"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."

Nod.

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"...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.

She smiles warmly at Hali.

"How about once we get to shore?"

"Sounds like a plan."

They're almost there, anyway!

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.

Su-Yeong sets Morgan down and holds her arms out. Hug?

Hug, definitely.  Definitely a hug.

It feels… nice. She should have done this earlier, honestly, it's been nearly two full weeks since she touched another person.

...Yeah, she needed this too.

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."

"Probably not anything good, no.  ...I'm glad I arrived before whatever it was did happen."

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."

"Makes sense.  ...I'm going to have such a familiar, if I figure out how, aren't I."

She grins.

"Probably!"

And then she sits back to watch what Hali does next.

"...Gotta admit, now that we're here, you probably know more about what to do than I do; I'm just going to need somewhere to think and possibly some notes on local magic users.

"Oh, and - Morgan, do you have any idea what you were doing, magic-wise or existence-wise, before you - well, got that body prosthetic?  I've been meaning to ask."

"Well, I was planning to go back to the townhouse I share with my boyfriend next, since I want to explain everything to him first. We'll figure out what to do together, from there… do you know how long you're gonna stay in this world? You might want to get some sort of job so you don't have to camp and eat travel rations, but that'd risk letting out that you're not from around here, which - wouldn't be the end of the world, but it might get you tangled up, y'know? Uh, we can tell you what we know about magic users, but since I'm so new to having magic, let alone using it, you'd probably get as much, if not more, information from peoplewatching with your fancy specs."

Morgan thinks.

"Let's see… I definitely existed before I… existed. At least, part of me did, as part of Su-Yeong. I don't know if I have all of her memories, but I have a lot of 'em and a pretty good sense of her whole life. I think the… feelings are different, though, from how she felt about the things at the time. Not super different, like there isn't anything that she's happy about and I'm sad about, but - different enough that I feel like I was there, somehow, and not just - having a record of it in my mind, y'know?

"And then, at about the time that she turned into a husk, there's - it gets clearer, or at least more clearly me. I remember - being in front of the whole staff, Mr. Vasillia yelling at me, and - Su-Yeong was so scared, worrying about what she and Tobi were gonna do, embarrassed - but I was furious. I wanted to scream at him, I wanted to punch him, I wanted to light a fire to his stupid ancestral mansion. And I wanted to make his daughter watch, to know how much what she did hurt. I couldn't - do anything, though, she was turning around and getting her bag and crying and running home. And I was so, so mad, I was stewing in it, I felt like I was burning up. My head was pounding, and - my human body felt wrong. I kept feeling like I needed to do something, on and off…

"I think I started being able to control what we did while she was on the way home, but - we both were in our body, and control was slipping between us, and she didn't seem to know I existed. I barely knew I existed. So I think she didn't remember what I was doing, especially because we still both felt horrible and angry and scared, and it's easy to get - lost, in that. We didn't realize what was happening to us until she looked in the mirror at home, and then she ran here.

"It was - basically more of that, afterwards. I definitely got mentally stronger, over time, more able to do things. But away from - from the Vasillia place, from town, from everything that had just happened, I didn't feel so - much. I mean, it definitely weighed on us both, but we were able to think about other things. We weren't able to ever relax, though, we were always - stressed, feeling like something horrible was about to happen, or like we'd have to fight for our lives. And I think - I still had that feeling of bodily wrongness, and I was trying to - do something about it? To be a normal familiar, shaped like this. I think it worked, because I remember that I felt - a little better, in that regard. Not all the way, but less. That's probably when we grew the horns. And I think… starting a few days after that, we would shift between being little with horns to being bigger with horns and also hooves. And I would be - more me, more in control, at those times.

"When you told us about how we had a goat soul that's when we both realized that I existed. And so when - I think you made a comment that freaked us out? Oh, right, it was the thing about bleeding off magic, we thought you might try to make me stop existing. When you said that, I got mad and scared like I would before, but Su-Yeong didn't, and she was able to - keep me from taking over. Then you made that doodad, and it was like… suddenly, I wasn't stuck in Su-Yeong's human body. I was next to her, next to that collar. So I was able to - pick it up, and put it on, and I could feel myself getting real. It was amazing!"

He prances a little in excitement, then realizes how much he's been rambling.

"… Does that help?"

"It does; thank you, Morgan."

(She's been nodding along to the explanation - it makes a lot of things make sense.)

"Okay, so - are you coming to my house, or should we split up now? We'd have to figure out a way to find each other…"

"I have tools for this purpose!"  And Hali can hand Su-Yeong a message-stone!  "I can find you with this; I don't hand out the version that I use, with a point-at-its-partner glyph, but you can get in touch with me this way."