Yup!

Magical girl fiction: yes.

Magical girl fiction tropes include:

- the magical girl starscapes while hiding from bad guys of some kind, and pops out with an outfit good enough for a first spell to defeat the bad guys with
- the magical girl's family or friends are jealous and reveal bad character traits in expressing that, but the magical girl's squad are great
- the magical girl just feels So Much More Comfortable in her new body
- Flying Is Amazing
- sometimes the magical girl dresses up in conventionally expensive and popular clothes to try to get in with the popular kids, but they turn out to be jerks
- if she can talk to animals, the animals like her a lot and want to be her friends
- in at least one scene of the book she must defeat a swarm or monster by herself before backup arrives

Dusk is pretty happy with the way her life has riffed on these tropes.

Are there girls who can talk to animals, though? She asks Julie about it.

"Sure are!" says Julie. "Weirdly, nobody who can talk to girls in the mysteries - I mean, you can, they just don't react consistently - but some who can talk to animals."

Huh; she wonders if her thing would do anything, since it's only sort of talking.

"Dunno, but I'd be surprised, it usually comes with an animal oriented theme. You can try it on the squirrels if you want."

She meant for talking to cryptids, but she should try that, too, yeah.

"Oh, for that I don't know. I don't think there are any living around here."

Well, if it comes up she's willing to try, anyway.

"I'll let you know if I spot one. Last January one came out of the sea to help us with a kaiju, it was pretty incredible."

Storytime?

"Ooh, sure. So we got the call from a station in Greenland - American Paladins protect other countries, too, and take their calls about kaiju. The Greenlanders had spotted it surfacing about forty miles off their coast and if it decided it wanted to make landfall it could do it in a minute or two, it was at least fifty swarms big and those suckers are fast. It was pouring rain and we all got into our storm gear on the way there, hoping we'd grab it and make it stand to fight us before it hit a town. By the time we got there it had gone underwater, too deep to sense, and we were circling, low as we dared - you can't get too close to the water when a kaiju's hiding or it'll wrap a tentacle around your chopper and pull the whole thing under. I got out and stood on a force platform to have senses open in more than one place, and then out it came - no tentacles, just arms, a dozen arms, and I blasted off and it went for the helicopter but Rivka got it slowed down with her magic molasses spell and it was in slow-motion, reaching, while the rest of the squad flew out to engage. And it very nearly landed a hit on Salome - she misjudged the distance, it's hard in the rain, and this one hadn't been doing tentacles up till then - but then out of the water came a sea-serpent, and she caught the tentacle in her teeth, and ripped it right off!"

Eeeee, gosh.

"And she disappeared under the water for a while, and we thought she'd just come to do that one thing and go, but then we noticed the kaiju was getting smaller, faster than we could account for - she popped up again about forty yards away, with six tentacles all bundled together in her jaws - she'd been fighting it underwater while we fought it over - and then when it was beaten she swam away."

That's so cool.

"It was! I'm not sure if she used magic or was just an awesome sea serpent."

Either way is pretty great.

Does Julie know if cryptids keep the same powers they had when they were regular magical girls?

"I think they sometimes seem to, but we can't be sure if they always do since they're not going to try it on command and often don't glam up - we don't know much about what God thinks of their looks, they can't tell us."

That would make it hard to figure out, yeah. They don't talk at all?

"I think occasionally some of them say a few words, but you can't rely on them for it."

Huh.

She'll have to get a book on cryptids next time she's at the library or something.

"Sounds like a plan! There's a lot we still don't know about them."

Well, she wants to know what there is, anyway. (Hug.) And she'll go back to her book now.

The next day is a pretty quiet day in. Winona winds up giving Julie a backrub since her posture's suffered a little from the injury recovery process; Winona scolds her about not being gentle enough with herself. They go to evening services and can collect the watercolors.

Church is nice. It's weird, liking it, especially since she's still not convinced it's true, but she does. And then there are watercolors. (If she'd realized they might hang them up she'd've matched the house's decor a little better. Oh well; next time.)