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]

"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!"

[taste_tester]

"Congratulations!"

[mrwoods]

"This power is really a stretch from the personality thing but I'll take it. And I mean, it's breaking Conservation of Energy pretty easily, here. I bet I could make honey."

[taste_tester]

"You probably could make all kinds of things from honey to milk to cruelty-free filet mignon, although I don't know that I'd advise telling anyone where you got your potluck contributions."

[mrwoods]

He giggles. "Now that's fun, I could become vegetarian by eating myself." More giggling. "...seriously, though, where is this mass coming from? I've not been eating noticeably more between yesterday and today."

[taste_tester]

"Magic. Or maybe you're breathing out less than usual and using the carbon. Or you'll be ravenous tomorrow. Or the chlorophyll worked better than you thought."

[mrwoods]

He looks at the horn he's holding. "Maybe I should have tested this before shedding mass like that."

[taste_tester]

"I don't think having a really big breakfast tomorrow will do you any harm. But come to think of it, can you reabsorb it?"

[mrwoods]

He looks at the bone then touches its tip to the part of his forehead's that's still exposed. The bone there starts shifting to try to engulf the detached one, but then it stops and returns to its old shape. "It doesn't feel like me at all. It feels like some random object I just happen to be holding."

[taste_tester]

"When did that kick in?"

[mrwoods]

"The 'not being me' thing? I wasn't paying attention, I think it was when it effectively broke. Lemme test something."

Instead of a horn, a fingernail! His left thumb's fingernail, to be specific. As it grows, he goes and grabs a nail clipper. First, he reshapes the fingernail a bit, to demonstrate that he can. Then he clips it halfway. Can still reshape it, can mend it. He clips it so it's only barely still connected to him, and it's still him. He clips the rest of the way, and that's it.

[taste_tester]

"Hmmm... what about fluids? Those don't have as clear a point of disconnection."

[mrwoods]

More pondering, some licking lips. "It doesn't feel like me at all. After I've actually produced it I can't seem to change it. Well, saliva, anyway, maybe blood's different? I'm not sure I want to change my blood inside my veins, though, I think that might kill me."

[taste_tester]

"But you were able to grow a new finger, which presumably got blood, and then get rid of it after. Maybe you need to watch your blood pressure."