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]

"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."

[mrwoods]

"Okay, that's actually a good test, yeah. Grow something that'd need more blood, then shrink it back, measure my blood pressure throughout. It'd need to be something pretty large to be noticeable, though."

[taste_tester]

"I don't have a blood pressure cuff or know offhand where to buy one but I can get a decent reading with my bare hand."

[mrwoods]

"Okay. What should I grow?"

[taste_tester]

"Ooh, do a tail."

[mrwoods]

"Okay!"

This one will take a while, he never did it before and it's involved. He doesn't want an ugly skin tail, though, so he starts out by growing a patch of hair at the base of his spine. He has read a bit of his anatomy book, skimmed over most parts, and paid a lot of attention to the most interesting pictures. Bone structure were some of them, since most of the times his transformations hurt happen because of bones squeezing stuff that shouldn't be squeezed.

So the next part is turning the end of his spine into not-quite-an-end, something that will become a tail but is still attached to his hips. He bases off other mammals' tails, and then his starts growing, pushing against his skin as he stretches it and makes more hair grow.

He's not content until his tail is about three quarters as long as he is tall, and that takes a while. About an hour and a half, to be precise. Hopefully Addy is patient, because once he starts he pretty much forgets she exists, and is wholly engrossed and focused in this process.

As for his blood pressure? No variation to speak of.

[taste_tester]

Addy's very patient, with a light grip on his elbow to monitor blood flow. She does not lick her lips.

[mrwoods]

She could've. He wouldn't have noticed.

He unfocuses and looks over his shoulder, thwacking himself on the forehead with his tail. "This will take a while to get used to," he giggles, then looks at Addy again, flicking his tail this way and that. "Any change in blood pressure?"

[taste_tester]

"Nope, steady the entire time. So you are definitely making new blood. Now the question is whether you can get rid of it. Preferably without endangering the carpet."

[mrwoods]

He pouts. "But I liiiike my tail!" Then shrugs. "But fine, I'd just have to shrink it back before school tomorrow anyway."

Shrinking! It's easier to shrink than it is to grow, though it still takes about 40 minutes to be done all in all. And his blood pressure remains exactly the same throughout.

"So?"

[taste_tester]

"And you are getting rid of the blood, or your pressure would have gone way up when you squished the tail's worth in. So you can too handle fluids - at least that one - but so far you only know how to do it as part of another shift."

[mrwoods]

"Hmm. Okay. I can too handle fluids. Any idea on how to do it? I'm grasping at straws here with figuring out how the hell my power decides what's actually a part of me and what isn't."

[taste_tester]

"What did you notice when you were so absorbed in removing your tail?"

[mrwoods]

"I was only really paying attention to the solid parts, shrinking and reabsorbing bone and hair, unstretching- destretching? Something like that, with the skin and the muscles and the nerves and the blood vessels. I didn't actually pay any attention to the blood itself, though."

[taste_tester]

"Well, it may have folded in with the vessels... are you doing capillaries individually or does your magic handle those okay?"