"If you think it's interesting, then it's definitely worth grabbing."

"I think I'm happy with my choices now."

"Restrictions banning necromancy, consortation, and potions, right? Last chance to add another complication or two? Only helps long term but there's a lot of long term to look forward to. If not..."

She extends her hands. "Whenever you're ready. Bet you'll look good."

"I think I'll actually grab the one where I have a bounty hunter after me for a couple years, seems worth it for improving my long term potential."

"Good choice. We'll have your back. Hmm, anything I forgot to suggest... Ah, mental fixation, that would get you four points of cap, right to the maximum. Makes you a little obsessive - bloodlust, curiosity, or paranoia are all inconvenient, but always having sex on the brain isn't nearly so bad. Want to go for it?"

"I.. don't think I'll notice the effect to be honest. So - yeah - absolutely."

She grabs Tesera's hand.

And the lights glow, then pour into Simone, and she feels herself rapidly changing; body, mind, and probably soul.

The big mirror's back out the next time she looks.

"Congratulations, you're a witch. Meet the new you."

Her first though upon seeing her reflection is: Who is that hot girl?

It takes her a while for it to sink in that she's the hot girl in the mirror.

She whispers: "I think it will take me a while to get used to it. Also, can we go somewhere else? The city noise is kinda overwhelming."

"Oh, wait, I can just..."

She opens a portal to a forest she used to visit as a kid. She hasn't been there in ages, but she remembers every inch of it. It smells like memories and safety.

Tesera mutters something, then steps through as well. "Where is this?"

"Acadia National Park, in Maine. I've been here many times as a kid, and it felt easy to open a portal to it. I should really get earplugs..."

"It's a nice place. But yes. I know of a gate to a witch community on the north edge of town where we came from, and... Maine, right? There's one in Portland by the ferry, there's a nexus there."

"Uh, I've never been there..."

She thinks about folding space, or just flying there, but then:

"Wait, I just realized... having magic doesn't mean we're not living in the 21st century."

She grabs her phone, searches for "Ferry, Portland, Maine" on Google maps, looks around a bit with street view, looking for a small alley, then opens another portal.

"Shall we?"

"Picking it up quickly, I see. By all means."

And she'll step through together.

She has to raise her voice to be heard above the noise of the city.

"Do you know where the gate is? Or I guess we could enter a music shop, they should have earplugs."

"From here?", she says quietly, "...Three blocks north, then down to the shore. You can probably muffle your hearing a little by stilling the air with windkeeping. The other side I can muffle everything with the same little Dominion trick until we're in the store."

She tries that, which helps a bit but doesn't solve her problem completely, at least not in the city next to traffic.

"Let's go."

Portland is a sleepy city, especially when it's cold, and there isn't much of anyone to pay attention to this small warehouse with its main doors pointed out to sea, even if the Veil wasn't discouraging them. Tesera taps the side door with her cane, and after giving Simone a brief respite in the quiet room, approaches the wall opposite the large doors, and taps that as well.

And then the portal opens, taking up nearly the entire wall. Everything in sight is at least three stories tall and mostly five, much of it in brick or wood shingle that wouldn't be out of place in the dreary Maine street but just as much in steel, or heavily-decorated concrete, or in a couple cases white or black marble. Almost everything has a second main entrance on the upper floors.

There are a lot more people here, all moving purposefully, and only about half are even as human-looking as Tesera. There are walking flames in silk clothing, two green-skinned women wearing necklaces of leaves, five different kinds of half-animal with at least two very different degrees of furriness, a veiled person with snakes protruding from her hood, a centaur and a bunnytaur, an elf, a family of orcs, a ghost statue eight feet tall, someone who'd pass for human if she wasn't twelve feet tall, a family whose adults are four feet and kids are under two, a porcelain robot, a man made of flowing silver metal, and a mummy, and that's just on the ground.

About half the people in the air are riding brooms or carpets, and others are flying under their own power; mostly very small fairy types, but also a floating woman with reptilian blue scales down her arms and legs and blue coral horns, a slender slightly translucent elf-looking couple who are drifting on the (very conveniently-aimed and local) wind, a small family of brightly-colored birds turning to and from humanoids at the balconies, and an East Asian woman with golden bison horns and flushed skin who's flying on conjured black wind.

There are a lot of billboards, some of which are moving without any digital element. Healing potions, a witch minting service, an Indian-Lunabellan fusion restaurant. A witch tailor, whose subject's robes and hat are bland and covering on the left side of the image, and a beautiful prismatic arrangement that probably would get her arrested for public indecency back in Portland on the right. Actually, the other ads are pretty risque, too; the healing potion is being poured over a woman's hips and wettening both the skin and, just above the bottom edge, reddish pubic hair, and the restaurant shows an expression of such delight with a bite of steakmelon tandoor that it's falling off her spoon and splashing down onto her breasts.

Tesera taps her cane on the floor just past the portal and the cushioning bubble pops out again. "Welcome to Nasi's Junction, Earth Syntropic-2 Chaotic-1, or Rainbow to those who live here. Welcome to the real world."

She stares, slack-jawed. So many different shapes of people! It's mesmerizing. And the doors on the second floor, of course, and the fusion restaurant that has dishes with ingredients she didn't even know existed until this morning and the ads are. Uh.

Different culture, eh?

"It's beautiful! And thank you for the bubble, it helps, combined with some  But... I do have a question. What's with the ads being... you know?"

"Mortals are so precious about sex. It's not like we're all sluts by their standards, but witches make birth control and disease control cheap, and have for centuries. Plus all the charging that's intimate or kinky, though not directly sexual. You only got offered vore, eggs, and sadism, but there's, oh, cuddling, voyeurism, submissiveness, breathplay, just straight causing desire... Nymphs are such teases. So, yeah, sexual ads are just - normal. No one really notices unless they go back and forth a lot."

Mortals. She's still not used to the idea that she won't have to die. She's never though much about death, but now that she doesn't have to worry about it, she feels... lighter, like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders.

"I... can't say I'm complaining. It's just unusual to see women being this open about sexuality. It's usually us ma..."

She shakes head. "Still getting used to it."

"No worries, sweetie. Let's get you to the store to help with the other changes. Just off the square to the right."