"No, that just - Well, yes, but also that just kind of hurt."

"Awww, sorry. On the bright side, though, we can figure out all the ways you can be dangerous, and then you can wreck people who disrespect you for being cute, and it'll take the assholes by surprise."

"Hmm. That does sound appealing. Tiny titan. You know, I'm not sure whether to like, expect story stuff? Am I in a fantasy novel now, and I should expect to find a legendary sword or have to find the girl who awakened me and fight her? Or is it just life, with magic."

"I think it's mostly just life, with magic. Can't really rule story out though, because I'm apparently a literal storybook character now. Inkborn, which is what I am other than Mimi, awaken into narrative archetypes and charge from storytelling."

"That sounds... Inconvenient. Not that I really know."

"I like it well enough so far. I think it helps that we usually get archetypes that resonate well for us. There isn't really a lot of data, though, given that there are so few of us. Actually, on that note..."

She takes off her hat — wide-brimmed, purple, holes for her ears, with a long point that flops over — and tosses it at the cute, surprisingly helpful cop.

And then, while everyone's eyes are on the improvised frisbee, she conjures another and sets it on her seat, upside down, then sits on it.

She adroitly catches the hat and sticks it on her head in one smooth motion. Kind of looks like she's expecting something, but not in a hostile way, just a little sardonic half-smile.

And with a careful bit of teekay, the hat floats back off her head for a moment, over her lap, and then Sable suddenly falls into the hat she's sitting on, out the one over the cop's lap, and suddenly lapful of foxgirl!

"Hi!"

She puts one arm on Sable's back to balance her. "Yo. Sable, right? Heard you had some bad luck and ol' Kemmie brought you in for a lecture."

"Mhm, and the mediator who helped with my awakening didn't even really know anything about Inkborn at all, just that we charge off storytelling, and now all my stuff is stuck at home and I'll probably be risking headaches daily if I try to go back, and so will Lenora, and I didn't even really have much but it's mine, y'know?"

"Yeah, it can be really hard for newbies who have a lot of links to the mundane world. Especially with radical transformations or odd needs. Tell ya hwhat," she drawls out the word with an odd pronunciation, "They mostly keep me around for my firepower anyway. I don't get to play much and if I do, it ain't fun. So I can give y'all a lift places for a bit, long as I don't have reports to write or nothin'. I don't think your friend likes me much though."

"Awesome, that'd be a big help! Can you get someone to look up anything y'all have on Inkborn, while you're at it? And I can't really blame her, honestly. You're a cop! Neither of us have had good experiences with cops, I bet. I'm just really good at being loving and lovable in spite of that."

"A quick archive pull's not that big a deal either. I can introduce ya on the way to the Abyssal check for Lenora."

"Great, thanks!"

And then she pulls her hat down about herself, vanishing beneath it and reappearing in her seat next to Lenora. The now-abandoned hat loses its color, then its substance at all, until it's just an outline, which then vanishes.

Lenora snickers. "Nice trick. And a good sport to play it on. I kinda get the vibe of someone who's been around since the sixties and nobody can fire from her."

She giggles and nods. "Yeah, that's the impression I get too. So, were we gonna teach you a bit of magic?"

"-Hmm, yeah. Might distract me from wondering what the hell I'm going to do next, since I can't exactly go back to freaking Roger's Hawaiian Bar and Grill two feet shorter. We're in Michigan. Not Hawaii. And the owner's name is Gary. Hmph. I - can move rocks around, I think? I'm feeling the rocks and dirt around us, though concrete's icky and horrible and doesn't work."

"Yeah, I bet it feels icky. We can come back to where we're going instead of our old lives in a minute. Coplady over there probably can fill in the blanks on what I learned about the factions while she's giving us a ride, and we can make our decision then."

She grins. "For now, let's pick one of the two absolute easiest things to start with. D'you wanna find your familiar, or your Rod and Garment and Hat?"

"Hm. Hats seem pretty mandatorily witchy."

She nods and smiles. "Solid choice. So now we're gonna find your Hat. Close your eyes."

She takes a breath, and smiles, her voice getting a bit dreamlike. "This is your Hat, and it's sitting inside your soul. It's sitting in a place that's all yours, and only yours. Right now your Hat is very plain, but after you summon it we'll make it suit you. For now, just hold up your hand as though you're adjusting it. It's already sitting on your head, you just don't know it yet. It's a plain, pointed, wide-brimmed, black Hat, and it's all yours."

Her voice turns firm. "Now grab it."

Focus.

Focus.

You're magic, you can feel it, just-

"-HAT!" And she's holding one.

"Got it! Great! Now change it. What's your favorite color?"

This hat shall be... RED!

No, not that red! It doesn't work on a hat. A deeper, velvety sort of red!

"How come we can do this? Are hats just innately witchy?"

"Nice color! And hm. So, what I read was that an absurdly long time ago, one of the ancestors of all witches did a spell to give all her descendants a few basic tools: a Hat, a Garment, and a Rod. And because her clan mostly won out, and the others married in, she wound up as an ancestor to all of us. And now these things are called mothergifts. As you attune yourself better to yours, you can make 'em do more stuff, or better, or faster. Judging by how quick you were able to summon your Hat, you're at least rank one. Judging by how quick you could change it, rank two. Most important is your Rod, because it's both a casting aid and a travel device."