She's not going to try to make it more obvious than that, not knowing how comfortable he is with—several things.

And it could indeed go on for a while.

And Cerberus has decided that patience is the better part of valor and is now meditating and talking in silence to the cards.

It can go on... Until Terry's stomach growls in protest of his mediocre breakfast. Then he pulls away reluctantly. "I should probably eat something. And meditate relatively near Change, and get to know the cards more, and. So many things to do, it's great."

"It is! I—" Pause. "Apparently ate?" she half-asks, eyeing Cerberus—

Who wakes up from his meditation about then. "Your mother gave me food."

"Was it cookies, ice cream, or chocolate?"

"It was pancakes with maple syrup!"

He snickers. "Well, I need to do my homework today too. Sadde, I'll give you my address and we can meet again in a few hours?"

"Sure," he says, turning into a boy again and offering Terry the card. "Should I just show up at your place?"

"Yeah. My folks aren't super strict about much other than grades and the phone. You probably don't want to switch in front of them but for magic-is-secret reasons not, like, intolerance reasons."

"Alright. Any particular reason why you don't want them to know?"

He grimaces. "They'd try to tell me to ignore magic because I'll spend too much time on it and stop getting As in school and then I won't get scholarships for college."

"...excuse me what."

"...Yeah. Maybe If I argued about how I won't need a college degree if I have magic, but they'll just get so upset and indignant that they don't listen to anything I say after 'don't need college.' My older brother is going to Yale next year. He's freaking golden."

"Uh... huh. ...d'you want a hug?"

"...Sure. And, you know, my parents aren't that bad. They just have a couple really bad neuroses."

"Mmhm," he says, hugging him.

Solemn hug. "I'm serious, things are OK, I'm a lot better at dealing with it than I could be."

"Okay. I maybe also wanted another excuse to hug you. And nibble on you."

Nibbling!

He chuckles, but, "Uh. Sorry. Not really in a kissy mood anymore."

"Awww. Okay." He disentangles. "I have no idea what that must feel like."

"I probably will be again later if it's any consolation." He stands up, backpacks his stuff.

"Good, I would like to kiss you again many times in the future," he replies, doing the same.

"See ya later, Sadde." And he bikes off in the opposite direction as before, grinning.

When he gets home he has a quick brunch, dutifully cranks out a mediocre-effort showing of math and biology homework, then meditates, trying to get to know Change. And see if he can tell anything new about Cerberus, Windy, or Float.

Change is only slightly less emotionally simple than Float, but it's infinitely more versatile. It represents impermanence, mutation, evolution, modification.

He doesn't get any new information about Cerberus, Windy, or Float, except for something he hadn't noticed before: a certain connection between Windy and Float, or something they share, which Change doesn't. It's impossible to translate it to visual terms, but the best analogy would be to say Float's source was Windy, in a way it isn't Change's source.