While the bus trundles down Main Street, her vision blanks out to be replaced with a look at herself: sitting (bus seat not included), wearing the clothes and hair that get her made fun of, against a backdrop of stars.

Would she like to change any of this?

It's the magic thing! She's heard of this - she thought it wasn't going to happen to her, because since when do lucky things happen to her.

...They said not to be too eager and think about if you want it, but it's kind of too exciting not to do anything.

Okay. Okay, first of all, her hair has got to behave. A bit longer, not frizzled or frayed, shiny and smooth and all going down the back of her head, darker brown. Second of all, she has a birthmark that has really got to go. Goodbye, ugly blob. Third of all - fix those teeth.

Fourth... Can she get taller?

She can! She can get taller!

Her hearing is unaffected; a girl says, "Holy shit, Laura got starscaped and she's going for it, look."

"We're all doomed," says a boy.

She's taller now. The feeling of suddenly having a couple inches of bare midriff past her T-shirt, and the suddenly too short old jeans, makes her pause. She doesn't wanna do this on a bus in front of everyone. Even though it might be fun to watch them gape as all the bad parts of her disappear.

...Okay one more thing. Permanent lipstick that won't smudge, in light red, is that a thing?

She can pigment her lips! Doing it in actual makeup is not currently unlocked because she basically still looks like a human.

She wouldn't mind having her lips look like that basically forever, so doing it in real skin is perfectly fine.

At any rate, she tries to get her vision to go back to normal. For now. And sort of smirks at everyone until the bus drops her off and she can run home.

She can exit the starscape with no problems. Running is a little different with extra inches.

Huh, it really is. She stretches her legs and swings her arms around, feeling the differences. There's a little bit more inertia to everything now.

...She kind of wants to play with her shape and exercise in lots of different conditions now.

She goes home. She tells her mom about the starscape, points out what she's done, and says that she's probably going to go all the way with it - her mom hesitates, then hugs her and says 'I hope it makes you happy'. Mom calls her dad, and he doesn't know how to react, eventually joking 'well, if I don't recognize you tomorrow at least I know why'.

She goes up to her room. She does a little internet research on the painfully slow, old laptop. What are the downsides to embracing magic, exactly? She knows you can't go back to plain-old-human even if you want to, anything else?

If you do too much, you turn into a cryptid! Also it makes you gay!

Yikes. And... Yikes maybe? ...It's not like she's ever had a successful date while straight. And magic! MAGIC!

She looks at a couple examples of 'too much', then strips naked, stands in the middle of her room, and brings the starscape back. There's all these really crazy changes right there, right under the surface, begging to be used, but she sticks to perfecting what she's got first. A more symmetrical face, slightly bigger eyes, less prominent collarbone, no scars or freckles, no hair in places other than her head...

Clear skin, bring in that waist a bit, bring up the bust and butt and hips a bit. Just a bit, she still wants to look like a teen at the end of this. The height plus this is already pushing that.

She has Opinions about the shape of her legs and arms and feet and hands and fingers and toes (and -nails on all four limbs). They're pretty subtle changes but it's so satisfying to be able to make them.

And after maybe fifteen minutes of carefully fiddling with what she's already got, stretching and posing between changes, she can take a deep breath and start to make bigger changes. Yellow-gold irises, like some creature of magic? Metal hair, in dark silver or bronze or gold, maybe? Hopefully that doesn't send her head crashing to the floor.

It's pretty heavy, but no, she can hold her head up with some difficulty.

She likes the look (and feel) of it, but the extra weight is really annoying, can she make that go away? Or get something that acts similar without being actually metal?

She likes the eyes. They make her look heroic.

She can get normal hair to be very very shiny and to behave stiffly like wire.

That's good enough for now. She's going to fiddle with it a lot, but later.

So, just these changes isn't enough, hmm...

The starscape waits patiently.

The Internet informs her that wings are always enough by themselves.

Okay then. Wings. Flying sounds fun. She's not nervous at all, no way.

Wings styled after an eagle. A single pair, long, wide, and feathered. The front half of the feathers brown, the rest sort of golden-blonde, but not shiny or metal, real feathers.

There she goes! Now she can change her clothes and stuff too so she doesn't have to wear ill-fitting junk!

Cool! Heeeee. She flaps them a couple of times, limited by the size of her room but positively grinning anyway.

Okay, maybe turn down the shininess of her hair some, it's clashing with the un-shiny wings. Make it layered brown/blonde like the feathers, make it less stiff, make it curve and curl a little.

As for clothes, she's probably not very good at this, but she wants to be a knight. A hero.

She gives herself a long-sleeve white undershirt coming up to her neck with patterns of red diamonds on the seams. Silver chainmail shirt, some of the links golden instead, a big ruby with circles of golden links around it in the center, over her chest. She adjusts it so it fits her figure, hugging it slightly without hurting her ability to stretch much. She has to try several times to make it not get in the way of the wings. She gives herself golden bracelets like a hexagon twisted over itself again and again in a spiral.

As for bottoms, apparently skirts are pretty much mandatory? But it can be an armored skirt, a Lady Knight's skirt, right? Pieces of chain-metal backed and sewn together with cloth, that clink pleasantly when she moves and flare out if she twirls. Leggings with the same white and red diamond patterns as her undershirt under them, the red diamonds peaking out of the armored skirt. She works more patterns of different colored metal into both items, flipping the colors of everything around until she gets something that looks cool.

Armored skirt seems to pass muster, and everything else she does is at least a little positive to the magic she can now slightly sense; she gets the biggest jumps from the ruby, the skirt, and the leggings.

Hmm.

More gemstones! Not, like, everywhere, not so many it becomes gaudy, but more. Mostly tiny little diamonds in various colors, and a lot of rubies. She likes the redness. A few more gems arranged around the large ruby on the armor shirt. Some at the corners of the skirt panels, little diamonds and rubies in gold fittings. Maybe a circlet, gold like two ropes weaving over each other, one large ruby in the middle and a line of smaller ones in slightly different shades of red.

Maybe the armor shirt needs to be more elaborate than one single layer - how about an open vest over the armor shirt, red trim and the fabric patterned white-and-yellow in a feather pattern?

Gloves? She's not sure about what kind of gloves fit the Knight thing without being cumbersome or ugly though...

How about some thin metal chains criss-crossing along the edge of the wings, or running through the feathers? How about she adds more red patterning, and maybe a little gold, to the undershirt and leggings?

The rubies do better than the diamonds, though the diamonds still help. The gold fittings are great, the circlet is greater. The vest isn't helping much, though it doesn't hurt. The wing adornments are weak additions. The red patterning is good!

Well, she likes the wing adornments, so nyeh.

White stockings with the same red patterning. Leather boots with gold fastenings and nubbins - one piece, no laces, she doesn't have to get them on - she tries a few different designs until the magic likes one. Interleaving lines of gold chain dotted with rubies hanging off each other down her armor vest, split along the center. A cape that fits just over where her wings join her body, dark blue with red, yellow, and white angular patterns on the back! Little golden feather-shaped earrings with a tiny ruby in each of them. She makes her eyelashes silvery, and her lips gain a slight sheen. Red seems to be working well - does adding red highlights to either her hair or the wings help? How about going totally Gold-and-red instead of gold-and-brown?

She wants to go try flying as soon as she gets something the magic likes enough to give her a spell, but she's having plenty of fun with this right now anyway. Though, she suddenly realizes that all this armor is pretty heavy. Well, she can go with just the undershirt and leggings or something later if she has to, to fly.

Most of these things are good! The earrings are very good. The eyelashes are bad. The highlights on the wings help, but losing the brown entirely hurts.

She's definitely got magic at this point! It just doesn't seem to come in discrete blobs.

Well, she'll undo the eyelashes then. And keep most of the brown, just doing highlights.

There's probably something she can do to improve the vest. Ribbons, perhaps? She could probably add more stuff directly to her body... Silvery tattoos, maybe? Hmm.

Either way, it's about time for her to go try to fly. She's not gonna wait for that any longer!

Flying works! She's not great at it but she can successfully take off and not crash into anything! The armor is really heavy, though, she's having to work pretty hard.