busyThis poem came out of the November 1, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by 
ellenmillion and sponsored by janetmiles. It's a sequel to the first poem in the Practical Magics series, "Wipeout."
Jenina detested doing windows.
As a little girl, it had been her job
to clean and re-grease all the oilskins
stretched across the windows of their cottage.
After making a name for herself with diaper charms,
she bought herself a library and a castle and
built the Brown Tower of Practical Magics,
filled with cut crystal windows to let in all the light.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time,
but Jenina quickly discovered that crystal windows
collected cobwebs and dust and bird droppings
and thus needed constant scrubbing.
At first she considered inventing a spell
to clean windows, but she'd have to make
one for each kind of window, which would be
a tedious task to accomplish.
Instead, Jenina invented a spell to create
a Transparent Wall Window anywhere,
which worked just as well on a wooden cottage
as it did on a fancy stone castle.
She hired a bunch of little boys
to make up cute rhymes about the new spell
and sing them on street corners,
in exchange for sweets.
Transparent Wall Window's a marvelous thing!
You put it up once; you can see everything.
It never needs cleaning, or other such care.
Transparent Wall Window -- it works everywhere!
Jenina made quite a bit of money from
people who wanted windows but didn't have any
and from people who had windows
but didn't want to keep cleaning them.
Then a few people put them up without thinking
and one enterprising fellow did so quite deliberately,
and the other wizards discovered that sometimes
the windows broadcast their images into scrying spells.
So Jenina had to call together her troop of boys
and ply them with toffees and pocket pies
to come up with a hasty addition
to the advertisement for her spell.
Transparent Wall Windows will work in both ways,
From inside and outside to bypassing gaze.
Don't put them in bedrooms whatever you do
Or else you will give the whole world quite a view!
November 3 2011, 06:10:02 UTC 9 years ago
You know, I hadn't given any thought to windows in the Lyria storyverse. Hell, I only just realized a half hour ago that the adamantium armor wouldn't need slits; it can be made transparent if necessary. (This I realized after reading a Cracked.com article and putting it together with the fact that adamantium from Lyria's world and crystalanium from the Traipah universe are basically the same substance, and realizing that the Traipah universe has ships with windows made of transparent crystalanium.)
So, windows... I don't know about other folks, but I'm pretty certain Lyria has transparent adamantium windows. Her fortress, Stinovangora Fortress, only *appears* to be made of stone... it's an adamantium structure with a stone facade.
Of course, something that happens in passing in one of the stories will have to be edited, now.
Still, there are ways of using magic to do something similar to the spell in your poem. Force a bit of air to stand still, making a solid but transparent barrier. Kind of like how, in the book "So You Want To Be A Wizard?", Nita and Kit walk on air to get to a portal. I was just thinking, earlier, that a similar process could be used to walk on water. With even Forizano's developing magic skills, using magic to tell the water molecules to hold still while he stepped on them would require only concentration and a little magic.
The spell also resembles a "structural integrity field" spell that residents of Port Insanity use to keep the constant hurricane-force winds from blowing their houses down.
I'm also reminded of the thing some people in developing nations are doing. Their little lean-to shacks don't have windows, and they often don't have electricity (or they turn it off during the day to save money), and so now it's a fad there to cut a hole in the ceiling, fill a plastic pop bottle with water and bleach, and stick the pop bottle in the hole. During the day, this makes for a DIY light-bulb that gives you light without windows or using electricity. (The bleach bit is important; it's so things don't grow in the water.)
One last thing: skylights and other windows in bathrooms have always perplexed me. Skylights may once have been okay ideas, but with airplanes, gliders, and spy satellites, no longer such a good idea in my opinion. Google Earth might accidentally post a picture of you sitting on the pot.
November 3 2011, 06:12:00 UTC 9 years ago
November 3 2011, 11:21:16 UTC 9 years ago
Frosted glass, pebbled glass, clear glass with sheer curtains in a pinch -- that should work, but if I'd ever build a house, you can be sure the bathrooms would have windows. :)
Yes...
November 4 2011, 05:47:41 UTC 9 years ago
November 3 2011, 12:49:25 UTC 9 years ago
Hmm... admantium mirror shades anyone?
November 3 2011, 22:34:29 UTC 9 years ago