there's only so much I can turn into

[mswoods]

The thirteen-year-old girl is coming back home from school, on foot.

There's a cat following her. It's been following her for a while, but from a distance.

She decides to be friendly. She stops and turns around to look at it. It stops as well. "Mow?"

The girl's face- changes. It's still a human face, mostly, but now there's something different about it. More feline than anything. Whiskers grow, her pupils dilate and her eyes get a bit rounder, her bones move under her skin, their shape changing a bit. "Mew," she says, vocal apparatus having changed a bit, apparently.

The cat blinks and approaches cautiously. "Moow...?"

She doesn't giggle, but she feels like giggling. She's talking to a kitty! Well, kinda talking to a kitty, it's not like she can understand kitty-speech. But still! "Maw!"

Comments

[taste_tester]

The wind changes. The kitty suddenly runs for no apparent reason.

[mswoods]

"Mrrrow?" she calls out, blinking, then her face shifts again and she pouts. "I didn't want to talk to you anyway!" she says to no one in particular.

[taste_tester]

"Oh, that's not your fault," says a voice.

[mswoods]

She eeps. "What?" she asks, turning to look at wherever the voice came from. She was sure there was no one around, she checked! She'd have never shifted if there had been.

[taste_tester]

"Cats don't like me. Sorry about that."

[mswoods]

"What did you see?" she asks immediately.

[taste_tester]

The stranger's hand flashes out, too fast to see, and brushes across Sadde's cheek, barely enough to feel, and then she duplicates the cat morph. "Just this."

[mswoods]

She blinks. "You can do it too?"

[taste_tester]

"Mm-hm."

[mswoods]

"How? Well I guess that's a stupid question since I don't know how I can do it either except, maybe you do? Since you're older, maybe you've had it for longer, have you had it for longer? How long have you had it? Do you know how you can do it?"

[taste_tester]

"I can do it because you can. Other places, I get different stuff." She puts her face back.

[mswoods]

"What do you mean, because I-" She pauses, then checks that she can still do it. She can. Good. She squints at her. "You copied it from me? And there are other people who can do other things? How?"

[taste_tester]

"I did. There are. Magic. Some people are born with it, some... grow into it."

[mswoods]

"You can grow into magic? How? How come I've never met anyone else with magic? And how does magic work? Where does it come from? Why do some people have it and some don't? How come everyone thinks magic is pretend?" There isn't a particularly sensible order to the questions.

[taste_tester]

"Oh, it's very rare, it's not odd that I'm the first one you've met if it doesn't happen to run in your family. The science of it is all very unscientific, unfortunately."

[mswoods]

"How can science be unscientific? Either it's science and then it's scientific or it's not scientific and then it's not science," she says reasonably.

[taste_tester]

"Well, the sample sizes are at most two, and that's with me personally helping, you see, the exact same witchcraft never turns up twice. And I'm more interested in the practicals... for instance, did you know most witches can get their magic to do more things if they work at it?"

[mswoods]

"Witches," she tastes the word, and giggles. "No, I didn't know most witches can get their magic to do more things if they work at it, since I never knew there was any such thing as most witches that didn't include me and no one else."

[taste_tester]

"Of course. Have you gotten yours to do anything you didn't start with?"

[mswoods]

"That depends on what you mean by 'start with,'" she says, then looks at the sky. "I should probably go home, it's getting late, also you're a complete stranger and I shouldn't be talking to complete strangers about magic at night. But I wanna talk more about magic and you’re the first person to know anything about it.”

[taste_tester]

"That's what I'm here for, talking about magic. When would be convenient?"

[mswoods]

"I'd have to ask mum. And she would actually consider it. Actually, if you come with and show her that you can do the same thing I can it might help, she's been looking into this stuff like crazy for years, you wouldn't believe how many whackos she's met. Anyway, yeah, unless you wanna kidnap me in which case I'm gonna run a lot and scream, I could show you to mum."

[taste_tester]

"I don't usually kidnap people, so we should be fine. Lead the way."

[mswoods]

She does!

It's small. Really small. As she opens the door to the apartment she calls out, "Mum! I'm home! There's someone I want you to meet!"

"New frie- oh, hello," Laura says, clearly surprised by the fact that 'someone' turned out to be an adult. The fact that she's absurdly stunning and very very pale doesn't help.

"Mum, mum, she can do the same thing I can! Look, show her!" That last part looking at Addy.

[taste_tester]

Addy shifts skin tone down to something more human and less sparkly-should-the-sun-come-out, adopts a new hair color (brown), and turns her eyes blue.