gadgetry and electronics -spoke to Adelaida's own sensibilities. They seemed to be similar on more levels than one.

"If you ever wanna give it a shot again, I practice - d - a very scientific school of magic in the past. Very similar to programming code. I've a few books lying around..."

"Ah, nice. I don't have the stuff with me, but that gives me pretext to keep in touch once tonight's done," Adelaida said with a grin, opening up one of her two jackets to regulate her warmth. She also pried out her phone and tossed it over, not really bothering to see if it would be caught, thinking that the soft grass and dirt meant it wouldn't take much damage anyway. "Just leave me your number and I'll set it up, over your choice of setting."

Without paying attention to whether her request was complied with, she began to talk to herself in classic Adelaida fashion. "One of my students - well, currently my only actual in-person student - has these constant voices in her head too. It's why she sought me out to begin with. Thought I'd be able to help her tune it out. We eventually figured out a better way of dealing with it through the magic."

"She doesn't tell me the details, but from what I know, they're kind of noisy. Bit similar to my case. I'm guessing they're not telling her to commit arson though, and we're working on getting the voices to quiet down."

Adelaida took the card, inspecting the grease on it a bit to see if it was actual elbow grease or one of the more esoteric greases that were common in an island as defiant of normalcy as Manta Carlos was. After a few moments, she also leaned over and plucked her phone back, now that there wasn't much need for it.

"I think everyone on this island knows how to deal with crazy on some level. It's why we're here... we're all here because the world outside doesn't have a place for us. We're basically sixteen hundreds Australian outback."