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

[mswoods]

"Oh. That's interesting. What counts as 'new,' though? Isn't what I did just another application of the same principles? I didn't feel like I really did anything all that new, just... um... combined the old things in a new way."

[taste_tester]

"That's exactly the sort of thing that I pick up. That and stretching old things in new directions and new distances."

[mswoods]

"But it's so weird that you can't do it yourself. Like, what would have happened if you had tried doing the horns thing before I did? Or the tooth thing, even?"

By the by, her teeth are back to normal.

[taste_tester]

"It might have worked, but if it did, it would have been because you could already do it and hadn't before for some other reason, like being scared of it."

[mswoods]

"Hmmm. I don't think there's ever been anything like that? Or at least I don't feel like there's ever been anything like that. It all feels like just the same thing. I mean... I guess the best way to explain it is that it feels like mixing paint. It may be a different colour, but I already had all the paint before and just mixed it differently this time."

[taste_tester]

"Sure. But my power doesn't work like yours, and every so often I'm gonna have to boop you."

[mswoods]

She shrugs. "Okay, I guess. So, erm, what next?"

[taste_tester]

"Did you try the fingernail thing?"

[mswoods]

"Nnnnooooo, I thought it wouldn't be very useful after I managed to do the horn thing."

[taste_tester]

"It's a different principle. Fingernails grow from a certain kind of skin. Changing some of your skin into matrix might make it easy to grow nail from it, or it might not, and either way would be interesting."

[mswoods]

"Hmmm, okay, let me try."

This one is a bit different as well. It's a way humans can be, but it's not the right place they can be. She could probably just move a bit of matrix around until it reached her destination, but that'd feel... inelegant. She has to coax a part of her body to be something it's not, not just to grow in a different way or move a bit.

...this one actually feels different in the way Addy suggested might happen. It's really not just some other way of doing what she always did. Her right palm, there, that's as good a place as any and good to show, so she starts changing.

It's really slow.

[taste_tester]

Addy is infinitely patient and attentive.

[mswoods]

Eventually it does work. She reworks the nerves and closes the blood vessels, which takes a few more minutes - it's not nearly as intuitive as stuff she already knew - and then starts growing a nail along her palm.

[taste_tester]

"And now you can have mutant superhero armor at a moment's notice. Fingernails are made of the same stuff as rhino horn, you know."

[mswoods]

She grins.

"Well, not a moment's notice, yet. How long did we take on this?" She looks at the wall clock in the kitchen, visible from where they're sitting. "Wow, that took twenty minutes. For this?!" A very small nail in the middle of her right palm. "Bleeehh. This one was different, though. I think you might want to boop it." And she goes ahead and boops Addy of her own volition.

[taste_tester]

"Thanks! But I think you can get faster. With practice."

[mswoods]

"Hmmm, yeah, probably. But I'd need to practice a lot."

[taste_tester]

"As much as you can," Addy agrees.

[mswoods]

"We should make this a thing. Mmmmaybe you shouldn't come home all the time, now mum knows you and stuff and she's not home all that often so being just you and me at home would be kinda creepy so maybe somewhere else? Like, somewhere public but not public enough that people would notice right away if my face became all weird or something."

[taste_tester]

"Do you have such a place in mind?"

[mswoods]

"There's this park between here and school, there's people there but not too many people, do you think that could work?"

[taste_tester]

"I think your power's a little too conspicuous to practice in the park."

[mswoods]

"Okay... hmm... maybe a library? I know a couple hereabouts."

[taste_tester]

"Maybe if you could go from thoroughly altered to normal faster than a librarian could round a corner, but you can't. Yet."

[mswoods]

"If we were in a remote corner behind some shelves and I had my back to them, they might not notice..." she suggests tentatively.