i might as well be the man on the moon

[truthwright]

Their Isabella having just gone to welcome a new Bell into the peal, Kas and Petaal snuggle up together and take a nap. They'll want to be well rested for the party.

When they wake up, she still isn't back.

[Jane?]

No response.

Kas teleports down to the Janepoint, Petaal wrapped snake-shaped around his shoulders.

The display reads: error 7788: lycanthropy

"...So that's new," he says.

"No shit," says Petaal. "Now what?"

He shrugs. She coils tighter.

"Hang around and wait, I guess."

Comments

[carillons]

"What are you going to be when we grow up, Kalavar?" says Helen.

Kalavar becomes a snake and coils around her shoulders. "I'm gonna be like Petaal and never ever settle," she announces.

[alicornucopia]

"You have to be a bird," opines Nicoa. "Mommy says." He illustratively turns into a tawny frogmouth.

[carillons]

"Only if I be something," says Kalavar, turning into a tiny dragon with gold-edged green scales and green-streaked gold wings.

[alicornucopia]

"If you don't be anything how will you know when to separate?" asks Shura. (Nicoa becomes a crow, and a bluejay, and a chickadee.)

[carillons]

"I dunno!" says Kalavar. "Maybe we won't. Maybe we'll just never grow up." She giggles, curling around Helen's neck as a fuzzy little red panda.

[alicornucopia]

"I guess then you won't eat your spinachdaddy," allows Shura.

[carillons]

"I wouldn't eat him anyway! He's nice," Helen asserts. She hugs her mommydaddyspinach.

[alicornucopia]

Shura giggles.

"I'm going to be a pretty bird," asserts Nicoa, experimenting with finches now.

[carillons]

"I'm going to be a scary bird," says Kalavar. She turns into a vulture.

[alicornucopia]

Shura giggles.

[carillons]

Kalavar stands on Helen's head and flaps her wings. Helen squeaks.

[alicornucopia]

Shura's mother chooses this moment to appear and pick up her daughter.

"Mommy, he's a spinach head," Shura reports.

"Really," says Shura's mother. "That's unusual."

[carillons]

"He's my mommydaddyspinach," giggles Helen, and she hugs Kas some more. Kalavar turns into a dragon again and lands on Petaal, who is being a white tiger at the moment.

[alicornucopia]

Shura's mother plunks her child onto her cloud-pine; Nicoa turns into a bat and hangs from the branch, and off they fly.

[carillons]

Helen sits in Kas's lap and declares him her favourite spinach in the whole wide world.

[alicornucopia]

Magic lessons start a bit later, and Helen has these with Shura, too - and also with Inkeri and Kaydi. They begin with simple verse spells, in non-English to discourage making up variations. This doesn't stop Shura from identifying a goddess's name in one spell, replacing it with another, and causing a small explosion and getting a time-out.

[carillons]

"What'd you do that for?" says Helen.

[alicornucopia]

"I didn't know it'd explode!" says Shura, when she bounces out of time-out and bends over her book of introductory spells again. "I just wanted to try something."

[carillons]

"Your something exploded," says Helen. "What was it supposed to do if it didn't explode?"

[alicornucopia]

"I dunno," says Shura. "We don't have to know to get stuff to happen, right? That's why we don't verse out of lessons?"

[carillons]

"Well, which one was it? Do it properly and let's see."

[alicornucopia]

"It was this one -" Shura reads off the syllables from the book, and Nicoa starts glowing; he cycles through several forms and the glow persists and he laughs. "It's to see in the dark!"

[carillons]

"Coooool," says Helen. She reads the spell, and Kalavar turns into a firefly and flutters bright bright circles around her head.

[alicornucopia]

"I wonder what all these words mean. Do you think I should learn these old witch languages nobody our age speaks?"

[carillons]

"Yeah!" says Helen. "I'll learn them too and then we can both speak them!"