Perhaps predictably, he sleeps in really late.

This was very predictable, upon reflection.

She carefully extracts herself, hoping not to wake him. Astea would like breakfast, and maybe a book to read while she waits for him to wake.

The tower contains enough food for breakfast and enough books for... yes. Enough books. Enough books for any conceivable purpose. So many books. Too many books.

Sometime around noon, Isfain finally yawns and stretches and looks around for his fluffy friend.

Astea is skeptical that 'too many books' is a thing. Plausibly there's 'not enough space for books,' but that's not the fault of the books.

When Isfain stirs, she's nestled beside him, reading one of the excellent books. Two modest stacks are neatly arranged nearby, respectively 'to read' and 'have finished.' She didn't want to make multiple trips.

Her ears perk up and she gives a little greeting chirp.

"Oh, good, I see you found reading material." He finishes stretching, snuggles back down amid the blankets, rests his hand on Astea and gives her gentle scritches. "I think I've untangled part of the puzzle—I realized that the fact that it's an incomplete transformation has implications I wasn't considering." He wiggles his fingers and a gold ring appears on one of them. "Now that I've worked out the theoretical side, I should spend some time confirming that the picture in my head matches the reality, which, happily for you, means snuggling you while you read all my books. And then either I'll have you turned back within a few days, or this will be a dead end and I'll have to find another avenue."

... That is way sooner than she was expecting! She gives a little happy yip and scoots closer to snuggle him.

By the way her ears are perked up and she's looking at him, she totally wants him to explain. Book? What book? Magic explanations are so much more fun!

"Your curiosity is fair and reasonable but it's hard to multitask explaining and information-gathering! All right, all right... this gets into some obscure ritual magic concepts so I'll have to simplify a bit, which I hate doing, but in brief: you were transformed imperfectly, leaving you with your original eyes. That has numerous implications but the most relevant is that the transformation is likely to be... wrapped around you, like a blanket or a coil of rope? Enclosing and veiling the true shape of your body, rather than altering or replacing it. Which means that it should be possible to, hmm, unwind the rope. Of course it's not nearly as simple as just taking the fox off you like a very inconvenient fur coat—physically speaking you are a fox, all this talk of veiling deals strictly with the abstract magical structures of the thing—but if I can find, so to speak, the end of the rope, I should be able to get the whole thing loose. This also bodes well for the question of turning back and forth from fox to human, although it will still be a separate project I'll have to undertake afterward, unless—depending on the details, I might be able to invert your, er, level of foxiness—leaving you mostly human with, say, a small patch of fur somewhere. A fetching pair of fluffy ears, perhaps." (He gently pets the ears in question.) "And then you'd be able to switch back and forth between the mostly-human and mostly-fox states, although at that point the major obstacle would be the time it took to teach you how... I suspect you'd pick it up quickly, though. Assuming, again, that I'm not haring off on an utterly misguided adventure. Which I still might be."

She listens attentively, giggles a little at the fluffy ears comment, and then nuzzles him affectionately. What a good clever wizard.

Then she gives another (satisfied) yip and closes her eyes and leans into him to focus on the glory of scritches.

Scritch scritch so soft.

Eeee scritches are great, cuddling with Isfain is great, hearing about magical theory is great, reading is great, she wants to stay like this forever…

Wait. They’ve been here before. Last time they did this, they forgot to eat. She doesn’t have to worry about that problem, because she fed herself while he was sleeping, but! He could not do that. She will attempt to not make the same mistakes she made like, a day ago? Maybe two? Because she tries to consistently grow as a person.

She perks up and boops his stomach with her nose, then gives a little yip. That is to say: Eat something, adorable cuddly wizard.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, I see." He keeps petting her, but with his free hand he conjures some bread. "Thank you very much for attending to the needs of my mortal form. I don't seem to be very good at it. Something else to work on, perhaps."

Astea gives another little yip, then leans up to boop his cheek with her nose. And then she can get back to reading, because look she was at a good part, okay.

What a good soft friend she is. Helpful, scritchable, has correct opinions about books. Gives excellent boops.

The books and the scritches will both continue for quite some time. Hopefully she will not get bored. They can always take a break if she does.

Nope, she's happy! She has a book and scritches, both excellent things to have.

In that case, she may need to remind him to conjure meals a few more times, and perhaps to replace her book when she gets to the end of it; but that evening he remembers about bedtime all by himself, and announces, "As far as I can tell my theory was perfectly accurate, and all that remains is to locate the end of the figurative magical rope," yaaaawn, "tomorrow, because being well-rested is important when dealing with delicate magical phenomena. It may be another day or so past that before I actually have you out of there one way or another. Do you have a preferred option, between 'disentangle the whole thing and get rid of it' or 'figure out how to make your foxiness level invertable'? I don't yet know which will be easier, but if they're similar levels of tricksome I might as well try for the one you'd rather."

She does remember to feed and water her cuddling companion, though she has a brief nap midway through. When she finishes her book, she requests a few on herbs and their properties; she knows a lot already, but she’d like to know more, and she wants to see how her own hedge witch knowledge compares to Isfain’s gigantic library.

Upon being addressed, she tilts her head thoughtfully, then barks once. Specifically, they will be able to reproduce the fox thing whenever they get around to digging up the damn thing that did it in the first place, and she’d hate to have to deal with anything really obviously weird out of the gate. She does, after all, want to go home and collect her things, at the very least. Maybe let her village know she’s not dead.

Not that she explains this; jumping down to spell out her reasoning would be tiresome.

Isfain's gigantic library contains plenty of books about herbs!

"Disentangle the whole thing first? Understood. I'll do my best. If that option turns out to look like it'll take twice as long I'll let you know as soon as I find that out."

She gives an affirmative yip, then leans up to boop his cheek again. This important task completed, she gets to putting books away (well, onto her nearby pile of books) and then snuggling up for actual sleep instead of cozy nap.

It is so good to sleep snuggled up with soft friend.

That it is.

She wakes first, gives him an affectionate boop while he sleeps out of sheer affection, then heads off to find herself some breakfast. Once her fast is good and broken, she returns to reading about herbs and snuggling. Predictably.

He wakes up and yawns and nibbles breakfast and settles in for a day of cozy companionable snuggling.

He's such a cute wizard.

She gets bored of sorting through herbs soon enough. Well, out of books, anyway. What she'd really like to do is go outside and find some, there are a couple varieties in the Crooked Hills that don't grow where she's from. Her earlier investigations only included what she already knew, not anything from these delightful books. Not that looking is all she wants to do anymore. Unfortunately, she is a little bit handicapped in getting any cuttings or transplanting entire plants by how she is, well, a fox. And the current weather. Also she's a little curious about the soil composition of the area, it seemed rather rocky to her? It would be an interesting puzzle to see if she could get anything to grow here. Probably she'll want to figure out a clever duplicate space for loam. ... Maybe a couple other varieties of soil? Hmmm.

Her tail swishes thoughtfully, then she gives Isfain a goodbye boop and heads outside to investigate the local foliage. She won't pick anything, but! She will know where things are for later! Even the ones she hadn’t know the existence of before!

The local foliage is available to be investigated! The soil is indeed very rocky in most places, but here or there in the low spots between the hills there's enough fertile soil to support some wild berry bushes or a small flowery meadow.

Isfain leaves her to it for an hour or so, then comes outside looking for her.

She’s sniffing suspiciously at the base of a set of bushes, tail swishing thoughtfully. Not particularly far from the tower, nor particularly hard to find.

Her ears perk up when she hears footsteps, and she looks up at him and gives a friendly yip, then tilts her head.

"I've come for my informative scritches," he says, holding out a hand with a gold ring on the first finger. "And for the pleasure of your company."