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]

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?"

[mswoods]

She has not reached eyes yet. She looked at the index and there was so much stuff and she got distracted and- "Yyyyes, I think so."

[taste_tester]

"Same time tomorrow?"

[mswoods]

Sadde takes a while to answer- she's become engrossed with something. "Oh, yeah, same time, sure!"

[taste_tester]

Addy lets herself out. She's back the same time the next day.

[mrwoods]

Sadde has a black eye!

Also he's a boy today.

[taste_tester]

"What happened to you?"

[mrwoods]

"Got into a fight," he shrugs. "I kept this because I wanted to show you that I can make it go away! Not quickly, though." He gestures her inside. "Also I made it so it wouldn't hurt, that took a while so it hurt at the start, but eventually I was giggling. That's when I got the black eye. It's really hard to feel angry and hit back when it doesn't actually hurt and I'm giggling."

[taste_tester]

"Well, I'm pleased to see your dedication to the enterprise."

[mrwoods]

"This is fun! I can totally see why you do it." He starts working on the black eye. It doesn't exactly heal as if it were going through all the normal stages, it just... fades away, over a couple of minutes.

[taste_tester]

"What order were you doing that in?"

[mrwoods]

"What do you mean?"

[taste_tester]

"It took a while; there must have been steps. What were they?"

[mrwoods]

"Oh. They were mostly, like, dissolving the blood clots and making sure they were going where they should go and stuff. I kinda have to go through all intermediate stages between where I am and where I want to be."

[taste_tester]

"But in what order?"

[mrwoods]

"Top to bottom?" he tries. "Or, shallower to deeper. First what was closest to the skin, then what became closest to the skin after that, and so on, until it was all gone."

[taste_tester]

"Why in that order?"

[mrwoods]

"I... don't know, it just came naturally. I don't think it'd be any more difficult to do it the other way around."

[taste_tester]

"It might matter why it came naturally. People get witchcrafts that suit their personality; and figuring out exactly how your personality gave you the specific affordances it did can be key to expanding it."

[mrwoods]

He ponders. "Hmmm... Yeah, I can see how my magic suits me. I'm- well, I'm a boy today. I just don't feel always the same way, like I should look the same or be treated the same. It's not just gender either, but having to be pretty inconspicuous doesn't help."