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About a mile away from the coastal town of Viterbo is a small island. It's covered mostly by forest, with narrow strips of beach giving way rapidly to greenery. People have been known to explore the island or have picnics on the sunny shores, but there are no buildings and it's uninhabited by humans.
Well.
Two weeks ago it was uninhabited by humans. And the sole current inhabitant isn't always sure she considers herself to be human.
"The more tools I cannot be deprived of, the less helpless I can be rendered when I - face whatever comes.
"And...I think I'm going to have to fight a god, someday. One that knows all the tricks I had back home because her agents pushed me to make them, in service of the plots she wove. But now - I'm outside of her range, because the things I know could topple her if I spoke where any of her kind could hear - and they would - so I can - orient, plan, grow beyond the tool she made, and come back prepared to kick her ass. Because the Spider Queen is an asshole that needs kicking, posthaste."
"Wait, a god? Like in mythology? With the - with the living in a volcano, or getting your eyes plucked out and one's the sun and the other's the moon, or the weird incestuous family trees?"
"I can't say that that's known to be in-correct, though what I am given to understand based on their actions is that most of the interventionist gods just do - spy shit, or throw around armies or big explosions. They have physical and temporal power, they play with us like pieces on a board - but I don't think they're fundamentally some different-from-us form of intelligence.
"Wow. Well, I don't think I'm really equipped to help, unfortunately, but - if you think that magic from our world will be useful, then that's good. As long as it doesn't… I dunno, draw her attention to here and bring down the spiderpocalypse."
"I am fundamentally incapable of surety about this. But - she threw me into the void beyond the world because I couldn't be allowed to die where any god could get their hands on me. So. I don't think it's likely."
"Right. Well, you'd definitely know better than I would."
A thoughtful pause.
"I hope you get your revenge, though."
"I hope I do, too.
"Or - it's not even about revenge. I hope I can get back there in time, and with enough power to, save the people she's tried to use me to hurt. And if I can repay her for that, well, that's sugar on top."
"...this has gotten very depressing. Do you still want that hug from earlier?"
...The fact that it's probably her who needs a hug right now is not something she'll mention.
They sure are!
Conveniently, there isn't anyone visible nearby. There are some benches facing the shore, though, their backs against a raised stone walkway a couple hundred feet out. There's a staircase leading up to the walkway between some of said benches.
It feels… nice. She should have done this earlier, honestly, it's been nearly two full weeks since she touched another person.
Eventually, it's time to pull away.
"Thank you again," she says. "I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't shown up here. Nothing good, probably."
That gets a laugh.
"Yeah, definitely!"
Morgan looks up. "We should probably figure out what you want to do, as far as pretending to have a familiar goes. Unless you were planning to copy that, I guess."
Su-Yeong laughs again.
"Oh, right. Uh, a familiar can be basically any land creature or bird? It'll have eyes that match yours in color, and I think if it's a bug it'll be a little bigger than normal - like, if someone had a butterfly, it'd be like this big" (she spreads her hands to illustrate something about the size of her face) "even if the actual kind of butterfly it is would be this big."
She pinches her forefinger and thumb together, making a circle a little bigger than her eye.
"I see."
"...I have to admit, I'm really curious as to whether I could do that."
"Do familiars mean things?"
Su-Yeong hums.
"I'd say it means a little, yeah. I don't think anyone's ever done statistics about it, and I don't have a lot of magician friends, but - usually they mean things about how you're built, how you think, how you approach social situations."
Morgan nods.
"I don't know a lot, but… I've got some intuitions and instincts that Su-Yeong doesn't, that I think are part of being a familiar. We didn't know that people had those, since we haven't talked closely to any other familiars, so I think those intuitions are probably pretty real, and not just something that Su-Yeong would have expected me to have? They're not very solid, though, I've just got a sense that there's a reason I'm a goat and not, oh, a sheep or a horse or a tiger. I don't know exactly what that reason is, but I think… we respond to stress, especially, in a way that's more like how a goat would than a bunny or a cat. It doesn't mean that Su's personality is exactly like a goat's, especially because we're not, actually, the same person, but… I dunno, am I making any sense?"
Su-Yeong scratches his head again, between his horns.
"I think that if you decide you wanna try copying our magic system, you should probably take a close magical look at some regular people, so you don't accidentally copy my husk-ness."
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