A ways away, a young woman sits in the attic of her mother's home, wincing as she slits the throat of a large rat with a razor blade. She feels a twinge of guilt, but reminds herself that the poor little things only live a couple years anyway. She quickly sets the rat's head over a small bowl and dips a paintbrush in the blood, doing her best to hold her hand steady as she paints a sigil onto a piece of printer paper. She's had to awkwardly dodge any questions about how things have been at "college" since arriving for her visit earlier today, lest talking about it without the aid of magic break the spell early. But as soon as she's got this thing in her pocket, her family will be happy to accept that she somehow got accepted to MIT despite not even having a high school diploma or having ever taken the SAT, and that to prevent fraud they have to accept the tuition directly from the student themself so they have to send the money to her bank account first, and that they don't have summer vacation and she can only visit them every three months. Magic is awesome. Say what you will about her dad, but he gave her all the good genes. It may suck for the rats, but if they were sapient and knew what Katie's family were like, they'd gladly sacrifice their lives to help her avoid it. She wished the damn thing lasted longer, though. Having to buy all the ingredients in secret, do it when no one's home, and then hide all the leftovers is such a hassle, especially in this car dependent shithole. She had to spend like 40 bucks on successive rideshares from here to the art supply store, and then from the art supply store to the pet store, and then from the pet store back home. She guesses the pet store is close enough that in theory she could've taken the bus, but while killing it is one thing, making a poor innocent rat spend its last hours on this earth waiting for the bus in this heat is just cruel. If she did that, she'd be no better than her family.

Damn, she actually has to do work. Mara drives like the wind to the spot marked on her map, hoping to get there in time for some evidence of black magic use to be remaining so she can report back on the spell's effectiveness. Fortunately, speed enforcement is minimal most of the way into town.

Mara peers intently in the front windows of Katie's house, and opens her wizard's Sight. She can see some traces of a mind control ritual having been used, though it must be one that operates at a distance or on a time delay; the victims aren't immediately evident. From her current angle, she can't see the practitioner who cast the spell, either, but they might still be around.

Before Katie's family are scheduled to get back, she hears a knock at the door.

Her heart stops. She's about to frantically try to hide the evidence, but then she realizes. Whoever it is is knocking. Mom wouldn't need to knock, she'd just walk right in. If any of her other family members were gonna come over to see her, presumably they would've let her know in advance. It's probably just a door-to-door salesman, or maybe a Mormon missionary. She's a little tempted to open the door just because she's never actually had a Mormon missionary come to her house before and she's curious what it's like, but she resists the temptation. Aside from the obvious, talking to someone other than her family might use up the magic. She's still not totally sure how this shit works.

No answer. She could just report her sighting of the traces of a likely mind control ritual, that's already more than Alyssa was probably expecting to learn out of this particular test. Still, she's already gone all this way, she might as well take one more shot to learn more. She blasts the door open and waits outside, trying to look authoritative.

Oh god. The Mormons don't do that. Katie doesn't know who would. Are there... magic cops? Aurors? She's pretty sure Harry Potter is entirely fictional, but the consequences if it's not are dire, at least assuming Magical America has a similar justice system to Britain. She picks up the razor and holds it inches from her neck, but she can't bring herself to do it. She's too clumsy and stupid and the magic cops will probably be able to forcefeed her a healing potion or something, and even if they don't, she's seen some stuff online that indicates Christianity might be real, so she might go to actual fucking Hell if she kills herself. In most cultures dying in battle gets you to a good afterlife, so that's probably the best way to hedge her bets. She grabs a glass bottle for throwing and hides in the bathroom. It's not gonna do much against someone who can blast down doors but hopefully it's enough to qualify as 'not a suicide'.

The caster isn't coming to the door. Mara could go inside to search, but the threshold would sap her power. She takes a few seconds for risk assessment.

"Looks like the raw power of Council material, but cast with bumbling incompetence. Amateur work. Do you agree?"

"Agreed. Bet you $500 it's a kid. You could take them in a contest of magic, even weakened by the threshold," chirps the spirit of intellect contained within Mara's butterfly hair clip.

(A skull or mask is a more traditional vessel for her kind, but Tiffany is rather more active in the field than most such assistants.)

"Nice."

A good chance of winning a magical duel doesn't rule out more mundane methods of conflict, however, and with Mara's life expectancy being measured in centuries she doesn't intend to waste it. With a few turns of a bracelet on her wrist, Mara pumps enough energy into her magical shield to withstand a bullet.

("Kevlar is the more efficient option," Mara imagines hearing in Alyssa's voice, but she finds it never goes with her outfit. Mara is of the opinion that activities that can't be done in a dress are for other people.)

She reaches into her purse—which has rather more capacity than its external appearance would imply—and pulls out pepper spray to hold in one hand, leaving the other plunged into the purse in case other options are needed.

With a wince as her power is weakened, she crosses the threshold and begins to explore the house. Without her full power, she can't simply force a door open without physical contact, but if any are locked she can bring them down with a magically assisted kick.

A... A hot woman??? An insanely hot woman in a dress with a purse... brandishing pepper spray? She's not sure what she expected the person or entity who broke down her door to look like, but she didn't expect them to be female. The shock causes her to drop the bottle and it shatters on the floor. The floor being covered in glass shards while she's barefoot ratchets her stress level up to 11. She starts crying. "Please don't send me to Azkaban, please, just kill me quickly and painlessly and say I was about to escape and you had to."

Damn, she almost wants to pat the kid's head and tell her everything is going to be all right. It wouldn't necessarily be true, though, and in any case she shouldn't squander the intimidation advantage. She reaches into her purse and swaps the pepper spray out for a pair of handcuffs.

"I'm hoping I won't have to do either. Hold your hands out and let me put these on, come with me, and get in the car."

"Following those instructions provides you with your best chance of continued survival and freedom!" chirps a voice from the back of Mara's head.

She holds out her hands. "Wait, hoping? Is Azkaban actually real? Also, uh, how am I supposed to follow you when as you can see, there's broken glass on the floor and I'm barefoot?"

Mara mutters something under her breath and waves her hand; the glass sweeps itself aside and reassembles itself into a bottle. She slaps the handcuffs on Katie.

"Azkaban isn't real. Your death is, unfortunately, on the table. I can explain while I drive."

"Whoa, sick. Man, I wish I had the executive function to teach myself to do that. Relief about the Azkaban thing though. How painful of a death are we talking?" The presence of sexy woman renders her remarkably calm in the face of imminent demise.

"Thank you! I think it is well within your capabilities, actually, and many other things besides."

"...and, um, by the sword. They're as efficient as they can be. I'll explain more in the car."

She starts walking, tugging on the chain of Katie's handcuffs to encourage her to follow.

"Well that's a relief. Kind of. So is the cop that arrested me also my defense attorney in whatever weird ass-backwards legal system magic people have? Because you're talking about me like you're on my side, despite, y'know, being the one to apprehend and restrain me." She follows.

"I'm not a cop. I'm...trying to figure out whether this should be brought to the legal system at all, or whether I should bend the rules and handle it my way. It's going to depend on what sort of person you are and what things you've done."

Reaching the car, she opens the passenger seat door and guides Katie into the seat with a hand on her shoulder, then hops in the driver's seat herself and punches the gas.

"How much do you know about the White Council and the Laws of Magic?"

"'I want to make a tasteless joke about that sounding like a white supremacist group, but thinking about it you (they?) have probably heard that one a million times before and are sick of it by now. Anyways, so you guys are like, magic cops? Or, well, you claim not to be a cop, but are arresting me anyway. Also, you should call whatever legal code you're enforcing something else. 'Laws of Magic' sounds like it denotes things you physically cannot do with magic, not things you'll get arrested if you do, and it does no one any favors for the two to be easily confused."

"I'm kidnapping you, actually. Isn't that what it's called when you arrest someone while not being a cop? And I'll let Tiffany handle the infodump."

"Hi! I'm Tiffany, spirit of intellect and wizard's assistant. I can answer your questions about the Council and the Laws and what kind of danger you're in. The pink haired one who so rudely refused to introduce herself is Mara, by the way. And you are?"

"Katie. So like, why are you talking about the law and the death penalty and all that if you're not a cop and you're just straight up kidnapping me rather than arresting me?"

"Because, unfortunately, the laws exist for good reasons. If I can't handle you myself, I will have to get the law involved; it wouldn't be safe for me to have a full-fledged warlock in my back yard."

"It was very insightful of you to observe that 'the Laws of Magic' sounds like it refers to physical limitations! They are based on a physical distinction—certain types of magic damage the brain and soul, compromising your judgment and impulse control while warping you to be better at doing more of that kind of magic, and worse at everything else. Such a person is called a warlock. The most commonly violated laws are those against killing another human with magic and mind control, but the category also includes transforming another's body, mind-reading, necromancy on humans, time travel, and messing with the Outsiders—uh, Lovecraft kinda things. It's not a moral distinction; you can use magic to coerce others as long as you don't do so using those specific methods."

She pauses for a moment and considers this. "Okay, fuck, that sounds scary and now I'm worried about myself, but how do I know this is actually real and I haven't just been kidnapped by the magic equivalent of fundamentalist Christians who think jerking off turns you into an axe murderer?"

Mara smiles. "I need to figure out if I can trust you to not break the Laws further, and you need to figure out if you can trust me to be smart enough to be right about them. There's one solution I can think of, that we can do as soon as we get to our destination and the car is stopped—an exception to the prohibition against mind-reading. It's called a soulgaze, a natural phenomenon that occurs when a wizard makes extended eye contact with another person. It gives each person a sense of the other's character. That would allow me to guess when and how you are likely to lie, and you to see what sort of reasoning processes I use to understand the world."

"Yeah, not gonna lie, getting a real 'it's okay when we do it' vibe here that has me concerned. But like, whatever, probably better if I cooperate at this point. Just uuuh, have wizards already worked out a principle with these things of 'don't ask questions and then get mad when they're answered honestly?'"

"I will endeavor to make sure you're better off for cooperating with me! I hope you will likewise endeavor to make sure I'll be better off for considering extralegal options instead of turning you in to be killed immediately."

"I've heard people say I'd be better off if I cooperated and found it to be a lie before, but those people actually were the legitimate authorities. Maybe this time the legitimate authorities are smart enough to lie that they're individuals acting extralegally to gain my trust though." The fact that it's a hot fat woman with pink hair doing all this does feel suspiciously like she was selected specifically to gain Katie's trust by someone with intimate knowledge of her personality.

"I don't think they're generally smart enough to think of it. My daughter is, but she'd probably be too much of a woke moralist to go through with it."

Despite the diss, affection is evident in her tone when she mentions her daughter. Katie might also notice she doesn't look old enough to have a kid who's grown up to become a cop herself.

"So apparently you're old enough to have an adult daughter, but also you have pink hair and use "woke moralist" as a pejorative. Are all wizards this cool, or is it just you? Actually, wait, sorry, is the pink hair even a choice or are magic people just born that way sometimes?" She was gonna say 'weird' instead of 'cool', but averts it at the last second. Mara's already gonna find out she's attracted to her from the 'soulgaze', might as well start flattering her now.

"No, most wizards are more of the opinion that the Amish are suspiciously technologically advanced and linguistic evolution should have stopped with Latin. There's reasons for some of that, too, to be fair—I'm sure you've noticed technology breaks more around you than the average person, and most wizards can't afford to keep replacing stuff. The pink hair is a dye job, but it's one I'm very attached to. As far as I'm concerned I'm a pink haired woman tragically born into a blonde woman's body."

Katie has some feelings like that about her own body, but she's holding out on them for now. Probably they will be seen in the Soulgaze. "Huh, that makes sense.. Are wizards more likely to be super clumsy and have ADHD symptoms too?"

"Nope! Our only shared disability is the technology thing. We do age slower once you get past physical maturity, though; it's not just the skincare routine that has me looking like this."

"Well that's nice, assuming I live long enough for it to matter. My only skincare routine is not going outside."

"Legit."

The car slows to a stop in Mara's driveway. The garage, immediately in front of them, is a recent construction; Mara's house itself, a considerable distance further along a trail, is an antebellum plantation house. The grounds are spacious, beautiful, well-maintained, and absolutely devoid of any sign of useful economic activity. Mara turns towards Katie, looking down a little so she doesn't actually meet her eyes.

"Are you ready?"

Whoa, nice. This is easily in her top 5 places to be kidnapped to. "As I'll ever be, assuming there isn't some crucial step you've forgotten to tell me, like that I have to hold my breath or I'll explode or something."

"Nope! Just hold eye contact."

Mara looks into Katie's eyes, and bares her soul. It comes across as a series of images. An overall sense of Mara's personhood, represented as a dragon with pink sparkly scales, exhaling little puffs of smoke as it contentedly sleeps on a hoard of treasure. A series of core memories and the emotions associated with them.

Marrying a man younger and smaller than her, desperate for her money as his own rich family have thrown him out, and reshaping him from a thug and a bully to someone delicate and submissive and feminine, divorcing him and arranging him a new marriage with a male friend of hers. The satisfaction of having another human being fully in her power, to mold as she wishes.

Dyeing her five-year-old daughter's hair pink to match hers, at her request. Offering her a choice of lavish vacations for her Sweet Sixteen and shaking her head and smiling as she asks her to give the money to charity instead. Promising someone worthy—her own blood—the world on a silver platter, and delivering just to see what she does with it, feeling baffled but supportive.

The simple, visceral joys of life. The best sushi rolls she's ever had and the cities she tried them in. Sampling different wines and strains of weed. Her first time getting the technology-breaking-aura suppression spell to work long enough to play a video game.

She gets a sense of Mara's thought processes, her reasoning processes. Not all of it fits into sensory impressions or is instantly unpacked into legibility, but it's all burned into her brain, a black box that she can consult to tell if she should trust her in any given situation.

Katie wishes she had a cool flashy soul-representation and a bunch of memories of her doing glamorous things. Her life has had a couple big important incidents like that, but really it's more about broader overall patterns made up of a million tiny little incidents. Hardly anyone likes her, and she likes hardly anyone. People force expectations on her that she never consented to. They make up nonsensical arbitrary rules, insist they're fair and principled despite blatant evidence to the contrary, and get mad at her for questioning them, let alone violating them. They don't think for themself, they just mindlessly follow along with the group. Katie sees them as no better than animals. Not that she actively wants to hurt them, or at least, not all of them. People generally don't feel that way about animals (Katie feels better about animals than most, but actually worse about humans, because they have the capacity for dishonesty, which she hates more than anything), y'know, it's one thing to torture rats to death for fun, but if they're eating your food supply you leave out traps, and you might feel a little twinge of cathartic pleasure seeing them get their necks snapped. She tries to be nice to people, and treat them fairly, and give them the benefit of the doubt, but she just can't help but feeling like she's better than them, like she deserves better. I mean, just look at them. Look at the way they behave. Look at their terrible taste in everything. Look at their active disdain for beauty and excellence and invididuality. She just does whatever she can to look after herself and make the world as beautiful as possible, and if that has to come at the expense of the peasants, they can take it up with God. It may come as a relief to Mara, though, that Katie does not perceive her as one of the peasants. Quite the opposite, in fact. She seems to exhibit beauty and excellence and individuality in spades. Mara is hot. Mara is powerful. Power is hot. Mara is large. Size is power. Power is hot. Size is a mark of hedonism. Hedonism is freedom from inhibition. Freedom is power. Power is freedom. Freedom is hot. Katie wants to be free. Katie wants to be powerful. Katie wants to be hot. Katie wants to be large. Katie wants Mara to feed her until she is large. 

"Oh, you are fascinating. I think I have an idea of what I can do with you, now."

Mara reaches a hand out to run her fingers through Katie's hair.

"I told you, don- wait, what?" She shivers at Mara's touch.

"I like you. I like the way you think. I like the way you see the world. It's given me," she blushes slightly, "a lot to think about myself."

She continues stroking Katie's hair as she talks.

"The way the Council handles practitioners like yourself, who have broken the Laws but not yet pushed their mind and soul past the point of no return, is that they can be apprenticed to any wizard willing to vouch for them, to be executed along with their master if they slip up again. I think the 'along with their master' bit is a huge waste, personally. I would be happy to train you in control of your magic, but I don't want my ass to be on the line. So, what I propose: you live with me, so I can watch you, make sure you don't violate the laws again. I don't tell anyone what I saw tonight, presenting you to the Council as a new wizard with a clean record. You obey my rules and I teach you magic and Latin."

"Is the Latin thing necessary for magic, or just your own weird niche kink?" She wants to lean against Mara but there's a car in the way so she just kind of awkwardly puts a hand on her thigh.

"It's the language of the Council," Mara says with only a slight roll of the eyes.

She places her own hand over Katie's hand, gently.

"Care to join me in the house?"

"I'd love to. Are all the wizards in all the non-Europe parts of the world pissed about that? How does- huh, wait, didn't you say killing people with magic eats your soul, I guess that would mean magic wouldn't be able to nullify Europe's technological military advantage over the rest of the world."

Mara puts an arm around Katie's waist to help her keep her balance with the handcuffs as she leads her to the house.

"Yes, the Council is a European-dominated organization, and yes, there's some resentment from its non-European members over this fact."

Mmmmmm that feels nice. She eagerly jumps at the chance to lean against Mara properly. "I guess learning Latin isn't a complete waste of time. Not on the top of my list for languages, though. Wish the Jews or the Japanese were in charge of the magic world instead."

Mara squeezes Katie tighter as she leans.

"Huh, why those two?"

"Because they're the ones who make all the good art, because they're still in touch with their pasts and weren't spiritually lobotomized by Christianity/Islam/communism like the rest of us."

Mara reaches the door to the house, and invites Katie in as she brings her across the threshold.

(The handcuffs are suppressing Katie's magic for now, but once Mara feels confident to take them off, she wants her to have her full power.)

"So, the Japanese make the best art...are you an anime fan, then?"

Ugh, this is embarrassing. "By all rights I should be, but I suck at sitting still and keeping my eyes pointed in the same direction long enough to watch TV of any kind."

Mara leads Katie to a couch and pulls her into her lap.

"Would you have an easier time learning to sit still if you practiced like this?"

"It's certainly worth a try!"

"Excellent!"

"Now, we do have a few matters of business to discuss. If I'm going to cover for your existing violations of the Laws, I need to know all about them. What spell did you use exactly, on who, and were there any others?"

"I found this spell online that's supposed to make people supernaturally gullible, and used it to convince my family I was at college, so they'd pay for me to live on my own without me having to do any actual work." The soul damage thing is scary but she continues to feel zero guilt. Fuck them helots.

"Seems easy enough to cover up, then—say you've dropped out and are moving in with a girlfriend, I wipe away the traces of magic so if they look back on their memories and notice anything off later it can be dismissed as temporary insanity. If they try to pull anything against you legally, my lawyer can fend them off. The other matter is—I want you to think about solemnly swearing to never break the Laws again, and to not use magic against me so long as you're on my property. Don't jump right to it. You seem like someone who takes her word seriously, and it's important to hold onto that as you enter the supernatural world. Oathbreakers draw the ire of all factions, and if you swear on your magic, it can actually weaken your power to break your word. However, if after some thought you're willing to take those oaths, they will be the easiest way to ensure your safety and mine, and proceed quickest with magic training."

Nuzzles. God she's so soft and lovely. "It's very kind of you to not just force me to at gunpoint. The first step for me being willing to do that is actually knowing in full what all of them are. No killing people with magic, no mind control, no necromancy, lemme guess, is there one about binding demons?"

"Not exactly! Imprisoning and extorting the denizens of the supernatural realms is actually a classic wizard trick. Some of them will euphemize it, but I prefer to be honest about what I'm doing. The only so-called 'demons' that it's forbidden to mess with are creatures from outside the universe. Have you ever read H.P. Lovecraft?"

"Yet another thing I'm supposed to have read but haven't. I have even less of an excuse this time, there are audiobooks of him and it's pretty easy for me to listen to those while playing video games (well, minus the constant technical issues), but starting new thing is EFFORT and there's another episode of my favorite riddle podcast right there begging me to hit play."

"Well, if you wanna get an idea of what they're like—or at least what wizards typically think of them, I haven't actually gone anywhere near one because I value my life—give him another chance. The ones you're still missing are no mind reading—it's considered a separate thing from mind control, maybe because it's the rule with the most exceptions, no transforming another's body, and no time travel."

"Some speculate that time travel doesn't actually have the brain damaging effects of other types of black magic, but was simply added to the Laws because it presents too great a risk to the world itself! There aren't enough case studies for either side of the debate to fully demolish the other."

"Hold the fucking phone. TIME TRAVEL IS POSSIBLE???"

"We really don't like to think about it. Shit is worse than nukes or nanobots in terms of catastrophic risk."

"Okay, but like, the potential reward is equally massive??? Are there not a bunch of Jewish wizards who would very much like their spouses and cousins and best friends back, and also probably Irish wizards too depending on how long exactly we live, and oh yeah Armenians and Rwandans and I guess Native Americans but that one's kind of uncomfortable because if that genocide didn't happen probably neither of us would exist."

"That's the catastrophic risk. You change the past on that scale, and it undoes your own motivation to change the past, creating a paradox. The results of such are unpredictable and inconsistent. No one wants to push it further and risk obliterating the universe."

"There's gotta be some galaxy brained way around that but I can't think of any right now. Still makes me a little uneasy about swearing never to violate that one, though. Anyways, transfiguration feels like the other obvious odd one out. Is it not reversible? Because if it is, I can think of several extremely beneficial non-evil uses."

"Transfiguration pushing you in the warlock direction is considered a mystery by many wizards! It is dangerous, often irreversible or carrying other negative effects, but it would indeed have positive potential if done right and it didn't damage your brain and soul. Unfortunately, in this case we do have enough case studies to conclude it does."

"Well now I feel bad for all the perverts who want to be turned into a mouse and have a subjectively-giant woman pick them up with two fingers and plop them in between her tits. Let's be grateful our depraved fetishes don't require dark magic to enact."

"Indeed!"

"Also, 'kill people with magic' is very vague. If you use magic to push someone off a cliff, does that count? Enchant a gun so it never jams and then shoot someone with it? Use strength-enhancing magic and then beat someone to death with your bare fists? What if you have a magic item with properties totally unrelated to violence, like, I don't know, a metal water bottle enchanted to be bigger on the inside, and beat someone to death with that? What if you- no, enchanting food to be supernaturally delicious would probably count as mind control anyway."

"I think all of those would count as violations except for maybe the water bottle thing. It's better to not be rules-lawyering it at all, though, if you're going to try to kill someone use a regular fucking gun. The food wouldn't count as mind control if you did it by altering its physical properties, but there would be limits on how delicious you could make it by that method."

"Also I'm noticing the laws say nothing about torturing people with magic as long as you don't kill them, even though that intuitively feels like it should be on there."

"For better or worse, that isn't against the laws. Kind of like the transformation thing but in the opposite direction, I suppose, a way reality doesn't quite line up with our moral instincts. There's not as much low-hanging fruit as you might think there, though, once you rule out methods that count as mind control and those with a high risk of lethality. You might as well waterboard someone."

"Actually, wait, I thought of another edge case. Say I kill someone through entirely mundane means. The actual physical act of doing this did not employ magic in any way. However, I would not have done it if I were not a wizard, because I have become fabulously wealthy via, I don't know, selling penis enlargement potions or turning lead into gold or something else that might be a violation of regular laws but not the Laws of Magic, and can therefore afford to hire a really good lawyer and bribe the justice system so I get away with it. Is that a violation?"

"Nope!"

"Huh. What if I cast an illusion (are illusions mind control?) on someone to make them look like, I don't know, Bigfoot, and someone else shoots them because of that? In both cases, magic only changed the decisions people made, not their capabilities, but in a way that isn't mind control."

"That one is closer to the line, I can see a Warden convicting over it. I'm not sure exactly what the distinction is—something about the proximity of the magic to the act, maybe? It's about the circumstances under which the magical backlash causes damage, which gets into points of magical theory that even Tiffany isn't an expert on."

"Anyways, these aren't nearly as bad as I was expecting. Mundane science has way more bullshit restrictions on it than this."

"Exactly! If you put up with nodding your head to the old men's bullshit every once in a while, you can make a really great life for yourself as a wizard."

"Yeah, like, I might've tried using my powers to produce goods or services people wanted instead of just mind controlling them, but it's not like there are Wizard Wanted ads in the paper, or like anyone is gonna believe me if I try selling magic shit on Etsy."

"There actually is a guy in Chicago who openly advertises as a wizard! He's kind of controversial, though, and you're safer and make way more money making private deals with the ultra-wealthy. I know people."

"That's awfully nice of him to help out the little guy, though. Does he get a lot of perverts wanting to use magic for sex things?"

"He says 'no love potions' in his ad—that's another loophole in the 'no mind control' rule, you can create really good drugs, aphrodisiacs included."

"Aren't aphrodisiacs- ok, no, regular foods being aphrodisiacs is bullshit but I guess MDMA qualifies, so like, I guess you can just make really good MDMA. Giving someone magic MDMA without their knowledge or consent, as is generally the case with 'love potions' in folklore, is another thing that feels like it should be dark magic even though apparently it technically isn't, and also isn't a waste of effort compared to mundane methods like magical torture."

"I think the fact that it's not dark magic is an indication God favors me personally."

"Kind of ominous, but I'm already insanely attracted to you, and I haven't eaten or drank anything you've given me yet, so it's probably fine as long as you don't, like, dismember me or make me fuck a man or something really egregious like that."

She pats Katie's head.

"Don't worry, I wouldn't make you fuck a man."

"You're a sweetie." She rests her head on Mara's tits. "But seriously, like, I got from the soulgaze that making your ex fuck men had this whole set of like, symbolic associations, but for me it has a different, worse set. I see the women around me being stupid conformist sheeple, and expecting me to be that way, and getting mad at me when I don't live up to those expectations, and I see attraction to men as symbolic of that, and I'm kind of like, terrified that if I ever develop any next thing I know I'll be a stay at home mom married to an accountant named Craig in the suburbs with 2.5 kids like all the other bi women. Y'know, except you."

"Glad to be One Of The Good Ones."

"Like, evidently your situation was different and shit, but like, in general, I get that by default, y'know, no one is entitled to private information about other people's love lives, and there's more straight people than gay people, so we should believe people when they say they're bi, but I think if you have a big expensive to party to commemorate your pledge to only screw one person who happens to be of the opposite sex for the rest of your life, you kind of lose the benefit of the doubt and forfeit your queer card."

"Hmmm, I don't think I really have a dog in that fight. I don't care whether I count as 'queer' or not," she says while making air quotes for "queer", "my philosophy on sex and relationships is more like that one girl from Buffy."

She puts on a decent Faith Lehane voice: "Want. Take. Have."

God she's so based. "I kind of think that inherently makes you queer. Well, that and having pink hair and not being all ashamed and self-hating about being fat. Thanks for that, by the way. Sex would be so much less enjoyable if I had to awkwardly beat around  the bush about what I like. Heh, beat around the bush."

Mara smirks.

"Heh, nice."

Her tummy rumbles.

"Have you had dinner yet today?"

"No."

"We should fix that! How do you feel about sushi?"

"Joyously!"

She reaches over to her purse, which she had laid down beside her, and pulls out a printed menu for a nearby restaurant with an extensive selection of rolls.

"Let me know what you want from there, I'll put in the Doordash order. I have a sort of personal chef I can call up from the Nevernever if I want something mortal society can't easily provide me at this location, but that sushi place is close enough and does good work."

"The Nevernever? Is that what wizards actually call the place where all the magic shit is?"

"It's not all the magic shit! Vampires, for example, are pretty firmly earth-bound. The Nevernever is the place for demons and fairies, mostly."

"When J.K. Rowling said wizards talk like they're in a fucking Doctor Seuss book, I didn't expect her to be understating it. Hey wait, did J.M. Barrie get that term from the paranormal community or the other way around?"

"That one was us first."

"So was Dracula! Black Court vampires are basically exactly like that in real life."

"Ordinarily, I would be kind of excited by that prospect, but you're already hot, scary, and you have body heat!"

"God, you don't wanna mess with vampires. Most of them are totally gross and all of them will kill you."

"Sad! On that note, uh, so there are things called 'demons', but they come from a place called 'the Nevernever', not 'Hell'... Christianity isn't real, is it?"

"While the exact details of the afterlife are fiendishly elusive, there's some compelling evidence for Christianity having some truth to it! 'Demons' is a catch-all category that refers to three things: the Outsiders, miscellaneous ugly and hostile creatures of the Nevernever that don't qualify as either faeries or spirits, and the fallen angels. The existence of this latter category implies the existence of regular angels, and then there's the Swords of the Cross—three blades forged with nails from the Crucifixion, that number among the most powerful magical artifacts."

"Well now I'm terrified we're both going to hell. Not terrified enough to actually change my behavior, to be clear. Don't negotiate with terrorists, even divine terrorists." She clings tightly to Mara's soft, warm body. 

"Christianity is definitely the most popular religion among the magically informed, but we have reason to suspect that the truth of it is best captured by the, uh, more moralistic therapeutic deist flavors? The phenomenon that's most widely agreed to be a case of divine intervention is the choosing of the Knights of the Cross, and those have included gays, Jews, and atheists. It's not the kind of divine intervention you'd expect from a God who tortures people eternally.

I'm not sure if I even believe in it at all, myself? Ghosts move on. We don't really have any evidence they move on to somewhere in particular. And the Swords are powerful, but their power could simply come from generations' belief in the Resurrection."

"Huh, 'Knights of the Cross' sounds very Catholic, but letting in gays, Jews, and atheists doesn't... Holy shit, were the Anglicans right the whole time? God, that would be so fucking funny. I was going to suggest that as a joke, I can't believe it's actually plausible."

"The Knights get most of their support from the Catholics, actually! The Anglicans do make some contributions, as do the Episcopals and the Orthodox. It's kind of a horseshoe theory which priests will be aware of the supernatural community—lots of rainbow flags, lots of Traditional Latin Mass types, not many normal party line followers."

"If the Knights are directly chosen by God and include all those groups of people, do the Catholics and Orthodox have some galaxy brained excuse for why?"

"Like I said, the priests who are actually worth a damn to have on your side in confrontations against fallen angels and their ilk tend to dissent from their organization's party line in one way or another. The rainbow flag types will say some shit about how 'every religion has a bit of God's truth in it' or something else along those lines that would totally get them in trouble if the Pope ever heard about it, the fire-and-brimstone types tend to cite cases like the Persian king Cyrus and so on, where God empowered a nonbeliever for His own strategic ends."

"Fascinating. Good to know there's at least some evidence in favor of a heaven. Oh yeah, speaking of religious conservatives, you were saying earlier to tell my family I'm dropping out and moving in with my girlfriend, but the thing is, I never actually came out to them."

Mara's stomach rumbles again, audibly.

"How about we decide what to do about that over dinner? We could figure out a plan for moving your stuff here, too. Let me know your sushi order."

She looks over the menu. "Lemme get uuuuuuuhhhhh, 6 pieces of salmon nigiri, a salmon maki, and the tempura lobster roll, that sounds yummy."

Mara scribbles down the order on a pad of paper.

"Very nice! I'll need to run off to the computer room to place the order; I keep all the technology around here in a separate room to minimize the number of magic-related replacements I need."

She lifts Katie up off her lap and walks off down the hall.

Katie lies down and quietly stews in the guilt from making a woman such as Mara wait for food with her stupid questions. She's a bad girlfriend to this woman she just met and she's going to make her get skinny with her constant stupid annoying yammering.

Mara returns quickly. The butterfly clip is absent from her hair.

"Order placed! It'll be a while, let me know if you have thoughts on what you want to tell your parents or when to get your stuff from your old place."

She sits beside Katie this time, moving her purse out of the way, and puts her arm around her waist.

God she's so warm and soft and cuddly. Katie eagerly leans in to the affection. "I uuuh... I kind of don't want to tell them anything. Decades of experience have taught me that telling them things is generally a bad idea. But like, fuck, they've probably already called  the cops, and tried to search my computer, shit I hope I had it locked." She is so glad she has a big soft woman to melt the stress away right now. Her spindly limbs jitter nonetheless.

"I used magic to fix the doors on the way out, there shouldn't be any evidence of a break-in, if you want I could take you to the tech room to give them a call before the sushi gets here and tell them some story about—wait, shit, you brought your computer with you to do a magical ritual? How has it survived?"

"Oh, no, it was in a different room, I figured that one out a while ago, just, y'know, in the same house."

"Dang, yeah, that sucks. Do you wanna go to the tech room and send some sort of communication to your parents to explain your absence? I know it's out of character and whatever you say or write won't be very convincing, but even a token 'sorry for running off guys, forgot to tell you I have plans with a friend!' will make my lawyer's job easier later."

Mara pauses for a moment, considering saying something more.

Leave it at that, don't show weakness, you wouldn't wanna squander the advantage of authority, says her inner voice of reason. It sounds like a mix between Tiffany and Alyssa.

"And my bad for not taking you to do that first thing. It's, um, my first kidnapping?"

"Okay yeah, let's do that now, which way is the tech room."

"This way," says Mara, and leads her down the same hall she had used to order the sushi.

The tech room has a big desk with an old-school rotary phone on it along with a desktop gaming PC and a variety of accessories. There's also a couch with a TV and a variety of gaming consoles in front of it. Tiffany is propped up in front of a microphone plugged into the PC, into which she's speaking commands to play some kind of visual novel game featuring a dark, brooding anime boy.

"Hi Mom, there's been an emergency, I had to leave, I don't know when I'll be back but hopefully I will be able to get someone to come pick up my stuff soon, I'm an adult, I don't have to tell you what's wrong, but I'm safe and you should not be calling the cops or trying to search my computer, goodbye."

Mara scribbles down the wording of her message on a notepad, in case it's needed later.

"Perfect! That will let me fend her off if she tries anything immediately, and give us time to come up with a more complete story later."

"God, I hope I never have to talk to her again. Please send someone over to get the stuff ASAP, she might ignore me and try to get into my PC anyway."

Mara mutters some words under her breath, and a pen moves of its own accord to write a note in precise, official-looking handwriting authorizing an agent to pick up Katie's stuff.

"Could you sign this?" she asks Katie, presenting her the note. "It's total bullshit pseudo-legalese but hopefully, combined with my friend's educated professional demeanor, will be enough to get them to give up the stuff."

"Yeah." She quickly signs it. "Hey, do you mind if I get my tears on you? I kinda want to cuddle and cry for a bit until the sushi gets here."

"Go sit on the couch while I call my friend, then I'll join you and you can cry as much as you want."

"The couch here, or the one we were on before?"

"The one we were on before."

"Okay." She walks back to that couch and collapses on it. God she hates her family. She really hopes she never has to speak to them again. She's a little scared of Mara too but she's so pretty and she can't be any worse than them, right? Right?

Mara soon emerges and pulls Katie into a hug.

"Mmmmm..... woman somft.... woman warm... woman comfy..." How the fuck is it possible for her to be scary and comforting at the same time, it doesn't make sense.

Mara emits a muffled moan.

"Fuck, uh, should I not be getting you all riled up until we've had our sushi?"

"It's fine. My response to having a cute girl being vulnerable in my arms is my own thing, and I'm used to it."

"Good to hear. Thanks for the food, by the way."

"It's my pleasure!"

"So like... when you did the soulgaze, what did you think about what you saw in there?" Katie really wants to get a good grade in soul, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.

"Like I said, fascinating. I think, in a way, you're what I might have become if I didn't have money. I want to see what you become when you are provided for and taken care of. And as for the, um, more visceral motivations I saw," she blushes a little, "I can't say it's anything I've ever done before, or even really thought of. But I think I might like to see if I can turn these bee stings," she runs her hands over Katie's tits, such as they are, "into a pair of melons."

Katie breathes heavily. "God, I'm so with you, on both of those things. I kinda have this whole complex about weight and femininity and shit. Basically like, I hate society's expectations for women, I'm really not very traditionally feminine in most ways, normie women feel like aliens to me, but I can't say I don't want to be a woman, because men are gross and ugly and women are pretty. Except that like, I'm not even pretty, I basically already look like a man, or at least an adolescent boy, I have practically no curves. Honestly like, I would kind of feel sympathetic to TERF stuff, I would rather just live in a world where I'm a woman because I have a pussy and not have to think about it any more than that rather than having to identify as something, but I hate them because they're political lesbians who are lame about sex. But anyways like, liking soft curves and hating heterosexual relationship dynamics are basically the only ways in which I feel connected to womanhood or whatever, and it's like, since I'm rail-thin and was single a couple hours ago, I might as well be a trans man, and that just feels kind of weird. Glad you're helping me sort this shit out."

"I love femininity! Or at least, I love feminine aesthetics, on myself at least. I can imagine I wouldn't if I didn't have magic and money, though, and I would be down to have a tomboy gf if you end up curvy because I made you so. Can't relate on the TERF thing, though, you don't in fact have to hand it to them."

"I don't know, like, TERFs are obviously psychotically cruel to them, but like, if we are indeed categorizing them as women, the fact that the vast majority of women who are similar to me in personality are, from my perspective, very ugly makes me feel bad. Honestly makes me kind of less inclined to dress femininely, in a weird dumb petty way. That, laziness, and not wanting society to have the satisfaction of me being normal are the main reasons I wear sweatpants 24/7."

"Sweatpants are a good choice if you're not femininitymaxxing! Comfy, which makes you more pleasant to cuddle as well."

She lets a hand slide down to cop a feel of Katie's butt.

Katie squeaks excitedly. "I must say though, you present a pretty appealing vision of femininity. Seeing a woman who has killer curves and likes pink and dresses and carries a purse and stuff who isn't another brainless Twilight-reading housewife makes me feel more inclined to start experimenting with that sort of presentation."

Mara scoffs. "Twilight. Swear to God, Meyer's gotta be working with the real vamps, the way she's practically feeding young girls to them. Undone decades of propaganda progress."

"Maybe the whole Mormon church are run by vampires, and that's why they don't use the cross. Don't they have a whole theological concept called 'blood atonement' too? Sounds kinda sus to me."

"I wouldn't really count the cross thing as evidence. It isn't really crosses that repel vamps, it's a symbol of whatever you have faith in. There's been reports of Muslims who've done it with the star and crescent or an inscription of the Shahada, Communists who've done it with the hammer and sickle, wizards who use a pentagram."

"Do Mormons have, like, a symbol of their faith that they commonly wear on their person like the cross or the star and crescent though? There's the magic underwear, but part of the point of it is it's not supposed to be visible."

"Huh, I don't think they do. I'm sure they could find some little object to repel a vamp, though, maybe a little pocket New Testament or Book of Mormon."

"Yeah, but how many of them actually carry one of those on their person all day? I'm telling you, the whole religion is a vampiric psyop. Them and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Wait a minute, both of those do the door-to-door missionary thing too. That must be part of it! In Mormon Utah, vampires invite you in! Wait, they do have like, houses, right? Because the butterfly thing said Dracula was accurate, but we don't really have dilapidated castles in the middle of the woods in America. And let's be real, even if we do, the Mormons probably send missionaries to those."

"The White and Red Courts do have houses; the Black Court tends to be more likely to live in a crypt, or something along those lines. I'm still not convinced of the Mormon Church being a conspiracy, usually supernatural conspiracies are known at least as rumors within the community before the lid gets blown off them, and I haven't heard any about the Mormons. You do make a good point about the tradition of door-to-door missionary work providing cover for all sorts of magical nastiness, frankly I should consider if there are any possibilities I could take advantage of there myself."

"You'd probably have to start a whole new religion for that one. Not many Mormons that look like you."

"Easy enough to temporarily illusion my hair!"

"If it were me, I would feel dirty having to put on the guise of a normie like that. What would you even be getting out of this, anyway? Clearly not money, you're not a vampire so not blood, you're not a warlock so not human sacrifices either."

"I don't know! But, like, I've already had one occasion to blast down someone's door, I should think of alternate approaches in case it comes up again in the future."

"Well this time you knocked and didn't get a response, which would be the same if you were in Mormon getup since I didn't see you, and if I did that would make me less likely to answer the door, not more. Frankly, anyone who would rather answer the door for Mormons than you doesn't deserve to have rights in the first place."

"True! Which is why it's convenient that I would be more powerful against someone who opens the door for me dressed as a Mormon than someone whose door I have to blast down—uh, if you haven't already heard, the threshold thing doesn't just apply to vamps. Wizards lose a chunk of our power when crossing one without permission."

"Huh. Does someone having a welcome mat count as them in inviting you in?"

"Nah, it has to be from them directly."

"Huh, does it go off legal ownership or occupancy?"

"There's some nuances to it, but basically occupancy. The more of a 'home' a house is, the stronger its threshold, and the ones who can invite people inside are the occupants of the home."

"So does it not apply to hotel rooms? That must be an easy way for vampires to get people if so."

"Honestly, the usual way for vamps to feed is more or less consensual—the Black Court is nearly extinct, and the Whites and Reds each have ways to addict people to being fed on. Regular people don't have much to worry about when it comes to defending their dwellings from vamps, it's more of a wizard concern. We do take a lot of precautions while traveling."

"I'm guessing from context that the addiction is in more of a scary fentanyl way than a hot sexual way."

"Um, it's kind of both? There is a sexual element to it—particularly with House Raith of the Whites, the Whites feed on emotional energy and the Raiths in particular feed on lust—but they tend to subject you to greater indignity than the sexual exploitation itself, and then you die."

"Emotional energy? There are really vampires that do that? Lemme guess, the ones who feed on anger invented social media."

"Heh, that would be clever, but if there are any White Court vamps who feed on anger, I don't know about them. The big three houses of the Whites in North America are Raith, Malvora, and Skavis—lust, fear, and despair respectively. The Raiths have the easiest time feeding and thus the largest population, unsurprisingly."

"Do they like, run brothels, or what? Presumably the fear ones feed in a kind of similar way to the ones who feed on blood, only deliberately letting their prey keep running until they collapse. What about the despair ones? Do they use social media as a food source, there's certainly a lot of despair there."

"The Raiths are heavily involved in the sex industry! Not just brothels, porn too, they use their influence to promote a no-strings-attached hookup culture because that's the kind of environment in which they can most easily feed. The Whites are hurt by the touch of someone who has most recently slept with someone they're in true love with. I don't know much about the Skavis's tactics, they don't have easily traceable investments in major industries like the Raiths do."

"You wouldn't happen to have a vampire in your basement we could use to test if we really have a connection or if I'm just blinded because you're hot and you kidnapped me, would you?"

"True love in the sense that burns the Raiths is rare. It wouldn't develop in one day, even in the most perfectly matched couples."

"I guess that's fair. Holding out hope we can do it one day though." She puts a hand on Mara's. "God, I want to say I'm stupid for moving too fast, but what even is the correct pace at which to move with a woman who kidnapped you?"

"Fuck if I know!"

There's a knock at the door. Sushi has arrived.

"Fucking finally, I thought it was never gonna show up. I'm starving."

Mara lays out the sushi on the table in front of the couch. Katie's order is as she had requested, only with eight pieces of salmon nigiri, not six.

"Now, I can't take your cuffs off yet. I still gotta take precautions to protect myself from you using magic against me. So, dang, guess I'll have to feed you."

She smirks.

"Let me know what you want to start with."

"Did the soulgaze not show you the part where I hate making decisions?"

"Let's start with the nigiri, then. I got you a little extra, I figure if I overshoot what you think you want a little every time it'll help you fill out faster."

She deftly maneuvers a piece of salmon nigiri to Katie's mouth using chopsticks.

"God, that's hot. For someone who's new to this, you're taking to it pretty well. Can you dip it in the soy sauce though, please?"

"Of course!"

She dips it.

"Now eat up, darling."

Chomp. "I like it when you call me darling." God, she feels dumb for saying something this obvious out loud, but Mara is melting her fucking brain.

She pats Katie's head as she dips and serves her another piece of nigiri.

"Of course you do, cutie."

"That too." Chomp chomp.

Mara intersperses feeding Katie bites of the nigiri with eating bites of her own first roll, a mango shrimp roll with mango sauce.

"Do you want—sorry, I mean, is there anything on this roll you hate?"

"I'm not the biggest fan of shrimp but I don't hate it hate it. Also wow, look as miss big powerful domme here, forgetting to be sufficiently authoritative and then apologizing to her pet when she corrects herself. Are you gonna start speaking in keysmashes next?"

"Having to be dignified all the time is just another kind of restriction. In a way, I'm freer than the politicians on the Senior Council, because I don't have to spend my time managing anyone's opinion."

"Y'know what, true. Sorry for being mean, it's an honor to be dommed by someone who sees things so clearly."

Mara eats another piece of her roll as Katie talks, then puts a piece of salmon nigiri in Katie's mouth as she says "Mara wins again. Sunglasses emoji."

"Anyways, don't go giving me all your food. You've got a figure to maintain too." She pats Mara's belly for emphasis.

"Don't worry about me, I've got plenty more to go. How do you feel about spicy food?" she asks as she starts on her second roll, a spicy tuna roll.

"I'm pretty weak to it. Your choice if you think I'd be cute while in pain."

"Oh, I'll have to think about that. For now I just want to spoil you."

She pinches Katie's cheek.

"You're a sweetie. That soulgaze really awakened something in you, didn't it?"

"It did! It got me thinking about your body, about how you could be even more beautiful with more to grab and feel here," she runs a hand over Katie's tits, "and here," she says, letting the hand settle over her belly, while the other hand with the chopsticks raises the salmon maki to Katie's lips.

Shiver. Twitch. Om nom nom. "You have such impeccable taste in everything. It's like, very congruent for me how fatness simultaneously signifies, at least to me, strength and feralness and lack of inhibition and not giving a shit about society's rules, but also amplifies one's feminine curves. Would make me feel a lot less weird about being a woman if I had a gut and melons."

She raises a piece of the tempura lobster roll to Katie's lips.

"Gotta say, I don't think I appreciated the gut enough until I saw it through your eyes. Never had any doubt about the value of melons though."

While she hasn't finished the spicy tuna, she tries a piece of her third roll, an unagi roll with eel sauce, with an audible "mmmmmmmm".

"I fucking love eel sauce."

Chomp chew chomp chomp chomp. "See what I said about impeccable taste? I don't understand how people don't notice the appeal of bellies, though. They've got all the same nice parts as tits: they're soft, jiggly, grabbable, and if you've both got them, they press together when you're in the act. I'm particularly looking forward to that."

"Tits are more sensitive though! It's kind of a natural alarm for my attention. I'm sure I'll have plenty of chances to atone for my failure to fully appreciate bellies with you, though."

"I'm just so used to shutting out my feelings and sensations, pushing them down, tuning them out. I'm sick of it. I want to feel more. More hunger, more touch, more motion, more desire. To be grounded, physical, vital. To really fully inhabit the world of flesh and blood rather than just being trapped in it like a living ghost." 

"Well, I certainly hope I can give you that. Making sure you're well fed is a good start. Speaking of which, how do you feel about eel and eel sauce?'

Katie opens her mouth wide in lieu of an answer.

Mara inserts a piece of her unagi roll, and takes a piece of Katie's tempura lobster roll as compensation.

Mmmmmm eel tasty. "Stealing my lobster, you big, greedy bitch? And I thought I was safe with you."

"What would have ever given you that impression?"

"I guess I was foolishly decided by how soft and comfy and adorable you are."

She serves Katie a piece of her lobster.

"Oh, that only makes me more dangerous. Comfort is the best tool for temptation and corruption."

Katie's breathing gets all heavy again. "True. Love to be comfy and cozy and tucked in. Gently lead me down the path of least resistance towards being a big fat fertility goddess, mommy."

"Fertility goddess, hmmmmmmmm? You know, I don't want to get your hopes up too much about this—magic training will involve lots of boring parts no matter what—but sex does play a legitimate role in magic. Strong emotion is the key ingredient in plenty of workings, and sex is a classic tool for evoking it."

"Holy shit, really? What next, is it based on body mass so getting fatter will make me more powerful?"

"No, but if a half-assed magical justification will get you to eat more I will point out that being well-fed helps with emotional regulation which helps with mitigating the negative side effects of being a wizard!"

"If what you just said is true, it'll make me more powerful anyways because it'll almost certainly make me hornier. Speaking of which, do you own any straps?"

"I have a project I've been working on using magic to make one that gives me physical sensation as I do stuff with it! The mundane attempts at that are unsatisfying to me but I think I've gotten my magic one to a good point, at least as far as I can test with solo exploration, haven't had a female lover since I started working on it."

"How convenient. I was just thinking about you fucking me doggy style, your belly plopped atop my giant shelf of an ass, mine and my tits hanging low, jiggling with every thrust, begging to be groped as you fill my cunt as full as my stomach."

"Sounds lovely! Of course," she gropes Katie's ass, "I don't think this quite qualifies as giant shelf material yet. Maybe you'll have to earn it by growing to that size. Eat up!"

She serves Katie another piece of lobster.

"I know. I'll keep working on it. Also, you have a pool, right? Fucking in the water is also up there in terms of my fantasies, being extra buoyant will help."

"I do have a pool! Swimming is a great joy."

Having finished her last roll, Mara eats one of her two pieces of squid nigiri.

"By the time we're finished, the water will be more- wait, no, never mind, that's gross, I shouldn't say it."

"Too late! You've said enough for me to want to know. Tell me."

"More pussy juice than water. Sorry. I still really wanna see you in a bikini though."

"You as well! Perhaps I could get progress pics of you in each size as you gain weight."

She pops her last piece into her mouth.

"Now look here, I've finished my meal and you still have half your lobster roll left! Less talking and more eating."

She raises the next piece of lobster to Katie's mouth.

Chomp. "Hot." She hopes that doesn't delay her feeding too much but she just needed to make it known.

She feeds her the next piece and pats her head.

"Good girl for focusing on your food."

She smiles and blushes as she chomps down on the next piece. She really wants to be uncuffed so she can touch Mara but she'll wait to tell that until after she's done because she is a good girl.

Mara finishes feeding Katie in short order! She rubs her tummy afterwards.

"As I was saying, of course you'd finish your food faster than me, you fucking cow. I'm gonna need lots of dedicated training before I can develop nearly as bottomless of an appetite as you."

"Cow? Please, I'd never be a prey animal. I'd say I'm a bear, if the gay men hadn't already claimed a monopoly on that."

"You're so based. Can you assign me a fursona?"

"A housecat, perhaps? A predator, with the corresponding instincts and energy, but still best off under the care of another.

...heh. Maybe someday I could post you on r slash chonkers."

"Plus size petplay subreddit, call that r/chonkersgonewild. Seriously though, correct choice. You understand me so well for a woman I just met."

"The soulgaze will do that! It's one of the great perks of being a wizard. Almost makes it worth having to learn to clone a hard drive."

"Anyways, I was gonna say this earlier but was too busy eating, but I literally have trouble sleeping on my stomach because my ribs poke into the bed. Just wanted to get across the urgency of you fixing me."

"SAD!" she says in a poor but recognizable attempt at a Donald Trump voice.

"Healthy young warlock gets busted, kidnapped by sexy wizard domme, feels good and changes - BBW! Many such cases!"

Mara laughs.

"You have an adorable laugh. Can you uncuff me so I can grab your boobs now?"

"The cuffs are there for a reason, sweetie! If you swear to not use magic against me and not leave the property without my permission, I can take them off. If you haven't thought about it and concluded you're okay swearing that and are acting out of impulse because you want to touch my boobs that bad, you could swear it for the night and I could put the cuffs back on in the morning."

"Okay. I swear not to use magic against you or leave your property without permission until the next sunrise. I'm a little worried about this being manipulated into remaining in effect indefinitely, either by you or by the cruel whims of fate, but if the earth stops spinning that's the least of my problems."

"Well, the idea is in fact to keep you within my power in one way or another long enough to verify you aren't going to revert to using dark magic and become a warlock! But yes, the cuffs can come off now."

She removes them.

"Well it'd be no fun if I didn't at least make some effort to resist, would it?" Her newly freed hands start just above Mara's crotch, slowly working their way up her belly and towards her tits.

Mara smiles.

"Very true."

She makes more and more pleased noises as Katie's hands approach her tits.

As her hands reach the tits, she squeezes onto them and circles her thumbs around the area where she estimates the nipples to be. "God, these really are lovely. I hope mine get to be this big."

She has correctly located the nipples! This elicits louder pleased noises.

"They will be, darling. If nothing else—mm—we could make it one of your magic projects. Modifying your own body is—nng—perfectly legitimate."

"Ooh, hey, can you use magic to make me gain weight faster too?" She moves her hands down to Mara's underboob and plants her face in her cleavage, careful to keep her ears exposed so she can hear.

Mara places a hand on the back of Katie's head, holding her in her cleavage.

"Yes, that could be an early project. A potion to enhance metabolism."

Katie wants to keep discussing their magic plans but is nonetheless grateful to be in her current predicament. Her hands blindly fumble their way back down Mara's vast expanse of body, squeezing her squishy love handles (they're called that for a reason!) on their way to her thighs.

Touching Mara's thighs produces a moan! She also adjusts Katie's head, pushing her mouth towards one of her nipples.

Joyous! Katie suckles vigorously like the malnourished kitten she is in spirit, her hands squeezing at Mara's upper thighs and feeling around for her cunt. She really wishes she wasn't awkwardly leaning forward so she could grind on something though.

"Mmm—Katie—"

She likes having her name moaned! Is there anything in the way of Mara's clit though? While she investigates, her free hand grabs onto Mara's belly and gives it a hearty jiggle, hoping that the vibrations will reach down there.

She locates the clit! It produces only a slight increase in moaning; it's hard to get Mara more worked up than suckling on her tits already has.

She is happy with this development but she really wants to be able to get off herself. Is Mara still holding her head down?

Yes! She really like having her tits sucked. She does relax her grip a little as Katie hits her with more sources of stimulation, though; it's more of a gently guiding hand.

She feels a twinge of guilt as she removes her lips from the nipple. "Sorry to interrupt, but can you please get me off? I'd grind but I can't really do that while I'm leaning forward like this." God she sounds so lame and unsexy she's ruining it Mara is gonna hate her and never do this for her again and probably won't even help her get fat she's ruined everything.

Mara adjusts positions so Katie can grind.

"Grind away, cutie."

She whimpers gently and presses her pussy against Mara's thigh as she returns her mouth to the teat. God Mara's thighs are so squishy and soft, which on the one hand is lovely but on the other makes it difficult to get off grinding against them so she's trying extra hard.

Mara emits a satisfied "mmmmmmmm" as Katie returns to suckling. She extends her hands to feel up Katie's own tits, very lightly pinching the nipples.

Katie's shirt is pretty baggy and they're not big enough that she actually needs a bra so it's quite easy to get at the bare flesh. Her suckling is briefly interrupted by an excited squeak.

Mara gropes Katie's tits thoroughly, very slightly increasing the pressure on the nipples and paying attention to her response.

Her breathing grows heavy, both from the stimulation and the extertion. The motion of tongue on nipple slows for a moment, then her mouth removes itself again. "Mmmmhhhh, your thighs are so soft it's a fucking workout grinding on them. You're burning off all my precious calories."

"Guess I'll just have to feed you even more!"

"What a shame that I'm gonna get abs from grinding on you all day only for them to be immediately buried in lard, though."

"I don't think it's a shame."

One of her hands drops from Katie's boob to grope her belly.

There's not really much there. She's comfortably full but not massively overstuffed, so it's only microscopically convex, if that. She appreciates the attention, though.

Mara lovingly strokes it for a time and then returns her full attention to Katie's tits.

"Glad you've seen the light on the matter of bellies. God, those abs are gonna be useful though, I'm fucking aching." She moves her free hand to Mara's tit to fill in for her mouth while it's busy talking.

Mara moans gratefully for the hand.

Her mouth goes back on the other tit. God, she really is aching though. She valiantly soldiers on nonetheless. 

Mara's moans reach an even higher level of intensity, and then gradually die back down. She switches positions with Katie, holding her down to the couch with one hand and feeling up her body with the other, making her way towards Katie's pussy.

(Her nails, which had been long and pointy, retract to become short and rounded, though they retain their pink sparkly appearance. Perks of magic.)

Yes. Yes. Hell fucking yes. There is nothing she loves more than having a big soft heavy woman atop her. Also her abs really are aching and being able to relax them is nice. "Ohhhhhh... Mara... Make me yours, Mara...fill me up, get me big, make me pretty... Your perfect pampered little kitty..."

Mara kisses Katie as she rubs her clit.

Fuck, she's a good kisser. Katie does her best to keep up as her arms reach around to feel for Mara's back rolls. Easily one of the most underrated parts of the fat woman.

Mara escalates the aggressiveness of makeouts as long as it keeps getting a positive response from Katie. She moans softly at the touch as Katie's arms wrap around her.

Indeed it does keep getting a positive response. Her hips buck involuntarily. She moans, the sound muffled by her mouth being interlocked with Mara's. 

Mara wiggles against Katie in response to her hips bucking.

"Mmmhhhh, you're so big and heavy, your wiggling is like an earthquake. I hope the furniture holds up when we're both that heavy."

As Katie withdraws from makeouts to talk, Mara tries planting kisses in other places. She leaves lipstick marks on Katie's cheeks, forehead, and neck.

She would be grossed out by this, but she's too in the zone to care. She'll wash them off later. "I'm so happy to have corrupted you. Excited for you to return the favor."

"It's my pleasure."

Mara experiments with various forms of hand action on Katie's clit and pussy.

"Mmmhhhh, yeah, that's it, fuck, I'm close... Make me cum, Mara, seize me, take me, make me yours... Turn me into a fat, feral fertility goddess... "

Mara fingers Katie with increasing intensity, and cuts off her words with a return to kissing on the mouth.

She twitches. Shivers. Stares into Mara's eyes as an orgasm washes over her.

"You have pretty eyes. Was kind of distracted, the other time, because...you know."

"You too..."

"Thank you!"

Mara shows no indication of lifting herself up off Katie. In fact, as she takes her hand off Katie's crotch, she wraps her arms around her.

"Mmmm, and so warm and soft, too..." She nuzzles Mara's shoulder affectionately.

Mara accepts the shoulder nuzzling, and yawns powerfully.

"Mmm, I could get used to this. Could I have a blankie, though?"

"We can share one! I'll be heading up to the bedroom; you can come with me. Taking any technology upstairs or downstairs will break it if it hasn't already, though; if you've got a phone on you, plug it into that outlet over there or, better yet, one in the tech room."

"Don't have my phone on me anyway. Is there a bathroom attached to the bedroom though? Kinda wanna wipe my face off."

"Of course there is!"

Mara scoops Katie up and carries her up the stairs to the bedroom.

She squeals excitedly. God she hopes this is Mara being strong and not just her being skinny, she doesn't have much of a frame of reference for these things.

(Mara isn't significantly stronger than average, at least right now. One might notice that the phrase "working out" has "work" in it. However, it's essential that she continue to be able to physically overpower Katie as she gets larger; she'll figure something out.)

When she gets to the bedroom, she sets Katie down, and gestures to a closed door.

"The bathroom's over there, I'll let you use it first."

She goes in and quickly wipes  the makeup stains off her face with a wet piece of toilet paper. As nice as being kissed by Mara is, that was getting really annoying. 

In doing so, she might notice the bathroom is HUGE. The counter and mirror are average sized (though if she opens any of the drawers, she'll see that they're bigger on the inside), but the bathtub is the size of a small swimming pool.

Fascinating! This will probably not be conducive to anything though because of her weird sensory issues about soap and shampoo. Thankfully Mara has an actual swimming pool too.

When Katie is done with the bathroom, Mara enters and removes her own makeup, then lays down in the bed (also huge).

"Normally it would be nigh-impossible for me to get to sleep without my phone, but I have a feeling it's gonna be easier now."

"Come here," Mara mumbles.

Katie diligently follows Mara's order.

When Katie has joined Mara in the bed, she wraps her arms around her tightly. She sleeps in pajamas, but they're thin and soft, and through them Katie can feel Mara's boobs pressing into her.

Mmm... Cozy... Somft... Katie cuddles up close to Mara and tenderly strokes her hair.

:D

God Mara's boobs are so nice. She'd be up for a round 2 but she's too fucking sleeby. She dozes off happily, warm and safe in her arms.

Mara dozes off soon after, petting Katie's hair.