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]

"They're not! And that means that you can make, and then change, non-alive matter. Maybe you could figure out how to grow specific kinds of things. Lay golden eggs, only probably not literally."

[mswoods]

"That... sounds like it would hurt. And I don't think I can shift into stuff that was never alive-ish in the first place? Or that's not... biological in some way? I mean, I can change bone, so the border's fuzzy, but I think gold is way too far from it. I mean, I totally want to try, I just have no idea how." She turns blonde - that's actually pretty fast, only takes a second - and her hair grows quite long. She flicks it. "Blonde, yes, golden, no." She shortens and blackens her hair again.

[taste_tester]

"Cutting your hair doesn't hurt," Addy points out. "And you can make it longer, which means you can generate new things. Maybe not solid gold, maybe you're stuck with biology, but biology can do neat things. Ivory? Pearls? Coral?"

[mswoods]

"Those sound all possible to me," she says, after a second thinking about it. "I think that's also in increasing order of difficulty. Ivory sounds like I could just convince my bones to be a bit differently, Pearls like I could convince my cells to secrete a certain substance, Coral... I dunno much about Coral, I'll need to research that too, I guess." She pauses. "And it's interesting that I seem to have some intuition for this? I never noticed I had intuition for this."

[taste_tester]

"It's very promising that you've got intuition for this! I bet wood would be even harder than coral, am I right?"

[mswoods]

She thinks, then nods. "Yes. I'm not even totally sure I could do wood. Why is that true?"

[taste_tester]

"Coral's an animal thing, wood's a plant thing."

[mswoods]

"Hmm... isn't that distinction kinda pretty fuzzy anyway? I wonder if I could convince my magic it's a pretty fuzzy distinction."

[taste_tester]

"Maybe you could! Might be easier to go via something other than wood. Convince your magic that your hair is not that unlike moss, maybe."

[mswoods]

"...but it is. Moss is actually alive, for one, and also is it even made of the same kind of thing? Erm, I should probably convince myself before trying to convince my magic."

[taste_tester]

"Maybe. Maybe you should start small. Chlorophyll."

[mswoods]

"That's... a molecule, right? What should I do with that?"

[taste_tester]

"Make sugar from sunlight, is I think the usual use. Also turn green."

[mswoods]

"Mmm," she says, and focuses on the back of her hand. She squints at it, and it does turn green. But- "I don't think this worked. I think my magic got stuck on the 'green' thing and kinda ignored where it was supposed to come from."

[taste_tester]

"Not all plants are green. Japanese maples, say."

[mswoods]

"Hmmm, and it's the same chlorophyll thing? That might actually help."

More squinting. No colour changes happen.

[taste_tester]

"Yes, ornamental red plants still photosynthesize the same way."

[mswoods]

"...I think this worked, but I have no idea how to tell that it worked."

[taste_tester]

"Do it to your tongue, then go outside and go aaah at the sun and see if you taste anything."

[mswoods]

She giggles. "Okay, let me try that."

She tries that!

"I think maybe I tasted something but I may have imagined it."

[taste_tester]

"Well, sun yourself while chlorophylly for an afternoon after skipping lunch and see how badly you want dinner."

[mswoods]

"But wouldn't that just make my skin cells get really sugary? How would the sugar get to the rest of my body? I'm not sure I could feasibly- well, I tell a lie, I'm pretty sure I could grow plant vessels around my body but I dunno if I could interface it very well with everything else."

[taste_tester]

"Yes, that's true. Go around with chlorophyll in your lips on a dry day and then nibble some skin off them."

[mswoods]

"That's a good idea! And I might just leave chlorophyll on them anyway." Pause. "I wanna see if I can understand cones well enough to grow new ones from that book," she says, and grabs the book.

[taste_tester]

"Should I leave you to that for the day?"