Ooh what a cute little store. Rebecca doesn't exactly have money burning a hole in her pocket but looking is free till they tell you otherwise! In she steps.

"Hello! Welcome to Wake's Curiosities. All kinds of oddities and wonders... Oh! For you, more than for most people."

"I'm just looking, thanks!"

Gwen pauses a second. "...Don't worry, this is on the house," she says, and twiddles her fingers. A swirl of wind starts at a box of glittery sand near Rebecca and spins upward in a spiral around her, booping her nose before cutting out, dropping the sand to the floor. "Magic exists! Want some of your own?"

"Eep! Um! Maybe! If it's not too against my religion!"

She tries to smile reassuringly. "There's a whole organization of Christian witches. Or Muslim or Jewish witches. They work together with each other, and the celestials."

"Celestials? Like angels and stuff?"

"Some people argue about whether they're 'real' angels, but yes, they're angels. They work for someone who is either God, or close enough that we can't tell the difference since He doesn't talk to any of us directly."

"That is great. I would love to do magic and meet angels."

"Great! I love awakening new witches, I have the best job." She makes a gestures and the window shades drop and the sign flips to 'open' 'closed' but on the opposite side.

"So, how this works is, you meet my gaze and take my hands, and then we will do a meditative kind of visualization of all the choices you have in the process of awakening as a witch. You have several ancestors who were a magical species - you'll be able to choose one of those species to become. There are three types of witch who learn and gain power in different ways - you'll pick on of those. And there are many types of magic you can choose, which you'll start out knowing some of and have talent to learn more. There's also a lot of small perks and drawbacks that let you tweak the details, which we can get into later."

"Also, and I can do this before or after awakening, I'll tell you about the world behind the masquerade. Magic's hidden from most people, for good reasons, and now you'll be able to find it."

"What're the good reasons?"

"It is metaphysically important that most people think the world follows straightforward physical laws. If that breaks down, we either get Heaven and Hell fighting a war with all of Earth as the battlefield, or Earth and most of its interplanar neighbors stop existing. It hasn't happened for sixty-five million years, and it's not that easy to put strain on the masquerade, but we have to keep the number of informed people relatively low."

"Sixty-five million years is... the... dinosaur number of years."

"You see why we don't want another of those wars? As I understand it, this Earth wasn't the primary Earth at the time, it was a neighbor, and the war wasn't being fought here but the side effects of the war were still enough to wipe out the dinosaurs. And then after the war settled down, this Earth became the primary 'keystone world' where the masquerade is enforced."

"Whoa, how many Earths are there?"

"Complicated question. There are hundreds of planets that are in approximate the same spatial location as Earth in parallel worlds, but the further you get along the weird perpendicular direction that separates parallel worlds, the less like Earth they get. But there's at least a dozen that are obviously recognizable."

"Wow. Okay, no wars."

"It would be bad. Now, it's not as hard as you might think. You can tell your immediate family, and the Veil will help you blend in, so you can live your life pretty well. But you can't tell your fifty closest friends or your whole congregation, or you'll start pushing the limits."

"Okay. And my parents shouldn't tell, like, my aunts and uncles or anything?"

"Depends how big their families are. It's something like - if you tell a dozen people and regularly do magic in front of half of them, you'll probably be fine. Double that, you might be fine. Fifty, you'll be causing Veil backlash for sure. Most people choose to tell their immediate family, anyone they're dating seriously, and maybe their couple best friends and favorite cousins who can be trusted to keep the secret, but it's mostly about numbers and trust."

Nod.

"Should I talk more about the world, or get right to the magic?"

"Magic!"

"Then let's go. You'll have some new senses - don't worry if they're confusing, I'll guide you through it."

Gwen reaches out both her hands and stares firmly into Rebecca's eyes.

Staaaaare.

And - they have some new senses. It's somewhat like sight and somewhat like proprioception for a body neither of them had a minute ago. Gwen is 'supporting' Rebecca, but Rebecca is the one who can twist and turn the 'body'. There's a sort of web of places she can reach for and put down bits of her natural power. The web has three main branches from here, two of which are really large clusters and one of which immediately splits off into dozens of smaller ones.

"The one on the 'left' is class - how you improve your magic over time. Over on the 'right' is race."

"I can't tell what they are by, uh, feelooking."

"Lean toward one and touch it, you'll get an intuitive sense and I can help you interpret it."

"That doesn't get me stuck? Okay... She pokes a 'race'.

"Nothing will be stuck until we finalize everything. And I'll be blocking you from doing that by accident - this bit over here" her quasibody waves a quasihand "is where finalizing lives, and you'll have to push through me to do it. Don't worry."

There are eight choices here, a couple of them with an extra link hanging off them further away.

"Okay, so you have six I recognize and two I haven't seen in awakenings, though I should be able to identify them with a closer look. Three of them you have the option of taking a racial perk - sort of an upgrade to the normal traits of the race. Like this one here-" she reaches to the 'closest' of the races "- is 'Neutral', which is an utterly normal-looking human witch. And the racial perk you could take would spend a chunk of your natural power to let you grow in the ways corresponding to either of two classes, not just the one you pick. And this one is Daeva, who are humans but unreasonably pretty, strong, tough, and fast, and their perk lets you control your own body temperature, heart rate, et cetera, and control whether you have children and everything about their genes including whether they'll be witches."

"Do you know if that counts as artificial contraception?"

"Well, it's definitely not artificial... But I don't know. I'm not observant and I've been sterile since awakening anyway."

"Oh no, I'm sorry."

"Don't be, I chose it. I was adopted, I'd rather adopt than bear my own anyway. It gave me a little more magic, it was an easy choice."

"If you say so..." What are the other choices here?

"If you need a religious opinion, we don't have to do everything today. We could look at it and you could come back in a week - I can ask a Watcher friend for the behind-the-mask religious authority opinion for - whichever church you attend, Catholic?"

Next to Daeva is Siren - "Oh, another siren. Hi, cousin! We have feathers, though they're not too hard to hide even without the Veil. And we can turn into birds, and it looks like you could get the siren perk, which is mesmerizing song and a beautiful singing voice that carries a long way. We charge mana from taking people's breath away - with beauty, art, or just sucking it from their lips. And immortality, similarly - if someone gives us breath after we die, we can revive. Every race has a different method of gaining mana and everyone but Neutral has a method of immortality. Neutrals just live a couple times longer than mortals."

"Ooooooh..."

Gwen removes the scarf and hat she keeps wrapped around her shoulders, showing the sandy yellow feathers that fan out around them. (It's a little weird to look back there, like double vision with the awakening-sense, but it's not like her eyes are working badly or anything.)

"I like siren, being able to fly is great and it let me get lots of wind magic, which is my favorite to play with. I would definitely suggest looking at all your choices before deciding, though."

"I also love singing," Rebecca says. "But yeah, I'll look." Next.

"Next - you've got some interesting family history. Both Lilin and Erinyes blood, ascended demons and fallen angels. No one's really sure if the Erinyes come from the same kind of celestials as the Watchers deal with, the Abrahamic celestials. Lilin earned their way out of Hell with good behavior but still look somewhat demonic and gain mana from breaking their taboos; Erinyes have black wings and tattoos marking their sins, and gain power from causing pain. Both have unpleasant immortality - Lilin have to be summoned back out of Hell, and Erinyes wake up in some new mortal host and overwrite them."

"Those sound awful!"

"There's ways around it, but yes, not fun. Should I move on?"

"Yeah."

"Last one I recognize - Dwarf. Small, tough, inexhaustible stamina, metal wire grows in your hair. They gain power from being around other dwarves, and if they die, a proper dwarven funeral will allow them to be reborn into the next child one of their relatives bears, gaining memories gradually."

"That sounds so awkward for the parents. I mean, if they're human parents. Mine are."

"Sounds like it. You'd live several centuries before it was a problem naturally, and probably you'll have witchy or otherwise magical family by then. But if it was soon, yeah."

"It would also be weird to be my own grandchild or something!"

"I assume the dwarves get used to it. I don't know any clans all that well. You can have another dwarf volunteer to be the mother, if that makes it better?"

"I guess it would be better than being a demon but not better than being a singy bird-person."

Gwen grins. "That's true. Okay, the ones I don't recognize..." Touching the next one, there's a sensation of - flatness. Memories, stories, art. "Oh, wow, I think I've only ever even met one of these. This is a Fresco. They're living art; two-dimensional, though they can fake it with wrapping themselves into a cloak and using their inherent telekinesis. A Fresco is a specific event memorialized in art that comes alive, or the descendant of one, and if you die all that's needed is a new illustration of the same memory, whichever you had. They gain mana from teaching - knowledge in a classroom or demonstrating practical skills. And there's a race perk - this would give you intuition for what art and knowledge is popular in the world around you."

"That's... cool, but..."

"Yeah, it seems... isolating. They can touch people with teekay, but I don't know how much they can... get a real hug."

"Yeah. I hope, uh, art preservationists or whatever aren't too disappointed that I don't want to be flat."

"It's your choice, not theirs. Also I consider everything we talk about here private unless you give me permission, a lot like a therapist. They won't know, it's none of their business."

"Okay. What are the last couple?"

"Just one left-" fire wrapped in flesh, sensations of crowds "-Ah. Phlegethontes, fire-bloods, they're not that rare. A phlegethon is fire wrapped in flesh, and they can feel the heat of life around them, all the people nearby. They look normal in warm dry places, but they steam a little in humidity and in the cold their eyes and flesh go pale and clear and show the fire underneath. They're magic-extroverts, gain mana whenever they're in crowds, especially mortal crowds. When they die, the fire runs wild, and keeps going until it takes a life or it gets fed a heart - easier than you'd think to do safely, some people resurrect easily."

"Huh. I mean, I don't want to die any time soon but it seems maybe kind of rude to set myself up to burn down a convention center or whatever."

"Yeah, getting in danger just as you're gaining mana could be pretty terrible."

"I'm kinda leaning singy birdy person. Is there anything you don't like about it?"

"Honestly, no. Some people like being able to go out in public and not worry about hiding - like, I can't get into a hot tub with mortals - but it doesn't really bother me, several of the other Earths are un-Veiled and there are tons of pocket dimensions with magic towns, so I just get most of my close socializing with them. Neutrals and daeva are the ones you'd pick if that's a big deal for you, though phlegethontes also work outside, like, snowball fights. I didn't give all the magic details for Neutral and Daeva, should I?"

"Oh, go ahead."

"Neutrals are like mortals, but age at half the rate or less, and don't get cancer or random tiny malfunctions that can be fatal like strokes or heart attacks. They only need to sleep about six hours, but can sleep longer and often do - they charge mana from sleep and about seven hours brings them from empty to full. Daeva don't have a natural reincarnation method but they don't age and they're really tough, Captain America kind of thing. They get mana from strong emotions - either pointed right at them, or just being in a crowd. An hour in a Taylor Swift concert and they're full, or spending that time with someone who really loves - or hates - them. And - this is important particularly for these two - true immortality is purchasable. You can make it if you're a really good alchemist, and there are a bunch of witches who have that as their primary income stream, selling true immortality to Neutrals."

"Do the angels have anything to say about all this immortality, come to think?"

"I'm pretty sure I'd have heard if they were against it. They don't spend much time on - doctrine, in my experience. There are demons and monsters and Outsiders endangering humanity and magihumanity and they care about encouraging virtue, that's part of the rituals to summon them, but not so much about details of our lives. God doesn't talk much, and He doesn't care about the differences between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, let alone particular sects within them. They're all accepted by the celestials and the Watchers."

"Huh, I don't know all that much about what's different between Muslims and Jews but the, um, the Jesus part, is pretty important as I understand it? Does Jesus talk to people?"

"Jesus does not talk to people. No one knows where Jesus is. And lots of people don't believe Jesus was the son of God, or that he existed or exists. It's pretty common to doubt that the little-g god we call God was actually involved in the Bible or Koran or any of the events depicted there, there are even people who doubt that and are still Watchers."

"That is confusing. Can my priest be on the list of people I tell?"

"He can be, and also I can put you in touch with an appropriate priest behind the Veil unless you're some really obscure denomination they only have in-" she glances out the window- "Chicago, that I've never met before."

"No, just regular Roman Catholic. I like my priest but would probably really stall the confessional if I went and told him all this."

"He might also not believe it, that happens. Seal of the confessional makes it safe to try, though. I can definitely find you some Catholic priests who are witches, sirens, or both. Probably in a couple hours."

"Okay, I'll save it for them then. Man, does the Vatican know?" she giggles. It seems rhetorical. She pokes at the "classes".

"At least one of the un-Veiled Earths has its own Vatican, so..."

There are three classes. They are 'red', 'green', and 'blue'. The green one has a lot of other nodes connected to it, some in groups and some alone, with other things tied to them. But the first one she touches is blue. It feels studious, and while she's touching it, she can see some of the larger web off in the distance shade bluish, and feel easier to reach, smaller dots becoming less distant. There are two big clusters of complicated webs, and about half of the larger one pulls closer. These feel cerebral, orderly, and so does the 'blue' node itself.

"This is Academic witchery. Academics improve their magic by study and experimentation, a lot like a science class."

Besides the feeling of focus and understanding, mapping out reality in your mind slowly every day, Rebecca can feel a sense of shortcuts and optimization - doing more with less, whether with the (hypothetical/prophetic) feeling of watching a steel cauldron boil or one of carefully writing symbols into leather and silver with gold dust and incense, or of planning out a portal or ripping a fragile one into the air quickly.

"The shortcuts this is trying to show you manifest as doubling what you make, or halving one of the costs you spend to get it. Time or mana, usually. It only applies to things that have a strong tie to academic magic, but that covers a lot of the stuff that gets traded around."

Also, she can feel two dim lines trailing from the cluster, ready to reach out to anything, filling the whole of a complex branch. But it wouldn't be a normal connection, in some abstract way.

"That one's hard to understand. Basically, it gets you two types of magic, mastering it to the limit of your capabilities with no cost from your natural energy, but they still will take just as much time to learn. That's probably about three years of dedicated study for each."

"My - natural energy?"

"Right, I should explain that. Every witch has a certain amount of natural potential energy. Unlocking different schools of magic to different degrees take different amounts, and most of the process of awakening you is deciding where to channel that energy. Things you don't choose to awaken you can improve later - how is based on your class - but you won't be able to do everything, and some things will be easier than others. Your class, and the elemental affinities of your race, are what affect those choices of what's easier. There's also some absolute limits - the complex magic comes in ranks, and you can reach rank four; I'm about average and can't get past rank three. Do you want an example?"

"Yyyyes please."

"So you might choose to start out with... the first two ranks of alchemy and portals, or instead get the first three ranks of windkeeping, and those are roughly the same amount of energy. That would let you make potions that did anything mundane chemicals can, but better, and make little portals a foot wide that cross a football field and one or two big gates that reach over a hundred miles. Or on the other side, gale force winds, enough wind to fly in humanoid form, and 'solid air' that can hold a lot of weight. With me so far?"

"I don't actually have a good sense of how strong gale force is but go on."

"Here's where it gets complicated - and I can give approximate numbers if you want to do arithmetic, but it's clinical and not perfectly accurate so I usually don't. If the elements match up - for a siren, the elements are usually called 'wind' and 'beasts', there are a dozen others - then it's about a third less energy. Windkeeping, naturally, is wind magic, so you could stretch the same amount of energy to four ranks, where you can make tornadoes, throw around cars, make a little lightning. Elementalism like windkeeping is mostly serious combat magic, especially at higher ranks."

"For class, it's mostly a discount to get the basics. Learning the very basics of alchemy or portals as an academic actually gives you a little energy, because it's a natural part of the class. Elementalism has sorceress affinity, and the rest of the major schools, the complex ranked magic, is about evenly split between academics and warlocks."

"Do a lot of people need... combat... magic... what am I saying, there are demons."

"Demons mostly only get out when summoned and bound, so they're less of a problem than you'd think. But there are also monsters. Griffins, rocs, hydras, dinosaurs, chupacabra - you name it. It's rare that they get to Earth, but other worlds have more, and some like Alfheimr have a lot more. Wandering knights with powerful elementalism are an institution there, and an important one."

"Alfheimr?"

"The Alfheimr Alliance is both a place and an organization; it's the Summer and Winter Courts of Faerie, which is one of the alternate Earths and also the source of most of the myths and stories of fairies. Alfheimr is one of the Big Six - the big factions of witches, sort of like countries, that most new witches choose to join. I already mentioned the Watchers; the other four are the Hespatian Covens, the city-state of Lunabella, and the two schools - the College of Arcadia and Hawthorne Academy. There are also two other big organizations which are Veiled but mostly composed of non-witches: The ORC, which are a law and Veil enforcement organization, and Alphazon Industries, which is an enormous megacorporation."

"Whoaaaa, faeries. Neat."

"Yeah, I prefer a peaceful life to an exciting one but I have some good friends who are knights in one of the Winter Courts."

"What are the Watchers, like, structurally, if they're not a school or a country and they're not even quite a church..."

"They have branches for every major strand of the Abrahamic religions, each of which collaborates closely with the others and with the celestials. They all coordinate with their churches, most of them pretty closely and Catholicism is one of those. They mostly don't act proactively in the world, just to oppose Outsiders and demons that get loose - that makes them unfriendly with the Hespatians, who can rarely be proved to be responsible but it's usually an open secret it was some coven's fault. Full-time Watchers usually take some job or position that lets them, well, watch. They are pretty sure an apocalypse is coming, and they want to be ready to respond to it. Other Watchers just keep in touch with their local churches and witches and pass on anything relevant, and occasionally get requested to deal with a problem or support one of the full-time agents in their job. They can teach you celestial summoning - technically it's called 'ministration' - which mostly is about doing acts of particular virtue that appeal to individual classes celestials so that they can descend and do favors for you. And they have a pocket dimension headquarters granted by an archangel a couple centuries after Christ, Eden, but not the actual Biblical one, just an imitation."

"Oh no, why's an apocalypse coming?"

"I don't know, and I never got the impression they were all that sure. Prophecy? That's not a kind of magic ordinary witches can get but it exists and I think angels and demons both have shown they can have it."

"Oh dear. Okay. Uh, so I don't know if I understand all this math but I think I get the general idea... I'm not a great, like, school person, just okay, so maybe I don't want to be an academic?"

"That makes sense. Take a look at sorceress or warlock, then? Sorceress is the one that 'looks red'."

Poke!

This node feels lively, active, and primal. The parts of the web that turned blue and came closer go back to where they started, and a different set of nodes turn reddish and come closer, most in a different fan-out of webs. A sense in which most of them were only barely connected recedes, and they all feel properly tied to her part of the web.

She can feel the magic flexing like a muscle, and there's a sense of oomph that attaches to the magic, a prophetic? memory of making the wind and fire and water move more fiercely, wrapping the elements around with her soul, which is pink, to control more at once.

"Sorceresses improve their magic the same way they improve their muscles - practice and exercise, both for strength and control. We're also the masters of elementalism - other types of witch can only train in the elements that match their race, and maybe one other; sorceresses mostly have at least a little of everything, and can train more of as many elements as they like. As a siren, you will definitely be able to do windcalling, but there isn't anything for the element of beasts except for very special cases, which we aren't."

"That cluster that pulled closer are the Elementalisms - Academics and Warlocks can only pick one element, other than ones that their race gives them an affinity for - there will be two elements, but not all of them have an elemental magic - and Sorceresses can pick as many as they like. Sorceresses also have an affinity for working with and empowering familiars."

"What color is it showing you for your soul? I've never learned to interpret that for myself, so I'm always curious."

"Pink! Like, coral pink. What's having a familiar like, it's not just going to be a pet, right?"

"Nice. Mine's the same yellow as my feathers. Familiars are a spirit in an animal's form, and they get smarter as you put more magic into it. You also get some traits of the animal - like if you had a goat you might get very good at climbing and be able to eat anything, or a cat you might always land on your feet and have great night vision. You can pick, and you can pick some weird things if you want - the witch who awakened me has a cow familiar and for some reason chose for one of her borrowed features to be having an enormous bust. If you go all the way to rank four, you'll be able to shapeshift into your familiar's shape, and vice versa, or any intermediate form."

"That sounds... neat but I'm not sure it's that neat?"

"Yeah, I don't have one. But communicating with animals and spirits and being more like your favorite animal is pretty nice."

"My favorite animal is dolphins, so I guess that could be kind of fun, but I was going to do the whole, being a bird person, thing."

"It's true, sirens get the best bits. I am a little siren-patriotic, not gonna lie."

"It sounds awesome!"

What is the green dot?

As she touches it, the other half of the big cluster of non-elemental magic tugs closer. There's a sensation of what a bond to a patron feels like - subtle, but constant. A previously almost unnoticeable part of the web opens up connections to this cluster, and brushing against them gives a very concrete impression of various magical relics that are being offered to her upfront. Where that fan of connections reaches the cluster for the Warlock, it twists through a sub-bundle which conveys the feeling of summoning and dismissing the tools you have made part of you. There is also a sensation of marking a portion of yourself onto items and allies, using it as an anchor to touch them at a distance or just make sure you notice any harm done to them.

"Warlocks advance their power by completing tasks and quests for their patron. That's usually less work than it would take for a sorceress or academic witch, especially as you get to the higher tiers of power, but you don't get to pick what it is in advance, and you can't always pick when, either. Most patrons are gods of some kind."

Entwined with the relics is a selection of bright nodes, which look very different from anything else in the web. These have personalities, noticeable even before touching them - a dozen of them all feel nearly the same, one substantially brighter than the others.

"Those are patrons, and the cluster that are similar to each other is the demons; the brighter one is Mephistopheles, the rest are various pride demons who are basically just Mephistopheles but less powerful. They offer to everyone, but I'm going to assume you're not interested. The other patrons I haven't seen often enough to tell you what they are blind. These three are the strongest and probably the main ones worth checking out - I think this first one is a celestial."

The celestial turns out to be an archangel Selaliel, who listens to mortal prayers and sends her warlocks to covertly answer them. Mostly ones from similar faiths to the ones the warlock holds, but there's some sense of Selaliel being kind of confused by how mortals and magihumanity understand religion and not being able to get that right all of the time.

"Oh I do kinda like the idea of just straight up working for an angel..." Are any of the others angels?

They are not. There is a very old and nameless pagan goddess of motherhood who thinks Rebecca would be good at motherhood and should try it. Probably some other 'helping people be mothers' tasks. There's also a pacan goddess Kalstra who cares a lot about women who've been battered, raped, or abused and is under the impression that Rebecca qualifies and stood up real well, would she like to help other women with those situations?

"Uh. To be clear, everything I learn here is a secret I won't share with anyone without your permission."

"That one is super confusing! My family is great and I don't even have a boyfriend or anything!"

"Um," she says, and starts massaging her temples, "that's... worse, actually. I've never known gods to be wrong, but they see the world differently, so... that's going to happen. To you. Eventually. Probably not very long in the future. ...This makes my head hurt even when it's happier prophecies."

"What! Why!"

"I don't know! Prophecy is weird. They try not to say things like this to us because it's so weird. Uh, be careful with your choice of g- boys, I guess? That will probably put it off for a while. Or something. Normally I'd say 'don't worry about it' but actually this is worrisome."

"I guess! I don't think I want scary pagan gods who think I'm a battered mom waiting to happen in my life though." She takes another look at the angel.

"That's fair. Patrons give you gifts - rare artifacts stuck to your soul. Let's see what Selaliel's offering..."

Several things that would help someone covertly watch over someone and sneakily answer their prayers. A Longing Mirror that lets you scry on people, and communicate if they can see your scry-eye. A Master Key, which can open doors even where there aren't any doors. (Even through the Longing Mirror, actually.) Violet Lenses that let you see how people feel about each other, or X-ray or thermal vision. A Nymph Vessel which will pour incredibly pure mineral water or a milky water that cures infections and stress. A HexVPN connection, which is a fantastically good magic internet plan. And a few generally-useful things. A Gem of Renewal, which is essentially an extra life that takes all wounds and damage on your behalf and heals the same as you. A Yaga Root that can grow into a small home which can summon chicken legs and wander around on command. And a pair of Golden Fish - some magic requires the sacrifice (for bright magic, a willing one) of a human or magihuman life, and with a pair of golden fish, every five years you'll have one of their children, and the life of the fish can substitute for a human, for magical purposes perfectly.

"I'm guessing you're not a very sneaky person," Gwen says with a smile. "And she would need you to learn, but give you tools to succeed."

"Why would I need to be sneaky?"

"Because you'd be answering mortal prayers and you'd have to do it without them knowing there was a witch involved."

"Oh, that makes sense. Do I get all this stuff if I work for Selaliel?"

"Yes, and they'll be stuck to your soul - appearing in your hands when you want them, or vanishing when you don't. Patrons are pretty generous with their gifts - one witch I awakened was offered a flying fortress, like a cruise liner crossed with a battleship but as a magic zeppelin instead of a boat. She didn't take it, but it was a real offer."

"Wow. Why didn't she take it?"

"She really didn't like the idea of being dependent on a patron, went with sorceress instead. The patron in question was Spider Anansi, who is pretty much as much of an annoying and callous prankster as stories portray him, so I understood the decision."

"Whoa, he's real too? Is Selaliel good to work with?"

"Most of the gods you've heard of in myths or history are real, though some of them are not exactly the same as described. There are also a bunch of gods that only live behind the Veil. I mostly only know about the archangels collectively, not Selaliel personally, but I've never heard of any of the archangels... using warlocks in ways that betray their consciences. They pick people who believe in the same virtues they do, even if you don't live up to those virtues all the time. And they only give you tasks you can achieve without betraying those virtues. Not to say there might not be shortcuts by doing something a little nasty, but that won't be her goal for you, she'll have expected you to do the harder, better thing."

"I'm not always good at that."

"Well, you'll get practice, if you choose Selaliel. The harder it is for you, the more your magic will grow as a reward."

"Really? Huh. Is there... any downside to taking the cool stuff and the angel boss, besides it being harder to learn all the elemental things?"

"Just because the harder tasks give you more, doesn't make them not hard. And they will get harder, and you can turn down some of the tasks but you can't keep turning them down, your patron won't desert you but they might eventually decide they're not ever going to give you another chance to grow. And even when you reach the limits of your potential - much more than when you start, but everyone does have limits - you'll still have the patron watching and pushing you. I hear it's not pleasant to have an unsatisfied patron pushing you to go questing for them, even when there's nothing actually on the line for you if you refuse."

"I... guess that does sound annoying..."

"Also the magic that has an affinity for warlocks is mostly the creepy stuff. Curses, necromancy, demon-calling. It's not all bad, transformation magic and divination is warlock-y too, as is the angel-summoning magic the Watchers teach their members, but all the creepy magic has an affinity for warlocks so if you're avoiding it, there's fewer low-hanging fruits for you to pick."

"Oh. That... does sound bad." She looks at the magical swag again. "I can decide later, right, if I want to go sorceress or do angel errands?"

"Yeah, even if you tentatively pick it now, you can change later."

She tentatively takes the Selaliel option. "What's next?"

"Three things we could do from here. Look at the major magic - elementalism and the rest. Look at the minor magic, which is a bunch of scattered pieces that do all kinds of things but only come in simple chunks, not the scaling ranks like major magic. Or look at drawbacks and restrictions, that make your life harder but give you more natural power to put into other things. I usually recommend going in that order, starting with the major magic."

"I'll take your recommendation there."

"Alright. Elementalism is simplest to explain in broad terms, so let's start there. Windkeeping I mentioned, and you can take that easily even as a warlock. The others are firecalling, waterworking, earthmoving, naturalism - that's plant magic, psionics, and metallurgy. You can pick one of those, if you're not a sorceress. They'd also be relatively costly, since you don't have affinity for them. Psionics lets you mess with people's minds and at high ranks make psychic force objects and weapons, it's scary as hell. All of them let you manipulate more, faster, at greater range, the more ranks you learn. They also protect you from harm by that element - by rank three, you're immune to nonmagical harm from the element. And some side benefits - windkeeping protects you from damage or unconsciousness from acceleration, waterworking both lets you control cold and protects you from it, earthmoving protects you from blunt force trauma, naturalism makes animals refuse to attack you. ...Psionics would make it so you're impossible to traumatize, which given our previous discussion might be uncomfortably relevant to your life."

"Those all sound like nice things to have... what is being impossible to traumatize like?"

"...you know, I think the best way to convey it is probably just to reach for psionics and stretch it to the third rank and think about it. I don't know that I understand it, or could explain it, better than 'you still have terrible things happen to you and it just doesn't haunt you' and that seems probably wrong."

Reaaaach?

There's a whole lot else to it, stuff you can do to people's senses and inflicting migraines and blowing out all someone's muscular coordination with a psychic sword.

But the defensive thing, it's basically... something happened to you. You remember it, you know everything that happened, but there's no reflexive associations. Nothing is ever going to shock you by feeling similar to your 'trauma', even if you experience exactly the same thing again. So it's there, but it's not traumatic. You could lose your family and almost die in a car crash, and you'd still be sad your family was gone, but you wouldn't be bothered getting in a car, or being suddenly brought up short like a seatbelt, or hearing whatever the last words your sister said before she was splattered across the windshield of the truck that hit you, or, or, or... It would simply not bother you.

It's pretty disconcerting, really, because it's giving you this obviously traumatic example and it just does not register as something that might cause traumatic associations.

"Well that's weird! Maybe better than not having it but it's weird!"

"...yeah. I think definitely better than not having it, it's not like you couldn't be sad, or angry, or anything else about the metaphorical car crash. But - definitely weird."

"All of the elementalisms look really cool though."

"Not gonna lie, they are. Flashy, too, sometimes people do elementalism as performance art. I did a sand-dance with another sorceress I was dating, once, she had had earth and wind too and we planned this whole beautiful duet. Some elements are prettier than others - metallurgy is mostly only good for combat past the early ranks - but it's great."

"Are people gonna think you were being pushy if I pop out a siren sorceress just like you?"

"Not unless I kept turning out sirens and sorceresses way more than chance, which I don't. And except for the other awakeners it isn't their business that I was the one who awakened you, anyway."

"Is it like, private for some reason?"

"So, there are two ways of awakening. This way, where someone guides you through it, and spontaneously, which is sudden, usually traumatic, and makes all the choices spontaneously without the input of the new witch. Guided awakenings produce better-adjusted witches, and also more useful witches, so all the Big Eight factions have a vested interest in funding awakeners. And part of that agreement is that we don't play favorites and we fade into the background as much as possible. It's your business, just as much as if you'd awakened naturally without anyone helping. I usually keep in touch with my new witches because I can help you girls network, but if you want me to buzz off, I buzz off, end of story."

"Is it all girls?"

"Mostly. Everyone who awakens becomes female by default, and it takes a little power to switch to male, even if you were male before. So witch society is about 80/20. Also pretty firmly homonormative."

"...how do the, uh, the Watchers feel about that, is the Pope getting stuff wrong somehow...?"

"For that and a variety of other reasons, Veiled society is generally... noticeably more liberal about gender and sexuality. The Watchers don't have an overall official opinion on it, and I'd think if the Catholic contingent frowned on it I'd have heard about it, Catholics are, you know, pretty common. But possibly there are multiple Catholic suborganizations in the Watchers and some of them stick to the mortal Pope's word more than others. Maybe the usual interpretation is that souls don't switch gender when you awaken and that's the important part for whether it's a sin, I don't know. The sense I got from Selaliel of being vaguely confused about a lot of mortal doctrinal disputes matches what I've heard from celestials in general. My church definitely has its preaching influenced by that, assuming that the angels are probably more focused on what Jesus cared about than the picture mortals have from centuries of interpretations and translations."

"Well, that's confusing. I guess I'll talk to a priest. Are there more Popes on the more Earths?"

"I know there's at least one who's in on the Veil, but I don't pay close attention or remember, sorry. I'm Episcopalian and not all that observant."

"Yeah, legit." What do all these powers that aren't elementalism do?

Back to magic! Much safer topic than religion.

The big list is Alchemy, Runes, Curses, Hexes/Transmutation - Witchery, Familiarity, Necromancy, Consortation (with demons), Portals, Divination, and Aethernautics.

Curses, Hexes, Necromancy, Consortation, and Divination are currently pulled inward and 'green' with the warlock affinity. The others are academic magic (except Familiarity).

"So this will be a little harder to see, but every one of these schools has a few elemental affinities. Like Alchemy is tied to water, nature, and life. They'll be cheaper if you have any of the three. For a siren, that's beasts and wind, so Hexes, Familiarity, and Consortation. Witchery and Aethernautics are universal - they're tied to every element and so they're easier to learn for everyone. What schools should I explain first?"

"Sirens aren't demonic, right? You said there was also a thing about summoning angels..."

"Everyone with a beast affinity is tied to Consortation. Demons are kind of bestial, mostly, so it's not ridiculous, but yeah it's still weird. Ministration - angel summoning - doesn't show up as easily because there's some Fate manipulation stuff happening there. So, you essentially need to promise that you'll tie yourself to the Watchers for a while to learn that starting now. But because awakening is weird, you can't just promise, you have to put a little energy into tying a loop of Fate that guarantees that you'll spend a few years with them, learning how to better use Ministration and advancing their cause and so on. If you do that, and you can only do that with one faction or your fate gets too tangled, then it opens up and it looks like all the types of magic you can see here. Here, if you want to choose to trust the Watchers, the fate loop thing is over here..."

"Is there any reason I shouldn't trust them, they sound nice?"

"Oh, they are, I just wasn't sure if you wanted to withhold judgment until you asked a priest or whatever."

"They have priests, I don't think my priest knows better than their priests particularly."

"Then go ahead and you can learn to summon angels. How that one works is that each rank is a different type of celestial, and each requires a virtuous act. They get more difficult to do - rank one is just kindness and you can get a Mediary to approve of you by, like, cooking a good meal for someone who's in the dumps. Acts of charity have to be bigger than that - find those in real need, roughly, and then you can summon a Servitor. Cheraphim at rank three want acts of mercy - forgive a real wrong done to you, and they won't answer if you're carrying serious grudges you haven't forgiven. And then Contemplars want acts of justice with big stakes, traditionally a life justly saved or justly condemned. Celestials's powers are mostly defensive and healing, but contemplars are warrior angels - they only take summons if you're in danger, but they will neutralize the threat and take the fight to evil on your request."

"Well, I... guess I am maybe looking at some wrongs I could work on forgiving sometime if you want to believe the pagan deities!"

"Does that count as a silver lining?"

Dear God, please prevent that from being inflicted on this sweetheart if there's some way you can overrule the pagan gods or persuade them to change their mind about their prophecy or something. I don't know if that's metaphysically possible but if it is, this would be a really nice time to do it. Amen.

"I guess!" Sigh. "It's kind of looking like all my choices are between trying to make myself be my best self forever versus being an awesome superhero."

"You could definitely do some of both. Your patron's quests won't take up most of your time - maybe a quarter at most, usually much less. And if you want to be a cool flashy superhero, you could still summon some angels to help. The Mediaries at rank one can help you pacify little demons and angry spirits - necromancy isn't just zombies and stuff, it also helps you work with restless ghosts and things. And the Servitor would be helpful to heal people who you could save superheroing but couldn't prevent from getting injured."

"There are ghosts? Why are there ghosts?"

"The dead go to divine afterlives when the reapers collect them, but some fear what afterlife they'll get, or are too angry or distraught to move on peacefully, or just hide for no real reason."

"Oh. If the ones who are afraid of their afterlife are right that's pretty understandable they'd want to be a ghost instead I guess."

"Yeah. Most afterlives aren't bad, but they might worry they earned Hell... It's not like most people know where they're going. But the longer they stay in the world, the more likely they get muddled and dangerous."

"Are there more than two? Afterlives?"

"Yeah, all the pagan afterlives exist. Pagans mostly go there, not to Limbo."

"Oh. But they're all right mostly? I remember Valhalla didn't sound very nice."

"A lot of them are pretty weird but they mostly seem alright. Some people like the idea of Valhalla."

"If you say so! Is there a way to tell where you're going? To reassure the ghosts?"

"Not easily, I think. You can ask a god or archangel or something, and strong diviners can get that kind of information, but I think it's one of the things that Fate makes hard for inscrutable reasons."

"Bummer."

What else are warlocks good at?

Hexes and Divination are the non-creepy kinds.

Hexes is also called Transmutation, and it's about turning things into other things. A basic hexer can turn stone to mud or tin to iron, and polymorph small animals to other ones with about the same mass. They can do more complicated things at higher ranks, like turning gasoline to bread (at the same calorie count), eggs to chocolate, meat to vegetables, and they can change the shape of larger animals and turn them into imaginary (nonmagical) animals. Higher ranks can also turn random objects or statues into slightly-intelligent moving servants.

Divination is somewhat about telling the future and mostly about handling information in all kinds of ways. Identify people you see, getting a name and some details, more detail like their magic if you have higher ranks. Check the health and status of people and possibly get details of what would fix it. Make magic maps of an area, or store sights you can see like eidetic memory. Higher ranks let you ask about whether an action will work out well for you, and activate a passive magic that lets you see a second into the future so you can react in advance.

Those seem okay but do lack the awesomecool factor of the elementalism. Hmm.

"How much stuff can I even get, like, I get wind for being a siren, and one more elementalism but only one?"

"Outside of elementalism and the factions's magics, you can get as many things as you can pay for. Which usually looks something like three or four types at rank four, about that many at lower ranks, a handful of minor magic, and a handful of drawbacks."

"So it would be specializing pretty darn hard to get all that many elementalisms anyway."

"At your max strength, yeah, but getting a bunch at rank three is easier. Each higher rank costs more than the one before it. But also you can improve later - when I started out, I only trained wind and earth past the first rank, but now I've gotten plants up to rank three and most of the rest to rank two."

"This is so complicated, wow."

"I usually recommend poking at things that seem like you really want them, then seeing how the tradeoffs look if that's more than you can handle and making the hard decisions then. Like I said, you won't be stuck into anything until you're sure. Some people try to optimize it really precisely and, like, make spreadsheets, but that's not really necessary."

"Yeah." She looks through all the remaining kinds of magic. Potions and runes just seem really fiddly and annoying honestly. She is super not going to be an academic and it's good to have that confirmed. Curses? She isn't sure she wants to push herself to be perfect all the time but that doesn't mean she wants curses. She wants the elementalismmmmmms. And she can still hang out with Watchers and accept quests from angels without having to be a warlock, right? Right?

"Most people pick up a couple ranks of either potions or runes, because that gives them something they can easily sell in the magic economy. Rank four of anything will probably be something you can sell or trade, it's not necessary, but being able to work something like a normal job if you want to save up for something rare, like cures for age for your family or something, is a good option to have."

"You can totally go sorceress and still work with the Watchers and they'd be happy to have you."

"If most people have a couple ranks of potions or runes who's buying their stuff?"

"Most people behind the Veil aren't witches. There's lots of magic species who aren't witches, and witches tend to socialize mostly with other witches - it runs in families - but there's a lot of people who need to buy most of their magic."

"Oh, that makes sense. It still sounds like it'd be kind of a bummer of a job though, like having an Etsy store only magic. I think some people like having an Etsy store but I don't think it sounds that great."

Divination looks neat. Portals also look pretty neat, especially compared with the other academic stuff.

What are the little magics?

There are so many little magics. Become male, make invisible spirit constructs, get really good at manipulating the Hat, Garment, and Rod you get from Witchery, grow your familiar to be large and dangerous, optimize your body to be a super-specimen of your race, turn yourself to living crystal, see through fog and rain, swap out your clothes instantly, make it so that, retroactively, someone in your family either is a witch or could become one, isekai into another world or family, hear anything on the wind, run across water like it was solid...

"Retroactively? For serious? Like, my baby sister'd probably love it, but what does this even mean."

"I don't know and thinking about it in detail makes me worry I'm pissing off Fate. I think it's sort of predicting your decision many years in advance and tweaking the world to make sure it works out right."

"Spooky! - are my siblings not possible to wake up like this even though it's about having witch ancestors or whatever?"

"It would make it more likely your siblings could also be awakened but wouldn't be a guarantee. Especially if you picked one of your parents. If you picked great-grandma, it would still improve their chances a bit, but much less. They'd probably also end up as weaker witches than you."

"Huh. What makes a witch stronger, just, like, how many ranks of things she can afford?"

"Yes, and what her maximum rank is. I think I said your max is four and mine is three? And I also started with about 20% less power than you did, and when we each have hit our long-term maximums, you'll still have about a quarter more oomph than me."

"Do I have to decide today - or like, I mean, while being awakened - if Judy can have always been a witch, or can I like, ask her when she's older and do it later somehow?"

"Short answer, has to be today. Long answer..."

"To be able to put part of yourself into it and make sure that she comes along, you'd have to do that while awakening. But... warlock patrons don't exclusively offer their tasks to warlocks. They, and other powerful spirits or demigods or dragons or witches ten thousand years old, will sometimes have similar offers to make. And 'arrange for my sister to awaken as a witch' is the kind of favor they might offer as a reward for for a proper quest, not just a little task but something longer and complicated. Asking your patron to sponsor Judy as another warlock, or asking your superiors in the Watchers if they could find an angel who would sponsor her, is the kind of thing you could do."

"Oh, good, because she is tiny and I don't know if she'll still be all over the idea when she's more grown up."

"The youngest awakening I've ever heard was seven, and that was a natural awakening. So she'd almost certainly just have the potential, and if she decided she hated the idea, she could just refuse awakening. And if she spoke to me or some other awakener, we could take precautions to make it much harder for her to awaken naturally - not perfect, but close. Just to be clear on your options."

"How expensive even is the thing?"

"That one's very small, maybe a tenth of your total, about like the second rank of something."

"Judy is... four. I think maybe I don't wanna do this but might put in a word for her with an angel if she's still like she is now in ten years."

Gwen smiles broadly. "I remember my little sister that old. Yeah, she'll probably change her mind a lot of ways before then. I can give you more detail about some of the others?"

"Yes please!"

"Let's see, going in order from the smaller things to the big ones..."

"Improved Familiar lets you make your familar larger and fiercer - like you could get a griffin or a big armored cave tiger instead of an ordinary cat. Hat Trick - I never explained Witchery and mothergifts, let me come back to it. Wind Whisperer lets you focus to hear things that could be carried to you on the wind. Can go over very long distances, though that takes a very long time, mana can speed it up but not that much. Skimmer Dancing lets you walk, run, or dance across water, or other liquids - if you can take the heat, even lava. Fog Sight lets you see, hear, smell, etc., through fog or rain like clear air - not smoke or ash, though, just forms of water. You sound like you care about your family too much to be interested in the isekai options. Pantomime makes invisible spirit constructs that can hold weight, and only witches to can see them - like miming, but real. Can get as complex as a spirit bike but not much more. Hot Swap also interacts with mothergifts, but what it boils down to is that you can swap into and out of lots of sets of clothes in seconds. Crystallize turns you to living crystal, hard as diamond, drains your mana like whoa but you're essentially invincible while you stick in that form."

"Is 'isekai' a real word?" Rebecca asks, tentatively picking up Hot Swap.

"Sorry, it's geeky, originally Japanese - it means 'get sent into another world'. Or reborn into another place in this one in a different family, in this case."

"Wow I don't wanna do that one."

"Yeah, I thought not. Should I explain mothergifts?"

"Yeah!"

"So, a hundred generations or more ago, one of the earliest witches, who we refer to as Mother, put a blessing on all her descendants, which at this point includes approximately every witch alive. Everyone, even those who don't put any energy into 'Witchery', can summon Mother's gifts - the Garment, the Hat, and the Rod. The classic witch's robe, hat, and wand or staff, and the Rod helps your magic a little."

"They start out plain, and without training in Witchery you can't change them. Put a couple ranks into it and you can summon and dismiss them instantly, replacing your current clothes or hat, and shift their shape by spending ten minutes or so meditating on the design you want. You can also turn the Rod into a broomstick, which starts out at bike speed but can go up to a car or with high ranks a passenger jet. High ranks also lets you put things in your hat or sleeves and pull them out later, a storage pocket in another dimension."

"Even at high ranks, that's all roughly at touch range - summon them in your hands or on your body, dismiss them if you can see them. Hat Trick, the other little magic I mentioned, breaks that - you can summon several copies nearby, move them around telekinetically, and jump into one hat and pop out of another like little portals."

"Both Witchery and Hat Trick match with every element, so they're fairly cheap; they're academic, but pretty easy to get a little training in."

"Oh those sound so fun! Is it redundant with -" She gestures at Hot Swap.

"No, without Hot Swap it will take a long time to change their shape and at any time they'll all be the same shape and size - with it, you could have staves, wands, dresses, suits, cloaks, even armor and weapons, and use them all interchangeably with your mothergifts. Excellent for being a very fancy fashionista, even apart from the practical benefits."

"Also for superhero purposes!"

Gwen giggles. "True that."

She will tentatively put... hmm... three?... ranks of witchery in her shopping cart next to Hot Swap.

"Okay, other small magic... oh, I missed a couple cheap ones, whoops. Fascinate has a lot of overlap with the siren voice; basically any time you're performing, you draw attention and people don't want to look away even if there are distractions. You also get better at performances of all kinds, and if you learn curses you can cast them via your song or dance. Energize lets you give off a little electricity - you smell faintly like ozone and anywhere within a dozen yards you can charge batteries and damage devices. You can send zaps further away than that, and in a storm direct the lightning strikes. And then an expensive one, Apex: that would make you a super-Siren; faster flight as a bird, your song would carry further and be more enchanting, easier to carry yourself on the wind even in human shape."

"That's everything unless you want to try your luck with the things I call adventures in unguided spacetime journeys, that essentially have another whole system of magic borrowed from another world, with a whole extra set of choices you have to navigate setting up without my help. I generally do not recommend them for most people."

"Wow, this is already confusing enough, yeah. The energized one sounds fun, and the fascinating one - I'll just have to give lotsa concerts, huh? For the mana and for fun. Do you recommend super-Siren-ing?"

"I think probably not. It's neat, but it's expensive - for that much energy you could get four ranks in almost anything."

"Gosh, that is expensive." She will leave it be and swing back over to the big magic. Hmmmm.

"I didn't explain most of the academic magic - it's more expensive, but you'll probably want at least a little of some of them. Aethernautics is another like Witchery that matches every element, so it's relatively cheap. That's the magic of traveling to parallel worlds, but you need high ranks for it -  the first two ranks just let you orient yourself to every star and planet you can see in the sky, and slowly travel through vacuum with some practice. Rank four would let you go into the aether, the space between parallel worlds, the same way, which can travel much faster. Aethernautics isn't too popular, honestly."

"There's also portals, which lets you make gates or touch-and-use portkeys to travel between places you've already been, and open rifts to elemental planes. Potions is about what it sounds like, at early ranks you can duplicate any mundane chemicals and at higher ranks stuff magically better. Runes is also 'enchanting', you use various concepts and put together artifacts that have magic effects. The first rank works with luck, courage, chill, and fertility - including reversing them; higher ranks get more obviously magical, like binding other spells into a bracelet or making blanket protection from magic and harm. Let me know if that sounds less annoying, I could explain more about how it works."

"Oh, 'enchanting' makes it sound kind of more appealing but still kind of Having An Etsy Shop. Portals sound neat though..."

"It is still definitely Having An Etsy Shop. Which I don't mind, as you can see" she waves around at the shop what she is actively having "-but I can see why you might not want to. Portals the main things that grow with rank is maximum distance and how many you can keep at once; for gates and portkeys they start with a max of fifty miles and you have to see the endpoint and be within a football field and you can only keep one, and at rank three you can keep six, and they can stretch... about from Chicago to New York. The rifts let you access unlimited fire or ice at rank two, electricity at rank three, and water at four."

"Before you finalize things, do you want to look at drawbacks and complications? There's usually some that you don't find too onerous, there's a lot of personal preference."

"Oh, yeah, sure, maybe some of them are fine."

"So these don't have elements but they still have affinity for warlock/sorceress/academic - the ones that match will give you more natural energy to work with. I'll note those where it comes up."

"I'll start with the ones that are fairly popular. Restriction bans you from a particular type of magic, like Consortation or Curses. You can pick up to three types for that. Like a Duck and Like a Rock make you lighter or heavier, respectively, which is fairly easy to get around - you can buy weighted clothing because Duck is so widespread. Eye Catcher makes you very attention-getting; people remember you, often just as 'the hot one walking by earlier' but it's hard to go unnoticed. Might be tricky with the tasks your patron wants. Witch Mark gives you an extra nipple somewhere on your body, which can be moved but not removed or hidden by shapechanging. There's Sensory Disability and Shock - you can make one of your senses either abnormally, often painfully, sharp, or abnormally dull. There's a couple variations on making yourself dependent on a substance or habit, psychologically or physically, and some of those are warlock-aligned. And Unveiled, which is one of mine - the Veil doesn't really protect me, I have to be careful not to let my scarf fly loose in public or it'd start causing metaphysical backlash when people saw my feathers."

"Let's ban Consortation! I don't wanna come within spitting distance of consorting with demons! Um... I probably wouldn't mind not having much of a sense of smell? Or being light and having to wear heavy things. Is there... any good place to put an extra nipple, it sounds like no big deal just a giant mole but I can't think where it'd go."

"I just have one a little below one of my normal nipples. I have to customize my bras a little but it's basically fine. Just to warn you: loss of sense of smell is pretty major. Like, if some meat falls behind the stove and is rotting, you won't notice for a couple days. And being very light makes swimming annoying - you can't dive without a bunch of effort, you're really buoyant. But yeah, those are all reasonable choices."

"If I take the water elementalism can I swim with that if I really want?"

"Yes but it would feel pretty weird, like the water was trying to reject you. ...That's odd - one of the sharp senses variants seems to have extra affinity to you particularly, I've only seen that once before and I think it was a patron playing games. You'd get extra if you took Touch Shock - it makes it so that you're more sensitive to pain and find most clothes and textures uncomfortable, most people with that end up wearing mostly silk and really finely-spun cotton, at least as an inner layer."

"Is it mostly just about clothes? I have clothes magic already, so I guess that wouldn't be awful?"

"Touch in general; you'd probably hate some oven mitts and types of silverware and types of wood in your furniture. But the big ones are clothes, because clothes are constant, and pain because it can be fairly debilitating when it comes up, and often that's the worst possible time to be debilitated."

"But this one... likes me, for some reason, and mostly I just shouldn't get hurt and have things that feel okay? ...can you tell why it likes me, is it Selaliel or what."

"I can't, sorry. It might be Selaliel, it might be some other spirit - I guess it could be one of the other patrons which were offering? Could just be Fate itself, as far as I know it's not a person but a lot of these drawbacks seem to be weird whims like Fate wants our lives to be... stories with more adversity in them. Which is a lot like a personality even if it never seems to act directly where we can see it."

"Gosh. Well, I guess I'll take it... and put back the being light one so I only have one problem to think about when shopping for clothes. And maybe take off my sweater right now because it's wool."

"That makes good sense. Okay, other ones worth suggesting... One of the warlock ones is Witchknight - this would mean that your power is actually not yours, but a child you're close to, probably a sibling, who's - subconsciously rejected their power and pushed it onto you. If they died, you'd still be a siren but wouldn't be a witch until and unless you could resurrect them. Which is possible, to be clear. Sort of the reverse would be Natural Only - leaving your power buried deep, far enough that the guided awakening won't entirely take. After you leave today, the Veil will snap back, you'll forget about me and the choices you made, and you'll stay mortal until you awaken naturally, though all the choices we made for you will stick. Then, after something that will suck badly enough that you might wish you'd died instead, you'll awaken, and gradually regain the lost memories. Either of those would give you a nice big chunk, good for three or four ranks of something."

"Would Witchknight - that's one of those weird retroactive ones, isn't it - would that mean that whichever sibling can't be a witch?"

"It would. And it's not as bad, but yeah, it definitely is at least somewhat retroactive."

"If I do the natural one will I definitely awaken? Will it take a long time?"

"You definitely will, and you'll definitely survive it (or recover from death) no matter how bad it gets, but it might take a while. I currently have someone who picked that and is... three years and change in, and four years is the longest I've seen personally. As I remember the statistics, a couple years is normal, the normal high end is a decade, but there's been one or two outliers out of a few thousand who went higher. The longest on record is thirty-two years for a woman who didn't awaken naturally until she died of cancer in her seventies, and it's her opinion that the long time was actually required to make her awakening traumatic enough to happen naturally, and wouldn't have been needed had she been a different sort of person."

"Hmmmmmmmmmm.

"Maybe I'll take that one. Will I be able to like, find you again, if I have questions?"

"After you remember? Almost certainly. Natural awakenings get attention, usually from ORC but in your case maybe from the Watchers, and they'll look up if your name is listed with any of the awakeners, which it will be, and they'll give you my hexmail address. You might be able to find the store again, but once or twice a year I close my doors in one city and open them in a different one, and I might do that for Chicago before you get back - currently I'm in Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, and San Jose."

"Is there a way to be sure that it's not going to be like. A car crash killing my entire family or something, that wouldn't have happened."

She's silent for a couple seconds. "...No. Absolutely no way. It could happen, and we'd never know for sure whether it was because of your awakening or not."

"Wow okay then I'm gonna skip it! Brrr!"

"That's fair. Fate's a bitch, giving it more ammunition to throw at us is never great. Couple others..."

"One piece of advice I got when I was awakening was that it's usually worth getting things that that are temporary but very annoying, because you'll live for thousands of years and the benefits you get from the extra power will last long past when the initial problems have become a distant memory. Losing your family would stick with you, but some stuff is more temporary. And given the pagan prophecy you got, maybe these have less downside for you than for most people. ...These are also both warlock complications."

"Betrayal - some time reasonably soon, someone you trust, care about, and expect to be on your side will blindside you and betray you. Maybe they'll be coerced, maybe they will actually think badly of you unexpectedly, maybe they'll think they're doing the right thing... but they'll hurt you, badly. What happens after that is up to you."

"And a slightly smaller one, Marked - some nasty people will put a bounty on your head. Hespatia, Alphazon, and maybe the Outsiders. You'll have to fight off bounty hunters who want to capture or kill you, for a few months or years, until they collectively decide you're too much trouble to be worth the bounty."

"I think... that possibly... being betrayed by someone I trust would also stick with me? Also, like, heck, I don't know how to fight, what if I mess up at it and instead of living for thousands of years I die in my teens."

"Witches are hard to kill, and harder to keep dead. I'd be more concerned about capture, if I had that after me, and the relics Selaliel is giving you would make you very hard to keep captured. But it's a fair concern. For the betrayal... I think it would stick with you for years, maybe a few decades, but not for centuries. If you're five hundred years old, someone who betrayed you when you were twenty is... like someone who fought with you when you were a toddler. I mean, I don't know first hand, I'm only sixty-five, but I know people that old, and a couple of them were deadly rivals for fifty years and now they're best friends who laugh about the stupid shit they did to each other back when they were 'kids', by which they mean eighty."

"But like if it was my sister or something."

"It could be bad. But you'd have a long time to fix things, and all Fate promises is that it will be very bad for a little while."

"Man I'm just really nervous about all these fate things poking me! I think I would rather they did not!"

"No one has ever met Fate, as far as I know. Which is unfortunate, because we all want to punch them in the face. Repeatedly."

"I can see why! I think I will not let any of the Fate things poke me extra."

"Understandable. Let's see, anything else... There's a smallish warlock one which is making animals dislike you and plants grow worse nearby, like a reverse Disney princess. Also ones which make you dislikeable or make it hard for you to form emotional attachments. And a large warlock disadvantage which makes you really outstandingly ugly. That's everything that seems like worth suggesting."

"It is literally my life ambition to be a Disney princess. - like by voicing one for a movie but still. And I don't want to be ugly or hateable either.

"I could take the one where I stand out, that one seems kind of neat maybe."

"Hah! Fair enough. Eye-Catcher seems to have more downside and upside for you than for some other people? Your decision, ultimately."

"What's the extra downside?"

"I think I said - you'll probably be trying to avoid notice more often than most witches, fulfilling mortal prayers without them noticing. So it could be tricky."

"Yeah... but like, is it a problem if they see me? Sometimes God acts through people, I'm a people."

"Maybe not! I don't really know what she's going to ask for."

"Well, if it's a problem I'll..." She pokes her three present ranks in Witchery. "Get another of these and turn invisible I guess?"

"...Huh, you know, I forgot that was an option. Mostly because rank 4 is out of my reach and most of my newbie's. Yeah, that would work."

"Oh good!"

"Well, if we've gotten all those nailed down... Do you want any advice going back to the good magic and picking where to put that extra energy, or do you have ideas already?"

"Oh go ahead and help me, there's so much stuff."

"Okay, so did you have thoughts about what second element you might pick..."

It won't be too long, from here. Rebecca's seen everything and Gwen's helped people like her plenty of times. So, soon...

"Well, that's everything spent. Any final second thoughts, or do you want to wrap this up and become a witch?"

"Did I successfully take off my sweater, it's kind of hard to tell like this."

Gwen pats her on the shoulder reassuringly. "Yes, you did, you'll be okay."

"Okay! Let's do this!!"

Then Gwen will stop holding her 'hand' in front of the linchpin of the whole network, and Rebecca can push into it, and-

She'll transform. Taller, lighter, with pastel-pink feathers on her shoulders and wrapping around less visible parts of her body. (Sirens are, in theory, beach-legal without clothes, the feathers cover just enough.) And she'll have new senses, and new 'muscles', and old senses will change, and, and, and...

"Ohhhh wow the touch shock thing is not messing around, I wanted to pet my feathers and now I'm scared to."

"Well, go gently, but I think you'll probably be okay."

Very tentatively she runs a fingertip down her neck.

"Okay actually this is awesome, I think when I'm used to it I will get along with it juuuust fine, it's just so much."

"Good! I've heard that before, but people relate to it differently. Hmm, let me get a mirror-" She starts to move toward the back of her desk, then turns into a yellow warbler, flies about six feet, and transforms back. She's spinning around a full-length mirror and tugging it over closer.

"Ooooh, I look so fancy. I didn't take unveiled so people mostly won't notice even if I slip up, right?"

"You do!" Also adorable, but Gwen's not sure she's someone who'd take that as a compliment. Even if it didn't come off as flirting, which it wouldn't be, but.

"Don't go down the street flaunting them, you'd usually be fine but not always so it's a bad habit to get into. Some things are really safe, though - like, if you have a driver's license the photo has changed a little to match your new look, and it will say your new height on it, and so on."

"Can you sell me a.... new sweater, I think I don't dare touch the old one, maybe it could go in a bag. I'm going to have to give a lot of my clothes to Beth."

"I do not have a fantastic selection of clothes but I think I still have a big silk-lined overcoat I picked up for this kind of situation..." She's back to being a bird and flitting around the couple  clothes racks in the store.

Then she's back on the ground. "Yep, still have it. Priced it stupid high, you can have it for an actual reasonable price. It's not going to be flattering, if you want to come sell it back to me at cost in a week, that's fine, I don't really need the money."

"Great. Probably something I have or can trade Beth for is still good and anyway I can go shopping, spend all my birthday money."

"Exchanging magic money for normal money is pretty easy, if you can find odd jobs. Actually, this is a good time to try out your warlock relics. A HexVPN connection was one of them, right? See if you can sort of reach into your heart and pull that out, you can get a hexmail account and check Oracle and WikiVeil for things nearby."

Reeeeeeeach -

There are nine things, two of them the same, but one of them feels distinctly more technological even if she doesn't look too closely.

And now she has a slightly ominous-looking black cube with fractal engravings, buzzing faintly. (A sense she gets from Energized will feel it has a power pack that does not need charging and is probably charging itself somehow, not that she probably can interpret that all that precisely yet.)

"Yep, that's a Hex box. Your phone will connect to it automatically."

"Ooh, buzzy," she says, shivering a little. She gets her phone out of her pocket.

"Your browser's default search will probably be redirected to Oracle, and you can find Hexmail from there. I'll give you my address if you want to ask questions; for a lot of things you can check WikiVeil, and WhereHunter overlays portal and pocket dimension locations on top of Google Maps, and ghost and monster sightings if there are any. Arcadia College has at least a couple entrances in Chicago, and they're often a good place to look for odd jobs, or turning mana into Kisses."
Beat.
"...Kisses meaning money. The main magical currency is Witch Kisses. They look like metal coins but they're mana in solid form. You can make them yourself slowly, but there are chests you can use to do it quickly, and you can rent one for a small cut of the money anywhere there are a lot of witches."

"Huh, cool. But regular money also works? We're, y'know, comfy."

"Oh, good. I'm kind of used to giving kids the good news that they've found their ticket out of poverty for a lot of people, but better not to need it."

"Mm-hm! Not that it won't be nice to have the career options, but for my immediate silk clothing needs it's good." Hexmail. Probably "rebecca" is taken?

It is, but rebeccadillard is free.

"You should probably take a look at Arcadia - and maybe Hawthorne - for other reasons; Arcadia has good classes in magic and everything else and it's free for all witches, and Hawthorne is pretty exclusive, and very strict, but their magic professors are the tops of their fields and have mostly been teaching for fifty years without slowing down. You want to be in the twenty best in the world at something, apply to Hawthorne."

She doesn't want her last name on there, because one day she hopes it will change! How about "songbirdrebecca".

"I can't be, can I? Since there are people who can do five ranks and I top out at four?"

That's available too.

"A lot of those are lazy. At least by Hawthorne's definition of lazy."

"I think... that possibly... I am lazy. - except about singing but it kind of sounds like they are about magic and not about being a Disney princess."

"I don't think their music is particularly good, no. Anything else I should cover before you go... I could give you the short versions of describing the other big factions in the world, I covered the schools, Watchers, and Alfheimr but there are four other big players."

"I can be pals with Watchers and still go to a different faction's school, right? But yeah, please."

"You can. Arcadia takes anyone, and Hawthorne specifically does teach a lot of Watchers. Also a lot of Hespatians, despite them being rivals. Speaking of: the Hespatian Covens are secretive cults, a lot of them, loosely associated with each other. The nicer ones are hedonistic sex cults and do orgy-rituals; the nastier ones have rituals including human sacrifice, occasionally consensual but rarely. People are often semi-open about being Hespatian but always secretive about which kind and which cult."

"I didn't see any orgy ritual magic on my options!" And a good thing too!

"That's their faction-specific magic tradition. All the Big Six have their own, but you have to associat with them for a good while to get tutoring."

"Oh. If someone wants to buy my golden fish in five years does that mean they're evil?"

"No, there's other uses for voluntary sacrifice. And, to be fair, there are some perfectly lovely Hespatians who know how to do the human sacrifice but would never consider it. They're a small minority but they exist, I've met some."

"Okay... who else've we got?"

"Next, Lunabella. It's a city on the back side of the Moon, nicknamed 'New Olympus'. It's absolutely gorgeous and they have so much magic that even the poorest Lunabellans have really good lives. But. Their government is weird - legally everyone is a slave, including the king, who is a slave to the constitution; making sure you're healthy and happy is the personal responsibility of your master. Also, even by Veil standards they're very sexually open, you see people making out in public while you're walking down the street."

"Gosh."

"That's most people's reaction. They're... lovely people and it works for them, but I have no idea how they... got there."

"Also, uh, Veil standards?"

"I mentioned we're more liberal about sexuality and gender, I think? Partly because a lot of mana charging methods are very intimate, or outright sexual - nymphs charge by making people feel intense desire, dolls charge from serving others, orcs charge from having blood-children, mimis charge from head pats and massages. So it ends up being that people's baseline for how much intimacy with not-particularly-close friends is normal gets higher, and that ripples through everything else, so people are much more physically demonstrative in public, and you'll regularly see, like, people in a D/s relationship who quietly wear a collar while they're working an office job or out doing errands."

"Gosh."

"I got used to it in... about a year.

"Alrighty then. The angels and everything are just fine with this?"

"They don't really like Lunabella but I think that's just the gratuitously extra paganism and the king who may have literally been Apollo back before he founded it. They seem to be fine with the general liberal norms."

"Huh. Okay."

"The other two big organizations are mostly not witches, but fully-informed and behind the Veil. Alphazon Industries is an absolutely enormous megacorporation which has a near-monopoly on commerce that crosses the Veil. Technically they run HexVPN and a lot of the Veil internet sites, and they do money-changing between Kisses and mortal currency and own large portions of all the public un-Veiled companies. They pay extremely well but their contracts are pretty heinously complicated and Faustian. ORC is law enforcement and also enforce Veil breaches; they interface with mortal police, do more than their fair share of hunting monsters and Outsiders, and try to rein in the excesses of the Hespatians, Alphazon, and occasionally the other Big Sixes, they're on good terms with Lunabella and Arcadia hasn't fought them yet but that's it. They're heavily armed and pretty brutal but arguably they have to be. And they take an especially hard line on magichumanity getting involved in major mortal political disputes - they tend to assume you're breaching the Veil if you try, even if there's no direct evidence you're using magic."

"What, so like, I can't, uh, run for mayor? I didn't really want to but now I can't?"

"You'd probably get a visit from ORC if you ran for mayor, but they'd probably be okay with it. Governor or Senator, though, they'd nix it. And sirens probably more than most, given the effects of the magic singing voice."

"What if my dad runs for something, because he sometimes talks about doing that."

"You should try not to make many public appearances for him, if so. Beyond that... I don't know, you'd probably want to go to an ORC office and ask."

"I guess I should do that then. Wow. Did not realize this implication. Can I have a singing career though?"

"Sorry, I should have been clearer. They'll probably get antsy about concerts for mortals, but even if that goes badly there are several other worlds of people to perform for."

"Do they have Disney."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure Alphazon owns like a quarter of Disney, it's not on every Earth but several of them. Mostly the same movies as our Earth but I've seen clips from a Veil-only one."

"Okay. I will settle for Alternate Dimension Disney Princessing. Probably."

"I hope it works, that sounds lovely. Anything else you want to ask about?"

"How do I take care of feathers?"

That is a thing Gwen totally knows and can explain, so she does.

And she wants to hang out in the shop for a bit longer, learning her way around the magical Internet and getting adjusted to the sensory shock and getting some help with her Arcadia application.

Gwen can help with this, too (and give her email, which is gwenwake@hexmail).

What's the Arcadia website say? Do the Watchers have a web presence? What about, like, the magic end of the Vatican?

The Arcadia website is a college website. It's more detailed than most, and has departments of lab magic,  elementalism, dimensional studies, personal magic, and several of the usual kind of mundane college majors. (All the kinds of magic she's learned except ministration are specifically listed if she looks closer, sorted idiosyncratically into the various departments.) There's lots of student clubs and associations mentioned, including multiple chapels and a Watcher program that seems a little like ROTC (not the only thing of that type on campus either, ORC and a Hespatian coven have similar things).

The official Watcher presence is the kind of bland you get when an organization with complicated internal divisions has some PR people try to minimize them and only say things everyone can agree on, which ends up agreeing with what Gwen said about them and not providing much more detail. They do have a big list of branches, organized by classes of denomination, almost all with several entries - there's a Lutheran section, Calvinist, Unitarian (in line with nominative determinism, only one group listed), Mormon, and of course Catholic, of which there are apparently seven, whose names imply that 'the Roman Catholic Church' is not sufficient to pick out a single church on this side of the Veil. If she checks out their websites, they're still focused on the things Watchers agree about - the celestials are the messengers of God, an apocalypse is coming and we need to watch and prepare for it, all the believing faiths should work together - but also have some comments that are clearly veiled barbs against other people who have theological or possibly political differences. And declarations of allegiance to particular churches which they consider the 'most true' faith. Two of them also express nasty sentiment towards pagans.

It's initially hard to find the website for the magic side of her familiar Vatican because it's smaller and less visible than the Vaticans which exist on this side of the Veil. Since they all know more about the structure of the world, they consider themselves better authorities on Jesus, the Bible, and various exegesis and points of doctrine; since they couldn't always easily communicate across worlds, there are three of them. Two of the three consider the mortal prime-world Pope authoritative for humanity outside the Veil, the third broke with him at the declaration of infallibility. When she finds the official hexVPN site of her Vatican it's trying hard not to commit to either of the two that recognize the Pope's limited authority and seems to be trying not to alienate the others too much either. There's notes of disapproving of immodesty but they stop short of actually telling anyone they're wrong in God's eyes or anything quite so explicit.

Wow, seven different Catholic clubs just at Arcadia. And every one of them on the side of the angels! She'll be spoiled for celestially backed choice.

She will make sure she's got Gwen's hexmail right and has down the present address of the shop so she can return the coat after she goes shopping, and head out to break it to her folks.

She's back with the coat in a few days.

"Hey! Adjusting alright?"

"On the whole I think so yeah! I'm glad the touch shock thing liked me, stubbing my toe sucks super super bad but nice stuff feels so nice now. My parents were pretty freaked but my siblings think it's awesome and even my parents eventually agreed I could go to Arcadia if I pass the GED so I can have a real high school credential!"

"Oh good! Arcadia's great, the people and the campus both. You think your folks will mellow about it with time?"

"Yeah, they'll get used to it, I think they wanted me to have like asked them first but sorry not sorry."

"Yeah, it's hard to turn down, even with the drawbacks and the craziness of the world behind the Veil to deal with. I've had people dither but never actually back out, there's just too much to love."

"Yeah, even if I were a real scaredy-cat I could have been a regular - wosscalled, neutral? - witch and not gone for any of the drawbacks."

"And not a warlock, probably - some people would doubt Selaliel was a real servant of God, or just get much worse patrons offering. But magic is just too great - fun, useful, beautiful, you name it."

"Yeah! And I'm a small enough bird that I can fly around in our apartment."

"Oh? Do you know what kind yet? I'm a yellow warbler, but it took me a while to find the matching species in a bird book."

"I'm not sure! It's pink and red. I'll show you." Poof.

She is a cute little bird.

"Aww, you're such a cute bird!" She poofs into her warbler and tweets at Rebecca.

Chirp chirp!

Cheep cheep!

"It's funny," she says, changing back and adjusting her new supersoft clothes back into place, "I thought only boy birds were colorful."

She also turns back, words are useful. "They're usually more colorful, but not always. I've heard some sirens claim they have the male coloration, but I'm never sure if they have the species right - there are some probably-not-magical but still wild breeds of animal in some places."

"Oh, do other planets have other birds, I guess that would make sense!"

"If you go far enough the worlds get really weird - the Order 'pole' or whatever every apple tree looks exactly the same and so on for every species, and the Chaos one everything's constantly changing. But go a little way toward Chaos and you get crazy species of everything. Sometimes witches import them as fancy pets."

"Oh, fun! Is it hard to get all these places?"

"It's hard to open the way there, you need strong Portals and Aethermancy, but if you can get there it's not hard to make it so other witches can follow - witches can all see and use portals by default and there are tons of mostly-permanent portals between Earths and dimensions. You probably saw the map of entrances for Arcadia, right? Hundreds just on this Earth. And it's the same thing, it's just a little easier when it's an artificial dimension like Arcadia is."

"Yeah, it's not a bad commute, I'll be able to come home weekends."

"You can also take your family on vacations through Arcadia. They'll want them to stick with you while you're passing through campus, but they're chill with being a transit hub for friends and family. If I remember right there's two-hop trips to Redwood National Park and Yellowstone, just on Earth. ...Maybe get recommendations before taking them to other worlds, there's beautiful sights but some of them will be real risky for mortals. Alfheimr's magnificent but go there with school friends, not family."

"What happens to mortals there?"

"Monsters, even in safer areas. If you're well within the boundaries of a lord's holding, you won't see anything witches can't scare off - and usually nothing you couldn't just beat into a pulp - but if you don't see it coming, it could attack a mortal, and even if they weren't hurt badly, it's much harder to fight off a horribear or wyvern when there's a fragile powerless person right next to them."

"A horribear?"

"It's like a grizzly twenty feet tall, only it has armor plates, claws that can scratch steel and teeth that could puncture it, and absolutely no caution. They don't back down from a fight from anything they can see. Elementalism works fine to hurt them from a distance and scare them, so witches are fine, but they're pretty dangerous."

"Wow! Are there like, magic martial arts classes or something at Arcadia, I'm not sure I have like, the right reflexes."

"Some will be covered in elementalism classes, and they definitely have dedicated classes if you want them."

"Cool. I wanna go places and see stuff even if the stuff is gigantic horribears."

"You should be fine, you're a Disaster. --Which is one of several semiofficial ratings of combat potential, judged mostly by highest elementalism rating. If monsters show up in Chicago you'll probably get a phone call asking you to help clear them out, because you're quite dangerous even untrained."

"I'm a disaster? I don't like that, why is that the word for it?"

"Hazard, Disaster, Calamity - ranks three to five. I think it was originally ORC police griping about how much damage you - we, I'm a Hazard - can do to the landscape if we're not careful."

"Well, I don't want to go around calling myself a disaster. That's negative self-talk or something. I can be, like, a storm?"

"People won't really know what you mean. If you don't want to mention it, it won't come up that much. There are policies that refer to it, but they don't even officially use the names."

"Well, okay. Anyway. Thank you for the coat."

"Of course! If there's anything else you want help with, let me know."

"Thanks! Will I like, run into you places or are you mostly hunkered down here?"

"The world's pretty big, hard to run into people by accident. But I'm around Arcadia regularly, for elementalism practice in their gyms or helping out new witches looking to network. My actual house is out in the sticks in alternate-Earth Nova Scotia, so you won't really see me in Chicago."

"Okay. Thank you so much for everything!" And she gives a little wave and lets herself out of the shop.

"Good luck with everything!"