Is this your house? It's cool you have a house.

It's our base of operations! We share it with the rest of our team—one of them has rich parents; the building technically belongs to her dad. He's letting us use it rent-free as a 'public service'. 

Oh, that makes sense. She bops around peering at things for a bit and then flops down on the couch.

So. Basics of magic and how to get better at it. 

You can transform pretty much any time you have any charge at all—and into just about anything you can think of—but your charge will last longer, and you'll be able to do more magic, the more your form reflects your personality and your...ideal self, pretty much. 

Ideal self?

The idea is to find the shape that feels...the most like you? Some people think of it as the shape they want to be, some think of it as the way they always looked inside...

It'll take some experimenting. I'm not there yet and I've had magic for years! Radha thinks she's pretty close, with hers, but she might have a breakthrough tomorrow and realise she's always secretly wanted peacock feathers for hair, or something. Although I think she's tried that one in particular. 

Wow. I don't really know how to think about that! I know what sounds fun to try, but not what I'm, like, inherently supposed to look like.

Most people don't! All you can really do is try things and see how they feel. Radha was pretty firm on what she didn't want—she knows she wants to be mostly human-shaped, having hands is too useful to give up—but the other details took a while to fall into place, for both of us. Can you believe it took me three months to think of trying a boy shape? 

Yeah, it took Book a while to realize what was the matter too.

He nods.

So it might take you a while to find the shape that works best for you. And in the meantime, you can keep playing around with different ones until you find something you like. 

Sounds good!

Are you still hungry? Radha asks Holly-and-Crystal. And do you eat meat? 

Why wouldn't we eat meat?

Some people don't like eating something that animals were killed to make, Liro says.

Oh—does troporting change things there? You mentioned it can do food, so do you even have to kill animals to get meat? 

It can do food but it can't do it well. Anyway I could eat more.

Good; I'm making us something more filling than pastries and fruit. Flying is hard work. 

Radha throws a few more ingredients into the pan and keeps stirring. 

I'm not sure what to explain next, Liro admits. 

Do you have any questions? 

Eventually we're going to need more mice, is there a way to get those around here?

...probably? Does it have to be mice in particular, what do you need them for—

So our body won't fall asleep.

One of us can take you to a pet store; if they don't have mice there'll be other small rodents. You use mice because they're easy to carry around, right? 

Yes, and not expensive to feed.

Do the ones in your backpack need feeding soon? What do they eat? 

They have some food left, at the moment it's troported peanut, but we were using them pretty hard.

Liro, can you come take over the cooking, I need to make a list—

Radha hands over the cooking to her brother, pulls out a notebook, and starts writing things down, narrating as she goes.

Mice. Food for mice. Food for you, somewhere for you to sleep...do you need clothes or do you have enough in your pack?