When they wake up, she still isn't back.
[Jane?]
No response.
Kas teleports down to the Janepoint, Petaal wrapped snake-shaped around his shoulders.
The display reads: error 7788: lycanthropy
"...So that's new," he says.
"No shit," says Petaal. "Now what?"
He shrugs. She coils tighter.
"Hang around and wait, I guess."
"I'm pretty sure it wouldn't make a snow-circle," she says, "but I don't know what it would do instead." With a glance at Shura, "Hopefully not explode."
"Um, it said Amariah Lytess... probably because she does daemons... and I put Farakhel Nimah and it exploded - because she does fire?... um... maybe if I put Yambe Akka it would make something cold?"
The teacher inclines her head. "That spell is actually a very versatile one, which you will be able to vary to assorted effects as an adult; it calls on numbered domains from the named goddess, which in the case you see in your book results in combining your daemon and the full moon, but if the numbers, the goddess, or both are changed can do any number of things. Including make something cold."
This is a good chart. Helen likes this chart. She reads it over and over and hums to herself.
"I saw it too," says Helen, "it was all green and curly and floppy! So people's heads can be spinach and they don't die!"
"Magic lessons are not the time to make up ludicrous stories," snaps the teacher. "We are working with dangerous forces. Shura could have easily hurt someone playing carelessly with the most basic of spells. Later we learn to control immense forces and to curse and to kill! If your judgment does not even extend to controlling your imagination while I am explicitly telling you to, perhaps you are not mature enough to be studying spells!" She reaches for Helen's book and closes it with a snap; the raven on her shoulder croaks. She looks speculatively at Shura's book, too, and Shura starts sniffling.
The wailed word fills the air like a shockwave. It's not especially loud in comparison to what any other five-year-old's lungs could generate, but it carries like nobody's business.
"Helen, sweetheart," says Kas, coming up to the semicircle of rocks and hugging his daughter, "what's wrong?"
Helen hugs him fiercely, pressing her face into his chest. "The teacher thinks I'm making it up!" she says, somewhat muffled now.