"- ah, yes, email said you'd seen a decent pro but only for a few hours, I suppose he ran out of time. Let me get the textile printer working on what I have in mind for refining your outfit - it's got some very usable elements - and then we can re-position some of these..." She goes and pulls up some images on her computer and the weird appliance starts making noises. "The fabric it produces won't be usable as-is but it works more precisely than I can do by hand without personally tatting your entire sleeve, and you can fix it from there," she goes on, marking scale locations. "Dye sublimation was an incredible boon to the industry."

This doesn't seem to require a response; Margaret admires the machinery. It's a mildly pleasant surprise that the stylist has looked at her old outfit and is planning to reuse some aspects. Means that her previous appointment will have been useful beyond just getting her here.

A lot of the details get carefully redesigned. The stylist has wax and while she's walking Margaret through some of the more tedious experimental sections she molds it into examples to stick to Margaret's jewelry, there to be transmuted into that exact shape of aluminum-titanium alloy and anodized just so along the scratches. The printer finishes and is sewn into a sleeve to compare against Valenti's drawn-on hasty lace design. The stylist wants her to try having two sleeves and a longer skirt with a lace border instead of one sleeve and one pant leg. She makes lots of little wax shapes. Comes up with more elaborate horn caps. Has Margaret wear her stardarters at the small of her back. Bulks up the belt for pocket compartments so carrying her cellphone won't affect the hang of the skirt. Tries a bunch of different wax shape ideas for details of the jewelry; shows Margaret reference samples of different gems to try.

Having two sleeves and shorts after so long in one sleeve and one legging feels weirdly lopsided for a bit. Transmuting things from physical models is much easier than going off a verbal description was. The computer-aided lace is especially impressive; the old pattern that had seemed so excellent before now looks, well, hasty.  

"Mm-hm. I can tell he did good work given the time and equipment he had, though, he might wind up on my level in a few more years," comments the Paladin stylist, totting up Margaret's point value and correcting an asymmetry between her ears when determining there's margin for that.

"Oh, yes, it was light-years beyond what I could have done. I didn't even notice my ears were asymmetrical, wow." (She fixes her ears and does not encrypt herself doing so.)

"Most people don't unless it's really obvious, nobody ever thinks about ear shapes." She looks at Margaret's teeth and deems them acceptable.

"  . . . I could have skipped braces and it would only have mattered for two years, heck."

The stylist laughs, has her experiment with smaller scales where her eyebrows used to be.

This probably improves on the uncanny-valley no-eyebrows-whatsoever thing she had going on previously! (Margaret isn't reporting what the magic has to say, because she hasn't been asked. That's just the narrator's opinion.)

The stylist does ask her about this occasionally; the magic is weakly positive on the smaller scales where eyebrows are but doesn't approve of it when it's extended to the place where head hair once was. She puts taller boots on her because of dispensing with the lace pant leg and dolls those up with sublimated-dye templates too, accomplished with some sophisticated software she has. They break for lunch, which she orders in so she can keep working on the computer while they eat.

If the stylist doesn't object, Margaret will watch over her shoulder while they eat lunch.

The stylist does not object. She's working on integrating Margaret's necklace with her shirt.

Integrating like getting them to match better, or like turning them into a single object? Either would be pretty cool.

Single object!

Oooooh. 

After they're done with lunch they can implement that. The stylist briefly experiments with seashells but ultimately scraps that direction. She spends some time adjusting the soles of Margaret's boots - "This will only matter in flight or if you have your feet up, but you aren't going to spend your life standing perfectly still."

Nod nod. "I fly a lot."

"Mm-hm." She settles on a tread she likes - "Go make sure that doesn't feel too slippery, now."

She tries walking, jogging, running (to the extent she can in this space), and the pushing-off sort of step she would use when taking flight without actually taking flight. "This works fine, as long as I never need absolutely maximum magic while on ice it's not going to be a problem."

"If you do ever need ice mobility I can work out a skate version of the boots in less than half an hour," the stylist remarks. "Or your Valenti guy would probably be plenty good enough to make that sort of adjustment. Not our priority today though." She has her try the small-scale thing around where her lips once were.

She had already had to have slightly smaller scales on her lips to get them to do their job as lips, but ensmallening them further works.

And maybe a little more of the same on the eyelids and around the nose, just that little bit smaller than they have to be to get around all those corners, there we go. On to optimizing the exact number of folds the skirt falls in from a neutral position, adding a slip for modesty given how lacy the skirt is now and to help it fall instead of catching on the scales, adjusting the exact weight of the adornments on the hem for maximally attractive twirl-and-swirl in flight maneuvers and on the ground...

Margaret has a lot of fun twirling experimentally during this part!

The magic likes it when she twirls! This explains some of the extraneous choreography in Paladin documentaries!

The stylist wants to tweak her posture; she doesn't have enough points for the "classic" extra couple vertebrae but she can nudge a couple less point-heavy things.