"That's because you're nice," beams Kas.

"Sure," says Petaal.

"If I'm going to show you, we do need to be inside," Isabella says, opening the door and ushering them in.

As soon as they're all behind closed doors, Petaal enwitches again.

Isabella fetches the silk. "There are actually dozens of ways to do this, but I've never bothered varying it, so this is just the most common way for Olympic clan witches to wear ours," she says, untying the knot at the back of her neck with an utter lack of concern and following suit with the other knots. When she has rendered herself starclad she lays out the half-dozen pieces and starts tearing the couple yards for Petaal to match. Then she ties hers back on, at one point with Path sitting on her head to hold her hair out of the way of the knot at her neck with both feet.

"First bird I thought of that felt like us right now," Petaal says with a shrug.

"Fair enough. One of these days I need to figure out why birds. It's obvious enough why flying creatures, and we don't wind up with ostriches, but why not bats, or... whatever." She opens the back door. "Remember the spell?" she asks Petaal.

"I remember the spell!" says Petaal, taking Kas's hand and leading him outside.

"It's pure verse, so there shouldn't be anything else you have to do," Isabella says. "I was not allowed to read Shakespeare out loud in class when I went to school."

"Well, it could happen, and no one wants that," Isabella says. "Especially not during Midsummer Night's Dream, which is when this came up first. Aw, no snow circle, that's a pity. Let me think of a spell that doesn't invoke a goddess, just in case..." She considers. "Do you want to summon a rabbit? Usually it's so we can slaughter them for food or for spells, but you can just let it go again afterwards unless you want rabbit for dinner."

Isabella teaches her the equally not-English words to that spell, too.

"That's a pity," repeats Isabella. And then she looks up at the sky and smiles. "Oh, there go those irritating clouds."

Isabella shrieks and lurches away; Path divebombs Petaal and seizes a knot on her silks and tries to drag her in the other direction. "What are you doing?!" exclaims Isabella. "Let go!"

"What the fuck, Petaal?" Isabella asks, sitting down hard on the ground and barely reacting to Path's fussing with her hair and nuzzling at her face.

"Just a little - shaky - and weirded out - we are not that close, at all, I've never even tried mindreading spells because mind-affecting magic weirds me out but it felt like I imagine one of those would - I'm not harmed, are you okay?" she says. "It is not supposed to make her drunk, and even drunk daemons don't usually fling themselves on people, is she okay?"