"A firefly?"

"I liked to glow."

"What do you mean by 'it didn't stick'?"

"...I'm an owl," Path says. "I didn't settle as a dragon or a firefly. Obviously."

"Just seems a bit peculiar to say 'didn't stick' about it, is all."

"Didn't you ever try to settle as things that seemed cool before you were ready?" Path asks Luca.

"By the relevant time I was pretty sure I was going to be a falcon."

"I'm the one with the shifting identity in this duo. He's even just a single gender."

"Huh, I wonder what that means."

Shrug. "Well, some people settle earlier, right, I dunno if it means anything."

"Huh. Well, Path's an Eastern screech owl grey morph and stuck that way. Settling's kind of a pity, though, it's much less practical - not too bad for you or me, but however much Path liked glowing a firefly would have been annoying in any circumstance and some people do have bugs and also changing all the time just leaves a lot of options open..."

"It does," he agrees. "Especially switching between something fast and-slash-or which can fly," he points up at Luca, "and something with opposing thumbs, if I only had that that'd be a whole lotta extra options."

"Yeah. And if we didn't settle people with monkeys wouldn't be pushed into careers as surgeons."

"The people with water-bound daemons are probably the most affected ones there."

"Yeah, especially big ones."

"I wonder if lots of them separate. We did but it's not like we use it to stay away from each other like that."

"I think it's common but some of them just practice enough distance to make a houseboat work."

"I am not sure why more people don't separate. It's very unpleasant but—boundedly and temporarily so."

"I think it'd be more popular if it was just physical pain."

"How was it for you guys?"

"We did it on the first try. Sucked, though."

"We had to try a few times. Took us a while to think of, uh..."

"Locking me up somewhere I couldn't escape. Due to a lack of thumbs."

"He didn't speak to me for a week."

"I didn't do that but we did have some stuff to process."