"What happens to your clothes? For that matter, my shirt is still on even though I've got these enormous wings now," says Bella, flicking her tail out of the way to sit on her haunches, "which is convenient, I suppose."

"Very convenient, considering," says Darren, blushing and looking really embarrassed. "They just - go... Somewhere when you're in natural form. If it - I think it works by what you consider decent, if it seems like it would be improper for you to lose articles of clothing, like your, ahem, shirt, then it will stay, but otherwise they'll go to where ever the somewhere is."

"But my shirt isn't actually shaped like this, or it wasn't when I bought it, I don't go around in backless garments, yet it's accommodating the wings. Also folded into the medallion spell?"

"Apparently. The magic to make them's been lost, so I don't know the specifics. I'm trying to learn them, though, it's really, really inconvenient that there's a cap on how many we have."

"...Yeah, that sounds like it'd be a problem. So if Charlie's the sphinx parent it's ungodly expensive to get him to turn into one too and he'd better never touch mine? Is that lady who dropped it going to be after me for hers, am I kind of screwed?"

"That's the thing. They only work for one person at a time. They just - kind of attach themselves to people, so no other amulet would work for you, and yours won't work for an un-turned sphinx. So she wasn't using it, but you see why I would be extremely confused at how she just dropped it."

"...Okay. That is indeed strange. So I am now basically dependent on and the only possible beneficiary of a rare and valuable item that a lady dropped in the grocery store. I am glad I didn't turn it into the lost and found, I guess."

"Yeah, that's why I was jumpy about 'Do you know where it is keep it safe' because when Savannah turned for the first time she left it in the woods somewhere and I went on a panicked expedition with my dad after he explained what was going on while she hid in the attic."

"I blacked out for a while after I decided to go for a walk - which is why I'm still reasonably confident that this is a dream, though less so all the time - but I do seem to still be wearing it, yeah." She concentrates. Slowly, her various parts are restored to humanity and she's just sitting crosslegged on the forest floor. (Fully clothed.) "Can you explain that part, or do I also have weird symptoms that are unrelated to secretly being a sphinx?"

"Um. Well it didn't happen to me or my sister, but it might still be related to you being a sphinx. Because sphinxes are supposed to be extinct. And you are not."

"I don't see how anybody could be very confident in any of these species being extinct with billions of humans to disappear among."

He snorts with laughter. "Pretty much. If a dragon shows up in five minutes I won't be as surprised as I was to find out you're a sphinx. I did not think I would meet a sphinx."

"Is this basically the weird-magic-quadruped equivalent of being a fairy princess?"

"Kind of? A super magic fairy princess," says Darren, with just a hint of squee. "I am really, really excited."

"What can I do, then?"

"Vague things, it's been centuries since the sphinxes went supposedly extinct - healing's usually mentioned, being super magic is also mentioned. Anything other than that I just don't know."

"Okay, do you have a general idea how I do it?"

"I will happily follow you as close to epic wizard as you can get me before you run out of knowledge or I wake up, whichever comes first."

"So this isn't sufficiently top-secret that I shouldn't tell him at all, then?"

"I don't think you should go and tell anyone you don't trust about it, but generally if you trust the person enough and know they're not going to react by throwing you to be dissected - yeah, it's fine. It's how my dad knows, he's human and was told."

"Okay." She smiles slightly. "You can fly inside your house? I'd think that'd be awkward."