[b]Tsane![/b] does the smirk. That little wizard smirk that they do when they're about to draw two units of oceanic mana from nearby nautical features. 

The worst thing about wizards is that sometimes they are, in fact, smarter[1] than you.

[1] 'Smarter', of course, is a smokescreen that wizards like to use as shorthand for expressing better than. Nobody needs to be 'smart' to hide a card up their sleeve. What they [i]do [/i]need is enough bloody-minded devotion to practicing a trick over and over and over until they get it right, along with the kind of personality that makes them read relevant books and a swan's impulse to shoving as much hard work out of line of sight as possible. 

Tsane spent a great many hours analyzing the waters of Vespergift - and the cleaning soaps that Eclair Espoir had used to purify them. And it had mattered [i]exactly [/i]how she had performed this act, and so Tsane had spared no effort in searching. She paid visits to four dozen homes and seven different businesses, taking meticulous analysis of their inventories and missing supplies. She had performed a chrono-analysis ritual to unpick the magic of her dress and broom. She had sacrificed a black rooster at midnight so that she might commune with the ghost of the man who's fat she had rendered down to lye. She considered herself quite clever and undeniably correct, and she was about to demonstrate why that mattered.

The pink fire in her lantern erupted, the glass rattling as it tried to hold in the explosion of aetheric heat and light. 

"Entropic Principle:" she declared, "Unfamiliar Kitchen!"

And things got [i]messy[/i].

The skateboard grooves all shifted and bent; rehearsed tricks to link onto them instead sent maids wiping out against walls. The wooden floorboards splattered and sucked in feet like mud. The windows all flew open to let arctic winter winds in, despite the continued presence of the heating. All of the furniture shifted, nothing was where it was meant to be, nothing was where it made sense for it to be - for anyone except Tsane. This was now her room, and everything was set out exactly according to her preferences. So what if she kept her pots and pans in what you'd expect to be the silverware drawer? If she used her under-sink cabinet for the storage of cups rather than cleaning supplies, how could you - a mere houseguest - say she was wrong?

And if she decided to sit down in her big comfortable chair and use you as a footstool, well - every house had different purposes for their maids, didn't they?

"What is this awful leaf juice?" she said, making a face and flicking the contents of the tea contemptuously onto the floor. "Make yourselves useful and find me some peach schnapps."

[Defy Disaster: 12]