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

[mrwoods]

"...my magic has a taste? Why does my magic have a taste? Is that common?"

[taste_tester]

"It's just how my own witchcraft interprets things. Plenty of witches have synaesthesia to go with it. When I grab something, I taste it and how to use it. It's a nice compensation for my dietary constraints."

[mrwoods]

"Well, do these tastes usually mean anything?"

[taste_tester]

"I can usually make up a just-so story. But there are only so many foods with so many properties."

[mrwoods]

"Are tastes typically unique?"

[taste_tester]

"No exact duplicates, but I've met several different kinds of bread and so on."

[mrwoods]

"Hmm... and did those breads have anything in common? And just how many witches have you met?"

[taste_tester]

"Nothing obvious. A certain general applicability and Western upbringing. And lots, but I don't spend as much time with most of them as you."

[mrwoods]

"Really? We've only been at it for three days and you've given me so many ideas and there's so much to do!"

[taste_tester]

"Sometimes I find witches whose powers are stuck. Or only flex in one or two ways. Or who simply don't want to work with me for some reason."

[mrwoods]

"Hmm, I guess that makes sense. What kinds of powers have you found? On the one hand I really really want to develop mine, but on the other I'm pretty sure I could listen to you talking about them for days but you probably care more about the former."

[taste_tester]

"Yours is unusually good, if slow. Sometimes it's just, say, an enhanced sense, or the ability to find people you're looking for. There are some good ones, though. Telepaths and precogs and one guy who controls the four classical elements."

[mrwoods]

"Whoa, there are precogs? That is super cool I think I'm a bit jealous. ...oh I forgot to say! I can see ultraviolet!"

[taste_tester]

"Oh, good for you! Your cones came in?"

[mrwoods]

"Yeah! And I really need to invent lots of new words for colours, now, there's a whole lot of context to all other colours that wasn't there before."

[taste_tester]

Addy boops him. "I'm afraid languages are pretty inadequate to such a task."

[mrwoods]

"Yeah. Anyway, what should I do next? Oh, look, I can do nails faster." He shows his palm, and a nail grows at the same spot it grew the first time, taking only about ten seconds to do it. "I'm still kinda learning to generalise, but I can do it almost anywhere in less than a minute."

[taste_tester]

"Did you test your chlorophyll yet?"

[mrwoods]

"I didn't skip lunch, but my lips are tastier than ever!"

[taste_tester]

"Promising. Are you developing pearls?"

[mrwoods]

"Nnnnot yet. I had some plans about that, and I looked some stuff up on them, and it turns out it takes years for them to form. I think I could probably do it faster but I'm not sure how, I'd need some more information about how exactly it works."

[taste_tester]

"I will get you a book about oysters. Anything else getting you stuck?"

[mrwoods]

"I haven't tried coral yet, but!" He closes his eyes and his forehead starts moving the way they do when he shifts nerves and stuff around. Eventually a tiny point appears right in the middle, but it's sharp enough to cut through skin almost immediately, this time with no bleeding to speak of. He continues pushing the single horn out, shaped somewhat like an elephant's tusk only smaller, and with the same ivory texture. He opens his eyes as it grows, and beams.

[taste_tester]

"You're a unicorn. Congratulations, you can make a fortune on the black market selling arguably genuine ivory if you can just detach it."

[mrwoods]

"I'm not growing nerves with. And since I can shape it..."

It's still growing, but as it does, it starts getting pretty thin around the base. Sadde holds it with his hands, and by the time it has stopped growing it's only technically still connected to the bone on his forehead. He uses that connection to reshape the base so it looks like it's been sawed off, and then he snaps it off, wincing very slightly. The exposed bone of his forehead returns to its old regular shape, and his skin starts knitting itself back very neatly.

"Ta-da!"