Laura blinks.

"Would you like to come inside and have some tea?"

"Oh, no tea for me, thanks, but I appreciate the offer." She steps in.

"It's all right, I'm very stealthy. There really was no one else around."

"My thing is going around, finding witches, and helping them expand their powers in creative ways!"

"My power - the copying, not the one I'm borrowing from Sadde - gives me a decent chance of telling from a ways off whether somebody's a witch or not. But there's some trial and error. What do you want to know about other witches?"

"You tell me, why isn't Sadde allowed to shift in front of people?"

"Chesterton's fence," she says. "Until we know why it's not talked about, we don't talk about it."

"Well, fair enough. But I don't recommend sharing it around. If too many people believe you, you'll have some people very invested in it not getting out at your throats. This isn't why most witches keep it secret; most witches don't know that - but it's why you should keep your mouths shut and mouth-shaped. Most people are doing more or less what you did: keeping quiet because they don't know what would happen if they didn't."

That's disturbing. Both mother and daughter look disturbed. "Why are there people so invested in it not getting out?"

"Fears of witch hunts, obviously."

"Obviously," she echoes.

"Okay, but anyway, witch classes from a witch trainer, that's kinda dropped onto our laps, good, right?" She's clearly very excited about the prospect.

"I'm so glad you're enthusiastic about it!" says Addy. "So how far have you stretched it already?"

"Well, the first time I turned was... surprising."

"That's one way to put it," Laura says, dryly. "She switched sexes in her crib when she was one."

"That's still the easiest way I can change, probably because I have so much practice at it. For the longest time it was all I could do. But then I learnt how to change other stuff, like what you saw today, or what you did now. I think I can change into almost anything human, except the farther it is from what I currently look like, the longer it takes, and if I haven't done it many times before it also takes a lot of concentration."

"Hmm. What are you concentrating on specifically when you're doing a difficult transformation?"

"I have to focus on what exactly I want to change, and how I want it to change. Like... I don't need to specifically know the anatomical details or anything, but I need to kinda will my bones to do this and move there and look like that, and my eyes to turn this particular colour, stuff like that. And sometimes the stuff I have to change is all related in different ways, and so I have to focus on it all at the same time, or do it just a little bit here and a little bit there, and sometimes if I do it too much the wrong way it can get in painful positions until I fix it."

"Do you ever get out of practice with things you haven't tried in a long time, or is it like riding a bike?"

Laura watches this exchange with interest for a while, having little to add to it.

"I'm going to start working on dinner, if you need anything." And she goes to the small kitchen over there, from where she can still hear everything they're saying.