and my ears will listen

[truthwright]

Time goes by. Shura's mother lets her cut a cloudpine branch, and she and Helen go flying together.

Helen celebrates her eighth birthday by baking all her favourite people a cake again. And then she goes away with Kas, to Iceland and Russia and back by way of Alaska.

When they fly in, Kas on Petaal's cloudpine and Helen on her own, Helen is wearing blue jeans and a pink T-shirt.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah but - baking cakes isn't a mortal thing like jeans are."

[carillons]

"So?"

[alicornucopia]

"So this is weird and that wasn't."

[carillons]

"You thought the cake thing was weird too," says Helen. "What's it matter if it's a 'mortal thing'? I'm still a witch, see?"

She gets on her cloud-pine and floats up off the ground.

[alicornucopia]

"Well, I know," says Shura. "You couldn't just decide not to be a witch, that's not how it works, but - you're - wearing a mortal costume."

[carillons]

"It's not a costume," she says. "Any more than Petaal's wearing a witch costume when she puts silks on to fly. Or Kas is wearing a girl costume when he puts on a pretty dress. It's just different stuff to wear."

[alicornucopia]

"...That's what costumes are, is wearing different stuff," says Shura.

[carillons]

"Is it? I don't think so," says Helen. "I think dressing up as something because you want to dress up as the thing is one thing, and just wearing stuff because that's the stuff you want to wear is a different thing."

[alicornucopia]

"But either way you have on jeans and a t-shirt."

[carillons]

"Yeah. But not for reasons," she says. "Just for feeling like it. Kas does the same thing."

[alicornucopia]

"Well, he's peculiar."

[carillons]

"I'm peculiar too," Helen asserts. "Not all the same ways, but I am."

[alicornucopia]

Shura shifts her weight. Nicoa has been hiding under her silks; he peeps a shrew-nose out from a gap in them at her waist.

[carillons]

Kalavar turns into a bee and buzzes away from Petaal to hover between Helen and Shura.

[alicornucopia]

Nicoa hops out of the silks and turns into a jerboa for a bouncy landing, going a few hops forward.

[carillons]

Kalavar buzzes down and becomes a chinchilla.

[alicornucopia]

"Do we have to understand this thing or think it isn't weird?" Nicoa asks her.

[carillons]

"No-o," says Kalavar. "But if you think it's bad weird, or you don't want to be near us when we do it, then we'll be sad."

[alicornucopia]

"It's - weird weird," Shura says. "Like if you were a cat with a turtle shell on."

[carillons]

Kalavar turns into a turtlecat.

"Like this?"

[alicornucopia]

"Like that," says Nicoa.

"And - I don't know if it means things, what if Kalavar isn't even a bird? Could you make her not a bird by doing not-witchy things? I never heard of anybody else trying," says Shura.

[carillons]

"What if I'm not a bird?" says Kalavar. "What then? I don't think I'm not a bird. But I don't know what being a bird or not a bird feels like, we're not that old yet."

[alicornucopia]

"But all witches' daemons are birds," says Nicoa. "If you're not I don't know what that means."

[carillons]

"Me neither," says Kalavar. "But if I'm not then I'm not, and that's just how we are. We won't know until I settle. If I do."

[alicornucopia]

"Are you really a witch," Shura asks slowly, "or just - a kind of peculiar that can do some witch things?"