It didn't feel particularly weird when Margaret got her medallion; hopefully that's just about their particular shapes and which direction she was going and the fact that she was too busy going "OMG magic" and not a sign that she fucked up the spell and Brenda is never going to be able to walk or something. She is going to stuff her worries in a hole and not talk about them unless something goes more obviously wrong.

"Yeah, I bet. Are you feeling okay apart from that? Are you still the same height? You look about the same height."

"I feel okay apart from that, but, like, toes. I didn't really have a height, just an altitude? This is one of my taller heights, actually, it was usually comfortable to hold myself lower than this but I guess that'd mean having really short legs. It's fine." She stretches out to her full human-height.

"Yeah, toes are kind of objectively stupid. And better weirdly tall than weirdly short, I guess? At least you'll be able to reach more shelves."

"Oh, I could get taller than this, I just wouldn't, like, hang out taller than this, it'd get tiring to hold up that much of myself."

"Oh, that makes sense. Do you want to try walking? You can hold onto my arm if you want."

"The part where you swing your arms around isn't important?"

"Not really? It helps you go faster, I think, but I've never noticed it helping with balance much."

"Huh. I guess you can carry things and still walk." Brenda attempts a few steps, touching the wall.

"Yeah. I think the arm-swinging is more important the faster you go."

"That explains why running looks so weird!"

"It does, doesn't it? I wonder what's easier, learning to walk when you're used to slithering or vice versa."

"Gosh, I don't know. Slithering feels really intuitive to me but it might technically be more muscles to keep track of even though there's not separate limbs."

"Hmm, yeah. And of course nobody can do it both ways and compare. It's too bad critters don't have the resources for fMRI machines; we could see what happens in people's brains when they change forms."

"Maybe somebody could sneak someone in after hours."

"Maybe if a critter going to a human college majors in biology. I'd do it but I'm going to major in engineering." Unless she drops out to sell medallions full-time or something. She should look up critter population growth rates and see how fast she'd have to go to keep up.

"It's a pity you can't major in magic, you'd be so good at it."

She cheats and would get spotted as a dragon immediately. "That would be so cool. I wish there were more critters, or that critters could live openly, so we could have all the things bigger communities have."

"Well, if there were more critters then the Avalons would get really full."

"Maybe if there were more critters we would have better record-keeping and would still know how to hide more Avalons."

"Why would more critters make for better record-keeping?"

"The more people who know a thing, the more likely someone is to write it down or tell someone else, and the less likely it is for all of them to die without passing it on. Though I suppose it might not have helped if Avalon-hiding was always a deliberate secret."

"I don't think anyone's just happened to all die in an entire Avalon."

"Probably not, but if only three people in the whole Avalon knew how to hide them, and none of them took students, they could all die without anyone else learning how."

"I guess, yeah. Do you have students?"

"No, but I might take some later." Now that she can tell when a spell is safe for non-dragons, it actually wouldn't be that bad of an idea. "I guess I should, even though it feels weird now when I'm still in school myself."