"Or until I can fix, for - some value of fix - husk-ness?  I'm really not quite sure what could happen, that's the problem when you run into things that've never been seen before.

"...Probably going to need to do some absurd reverse-engineering attempt about it, actually, let me just..."

So she has her soul projector, and she has a looping control structure...

If she puts those two ideas together, maybe she can get a soul writeout!

She sure can! It'll be in a runic format, so if she wants Lucy or Su-Yeong to draw any conclusions, she'll have to translate.

The writeout mostly tells Hali what she already knew. There's an example regular person, presumably someone in the marketplace going about their day, who has lilac magic and a rabbit familiar. The runes are pretty emphatic about both these facts, actually - not through an application of extra force, but a reader may get the impression that if someone was writing this, and not just an automated process, that person very strongly believes that this magician should have a rabbit, that the specific kind of rabbit they have just perfectly represents them in a way that is particularly beautiful. The counterfactual author of this magician's soul also thinks that their magic color is fitting, but that mostly seems to be because their mother had a similar baby blue magic hue, rather than because there's an ineffable sense of Correctness that's being appealed to here.

Lilac Rabbit Magician produces magical energy, or maybe converts building blocks of magical energy that are omnipresent in the environment, at a rate that fluctuates based on whether they're trying to use magic! The base rate is roughly equivalent to the rate at which they leak unused magic. They happen to be wearing a brooch that could be a closer match, color-wise, but does the job of collecting most of the leakage. It can hold a lot more magic than the magician's own reservoir, but not quite as much as the rabbit. (Magic stored in the rabbit isn't actually used, but it's still Very Important that the rabbit exists. If the rabbit were to be killed, the magician's magic production would kick into a higher gear to rebuild it, which would take about half a day, and the magician wouldn't be able to use magic other than what had been stored in their jewelry until the rabbit was back.)

Controlling magic seems to be done entirely with the magician's own will.

Su-Yeong produces magical energy a lot faster, of course, and it's pretty clear that she and Morgan are much more entangled than the example magician and their rabbit are. In a similar style as the insistence on the example magician's soul/magic being rabbit-shaped, it's okay that Morgan has his own body right now, but eventually the prosthetic will wear out and he'll be yoinked back into Su-Yeong's body. That's not to say that a permanent solution isn't possible, especially since whatever's constructing these souls prefers that familiars be external! But it's clear that the patch is just step one of the process to full recovery.

Lucy's soul does not produce magical energy! It's sad about this! The swan wants to exist! Almost as a consolation prize, they have the ability to manipulate a broader range of magic colors than other magicians do, although their own color is of course best.

It seems that, for both Lucy and Su-Yeong, there's a small chance that they'll retain harmless features of their current conditions even if Hali's able to get their familiars metaphysically behaving properly, but it's more likely that they'll just be regular magicians on a soul level.

"...That's...odd.  Some of these runes have - I've seen these signifiers before, but not as diacritics.

"Well.  If an ineffable force is having opinions at me somehow, hi?

"...This is - hmmm.

"Well, the prosthetic is - miscalibrated enough that I think I ought to fiddle with it, based on this, because it might well undergo shear enough to break, as-is, and that would be - unpleasant.  Other things that are evident..."

She'll relay her findings, though without much further explanation of how she's reading these.  "Really we already knew a lot of this, but it's good to have confirmation on one's findings."

(Su-Yeong's a little spooked at the idea of the soul prosthetic breaking. The soul prosthetic continues working just fine - it's not under nearly enough strain for that at this point in time, though it probably wouldn't last for a year unless Su-Yeong lived a completely relaxed life of feeding extra magic into rubies for Lucy to use or something similar.)

"Yeah… I mean, don't rush the replacement for the magic prosthetic, because I'd rather it be done right, and… being a husk doesn't seem like the end of the world, anymore. I've already done it, and - I know now that I won't be completely fucked if it happens again."

Gentle headbutt to Su-Yeong's leg.

"Not that we're volunteering to do it again, mind."

"Of course not.  ...Part of my brain is still insisting that it would be really cool for everyone to be able to do animal-traits, but...not that way.  Never that way again."

Lucy chuckles.

"I've read fantasy about that. Stories where the world's mostly the same, but instead of getting a familiar you get the ability to turn into your familiar at will, or familiar-themed super senses, or whatever."

"Sounds neat; I'd love to borrow one sometime."

"Yeah, just let me know."

They've got a lovingly-curated bookshelf at home.

She certainly will; right now, though, she has work to do, and magic to study.

Looking closer at the bond between magician and familiar reveals a lot more differences than looking at just the magic!

For normal magicians, the bond is pretty loose! A magician and familiar can be arbitrary distances from each other without any difficulty. They don't share thoughts or emotions, though they tend to have similar enough personalities that they will have similar reactions to the same event. (Reading between the lines: just as every magician is different, every magician has a different relationship to their familiar. It seems that the familiar's personality, both the instinctive tendencies that the animal they are would have and their disposition as an individual, tends to be influenced by any and all of: a magician's relationship to their own magic, a magician's relationship to themselves, emotional needs a magician might have that aren't filled by the other humans they know, how a magician reacts to stress, how a magician approaches their relationships… it's pretty nuanced and complex.)

For Su-Yeong, it's a lot tighter. She can still be far away from Morgan without any physical or psychological torment, though. But they definitely pass thoughts and emotions back and forth a little, especially if the emotions are intense and one of them is agitated or it seems like Su-Yeong's in trouble. Morgan's account of what it was like before Hali came around lines up pretty tidily with what the magic is saying, though of course it's slightly different now that he has his own body of sorts.

(Thierry and Lucien are actually more distinct than Su-Yeong and Morgan, if Hali takes a peek at their case specifically. They've had a lot more time, both pre- and post-husking, to develop themselves as people.)

Lucy and the swan can't separate, but that seems to mostly be a result of Lucy not having enough magic in their system for the swan to have its own body rather than the bond being fundamentally different. There's also more personality overlap, but that doesn't seem to be inherent to Lucy's condition - it's more that the swan and Lucy have grown together over the last five years.

Interesting.  "Well, I have a much better idea of how bonds get put together, now.  I think Su-Yeong and Morgan might well be able to pull off telepathic stuff, incidentally, which is not a usual thing."

"Huh, that makes sense. Both us being telepathic and most people and their familiars not."

"For the record," says Piper, "technically people can do a little direct communication with their familiars. It doesn't share thoughts, though, just - senses? And it's a specific spell you have to cast, not an ongoing effect. But Ivy and I can do it."

After a moment of quiet, footsteps and a key turning can be heard from outside before the door opens.

"Hey Su, Hali. Who's this?"

He nods towards Lucy.

Lucy waves shyly.

"I'm Lucy,"

(Glance towards Su-Yeong, who nods encouragingly.)

"but I'm also, uh. Your friend Morgan from five years ago?"

In an impressive display of restraint, they don't facepalm at how awkward that sounded coming out.

"We've had a very...eventful...day, as you may surmise.  How was yours, though, Tobi?"

He looks between Lucy (who looks as lost and wrongfooted as he feels) and Su-Yeong (who's smiling encouragingly at him).

"Not nearly as eventful," he finally says with a nervous laugh. "It was pretty good, actually - knowing that Su-Yeong is okay was a huge weight off my shoulders, and I guess it showed, because both Mr. Vasillia and Philomena commented that I looked happy."

He laughs, more wryly this time.

"I told her that you were feeling better after a rough time and she asked if you felt good enough to come back to work."

Snort.

"What'd you tell her?"

"I said it wasn't up to me. I think she got what I was hinting at, 'cause she scampered off afterwards. I kinda feel bad, but… honestly, I'm pleasantly surprised that she seemed to care about how you were doing."

He sits down on the couch.

Su-Yeong joins him.

"Lucy doesn't remember much of - well, our lives," she whispers to her boyfriend. "But they still seem like… y'know, how Morgan was."

Hali continues to be a supportive presence near Lucy, as best she can.  She's been building the structure of a properly integratable magical shunt for the past little while, but that can wait; making sure nothing explodes socially takes priority.

(Lucy is grateful for the support! They aren't sure what to say, or if they should let Tobi ask questions first. It doesn't help that he's really cute, either. They wonder if he and his girlfriend are poly. Probably they should figure out if they can do poly; this wouldn't be a very good time to find out the answer was no.)

Tobi looks at Lucy, concerned.

"Do you know why?"

(He's kind of asking both them and Su-Yeong.)

"A - magical accident, five years ago.  How that became memory loss I haven't a clue, but that was the - causative event."