"Yeah?"

"Why?"

"Because I felt like wearing it and I don't feel like stopping."

"But why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"The same thing why always means, how come, what makes you feel like it?"

"Well, part of why I feel like not taking them off is 'cause I'm mad that Kaydi thinks I'm not a witch or something," she says. "But I just tried on mortal clothes to see if I'd like them, and then I did, and now I wear them sometimes, there's not a thing that made me feel like it, I just do."

Shura shuffles her feet and doesn't seem to know what to say.

"...Shura? What's wrong?"

"It's weird and I don't get why you're doing it but I'm worried you're gonna be mad at me for not automatically understanding."

"I don't get what there is to understand!" she says unhappily. "Can't it just be another thing about me, like how Kalavar likes being dragons, and I give people cake on my birthday?"

"You never did it before," says Shura.

"Yeah, 'cause I only started now!" she says. "And I never baked a cake before I baked my first cake, but now I like baking cakes!"

"Yeah but - baking cakes isn't a mortal thing like jeans are."

"So?"

"So this is weird and that wasn't."

"Well, I know," says Shura. "You couldn't just decide not to be a witch, that's not how it works, but - you're - wearing a mortal costume."

"It's not a costume," she says. "Any more than Petaal's wearing a witch costume when she puts silks on to fly. Or Kas is wearing a girl costume when he puts on a pretty dress. It's just different stuff to wear."

"...That's what costumes are, is wearing different stuff," says Shura.

"Is it? I don't think so," says Helen. "I think dressing up as something because you want to dress up as the thing is one thing, and just wearing stuff because that's the stuff you want to wear is a different thing."

"But either way you have on jeans and a t-shirt."

"Yeah. But not for reasons," she says. "Just for feeling like it. Kas does the same thing."

"Well, he's peculiar."

"I'm peculiar too," Helen asserts. "Not all the same ways, but I am."