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Never-contented things
An Yvette would like some help with a problem
Permalink Mark Unread

A fox briskly trots down an empty road, looking to all the world like it knows precisely where it's going.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Well that's not something you see every day.

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The fox's ears perk up, and it looks at him with a pair of intelligent hazel eyes. Do foxes typically have eyes of that color? It's very striking.

Its tail lashes, and the fox turns and hops ever-so-gracefully into the bushes by the road. Apparently it's not feeling very social. Perhaps it's afraid of him.

Permalink Mark Unread

He is not a very fearsome person, to all appearances. Well-dressed but unarmed, without a wizard's gem-studded rings or even a hedge-wizard's hodgepodge of silver. In some places it wouldn't be wise to walk around looking so invitingly harmless - his clothes don't speak of outrageous wealth, but they do speak of some - but around here, people tend to be kind to strangers.

When the fox jumps off the road, he pauses and gazes thoughtfully into the bushes after it.

Permalink Mark Unread

A pair of eyes look back at him. They flick towards his hands, his neck, and his hip, as if the fox knows where possible signs of danger might be located. As if it's assessing him.

After a moment's study, it cautiously pokes its head out from the bushes it hides in. The fox isn't particularly well hidden, but one gets the impression it's not trying to be. It'd be awfully inconvenient to grab at it through the bushes.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello," says the traveler, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Do you need a lift somewhere? I'm rather taller than you are, I imagine you'd make better time with my help."

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The fox's head tilts slightly, and one of its ears twitches.

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"You're obviously not an ordinary fox," he says reasonably. "I can't imagine why someone would have turned a person into a fox or given a fox the mind - and eyes - of a person, but those are the obvious possibilities. Either way, it seems only polite to offer, since we're going the same way. I can take you as far as Tumbledown Pond, maybe farther if you turn out to be an agreeable travelling companion."

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Its ears perk up at the first sentence.

After a thoughtful pause, the fox gives a little affirmative yip, and summarily hops out of the bushes.

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He smiles at it, and bends down to pick it up.

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It gives him a bit of a wary look, but cooperates with this with only a little hesitation. It has very soft fur.

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Scoop! Now he is carrying the fox.

"Comfortable?" he asks. "Or would you rather ride on my shoulder or in my bag?"

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The fox noses at the bag, but sort of curiously. Perhaps it depends on what's in the bag.

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He opens it to show her: miscellaneous objects including a coin pouch, a small leatherbound notebook, and some apples. Not a comfortable assortment, all in all. "Sorry. If I'd expected you I would've put off buying the apples."

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Yeah, the fox doesn't want to hang out with the uncomfortable assortment. It noses at the bag to close it and instead nestles down in his arms, apparently content to be carried.

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He nods agreeably and sets off.

 

He's not really hurrying, but he is very tall, and walks briskly. They are in fact making better time together than the fox would have alone.

Permalink Mark Unread

The fox is a quiet travelling companion, but after a while it looks up at him and yips curiously.

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"Hmm?"

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The fox makes a show of looking around at the road they're on, then noses him.

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"Why am I going this way, you mean? Oh, I thought I might climb Tumbledown Hill and sit and draw the view."

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Affirmative yip.

... That seems to be as far as it can really converse. It's hard to have good conversation skills as a fox.

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The traveller seems content to walk in silence.

 

After they've been walking for an hour or so, he says, "My arms are getting tired; would you mind climbing up to my shoulder for a while? It's not too much farther to the pond."

Permalink Mark Unread

Agreeable yip! And an apologetic nose to his hand.

The fox obligingly hops onto his shoulder. It's a rather small fox, so it doesn't have too much trouble. It decides to become a soft fox scarf instead of attempting to stay balanced on his shoulder.

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He giggles at his fashionable new accessory, pauses to make sure it's settled in all right, then keeps walking.

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His fashionable new accessory carries itself with all of the dignity of a monarch. ... And innocently tickles his nose with its tail. Ever so innocently.

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Splutter-giggle.

"That was uncalled-for!" he protests, laughing.

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The fox gives a little amused huff, but the tail stops tormenting him, and he gets a little apologetic nose for his trouble.

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"Thank you. Is it lack of entertainment? Should I sing?"

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'Lack of entertainment' gets an immediate affirmative yip. The fox is more ambivalent of whether or not he should sing. It looks curiously at him, anyway.

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"Ah, you haven't heard me sing. Well. I could give it a try and stop if you complain?"

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Affirmative yip!

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So he sings.

He has a nice voice and a good memory. He probably shouldn't quit his day job, whatever it is, but he could easily end up being the best singer at any social gathering with no professional musicians attending.

Permalink Mark Unread

His vulpine companion finds this agreeable, and settles in to listen.

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And in this way they end up at Tumbledown Pond not too much later.

As depicted on local maps, the road touches the side of the pond and then curves to the west rather than continue northwest into the rocky hills of which Tumbledown Hill is the most friendly and hospitable. The traveller stops at the bend.

"Well, here we are," he says. "And which way are you going?"

Permalink Mark Unread

The fox gives him a somewhat wry look, then points with a fluffy tail. The direction is distinctly not towards the road.

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"I suspected as much, but I didn't want to make assumptions. Well, as it happens, it wouldn't be very far out of my way at all to carry you the rest of the way to the tower."

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... His fluffy fox scarf stiffens a bit, looking at him with at least some fraction of surprise, or perhaps alarm.

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"Oh, did I not introduce myself?" he asks with something approximating innocence. "Isfain of the Crooked Hills. Delighted to meet you. People don't come to me with problems all that often, and out of all I've seen, yours is by far the most interesting."

Permalink Mark Unread

The fox flicks its tail, then moves as if to jump down from his shoulder, but—that is kind of a long drop. It hesitates to actually go for it.

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Isfain reaches up to offer it a lift down to the ground.

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The fox accepts this lift, lands neatly on the ground, and moves out of arm's reach of him. Then it sits, looks at him thoughtfully, and politely bows its head.

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He answers the nod with a friendly smile.

"I apologize for not saying something earlier, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to get to know you without my reputation in the way."

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The fox looks at him. Archly.

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"People tend to behave very differently around me when they know who I am!"

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His vulpine companion does not look particularly happy, but doesn't really have much ability to reply. It settles for flicking its tail.

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"If we continue on to my tower, I can try to figure out a more reasonable way for you to have a conversation. Something with letters, maybe, if you're a literate fox."

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Affirmative yip. Then without waiting for him, the fox flounces off in the general direction of his tower.

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He follows.

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Clearly the fox has only a basic idea of where it's going, but gosh, is it going to go in that direction. Grumpily.

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Since Isfain is still faster than the fox, it doesn't take him long to catch up and start leading.

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Yes, fine, that's allowed. The fox will follow his lead.

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He strolls between the hills, along a trail that is only occasionally visible, until they come around a particularly tall and rocky cliff to find themselves almost at the foot of his tower.

It's a pretty impressive tower. Tall, fancy, lots of quality stonework. The rather large and imposing doors open silently at their approach.

Permalink Mark Unread

If the doors are large and imposing, then the fox seems not to have noticed. It just - strolls right on in after Isfain. Still slightly miffed.

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Into the spacious and tastefully decorated front hall they go, then.

 

When the doors close behind him, he stretches, runs his hands through his hair, and smiles to himself, very much with the air of someone coming home after a long and stressful day. A shrug dislodges his bag from his shoulder; it vanishes on its way to the floor. He rubs his hands together, strides out into the middle of the mostly-empty room, and starts conjuring things out of thin air—small squares of pale wood, and a pen to mark them with. In only a few seconds, he's sitting on the floor in an awkward-looking sprawl which he seems to find very comfortable, writing all the letters of the alphabet onto wooden squares one by one.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well. Well. Good!

... The fox definitely finds it difficult to stay annoyed at him when he's laboriously writing out every single letter of the alphabet onto wooden squares, just so it can maybe communicate with someone. There is a brief pause as it tries to keep hold of its annoyance, and then fails. With a slightly annoyed huff, the fox strides over to sit next to him and watch him work.

Permalink Mark Unread

As he finishes each square, he blows on it gently to encourage the ink to dry and then sets it down on the floor letter side up. When he puts the last one down (and vanishes his pen), they form a neat half-circle all together, in alphabetical order. He scoots out of the middle of the circle and sits where he can see all the letters clearly, then gestures invitingly at them. "My memory's good enough that I think I can tell what you're saying if you just point to the letters," he says. "I'll let you know if it turns out I've overestimated myself."

Permalink Mark Unread

The fox nods, then scoots where it can point at everything.

Thank you for making these.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're welcome!"

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...

There's an awkward pause.

I'm Aysilvetea, declares the fox, for lack of a better idea.

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"Aysilvetea," he repeats aloud when she finishes pointing to the letters. "That's a pretty name. Were you a person to begin with, then?"

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Thank you. I'm still she begins, then she shakes her head and flicks her tail, annoyed. I'd been human, yes.

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"I meant as opposed to having started out as a fox and got the eyes and the mind later," he clarifies. "I suppose in a sense this way is more promising. It would take a truly bizarre level of dedication to learn how to turn people into foxes, but whoever did it was almost certainly a classically educated wizard using ordinary life magic. Turning a fox into a fox-shaped person is the sort of thing you can't do without first learning an obscure branch of necromancy."

Permalink Mark Unread

Exciting. I think defense mechanism against tampering. Music box.

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"A music box. Really? Wow."

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I know. I wish I could bite the person that made it.

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"Understandably so!"

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Or make him eat nothing but— she stops, and shakes her head again. Will you help? Pause. Please?

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"Of course. I'm not sure how fast I can fix it, but I'm sure that I can. It's just a matter of figuring out how the transformation worked and then reversing it." He smiles crookedly. "And I almost certainly won't have to learn any necromancy."

Permalink Mark Unread

Thank you. I kept the music box, if looking at it would help.

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"...Kept it where?" he asks, blinking at her.

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In a hole in my yard. I didn't want it going anywhere. It was cathartic.

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"I imagine so. Well, I'm not eager to go poke it; I'm probably safe from being turned into a fox, but I wouldn't like to find out the hard way that I was wrong about that. But if if I think it'll be helpful enough to be worthwhile, I might go have a look."

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes, please do not also become a fox. That would be very inconvenient.

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"Less of a setback than you might think, but not completely harmless either."

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She nods, then curls her tail around herself and looks at him.

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He looks back at her, thoughtfully.

"Is there anything you need right now? Something to eat or drink?"

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Food, please. I'm so sick of hunting.

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"Sure."

He makes a gesture as though spreading an invisible tablecloth over the floor, and a tablecloth appears in his hands and unrolls neatly; the draft as it settles down pushes the last few letters of the alphabet out of place, and he absently taps them back into their neat half-circle, then starts pulling plates of food out of thin air. Bread, sausages, grilled fish - things one might reasonably guess a fox could eat, but nevertheless definitely human food.

Permalink Mark Unread

 


Thank you, she says, after a pause. Then she sits up from her little foxball and begins eating. Daintily. Scarfing all of the food present would probably make her sick.

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Isfain grins delightedly at this spectacle.

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She eats a little bit of everything, because she's really not sure how healthy her diet was before.

Partway through, as she moves on from the sausage to the grilled fish, she notices Isfain's gaze. She returns it, and tilts her head in an unspoken question.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hmm?"

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You're smiling at me.

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"Oh, I guess I was. It's—nice to feel like I'm off to a good start in helping you. And you have charming table manners."

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Oh. Thank you.

This having been communicated, she returns to eating. With the most fantastic table manners.

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It's so charming!

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She's a little surprised that he finds her this charming, but okay.

Soon enough, she eats her fill. She's a fox, it's not like she has a very large stomach. And, well, she's. Not been eating well for a while. She doesn't want to push it.

When she's finished, she asks, Now what?

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose I could make up one of the guest rooms for you. Although I'm not quite sure how to be properly hospitable to a fox. Suggestions?"

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Fox box, with blankets to snuggle in, she says, immediately. Maybe a little door or something so I can go outside, if that's possible.

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"There's only the one door, but I can have it open for you."

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She decides not to take the time to spell out her sentences, in favor of giving a little happy yip.

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He giggles.

"All right, give me a minute and I'll have a guest room set up for you," he says, and he stands up and steps into thin air and disappears.

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She barks agreeably, then settles down to think about what other things she might want, now that she's in a position to ask for things.

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It's closer to five minutes before he reappears.

"You have a box!" he says brightly. "And all the doors in the house will open and close if you tap them with your paw. Your room's this way, if you'd like to see it."

(He flutters his fingers at the remaining dishes of food, and they disappear.)

Permalink Mark Unread

Affirmative yip!

But also: Bath?

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"Hmm. I have baths, of course, but they're not very fox-sized... I can probably come up with something smaller if you like."

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She nods agreeably. The soap's more important. Nothing really smelly?

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"I expect I can manage that! Let me show you to your room and then I'll go fiddle with the bath problem."

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Affirmative yip! She hops to her feet and trails after him.

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On their way out of the front hall, he flicks his fingers at the alphabet and vanishes it; when they arrive in her room, he flicks his fingers at the floor and the alphabet appears there.

It's a nice room. Obviously meant for human guests, but he's put in a cozy little blanket-lined box, with a pile of small pillows next to it in case she turns out to prefer that. There's a little water fountain on the floor in case she gets thirsty. The box and pillows and blankets and fountain all match the blue-and-silver theme of the room's other decor.

Permalink Mark Unread

Aww! How cute.

She gives a little approving bark.

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He grins at her. "I'll go see about that bath," he says, and vanishes again.

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He sure does that a lot, doesn't he.

Well, she can just investigate her room while he's away. She does that. She has some water, too, while she's at it.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's a very nice room. Isfain is apparently a talented interior decorator, in addition to a decent singer and a frighteningly powerful wizard. One wonders what unexpected skill he'll turn out to have next.

 

After about ten minutes, there's a strange noise from behind a tapestry hanging on the wall, and around the edges of the tapestry she can see the stone wall rippling like water and a wooden door appearing as though floating to the surface. The door opens, the tapestry vanishes, and Isfain steps through.

"There, all set," he says, theatrically dusting off his hands. "Do you need help with the bath or should I leave you to it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

... Wait, what? Was that room already there, or did he just casually change the layout of his house? Forget the bath, she must investigate the architecture.

Did you rearrange your house just for a bath? I wouldn't have minded going down the hall for it.

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"Well, I didn't have a fox-sized bathroom," he says reasonably. "So if I had to make one anyway, I thought I might as well put it here."

The bathroom is small and cozy and has a fox-sized bath with what are probably magical fixtures, and pleasantly bland soaps, and soft fluffy towels stored at fox-reachable heights. The decor and the towels match the theme of her bedroom.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's a very pretty room, and everything, but:

But what had been there before?

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"...hmm? Oh," he says. "Nothing at all. If you left the room and went around to where the other side of that wall is, there wouldn't be a fox bathroom there. I think it's a linen closet but I might be misremembering the layout. I didn't replace anything to make the room, I just - made an extra bit of space and attached it here."

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She stares at him like he's grown a second head.

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"I can try to explain the magical theory if you like, but most people don't get any less confused after I tell them how it works."

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Try me, she invites.

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"Well, all right."

He sits down on the floor.

"Vanishing is probably the world's most neglected magical discipline; wizards look down on it because you don't need four years of study to get any good at it, and hardly anyone else knows how it works. But I like it. It's useful. And one of the first things you learn how to do with vanishing is - I suppose you could call it 'folding space'."

He pulls a small wooden hoop out of thin air, big enough for Aysilvetea to step through. Then he pulls another, identical hoop out of thin air. Then he puts the two hoops together, and spins them around to show her what they look like from all angles - just a perfectly ordinary pair of wooden hoops held together so they behave like one.

Then he pulls them apart, and turns them both so that what was the outward-facing side of each is now facing toward the fox. And... it's like he turned them into a pair of linked magical portals: when you look into one, you see out of the other. It's a little unsettling. Especially with how he did it so casually. Powerful magic is supposed to be more difficult than that.

"So that's how you make a door that leads to somewhere other than the other side of the wall it's in. With me so far?"

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She plods over to sit next to him, watching the hoops thoughtfully. She nods.

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He taps one of the hoops to break the connection between them, then taps it again to vanish it, leaving him with only the first hoop; then he vanishes that too.

"And then you can also fold space in a different way, so that instead of making two places behave like they're the same place, you're making one place behave like it's bigger or smaller than it really is. The simplest trick is a box that's bigger on the inside."

He pulls a shallow wooden box out of thin air, opening the large square lid to show her that it's only a few inches deep; then he closes it, and runs his finger along the diagonal of the lid in an oddly precise movement, and opens it again, and now instead of being a few inches deep it's big enough for Aysilvetea to sit inside. The box doesn't seem to mind that in order to have that much space inside it, it would have to extend down into the floor. He picks it up and knocks on the bottom to demonstrate that it hasn't changed shape, then sticks his hand in to demonstrate that it really does have more space inside it than it used to.

Permalink Mark Unread

After thoughtfully looking at the box, she hops back over to her letters and says, Are the gestures required?

Permalink Mark Unread

He laughs. "Caught that, did you? Yes, they are. The way you do vanishing magic is by - thinking of what you want to do in a certain way, and linking it to a gesture or motion you intend to make, and then completing the gesture exactly as planned. The more difficult the magic you're trying to do, the more precisely you have to plan and execute the gesture. Which is why I think all wizards who are serious about the craft should learn sleight of hand, and probably also some acrobatics, but for some reason they consider that sort of thing beneath them. Even more so than alchemy, which I also think all serious wizards should learn."

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Why's that? she wonders, ears twitching curiously.

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"Because I don't think it's a coincidence that the seven alchemic metals are exactly the same as the seven metals of magical amplification. There's all sorts of interesting correspondences that alchemists have known about for centuries that wizards either don't believe in or don't think are important. Did you know true healing magic is easier on the full moon? Because the moon is the celestial guardian of silver, which is the amplification metal for healing. Oh, but I shouldn't start talking about healing magic or we'll be here all week."

Permalink Mark Unread

Aysilvetea lets out a little vulpine giggle.

I did know that. She looks faintly amused. Though I didn't know why. You can talk while I bathe? This is fascinating.

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He laughs. "Sure. The celestial guardians affect all the other elements too - life magic is easier under the sun, air magic under the Quiet Star, earth magic under the Crown Star and so on. But the difference is mostly subtle enough that you wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it, so I can forgive them for not paying attention. What I find inexcusably silly is the way everyone uses life magic for healing, even though healing magic is better at it, which they'll give all kinds of excuses for but I'm pretty sure traces back to the fact that gold is a more prestigious metal than silver, which it owes to the alchemical hierarchy. It's ridiculous!"

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She sets about figuring out how the bath works and how she can get it running. It's clear she's still listening to him, though, because she lets out another little giggle.

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"Magic makes so much more sense when you look at the elements through the lens of alchemic correspondences. Light and life are the elements of the sun, linked to gold, sunstone, citrine, and the colour yellow. Water and healing are the elements of the moon, linked to silver, moonstone, sapphire, and the colour blue. Lightning and mind are the elements of the Dawn Star, linked to copper, garnet, topaz, and the colour orange. Last I heard, wizards hadn't even figured out that garnet was the other amplification gemstone for lightning! Fire and ice are the elements of the Blood Star, linked to iron, carnelian, ruby, and the colour red; earth and poison are the elements of the Crown Star, linked to tin, jade, emerald, and the colour green; shadow and death are the elements of the Dark Star, linked to lead, obsidian, onyx, and the colour black; and air and song are the elements of the Quiet Star, linked to mercury, pearl, diamond, and the colour white. By the way, d'you remember when I said that giving a fox the mind of a person would require an obscure branch of necromancy? That's because what we call necromancy is actually just the use of the elements death and mind. They go together like that because most of what you can do with both of them is horrible, so they have a bad reputation and are mostly only studied by people who intend to do horrible things, which contributes further to the reputation, and around it goes."

Permalink Mark Unread

She's going to want to make a chart of this later, isn't she. Of course she is. It's a pity she doesn't have any opposable thumbs, otherwise she might be tempted to do that now. It's also a pity that her father never got the chance to talk to Isfain; she expects they would have gotten along like a house on fire. At least while discussing alchemy, anyway.

Oh no, she made herself sad. Luckily, she's figured out how to make there be water, which is quite distracting enough to keep her from being randomly sad. There's even a way to fiddle with the temperature, which she figures out through experimentation. Soon enough, she hops into the little fox-sized tub to soak and listen to his lecture.

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"Please complain if I start to bore you, by the way. Anyway, so that's why I think anyone who's serious about magic should learn alchemy. And sleight of hand. And music - song is a tragically underused element. Probably most reasonable people would stop there, but I'm not a very reasonable person, so I also learned knitting and weaving and sewing and pottery and stonecarving and really any other interesting-looking craft I can get my hands on. I start to get restless if I go a few months without learning a new skill. Most of it turns out to be useful for something - magic can't ever conjure something from nothing, even the things I can pull out of thin air in arbitrary quantities have to come from somewhere to start with, so the more things I know how to make, the more things I can have. Stonecarving was almost pure self-indulgence, though, I can use magic to reshape stone however I like, I just wanted to find out how it works when you can't do that."

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She isn't bored. This is still pretty fascinating, and also kind of adorable. She giggles, again.

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"Anything I learn how to do with my hands makes me a little better at vanishing, though, so it wasn't completely useless."

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Agreeable yip!

... Speaking of hands. Someone doesn't have any. Um. This is maybe a problem. Soaking in a tub is all well and good, but uh. She would like to be clean. Well. He did offer to help, earlier, and it's not like she's asking someone to help her bathe while she's human shaped.

She sniffs the available soaps, selects one that smells the nicest, places it on the edge of the tub, and yips, again. Giving him big sad fox eyes.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aww," he says. "Sure, all right."

And he picks up the soap and attempts to help. He has never washed a fox before, but hopefully it won't be too difficult.

Permalink Mark Unread

It seems pretty straightforward! And probably way easier than washing an ordinary fox. This one is cooperative, instead of trying to escape.

She yips at him invitingly, ears perked up. He should talk more.

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"Are you asking me to keep talking about magic? People don't usually do that."

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Affirmative, happy yip!

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"Well, all right. Let's see, where was I - oh, this all started with vanishment, didn't it? Would you like to hear me complain about how the standard wizard education teaches the subject completely wrong?"

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Yip!

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"Happy to oblige!" Scrub scrub. "So the thing you have to understand about wizards is that they are terrible at acknowledging any wizard has ever been wrong about anything. Which means that a lot of what gets taught in schools is just something someone came up with a hundred years ago and decided must be true because it sounded plausible and he couldn't prove it wrong, and now we're stuck with it. My favourite example is half-spaces. A half-space is a vanishing trick: instead of vanishing something to some specific place, you vanish it to - not exactly 'nowhere', but the next best thing - and then it stays exactly as it was the moment it vanished until you bring it back again. The not-exactly-nowhere place is called a half-space, because it's not completely real. And in wizard school they teach you that every person has exactly one half-space, which you can learn to access by doing thus-and-such. Then a little later they teach you how to make a duplication space - which is like a half-space except that once you've put something into it you can take it out again as many times as you want - by doing the exact same thing with a few extra steps. So of course I thought to myself, well, what happens if I do it again without the extra steps? And the answer is, I get another ordinary half-space. I asked my teacher why he was teaching something so obviously wrong, and he said that it was traditional and anyway most people would get hopelessly lost if they tried to use more than three or four different half-spaces because the only way to tell the difference between them is by the way it feels to think about them, which is nearly impossible to write down."

Pause.

"At last count I had two dozen. I don't believe I've ever lost track of one."

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She makes such a face at the story about his teacher. Such a face. It doesn't fit into their traditional way of recording information, therefore it doesn't exist? That's not how information categorization is supposed to work. Revisionism for a tidy explanation only looks tidy, while underneath it's a giant mess of lies and misinformation—

She does let out a little giggle at 'two dozen,' though.

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"I could probably make do with fewer, but this way I can have, for example, a duplication space that has nothing in it but water, and then whenever I want to do magical plumbing I can link the pipes to that space without having to worry about exactly what will come out of it because there is only one thing. And another duplication space dedicated to interior decoration, and a half-space dedicated to garbage disposal - because just as it's impossible to make something out of nothing, it's impossible to make something truly disappear, it always has to go somewhere, and I don't want enormous piles of junk cluttering up the spaces I actually use for things."

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This earns an approving little yip. Yes, excellent, organization. She approves.

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"What I really wish I could do is subdivide them - there isn't really such a thing as parts of a half-space, you see, something is either in it or not in it and there's nothing more to be said about details of location, and I think I would probably not need quite so many half-spaces if I could for example have a space for crafting materials and then divide that into sections for textiles and pottery and so on. But I've been trying for years to figure out a way to do that and as far as I can tell it isn't possible."

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Aww. Yes, that sounds like it would make organization harder. How does she do sympathy as a fox, uh...

... Hand nuzzle? That's comforting, right?

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He grins at her. "Aww, thank you. Well, I think you're all clean, shall I fetch you a towel?"

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Affirmative yip!

She patiently does not shake the water off of her. That would get it all over him. She will wait for the towel.

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Towel! It's extremely soft and fluffy. The cuddliest towel.

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The cuddliest towel bestows upon her its powers! Of being soft and fluffy. ... Possibly a bit too much of that second one. She is now very fluffy.

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...Isfain giggles.

"My goodness," he says. "You've puffed up like a dandelion."

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She looks at him imperiously, then down at herself. Then back up at him.

Then she barks once, hops out of the tub, steals a towel from the fox-friendly towel rack, and gleefully scampers out of the room to leap onto the bed at full speed. Where she proceeds to roll all over the towel.

She's cleeaaaaaan!

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Well now he's giggling even harder!

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She rolls around on the towel for a little while, then hops off the bed with it, and drags it to her fox box. Upon reflection, though, this is clearly not enough towel. Luckily, this is a solvable problem. In the interests of solving it, she scampers back to Isfain, barks again, steals the towel he was using, and drags it to her fox box as well, where she makes a more suitable towel nest. That she doesn't use, in favor of running a few laps around the room because wheeee she's clean shut up she's a fox she's allowed to act ridiculous every now and then!

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This is just unbearably adorable.

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Run run run run run wheeeee!!!

She decides that just running around the room is boring, and ventures into the bathroom. ... Too quickly. She loses balance, over corrects, and ends up sprawled on her back at Isfain's feet. She barks happily up at him, quite unharmed.

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"You're incredibly charming, you know that?"

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Happy bark!

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Aaaa she's so cute!

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Well clearly the answer to that is to roll around on his feet! Adorably! Ha! Take that, feared trickster, this little fox has reduced you to impotent giggling! She has gained victory this day!

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The feared trickster doesn't seem to mind this at all.

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She yips at him and hops to her feet and resumes zooming around her bedroom. Wheeee!

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He sits on the floor and hugs his knees and watches her.

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Eventually, she tires herself out, and plods over next to him to sit down. She gives a satisfied, happy little whumpf.

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He smiles affectionately at her and pets her soft fluffy head.

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Oh, gosh! She hasn't been pet before.

...

She turns out to like it. She turns out to like it a lot. He can keep doing that. That's pretty great.

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Awww!!!!!!!

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She makes a happy contented little extended chirping sound and snuggles his hand.

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What a good soft fox. Pet pet pet.

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Eeeee.

... Something occurs to her. Her ears perk up and she gently extracts herself to go over to her letters.

Brush? she requests, looking up at him.

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"Hm!"

He thinks for a moment, and then pulls a brush out of thin air that seems suitable for brushing foxes.

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Well then!

She prances back to him and plops down for brushies.

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Brushie brushie brushie!!

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Eeeeeeeeeeee!

Yes good. Happy chirping noises may resume.

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Oh no she is so good and soft and fluffy and adorable.

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Aaaa this is so nice she's so happy. She's warm and well fed and safe and clean and able to communicate with someone and her personhood is actually respected and she's being brushed and and and.

Does he want to be snuggled? Because she kind of wants to snuggle him.

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He is absolutely delighted to be snuggled!

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Then he shall be snuggled! She's still slightly damp but she is so soft and so clearly happy to be here!

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Snuggle snuggle brush brush.

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Haaappy chiiirpiiing noiiiises!!

She is the happiest fox. Ever. In all of time.

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Also the softest and the cuddliest!!!!

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Yes, these are also true.

She's just going to curl up in his lap and nap on him. Okay? Okay.

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Okay.

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Snuggle zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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After a few minutes, he carefully teleports them both up onto the room's human-sized bed, so he can curl up with her and snuggle her comfortably while she sleeps.

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She cooperates with this move, in that she nestles closer to her source of warmth and otherwise does not notice the change at all.

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Oh good! Then they can have cozy naptime.

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Sounds good to her.

 

She twitches awake several hours later. For a brief moment, she doesn't know where she is, or why she's so comfortable and full and warm, and the first thing she thinks is, If this is an afterlife I'm very disappointed. Then a second later she remembers, and relaxes again. She snuggles closer to Isfain.

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Isfain has by this point fallen asleep himself, and is curled up cozily around his small soft new friend.

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Yeah, that's understandable.

She doesn't actually want to relocate to her fox box, though. This is nice. It's been such a long time since she's had any contact with anyone. She'll just snuggle him and quietly wait until she calms down.

Eventually she gets back to sleep.

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So cozy a nap!

 

When Isfain wakes up again, he conjures a book to read. One of his magical theory texts, with a focus on life magic. Might as well get started on the problem.

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He has a while to study by himself, but eventually his vulpine snuggle buddy yawns and stirs, blinking at him sleepily.

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He smiles and pets her. "Did you have a good nap?"

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She makes a little affirmative yip and nuzzles him, a little shyly.

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Aww. Pet pet.

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Aw. Scritches help make her feel better.

She noses at the book curiously.

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"Reading up on life magic," he explains.

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Ooo!

She makes a little happy yip, and scoots up so she can read over his shoulder. While snuggling him.

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He sprawls out comfortably so he can easily hold the book where she can see.

It's kind of dense and assumes a lot of context she mostly doesn't have, but that does look to be a magical theory text about life magic.

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Eh. She's not expecting to understand everything. She just wants something to do. And she hasn't gotten to read anything in a while; this is interestingly novel. Besides, she likes the snuggles.

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They're very cozy snuggles! Isfain appreciates them too.

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He's honestly the most adorable trickster. Ever. In all of time.

... But she would like breakfast. She gently nudges him, then points with her nose at her stomach.

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"Oh, right—"

He sits up, and pets her, and pulls a side table close to the edge of the bed and conjures plates of food onto it.

"There you are. I should probably eat something too, come to think." Another couple of plates appear.

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He gets an affectionate (cold) nose for his trouble!

Then she goes to eat. Nom!

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The cold nose may possibly cause a small squeak.

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Awwwww. Aw aw aw.

Nevermind, she takes it back, eating can wait in favor of making a soft apologetic fox noise. Sorry, Isfain. She uh, forgets her nose is cold sometimes. Have an apologetic nuzzle before she goes and actually eats.

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He laughs softly. "I forgive you."

Food!

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Food!

She doesn't eat as much this time; she's still digesting from earlier, and also maybe recovering a little from malnutrition. Best not to push it. Lots of little meals are the way to go, she thinks.

When she's done, she returns to snuggling him. Hey, it's nice, she's had a tough time of it, why not?

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Cozy snuggles!!!

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Yep!

She'll probably get bored eventually. For now, though, she wants to just not have to worry about things for a little while. And have positive human interaction. She can read over his shoulder and try to figure out just what's going on to amuse herself.

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Isfain reads his book and pets his small soft friend.

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His small soft friend is so affectionate!

... She wishes she could ask questions, though. Technically she could, but she doesn't really want to slow down his research just for her own curiosity, and hopping over to her letters to spell out what she wants to say takes a while. She'll just - wonder about the foundations of the concepts this book speaks of, tail twitching thoughtfully. (Safely away from Isfain, she will not be tickling him.)

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Well, if she doesn't say anything, the snuggly reading may just go on until he has finished the entire book.

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That sounds pretty okay to her, really.

She does eventually get bored of failing to understand the book, and curls up to have Even More Nap. (She has been a little bit sleep deprived, lately.)

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Aww. Small soft sleepy friend.

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She's so happy!

This nap is much shorter than the last two though; more of a catnap. She stirs awake and yawns, stretching. Then she gives him a little affectionate nose (carefully aimed to prevent cold nose) and gently disentangles herself so she can go take care of Foxly Business. That being, drinking some water, and also going outside to handle, uh. Foxly business.

She returns soon after, to resume cuddles.

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When she comes back, he smiles and puts down his book for a moment so he can greet her with a hug.

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Awww!

Well then, she will just have to flop on him affectionately. Flop!

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Awwww. He appreciates this flop very much. It is a good flop.

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Yes!

Snuggles can now resume. Snuggles and reading.

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Snuggles and reading! An excellent combination.

 

When he finishes the book, he puts it down and stretches out and pets Aysilvetea some more.

"I'm going to guess you didn't have the background to follow most of that," he says. "Wizards like making their writing intentionally obscure, it makes them feel important."

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She makes an annoyed harrumphing sound and rolls her eyes. Yes, wizards do that. Some wizards aren't assholes, but as an organization... well, they're kind of assholes.

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"Well. The relevant part is that there's approximately two ways the creator of that music box could've set his trap," he says. "One of them would take him years of study to figure out how to do and would take me only slightly fewer years of study to figure out how to reverse, unless I'm a lot smarter than he is, which I very well might be. The other one is a little more work for him and a lot less work for me. It depends on whether he intended for you to ever stop being a fox or not. If he meant to be able to reverse it - say, if he was thinking ahead and realized he might get caught in his own trap, or if he was feeling generous and only wanted the transformation to last for a year or two before wearing off - then he would've done it the second way and thereby made my life a whole lot easier. If he was lazy and shortsighted and did it the first way, then instead of figuring out how to lift a fox-transformation spell I have to figure out how to turn a fox into a human, which is much more difficult, especially because I assume you would rather end up looking more or less the same way you did before all this nonsense, which means I'd need to find some way to turn you into a specific human."

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Affirmative bark. Then she noses him affectionately and hops over to her letters. One is slightly askew from her earlier running; she fixes it.

Would the music box help? she asks.

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"It might. Or it might turn me into a fox, and then I'd need to figure out how to do magic as a fox, which would be a bit of a hassle. I think for now I'll try to distinguish the two cases just by examining you for traces of magic and seeing what sort of a picture they make. Hopefully you're not rigged to turn people into foxes when tampered with."

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Nod. She hops back onto the bed for snuggles. She does not want to accidentally turn other people into foxes.

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Snuggles! Pet pet pet. So soft.

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She noses him affectionately. Yes, good. She's glad she came to him for this problem, he's handling it so well.

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Well, he's glad she came to him for this problem! She is charming and cozy and he is very glad to know her!

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Being so small and fluffy is convenient! Except for the ways that it's inconvenient. Of which there are many.

She makes an excited little yip, swishing her tail. Is he going to examine her for traces of magic, then?

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Apparently he is going to snuggle her. But the gold ring that just appeared on his finger is probably not a coincidence.

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Aha. Yes, that makes sense. She affectionately noses the hand with the gold ring, and then focuses on snuggling him again. Snuuuuggle snuggle snuggle.

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Snuggle. Snuggle snuggle.

 

And: "Hm," he says after a few minutes. "That's definitely more life magic than I'd expect from a non-reversible transformation. So it's probably the convenient version."

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Her ears perk up and she makes a little happy yip! Tail swish, tail swish.

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Awwww pet pet pet.

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Well, gosh, she guesses the only response is to aggressively snuggle him! Snugglesnugglesnugglesnuggle!

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Goodness, she's so lively. And soft and fluffy and cuddlesome.

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All of those things, yep! Snugglesnugglesnuggle.

She finally has a respectable amount of calories in her, and consequently she's energetic, and feeling so affectionate towards him, and she's not allowed to nibble him, not even a little bit, or steal his shoes and bury them in the yard or anything. So she has to channel all of that energy into snuggling, and so she's gonna.

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That is a lot of really enthusiastic snuggling! Isfain is tremendously charmed.

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She aggressively snuggles him, then hops away, scampers around him to the other side of him, and begins aggressively snuggling that side. It wouldn't do if he felt neglected. She is an equal opportunity snuggler.

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Well now he's just giggling helplessly.

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Snuuuuugglesnugglesnuggle...

Okay. That is probably enough aggressive snuggles. She can instead flomp on him affectionately for more toned down snuggles. So he can be free to do other things besides 'be aggressively snuggled by a fox.'

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Aww, affectionate flomping.

"You're terribly charming," he says, petting her.

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Affirmative yip!

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He scoops her up in his arms and nuzzles the top of her head, because she is cute and soft and good.

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She giggles a little vulpine giggle, and nuzzles him back.

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Snuggle-nuzzle-pet-pet. Such fluff. So soft. So good.

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Awwwww. He's so cute. He can have an affectionate nose for his trouble.

She forgets to accommodate for her cold nose, so: it is an affectionate cold nose.

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He squeaks, then giggles.

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Oh no!

Apologetic nuzzle. She's sorry.

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"It's all right." Pet pet.

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Happy yip.

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Nuzzle. "You're so cute."

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Happy yip! Affectionate nuzzle.

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What a good soft cozy friend!!!!!!

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Yep! Sprawled affectionately on him and everything.

Though she does thoughtfully nose the hand with the gold ring on it, and then give him a questioning look. Is there anything he needs to do to examine her further? She doesn't want to interrupt his work just for snuggles.

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"Hmm? Oh. Yes, I'm still paying attention," he says. "If the spell does have a defense against tampering, the easiest way to avoid triggering it is to do all my information-gathering very very passively."

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She yips an affirmative, and returns to snuggling. Just checking.

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Snuggle. Soft fox soft fox soft fox.

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Eee.

It's kind of cute how charmed he is by her adorable fox form. Is he going to be terribly disappointed when she's human again and he doesn't have an adorable fox around for snuggles? Is she going to be terribly disappointed when she can no longer snuggle people adorably? She doesn't know. But at least she has adorable snuggles now. Snuggle snuggle.

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Isfain gives no sign of being worried about these questions. He just pets the soft fox.

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The soft fox is okay with this.

Eventually, though, she gets bored. She noses the book and gives a little yip.

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"—what, do you want to read it again? Or just read a book in general?"

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Yip-yip. That probably translates to the second option?

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"Sure, all right."

He vanishes the magical theory book, and appears a book of humorous poems in its place.

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He earns an affectionate nose for his trouble, and then she carefully opens the book and begins reading. It's a bit of a trial, without opposable thumbs, but she manages.

... She starts giggling soon enough. Little adorable fox giggles.

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Adorable fox giggles are the best!

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The adorable fox certainly thinks so!

Poetry usually isn't her kind of thing, but there's something sort of charming about reading humorous poems right now? It invites her into a place of otherworldly silliness, or something. Where all the troubles in the world are either far away or can be carefully nestled into stanzas where they won't hurt anyone. Maybe she's just so starved for reading that she'd read literally anything put in front of her. Either way, this is nice.

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Isfain pets her and reads over her shoulder.

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Yes, excellent.

She requests another meal eventually, and then another book, and she gets up to go get water, but they can just sort of. Comfortably snuggle. All day.

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Isfain also has to get up once or twice, but yep, snuggling all day seems to be where it's at.

 

A little while after sunset, he makes a thoughtful 'hm' noise. "I should probably go sleep in my own actual bed at some point."

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She makes an amused little snort and nods agreeably. He may have an affectionate nose, though, for his trouble.

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He giggles and hugs her. "You're very charming and I like you very much," he says. "Goodnight."

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She nuzzles him, and yips an approximation of 'Goodnight.'

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He pets her and nuzzles her and vanishes, presumably to bed.

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D'aww.

She'll go to bed eventually, but she thinks for right now she wants to explore the house. She's been cuddled in bed all day, she has a lot of energy, let's do something with it.

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The house: is big! And towery! And extremely well-decorated! Which is even more impressive given the implication that Isfain personally handmade most of the decorations!

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Gosh! Yes, that's actually really impressive. And she likes the fact that it's a tower more than she'd expected to, it's all... tidily tower shaped. She shall sniff everything in here, it is her Foxly Duty.

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There are many sniffable things. So many. Possibly more than she can sniff in one night.

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Hmm. Yes, this is true. She finishes off a room, conducts further business outside, and then heads to her fox box to sleep. She can investigate more later. For now: zzzzz...

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Her fox box is cozy and comfortable, and nothing interrupts her during the night.

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She wakes up warm and dry and safe and it's glorious. She takes a little while to sprawl out and think about this. While she hadn't precisely taken any of them for granted when she was a human, nothing quite introduces someone to how nice their life was like, well. Suddenly being a very fragile fox that has to scrape and hunt to survive.

Eventually she decides that even if she's not super hungry, she should eat something, so she gets to her feet and goes looking for Isfain.

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Isfain can be found sprawled on a couch in one of his lovely well-decorated sitting rooms, around a corner from her guest room, reading another magical theory book.

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D'aww.

She gives a friendly greeting yip, and hops up next to him and inserts herself in a proper snuggling location.

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"Good morning!" Pet pet. "Would you like breakfast?"

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Affirmative happy bark!

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He unsprawls enough that he can reach over and pull a small table closer to the couch, and then appears some plates of food on it, and then re-sprawls and goes back to his book.

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She gives him an affectionate nose, then hops into reach of the table and begins eating. Dainty as ever.

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She is the most charming of foxes.

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Yes. Though, to be fair, she does have a massive advantage of intelligence and human context. So. It'd be kind of pathetic if she lost out to a completely ordinary fox.

She finishes eating, then hops back over to the Optimal Snuggling Position, where she can snuggle him and read.

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He pets her and vanishes the plates.

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Excellent. Then they shall snuggle, and she shall read over his shoulder. And probably not have any idea what the book is talking about.

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Yep, it's another one of those unreasonably obscure wizard books.

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How did she guess.

She'll try to understand anyway, at least for now. If she gets bored she can go back to exploring the tower.

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This one is actually even less comprehensible than the one about life magic, because it's mainly about ritual magic and assumes the reader has been studying ritual magic for at least three years.

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Oh. Oh wow. Oh, yes, she has no idea what the heck it's talking about. At. At all. Okay.

She's just. She's just going to stop reading that entirely in favor of snuggling him. Snuuuuggle.

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Pet pet.

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Aww. Yes, she can stick around for a little while for scritches. They're pretty great.

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Soft fox!!!

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She is! And he's comfortable to snuggle and scritches are great!

..… Eventually she does get bored, though. Hm. She noses his book and makes a little yip.

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"Hmm?"

Oh, that reminds him that there are no letters on the floor in this room. He flicks his fingers and appears some.

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Aaaugh she guesses she'll exit snuggles just for the sake of communication. If she has to. He gets an affectionate nose, and then she hops off him to go spell out, Can I have a book?

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"Oh! Sure."

He pulls a book out of thin air: a collection of southern folk tales.

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She hops back onto the couch and gives him yet another affectionate nose, because it's not like she has a large set of communcation options here. Then she carefully opens the book (so as not to damage it) and begins reading.

Snuggles can resume! And she is not bored, hooray!

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Cozy companionable reading!

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Yes! Turning the pages on her own is a little tricky, but she manages okay. Without horribly mangling the book, even.

She's content to stay like this for a while.

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Eventually he summons lunch.

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Lunch!

Is he the type to eat while reading, or can she attempt to question him about his progress on the book? She's curious!

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He is not reading while he eats!

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Affectionate nose. Inviting yip?

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"Mm?"

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She hops down to her letters and explains, I like hearing you talk.

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"That's an unusual preference to have!"

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Are you complaining?

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"Well. No. All right, what do you want me to talk about?"

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I'm not picky. Whatever you like.

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"I have to say, it's very flattering how you're so interested in hearing me talk. Well. How about my attempt at an introductory lecture on ritual magic? I'm not really a teacher but I'd like to think I'm not awful at explaining things."

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Affirmative yip! Her need for letters has passed for now, and snuggles may resume. She summarily hops back up to snuggle him.

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Pet pet.

"Okay. So the first thing you need to know about ritual magic is that it's pretty much exactly as difficult and intricate as it sounds like, and a lot of very smart people have been trying for a very long time to come up with shortcuts, so if you think of a clever way to skip a lot of the work you're probably just wasting your own time trying it. But the second thing you need to know about ritual magic is that sometimes wizards are idiots, so once you've put in the time to understand the basics, one of the most useful things you can do is learn all you can about one of the advanced specialties and then sit down and go through it all experimenting to see what they got wrong. That's most of the proper wizarding research I've ever done, although of course I can't get it published anywhere because real wizards think I'm a disreputable lunatic and writing books about how dumb they are is hardly going to help."

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She gives him an affectionate nose, then nods.

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"So! The basic idea of ritual magic is that it's... rigid, structured, stable, where raw manipulation of the elements is more freeform and immediate. If someone shows up on your doorstep with a broken leg, you can use life or healing to fix the immediate problem; if you want to make a wand that fixes broken legs at a touch, you need to use a ritual to bind and stabilize the magic into a more permanent form. And because it's more rigid and less freeform, it has to be much more complicated to account for all the things that you'd be adjusting for in the moment if you were doing the magic yourself every time. That's why lights are just about the cheapest artifact - they glow, and that's it. The fancier ones glow sometimes and stop glowing other times, which adds about five minutes to a two-minute ritual, and more than that if you want the light to do anything more interesting than start and stop at a specific signal. That kind of complexity is why ritual magic is such a tough subject. It's like... to make a wand that fixes broken legs, you have to make a sort of - guide to fixing broken legs, which the wand carries out as automatically as clockwork every time you use it. And doing that with life instead of healing is about a hundred times harder, which is why healing artifacts are so stupidly expensive. There are artifacts that can react more fluidly, but they are outrageously difficult to make, I can barely do it myself and I'm probably one of the ten most accomplished artificers in the world."

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D'aw. He may have another affectionate nose for his trouble. Yeah, that's shaping up to a hell of an understanding of how absurd it is for someone to bother to make an artifact that can turn someone into a fox. Wow. That's. That's insane, is what that is.

But what's also insane is—don't they just then make artifacts with healing instead? Surely someone does that, don't they? That's just—that's just practical. Sure it makes some sense to learn life over healing in school, even if it's harder, because it's more adaptable. There are more things that can be done with life than healing, objectively. However, it doesn't make more sense to fight a system just to use life when someone's making something specifically geared towards healing anyway, and an insistence on sticking to life is wasting valuable time and energy. She needs to verify that these idiots don't actually do that. They don't actually do that, right? No one could be that stupid. ... Right? Right?

She hops down to her letters and says, Do they actually insist on making all of their healing artifacts with life?

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"Oh, of course. Conventional wisdom is that life is just strictly better than healing. Most wizards, if you asked, would say healing is about as useful as poison - it only does one thing, and it's a thing you can almost always get more conveniently elsewhere if you need it at all. Using healing to heal is looked down on in sort of the same way you'd look down on someone for using substandard materials in a craft."

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She stares at him.

But it's faster to make healing artifacts with healing instead of life, isn't it?

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"Yes, but by the point where they're in a position to notice that sort of thing, everyone who might try it has already had the experience of the first ten clever ideas they came up with for making ritual magic work better being wrong and counterproductive, usually in ways that hundreds of other clever students had been wrong and counterproductive before them. It takes exceptional stubbornness or exceptional arrogance to make it all the way through the first three years of education in ritual magic and still feel like you probably know better than the accepted wizarding authorities."

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She considers this. It sounds like the wizarding community is not conducting itself in the most efficient manner of discovering how magic works.

She decides, very resolutely, that she will not stand for it.

Will you teach me ritual magic, so that I can churn out hundreds of healing based healing artifacts, sell them to the populace, and aggressively flout everything wizards think is good and decent?

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As she spells out this sentence, he grins progressively wider.

"That sounds like a fantastic idea!"

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She lets out a little happy yip, then hops back up to snuggle him. ... Kind of aggressively. More affectionately than energetic, this time.

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He giggles and pets her.

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Snuuuuggle.

Okay. She will free him. He is allowed to do things in addition to snuggling his soft fox friend. She doesn't want to monopolize his time.

(... Well, only a little.)

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He can pet her and eat lunch at the same time! He has this power.

"And I think that was about as much introductory lecture as I can give you without getting into the specifics of how rituals are done, and I think I'd be much more effective at teaching that if I could show you, so it will have to wait until after lunch at the very least. And you might prefer that I focus on finding your cure before I start seriously trying to teach you."

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Affirmative, wry yip! Yes, being human shaped again takes precedence over her budding ambition to grab the wizard community and give them a good, firm shake.

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Pet pet. "Yeah, I suspected as much."

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Affectionate nose. She'd snark if she had an easier way to communicate than letters, but she does not.

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He snuggles her cheerfully.

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Snuggle!

They can snuggle for a while; she'll go back to reading her book.

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Cozy reading? Cozy reading.

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Cozy reading!

She has to turn the pages with her nose and be very careful about not hurting the pages, but just getting to read at all is, well. Still pretty novel. Nevermind on wandering off to explore the tower some more, they can just snuggle and read. For the second day in a row.

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It's so cozy!

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It is!

She is content to spend the rest of the day like this.

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They can read cozily until dinner and then have dinner and then snuggle some more, how about.

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Wellllll...

If she has nothing to read after dinner, she might instead adorably bounce around the room with all of the extra energy she has from all of these wonderful calories she's eating for a little while. What about that? Is that also acceptable?

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Yes! Yes it is!

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Excellent! Then she's going to go be an energetic little floof and bounce around the room. Then out of the room. Then back into the room, onto the couch for a very brief boop with her nose, then out of the room again.

Once she has been sufficiently exhausted, then yes, absolutely, snuggles.

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"You're so charming." Pet pet. Soft fox soft fox. Fox so soft.

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Affirmative yip. Yes! She is very charming, she's aware, she's so glad he noticed! Also soft. She is that too.

Snuggle, snuggle.

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What a good small soft fluffy friend.

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What a good disreputable lunatic wizard friend!

She believes she shall nap on him.

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This seems like a fine idea.

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She thought so!

Zzzzzzzz...

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Awwwww she is so soft and fluffy and cozy and sleepy and good.

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And napping on him! She is that, too!

She naps for a little over an hour, then yawns and snuggles closer.

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He pets the soft fox. So soft a fox.

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She hums a little contented sigh. It's a pity she probably won't get to just - shapeshift into a fox whenever she wants. ... That's not a thing she can get, right? Because if it is a thing she can get due to that stupid music box, she wants it.

.... She does not want to interrupt snuggles to ask, though. That can be a tomorrow question.

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Soft fox soft fox soft fox. So good and so soft.

 

...hm. Yeah, he really likes her, doesn't he.

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She probably likes him back, at least a little. Judging from the snuggles.

Or the way she has maybe noticed his fond gaze. And returns it.

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He smiles down at her.

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Without warning, she leans up and boops his nose. Boop!

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—he giggles. And leans down and kisses the top of her head.

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She blinks, surprised.

Then she gives him an affectionate little nose, and promptly hides her face in his shoulder.

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...aw. He pets her gently. "Sorry, should I not have?"

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Aw. No, she doesn't feel that he shouldn't have. She's just embarrassed.

She leans up and boops his nose again. A little shyly, she shakes her head. Then, back to hiding.

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"Oh good."

Then he can just continue petting her while she hides.

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Hiiiiide hide hide hide.

... Okay it's getting annoying to breathe like this, she'll just. Tentatively stop hiding. And go back to snuggling. A little shyly.

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Snuggle snuggle. Soft fox.

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Soft fox!

... Shy, soft fox!

She has some things to think about, doesn't she. Snuggling is good for while she's thinking.

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She is so good and small and soft. And cute. And shy. And pettable and cozy.

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She is!

... And she maybe has a crush on him. Or. Well. Probably. She probably has a crush on him. Whoops. That was fast.

A lot of it could be that she has had kind of a terrible time as a fox. Then he scooped her up and invited her to his tower, where he took care of her and treated her well and made sure she was safe and well fed and happy. Those things have turned out to be pretty damn important to have, and he's just. Casually given them to her. This accounts for some of her general warm fuzzies towards him, but not all of it. He's smart and funny and sweet and cute and explains magic so well and, uh, admittedly is nice to look at. She thinks that she'd have liked him even without the whole fox business. Well, once he stopped lying to her by omission about who he was, anyway.

Musing over what-ifs won't get her very much, though. She tries to be a bit more practical. Unfortunately for her, she's a fox. This makes romantic entanglements a little bit trickier. Putting aside the obvious issues inherent in one member of a romantic duo being a fox, she is not a magic talking fox. Even with the letters, her ability to communicate is handicapped, and it's kind of easy to get along with an adorable soft cuddly fox. She'd probably like him a lot less if it turned out they had zero conversational chemistry. She doesn't think that'll happen—he was too delighted to hear her idea about the rituals, and her general way of doing things—but it's possible. It's annoying, that she doesn't have confirmation that they will be able to get along when she's human, but, well. She has now, and now's pretty great.

Paradoxically, it's also a bit fortunate that she's a fox. Since doing anything about... anything.... would be logistically difficult, there's no real rush on figuring things out. She can take her time and sort out her feelings.

In the meantime, she's got snuggles.

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She has so many snuggles.

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She does!

... She would like another book though. She would like to not just be trapped in her own thoughts forever, therefore: book. Book nose?

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He summons her a book and cuddles her some more.

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This outcome shocks her to her very core.

Oh wait, no it doesn't.

She cuddles him back and reads her book happily.

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This one is a very engaging and charmingly written history book about long-dead nations! There are probably some inaccuracies but it's really fun.

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Ooo! Usually history books are much less charmingly written. Insidious little book; it'll persuade her to go look up corroborating evidence to fact check some of the more notable parts in it. Not that she minds.

Though it'll be kind of tricky to look up corroborating evidence while she's a fox. She'll uh. Probably bother Isfain about that. After she's done with this book. Which will probably take a while.

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It starts to get kind of late as she continues reading; Isfain pets her and reads select bits from several different books about magic.

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What is time? There is only history book.

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Isfain yawns and puts his latest book away and cuddles the soft fox and says, "I'm going to bed, goodnight."

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Hm?

Oh. Right. Sleep. Is it late enough for that? ... Uh, judging by her own level of tiredness, yes. Yes it is. Uh. Oops.

She affectionately noses him and yips her little 'Good night' facsimile, then looks critically at her book. ... How the heck is she going to bookmark this.

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Perhaps with this length of ribbon that Isfain just conjured and laid over the page?

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That works!

She closes the book over the ribbon, then boops his nose affectionately because damn it, he's cute.

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He grins at her, and kisses the top of her head again.

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She snorts, a little. Yep. He's still very cute.

This fact well and truly established, she picks up her book, hops off of him, and deposits it on a nearby table.

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"Goodnight," he says again, and disappears presumably to bed.

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She takes a little while to take care of her poor ignored mortal form, then yep. Bed!

The next morning she yawns and stretches and hops out of her fox box to go find Isfain.

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Same sitting room, different sprawl, new book!

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He may have a good morning yip and a snuggle, then! Good morning! Snuggle.

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"Good morning!" Snuggle. "Would you like breakfast?"

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Affirmative yip!

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Breakfast!

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She has breakfast!

Then she fetches her book and picks up where she left off.

This is going to be a theme for them, isn't it.

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Cuddly reading? Yes, yes it is.

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It sounds like a pretty good theme.

She finishes her book, then spends the interim before lunch quietly organizing things she wants to look up later in her mind. It's a pity she can't write it down, but, well. It's not the end of the world if she forgets.

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And then lunch. Cuddly lunch.

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Cuddly lunch!

She finishes before he does, then hops down to her letters and spells, I suppose it's not practical to figure something out to let me switch between fox and human, is it.

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"...well," he says, thoughtfully, "I'm not sure about practical, but I bet I could do it."

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I bet you could too. But it'd be faster to just turn me human?

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"Oh, much. But I could still look into it afterward."

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We'll see how much I'll hate not being able to be a fox once I'm human, then. For now it's just idle musings on the benefits of being fluffy.

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"There definitely seem to be benefits." He leans over and pets her fluffy head.

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She makes a little affirmative yip, and leans into his hand.

I think I'll go exploring today. Let me know if you need me?

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"Of course. Have fun." Pet pet.

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He gets another little affirmative yip! And a hand nuzzle. Nuzzle nuzzle.

Okay, exploration time! Whee!

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It's a big tower! It's really pretty! It has a lot of things in it! And so many well-decorated rooms!

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They're all lovely and she likes looking at them! Learning the layout of this place is nice, too. Though, if she were an all powerful magic user, she'd probably live somewhere a bit smaller. She supposes that since he can teleport it probably doesn't matter much to him if it's enormous. Admittedly, it's very impressive and was probably fun to make.

She explores until her sense of time makes her suspect it's around dinner, and then she goes back to the sitting room with Isfain for dinner and snuggles.

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It is indeed time for dinner and also for snuggles!

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Hooray! Her sense of time is only woefully inaccurate when she's fallen into a book!

She eats, and then she snuggles. It's nice.

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Soft fox soft fox soft fox. So cozy and pettable and good.

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It's kind of adorable how much he clearly enjoys snuggling her.

She requests (and receives) another book, and spends the rest of the evening reading and snuggling.

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They could go on a while like that, snuggling and reading and taking their meals together and having occasional cuddly naps while Isfain does impenetrable magical research and slowly improves his understanding of her fox-related situation.

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They could! For days, even. He has a pretty nice collection of books, and she enjoys reading them. Though she does need breaks to do other things. Snuggles are great and all, but she's a fox, she gets antsy.

One day she decides to take advantage of her acute sense of smell and go exploring in the area around his tower.

When she returns, she looks very pleased with herself, and also more than a little covered in dirt.

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As soon as she comes in the front door, Isfain appears and giggles at her.

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She yips happily up at him, then politely wipes her paws on the doormat. Being stuck as a fox is no reason to track mud through his house, after all.

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"Thank you. You look very adventuresome this morning," he says. "Did you have fun?"

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Affirmative yip!

She hops over to the set of letters he first made, then says, You have a weasel for a neighbor! And some goats.

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"I had seen the goats but not the weasel!"

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It got uppity when I started investigating its den. Very brave little thing, the weasel.

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"Do I still have a weasel for a neighbour?"

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She giggles a little fox giggle. Unless I convinced it to move!

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"Well. I'm glad you had fun."

He comes over to sit on the floor by her letters and playfully taps the end of her nose.

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This earns him another giggle.

I'd snuggle you, but I don't think you'd appreciate the dirt.

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"Yes, I was looking for a clean spot to pet and I didn't see one, other than," tap, "your small adorable nose."

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She makes a little happy yip, then pokes him affectionately with her small adorable nose.

I might need another bath, she says, after a pause.

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"Yes," he agrees, "I think you probably do."

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I didn't mean to get this messy! It just kind of happened.

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"I don't mind!" he assures her. "—Although..."

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Her ears perk up and she looks at him attentively, in lieu of spelling out the obvious question.

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"...It occurs to me that... things were a little different, last time I gave you a bath."

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She blinks up at him, confused.

And then his implication clicks and she ducks her head, suddenly ambushed by an attack of the shy.

A bit, yeah, she agrees.

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"Sorry - it's possible I shouldn't have brought it up - but, well, it didn't seem any better to not bring it up, you know?"

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Little affirmative yip.

It seems better to talk about it than not. It's okay.

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"...You're very charming and I like you very much," he says, smiling down at her.

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Shy fox shy fox shy fox—

You're very charming and I like you very much, too, she manages anyway.

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"I think most of the reason why I've been so snuggly with you is because you're small and cute and soft and - not complicatedly human-shaped - but you are very charming and I do like you very much and I think even when you are complicatedly human-shaped I will still want to pet you and hug you and read with you and kiss you."

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Oh goodness.

She needs a few seconds to figure out what to compose because goodness—spelling out her sentences is the exact wrong intersection of 'unable to immediately say the first thing that occurs to her' and 'requiring a level of pre-planning she's doomed to overthink'—but she eventually collects herself well enough to manage a reply.

I have a giant crush on you that I've been ignoring because I'm a fox, she painstakingly writes. And it's not like you know what I look like or what it's like to properly speak to me, or anything.

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"I don't think I need to know what you look like. And I have a pretty good idea of what it might be like to properly speak to you, and I'm very much looking forward to it."

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She makes a little happy yip and boops him with her nose. She's not allowed to snuggle him because dirt, but she can boop him.

After another break to compose herself:

I could be an eighty-four year old grandmother! You don't know!

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"I bet you aren't. And I'd still want to snuggle you if you were."

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That's very flattering, she informs him, because nothing else is coming to mind.

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"You're very cute, and I don't think all of that is because you're small and soft and fluffy. I don't think even most of it is. I think it's mostly just you being yourself."

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To be fair, it is easier to be cute when I'm a fox.

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"It's much harder to say interesting clever endearing things, and yet you keep managing it!"

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She blinks at him.

Really? I've felt like I haven't had all that many chances to display cleverness.

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"Clearly you've had enough to get the point across. You're - smart and thoughtful and witty and - 'ambitious' isn't quite the word I want - you have things you want to do and you mean to do them."

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Flatterer, she accuses, but she gives a little pleased yip.

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He grins at her and taps the end of her nose again.

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You're sweet. She taps him gently with her nose right back. And I really need a bath, it's getting very hard not to snuggle you.

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"All right. A bath you shall have."

And he teleports them both to her fox-sized bathroom. It's a very neat transition; one moment they're on the floor of the front hall, and then the world seems to slide smoothly in some unspecified direction, and they arrive in the bathroom without any overt sense of movement at all.

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Oh, he can take along passengers! That's convenient.

She yips happily up at him, then hops in the tub and gets to making there be water. At the proper temperature, of course.

Soon enough, there is water!

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And soap! And a helpful assistant!

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All excellent things!

The helpful assistant should talk, though. She noses him and yips encouragingly.

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"—are you telling me I should talk more? I'm going to get such a swelled head at this rate. 'As we all know, listening to me run my mouth is the greatest joy this world offers...'"

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Well, now she's giggling too hard to answer that.

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That qualifies as an answer! Isfain giggles too.

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Soon enough she recovers from her gigglefit, and nuzzles his hand and yips an affirmative.

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"Hmm... so, at this point I think I'm probably going to have a solution to your problem in a few months, sooner if I am very clever and make an unprecedented breakthrough, which I have been known to do on occasion. And then I think I'm going to adapt my defoxing ritual into something I could cast while transformed, just in case, and then ask you to fetch your music box so I can try to reverse-engineer the fox curse and turn it into something voluntary for you."

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Aww! Awwwww! He's a sweetheart.

She trills at him affectionately and nuzzles his hand again.

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"Oh, as though I was ever going to turn down the opportunity to make obscure but fascinating magical advances." Wash wash rinse rinse. "Hmm. I declare this fox officially dirt-free."

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He earns an amused (and somewhat affectionate) look for his answer, and then a happy yip at this declaration.

She is however not water-free, so uh. She's going to just wait patiently in the tub for a towel.

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Towel!

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Floof!

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Helpful towel snuggles! She will be so soft!!

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She giggles a little and snuggles him back. This time she decides not to steal a towel and run off. It's a natural result of feeling very affectionate towards him. She does boop his nose, though. Boop!

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He giggles and kisses the top of her head. Her boops are the cutest of boops.

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She tries her best!

Soon enough, she's about as dry as a towel can make her. She yips affectionately at him and then gently extracts herself from his arms to go find her letters in the next room over.

My turn to shower you in compliments, or should I wait until I'm human and more eloquent?

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"I'm hardly going to turn down compliments just because they're laborious to produce."

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Snort.

You're brilliant, funny, and completely adorable. You've been very sweet, and very thoughtful. You're blatantly delighted with me, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't endearing. I mentioned the massive crush, right? Because: massive crush.

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He flops on the bed and grins down at her. "I am blatantly delighted with you! You're very delightful!"

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Surprisingly enough, I generally don't get a lot of people going, 'aaaa you're delightful!!!!' at me, she replies, amused. For the 'aaa' she holds her paw down on the required letter for noticeably longer than usual.

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Giggle. "I can't imagine why not!"

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Clearly they are blind to my charms. Woe unto them, she snarks, and then she hops up onto the bed for affectionate snuggles.

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Snuggles! Aaaaa she's delightful! The softest fox!

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And so floofy from her recent bath! And so fond of him! Look at her, snuggling him affectionately.

It looks like it might be back to read and snuggle time. Reading pending.

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Mmmm yes good plan. Books, snuggles. A time-honoured tradition.

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A beloved time-honored tradition that she is happy to indulge in!

She's noticeably more affectionate, though. Probably something to do with admitting feelings, or something.

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Yes. Isfain is the same way. He keeps ruffling her fluff and then kissing the top of her head, just because he can.

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Well. Well.

She will just have to lean up and affectionately nose his cheek, then. Fox kiss. Vengeance!

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He giggles. And kisses the end of her nose. So there.

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She gives a little happy yip, nestles slightly closer, and takes a little bit of time away from her book to gaze adoringly. Then he gets another little fox kiss and she settles back to reading.

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Cozy cuddly reading!!!

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Aaaa he's so great and cute and sweet!!

Around dinner she grows bored of reading, but she does not grow bored of snuggles. Snuuuggle snuggle snuggle.

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What a good soft small cozy friend!!!

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His good small cozy friend ends up falling asleep on him. Zzzz...

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This time he stays there to sleep for the night, cuddled up to his floofy friend.

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Well, gosh. This means that she wakes up in his arms. She decides to celebrate this by gazing fondly at him.

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He wakes with a sleepy yawn, opens his eyes, and grins at her.

"Good morning!"

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She yips a cheerful good morning, boops him in the nose, and then hops out of bed to gleefully scamper around the room. Whee!

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He flops on the bed and giggles helplessly.

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Scamper scamper scamper! She hops up onto the bed again, boops him on the cheek, then leaps over him and back onto the floor for more scampering. Whee!

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"I don't know where you get the energy to be that adorable this early in the morning."

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She yips happily, finishes her lap around the bed, then hops back up to prop her head on her paws and look at him with her hazel eyes. Her tail swishes behind her. Then she gives another little yip and leaps forward to boop his nose.

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He disentangles a hand from the blankets to pet her.

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Well, his hand may get an affectionate nuzzle, then! Nuzzle nuzzle.

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He laughs and kisses the top of her head.

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She yips happily and goes back to nuzzling his hand.

Then her ears perk up and she blinks as if remembering something. She gives his hand a little goodbye boop, then hops down to her letters to say something.

You can call me Astea, she says, a little shyly.

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Oh gosh, a goodbye boop! That is incredibly precious!!

He watches her tapping the letters, then grins. "Astea. That's very pretty."

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Happy yip.

Thanks. I like my full name too, but it's... long?

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"It is that."

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Amused tail swish.

Except it's weird if people use my nickname when I don't know them well, so. I make people run the name gauntlet. ... I'm babbling.

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"Babbling under these conditions is honestly impressive!"

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Kind of, yeah! Even if what I'm saying is silly I kind of want to say it. I promise I'm much better at babbling when I'm actually able to talk.

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"I believe you completely."

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Happy yip!

She considers, then, because she's already down here: ... Can I have a thing to nibble?

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"A food sort of thing, or...?"

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Like a chew toy. I've been suppressing the urge to nibble things.

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"Well, let's see what I've got..."

He trails off, goes quiet for a few seconds, and then produces a length of braided rope. The rope is thick and soft and white, arranged into a complicated twisting pattern with a loop at each end.

"I apologize if you're too dignified to chew on last year's curtain stays. It was the first thing I thought of."

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It will do nicely, thank you!

She gives a little cheerful yip, then hops back onto the bed to snuggle him and nibble upon the rope, tail swishing happily.

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Awwwwwwww pet pet pet.

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He may have an affectionate nose for his trouble, along with a matching gaze! Then it's back to nibbling upon her new toy. Nibble nibble.

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She just keeps being adorable!!!

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It's her contractual obligation as a fox! Or, well. No, it isn't, she doesn't have the necessary digit dexterity for signing anything, but it sure is fun to be adorable.

Speaking of how fun it is to be adorable, how does he react if she mysteriously baps his hand with the other end of the rope? Followed by a little playful yip and pulling the rope away again, just out of his reach. She swishes her tail again. Swish, swish. One might get the impression that somebody wants to play.

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"Are you sure you want to play this game with me?" he asks, raising his eyebrows at her with just a hint of a smile as he reaches for the rope. "I cheat."

He hasn't actually touched the rope by the end of this sentence, but suddenly it's in his other hand, halfway across the bed.

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!!!

He is incredibly charming, and she is incredibly charmed.

She makes a show of thinking about it, drooping her ears and tail like she's unsure of what to do. Then, without warning, she hops towards his other hand and the rope contained therein, face first. Her jaws open to snatch it.

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He yanks it out of her path and tosses it in the air.

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She giggles even as her fluffy face collides with the bed, but recovers quickly. She glances up at the toy as it sails through the air, judges its trajectory, and promptly sits on top of the hand that threw it, waiting for her perfect moment to strike. It'll come back down.

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Why in the world would she assume it's going to come back down?

Sure enough, at the top of its arc it vanishes, reappearing in his left hand - the one she isn't sitting on.

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This earns another giggle! Her tail swishes thoughtfully.

She turns, grabs the edge of the covers with her jaws, and then attempts to use this to entangle the fingers of the hand she's still got pinned.

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He tosses the rope across the room, and then, since she has so thoughtfully put herself right on top of his hand, scoops up the fox and kisses the top of her head.

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The fox is scooped! She giggles again, then affectionately leans up to boop his nose.

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This task complete, she promptly begins squirming for freedom.

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He puts her down.

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He's totally going to snatch the rope away before she can get to it, but she's not going to get it either if it just stays over there on the other side of the room. To the rope!

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It vanishes from the floor and reappears in his hands. He tosses it up and catches it again.

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Yep. That's about what she expected. At least now the rope and the means by which he magically moves around the rope are in the same general location.

To Isfain!

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As soon as she reaches the bed, he throws the rope at the opposite wall again.

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She looks at the wall with the rope, then at Isfain. Then at the wall again. Then at Isfain, perhaps belaboring her point a bit too much.

Clearly the thing to do instead is to climb up onto his shoulders, carefully balanced like she is attempting to become a fox scarf again, and then introduce his face to her fluffy, fluffy tail.

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He giggle-splutters, attempting rather ineffectively to fend off the fluff.

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The fluff is inescapable. He has earned the wrath of the fox, and the fox has decided to express her wrath in fluff.

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Oh no! The fluff! It's so soft! Whatever will he do?

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Sneeze, presumably. Or return the stolen rope toy. Either one.

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Well. Well. How about instead he scoops the fox off his shoulders and holds her up to his face and nuzzles her fluffy neck. How about that.

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Clearly he has decided to give in to the fluff! This obviously counts as a surrender, and she shall accept it with grace. And fluff. She nuzzles him back and attempts to tickle him with her fluffy tail, now that his face is sufficiently fluffed.

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He giggles some more.

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That sounds like a natural result of being tickled! She should clearly keep it up. No quarter for rope thieves! Only fluff and tickling!

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Hmmmmm okay he is done having a faceful of fluff. Time to put her down and pet her.

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She finds this acceptable, too. Yes, pets, good.

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the softest fox

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So soft! So happy to be pet!

Eventually, she even flops onto her back so he can rub her belly.

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Eeeeeee. Fluff!!!

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It is so tempting to nibble upon him. So tempting. She'd be very gentle about it, but that's probably weird, even with a license to fox. Especially with an acknowledged mutual crush. So she will not be doing that.

Instead she yips invitingly, and motions with her tail towards the wall where he threw her rope chewtoy.

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He laughs. It vanishes from the wall and reappears in his hand; he sets it down in front of her.

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She is so tempted to immediately run off with it and hide under the bed or bury it outside somewhere. This is not a great thing to do for long term incentives, though. She doesn't want to confuse him and make him hesitant to give her things she asks for because she might immediately and craftily run off with them; there should be a measure of trust between them, even as they play. Therefore: no running off with the toy. Even if it'd be hilarious.

Instead she nuzzles him to say 'thank you,' and settles down to nibble upon her toy. And receive pets. Pets are important.

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She is a good soft fox.

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She iiiiis! And she's so glad he's noticed.

....

Wait, why is she hungry. Did she forget to have breakfast. Did they forget to have breakfast? Her ears perk up and she reviews the time since she woke up. Yep. They forgot to have breakfast.

She gives a little yip and noses her stomach, then aims her Sad Fox Eyes at him. Look at them! So cute! So sad!

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"—oh, right," he says. "Breakfast."

Breakfast!! His repertoire of conjurable food items is amazing; he must know some pretty spectacular memory tricks to keep it all straight.

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Both the breakfast and the means by which he conjures it are pretty impressive. She wonders if he cooked all of the conjurable food himself, or if he put a lot of work into searching out places to buy food from to place in the duplication space. It probably doesn't matter; either way, it's tricky to pull off. She gives him an affectionate little nose, and then begins eating.

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Cozy breakfast is the best kind of breakfast.

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Especially when the cozy breakfast is with a ~romantic interest!~

She is pretty happy to just have a cozy day with him. Yesterday she was very adventuresome, today she is very snugglesome.

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Cozy breakfast, cozy books, cozy lunch, cozy dinner. When cozy bedtime rolls around, he doesn't bother leaving, just snuggles up with her in her cozy bed.

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!!!

Gosh. Yes. That's a thing that can happen. This is a good day.

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"Goodnight." He kisses the top of her head.

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She yips a little affectionate 'Goodnight' facsimile, and affectionately nuzzles him back. Then: yes, sleep.

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He sleeps late in the morning, sprawled untidily in a tangle of blankets.

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When she wakes she is confronted with how completely adorable this is. He's so adorable. So very, very adorable.

She is careful not to disturb the charmingly untidy sprawl, nestling in a little foxball sized space next to him until he rejoins the waking world.

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He yawns and stretches out and spots the little ball of fox and giggles affectionately.

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Well! Since he's now awake, she doesn't have to worry about disturbing him. She decides to join in on the sprawling. Now there is not a little ball of fox, there is a little fox taking up a moderately impressive amount of space for her size.

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"Good morning!" Pet pet.

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He may have a good morning yip, and also have a good morning affectionate nuzzle.

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He kisses the top of her fluffy head.

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Oh, fine, he's persuaded her to also grant him a nose boop. There it is, his nose is booped.

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He giggles.

"Hmm. Breakfast?"

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Affirmative yip!

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Breakfast! Also nuzzles. Nuzzles are important.

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She wouldn't dream of forgetting the nuzzles.

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She is so good. A good soft fox. The best.

 

After breakfast, he yawns and pets her and then says, "I think I'm going to disappear into a pile of books for the day, I'll leave you some more food in case I forget that time keeps moving even when you're not looking at it and miss coming back for lunch."

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She giggles, noses him affectionately, and yips an affirmative.

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He kisses the top of her head, conjures some food that will comfortably keep all day, and vanishes.

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Okay, being a fox is sometimes pretty great, but it comes with the weirdest urges. Not only does she still very intensely want to steal something of his and go bury it outside so she can have it available later, she also wants to roll around in the place he was sleeping so she can smell like him. That's. That's more than a little bit weird.

...

That doesn't mean she doesn't do it, but it's really, really weird. If he questions her about it later, she might not actually admit to it. Also, she steals his pillow. Hey, her fox box could use a pillow, right? This is very reasonable of her. Yep. Totally reasonable. Not crazy at all.

This bizarre set of vulpine tasks completed, she goes exploring outside. She can avoid getting messy if she doesn't go digging or running in mud or anything, and she didn't smell any traces of predators in the area that could kill a fox. It's fun and safe to just sniff around the immediate area. She will know this place so well.

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Isfain does in fact miss lunch. And dinner. And bedtime. He did leave her enough food to account for all this, though!

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How responsible of him!

There are plenty of things outside for her to sniff to keep from getting bored. That and fuzzy crush related feelings. (He likes her!! He likes her! He thinks she's charming and he snuggled her all day yesterday and he thinks she's interesting and clever and endearing and he's still going to teach her magic and aaaaa she feels a little like she could float off into the sky if she's not careful!) She appreciates space to sort through/bask in her fuzzy crush related feelings on her own.

She doesn't really miss him until bedtime, when the lack of a snuggling companion sort of - tugs at her. He is snuggly and warm and sweet and likes her so much and she feels very safe when snuggled next to him and he's terribly cute in the mornings. And he's not here. She has a brief debate over going to find him to snuggle, and decides that the pillow in her snug little fox box is good enough for her purposes. The fox box is warm and snuggly, too. She'd rather not get clingy. Even if she's totally being weird about stealing his pillow.

Eventually, she falls asleep.

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He's not back by the morning, either.

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Hm. She considers her food supplies, and whether she wants to go find him or not. It's fine if he wants to spend another day buried in books, but while she has enough supplies leftover for breakfast, she doesn't think she could comfortably make it all the way to dinner on them. In order to avoid having to hunt for her meals, she'll need to find him sometime today, and she'd really rather not have to do that again. This decided, she'd rather find him early, so she doesn't have to go anywhere near food insecurity.

So she goes looking, nose to the ground and ears perked up and listening for signs of a wayward wizard.

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When she finds him, it's at a desk in a study on the upper floors of the tower, surrounded by piles and piles of books and scribbling in a notebook as he reads.

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Well, that's a charming sight. He's very cute when he's surrounded by books and clearly in the middle of something. Also, wow, that is a lot of books. That is enough books that there is no clear path out of the books. Has he been reading all of those? She has a pretty good idea of his reading speed by now, even if he's just finding the chapters or passages he needs, that has to have taken him quite a while.

... Hold on. Has he slept? She is not sure he has slept. That is a lot of books that he went through if he slept.

He's clearly in the middle of something, so she doesn't want to interrupt him with a yip. But on the other hand, she's not sure when he'd finish on his own, and he maybe needs some kind of reminder that his body actually exists. Hm. She eyes the piles of books critically, figures out a navigable path for a small fox, and weaves accordingly. Avoiding knocking any over is tricky, but not impossible, and soon enough she's next to him and can curl up at his feet and wait for him to be cognizant of his non-book surroundings on his own.

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"—oh, hello. Right, time. Has passed. As it tends to do. Do you need, uh," he glances at a window, "...breakfast?"

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He's so cute.

She giggles, and makes a little affirmative yip. Then she affectionately noses his knee, just to show she cares. And because she can't reach his nose.

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He leans down and pets her. "Right. Just a moment," he says, and he writes another sentence, bookmarks several books, and then teleports himself and Astea down to her room and conjures some breakfast, of which he has about two bites before flopping into her bed and going to sleep.

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So cute.

She has breakfast, then takes a couple of minutes to carefully tuck him in as best as she can. Then she goes outside to investigate the state of the weasel. ... Without getting herself messy. No mess allowed, this time, she is not going to be having another bath.

Several hours later, after the Crooked Hills have been thoroughly sniffed, she returns to finish the remaining leftovers, then nestles beside him in bed for a quick nap. She did a lot of running in her investigation! And she's a fox, she can indulge in a... foxnap? Hm. Doesn't have the same ring to it as catnap. Oh well. Point being: Isfain now has a snugglesome companion keeping him company as he sleeps. She's careful not to disturb him.

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How cozy!

When he wakes up, a little late for lunchtime but overall not too bad, he makes a pleased sound and snuggles her.

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Her nap was a light one, on account of actually having had sleep the night before, so her ears perk up and she stirs when she senses movement from her cuddlebuddy. She yawns and sprawls affectionately on him.

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Soft fox soft fox soft fox what a good way to wake up.

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D'aw. She's so glad he thinks so! He may graciously have a noseboop. Just for him. She is a kind and gentle fox that likes him very much.

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He kisses the end of her nose and hugs her.

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Eee!

She nestles happily in his arms, and makes soft little affectionate yips. She missed him! He's snuggly! Snuggliest sleepy wizard.

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Well, she's the snuggliest softest fox, so there!

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She happily accepts this title! Also 'wigglesome.' She has decided to wiggle affectionately. Wigglewigglewiggle. Affectionate soft fox!

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So soft! So wigglesome! So cozy and fluffy and pettable!

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Wiggle! Wiggle! Wigglewigglewigglewigglewiggle okay that's enough of that. Noseboop, just so he knows she cares.

Then she gently baps his stomach with a paw as a reminder for lunch, and affectionately boops his nose again.

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He laughs, and conjures lunch.

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Lunch!

But first: he may have a nuzzle. Then lunch.

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Awwwwww, a nuzzle! What a good way to start the day.

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She has a light lunch, and then snuggles up again. It was more important that he be reminded of lunch's existence than for her to actually eat; she sort of suspects that if he forgot to sleep, he might have also forgotten to eat. Now that there is food in front of him he probably remembers that it's a thing. Sure, he's an all powerful wizard who maybe doesn't need to eat to sustain himself, but she's allowed to care about his welfare. She noses him affectionately, just because.

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He eats lunch and then pets his soft fox friend.

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Snuuuuggle.

Hmm. She believes she'd like to read. She nuzzles him, then hops off the bed to go to her letters and write:

May I have a book?

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"Of course!"

Here's a book about the history of cooking, written by someone who is clearly very passionate about the subject and wants to share the joy. It's pretty good.

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This is an adorable book. She loves it very much. While she's not that interested in cooking or its history, it's still nice to watch someone else care very much about it, and write their passion. And maybe she can try out some cooking ideas once she's got opposable thumbs again.

She snuggles her snugglebuddy happily, and settles in to read.

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Isfain pets her some more, and nibbles on lunch, and then says, "Back to work with me," and conjures some more food and vanishes.

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She yips an affectionate farewell, then goes back to reading.

Eventually she finishes her book, has dinner, and then promptly has no idea what to do before bed. Isfain's busy, she already did a lot of sniffing around outside, she doesn't particularly want to read any more, she's explored most of the tower, and she already had a nap. As far as fox activities go, there's not really a lot else. For a little while she nibbles upon her chewtoy, but eventually she gets bored of that too. Hm. This is a problem.

Clearly, she needs a project of some kind. The only question is: what kind of project can a fox actually do? ... No, fox instincts, 'pee all over everything in the tower to claim it as her own' is not a valid project. Go back to the corner of shame, she would like to go back to ignoring those urges. Instead, she wants an actual project, that can amuse her very human mind.

... Hm. She thinks she has an idea. But she'll need supplies and a place to work. The place to work is easy enough; there are a number of rooms that look like they haven't been used for a while. The materials are a bit trickier, she has to put time and effort into collecting them, but there are plenty outside. She spends the next several hours collecting small rocks and twigs; the twigs she carefully trims down to straight sections with her jaws. It doesn't taste very good, but hey, she's eaten rats. It's all uphill from there. Once she has a suitable set of supplies, she carefully transports them to her chosen workspace, and organizes them by type and size. Then she begins carefully constructing a little city made out of twigs and stones; the stones arranged to make cobblestone paths, the twigs stacked on top of each other to make little twig houses. It's incredibly difficult to do without any fingers, but, well. She was looking for a way to waste time. This will certainly do.

Eventually, she finally notices she's tired and goes to sleep in her foxbox, too exhausted to even really miss the snuggly embrace of her wizard companion.

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The next morning there's an adorable picnic basket next to her bed, with a note pinned to it that says, I'll be in the big pile of books if you need me. Inside the picnic basket is enough food to last her the day.

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D'aww! What a sweetie. She is charmed by the picnic basket. Also by Isfain. She is admittedly super biased on this front.

The adorable picnic basket gets dragged to her twig and stone city workspace, so she can eat while she works. She adds a little town hall, a town square, a blacksmith, then a couple little houses, and then she's entirely out of building materials and needs to go collect more. First she has lunch, then: yep, time to go collect more. Once she has enough, it's back to building. Her tiny twig and stone city will be glorious one day.

She spends the day like this, then drags the picnic basket back to her room and curls up to sleep.

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The next morning's picnic-basket note reads, Pile of books: day 3 and counting...

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Giggle. Clearly, this deserves some kind of response. She considers, then goes and steals enough letters from the set in her room and the one in the entrance hall to spell out, 'Adorable' next to the picnic-basket's location.

Then she decides she doesn't want to work on her twig and stone project just yet, in favor of wandering around outside and sniffing everything some more. Can she identify useful herbs by smell? Even though it's cold outside and they're all either dead or in hibernation? Can she remember their locations so she can swing by when she's human and collect them for a possible garden, later? As she finds out: yes! Her nose is excellent, and if she pays close attention, she can identify some plants by smell. Whether or not she'll remember where they are when she's human is another matter entirely.

She heads back inside, decides that she wants to soak in a bath, because that seems novel, and then does that. Once that's done, she rolls around in towels, and then indulges in a case of the zoomies. When she calms down, she spends a little while nibbling her chewtoy, then begins tossing it in the air and chasing after it. When that gets boring (and it gets boring pretty quickly) she goes back to working on Twigtown. Which she labels as such, since she already broke up the letter sets to declare that Isfain is adorable. She has just about figured out Twigtown's economy. Because it amuses her, they are a logging village, and rely on lumber exports down the river (represented by a stolen towel, since it's so helpfully blue to match the blue and silver theme of her room) that cuts through the middle of the town itself. She even adds a little twiggy dock, with a little boat, connected by carefully positioned tufts of grass to represent the boat's mooring.

Eventually: bed.

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The next morning's note reads, I don't think I realized just how long I can spend buried in books at a stretch until I had to step out daily to keep my fox friend fed.

The picnic basket is accompanied by a neatly organized assortment of letter tiles, with what looks like about a hundred of each letter available. A tedious but highly effective way for her to leave more messages.

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It's getting kind of annoying that her only method of communication involves tedium, but she is building a little village out of twigs. Tedium for something actually useful sounds acceptable, if kind of annoying.

Don't worry, I'm amusing myself well enough while you're swimming in books. Take as long as you need. I also don't mind if you leave me more than a day's supply of food so you can cut back on interruptions. I'll remind you if I get low, she spells. Then she considers, and adds another line. I do miss snuggling you, though. If you go to bed at a time that I'm asleep, feel free to steal me from my fox box for snuggles.

This message written, she goes and continues Twigtown construction. Then, she wanders around outside exploring and gathering more materials, and then she goes back inside, cleans her paws of dirt, and spends half an hour jumping on the bed. Because she's an adult, and she's allowed to do that. This important task completed, she settles in to nibble on her chewtoy, and eventually goes to sleep.

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That night, he does in fact steal her from her fox box for snuggles, at a late but not totally unreasonable hour.

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He is deft at stealing foxes, because this one does not wake up from her relocation! The teleportation probably helps.

Predictably, she wakes up snuggled, and is summarily delighted. She nestles closer and makes a pleased (and quiet) little chirp, careful not to disturb the sleeping wizard.

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The sleeping wizard is so cozy!

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He is! He definitely is! She's more than happy to stick around and contribute to his coziness until he wakes up. She missed him very much.

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The first thing he does when he wakes up is curl up and start petting her.

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Eeeeee! She makes a little happy chirp, and wiggles closer to snuggle him. Her tail goes fwishfwishfwish. Yes, excellent.

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Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww soft fox soft fox soft fox!! With soft fwishes!!!!

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She giggles at his delight, fwishes her tail a little more, and then leans up to boop his nose! Boop. Good morning, Isfain, Astea missed you, can you tell?

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He can! He can tell!

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Oh, good! This is important to communicate. His presence has been missed, because he's very great. While she was fine without him and perfectly capable of amusing herself, he's a positive in her life, and she noticed his absence. It's good to see him again. She indulges in more happy wiggles and happy tail fwishes, because aaa he's so great.

Then she carefully inspects him now that he's awake. Being buried in books has not been bad for him, right? He has not shrunken to skin and bones or shriveled up into a raisin or collected strange fungal growths or anything? He's probably fine, he has successfully made it this far in life without anyone to remind him that time passes and he should maybe eat something, but she's invested in his welfare because she cares about him.

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He looks fine. No dark circles under his eyes or mushrooms behind his ears.

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Good, good. It'd be alarming to find mushrooms behind his ears. He may have a little boop of fox approval. She's glad he's taking care of himself, he is important and should keep it up.

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Pet pet. "Aww, were you worried about me?"

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Amused huff. She nudges his hand affectionately, then hops down to her letters. He fixed them at some point, probably when he got her the hundreds of letters for tedious messages.

Not worried, exactly. I don't think you'll burst into flames if I look away. Amused tail swish. But I care about you, and want to make sure you're taking care of yourself.

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"I disappear into piles of books pretty frequently, and they haven't yet managed to set me on fire!"

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Giggle. Good job!

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He scoots to the edge of the bed and leans over to pet her.

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She leans into his hand and gazes fondly up at him.

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Soft fox!!!

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She should probably ask him how long he expects he'll be buried in books, or about his progress, or for breakfast, or about something else while he's actually here, but gosh scritches are so compelling. Especially when he pets her ears. He should pet her ears, they are very soft.

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They are! She has such good soft ears!!!

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Leaning into his hand for ear scritches is such a priority that she actually ends up overbalancing and losing her footing. She catches herself with a paw before she goes toppling over, but the stumble itself is pretty hard to miss. Whoops, that's embarrassing.

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Awwwww. He scoops her up onto the bed with him and kisses the top of her head and pets her good soft ears some more.

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She giggles, boops his nose with her own at the kiss, and then settles in for snuggles and pets. He has earned little happy chirping noises and little wiggles, she hopes he is proud of his achievement.

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Yes. So, so proud.

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Excellent. Then all is right in the world.

Unfortunately, she cannot indulge in the hedonistic pleasure of ear scritches forever.

...

Ahem. She said, she cannot indulge in the hedonistic pleasure of ear scritches forever.

...

She cannot indulge in the

—Oh, fine, she'll embrace hedonism for a little while. Ear scritches are compelling.

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Ear scritches are important.

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They are. How else would he get a liquid fox? Ear scritches are an important part of this process. He can see the results of it for himself.

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Oh! A foxpuddle! The best and softest foxpuddle!!!

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Also the happiest. Mmm being a foxpuddle is so nice.

... But she missed him. Not just for his ability to scritch her ears, but for everything else. She cracks open an eye to gaze at him fondly, then makes a little tiny encouraging yip and noses him languidly.

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"Yes?"

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Yip-yip!

... She tried to make that sound like 'talk more,' but it probably wasn't very communicative. Damn. Does she have to get up and go to her letters to say anything? She likes being a foxpuddle so much. Let's see if leaning up and bapping his mouth with her nose will communicate the thing.

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...He giggles. "Really? All right, if you insist. Should today's lecture be on magical theory, the failures of the wizarding education system, or some new interesting subject I haven't discussed before?"

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Hm! She considers this, then:

Single yip! That probably means the first thing.

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"Hmmm, let's see, what magical theory shall I discuss... ooh, I know! Dragons! Dragons are a fascinating example of something everyone thought was true for a really long time and then fairly recently someone put together a sufficiently compelling case to overturn the consensus. First of all that's fascinating because hardly anyone ever manages that, and second of all it's fascinating because I have no idea if they were right or not. No one's found any evidence of them in the last hundred years, and in most cases if you can't dig up any conclusive signs that something exists, that in itself is a fairly conclusive sign that it doesn't, particularly when the thing in question is the size of a house and breathes fire. But eight or nine hundred years ago when everyone was pretty sure that dragons existed, all the accounts of what they were like were remarkably consistent - and included details implying alchemic correspondences that hadn't yet been discovered at the time! Poison is such a little-used element that its association with the Crown Star was only proven a couple of centuries ago, but green dragons are reliably depicted with poison breath. On the other hand, if dragons do exist, then where in the world have they all run off to?"

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... Gosh. Yes, that's an interesting question. Just from Isfain's explanation, she's inclined to think they do exist, but something happened to them to cause them all to disappear. That seems like a sensible compromise that follows both sets of evidence. On the other hand, though, she hasn't personally read either case, and is hesitant to weigh in so soon. Hm.

She gives a little thoughtful whumpf, and noses Isfain affectionately. He is a good wizard, and she likes him.

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He grins and pets her soft ears.

"For a while when I was fresh out of school I toyed with the idea of setting off on a quest to find the dragons, but then I decided there were plenty of interesting questions to answer a little closer to home, and I'm much more of a theorist than an adventurer."

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She's certainly glad he didn't run off to find dragons, even if the answers would be fascinating. How would she have shown up on his doorstep to be defoxed? Clearly it would have been much more difficult, which sounds terrible. She would have been wandering in the woods as a fox even longer. Instead, she can giggle a little fox giggle, then nuzzle him affectionately, in this nice comfy bed with this nice wonderful wizard.

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"Maybe someday, though. After I've run out of more convenient notions to pursue."

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He gets a very wry look. Uh huh. Somehow she expects that will take a while.

... But then, he's a powerful wizard, he probably has a while. By the stories, he's got to be at least twice her age, if not more so. She tilts her head thoughtfully.

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"Are you doubting that I could possibly have such a limited store of notions as that? You might be right."

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She gives a little affirmative yip and nuzzles his hand affectionately. Ear scritches and Isfain lectures, yessssssss.

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Pet pet pet. "You're so soft. I apologize, that wasn't about magical theory at all."

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She giggles, then playfully nibbles his hand. Very gently.

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—he cracks up.

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Nibble, nibble... Boop! She has taken advantage of this distraction to boop his nose.

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Gasp!!!! Surely this is the most unexpected of all events!!!!

(He giggles and attempts to pet her again but fails because he is laughing too hard.)

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Awww! Well, if he's having trouble petting her, she can wiggle right into his hand and help!

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Eeeeeeeeeeee soft fox!!!!!!!!

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Snuggle, snuggle. Snuggle, snuggle.

... Okay he should talk again. She yips at him accordingly, ears perked up.

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"Right. Magical theory. You've heard my opinions on dragons, and why everyone should learn alchemy... let's see, what else is there..."

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She considers, then gives a little yip, nudged him affectionately with her nose, and hops down to her letters.

Healing magic? I'm a hedge witch, I've got some experience with it, but nothing formal.

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"Sure. Healing magic."

He drums his fingers together consideringly.

"The thing about healing magic... well, there are several things. I've already had my little rant about how it's short-sighted for everyone to think life magic is better at healing than healing is just because gold is more glamorous than silver. That's the most infuriating thing about healing magic but it's not really the most interesting, it's not even really about healing magic, it's about wizards being idiots. The most interesting thing about healing magic, I think, is that it understands how a body is supposed to be shaped."

He pulls a bit of string out of thin air to fidget with as he talks, for no apparent reason other than that he wanted something to fidget with.

"Now, on the face of it, 'healing magic knows how to heal things' seems obvious and straightforward, right? You don't look at a fact like that and go 'what a surprise, my world is crumbling before my eyes'. But to a wizard trained in life magic healing it actually seems kind of insane! You mean I've been going around all this time learning anatomy painstakingly by staring at gruesome drawings of dissected dead bodies and occasionally at actual dead bodies, and meanwhile there's a kind of magic that just knows how many layers a person's skin is supposed to have and what order they go in? All right, that's not entirely fair, life magic is overall pretty good about skin, the real troubles start when you get to the fiddlier bits, but I've used healing magic to regrow a person's entire foot and not once did I have to consult a textbook about where all the bones should go. The magic just knew. On the other hand, I tried the same thing on someone born without a foot and it was useless, the poor man's leg just sat there with the stump glowing white, I had to wait until the next morning and get out my textbook and do it the stupid way with life. On the other other hand, once the foot was there, I asked him if I could test something and I tried the healing magic again and it didn't make the whole thing wither back away or anything of that nature—it even healed him normally when I poked him with a pin. I probably should not have asked if I could poke him with a pin."

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That is very interesting!! She gives a little excited yip and everything! And also an affectionate nose at 'I probably should not have asked if I could poke him with a pin.'

Then she goes over to her letters, her tail swishing:

Following pattern? Life changes pattern itself? Poke me with a pin let's see!

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...he giggles as he reads that last part. "I really should've expected this. All right, c'mere, let's learn things." A pin appears in his hand with a tidy little gesture.

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She hops up beside him and presents him with a paw!

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He flexes his fingers; a silver ring appears. He gently applies pin to paw, and then immediately applies healing magic to the resulting pinhole; there's a brief sensation of soothing coolness, and no more pinhole.

"Yes, that's about what I'd expect. As you said, life changes the pattern."

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Tail swish tail swish. She gives his hand a fond goodbye boop, then hops back to her letters.

Odd though! I'm female fox. All fox female fox, or because female human?

Apparently someone is excited and is skipping proper grammar because of it.

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"I'd expect that you're a female fox because you were a female human, but I can't be sure without looking at the source to see how the creator of the music box arranged things. He could have been lazy and decided to make everyone female foxes. Hmm, actually, there's another way to achieve a slightly better guess - when you were human, did your eyes look like they do now? If so, probably they carried over directly, so the magic was responding to the properties of your existing body in constructing your new one. If not, it's more likely that your fox body was constructed without reference to the human original."

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Her ears perk up, and she gives an affirmative yip and a nod.

Clever, she praises, tail swishing.

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"Why thank you! I do try."

He vanishes the pin and goes back to fiddling with the length of string.

"The eyes are interesting, actually, now that I think of it..." and he trails off, still absently weaving string through his fingers.

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Astea gives him an affectionate boop. He is very cute when he's being a nerd.

Oh? Or do you need to return to your books because this is relevant?

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"Hmm—might be nothing, might be something, I'll let you know when I find out, feel free to drag me out of my pile of books if you get curious—I've forgotten what time of day it is already—" he kisses the top of her head and conjures a picnic basket in case of foxly hunger and vanishes.

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She giggles. He is a very cute nerd, and it's a pity that she can't properly nerd with him because she's stuck as a fox. Fortunately, he's trying to fix that, so.

Hmmmmm she would like to spend her day investigating his library and reading! She bets he has some very nice books.

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He has so very many nice books. On so very many subjects.

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Why didn't she investigate the library sooner? This is a treasure trove! Oh, right, it's because she's a fox and reaching shelves is difficult, leaving books intact is difficult, and turning pages while a quadruped is a chore. Regardless, though, she has some practice reading as a fox, so she's going to use it. And very very carefully not damage any of these precious books.

Isfain is not the only one that forgets what time is, today.

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It's possible that without her intervention, Isfain is just going to pull another of those book-filled all-nighters.

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Hmm? Isfain? Is there an Isfain? Astea remembers only this excellent series of novels. ... And maybe to feed herself. She guesses.

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Her picnic basket is easily foxable and contains many delicious treats.

Her wizard friend is going to spend the next thirty-six hours or so squirreled away in a study somewhere, reading obscure wizard books and making notes about various theories.

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She does remember to sleep in this time, and similarly remembers that Isfain exists and is squirrelled away when she does that. The lack of warm snuggles gives it away. She's curious about what he's figuring out, but she expects that explaining everything to her would make everything take twice as long.

... But she does decide to keep him company, since she's reading, too. Books get carefully bundled in a sheet so she can drag them to him, and she flops at his feet with one of them, leaning against his leg fondly.

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"Oh! You still exist! Hello." He reaches down to apply scritches to the fluffy friend. "I've been," yawn, "at it again, haven't I. But this time I have good news, I think! I still have to double-check, er, a few things..." he glances sheepishly at the enormous stacks of books scattered around the room. "Maybe more than a few."

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Astea giggles and leans into his touch.

She has a bundle of books of her own! Looks like she planned to do some companionable reading. None of the books she brought look like they'd be at all helpful to his project, just that they'd be fun for her to read.

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Scritch scritch. "Feel free to nibble me reproachfully if I look like I'm headed into a second night without sleep." And he picks up his latest reference text again.

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Affirmative yip!

And then they have ~companionable reading.~

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There is so much reading, and it is so companionable. Occasionally Isfain stands up from his chair, vanishes, and reappears to sit back down again a few minutes later.

 

One thing he does not do, though, is go to bed.

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Not on his own he wouldn't, no.

But when she's tired, she gives a loud yawn and then flops dramatically over his feet.

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Oh no she is so charming and also soft. Whatever will he do.

"That," yawn, "is probably a sign that we should go to bed, hmm?" He leans down for a scritch, then gently scoops her up, making sure to wait for nonverbal confirmation before lifting.

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She gives an affirmative yip and nestles into his arms for transport.

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Scoop! Off to bed they go!

"I think I'm onto something, the implication is definifsdfhlzzzzzzzz," he says, literally falling asleep in the middle of a word.

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Oh goodness, that's so cute.

She makes sure he's tucked in, then nestles into bed next to him to sleep. Cute.

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Perhaps predictably, he sleeps in really late.

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This was very predictable, upon reflection.

She carefully extracts herself, hoping not to wake him. Astea would like breakfast, and maybe a book to read while she waits for him to wake.

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The tower contains enough food for breakfast and enough books for... yes. Enough books. Enough books for any conceivable purpose. So many books. Too many books.

 

Sometime around noon, Isfain finally yawns and stretches and looks around for his fluffy friend.

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Astea is skeptical that 'too many books' is a thing. Plausibly there's 'not enough space for books,' but that's not the fault of the books.

When Isfain stirs, she's nestled beside him, reading one of the excellent books. Two modest stacks are neatly arranged nearby, respectively 'to read' and 'have finished.' She didn't want to make multiple trips.

Her ears perk up and she gives a little greeting chirp.

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"Oh, good, I see you found reading material." He finishes stretching, snuggles back down amid the blankets, rests his hand on Astea and gives her gentle scritches. "I think I've untangled part of the puzzle—I realized that the fact that it's an incomplete transformation has implications I wasn't considering." He wiggles his fingers and a gold ring appears on one of them. "Now that I've worked out the theoretical side, I should spend some time confirming that the picture in my head matches the reality, which, happily for you, means snuggling you while you read all my books. And then either I'll have you turned back within a few days, or this will be a dead end and I'll have to find another avenue."

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... That is way sooner than she was expecting! She gives a little happy yip and scoots closer to snuggle him.

By the way her ears are perked up and she's looking at him, she totally wants him to explain. Book? What book? Magic explanations are so much more fun!

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"Your curiosity is fair and reasonable but it's hard to multitask explaining and information-gathering! All right, all right... this gets into some obscure ritual magic concepts so I'll have to simplify a bit, which I hate doing, but in brief: you were transformed imperfectly, leaving you with your original eyes. That has numerous implications but the most relevant is that the transformation is likely to be... wrapped around you, like a blanket or a coil of rope? Enclosing and veiling the true shape of your body, rather than altering or replacing it. Which means that it should be possible to, hmm, unwind the rope. Of course it's not nearly as simple as just taking the fox off you like a very inconvenient fur coat—physically speaking you are a fox, all this talk of veiling deals strictly with the abstract magical structures of the thing—but if I can find, so to speak, the end of the rope, I should be able to get the whole thing loose. This also bodes well for the question of turning back and forth from fox to human, although it will still be a separate project I'll have to undertake afterward, unless—depending on the details, I might be able to invert your, er, level of foxiness—leaving you mostly human with, say, a small patch of fur somewhere. A fetching pair of fluffy ears, perhaps." (He gently pets the ears in question.) "And then you'd be able to switch back and forth between the mostly-human and mostly-fox states, although at that point the major obstacle would be the time it took to teach you how... I suspect you'd pick it up quickly, though. Assuming, again, that I'm not haring off on an utterly misguided adventure. Which I still might be."

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She listens attentively, giggles a little at the fluffy ears comment, and then nuzzles him affectionately. What a good clever wizard.

Then she gives another (satisfied) yip and closes her eyes and leans into him to focus on the glory of scritches.

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Scritch scritch so soft.

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Eeee scritches are great, cuddling with Isfain is great, hearing about magical theory is great, reading is great, she wants to stay like this forever…

Wait. They’ve been here before. Last time they did this, they forgot to eat. She doesn’t have to worry about that problem, because she fed herself while he was sleeping, but! He could not do that. She will attempt to not make the same mistakes she made like, a day ago? Maybe two? Because she tries to consistently grow as a person.

She perks up and boops his stomach with her nose, then gives a little yip. That is to say: Eat something, adorable cuddly wizard.

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"Hmm? Oh, yes, I see." He keeps petting her, but with his free hand he conjures some bread. "Thank you very much for attending to the needs of my mortal form. I don't seem to be very good at it. Something else to work on, perhaps."

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Astea gives another little yip, then leans up to boop his cheek with her nose. And then she can get back to reading, because look she was at a good part, okay.

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What a good soft friend she is. Helpful, scritchable, has correct opinions about books. Gives excellent boops.

The books and the scritches will both continue for quite some time. Hopefully she will not get bored. They can always take a break if she does.

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Nope, she's happy! She has a book and scritches, both excellent things to have.

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In that case, she may need to remind him to conjure meals a few more times, and perhaps to replace her book when she gets to the end of it; but that evening he remembers about bedtime all by himself, and announces, "As far as I can tell my theory was perfectly accurate, and all that remains is to locate the end of the figurative magical rope," yaaaawn, "tomorrow, because being well-rested is important when dealing with delicate magical phenomena. It may be another day or so past that before I actually have you out of there one way or another. Do you have a preferred option, between 'disentangle the whole thing and get rid of it' or 'figure out how to make your foxiness level invertable'? I don't yet know which will be easier, but if they're similar levels of tricksome I might as well try for the one you'd rather."

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She does remember to feed and water her cuddling companion, though she has a brief nap midway through. When she finishes her book, she requests a few on herbs and their properties; she knows a lot already, but she’d like to know more, and she wants to see how her own hedge witch knowledge compares to Isfain’s gigantic library.

Upon being addressed, she tilts her head thoughtfully, then barks once. Specifically, they will be able to reproduce the fox thing whenever they get around to digging up the damn thing that did it in the first place, and she’d hate to have to deal with anything really obviously weird out of the gate. She does, after all, want to go home and collect her things, at the very least. Maybe let her village know she’s not dead.

Not that she explains this; jumping down to spell out her reasoning would be tiresome.

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Isfain's gigantic library contains plenty of books about herbs!

"Disentangle the whole thing first? Understood. I'll do my best. If that option turns out to look like it'll take twice as long I'll let you know as soon as I find that out."

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She gives an affirmative yip, then leans up to boop his cheek again. This important task completed, she gets to putting books away (well, onto her nearby pile of books) and then snuggling up for actual sleep instead of cozy nap.

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It is so good to sleep snuggled up with soft friend.

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That it is.

She wakes first, gives him an affectionate boop while he sleeps out of sheer affection, then heads off to find herself some breakfast. Once her fast is good and broken, she returns to reading about herbs and snuggling. Predictably.

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He wakes up and yawns and nibbles breakfast and settles in for a day of cozy companionable snuggling.

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He's such a cute wizard.

She gets bored of sorting through herbs soon enough. Well, out of books, anyway. What she'd really like to do is go outside and find some, there are a couple varieties in the Crooked Hills that don't grow where she's from. Her earlier investigations only included what she already knew, not anything from these delightful books. Not that looking is all she wants to do anymore. Unfortunately, she is a little bit handicapped in getting any cuttings or transplanting entire plants by how she is, well, a fox. And the current weather. Also she's a little curious about the soil composition of the area, it seemed rather rocky to her? It would be an interesting puzzle to see if she could get anything to grow here. Probably she'll want to figure out a clever duplicate space for loam. ... Maybe a couple other varieties of soil? Hmmm.

Her tail swishes thoughtfully, then she gives Isfain a goodbye boop and heads outside to investigate the local foliage. She won't pick anything, but! She will know where things are for later! Even the ones she hadn’t know the existence of before!

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The local foliage is available to be investigated! The soil is indeed very rocky in most places, but here or there in the low spots between the hills there's enough fertile soil to support some wild berry bushes or a small flowery meadow.

Isfain leaves her to it for an hour or so, then comes outside looking for her.

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She’s sniffing suspiciously at the base of a set of bushes, tail swishing thoughtfully. Not particularly far from the tower, nor particularly hard to find.

Her ears perk up when she hears footsteps, and she looks up at him and gives a friendly yip, then tilts her head.

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"I've come for my informative scritches," he says, holding out a hand with a gold ring on the first finger. "And for the pleasure of your company."

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Affirmative, slightly amused yip! And then over to Isfain she goes, leaning up for scritches.

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Scritch scritch. "And how have you been enjoying your adventures in herbalism?"

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Happy squeak! Followed by excited tail swishes.

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Oh no she's so soft. "Well, do let me know if you'd like me to leave you to it, or alternately if you'd like to come back inside." But in the meantime, he shall scritch the soft fox.

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Hmmmmm she thinks her map of the surrounding area is accurate enough to be getting along with, and she has a few ideas of things to go running off to look up in the library. Probably best to go back inside before she starts digging things up and needs another bath, which she was... definitely thinking about doing. Ahem.

She stands on her hind legs to put her paws on his leg and give a yip that's probably asking to be picked up. Then her nose points tower-wards.

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Scoop! And off he strides on his improbably long legs, with friend on shoulder, back to the tower.

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Being scooped is great fun! Especially by a cute wizard she has a crush on. This is a happy fox! Who is on her way to not being a fox, so that she might perhaps do something about the aforementioned crush!

As it is, though, she just gives him a friendly boop. On his ear. Because she's aware her nose is cold, and his reaction will probably be funny.

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Squeak!!

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See! Such a cute reaction!!

She will give him an apologetic nose boop on his cheek, though.

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"I look forward to the day when your nose is not so damp," he says, but he's also still petting her.

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Her, too!

Also oh goodness he's flirting back, that's exciting and also furthermore eep. Happy eep, but! She will nestle her head into his shoulder and totally not think about what precisely they will be doing once she's human shaped again.

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Many soft pets for the soft friend.

And here they are at the tower again. "Where to?" he asks his passenger as he starts up the stairs. "Sitting room, your room, somewhere else?"

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Hmmmm. She thinks she'd like some variety in scenery, spending too much time in her room is going to make her feel like a shut in.

One yip!

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Sitting room it is! A cozy little one with a red-grey colour scheme.

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Excellent! Then she can snuggle him and get scritches and presumably he can work on making her not fox shaped anymore!

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He does indeed work on that. With scritches. They're very important scritches.

 

Sometime in late afternoon, he exclaims "ah—ha!" and flops delightedly into a new bizarre configuration on the sitting room's very comfy couch. "All right, I have, so to speak, found the end of the rope. It would be faster to flip it than pull it off entirely, but it's looking to be a difference of hours or days and not many days if any, so I presume you'd still rather be completely defoxed?"

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Astea has, by this point in time, had a nap, some snacks, and has solicited a chew toy to nibble on while snuggling and getting scritched. She looks up from her mangled curtain tassle and gives an affirmative bark.

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"Understood." Scritch scritch. "I'm off to disappear completely under a pile of ritual magic books; I will be returning at unpredictable intervals to check my work against the reality it is meant to affect."

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Affirmative yip! Then she pauses and jumps down from the couch to tap the floor twice with a front paw. Sort of how she points to the letters.

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"Hm? Aha—" He flicks his fingers and conjures a letter-set for her.

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Food and sleep reminder?

She looks very wry, for a fox.

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"...I would like to say I won't need them, but, alas, you know me too well for that. Yes please."

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Affirmative (and amused) yip! Then she bounces back onto the couch to give him an affectionate noseboop, grabs her chew toy, and waves a front paw before heading off. Probably to investigate his library some more, but she hasn’t decided yet.

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Isfain, as promised, vanishes upstairs to make a huge mess among his books on ritual design.

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He is very cute.

But she should leave him to be a nerd in peace, with only minimal interruptions to remind him that he has a mortal form that needs some kind of care. And also for snuggles, because he does actually need to check his work, and snuggles and scritches are great. They still sleep snuggled together, because that's just nice, and it seems obvious for them to fall asleep together when she's the one reminding him to sleep at all. She hangs around him and occasionally points her adorable fluffy charm at him, but she is actually perfectly comfortable giving him space to work.

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What she is less comfortable with is still being a fox.

It was kind of nice at first, being a fox in his tower, because it was rather like a forced break. She couldn't do anything of real substance, so there was no pressure to do anything at all. Instead she could goof off and follow whatever whims took her. Which was nice! It's not a thing she's had for literal years, probably since she was a child. Being free to do whatever she wanted was novel, even if she lacked opposable thumbs during this freedom. Now, though... well, she wants her opposable thumbs back. She wants to be able to hold a proper conversation without painstakingly pointing to each and every letter that, despite how good she's gotten at pointing quickly, still feels like it takes forever. She wants to be able to look for and retrieve books without either requesting assistance or having an absurd fox adventure in order to safely retrieve them from the shelf without damaging the books themselves. She wants to read without having to carefully use her lower jaw to turn pages, because her nose is cold and wet (and therefore damaging to books) and her paws are, well, fox paws. She wants to garden, wants to learn ritual magic so she can make a billion healing artifacts, wants to get home before someone decides her cottage is going spare and dumps or sells all of her stuff.

Quite frankly, she's more than a little sick of this. Capable of distracting herself, sure, but quietly unhappy and dissatisfied and admittedly a little bit lonely, because there's only one person she can interact with and he's busy. But bothering him wouldn't fix her fundamental problem, it'd just draw this out longer, and she'd really rather not. So instead, she kills time. She works on her silly little town made of twigs and stones and other stolen items. She runs around outside and sniffs things, from creatures to herbs to interesting rocks. She jumps on the bed, she flounces around the tower because moving around is kind of mechanically fun. The adorable wizard gets fox snuggles and gentle reminders to eat and sleep. She gets scritches and books and ignores the growing urge to go outside and scream as loud as she can because this is such a stupid thing to have done with magic what an absolute waste of everyone's time and energy and it's not fair.

But none of it has ever been fair, and throwing a temper tantrum about it won't help anything, so. She keeps distracting herself, and tries very hard to be patient and supportive. Eventually, she will get to stop being a fox. What an exciting time that will be.