"That's why the stars twinkle, you know." Jasper said, glancing up at the stars, then looking back down at the brass disk he was pouring starlight into.
"What?" Elise asked, blinking at him and then following his gaze upwards.
"Well, think about it." Jasper said reasonably, "there's all kinds of luminologists out there. So people are always calling on *some* star or another, so it makes sense that as the stars are called on, the power flow from them to us makes them dim and brighten, right?"
Elise blinked, and Daffodil, curled up into a ball at her side, snorted.
"Is that really how it works?"
Jasper glanced over at her, then snickered, grinning. "No, I'm fucking with you. It's something to do with the air. Master Lissand wrote a treatise on it ages ago, about how there's no air once you get up high enough, and because there *is* air here, then the stars flicker and twinkle because of the way the air moves."
Elise reached out and kicked him gently, careful not to mess up the spell-binding. "Jackass."