Loud purr.

Hee.

Tummy rubs!

Wriggle wriggle purrrrrrr.

Ruby is a cute kitty.

She seems to be exceptionally enjoying the attention.

"How did you do the invisibility thing?"

Mrrrr.

"Directly messing with another wielder's head is really hard and not my thing. But fire is light, and light is knowledge and seeing things - I drew the fire out. Metaphorically."

"Huh. That... makes sense."

"You might need to figure out your own concept stream. Or work directly at it - and direct work, not tied to what your artifact does, is a lot easier to carry over into being human."

"Electricity's pretty versatile. I should brush up on my physics."

"Mmhmm. And mythology and such - mental conceptual links work just as well as what things are literally physically doing."

"Lots to practice."

"Yeah. 'S fun."

Speaking of...

She wants to work more on her compass idea.

"Wanna try to find random objects, or look for me while I hide? - Or I could make a scavenger hunt for you!"

"A scavenger hunt sounds fun."

"Yeah! Might take me a bit to set it up, though."

"I can practice human-form magic? Or we can do it later."

Into human form! To continue flopping over Ellie, of course. "How about I set it up for... Hm, Friday? Starting first thing in the morning. I don't have classes then, and I do want to actually attend any of these."

"Strange priorities, but okay."

She laughs. "I live to transgress against people's expectations of me. Anyways, it'll give me time to plan something fun for the whole day."

"I'll look forward to it."

In the meantime: magic. She should start with something basic, maybe. How about flicking lightning off her fingers, like she does automatically in cat form?

Ruby suggests starting with artifact on but not activated as a first step, and then moving to artifact off once she gets each individual little trick - especially for something she can do naturally in cat form.

That suggestion does make it much easier; still, though, this seems to be the part where magic gets frustratingly hard in general - her first success is just enough static electricity for a small jolt.

Progress is progress.

(If she tells herself that enough, it'll become true.)

Progress does, slowly, creep on.

Ruby at least seems to think she's doing well.