“Okay, now off the burner for another minute.”

Maisie moves the vial out of the open flame and delicately sets it in the tray again.

“I feel like a mad scientist. Do you think it will work?” She says.

“I dunno! We are mad scientists! Muahahaha!”

A short silence follows her laughter. They stare at the timer for a bit, Maisie clicking her tongs twice a second in rhythm.

“Nobody knows anything at this point... It’s a wildland.“ Lucy says.

“I mean, how fucking cool is it to live at the exact moment in history when humans discovered magic? And to still be young enough to be able to play with it?”

“Younger even and we might’ve been able to study it in school. For now, we’ll have to stick to homemade recipes and dark web experiments. You know who I feel like?”

“Who?” Maisie asks

“Luna’s mom!” Maisie frowns. “You know, in Harry Potter?”

“I haven’t read them as much as you did, and you know that. Now that magic is actually a thing, I don’t think I can get myself to read about an invented magical system.”

“She was always experimenting with new spells and formulas… She did die, though, during one of them…” The timer rings. Maisie grabs the tube again and props it into the flame.

“Anyways, That’s why we have these, and this.” She points to their protective glasses as well as her own apron. “You should wear the one I bought you. You have no idea what can happen right now.”

“Exactly, how do you know these things will protect us if anything goes wrong? It’s magic, it might just as well traverse our clothes, plastic, or even the walls.”

“With that logic, why are you even wearing gloves?” Maisie shrugs, soon followed by Lucy. “At least I won’t get burned.” She says as beads of sweat start forming on her forehead, readjusting the long sleeves of her shirt. “Magic or not, this has got to be hot as hell.” She raises her phone. “So this step was only 30 seconds in the flame instead of a minute, did you change the timer?”

Maisie’s eyes lower to her own phone. The countdown, very well set to 30 seconds, hasn’t been started.

“Uhhh..”

By the time she realizes her mistake and pulls it out of the heat, the tube shatters in a million pieces, spilling its gooey content in an arc on the countertops, the cupboards, the floor, and the girls themselves.

“Ahhhhhh!!!”

Both girls scream simultaneously. After the initial shock, they open their eyes again and look around themselves to see the liquid, a translucent shade of green, plastered across the room.

“Are you hurt?” Lucy asks.

“I think I’m okay, although it scared the shit out of me.”

“Yeah, me too.” They take a few seconds to let their shaking hands rest. “Alright, let’s get cleaned up, we have no idea what this can do to us.” Lucy says. “Quick, come on!”

“Of course, dang it.”

Maisie drops the tongs in the sink and they both run to the bathroom, dropping their glasses, gloves, apron, and all of their clothes on the tiled floor. With wet cloths, they wipe themselves down of any potion that touched their skin and then proceed to scrub it down with soap.

“Will soap even work?”

“I read somewhere that if it doesn’t get the spell off the skin,” Lucy says, slightly out of breath, “it can at least help to remove the remaining potion off surfaces, which can limit propagation.”

“Good…”

Soon enough, Lucy is back in the living room with a fresh change of clothes, her heart still pounding in her chest. She grabs her phone, hoping to tell what just happened to her friends, or at least write about it on the dark forums onto which she initially got the recipe for the potion, hoping for advice.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to be online, so she puts it away. Closing her eyes, she rests her head in her hands to take another few deep breaths.

Still in her room, Maisie is having a harder time than Lucy to get over the incident. Her hands feel shaky, and her legs unstable; so much that she has to sit on her bed to put on her shorts. Grabbing a hanger in her closet is strenuous, harder than she remembers, like they’re hung higher up than usual. Her shirt feels like it weighs as much as a brick. She frowns and makes her way back through the door.

“Lucy, I think something is happening.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, I feel… That’s stupid, nevermind.” Pondering, Maisie turns around, as if to go back in her room, only to stop almost immediately again and walk backwards to her friend. “I know it’s going to sound weird, but I’m just gonna say it. *sigh* Shorter. I feel shorter. Is that possible?”

“Come here and let me see.”

As Maisie makes her way into the living room, still unsure on her two feet, Lucy too feels like something is gaining over her body. As she lets go of her head, her hands seem to tingle, as if she’d been sitting on them for too long. Her friend finally shows up.

“You look fine to me, I guess.”

“Am I not shorter? I feel... stubby.”

“It’s hard to say from a distance.”

Another few steps and she’s right up by the fridge. “Oh my god. Definitely, look.” Tiptoed as high as she can, she reaches for a box of cereal laid on top of it, but in vain. “I can usually reach up here, right? Why am I getting shorter? Could this be the potion’s effect?”

“We’re about the same height, right? Come here and let's compare. Oh sh….” As she stands up, she stumbles forward, falling right into her friend’s arms. “I lost my footing, this is wei… MAISIE LOOK!”

“How is my head leveled with your tits now? I can’t be a full head shorter than you..”

“Because this is what the potion is doing! Look at my left leg!”

“Oh what the hell! Why is it shorter than the other one?”

“The potion must’ve touched that leg but not the other one.” Lucy guesses. “And it’s still going, look at it! I can see it shrink!”

She’s right. While her left foot has made its way up as high as her right knee, her leg continues to slowly shrink back into her body, as slowly being erased, dragged back inside her hips.

“And it spilled on both of mine! That means...” Maisie exclaims, looking down at her own legs. “Oh that’s not good, what are we gonna do?”

“First thing is: do not panic.” Lucy breathes in and out. “You still aren’t hurt? Do you feel pain anywhere?”

“For that I’m good.” She walks back into the kitchen. “There are no shards of glass, the tube was pulverised, literally. Nothing’s left of it.”

“Um, Maisie…” Lucy whispers.

“I don’t like your tone, Lucy. What is it?” She gasps and points at her friend, who lifted her forearms before her eyes. “Where are your hands?!”

“They’re.... gone. At first they only tickled but I didn't even notice them… going away..” A few inches up her wrists, her arms end in round stumps. Her fingers and palms have vanished entirely from her body. She points a stump to her friend in return. “You should come here, and quickly.”

“Why?”

“Because your… Just do it, and don’t look d… Damnit.”

Just as she says it, Maisie looks at her legs and lets out a scream. While she still has feet at their ends, her entire legs now stretch barely beyond the initial length of her thighs. She looks around her only to notice her chest is now leveled with the kitchen table, and that she is still shrinking. After a few clumsy steps, she stumbles forwards and grabs onto a nearby chair which seemed to have tripled in size, the bars now too big for her hands to hold. She yelps again.

“My arms Lucy! They’re disappearing too!” Her limbs, now much shorter and smaller in comparison to the size of her torso and head, look like they had been picked out from a giant doll and pinned to her body.

“Quick! We must stay together!”

“I won’t be able to make it! You’ll have to come and get me!”

“Stop talking and get your ass over here!”

A panicked look on her face, Maisie starts making her way back to her friend, whose leg had finally finished shrinking. Her arms, also affected by the potion, swing at her sides as she battles her deflating body for balance, and finally makes it into Lucy’s weakened grasp.

“What now? I just wait until I lose all my limbs?”

“This might be how it’s gonna go down, yes.”

Soon enough, Maisie’s knees melt away from under her and she lets herself fall, sitting in front of her friend. Her feet, smaller even than a baby’s, shrivel and vanish. She let her arms rest at her sides, her hands higher than her hips already, as they continue to wither away. After another minute, the whole process stops. On her right side, her arm is completely gone. On her left, the remnants of her arm, not even a few inches long, stops shrinking in length but compresses in width, down to a third of its normal size.

“...Fuck.” Lucy said.

“You think?” Maisie replies.

“Fuck, fuck, look at us.” Poking the crumpled leg of her jeans looking for her flesh, she found nothing.

“Yeah, we’re fucked.” Maisie looked down at her empty shoulder, then at the stumps of her legs. “Did you post anything on the forums?”

“Yeah I had time.” Her phone on her lap, she tries to unlock it with her fingerprint out of habit. “Okay, it’s already harder than I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Honestly, that our invisibility potion would turn out fine, that we’d drink it and have fun for a few hours before its effect went away.” She flips her phone over again and swipes up with the stump of her right hand.

“Well it worked. Our limbs are so invisible that they completely disappeared!” As Maisie tests her new body, she waddles from side to side and pushes down using her left hip, hoping to help her move a bit. “At least I still have a tenth of an arm to grab things that are right next to my boobs, but only on this side.”

Lucy sighs loudly, her eyes stuck on her phone as she scrolls through paragraphs of text. “Oh, this seems interesting. See, according to the guy who posted the recipe, invisibility might as well be the final culminating state of some properties of magic.”

Maisie rolls her eyes. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that… Ugh... did you watch Avatar The Last Airbender?”

“Who hasn’t, seriously?”

“Okay, so making lightning is an extreme and elite form of Fire Bending, right? Same thing with Blood Bending and Water Bending, Metal Bending and Earth Bending, and then Flight for Airbenders..”

“Riiiiiiiight...”

“What he suggests is that on it’s way to granting invisibility, the concoction transitions through several phases, each with different effects. What exploded in our face might’ve been a rough version of invisibility, like, like... a transient state, and ended up simply erasing our limbs which, like you said, isn’t so different if you look at us through tinted glasses… from really far away..”

“So what do we do from here?”

“No one’s online at the moment…” Pressing her stumps to the side of her phone, she moves it on the couch and starts foraging for her lost leg again. “What I don’t understand is why did I lose my leg? My hands stuck out of my sweater, I can understand that, but why only one leg?”

“Weren’t you wearing your torn-up jeans? The ones your mom hates so much?”

“Fuck, I think you’re right. Some potion must have touched my skin from there. Stupid, stupid, stupid…”

She sticks her stumps beneath the elastic of her pants and pushes them down to inspect her left hip to confirm what her senses already taught her. There is nothing but smooth skin, even where her leg used to articulate a few minutes ago.

Suddenly, they hear the door of their apartment open and faint voices spill into the living room where they sit.

“HelloooOOOooo!” The girls recognise Lizzie’s voice. “Anybody home?”

“Um…” Uncertain, she looks down at Maisie and joins her stumps on her lap. “Over here..!”

*sniff* “Gosh it smells terrible in here, like burned hair.” Greg says in a whisper, barely audible to the others. “How did the potion turn out? Is it ready yet?”

“Wait for me, it’ll be just a minute I swear.” Lizzie says as she slams the bathroom door behind her.

Lucy bites her lower lip as Greg walks down the corridor and emerges into the room. Noticing her first, he doesn’t seem to realise what has happened. He jumps back back when becomes aware of Maisie.

“Nice!” He raises his eyebrows and drops down on his knees. “So did you rub the potion on your limbs to make them turn invisible? Or you drank it and it’s kicking in gradually?”

“They’re…” She stops speaking as he extends his hand wanting to feel hers. After waving through the air looking for it, he reaches for her shoulder and passes right through where her right arm should normally be. “... not invisible.”

He turns back to Lucy. Raising her arms, she presses her stumps together to prove the rest of her arms are also gone. His eyes drop to her hips, onto which she managed to pull back her pants, and he notices the flattened pant leg. He comes back to Maisie to grab her empty shoulder and arm stump.

“Fuck.” He says.

“You tell me.” Maisie answers back.

“What happened? The recipe didn’t work?”

“We’ll never know because the tube blew up in our face.” She lowers her head. “I forgot to start the timer and it overheated..”

“The fault is on both of us, we were talking and in between steps… well it doesn’t matter now.”

“What’s happening?!” They hear Lizzie tumble out of the bathroom and groan. She massages her ankle with her thumbs before painfully limping to her friends. “Oh..” She takes an entire set of seconds to take the girls’ states in, lay back against the wall, and shove her hands down the pockets of her skirt. “My. God.”

“Yeah..” Lucy sighs. “We’re done for. I’m not allowed to play with magic, if my parents find out I’m dead.”

“As long as you don’t tell mine, I won’t tell yours.” Maisie says. “It’s not like we still live with them, anyways.” Annoyed at Greg, who’s been tucking at her arm for a while now, she tries to pull it away, without success. “Give that back, please. It’s hard enough not having legs, can I at least have my one shitty arm… Thank you.”

“Sorry. It just feels so wack.”

“Imagine being the one stuck without any of your limbs.”

“You should’ve dressed up more like I told you.” Lucy says.

“Well you’re not entirely complete either, Miss Potter.” She attempts to point menacingly at her friend with her stump, but even she feels ridiculous doing it. “It's a hazmat suit we should’ve worn.”

“So, can one of you tell us exactly what happened?”

She waves her stumps in a circle around her. “Tube shattered, spilled everywhere in the kitchen. To our understanding, the spots where the potion touched our skin just erased our limb up to that point. I,” she lifts her arms once again, “was wearing gloves and a long sleeved shirt, while Maisie was, well, you know, in whore mode.” She adds cheekily.

“And Lucy had the brilliant idea to wear a pair of jeans with holes in them, just so she could lose an entire leg for free.”

“That was unfortunate.”

“So, the kitchen’s a war zone?” Greg asks.

“I guess so. So don’t walk barefoot or touch anything with your hands until it has been scrubbed cleaned from floor to ceiling.” Lucy replies.

Shifting her weight from one side of her body to the other, Maisie manages to turn her body away from Lucy and towards the corridor. “Or our clothes, while we’re at it. They must still be drenched in potion.” She points with her chin towards the bathroom where all the friends turn their gaze anxiously.

Lizzie’s snort superbly catches everyone’s attention. After a few seconds, she starts giggling. Inside her pockets, they can all see she’s toying with something.

“Really Lizzie?” Maisie asks.

“You know how I am, everything was piled on the floor, I just wanted to put them in the laundry basket...”

“You couldn’t just go take a piss without transforming into Cinderella?”

“Show us your hands.” Greg says sharply.

“Okay, but then there’s something even funnier I need to tell you about, guys.” She raises her hands to reveal that most of her fingers have already started to melt away, leaving behind only a few stubby phalanges. “These aren’t really pockets. They’re holes.” She pushes her hands through them until they come out from under her skirt.

Maisie sighs. “Really? Another dwarf was the last thing we needed…”

“YOU DIDN’T TELL ME! HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?!”

“You told us to wait until after you pissed, miss.” She hammers her stump up and down as she looks up at her. “Now go sit down, you’re going to need it soon.”

“Don’t you think I should wash my hands before I contaminate everything in here?” Still laid against the wall, she can feel her back slowly sliding downwards. She puts her hands up to prevent her from touching anything else.

“I’ll get a fresh cloth and a bucket.” Greg says, turning towards the kitchen.

“STOP!!!!” The girls shout in unison.

“Right…..”

After a minute or two, Greg is back with a bucket, a wet cloth, some soap, and gloves on. He throws the cloth to Lizzie, who catches it between with a fingerless hand and another one with three remaining stumpy digits. After cleaning her stumps, she scrubs down the front of her thighs, where her hands touched her skin, and sits down, as her head now passes under the height of Greg’s shoulders. By the time everyone is back in the living room, her legs have shrunken almost completely, but have now stabilized.

“So… what do we do now?” Maisie asks.

“First we need to figure out how long this is going to last. Two hours is not too bad, but a few days or weeks could be a real problem.”

“What was the duration of the potion you were trying to make? According to the formula?”

As she talks, she starts testing the strength of her arms. Lifting herself up, she swings her rump backwards, then forwards.

“Formula’s a big word, it was more estimated guidelines. It was supposed to be only 4 to 6 hours but in this incomplete form, it could be anything…”

For a minute or two, nobody dares speak a word. Looks are exchanged, limbs are tested, poked, bend, swung, as the girls ask themselves how long they’re gonna have to like alongside them. After stroking his beard a couple times, Greg finally breaks the silence.

“We don’t have much of a choice. You won't be able to take care of yourselves while this lasts, and I’m not sure we should test the limits of my cleaning skills today. Let the kitchen dry off and maybe the spell will have worned off by the time we come back.” He takes a pause and alternatively looks at each girl as their eyes are fixed onto him. “We’re gonna need the Guild’s help.”