Off it goes, then.

Obviously adding bits can be an improvement, though. Let's see... wings just sound terrifying; she doesn't really want a tail if it's not a cat tail... antennae might be okay, and there's no obviously good way to add a pair of legs - being a centaur sounds very inconvenient - but she can add a pair of arms, how about that?

That's worse, apparently, especially if she doesn't fix her shirt to accommodate them.

She reverts the change. And of course she fixed her shirt; she puts it back, now.

While she's thinking about the shirt - the magic cared more than she expected it to about her taking the clouds off. Maybe it'll care more than she expects about other changes, too. Not that there's anything she wants to change - she likes the colors, and the matte texture against the skylike shimmer. How about... can she animate it, have the clouds drift like real clouds do?

Not quite. She can move it moment to moment manually - actually, the magic likes that quite a bit, there's just the edges of another spell coming in when she keeps the clouds in motion - but she doesn't seem able to automate it, at least not with only yea much magic.

Good to know.

She adds clouds to her pants, near the cuffs, and a gradient of sparkles from mid-thigh to waist to suggest stars becoming visible as night sets in. If that helps, she'll add a similar sparkle gradient to her hair, and make the tips sunset orange.

That does help! Now she has her second spell. She can make - things. They will not be quite real but they can have real effects.

Magic!

Can she try that out, here? Maybe it'll give her some ideas.

She can! It requires a lot of concentration - it might take less if she looked cooler; animating the clouds is about a tossup in terms of how much she can get out of her attentional capacity and this spell.

The stuff looks obviously fake; it casts shadows but they're oversimplified and blocky, and the creations have outlines, and move with something very much like a frame rate. They are, in a word, solid cartoons.

That's pretty cool. And it might be enough to get her out, if she can make, say, a key, and have it be the key to a door she wants to unlock.

She's going to try for another spell, first, since that will only maybe work. She likes this star gradient idea, and the magic seems to like it, too; she starts by shortening the sleeves of her shirt so they just barely cover her shoulders and then adding the gradient to her arm tattoos.

The magic does like that! Not a whole-nother-spell likes it, but it does like it.

Good that they're on the same page. And - it seems to like the sunset/evening motif - what happens if she, say, adds a couple moths, the little brown ones she sees at the window sometimes, to her gloves, in the same painted-on style as her shirt's clouds?

Neutral.

Might just be a little dull. What if she recolors them - sky blue, or maybe a bright teal?

Sky blue works better than brown or than the teal but still not well; it's barely possible even to tell the difference.

Well, they are small, and gloves are a pretty aesthetically dubious place for moths. Maybe around the knees of her pants will work better, between where the sunset fades out and the stars fade in.

- nah. She takes a glance at the magic but she'll be surprised if it's an improvement at all, and anyway she doesn't like it, too cluttery, night isn't like that.

What if... context does matter, she saw that with the cat tail and ears combo, together they were almost neutral but individually they were both worse; antenna might help if they're specifically moth antenna - yeah, that looks good, curling back from her temples like a fuzzy indigo tiara with orange tips - and... maybe moth wings? Moth wings don't sound so bad.

Moth wings and antennae give her a little boost together! She might be almost at another spell.

Cool.

Given how context does matter, she should check that none of the parts of her outfit are working against her now. The metal swirls seem most likely to have that problem; she removes them, then the gloves, then changes the boots to plain sneakers, checking the magic and reverting each change when she's done with it, and then checks the gloves and boots together, for good measure.

None of those elements seem to be hurting, but the gloves are helping least, followed by the swirls.

Good.

Fixing up the colors on the wings might even be enough to push her over; the sky blue is a bit much at this scale. The orange-to-indigo-to-starry theme seems to be working really well; no reason to not at least try it. And - she can open the wings, and there's a second pair of wings that peeks out when they're just slightly spread; that can be silvery-blue and metallic.

There she goes! Another spell! Would she like to be less real?

'Less real' seems to here mean 'can walk through walls'. She would very much like to be less real.

When she casts her spell, she shifts slightly kata, out of phase with the room; she can see it, but all of it looks farther away, at the same time. And yes. She can walk through walls.

This is the best thing.

She can probably get to Janet's room without being seen. And if she is... well, they're going to have a tough time catching her, huh. Off she goes, carefully.

The older girl is asleep when she gets there, quiet but restless with some nightmare; Denice settles herself on the floor by her bed, shielded from Janet's roommate's view, before phasing in. She knows better than to touch her without warning, but a gentle tap on her mattress is enough to wake her partially, anyway.

"Mmnh... no, go away..."

It's me, Denice, she sends. I got magic.