That's what happens if you try to get too much magic, right?

"If you make too many changes to your body," corrects Julie. "I rock some serious magic in combat gear, but that's not gonna do anything to my brain. Brain stuff is all about how much you mess with your body. You can wear stuff so radiant it hurts to look at you and not be in the slightest danger of falling into the mysteries."

Okay, that's good to know.

"There's a point system people use to guess how much safety margin they have," she says. "Wings, any kind, eat something like half of your allotment, I'd need to look it up."

That's also good to know.

It's a little scary now that she put her wings on almost last thing, that sounds like it could have been really bad.

"You're well within tolerances. Basically it's big changes to how many limbs or bones you have that are really big-ticket. If you add arms, that's a little less than adding wings; if you swap your legs for a snake tail that's a little more. And it doesn't matter what order you add things in, you can't tell by feel if you're close."

If she'd added the wings first and then added little things until she got her third spell it maybe wouldn't've been as many little things as she actually did add before she added the wings, though. 

"Maybe, but little things are, well, little. You're in the clear now, no cryptid are you."

Yeah.

She kind of wants to sneak in and tell the other kids this stuff. So if another girl gets magic she'll know what to do.

"What's the range on your telepathy?" asks Julie.

She hasn't tested it. She has to know who to send to but that might not mean she has to see them. But she can't hear people back this way, and she's pretty sure she can't wake people up, and it wouldn't be safe to go during the day even if she didn't go in.

"We can see how long-range you can get, and you can make a couple trips, after dark or just before dawn, to see if you can cover everyone you need to talk to?"

Yeah, if she went right after bedtime that would work. She really only needs to talk to one person, anyway, Janet - the real Janet - will figure out how to make sure everybody knows.

"Aww, you borrowed her name. That's cute."

Yeah.

She misses her, a little - misses everybody, really, but her especially - but she'd want her to be out and safe like this.

"Winona's working on it. Maybe there's something she can do. What-all has Original Janet in there, it might matter -"

She, uh. Tried to kill herself, a couple times, she thinks? She definitely did that when she first got in, anyway. She's doing a lot better now but she's still kind of fragile that way, she's touchy about stuff and has trouble when the staff lean on her too much.

"- ff...ork," says Julie. "Okay. Are her parents in the picture?"

She doesn't know if she has parents. If she does they never visited but only a few kids with parents had them visit, so that doesn't mean much.

"Mm-hm. How old is Original Janet? - Should we keep calling you Janet? Probably risky to go back to your old name, but..."

Real Janet is older, like sixteen or something. She does like her real name but it's risky, yeah, and she's more used to listening for people to say Janet than anything else.

"Some girls pick names that have to do with their aesthetic or their powers, and go by those some or all of the time."

Aesthetic means look, right? She's not actually sure she's going to keep this one - like, she's keeping it for now, but maybe not forever. She wouldn't mind being named after her powers if it was a good name, though.

"Yes, aesthetic means look. I'll think on names about your powers. 'Cartoon' is a terrible name, unfortunately." Smile.

Yeah.

And she doesn't really want to tell everybody about the phasing, she feels safer with that being mostly a secret. The telepathy is fine, though.