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It's the Saturday before classes start. Ellie has been driving all day, but it's worth it for an entire three months out of the house. And she even drew a single in the dorm lottery, so there's that. It's tiny, but she doesn't have to share.
Suitcases on the bed, she starts unpacking into the dresser that lives underneath. Tops here, pants there, hanging things in the closet. Computer can go on the desk, and then notebooks into the drawers.
The drawers contain some leftovers from the room's previous occupant. Crumbled up paper with drawings. Broken pencils. A pencil sharpener. An agenda with no writing, just crossed out days. A notebook with most of the pages torn out. And, at the bottom, a necklace - bronze, possibly, depicting a cat with odd swirls and stylized wings.
Trash, trash, trash, trash- huh. That's interesting. She picks the necklace upt to examine it more closely.
It's warm, and a lot heavier than it looks. Smooth to the touch. And very aesthetically appealing, though it's hard to call it pretty - this is a cat on the prowl, one that remembers its ancestors were wild.
An odd electric tingle starts in the tips of her fingers. The necklace isn't heavy to wear, not at all. The chain's comfortable.
The pendant is also noticeably a lot warmer.
Its eyes are maybe glinting a little - though they hadn't seemed to be made of gemstones earlier.
Focusing on it - thinking about it - increases the tingling in her fingers.
What kind of thing is this? She can't see any obvious switches and it's not really big enough for a battery...
There seems to be a breaking point in her examination, in the extent of her focus on the pendant -
It glows and sparks, little arcs of electricity jumping around it. It doesn't hurt. On the contrary - it feels nice. Correct.
The tingling is now spreading from her fingers, over her whole body.
Lightning arcs around her, wrapping her - changing her, or at least her view of the room.
The room: only has hints of shadows. She can see in the dim light far more clearly. She can see-feel-hear-smell- taste the electric light over her head, the outlet in the room, the wires in the walls...
She also appears to now be a glowing cat. The pendant is still around her neck, the cord adjusted perfectly to her new shape.
Okay this is really cool. Everything is humming. And also maybe kind of weird. She examines her paw.
Sleek, golden, with claws that smoothly emerge when she flexes it, and electricity dancing among her fur.
She sheathes and unsheathes her claws a couple times, then slashes across the air experimentally. She half-expects this to cause some kind of lightning bolt.
It causes a crackle and a small flash, the afterimage lingering for a second.
She has, indeed, never seen anything obviously magic before now. No glowing lightning cats anywhere to be found.
Still, the campus isn't that crowded yet, and the dorm does have a roof... And there are all those weird half hidden walled gardens...
That is true. But if she's stuck like this it'll be hard to attend class, so she'll need a different plan depending on if she can transform at will or not.
First she'll try taking the necklace off.
Taking the necklace off seems to suddenly (and a bit disorientingly) turn her back into a human, with a small light show.
It's warm but doesn't immediately transform her back. Feels like it did when she first put it on.
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