(Morgan trots up the stairs as soon as the door's been opened.)

"Interestingly.  I'm going to need to perform some practical experiments, but I think I have a proper answer to husking - and a lot more questions."

"Oh, what kind of experiments?"

"Not - on anyone, well.  Until actually attempting the thing happens.  But...seeing if certain magic is constructed in the way I hypothesize it's constructed.  And I probably am going to need to look at what's actually responsible for the...not exactly generative, portion, but the coloring.  Magic back home had - maybe a signature, but not something as explicit as this.  You could tell a mage by how they threw a spell, but not the mana they actually threw.

"It's weeeiiiird."

"Huh, how's it weird?"

The young man on the couch looks up at Hali.

"Hey, I'm Tobi. Thank you so much for helping Su-Yeong."

"It's unusual, especially given the way that - color can stain gems over time in a way that improves their affinity to carry that mana or maintain structure or - something.  I should try conjuring up something by specification, sometime, and seeing how that - works, compared to...

"I can get distracted by 'why this' later, it's just really quite strange that -

"So, souls are also made of mana.  And there's...hm, now I really am wondering...

"Every single person, even those without any active access to it at all, has their color of mana constantly - being generated, falling in and out of alignment, there's something about the process...

"What is it doing?  Why is it doing it?  Is it just ease of - but then what's with the soul animals?  I don't know, and it confuses me!  It's like it was designed, and I don't know by whom or for what purpose!

"It could just be - adaptation - but still, the soul-animals!"

"...Excuse me, that's gotten rather off-topic.

"Hello Tobi; I'm glad I was able to - properly help Su-Yeong."

"Huh. I didn't know that about gem color. It sounds like the magic is… doing stuff on purpose?"

Morgan trots over; she looks at him thoughtfully.

"Maybe it's… I know that familiars are the manifestation of magic, or at least that's what they say about them. So maybe they're… I dunno, an expression of that personality? Wow, that just sounds like I'm on drugs."

Tobi laughs.

"I think it just means that this stuff is over our head for now. Anyway, you said you had an 'answer' to husking? What do you mean, by that?"

(The color of his magic, as it so happens, would be a rich forest green.)

"Yes, soul animals are a personality thing, absolutely, but - why are they a personality thing, from what source are they deriving personality traits associated with themselves - has anyone ever had an animal they've never seen before?

"...Anyway.  Answer to husking.  Yes.  I've had a chance to look at 'normal' mages, and I can - compare what they have, and sort of figure out what needs to be set up, to make a full - solution to husking?  In a way that's not...tool-dependent."

Su-Yeong thinks.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure. At least, I'd never seen an armadillo before Tully - uh, that's Philomena Vasillia's. And I'm pretty sure she had to look up what he was in a book."

Tobi pipes up.

"Yeah, I think they're from the other side of the world. Anyway, yeah, it's not super common, but Philomena's not the only time I've heard of."

"Yeah. So - what do you think you'll need to make a real solution? And…"

She looks down.

"Do you think you'd be able to do - awakening people's dormant magic? I don't know if it's - a good idea, because I bet there's people who wouldn't want to take that option and I wouldn't wanna force them. But… some people would probably kill for the opportunity."

"What I need for a real solution is - mostly, time.  To experiment.  And data to work with.

"As far as awakening someone's magic - I think I might have the one tool I need for that already.  But it would be risky, to just try jamming it in to see what happens.  So I'd want to study and prepare, before trying."

"Right. Well, we've got time now. I agree on not wanting to take risks like that, though. What kinds of experiments are you gonna run? I'm guessing that you won't be doing any on, you know, people, at least at first."

"Yeah.  Seeing if I can - make something like the structures a non-husk mage has, and seeing if I can - connect it to a 'dummy' soul that's shaped sort of like, well, yours, and...stuff like that."

She giggles.

"A dummy soul? Almost makes it sound like you're trying to build a magic zombie."

"I wish it was that simple; I'm going to have to do techniques on top of techniques around a riddle wrapped in a mystery surrounding an enigma at this rate just to create the practice targets!  At least I have - helpful ideas, from how your items work, and some things I've seen..."

"Yeah?"

"...I don't know if I want to say anything about it aloud.

"Because it's - the knowledge is dangerous not in the knowing, but in what the knowing enables one to do therewith."

"Well, that's pretty spooky. But you're pretty sure that what you wanna do won't hurt anyone?"

"Yes.  Unless - someone makes me beat the plowshares into swords.  Which would be...difficult to do."

"Ah, so you don't wanna… risk someone finding out that - my brain is deciding to substitute in the thing where if you mix a cleaner that has ammonia with a cleaner that has bleach, it's really bad - and forcing you to metaphorically make bleach and ammonia bombs. Even if it would be really hard for them to force you to do that."

She yawns.

"Speaking of cleaner, I'm gonna take that shower I mentioned and probably hit the hay. Tobi, I told Hali that we might be able to keep her for a night or two…?"

Tobi, who had picked up a book when the discussion turned to technical magic talk, looks up.

"Oh, that's - I think that's okay?"

"Yeah, that sort of thing."

"...Thank you, Tobi, Su-Yeong.  I - don't need to borrow your roof, but I appreciate it."

"And we appreciate what you've done for Su!"

"Seeya in the morning!"

While Su-Yeong showers, Tobi makes up the couch for Hali.

"See you in the morning."

...She might be up a bit longer; she has designs to draft before the inspiration vanishes like morning dew.

Valid of her!

Tobi gets up at about six and goes to work; Su-Yeong sleeps in for about an hour. When she emerges from the bathroom she's dressed in her own clothes and holding a bundle of laundered and folded clothing.

"Morning!"

Hali makes a noise that may or may not be describable as "Good morning", in response, as she blinks awake.

The nearest flat surfaces are absolutely covered in papers full of runes.

Giggle.

"Oops, did I wake you?"

She… would like to set the bundle of clothing, which is the borrowed outfit from yesterday, down near the couch, but - papers. She decides to set it down on the nearest not-papered flat surface. She peers curiously (without actually touching the papers) at the strange alphabet on them.

Well, it's not actually an alphabet!  Runes are logographic!  But it is, certainly, quite strange!

"I think you might've, yeah.  It's fine, though, like...I think I got enough sleep, at least."

The clothes, after a bit of ink shifts on Hali's arm, are picked up in a gesture and secreted away in her bag.

"Thank you for returning those."

Either way, she can't really make heads or tails of them. But she didn't really expect to.

"That's good. And I can try to remember, if you end up staying here longer. What is your camping setup, out of curiosity?"

She watches with interest as Hali lifts the clothes into her bag.

"Tent with runes, bedroll - the usual stuff.  With extra magic."

"Huh, what do the runes do for the tent?"

"A bunch of comfort things.  Keeping the heat or cold in, and the bugs out.  Etcetera."

"Neat! There's probably similar stuff for sale here, but I've never been outdoorsy enough to go looking."

She flexes her hand experimentally, calling forth a burst of magic.

"What kind of stuff do you like to do with magic, normally? I feel like I'm so used to doing stuff the regular way - or the long way around, or however you wanna call it - that I'm kinda coming up empty when I try to think of things to do with all this magic."

"Moving things with my miiiiiind," she jazzhands, "is, like, definitely the thing I do most often.  Heating and cooling stuff.  The message stones count, probably?"

Nod.

"I guess I can work on getting good at moving stuff without touching, yeah."

She lifts her key off its hook experimentally.

"What's the plan for today?"

(She feels - weirdly itchy, not sure what to do. Part of her is convinced that she should be going to work right away, since everything else is so - normal.)

"I have experiments to run, there is science to be done - you need a proper tutor."

Nod.

"Yeah, I agree. I just don't know how to find one, since pretty much nobody I know socially has magic and even if it wasn't a really bad idea to go to the Vasillia place and ask for recommendations, they'd probably recommend someone who charges way more than I can afford. There's, like, one person I thought of but I haven't seen him in like five years and have no idea how to get in touch - he might not even live here anymore."

"Mmmm.  It can't hurt to check, if you have any idea how to find out how to get in touch - perhaps start at wherever you know they frequented?  Their house?"

"I - might be able to find out how to get in touch?"

Sigh.

"See, what happened is… Tobi and I grew up basically on the streets. But we weren't completely alone, we had a friend. His name was… Morgan, actually. And a little before he turned twelve, he got magic. Someone scooped him up as an apprentice - see, there was this one cop, Officer Rothart, who was nice to us, and he was dating this scientist. The scientist, Dr. Malliet, took Morgan on as an apprentice, and Morgan started living with him and Officer Rothart. And then, after a couple months, we never saw the doctor or Morgan again. I think I still see Officer Rothart, sometimes, or someone who looks like he could be him? But he never tries to talk to us or anything. I don't know where he lives, and I'd feel… weird, walking into a guard station."

"Oh, that's - I find myself equally concerned and hopeful.

"...Do you know what color he is to - really high precision?  I mean, I could try the idea I had anyway, but it would be - harder."

Another nod.

"Yeah. Uh… Dr. Malliet and Officer Rothart were both blue - Officer Rothart's was a lot lighter. And then Morgan's was raspberry pink."

She shuts her eyes in focus before manifesting a shimmery illusion. It's hazy, both because she's not practiced at illusion magic and because the memory is five years removed, but it shows a fair-skinned man with blonde hair in a ponytail, royal blue eyes, and a peacock with a darker-featured man with baby blue eyes and a hamster. A preteen boy with sleekly wavy dark hair and deep magenta eyes smiles nervously up at the blonde man, cradling a cygnet in his hands.

"Does that help?"

"Oh, yes, very."

She can capture the light from that!

"And - oh, I can probably filter for swans, too -"

Runes spread across a blank page, some producing glowing shapes in the shapes of corresponding animals, including Su-Yeong's red in the form of Goat Morgan - at which point, a circle spreads out above the page, showing a red goat in nearly the center, and, hopefully, other animal shapes in their corresponding animals' magic colors!

She's even managed to make a 'sensitivity' dial out of sustained magic, which she will twiddle with should there be no results.

At first, nothing comes up. There's a couple of other folks with similar, if not quite identical, colors - a girl about fourteen years old with a poodle, a fortyish-year-old woman with an ocelot, a middle-aged man with a mantis - and plenty of other folks with birds, even waterfowl, but nobody who has a match for both magic color and familiar type.

"...Well, that's not a good sign..."

What if she searches for only magic color, instead?

Still the same handful of dark reddish pink magicians, at first. Once the sensitivity is adjusted to account for people who don't currently have magic, however, some more people prop up: mostly young kids, but also…

This guy! They're sitting on a bed in a room nearly as big as the living room Hali and Su-Yeong are in, cheerfully chatting with a silky white cat as they mend a shirt. There's lots of fabric in this room, in the form of articles of clothing in various stages of completion as well as bolts. A tailor's dummy stands in the corner.

Magically speaking, they don't quite look like anyone Hali's already seen, magic user or no. Their magic color seems to be not there, not just dormant like that of black-eyed mundanes, though in a paradoxical, almost after-image-like sense, it is a dead ringer for Su-Yeong's illusion.

A wispy black swan sleeps fitfully next to them.

"...what the fuck," Hali breathes out, as she pans her 'scope over the scene, "- is he -" like me, Morgan, okay, - "- what happened to his eyes -"

Focusing in to the point that the actual image of what this person would look like to an observer fades out reveals that the underlying mechanisms of their magical respiratory system, as it were, are basically identical to that of a normal magician. There's the reservoir that holds magic and the systems that control and direct it in perfect working condition, except for the part that there isn't any magic. The generators are completely offline. It's not just that they don't have a right eye - Hali's seen, by now, magicians with just one eye, and their magic works completely normally. It's that their left eye just - doesn't produce magic. It's unclear if it fundamentally can't or if there's something external blocking it.

(Before the image fades out, Su-Yeong spots it.)

"I'm pretty sure that is Morgan, or at least his secret twin. And your thingy says he's still in this city?"

"I thought that to a first approximation the eye thing came after the magic generation, but somehow no, what is this, why is this -

"Yeah.  He's still in the city."

Is anyone else like him?

Nope!

"… That house looked pretty nice. Is he… on his own? Can your thing check for that?"

"I could probably arrange for such, with enough effort, but I would like to know why you feel it necessary to spy upon him so, instead of asking?"

Oh oops.

"… Oh, good point. Sorry. I guess it's just -"

She bites her lip.

"We were best friends, him and Tobi and me, for as long as I could remember, until he left to be with Dr. Malliet. And I don't… blame him, y'know, we were on the streets and if I had gotten my magic back then instead of him I'd have made the same call. But - I guess that imagining he moved away hurt less than imagining that he's been here, this whole time, and just… forgot about us. Because we don't matter like magicians do."

She shakes her head.

"I guess I also don't know what we'd say, if we went and knocked on his door. Why we found him, how we found him. I guess since your magic is what found him, you'd probably be better at explaining anyway?"

"...I don't imagine he's forgotten you; did you - actually make any plans to be able to stay in touch, Su-Yeong?  Because - it's hard to find two kids you haven't seen for a long while, without magic."

"Yeah. I mean - I guess we didn't, because it wasn't a goodbye, at first? We had known Officer Rothart for a little while before Morgan got his magic - he was a lot nicer than other guards. I mean, most of the guards aren't mean, most of them ignored us, but Officer Rothart would sometimes get us treats, or shoes, or other stuff it was hard to get on our own. And then Morgan got his magic, and… I think that it's a lot easier to take on an apprentice than to legally adopt a kid, especially if you don't have a lot of money, which, in retrospect, they probably didn't. But Officer Rothart kept looking out for us, and sometimes we would all go out for muffins and hot chocolate or whatever. But then, he just. Stopped. I remember we were gonna do something for Morgan's birthday in April and it just… never happened."

"...I wonder if something happened to the doctor.

"Could be related to the 'magic broken' thing.

"...I think we should go talk to Morgan."

Oh no scary social interaction She can handle this, actually, because she's an adult.

"Okay."

She… vents a bit of magic, making a little glowy ball in her hands that she dismisses after breathing deeply for a few seconds.

"Yeah, okay."

"You don't have to come.  I'd like having someone who can confirm I'm not just some crazy lady along, but - you don't have to come."

"I think I would rather, all things considered. Both to confirm you're not some crazy lady and also because I want to see him. I can always bail if it seems like it's starting to go south."

"Then - let's go, shall we?"

She'll just make a pointer to Morgan's antisignature, and then they can go find him.

Morgan lives in a pretty nice house in the foothills on the south end of town! The yard's pretty overgrown, though, and tall trees shade the windows.

Hali's mien as she knocks on the front door is - cautious in a way that only people who spring ambushes know.

A pause, and then -

"I'll get it, Master Rothart!" hollers a muffled voice. Feet hurriedly thumpthumpthump down the stairs.

The door opens. The teenager in the door glances briefly at Su-Yeong and Hali.

"… uh, hi? Can I help you guys?"

(Behind them, the cat slinks down the stairs.)

"Hopefully, yes.  If I have correctly identified you as Morgan, your friends from when you were young are kind of miffed they didn't get to come to your birthday party."

The cat, on the other hand, doesn't get to hear the personal details, due to wind.

(Well, that's suspicious. She looks torn, but - decides to stay and watch. Just in case.)

Possibly-Morgan, however, looks - blank.

"Uh, what? Birthday party? Sorry, I think you've got the wrong house. I don't know any Morgans."

"...Well, that's strange; you're his spitting image."  The cat can hear that.  "...I don't suppose that you have," and here she somehow manages to heave a dejected sigh at the potential dime-novel dramatic-shenanigans of her question without stepping down from a level of alert that's approximately 'expecting ninja assassins in the next five minutes', "mysterious retrograde amnesia?  Because - well, if not, then I'm sorry for troubling you; I'm looking for someone's lost friend, and you're the only person matching the description in the city, but if it's not you, it's not you.  If so, though - maybe we should step inside; I don't know what I'm stumbling into at this point, but I find myself preferring to discuss - whatever it may be - in a secure area."

"Um. Is this a prank."

They tap their foot nervously before seeming to make a decision.

"You - can come inside. I guess. But - if I tell you to leave, and you don't, I'm getting my master."

(Glance at the cat before opening the door wider.)

"… Also, it's Lucy. Uh, 'now.' If you're not playing some sort of horrible prank. And I use they pronouns."

Su-Yeong steps inside as though she expects Lucy to suddenly retract their offer.

"For what it's worth, you do sound a lot like how my friend did. You really don't remember Tobi and me? It was only five years ago…"

"If it was a prank, I would hardly make outlandish claims like this that - aren't funny.  No, I'm - worried that there's something unpleasant afoot, and - of course you should take your own precautions."  Though she's still unsure how much this master could have had to do with this; the cat's reactions are a good sign but not probative.  "...It's a pleasure to meet you, Lucy; I'm Hali."  The door's shut now, right?  "Some of the things I want to talk about with you might merit the input of your familiar."

"… Five years is about the right time. I - there's kids, down at the marketplace I go to, who talk about a Tobi, but I've never met him. Uh, that I know. I guess."

The living room is comfortably decorated in a way that still somehow conveys that nobody really spends much time in it without actually being dusty. The overwhelming theme of the furniture is a familiar deep blue - that, and peacocks. Peacock figurines, a clock shaped like a peacock, wall hangings depicting peacocks…

As Hali mentions familiar input, Lucy freezes. Glances at the cat.

There's absolutely zero magical connection between the two of them.

"What for?"

Hali casts some runes over the scene, in light that is invisibly deeper than red, to ensure that no-one can scry upon them.

"Well, firstly, I have to admit that we already know that your familiar's a swan.  And not this cat.  Because how I found you in the first place was by searching for people with a certain color of soul and a swan attached to it.  But the thing that has me equal parts incredibly scientifically interested and deeply concerned is that you are especially devoid of that color of mana, in that - normally, those without magic simply fail to accumulate the mana they naturally color, but you don't produce any at all."

Shit, they can't lie their way out of this. Ivy help

Fortunately (?), they're too confused to freak out, at least for now.

"Uh… maybe this is just the amnesia talking, but I don't have a familiar. Since that's already out in the open. I mean, maybe I had a swan five years ago, but… who ever heard of someone having a familiar and losing it?"

They sigh.

"It is true that I can't do magic, no matter how hard I try. And I've tried, me and Master Rothart both. Uh - is the color pink? He pretty much only has me try with spinels, at least when he was still trying. You're saying I have less magic than someone without magic? Figures."

(Over the course of the last minute or so, the extra magic Su-Yeong and Morgan generate has been drifting towards Lucy, like drops of dye in a container of water that's slowly draining.)

"...No, you definitely still...

"Oh.  I thought that had looked weird but I figured it was a consequence of the magic or lack thereof.

"Here, look at - you still have the familiar spirit.  ...And it's drawing in 'loose' color-attuned magic?"  She can produce a soul-projection!  "...My 'I'm being jerked around by a deific figure' senses are tingling, I fucking swear.  This is just...the number of weird things happening..."

At first, it isn't quite obvious to Lucy what they're looking at. There's… an illusion of someone who looks like them, kind of, and they can definitely see why you'd think there was a swan there, and a weird hint of pinkishness… And they can also see the cloud of a redder red drifting towards them, trying to take root in the area around their eyes but dissipating before that can happen. After looking at it for a little while, it becomes clear that the magic that dissipates is closer to Lucy's not-color than to Su-Yeong's.

"So that red stuff is her magic? How come it does that? Why isn't your magic doing anything like that… actually, how come you're able to see all that in the first place?"

"Well, I'm not actually inherently magical either, which was a whole thing back home, and I learned the techniques I use now to compensate.  Which makes it quite a coincidence to stumble upon someone else with the problem of lacking some fundamental magical organ, though you actually have a soul."

"Huh, can you teach me? And what do you mean about a magical organ?"

"Your eye's not working in the fashion normal to most.  Because somehow eyes are involved in the process of attuning magic.  And - can I teach you runes, yes.  Will I - I'm not sure.  Not that you don't seem to be a lovely person, but - I worry that the tools I use can be used to quite harmful ends, ends beyond normal magic to achieve, and I wish to be careful of what I then spread of it.  Certain things are less sensitive than others, though."

(It isn't a personal attack. She's just being cautious. She barely knows them; they barely know her. She isn't saying a hard no yet, she might make up her mind later-)

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"You seem like the kind of person to take to it like a duck to water, honestly; runecraft is as much engineering as art, and while I barely know you, you seem to have both talents."

✨

"Oh - well, thanks. I guess I do, I make basically all my own clothes-"

They smooth the front of their clothing with their hands.

Su-Yeong smiles.

"You liked to mend stuff, too, back when - uh, before."

She glances at Hali.

"Did you wanna do any more magic tests? I wanna catch up, but I don't wanna keep you waiting or anything."

Lucy gets a soft smile!  The poor dear needs all the encouragement they can get.

To Su-Yeong, though, Hali has a followup:

"Well, it kind of depends on what I can tell Lucy about you."

"I don't mind telling them…"

She remembers the cat and tilts her head.

"Unless… if that cat isn't yours, whose…?"

"Oh, Ivy? She's Master Rothart's, but - you can tell her anything you can tell me. She spends more time with me anyway."

Ivy seems a little more hesitant, but:

"As long as you aren't planning to hurt Lucy or Thierry, I won't tell anyone else. I guess I can leave if it'd make you more comfortable, though."

There definitely seems to be a complicated array of royal blue magic around her!

"I don't think I mind her hearing, then. Anyway, I… am? Used to be? A… husk. Hali used her magic to fix it, though - she can probably tell you more about that than I can."

(At "husk," Ivy tenses up, but doesn't say anything.)

"I mean, I'd hardly say it's fixed until you're sustaining your familiar without a prosthetic, but - this is relevant because it's only Su-Yeong's magic that you're drawing to yourself, as far as I can tell, Lucy."

"Huh. It doesn't feel like anything…"

Su-Yeong shakes her head.

"Generating magic doesn't feel like anything to me, either. Or to Morgan. Ha, I guess it's convenient that you changed your name, Lucy. Morgan's what I named my familiar after Hali drew him out."

...That cat just said 'Rothart'.  And there's peacocks all over the house.  Hali has this feeling that she knows from whence this disaster came.  Anyway.  There's other things.

"Well, it wouldn't; it's not - going in."

"Huh… they're just eating up the extra stuff I make, right? What if I-"

She makes another ball of glowing red light and nudges it towards Lucy.

The magic from this gets absorbed eagerly! It doesn't dissipate, either - well, it does, but only at the same rate it's been dissipating the whole time. The spectral swan - solidifies, just a little, and seems to wake up.

"… I think I feel that."

"And I saw it get absorbed.  And your swan's stirring."

(Their heart starts pounding with excitement. Even if - their brain is making up something to feel, there really is something to feel.)

They try to make a glowy orb of their own, but there doesn't seem to be quite enough magic in their reservoir. The swan looks like it wants to honk in frustration.

"Pass me a li'l more?"

A li'l more, this time in a continuous stream rather than a discrete ball.

"Oh, yeah, I'm definitely feeling it now…"

Lucy gets a distracted look on their face as a similar, pinker orb of light forms in their hand. Their magical motor is clearly running, chewing on the magical fuel Su-Yeong provides and outputting something more them-flavored. The swan preens happily.

"This is really interesting.  Can you - loop it through yourself, now that you have any magic?"

Blink.

"Hm? Like…"

They use their hands to stretch the light like putty into a stream of its own. It's a little thinner than Su-Yeong's.

"Point this back at myself?"

"Yeah."

They bend it back towards their chest. At first it stops, like it's a solid object, but after a moment of focus, it pushes inwards insubstantially.

"Heh, it feels warmer this way."

Their magic processor happily laps it back up!

"Neat.  You can reuse magic like that, I think."

"Nice!"

Su-Yeong cuts the flow of magic.

Lucy's able to keep the loop going for about a minute, but the reabsorbtion is as lossy as it was when Su-Yeong was feeding magic to them. Soon, the stream of light sputters out. The swan droops sadly, almost lethargically.

"Oh. Not for very long, I guess."

"...It's lossy, it seems.  Unfortunate.  I need to get a better look at what the heck happens in there, sometime, because it's just - baffling."

"Huh, what's it like?"

...Well, what is it like?

Possibly the weirdest thing about how Lucy's magic works is how close to normal, for this universe, it is. They can manipulate magic just the same as anyone else, with nothing blocking their use - just the clumsiness of someone out of practice. Possibly other people could take in magic the way they do, it's just that they don't have any reason to, since they usually generate their own. Everyone else dissipates magic, too, most people just generate it at about the same pace or faster, and nearly all magicians keep gemstones on their person so that the magic they naturally leak can be stored usefully instead of dissipating into nothing.

Lucy's connection to their familiar is slightly weirder, now that Hali's seen the ghost swan in its more active state. The un-familiar seems to be doing most of the work in doing anything with the magic that they take in, actually, though Lucy can get involved if they focus and mind meld with the swan a little.

… In general, it kind of seems like Lucy's connection to the swan is about halfway between a typical magician's connection with their familiar and Su-Yeong's. They're not quite as intertwined as a husk would be, but there's a lot more overlap between Lucy and the swan than between, say, the enchanter and her bird.

"...Huh.

"It's like you're a - demi-husk of some sort?

"In that - your familiar is, obviously, not physically separate, but that - the anatomy of your soul is also halfway between where you'd expect from a typical soul, and what I saw with Su-Yeong's."

(Ivy - almost speaks up.)

And Su-Yeong leans forward.

"Huh, that's interesting. I wonder how that happened, 'cause… well, the last time I saw you, you had totally normal magic. Do you know - when that happened?"

Lucy shakes their head.

"No, I've always been like this. Well, that I can remember. So I guess that means it… probably happened about five years ago, a little after I got my magic and a little before the summer I was twelve, which is the farthest back my memory goes."

Hali gives Ivy a look.

It's not a judgemental look, it's a curious look.

"If anything, I imagine that whatever happened was in fact the catalyst for you becoming like this, Lucy; I don't suppose any of the people who were there might be willing and able to share, Ivy?"

Yeah, this was a long time coming.

"I - wasn't there," she hedges, "but…"

Deep breath.

"Lucy, I want to fetch Thierry. He was there. But - I know that it might be stressful. For both of you. So if you'd rather, I can… tell what I know, since he has told me. But… it would be better, if he told it, because there are parts of the story that aren't mine to tell, and I'm not going to break his trust if I can help it."

It's Lucy's turn to tense up.

"If you're sure," they finally say. "Um. If it… seems like it might go pear-shaped, can you get his permission to share the parts? Only if they're relevant, I don't really want to pry into his secrets or personal life."

If Hali wasn't using an illusory disguise, it would be very evident from her tail's stress-poofed fur that she's worried about whatever caused that response.

As it is, it's only mostly evident, in the way she tries to untense, in the way she fails, her muscles straining against themselves as she stretches her hands low to her sides, in the way a sharp-eyed viewer might spot a flicker of a knife - in a palm that does not grasp it - for the barest instant, before it vanishes.

"...I'm guessing that if I asked you, Lucy, you wouldn't recognize a Dr. Malliet."

Lucy shakes their head, but they squint, just a little, like they've got a word on the tip of their tongue -

"They wouldn't recognize the name," says Ivy firmly. "I'm - going to get Thierry."

She turns tail and hurries up the stairs.

(Su-Yeong picked up on the tension, if only subconsciously.)

"You okay?"

"Worried.  Too much - plot - for me to be comfortable about being near it, but I can't not, not without betraying the person I want to be.  The one who helps."

"Yeah."

"If it helps," says Lucy, "I think… I know that Ivy's being really weird and cagey right now. I don't know exactly why, but I trust her. She's - never not been on my side. Master Rothart is… well, he can be a huge jerk, and it feels like he's impossible to please. But Ivy gets that. She gets me. She knows that I'm trying my hardest, and she stands up for me. So… you don't have to worry about working against her, I think. If you want to help, she probably does too. If you want to help me, she definitely does too."

"Yeah.  I trust Ivy.  It's everyone else I'm worried about."

This gets a laugh out of Lucy!

"Well, I'll do my best not to muck it up for you. Even if I am a… what'd you call it, demi-husk?"

"I don't know what you are, honestly.  Not a husk, not a magician, but a secret third thing that I want to figure out."

"… I wanna figure it out, too."

They look thoughtfully at one of the peaclocks.

"So, Su-Yeong… what have you been doing, the last few years?"

Su-Yeong laughs.

"Oh, y'know, this and that. We - got by, after you got taken in. It got easier, over time. And then… Tobi had the idea of pretending to be magic. He didn't do much, just got a pet rat. Named him Tater, made a little collar for him. It worked. People were suddenly nicer to him - I mean, it's not like they were horrible before, but there's still a difference. He got a really cushy job, cleaning up at the Vasillia place, and he was able to get me in."

"Vasillia? Like, Philomena Vasillia?"

Ugh.

"Yes."

Lucy cackles.

"You don't like her either, huh? I thought I was the only one!"

It's on this note that Ivy comes down the stairs. Trailing behind her is -

Dr. Malliet, but looking much older than he should. (It's a disguise - under the hood he's the right age.)

Also, he's a husk, and he's much farther along than Su-Yeong was. He's wearing half a dozen sapphires on a necklace, and they're all humming with the magic that pours from him. The peacock part of his soul is stronger than Morgan was. He's in surprisingly good condition, though.

Relatedly, Ivy is radiating even more of his color blue than she was when she left.

"...How in the actual fuck are you doing that?"

Malliet does a double-take at the cussing, then shares a look with Ivy.

"Which part?" asks the cat.

"Not possibly quite literally exploding from thaumaturgical overpressure, and especially keeping the strain off your bird in a way that allows you to pass."

"His bird?"

They always kinda thought the peacock stuff was commemorating a dead kid or something.

Thierry almost laughs, then sits down in an armchair.

"I suppose the jig really is up, then."

(Ivy rolls her eyes fondly.)

"The secret is Ivy, but if you'll allow me, I'd like to address that later. First, I-"

He coughs awkwardly.

"I believe I owe Lucien an explanation, even if it may be obvious to you."

A weary sigh.

"Don't worry too much, I'm cheating."  She drops her illusion.  "...So.  What I've - deduced, so far, is that - things were quite alright, and then suddenly, somebody did something, or something unexpected happened, or there was some sort of attack, and it broke rather a lot considering that Su-Yeong saw your peacock in the flesh at least once.  And I have some bare theories on how I might - cause that sort of damage, not that I'd ever - and I'm working on the techniques that might allow me to fix it - but - do we need to worry about someone else getting hurt the same way, or - was it an experiment that exploded?"  She smooths out her tail, and lets it go back to its focused waving back-and-forth, like she's on the hunt for something.

Perhaps she is, for that matter; it's just less tangible than most.

The implications of what people have been saying belatedly catch up with Lucy.

"Wait, you're-"

Malliet nods sadly at them.

"A husk, yes."

He looks at Hali next.

"I may as well drop my own illusion…"

"I'm not a husk, I'm just from another cosmos.  Which is why you don't have anybody else who knows runes here."

Another cosmos? Rune-based magic? He wants to geek out, but - later. He drops his disguise.

"I don't think there's any need to fear others getting caught in my - blast radius, as it were. Not unless someone with less equanimity than you discovers us and panics. But I've taken pains to keep my secret…"

He shakes his head.

"I'm sorry. It's been - a while, since I've had anyone to talk to other than Ivy and Lucien. I'll try to be more direct."

Deep breath.

"I don't know exactly what happened - Lucien here was the trigger, in a way, but they were not responsible. How much do you already know, about how Lucien - they went by Morgan, then - came to live with me?"

"That's all I know, really.  Su-Yeong or Tobi might know more than I do, but I've been here for approximately a day; not much time to accumulate context."

"Well, Officer Rothart was looking with Tobi and Lucy and me for a while, so he noticed when Lucy's magic came in. And then you guys decided to apprentice him? That's basically it."

Fond smile at Su-Yeong, though there's pain when she brings up Officer Rothart.

"Exactly. In early March, Lucien fell ill. I didn't realize, at first, that they were exhibiting the early symptoms of the husk transformation, because - I didn't expect it, I'm afraid. It didn't match anything from our research. Joseph - my fiancé - went to the store, to fetch some things to help take care of Lucien in their illness. While he was out of the house, everything snowballed. I realized what was happening, but it was too late. I could see that their eyes were starting to change.

"In a fit of desperation, I removed their right eye and was overwhelmed by a sudden rush of magic. When I came to, Lucien's remaining eye was grey, our familiars were gone, and my hair was down to my waist. And the house was on fire. I grabbed them and climbed to the roof, and - I saw him. Joseph."

He starts to tear up, but pushes his breath out forcefully.

"...Joseph enters the house, to try and save you, and - passes, leaving Ivy behind, I - assume.  At which point you - improvise some sort of stabilization ritual, and take up the identity of Monsieur Rothart, with her collaboration.

"...if the knowledge of how - gods, 'husk' is a wrong word for it, familiar inversions work was more known...perhaps...

"Fuck.  I know I had no control over how and when I arrived here, but I'm sorry it wasn't sooner.

"I wish I could have stopped this tragedy before it started.

"I'd like to see your notes on the - original incident, sometime, but - I don't wish to push you to talk about it.  Emotional stability is important in managing your present condition, as I'm sure you know.  I'd certainly like to compare notes on our mitigations for that; I feel like I'm close to what I'd need already, but - more knowledge always helps."

"No, that's not what happened. Joe's - still alive, thank god. But-"

"I saw him in the street - we made eye contact, though I doubt he recognized me. It was too far away for that, and I was - unrecognizable. I fled into the night."

He shakes his head.

"You're remarkably compassionate and understanding of husks - I expect that's because you grew up without the concept of them, though of course your compassion shouldn't be discounted. Even I felt a surge of fear, of revulsion, when I realized what I had become, and I had spent years excitedly studying them. I'm sure that Su-Yeong is familiar with the feeling."

(Su-Yeong nods.)

"I wasn't - I couldn't bear the idea that he might hate me now, or worse, be forced to kill me as part of his guard duties. Instead that task fell to, well…"

A self-deprecating smile. He tilts his head towards Ivy.

"My sister."

"I don't really want to get into the details, but - I used to be human. We both had to fake our deaths - and Lucy's, too. I was told that my brother had died in a house fire and sent to kill the husk responsible. He found me, and we found a way for him to use up all the extra magic he was generating. It killed two birds with one stone, really, because… I would have been in big trouble, if I had let him get away. So we both just… disappeared. Being a cat is the perfect disguise, though - if I'm with Lucy, everyone assumes I'm their familiar, because as far as anyone knows, magic can't actually turn a human into a cat - I don't know why, but you can't shapeshift smaller than you started, even though husks can return to their original size after getting bigger. But if you have all the magic a husk can bring to bear, it's doable."

Nod.

"I also distribute the excess magic in these, when Ivy isn't available," he adds, hefting the sapphire necklace. "I'm… not very good at the emotional regulation and stability, though," he wryly adds.

"Probably 'cause you never talk to anyone," says Ivy, but she's rubbing up against him fondly.

"...It's probably partially as you say, and partly - the way I arrived here.  But it's also - the panicked animals behind what most call husks, they're just - scared.  It's not...I've seen monsters.  I can smack them about just fine.  And husks aren't monsters, even if they look the type.  They're not - omnicidal bastards.  Just...panicked and hurting.  And I saw that, and I can't unsee it without - becoming the sort of person who I'd fight with all my breath.  Killing because it's more convenient than otherwise...No."

...She's going to take a closer look at that spellwork around Ivy, because - what the fuck?

"...What the heck kind of magic are they teaching you that you don't have Baleful Polymorph, anyway?  And even, like, Alter Self, can make you bigger or smaller as you'd prefer!  That's basic wizarding!  Where I'm from.

"And I'm not even a wizard and I've got shrinking-spells."

"It's a very good disguise, by the way, to be a cat, though perhaps I'm a bit biased."

And then Hali was a calico.  She doesn't stay that way, but she does smug about it.

Magically speaking, the spellwork around Ivy is made of duct tape. It's well-made, to be clear - the equivalent of a wallet or even a prom dress made with the kind of duct tape that comes in pretty colors or fun patterns with no stickiness or fraying threads exposed - but it's clear that, though there's obvious skill and care in the construction of the spells, they only work because of the sheer amount of force a husk's magical overdrive can provide.

Underneath, she's a normal magician with sky-blue magic. She's even got a familiar who's unaffected by the transformation: a frog that's been sitting on the windowsill.

"Around here, magic requires more than simply describing with words the effect one wishes to cause," Thierry says with raised eyebrows, though he's also smiling. "And I wouldn't - I wouldn't inflict that on anyone without asking, not unless circumstances were… dire."

He glances over at Lucy, then sighs.

"Which I'm afraid leads conveniently into something I've been putting off for far too long. I'm sorry, Lucien. For - for everything. The last five years. Hiding so much from you. Being… distant and cutting. Everything."

"… I get it. Mostly."

They shake their head, trying to keep their breathing level.

"I get why you - pretended to be an old man, and hid all your huskiness from me, and let me think Ivy was your familiar. But…"

Ivy climbs into Lucy's lap.

"You let me think that I was a failure. That there was something wrong with me, that I couldn't do the most basic magic. That I wasn't trying hard enough. And-"

They shake their head.

"...You didn't even tell them that there had been a horrible accident and their magic had probably consequently broken?"

Hali pinches the bridge of her nose, frustratedly.  "That's just bad mentorship!

"And - while I admit that I do benefit from the relatively forgiving nature of runes often enough, it's not actually as simple as it looks, when you want to do something that's not - quick, cheap, basic.  Doing something complex, like the way Su-Yeong's familiar was rendered physical, took - quite a bit of applied theory of mana topology, knowing just the right stylistic elements to use to draw out the correct connotations from the rune-linguistic perspective, whereas the biggest trick I use day-to-day is actually cheating those limits by having been worked into me like a muscle - there's something in the blood, apparently, or else I wouldn't have such an eager knife with so little runework.  And equally my tattoos enable me to do the same work I'd otherwise have to do with pens or sticks or what-have-you a lot faster, for that matter.

"And - still, your spellcraft sucks.  Like - this could be so much more elegant!  Why on earth do you have -"

Annnnd Hali is absolutely going to construct an eyewatering model of several things she thinks are easy fixes about the construction of the cat spell, increasing - 

Oh, hmm, efficiency seems counterindicated, actually, but what if -

Ye-es, that ought to increase the resiliency of it, while actually incorporating space for a hypothetical human alt-form.

You just need to stop limiting yourself to three dimensions.

Well.  If the details work the same way.  Some of them definitely do, but - she needs to confirm that.

This is an exercise involving what looks like poking a ball of light with knitting-needles, until it most definitely no longer resembles a ball whatsoever.

Both Thierry and Lucy open their mouths; Ivy gives both of them a silencing look.

"Without getting too far into something that should really be a long, private, hard conversation - yes, Thierry made a lot of mistakes in how he handled the situation. He's a husk. That doesn't mean that his choices didn't hurt Lucy, or weren't mistakes, but… it's happened already. We're going to work on moving on instead of retreading the past, 'kay?"

She watches Hali work.

"Mm… I'm not a magic theorist, and I really don't know how your magic works, but - yours looks like magic is raw materials that you use to make things. For us, magic is like… flexing a muscle. It's more complicated than that, obviously, maybe it's more that magic is our whole body, but there's still… sinew and tendons and bones, and sometimes they get in the way."

Hopping down from Lucy's lap, she pads over to sniff at the light.

"All that said, I wouldn't say no to a more elegant cat disguise. Especially if it would, say, let me switch it on and off from time to time."

"...A-ha.  It's wizards versus sorcerers.  That explains it."

"That said, I've definitely seen some tricks that'd work to make the spellform I've figured possible for you to cast - you'll need to work at a level of indirection, most likely, but it's certainly possible to do that in the first place.  My cat transformation is cheating, but I know how these spells work in the general case; I've enchanted them before."

"Really! Do you have - notes, on what you've observed? How long have you been here - in our town, in our world?"

"I have so many notes.  And I've been in your world for...not very long, but there are certain things that I would have noticed exploding if my magic was that badly miscalibrated for this world!  My magic-sight, for example, relies on a resonance sieve constructed about..." Hali can absolutely go on about spell theory!

:D

Hali can walk him - and Lucy, Lucy really deserves the chance to finally do magic now that it's known how that works and it ought to actually help with the not-exploding - through setting up the spell that allows wizards to tell what they're doing, then!

Lucy needs maybe a little more handholding than Thierry does, but they're just as enthusiastic - where he has a general geeky love of knowledge and learning, they're just excited to get their hands on magic they can actually do.

And Hali studies how they do it, in the process.

It takes all of them a good amount of mental focus, at first - the way that Hali tells her magic how to do things is pretty different from the way that they tell their own magic to do things. Thierry, having the most technical background and ability to adopt the correct mental posture, "gets" it first, though Lucy, who has nearly zero experience with local magic in the way, is a close second. Ivy's frog familiar, who introduces herself as Piper, comes out to help at some point - it transpires that familiars have inborn intuitions about how to do magic that aren't completely useless when working within a different system and Piper, as the familiar with the most experience being a separate entity, is able to help all the locals translate between their own expectations and Hali's.

Both Thierry and Su-Yeong contribute their own extra magic to Lucy when it's their turn to try things. They absorb Su-Yeong's magic the most readily - it seems that their system wants to shift the magic towards Lucy's own color, which is a lossy process, for best results. Eventually, they try a process where Lucy holds one of Thierry's sapphires and draws just a hint of his blue magic at the same time as Su-Yeong feeds them a stream of red.

Thierry's the first to get a refined spell to click.

"This is bizarre," he remarks cheerfully. "It feels both more and less efficient at the same time."

"That's wizards for you!  There's a reason the most common secondary descriptor for 'magic a god isn't responsible for' is 'arcane'!  And from my own perspective, this is bizarre too; how is your magic even getting colors in in the first place?"

Thierry chuckles.

"Now there's a question you ask if you want to set a group of academics to bickering, or if you want to derail your professor and think they might not be familiar enough with that trap to not fall for it. I may not be the best person to ask since I don't have a pet theory; that fact might also make me one of the better people to ask. I had a professor who thought that it mainly indicated personal temperament or magic style, another who thought that it evolved in a similar manner as hair and skin colors, and yet another who believed that it was determined by a process so complex that to understand it required an inhumanly complex mind - she might have been joking, though, it was always hard to tell with her."

He shakes his head fondly.

"I do know that there have been studies on how color correlates with various traits such as proficiency with different types of magic, proficiency with nonmagical skills, all sorts of personality traits… personally I think those studies illustrate the human capacity and love for pattern recognition and making up stories to tell ourselves."

"I think I'm almost inclined to give that third theory credence.  It's the familiar that is a reflection of your personality, and that seems to be able to consult an external record already - given at least one example of an animal not ever before seen by their mage - so why not try to rule out gods?"

Shrug.

"You're welcome to try that yourself, since you come from such a different frame of reference. I've never seen any evidence that our magic is capable of confirming or disproving the existence of gods or communicating with them any better than walking outside and talking to a tree - there are historical rituals from all over the world, of course, but studies suggest that any concrete results from those are purely an effect of one's own magical power and attitude towards the ritual: someone who believes with all their heart that they are communing with their god will succeed more than someone who's merely going through the motions to see if it works."

"...How do you mean?"

Thierry stops suppressing the urge to stand up and pace. Ivy rolls her eyes good-naturedly.

"Throughout history, nearly all cultures have come up with the concept of gods - which I'm using here to mean, broadly, entities of varying intelligence and interest in the way the world operates that have power beyond even the most powerful magician - husks being included in this definition of 'magician,' since we're still, fundamentally, human. And those cultures came up with practices that they believed would help them communicate with their god or gods, so that they could induce an effect in the world. Scientists of all sorts of different backgrounds have tried all sorts of different ways of opening a channel of communication with any god who may be out there, but there's never been anything that suggests the existence of a god who can understand and communicate with human beings. Your magic is different, though, and you may well come from a place where gods are commonplace. Does that clarify what I meant?"

"I believe so.  I was asking more about the specific results; something demonstrably happening is still evidentiary even if it's not reliably reproduced independently."

Nod.

"Ah, yes. I think I was able to salvage the book that had my favorite study…"

He goes upstairs to look for said book!

"Is he always like this?"

"No."

"Yes."

She catches herself.

"Well - he used to be."

She nuzzles Lucy again.

"I wish he was like this all the time. Maybe I could have actually learned anything about magic if he rambled about his professors or whatever instead of lecturing me about being lazy and forgetful, even if I couldn't use it."

"...He hwhat."

Hali's tail lashes angrily.

"If 'twere not for the fact that it wouldn't help, I'd slap the man.  That is an insult that I had hurled against me quite enough that I will not stand its employ again.  If he keeps behaving like that now...

"Let me know.  I'll work something out for you."

Lucy brightens up! Sometimes there's nothing better than telling someone about something that hurts and having them immediately react to say "hey, that's bullshit and you deserve better."

"Thanks."

Ivy starts to look unsettled - Lucy scritches her head.

"Listen, I know it was probably because of the huskiness. But you know that doesn't change what it felt like, Ivy. More than anything, though, I think…"

They look thoughtfully at the unlit fireplace.

"I think I wanna… get a job, actually? Something that gets me out of the house so I don't feel…"

They gesture vaguely.

"All this all the time?  Yeah.  That makes sense.

"...Hmm, what would your comparative advantage be..."

"...and, yeah.  It is probably husk-y.  Which is why I hope it changes once I've gotten him a decent prosthetic."

"...I suppose there's the job Su-Yeong recently vacated open, as unlikely as that is to end well given...what's-her-name...I don't recall if you've ever said what it was, in terms of duties?"

"It was pretty general, honestly? I did some cleaning, some cooking - I wasn't a chef or anything, but I sometimes peeled potatoes or made roux, that kinda thing. I don't think it'd be possible to avoid Philly, though, and it definitely wouldn't be a good idea to ask Mr. Vasillia if you could."

"Ha, I can imagine. I guess if I really needed the job and didn't think anywhere else would take me, I could swallow my pride - hell, I bet if I asked her, she'd recommend me. She's weirdly convinced that I'm basically her best friend. But… I can afford to keep my options open."

"...Having ever met people like her, I wouldn't be surprised if that's just the straight unvarnished truth.  They get lots of ass-kissers, pardon my language.  ...You sew, don't you?  Perhaps that's an idea for a job?"

"Huh, I guess you could be right… there's a couple of girls in the representative contest that seem to like her fine, but I guess they could be just after her money. I don't exactly try to listen in on their conversations."

They nod when Hali brings up the sewing suggestion.

"I could, yeah… I guess I haven't ever looked for a job sewing things because I was embarrassed about not having magic. Like, what if you're supposed to be able to hold a bunch of pins and thread up with your mind and I fall behind because I can't do that? Or - I dunno, it just felt… bad."

...Would Lucy like a hug.

"My homeworld had a lot of magic craftspeople and the people who weren't magic got along just fine.  Besides, there's artistic works which don't care about speed."

They've got an Ivy!

"Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe I could go out tomorrow, after the contest? Or Sunday…"

"You could also go out before the contest. It doesn't start 'till ten, you know."

"Ha ha, funny joke."

Su-Yeong laughs.

"For what it's worth, I totally understand what you mean about the no magic thing. It helped to have Tobi and Pea, since I know they'd never judge me for not having magic. And yeah, it was different, because they also don't have magic. But… it still helped."

"I have to admit, I'm curious about what the heck this contest is."

"Huh, I guess I was assuming everybody already knew. So, uh… Representative Eudora is stepping down for personal reasons, so that means her position's opening up again. There's a contest going on right now to select the next one. It's open to anybody under twenty and they've been doing elimination rounds every Saturday."

"...under twenty?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Blink.

"I dunno, I never really thought about it?"

"Officially, it's because it's traditional. But - people have challenged the tradition before, and they never made it very far, because-"

She shakes her head.

"I don't think it's a good idea to talk about this right now. Personally."

"...That is very ominous, I hope you know."

Ivy laughs dryly.

"I'm aware."

Piper hops onto Lucy's knee next to Ivy.

"I'm going to want to know more, later."

Lucy holds Ivy protectively, but Piper nods.

"That's fine. Later."

Thierry returns! With a small stack of books.

"Sorry, I got distracted. I've got the book with the study on religious rituals, as well as some papers about magic color studies and familiar studies to boot."

"Perfect timing to defuse the ominous town tradition enforcement mechanism discussion.

"Let's take a look, then."

The first book is mainly about the history of various cultural and religious practices! They bear a surprising similarity to Earth's cultural and religious practices, though they aren't 1:1 and Hali, not being from an Earth, likely wouldn't recognize them anyway. In many cultures magicians who spontaneously manifested were elevated as a priest class of sorts. The specific rituals tested involved calling down rain, helping livestock conceive, and improving the health of crops. Calling down rain had the least effectiveness - the authors speculate that weather is too large and complex for humans to manipulate. Next was fertility, which seemed to mostly work mundanely rather than magically. Plant health rituals had the best results - and, as Thierry mentioned, people who honestly believed the rituals to work consistently had the best results, after controlling for magic strength. Generally speaking, the more willing to give the ritual/spell a fair shake someone was, the better their results. Surprisingly, even non-magicians were able to get better than useless results. The authors have a lot of speculation about why this may be, but they seem more focused on the idea that the non-magicians were manipulating the ambient magic that dissipates from magicians.

The magic color studies definitely suggest that what color someone gets is nearly arbitrary! There is a clear pattern, and it's that magic color runs in families, though it seems to operate slightly differently from other hereditary traits like hair color, height, and earlobe attachment - children are more likely to develop magic that's close in color to that of their parents than to inherit throwbacks from grandparents. It also seems that, while colors that look like a mix between parent colors aren't unheard of or even particularly uncommon, what typically happens is that people take after one parent with greater or lesser similarity:

Many people believe, or at least alieve, that magic color provides some sort of indication of personality, but this is about as accurate as a horoscope. There was a study done where subjects watched recorded illusions of various people, dressed in neutrals and with their familiars (if applicable) not present. Some of the illusions were unedited, some were glamoured with randomly-chosen eye colors, and some were glamoured to have all the eye colors be black. The subjects were able to come up with reasonable-sounding explanations, based on behavior or bearing, for why someone had a particular magic color - whether or not that color lined up with reality. The subjects who had to guess magic colors were right about as frequently as random selection. (The subjects were better than chance at identifying non-magicians, both those shown recordings of non-magicians edited to have colorful eyes and those shown all-black-eyed recordings.)

Familiar type is more straightforward, though it also seems to loosely run in families. Interestingly, magicians who were adopted or raised by people other than their biological parents for whatever reason tend to take after their adoptive parents. The same is the case with magicians who had a teacher or role model they particularly admired - they tend to take after the role model.

"Interesting.  The result where mages were discriminated from nonmages better than chance, even with obfuscation...Either it's in the bearing, in which case I wonder if it would still show with pictures, or there's something we haven't yet observed at work.

"And the plant health rituals...

"Does anyone still do them, do you know?  Because that's very interesting; I want to take a look at the process.  ...One does have to consider confirmation bias, or the power of people paying more attention to things, but - reliable increases in crop yields..."

"Bearing seems pretty likely," pipes up Su-Yeong, "because a lot of magicians are used to having their familiars on them most of the time."

"Hmm, I'm not sure. It seems like the kind of question that would be quite easy to find the answer to, though - I agree about confirmation bias, hmm…"

"You'd need to make the study itself not know which pictures are which until afterwards, I think - hmm - and I was thinking 'bearing' being more, the difference between you before and you now, Su-Yeong?  Confidence."

Nod.

"That too. I bet…"

She pauses a moment to think.

"Well, I was gonna say I bet some people would be able to tell that I'm new to magic, but now that I think of it, I think that those people probably just think they're able to tell. How would you make it so the study doesn't know?"

"Enforce separation between the people who're recruiting and the people who do recordings, have the effect that blanks eyes applied before the images are taken."

"Huh! How do you match up people's guesses to reality afterwards, then? I guess you could have a clerk give everyone a number and write down that person 1 has red magic, person 2 has green magic, and so on…"

"Applying an illusion like that sounds fiendishly complicated… although your paradigm for spell construction might have an advantage in making it less so."

"I was thinking it would be an item, truthfully; a set of glasses in quartz, perhaps."

"Oh, that would work well… I suppose at a first pass you could have it flatten everything into shades of grey, and then - you can enchant glasses to disguise your eye color; it should be a simple enough matter to invert the focus…"

"Quite!  You'd want to use a set of reference eyes though, mages glow and non-mages don't -"

"Right, right, although it's not bright enough to affect the skin around the eyes… you'd want it to recognize eyes and turn them all black, so that people don't get hints from the value…"

He is ✨ in his element ✨ after spending so long out of it. It's great!

"Eyes are sharper than you'd think; remember how much you can see in the dark - probably better to hemispherical-blackness-dome, actually -"

Su-Yeong quietly pipes up:

"Maybe the social science stuff can go on the checklist for later? Might be a good idea to make him some husk-relieving jewelry soon…"

" - oh, yes, right, gah.  Almost forgot."  Right, if she does this and this and this -

"This will work for now.  Hopefully."

Ivy laughs and hops over to snuggle Su-Yeong.

And Thierry puts on the item!

"Ooh, that's very nice," he remarks immediately. "It doesn't just catch the magic like a sapphire, it takes it actively - it's like the difference between mopping something up with a sponge and applying suction."

His peacock takes a little longer to visibly manifest - Thierry's magic channels are more damaged, and the damage happened longer ago, and he seems like he's absorbed it a little - but manifest he does! Magician and familiar smile fondly at each other.

"Thank you very much - did you do anything different for me than you did for Su-Yeong, by the by?"

"Changed the runes that specify the animal, mostly."

"Oh, you have to specify that? How interesting!"

"We wouldn't expect that," clarifies the peacock, who happens to be named Lucien, "because of how… fundamental it feels, being the kind of thing that we are."

(Morgan and Piper both nod in agreement.)

"It might be that I could get by with 'Soul Animal', but - better specified is better."

Wry grin.

"That's understandable. Do you have plans to refine the technique? And, more broadly, what's next on your agenda?"

"Yes, definitely; I want to get it to the point where it's something I don't need to make artifacts to sustain each time.  And I think that my plans are mostly...research on that, and probably investigate the ominous tradition?  I - part of the reason everything happened...was exploitation of young magicians, back home.   And thus...Well, the rule for representative candidates is concerning."

"The rule…?"

"The way the representative contest is for people twenty and under, Thierry."

"Ah, that. I've… never had a particular head for politics or history, so this should be taken with a grain of salt, but - from what I recall, there was a particularly promising representative once who was only sixteen years old when they took up the position and went on to have quite a successful career. I don't remember how that led to the present status quo, though."

"...Well, that's better than I was thinking it might be.  I hardly like it, though; it seems too ripe for abuse regardless of intentions."

(A quiet look, shared with Ivy.)

"Yes. Particularly given the current state of the magistration."

"...If you...wouldn't mind elaborating?"

Ivy sighs.

"You're right that specifically seeking out kids and teenagers to fill a role like city representative is a bad idea, even if the people who direct and mentor them are perfectly lovely and aren't looking to hurt or take advantage of them. The magister of the city right now, Fidelia Lapointe… well, if she likes you she can be perfectly lovely. But there's teeth to it - she cares a lot about having influence, even if she doesn't know what she wants to do with it yet. To her, the representative being a kid who thinks she's cool and looks up to her is basically a birthday present wrapped up in a big shiny bow."

"...I know the type."

Well, that fucking sucks.

A cautious smile!

"Yeah. It's probably a good idea to stay away from her, at least for now. I'm sure she'd be very interested in what your magic could potentially do for her."

"I am most definitively quite done with being someone's tool."

This gets a laugh from Piper!

"We're glad for you."

Lucy, who's been idly thinking for the past few minutes of magic nerdery, comes to notice what time it is.

"How's about we take a lunch break?" they suggest. "I dunno if I've got enough to cook for all of us, since I was gonna go shopping today or tomorrow, but I could make a snack, or we could…"

They bite their lip thoughtfully.

"… well, I was going to suggest eating out, but uh. I dunno if Master Rothart wants to be. Seen in public. On account of the faked-death thing. Plus I'm pretty sure you literally haven't been outside in five years and even if you aren't actually an old man I'm not sure it won't give you a heart attack if we don't take it slow."

(That last part is said with a jokey grin.)

"I could probably produce a second disguise; there's certainly magic to spare for powering it."

Thierry chuckles.

"I can do that myself, not to worry."

He re-adopts the old man illusion, but Lucien-the-peacock and Ivy laugh at him until he shakes his head and changes the disguise to make himself a freckled brunet of the correct age. And then: outside!

Outside!  Hali remembers to put her disguise up at the last second, and then sneezes at the sunlight.

A good idea!

There's a market relatively close to where Thierry lives, but out of habit Lucy leads them back down to the San Carlucco neighborhood.

"What're you guys in the mood for?" they ask cheerfully. It feels… surprisingly good to be out and about, more than if today was a normal Friday and they were doing some leisurely shopping with Ivy. "I know a place that has really good grilled chicken."

"I'd like the chicken place, if you're recommending it."

"Sounds good to me!"

Ker-lunch! The owner and her deer wave at Lucy.

"Hey there! I see you've brought some friends."

Oh, that's why they feel so nice.

"Yeah."

Once they've ordered:

"I can't wait until Tobi gets home! He's gonna be really happy to hear about you, Lucy."

Friends!  Hali likes having friends too!

Lucy gets an encouraging nod if they look to double-check.

:)

"Can you tell me more about him? It's still pretty weird to think that we used to be so close and I don't remember any of it."

"Haha, I dunno where to start! Hmm… there's some kids around here that we look after, and he's really good with 'em. There's Pea, of course, but there's some others - Billy and Martha, Rascal, Hanzi…"

Lucy perks up a little.

"Wait, I think I know the ones you mean! I usually, uh… 'help' them get food when I go shopping here."

Chuckle.

"That's sweet of you."

Hali is just going to eat her food and, much like a cat, be present in the company of friends as a perfectly reasonable way to express friendship.

That's very chadlike of Hali, objectively speaking.

Lucy ends up dominating the conversation somewhat - one question from Su-Yeong about sewing leads to a somewhat rambly explanation, which leads to more questions, which leads to ramblier explanations…

Cute.

As they pay and get ready to leave:

"Should we head back to Lucy and Thierry's place next? Or somewhere else?"

"I'm not sure, but - I imagine Tobi would want to know the things we've found out."

"Yeah, definitely. He'll get off work at around six, so… I'm all right hanging out at our place until then, especially since it's nearby. Or we could do something else for the next couple hours, but - option's open."

"I think that might be a good idea."

Then Su-Yeong can (after confirming to Lucy that yes, they're welcome to tag along) show them the short path to her place!

(Thierry and Ivy go back home, but Piper comes with the group heading to Su-Yeong's house on Lucy's shoulder.)

Good, Lucy gets to stay out for a while.

She's been in some holed-up-somewhere-for-security-reasons situations before, and even she gets stir-crazy, no matter how fond she is of having space to herself.  And that doesn't even begin to consider the personality clashes.

Lucy shuffles, and then…

"Do you think it'd be a good idea to try and… I dunno, fix my magic generation, or at least bring my swan out? I…"

They trail off, looking at the ground. Suddenly their thought process seems stupid, now that they're trying to voice it.

"I think that - it would be reasonable to try some simple, easily-reversible things, under the supervision of as many watchful eyes as we can get.  Because, as much as I look it, I don't know what I'm working with here, and I don't think anyone else does either, but - the more information available, the more chance that some's useful.  I really do want to fix or otherwise improve your situation, dearly.  You - remind me of me, when I was younger."

Cautious smile.

"… Yeah, I don't wanna accidentally break my brain or anything."

Deep breath. They're going to be okay.

"Thanks for - giving me a real answer, by the way. And not just saying yes because I want it, or - yeah."

"Yeah.  I'd want nothing less, were I in your shoes."

✨

Su-Yeong comes back in from the kitchen with some iced tea. (She's definitely got a newfound appreciation for real food that she didn't have to pick off a bush or hunt herself in the woods. Yum.)

"All right, what should we do while we wait for Tobi to get home? I know that you've got some magic stuff in mind, like refining the husk stabilizer thing and… trying to find a safe way to give yourself our type of magic, I think? But we could also, I dunno, play a board game."

"I think I do want to poke at that, yeah.  But I wouldn't mind hanging around while you two play."

Su-Yeong grins and gets out a board game that can be played by two players or three, as well as a deck of cards in case they want to switch. As they play, they chat - not about anything as earth-shattering as the revelations from earlier, just about life in general. Su-Yeong, remembering Hali's advice from earlier, uses the game(s) as an opportunity to practice her telekinesis more. She's getting a lot better at it, more accustomed to the mental motion, which means that soon she's moving the pieces almost as steadily as she could with her hands.

Hali nestles herself in a chair and gets to working on magic.

The magical environment consents almost cheerfully to being examined!

Examination of eyes - Su-Yeong's, Lucy's, those of normal magicians and mundanes on the street - reveals that the underlying structure is pretty much identical all around. There's the bit here that actually produces the magic, the bit here that collects it into a small reservoir, and the bit there that lets the magician manipulate it. The first bit operates continuously for magicians and husks, with husks producing much more magic than magicians, as Hali's already seen. For Lucy, it seems like it's intact but nonfunctional - it seems possible, but tricky, to potentially start it up again.

Familiars, like Piper, are slightly different. They don't produce or manipulate magic on their own, but they can store it more efficiently than their human counterparts. Magicians can't exactly draw from their familiars, though - it seems that most of the magic storage goes into letting familiars maintain their forms, which are possibly the only true example of a persistent magical construct that Hali's seen here. They don't really have biology per se - they can eat food, for instance, but it doesn't seem to do anything for them. They can sleep, preferentially but not exclusively while their magician is also asleep.

A closer look at various nonmagicians shows that some of them actually do produce magic - it's just not at a high enough rate to do anything before it dissipates, much less fill up the reservoir. Nobody in the city happens to be on the cusp of filling their reservoir for the first time right now, but there are some people - a twelve-year-old in a rich part of town, a twenty-something in a more middle class area - who seem to be actively trying with gemstones. Without being able to read their minds or ask what they're doing, it's impossible to tell for sure, but it seems like they're making the mental motions of spellwork in such a way that causes their magic production to kick into a higher gear - presumably enough of this sort of training will cause the reservoir to reach sufficient capacity to spark a familiar into being.

Huh.

"I think it ought to be readily possible to - restart the process of coloring your magic, Lucy - it's similar to a catalyst I've already worked out.  The thing is, I'm not sure what that'll do."

Lucy glances over.

"Huh, really? How would you do it, and what kinds of things do you think might happen?"

"You're just...You need something to poke the engine and start it, because it's still there.  Just not - spinning, metaphorically.  As for what I think will happen - it's, you're somewhere between the examples of husks I've seen, and the examples of 'normal' mages, in terms of soul structure, and I have no idea what that means."

The frog pipes up.

"From what Thierry told Ivy and me about what happened, that sounds about right. They were in the process of husking out, and… his guess is that the…"

(She takes a deep breath, apparently squeamish about what she's about to say.)

"Eye removal, uh… shocked their system into stopping. So… yeah, I agree that you'd probably wanna tread lightly, just in case what happens when you restart it is 'your magic remembers it was turning you into a husk,' or something like that."

Lucy nods.

"What d'you mean about soul structure?"

"I mean -" here, she can show them.

"This is a 'normal' person's soul."

"This is Su-Yeong's soul."

"And this is your soul," she finishes.

They examine the images.

"I think I see what you mean. It's funny, 'cause - you'd think I was the opposite of a husk, instead of halfway there."

They think for a moment, about the magic lesson from earlier.

"What do you think you'll want to try first? Both stuff to get the magic going again, and… precautions. Not that I'm trying to rush you into it! I'm just curious."

"Well, some of it's kind of a trade secret - but the idea is to sort of...see if we can get the conversion going by doing a similar process as with how I approach active effects, and hoping that'll do...sympathetic resonance, sort of?  The structure is all there.  It's just not active right now.  And - as for precautions, well, if you do husk out I think I have better tools for dealing with that than with this, right now!"

They let themselves snicker at "trade secret."

"That makes sense. If it's all the same, I think I'd rather wait until we're pretty sure I won't husk out - no offense, Su."

Smirk.

"None taken."

"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."

Su-Yeong nods.

"Yeah. It turned Dr. Malliet into a husk, too, and he took it pretty poorly. Withdrew on himself, and kinda… let himself go, emotionally speaking. He was really rough on Lucy."

"Dr. Malliet? Is he still alive?"

"Yeah.  But - let's leave off on him; you'll have plenty of time later and Lucy really could use a space free of - reminders of the shit that happened."

(They're not tearing up that Su-Yeong and Hali are being so nice about it, about their feelings. If they turn their head away to wipe at their face that could be anything, really.)

"Thanks," they say with a quiet smile.

"It's no problem," says Su-Yeong easily. "Oh, Hali found out some cool magic stuff, d'you wanna hear?"

(A sad look at Lucy, but-)

"Sure!"

"...What was particularly cool of the things we figured out today?  I'm - regrettably lacking context to explain the cool stuff!"

Grin.

"That makes sense. Uh, I thought it was cool when you did that thing that let us see our sooooouls."

She wiggles her fingers ~spookliy~, making Tobi laugh.

"I did do that, didn't I?  I continue to remain more impressed by the soul animals."

"Huh, do those let us do things that your non-animal souls can't?"

"I mean...It's a sure thing for some values of 'souls', 'us', and 'do', but not really because it's all magic underneath?" she - mumbles embarrassedly?

"But the really interesting thing is that - everyone on this planet seems to naturally have a familiar!"

"Huh, really? What about people without magic? Are they… around and invisible, or something?"

He looks around himself, suddenly vaguely nervous of the possibility that there's some sort of unseen critter lurking in the apartment.

"They're sort of just...there, but sleeping?  Do you want to know what yours is, actually?"

She does have soul-sight running, still!  She was experimenting!

"… Sure!"

His would-be monkey is somewhat amorphous compared to the soul-imprint of an instantiated familiar, but it mostly resembles this kind! Most of his forest green not-magic is concentrated in it, though since his internal reservoir is only about a third of the way full, that's not a lot. As Hali said, it's currently dozing on his lap.

She can project his monkey for him, then!

Oh shit it's right there. His surprise bursts out of him in a small laugh.

"… Aww, a little monkey. I think I was kind of subconsciously expecting a rat like Tater. Or a cat."

Su-Yeong laughs and leans over to peck him on the cheek.

"Silly."

"'s kind of the same proportions as Tater," she muses.  "But I think you, Mr. Clever Tool-User, ought to have seen this coming, hmm?  ...That's a joke.  By the way.  I am not legitimately upset or surprised by your failure to predict your familiar's species."

A gentler laugh.

"Don't worry, I kinda figured."

He decides against trying to pet the projection, since - he's pretty sure it's just an illusion, even if it is possibly overlaid over the real (?) thing.

"… Do you think you'd be able to do something like what you did with Su-Yeong to help people who don't have their magic yet?"

"I'm not sure, but I asked her about - my thing - and she said she wanted to be extra careful to not husk me out the rest of the way. Why, did you want…?"

Headshake.

"I'm okay not having this li'l guy, cute as it may be, but… I think that Peony deserves the chance, if she wants it."

"I think pushing a natural awakening the rest of the way is probably a good test case, honestly.  You're about...a third of the way there?  I think.

"But also - I don't want to try it on Peony when I'm doing it for the first time.  I need better feedback.  So...do you have some objection to having a familiar?"

He nods along seriously.

"Oh, good point. Nah, I wouldn't object at all. Though it might cause awkwardness at work… hey, Su, do you remember if I ever actually told anyone that Tater was my familiar?"

(That last part being a joke, Su-Yeong rolls her eyes. Tobi grins, then turns back to Hali-)

"To be clear, that last part isn't a big deal at all."

"You could always be especially sneaky about it."  She quirks a grin.

"Alright, let me just..."

This is actually going to be practically routine, given how her 'spells' work!  Though doing it on a person, especially one that isn't her, is admittedly somewhat novel.

She just needs to aspect the mana she feeds through her mana-concentrating glyph like so, to get the color right.

("Try imagining you already have the magic," Su-Yeong whispers to him, "and you're trying to cast a spell.")

Tobi nods, squeezing her hand. He focuses on Su-Yeong's advice, and his magic production does indeed start to pick up to a pace faster than he's bleeding it off.

With the help of Hali's spell, the speed ramps up even more, and the illusory monkey's tail twitches. It also opens it eyes and - seems to look for Tobi, though it seems like it doesn't have a very precise sense of what its physical environment is like.

The pace of magic production hits a plateau after about a minute of smoothly ramping up, and then within five minutes or so Tobi's reserve is sufficiently full for his eyes to light up green. There's a shimmer of magic - Tobi's magic - and his familiar now exists.

"Congratulations; you did it.  I think you could have done it on your own if you just - gave that same thing you did, more time."

Tobi laughs - a bit shakily; the magic generation seemed to be causing some physical anxiety symptoms and he feels surprisingly fluttery from it.

"You're probably right. I dunno how much time, though."

This time he can scritch the monkey - he'll have to take some time to decide on a name.

"How're you feeling?"

"Excited!" she chirps. "I really like having a body. And being me! I used to be mostly you, which was okay, but now I'm me, which is even better! For me."

She scampers up onto Tobi's shoulders.

Hali laughs.  "Clever girl."

Monkey grin! Which, since she's a familiar and not a regular monkey, has the human meaning and not the monkey meaning.

"Thanks!"

She starts fiddling with Tobi's hair. Having hands is great!

"That was… surprisingly easy. Uh - I can get Pea and ask her, if you think that the process is good?"

"I think so, yeah."