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]

"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."

[taste_tester]

"If you could be as conspicuous as you wanted what would you do?"

[mrwoods]

"I don't know! That's the fun part. I'd just do what I felt like doing, I'd look like all sorts of things, I'd be all sorts of people. I'd, like, play pranks! I'd spend a week looking like an angel and a week looking like a demon and a week looking like a lizard, I'd dress up and dress down and, I don't know, really, sometimes I just feel like a kind of person and I wish I could be that."

Pause.

"...those don't sound much like they're the description of a personality thing, though." He hmms.

[taste_tester]

"Well, they could be. Sounds very... whimsical. Mercurial. Actually, your last sentence reminds me of me, a little. I focus on magic these days but my thing turned out to be mimicry."

[mrwoods]

He thinks about it. "Yeah, but I'm not really about copying other people, it's more like being a kind of thing? But... Prodding my brain a bit, I think it's more that I like to be in control, kinda. In control of what I'm showing, what I'm doing, how I'm presenting and what other people are thinking of me as. ...yeah, that sounds closer to the mark. I want my body and my self to be something I can control, not something that just happens."

[taste_tester]

"So why the constraint to biology? What if you wake up one morning and want to be a cyborg?"

[mrwoods]

He blinks. "I don't know? I mean, I may be completely wrong here and that's a just-so story, maybe it's just the whimsical mercurial thing, you're the witch genius, I dunno how my power relates to myself. I mean, if you were trying to explain that constraint, how would you explain it?" Pause. "I just thought of a way maybe but I want to hear what you have to say anyway."

[taste_tester]

"Your guess will be better than mine but I'm starting to wonder if it's aimed more at cosmetic results than practical ones."

[mrwoods]

He thinks about that. "Kinda? I mean, I guess it'd be super cool if I could shoot lasers out of my eyes but that's, yeah, not really what I meant. My guess is mostly that my magic is about my body, and cyborg isn't as much about a presentation as it is an... addition. Kinda like clothing? I wouldn't feel like clothing is a way I am, it's just a thing I have on me at the moment and that's not the same at all."

[taste_tester]

"Hmm. What things are about what you are, then? Hair color counts, cyborg parts do not..."

[mrwoods]

"...everything that grows?" he tries. "I don't think I could shift hair that fell or nails I cut."

[taste_tester]

"So you identify with things that you grow more than things that you build, because they're part of who you are. ...You know, I've never met a witch who could do magic to their magic before, but I'm just going to toss that idea out there, you grew it, it's natural to you."

[mrwoods]

"Metamagic? Okay that sounds really cool."

[taste_tester]

"Might not work, but your power's as plausible as any for it."

[mrwoods]

"Got any thoughts on how to go about doing that? Because I have no idea what I'd even focus on, if that's possible it might be better to wait until I can maybe shift without knowing what my destination would look like or something?"

[taste_tester]

"Well, I don't know if this helps, but to my magic, your magic tastes like eggwhites."

[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?"