OK, see you then!

See you!

And on Tuesday at 7:30 she teleports, invisible and winged, to the air above Framingham, lands in an alley near the Avalon entrace, and walks out human. By 8 she should be knocking on Brenda's door.

Brenda answers. "Hi! Wow, I forgot you're so much younger than me that you look noticeably older after being gone for months. How are you?"

"I've been good! Really busy with research and school, but totally worth it. How about you, how have you been? And how's the rest of the group doing?"

"We're on a sci-fi campaign now, picked up a new system. I'm a robot made from parts from a bunch of different civilizations and it makes me glitchy, it's fun. Can I get you something to drink or anything?"

"Ooh, that does sound fun. Water would be nice, thank you."

Brenda slithers into the kitchen and gets her water. "Sanjay's doing this kind of annoying thing where he didn't take the common language so he mostly speaks in gibberish unless his translation software is working and Xavier's having way more fun with that than the rest of us are - he gets notes about what Sanjay means, see - so I'm hoping he has some payoff planned because in the meantime it's a waste of time." Water.

"Heh. Yeah, that's the sort of thing that sounds on paper like an interesting way to handicap your character, and then you go to actually do it and realize it's kind of terrible."

She takes a sip of her water, and pulls the medallion and its chain out of her pocket. "Thanks. So, where do you want to do this?"

"Is there a reason here's not good?"

"Nope, here's fine. One quick warning: if my bracelet lights up, that means there's something magic going on that doesn't match what my medallion is doing, so if that happens you should probably take it off in case it turns out to be something bad. With that said, go ahead and put it on." She's twisting one of her rings around and around, but her face is calm.

"...Okay." She puts it on.

Margaret smiles when her bracelet doesn't light up. "Okay, now try to think yourself human-shaped. Sort of visualize what you want to look like and try to--mentally squash your shape into a human shape? It took me a bit to figure out, it might take you longer since you don't have a point of reference."

"It goes off what I want?"

"I think so? I haven't actually researched what this is like for people born in critter shape, maybe we should get on your computer and look for tips if it isn't obvious." Margaret is fidgeting with her teleport ring even more now, worrying that maybe her first test should have been on a species that already had medallions.

"That's a good idea, I think there's a site about that somewhere." Brenda slithers to her computer.

Margaret finds somewhere to perch and reads over Brenda's shoulder.

There are eight slightly redundant numbered items, when Brenda finds the page. She reads through them all, then lies down on the floor - there's an item about making sure you won't lose your balance the first time - and closes her eyes and concentrates.

And gradually she acquires legs, but this completely fails to materialize pants.

Margaret realizes what's happening as the transformation starts and hastily switches from fascinated staring to averting her eyes.

"Did you get it? . . . Do you want like a towel or something?" 

"- oh, that didn't occur to me. Yeah, that'd be good probably," says Brenda, craning her neck. "I'm going to have to learn to put on clothes! I'm too old to have to do that!" she laughs.

"It had never occurred to me that you were wearing less clothes than most people!" Margaret giggles, grabbing a blanket off the couch and holding it up between them.

"I sometimes put on a skirt? I guess I can do that if pants are hard?" Brenda manages to drape herself with the blanket. "Only I think maybe people normally also wear underwear with those."

"Normally, but I guess it's up to you. Underwear is more important with pants than a skirt, I think, but I hardly ever wear skirts."

"More important with pants? But there's no way to see up the pants." Brenda is now working on standing; it is hard to do this while maintaining blanket drapery since she needs to grab her sofa to try to pull herself up.

Margaret leans down and offers a hand, careful not to step on the blanket. "I guess it depends on skirt length." Then her brain stops waiting for the other shoe to drop and it finally hits her: "But whatever, it worked you have legs! I feel like nothing can possibly be too difficult right now."

Brenda hauls herself up and balances tentatively, not trying yet to take a step. "They feel so weird!"