witches own little | Glowfic Constellation

Kas clings to the cloud-pine and laughs and laughs.

dark_light

"You can see why this is my default entertainment," Isabella calls over the wind.

"Hell yeah!" he agrees. "Can I hug you when we land, or would that be weird?"

dark_light

"That's fine," says Isabella carelessly, finishing her climb to an altitude at which she still expects him to be able to breathe and plummeting. She rises again at the bottom of the dive hard enough to press them both into the cloud-pine with the force of the direction change.

Kas cackles.

dark_light

After half an hour of continuous, half-sane flight, Isabella lands near Metis's circle and dismounts.

Permission having been granted, Kas does indeed hug her.

"That was really awesome," he says. "Thanks."

dark_light

Isabella hugs him back comfortably, then peers at the symbols that form the circle with academic fascination. "Sugar?" she asks Metis.

"Right in one," says Metis. "Kas and Petaal, in, if you would, don't disturb the lines."

Kas steps carefully into the circle. Petaal zooms out of his hood and becomes a maned lioness to lounge on the ground in the middle; Kas sits down and leans against her, burying his hands in her nice warm mane.

dark_light

"Mm," says Metis. "Isabella Amariah, do you want to patch in?"

"Yes please, Teacher," and after a pause in which Metis performs no visible actions at all, she adds, "Thank you, Teacher."

Metis paces around the circle, hmming to herself. Isabella sits on the ground and closes her eyes. Eventually Metis says, "Smallest form she commonly takes?"

"Dunno," Petaal says thoughtfully. She does the bee hummingbird again, then a glass-winged butterfly, then a goldfinch, then a tiny bat, then (landing in Kas's collar) a teeny tiny shrew.

dark_light

"Largest?" says Metis, not quibbling over the definition of size.

Petaal hops out of Kas's hood and cycles through more forms. Tiger; maned lioness again, then a male lion; horse; grizzly bear.

dark_light

Metis startles when she becomes a he. She'd been aware only of the late unsettledness and not of the sex-changing. "Let's see the same species, your choice, cycle between sexes a few times? Not too fast?" she says, recovering quickly.

Isabella, still sitting with her eyes closed and presumably observing via spell, smiles.

Petaal stays a grizzly bear, just for fun. Male, then female, then male, then female again.

dark_light

"Isabella Amariah, fetch a bucket of water," says Metis. "Can you become a New Mexico whiptail lizard?"

Isabella gets up to get what was requested.

"Sure," says Petaal, and does that.

dark_light

"Please attempt to hold species constant and change sex," says Metis.

With a tiny lizardy shrug, Petaal does that, too.

dark_light

"Have you ever been or heard any information about that species before?"

Isabella reappears with the water.

"Nope!" says Petaal. "But I bet they're not supposed to have boys."

dark_light

Metis doesn't bother informing them of the answer to this question. "Please take the water from Isabella Amariah and set it down inside the circle."

Isabella holds it over the sugar lines of the divination.

Petaal decides he wants to be the one to do that.

The form best fitting the intersection of 'has hands' and 'won't mind the cold so much' is witch.

So she turns into one of those, and takes the bucket.

dark_light

This does get a visible startle reaction out of Metis. And Isabella, too, who was expecting Kas to reach for the bucket and has to do some maneuvering to avoid contact.

"To... confirm... what the spell is telling me... you are currently in the form of a witch," says Metis, examining the (starclad) daemon with a clinical sort of gaze. "Isabella, go tear some silks, we are outdoors and I should not like anyone to be arrested."

"Yes, Teacher," says Isabella, and she runs back inside.