"I don't know," she sighs. "I keep trying to - think about it, and I keep not knowing."

"What do you think, when you think about it?"

"I love you," she says. "But I don't know how I did it, and I don't know how to make sure I never stop."

"When you did it," murmurs Etty, "what happened, what did it feel like, what were you thinking?"

"I don't know! I didn't really do it at all," she says. "It just happened. And not all at once or anything."

"If you stopped loving me what would do it?" Etty tries.

"I don't know," she sighs. "If you weren't the person I think you are, that might do it. But you are, aren't you?"

"Yes." She swallows. "For now, anyway."

...Nona hugs her.

"I imagine if I turn into one of those - swans - there won't be any of me left to love."

"I'll still love who you were," she says, hugging her some more. "Who you are now."

Etty turns her face into Nona's shoulder and whimpers.

"I love you," she says helplessly. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

"I love you too," weeps Etty; she wasn't sure if she did until just this moment, but now she is.

Nona sniffles and hugs her.

Squeeze.

Cuddle.

Time continues to pass. There is no summons the following night, but the night after that, it comes just after dusk.

Etty drags herself to where she is bidden as usual.

The Baron brings her into the castle, and eats dinner with her, and carries her up to his rooms. As usual.

Etty shuts her eyes and tries not to have nerves and cries and waits.

The Baron goes to sleep.

The door opens, very quietly, just enough for Nona to slip into the room.

Etty gets out of the bed and backs away from it, wide-eyed.

Etty nods, rapidly, many times, tears creeping down her face.

"Thank you," whispers Etty.

"Now what?" says Nona.

"I don't know," says Etty, and she sits on the floor, shaking, still naked.

Nona is covered in the baron's blood. She wants to hug Etty, but - she hesitates.

If ever Etty was squeamish, it's gone now. She holds out her arms.

"You can be something else if you want," says Nona.

"I think I'll be Etty, if I can't have whatever I was before."

"Let's do that," she says.

Etty gets up, and picks up her dress with a relatively bloodless hand, and goes out of the castle and to the shore with Nona.

"They're swans," murmurs Etty. "It's night, and they're swans." She wades into the water.

"I guess that's what they are now," says Nona, ribbons of blood curling away from her in the water.

"...I'll miss flying," sighs Etty.

"Maybe you can learn magic," says Nona.

"We still might catch fire if we try the library door."

"I'll try it."

"If - if you're sure, but let's find a bucket - or a blanket, we could soak blankets."

Etty follows, and picks up her dress, and shimmies into it, damp or no damp. "Will there be buckets?"

"Probably somewhere."

Etty starts looking.

The stable, while empty of horses, contains both buckets and blankets to spare.

Etty fills them all with water and brings them to the library door as (presumably) identified by Nona.

Etty follows her in and starts looking at the books hungrily.

There are a lot of books.

Are any of them about sorcery?

Most.

Excellent. Are any of them introductory-looking?

None.

Many of the books contain information on how to do spells, and the recipes seem reasonably complete; some are even annotated with the Baron's additions. But there is nothing resembling a book of theory, and very little organization to the spells themselves.

Etty hunts up something less cluttered than her well-used scroll to take notes on.

There is plenty of loose paper around; the Baron was also in the habit of taking notes.

Etty doesn't want to think about him right now. She takes blank paper and starts up an index of useful-looking spells with actionable recipes.

The Baron's much-used spell for serving himself meals is one that requires no long list of obscure ingredients for the setup, just a kitchen and a bowl of animal blood, and after that can be invoked at any time.

Can it be invoked by people other than the original caster, Etty wonders, or will she have to find an animal? (She would be squeamish about helping herself to a swan.)

No explicit information is included.

She decides to try the invocation step and see if it works.

The invocation step is to find oneself at a table one wishes to fill with food, and command - through word or gesture - that the table be so filled.

Etty goes. She sits at the table. She waves a hand - she really could stand to eat; it's been a while since dinner at this point - and stares down the emptiness of the table.

Nothing.

Well, that's grotesque, but she's getting the impression that that's the general theme, here; she notes it and keeps looking through the books. (It's not like she's starving yet.)

Another animal summoning spell requires her to urinate in her best approximation of a perfect circle wherever she wants the animal to appear. A third requires that she have the severed foot of the desired kind of animal, whereupon once the proper rituals are complete she can summon as many of it as she likes.

At the end of a trail of blood and the occasional stray bit of flesh that leads from the Baron's rooms to the lakeshore, where a pile of blankets and Baron-bits is burning.

"I'm not surprised," says Nona.

"It can do a whole lot of things, though. It won't be hard to re-cast the food spell, just icky."

"Icky?"

"It needs a bowl of animal blood. I don't want to kill one of the swans and I don't think I could catch anything else, and the least revolting animal-summoning spell requires the caster to eat a blade of grass soaked in their own blood. There's a lot of blood involved."

"I can do it," she shrugs. "I don't mind blood."

"I found some healing spells but nothing general, not in the books. Some of the specific ones will work on things of narrow parameters - like the type of implement. If you have something made of steel to use to get the blood you can be patched up after. All-purpose versions, like what you had before, I'd have to go into his notes for."

"There's knives and swords and stuff," she says.

"Probably made of steel," nods Etty. "So we can operate out of here till - we know where else we'd go. I can't remember the way to Astgabels..."

"I don't know where that is."

"I'm sure someone does, but I don't even know how far away or in what direction the nearest settlement is. If I could still fly..." She nibbles her lip; she wishes she could still fly.

She is a human again, complete with pristine white dress.

"...Interesting," she says. "Okay, so I can range pretty far afield, looking for places we might go."

Nona hugs her.

Hugs!

"Okay, tell me how to do those spells so we can get the kitchen working again."

Etty leads her to the library and shows her the relevant magical instructions.

After eating, Etty goes back to cataloguing the usefulness of this and that portion of the library. There's a lot to cover.

Nona goes to her room and curls up and sleeps.

Etty joins her, a couple hours later, snuggled up warm.

Sleepy snuggles! Snuggly sleeps!

Both of those things! Nona went to sleep first and will probably wake up first.

But when she does, she won't see any reason to move.

Nona grins and snuggles right back.

"Good morning," sighs Etty.

"Good morning I love you," says Nona.

"I love you too."

Mmmsnugglysnuggly.

"After breakfast I think I'll pick a direction and see what's there. West first, I think."

Om nom!

Etty hugs Nona goodbye, says she'll be back before sunset, and goes outside and changes and flies west.

Landscape happens.

Etty keeps flying until just past noon or until she sees some form of habitation, and then she turns around and goes east.

Habitation - a farm - comes before noon.

Etty lands a ways away from the farmhouse, and she changes, and she approaches slowly.

No one is home. Or no one wants to talk to her.

Etty turns around, finds a private place to change again, and flies back to the lake.

Nona is in her rooms, having a pastime.

Etty leaves her to it and goes to do librarying.

Etty decides she is going to be Library Person and Nona, who plainly has a higher or possibly nonexistent disgust threshold, can be the Actual Spellcasting Person barring emergencies. Etty does find some soap and water and re-casts the spell that kept the castle clean by herself, though.

The castle obligingly becomes cleaner; all she needs to do to maintain it is wander through the rooms every so often and want them to clean themselves. Apparently the Baron couldn't be bothered to do even that to the rooms that were cobwebbed before, because there's no problem cleaning them now.

Etty tours-and-cleans the entire castle. She saves Nona's room for last.

Nona is napping.

Etty watches her for a long moment. She can't go have dinner by herself, the kitchen only responds to Nona; she decides to lie down with Nona till she wakes up.

She snuggles up in her sleep.

Mm, snuggles.

Mmm, snuggles.

Etty waits dozily for Nona to wake up so there can be dinner.

"Hi," says Etty. "I found a farm, but no one was home, or they didn't want to answer the door."

"Mmm," says Nona, and curls up in Etty's arms.

Huggles. "Do you want dinner?"

"Mmyeah," says Nona.

"Good, I'm hungry."

"I've been hungry for a while. You took a long nap," says Etty, squirming. "I didn't want to wake you."

To the dinner table!

"Thanks," says Etty. "Sorry to drag you out of bed."

"'Sokay."

Nom nom nom.

Nap nap nap.