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]

"Why not? You can move bones."

[mswoods]

"I... I don't mean it's impossible to do it, I think if I tried really hard I could, but I think it'll hurt a lot."

She closes her eyes again, and after a few seconds two little points start poking from under the skin of those depressions, as if tiny little horns were trying to grow from there.

[taste_tester]

"Can you grow bone without adding any nerve to it, maybe?"

[mswoods]

She ponders the question. "Ye-es? I think." Pause. "I wonder if I could maybe remove the nerves from the skin and muscle, too? So it won't hurt?"

She tries that. But that is not a way a human could be. With the two little points still pushing against the skin, a faint shifting can be seen - by Addy the vampire, not by any humans, it's too faint. She winces and shudders as she does that, but doesn't actually say "Ow!" It just... takes quite a while.

Dinner smells can be smelled!

[taste_tester]

Addy is infinitely more interested in Sadde than in dinner.

[mswoods]

Eventually the shifting of nerves stops. Sadde swallows, then starts pushing the horns against the skin again. She shapes them to be a bit sharper, so they'll cut skin more easily, and eventually two spots of blood appear, and expand, ripping open with a very unappealing sound (to humans) as the little bone horns manage to emerge.

"...this feels really weird," she says, her eyes still closed, and blood trailing down her face. There is in fact quite a lot of blood. Head wounds are known for bleeding more than their severity calls for but wow.

[taste_tester]

"Can't you close your blood vessels?" Addy asks, a little quietly, not using too much air.

[mswoods]

She frowns, and winces, the nerves routed around her new horns acting funny. But eventually the blood flow does slow down and finally stops altogether.

"Yeah," she answers.

[peterxy]

"Dinner's- oh, Sadde, are you alright?!" Her mum quickly scoots over at her, shooting Addy a look.

[mswoods]

"I'm fine, it doesn't hurt, I rerouted my nerves. Erm, can you get something to clean my face, though?"

[taste_tester]

"I didn't know she was going to start bleeding," Addy says. She taps Sadde on the hand and grows her own horns. "Look, when I do it I don't bleed." And indeed she does not.

[peterxy]

Of course she doesn't.

Laura goes back to the kitchen and returns with a lot of paper towel, handing it to her daughter.

[mswoods]

"Thanks, mum," she says, cleaning herself up as well as she can, then opening her eyes and blinking a few times. "Wow, you look wicked! Mum, do I look cool like that?"

[peterxy]

"Yes, dear," she says, smirking a bit and returning to the kitchen. "Anyway, as I was saying, dinner's ready."

[taste_tester]

Addy undoes her horn morph. "I can come back later, perhaps."

[peterxy]

"Oh you needn't, there's enough food for you."

[mswoods]

"Yeah and also you need to teach me how you managed not to bleed!"

[taste_tester]

"I'm afraid I have extremely bizarre dietary needs and I wouldn't dream of asking you to meet them," Addy says. "And I didn't leave any open blood vessels, that's how."

[peterxy]

"If you're sure," Laura says.

[mswoods]

"Well, these are neat, anyway! I like them! Yes mum I know I can't keep them," she sighs, and then shrinks them herself, not nearly as quickly as Addy. "How come you're faster at it than I am?"

Also, there seems to be a slight problem in her version of the horns, namely that she doesn't actually have super healing, even if she can keep her skin flaps close together and not... flapping about.

[taste_tester]

"I have practice at picking up new magic quickly and I'm not afraid of things hurting," Addy says. "I'll be back in, call it an hour, enjoy your dinner."

And she lets herself out.

[peterxy]

"...what a curious person," Laura says.

[mswoods]

Sadde just giggles.

[taste_tester]

Addy is back an hour later. There is not a homeless man's blood on her lips; she ate very neatly. Knock knock.

[mswoods]

"Hello!" the girl says when she opens the door. Her forehead has bandages covering the spot where the horns' damage is healing. "How come your forehead isn't all ripped open, too?"