Laura took another bite of her chicken salad sandwich and turned around to reach for something inside her duffle bag. “ ‘ook wha’ I go’ a’ ‘he i’ra’ry!” She said excitedly with her mouth full.
“Really?!” Fleur groaned and rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to see the inside of your mouth! And I can’t understand anything, anyway.”
Laura lifted the object towards Fleur. It was a thick, leather bound book and although it didn’t have any title or inscription on the cover, her friend seemed to know exactly what it was. She swallowed and licked her lips. “Tada!!”
“Laura!! How did…” She looked around, as if someone could be listening from a nearby bush. “How did you get it out of the restricted area?!”
Laura closed her eyes and grinned, proud. “I got a special note from my transmogrification teacher, Mr. Morton. I rented it for an entire month.”
Fleur covered her mouth with both hands, standing on her knees before sitting back on her feet. “Oh my god! Give it to me! I wanna see what’s inside!”
“Tut, tut, tut…” For the first time since the girls knew each other, Laura looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to touch it. You know, non-wizard and all..”
“Oh… right… I wouldn’t want to get sucked into the page..” She said, swallowing a sip of 7up with difficulty as she recalled an old tale her friend had once told her. She didn’t care if it was real or not, but she wasn’t ready to push her luck, either. “Well..? What are we waiting for?”
“You want to do this here?! In the middle of the park?”
Fleur scoffed. “I’m not saying I want to be turned into a frog right here, right now!, but let’s at least open it and check what spells are inside!!”
Putting down the book for a moment, Laura flicked an ant away from the last bite of her sandwich and walked around the blanket to sit by her friend.
It was a beautiful midsummer day. The sun shone in the sky close to its zenith and even though they had sat in the middle of the park, where no shade could possibly reach them, an occasional breeze prevented them from feeling too hot. Apart from the occasional passersby, they were completely alone. Laura grabbed the book again and opened it at a random page.
The entire volume was dedicated to a school of magic that was heavily frowned upon by most of the wizarding community : Body magic. Since humans were thought to be the embodiment of perfection, able to not only sense the pulses of arcane energy in the air but also reap and use them to their own designs, altering such a design was thought to be sacrilegious. It had been decriminalized in the past few decades, but very few people practised it openly, by fear of being judged or even cast aside by their compatriots.
It also explained why it had been so hard for Laura to check the volume out of the library. Her motivations for using such a book had to seem pure and scholarly, as opposed to for entertainment purposes. Which is exactly the intent the girls had in mind for it.
Fleur’s eyes ran on the pages, unable to understand most of the latin text inscribed on them. “What does it say?”
“Oh, that’s a perfect way to start. Wanna play guinea pig?” She threw a side look at her friend.
“Do I really have a choice?” Fleur chuckled. “What are you thinking of?”
“Just trust me, okay?”
Fleur cleared her throat and sat back on her feet. “Do your worst…” She forced her eyes shut, as if expecting Laura to slap her across the face.
The latter read the incantation to herself a few times before clearing her throat and bringing her hands together. “Capilli nigrum fiant, noctis tactu obducti!”
There was a low, earthly sound. Like the ground beneath their feet had rumbled deep within the earth, or like a gong had been hit in the distance, a few hundred meters away from them. It resonated inside Fleur’s head for a fraction of a second and, as quickly as it had manifested, it was gone. She opened her eyes again, looking around them both, searching for something that could’ve changed.
“Did… Did it work?” She asked.
Laura leaned forward and grabbed a handful of hair that rested on her friend’s shoulder. “Weren’t you blonde 30 seconds ago?”
Reaching for her mane herself, Fleur staggered back in surprise. Her hair was now as black as the starless night sky. “Holy shit!!! It really worked!!”
“Of course it did! Do you think I study hundreds of hours each month not to be a good wizard?”
Fleur couldn’t believe it. She had dyed her hair many times before, like many girls her age, but there was something about the nature of the color that baffled her. Her friend had commanded the fabric of reality itself to bend to her will and change the color of her hair. She twirled a lock between her fingers thoughtfully.
“Okay Laura. I want you to do something big, now.”
She frowned. “Big? What do you mean, big?”
“I’ve seen you use magic around the apartment a million times before. Doing the dishes, folding the laundry… It’s impressive, but changing something about me? That’s just WILD!!” The twisted hair fell from her grasp and her attention turned to her fingers. She raised her hand before her and an idea crossed her mind. “I want you to really impress me. Can you, like, erase one of my limbs?”
Laura choked on her saliva and went into a minute long coughing fit. When she got control back over her breathing, she looked into Fleur’s eyes and saw that she wasn’t joking. “Wait, you’re serious?”
“Why not? You’re my best friend and I trust you. Besides, a book that thick has to have counterspells included, right? If it’s too weird or I don’t like it then you can just reverse it.”
Laura chuckled. “For someone afraid to even touch the book, you jumped on the bandwagon pretty fucking fast, you know that?”
“Am I not going to get sucked inside?!” Fleur punched her friend in the shoulder as Laura started laughing. “Gosh I’m gullible.”
“Again, there’s no way for you to know if I’m joking or not, right? Even to us magic can be a little… unpredictable sometimes.” Laura turned her attention to the pages again, browsing and flipping until she, unsurprisingly, found a section with a title of interest : limb magic. “Okay, just to be clear, you want me to… erase… one of your limbs?”
“Erase, cut off, make it disappear.. Why not?” She repeated. “See how I fare down a leg or an arm.”
Laura turned a few more pages and a smile stretched on her face. “Ohhhhh…” She raised her eyebrows at her friend. “Something big you said… You know what they say in snowboarding? Go big or go home?”
Fleur’s confidence took a stumble. “What did you find?”
“In English it roughly translates to… Remove a person’s arms and legs temporarily. What do you say? Wanna go big?”
Fleur’s eyes alternated between her friend and the codex written on the pages. Her heartbeat quickened. “You're not gonna leave me alone are you?”
“What are you talking about?! Of course not!”
“Do you promise to take care of me when my limbs are gone?”
“What a ridiculous question, but if you insist..” Laura traced an arc of light between them and muttered an incantation. “We are now magically linked by the following promise : I shall take care of you to the best of my abilities when you are helpless and all your limbs are gone.” Something twanged in their chest like an invisible padlock. She smiled at Fleur. “Ready?”
“Yeah.” She joined her hands. “Yeah, okay, let’s do it.”
Laura’s focus shifted to the book again. The incantation was a lot more complicated than the first one. Apart from being almost four times as long, the mental state she needed to put herself into, as well as the gestures that accompanied it, were a lot more precise. She muttered the words in a low voice to herself once or twice, in a way that wouldn’t trigger the spell, and separately swung her hands through the air to produce ancient symbols of origins now unknown. She looked up at Laura and they both nodded.
Filling her lungs with as much air as she physically could, Laura recited the incantation in a single breath :
“Per carnem et ossa, per vim antiquam,
Membra auferantur, truncus maneat.
Fiat voluntas mea in forma nova:
Nullis brachiis, nullis cruribus — solum corpus.”
The last few syllables echoed around them like in an enclosed room, becoming louder and louder with each reverberation instead, bouncing back into Fleur’s ears until they became absolutely deafening. The ground seemed to tremble beneath them and the sky became white as hot flames for a fraction of a second. Laura didn’t seem bothered by these events at all and, as Fleur lifted her hands to block out the sound from her ears, she gasped.
Her hands were gone.
She tried to clench her fists but seemed to have forgotten how, like the idea of her even having hands was nonsensical.
Instead, her forearms ended in two bony stumps at the wrists and as she kept examining them, both girls noticed they were actively shrinking. Like plant shoots growing backwards, they retracted themselves inwards, shortening her limbs inch by inch, erasing with them any memories she had had of ever using them. As she tried to join her stumps together, the spell traveled through her elbows and deconstructed them into nothingness. Short upper arms were soon all that remained of her limbs and even as she flailed about trying to understand their physicality, they too disappeared entirely.
“Oh my God, Laura!! Look!!!” Head cocked towards her shoulders, Fleur shrugged and rolled them in their sockets, unable to do more than twist her torso to one side and another. “My arms are gone!!” The short empty sleeves of her top flapped at her sides in the breeze, useless, and she laughed excitedly. “They're gone!”
“It’s not over yet..” Laura added, clearly spent by the energy the spell had demanded of her, pointing at her friend’s legs.
Fleur’s shoes laid discarded on the grass, a pair of emptied and still warm socks lying about in them. By the time she realized her legs had also started disappearing, her leggings had deflated most of the way up her calves like punctured birthday balloons. She lifted her right leg to take a good look at it and lost her balance, falling over on her back.
“Are.. you… okay?” Laura panted.
“Eep!!” Fleur thumped on the ground. “Oomph. I’m alright, I'm alright.”
She grunted and shrugged her shoulders as she tried to move her non-existent arms with all her might but there was no use. Instead, she swiped at the grass with her ever shortening thighs, her empty leggings dragging behind her movements. With burning muscles, Laura closed the distance between them and helped her get into a sitting position, keeping a securing hand on the side of her ribs where her left arm had vanished. In its ineptness, it jerked back and forth, testing, overcompensating.
Just when she thought Fleur had found her balance, she removed her hand and immediately bursted into laughter. Fleur’s ridiculously short legs jerked upwards reflexively and she fell onto her back again like an overturned turtle. In a matter of a few seconds, the last bits of her legs had vanished as well and she laid on the grass, nothing more than a torso with a head.
“That was…” Laura breathed heavily still, hands on her thighs. “That was the hardest spell I ever cast..”
“You bet!!” Fleur groaned and lifted her hips from the ground, unable to find purchase on anything else. “Wow, I…” She squirmed, pushing her head and shoulder down into the grass. “Laura you did it!! I'm limbless!”
“That’s crazy… Look at that!!” She took an empty pant leg and showed it to her friend, folding it neatly against her legless rump. “Completely gone..”
Fleur chuckled. “Oh my god!” She twisted her hips again under her friend's touch. “I can feel your hand where my leg used to be!”
“Let me see…” Finding some of her strength again, Laura pulled on the leggings and they fell off from her friend’s rump almost without effort. “Wow, it’s like you never had any legs at all..” She ran her fingers on the smooth patches of skin that now showed through her panties. Scarless, legless, the atrophied muscles twitched when she pressed her thumb against them. “How does that feel?”
“That tickles!!” She rocked her hips again and managed to move them a few inches to her right, giving her torso a crooked angle. “I know you just used magic to remove my limbs but…” She tossed and twisted her shoulders and hips in opposite directions, managing to flip on her stomach with surprising ease. Laura gasped. “It’s hard to even remember how it felt to have arms or legs. It’s so weird…”
Laura’s eyes grew wide. “How did you do that?!”
Fleur frowed. “Do what?”
“Fleur, you just turned on your stomach like it was nothing!”
She looked back at herself, neck craned, shoulders shrugged. “I um…” She waddled and scoffed, leaning against her breasts. “Wow, I really did, huh…”
“What more can you do?”
“Honestly, not a whole lot without…” She wagged her empty shoulders and they poked through the fabric of her sleeves. “Let me see…”
Biting her lower lip, Fleur started flexing the remaining muscles of her new body. Like an experienced guitar player that picks up a friend’s instrument, it only took her a few seconds of warm up before putting her body in action once more. Slithering almost like a snake, she tensed and jerked each side of her body alternately, pushing on the ground with her rounded hips, rotating her shoulders in ridiculously small arcs. Inches became feet and over the course of an entire minute, Fleur had progressed enough towards Laura to anchor her chin on her friend’s thigh, pulling herself forward a little bit more with each sequence. Sweat dripped down her back and she caught her breath again. The wizard couldn’t believe it.
“Okay, let’s try this, now.”
Fleur needed a full minute to get a comfortable grip on her friend, catching her weight first with her chin, pushing one shoulder and then another against her leg, before getting blocked in her progress by the presence of her breasts. With the slight angle she had gained, she started rocking her hips again to walk forward, in the excruciatingly slow way that they flopped and sagged under her weight. She arched her back slowly until she was almost bent in half and took a deep breath.
“And now, for the grand finale..”
In a single motion, Fleur pushed off of her friend with all the strength the spell had left her, tensing her abdominal muscles and curving backwards until her center of mass was almost above her pelvis. At about three quarters of the way there, she slumped her shoulders forward and canceled the remaining momentum, successfully and impressively staying upright. She stood, or rather sat, proudly in front of her friend.
“Wow.” Laura simply said. “That was seriously impressive. How the fuck did you know how to do that?”
“Like I said, it’s like the spell completely erased the fact that I ever had limbs before. It’s hard to explain..” She twisted her shoulders to one side before quickly bringing them the other way along with her hips. The latter moved forward by an inch. She repeated the sequence again and the other side did the same. Despite the extremely limited way she handled herself, she looked both at ease and in control of her body. “This..” She looked down at her shifting, twisting, jiggling torso. “..feels as natural for me as walking was a few minutes ago.”
“This spellbook is wild. We all have our natural talents it seems.” Laura said, loudly closing the book. “Okay! How about we pack up our stuff and get back home, then? I'm DRAINED.”
“Sure but… how are you planning on doing that if you're so out of juice?”
Laura smirked. “By being clever.”
Reaching inside her bag, she fished out a small object roughly the size and shape of an egg. Its surface was black and smooth and bore no imperfections, apart from a single rune that had been etched at the bottom of the wider edge. Under Fleur's attentive eyes, Laura gave it a spin and it started floating above her hand, emitting a soft blue light. She spoke a single word of command and both girls were blinded by a flash of white hot energy.
When the light had faded away, Fleur noticed several things at once, but most importantly that they had been teleported back to their apartment. Instead of the grassy meadow she had been sitting on, she recognized the used wooden boards of the living room. Laura still sat in front of her, in the same position she had been before the flash. She now stood up, the egg shaped charm still in hand, although it shone no more. All the energy inside had been depleted. She stuffed it back into her pack along with the rest of the things that laid around them, which had luckily been transported along with the spell.
“I can store energy within this charm.” Laura said, seeing as Fleur’s brows had furrowed in interrogation. “This way, I can use it to cast a spell or two when I’m out of energy without needing to wait for my pool to fill back up. Pretty neat, huh?”
“Neat indeed.”
“I pretty much emptied it by teleporting us here, though. I'll have to remember to fill it back up when I have energy to spare.”
Fleur smirked and started squirming again, slowly making her way in the corridor and towards the kitchen. As her discarded leggings bunched around her hips, she carefully stepped over them and kept going forward as they dragged behind like a snail trail. After she had waddled onto the kitchen tiles, she looked up at the refrigerator and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Asked Laura without looking.
“I walked… waddled over to the kitchen because I’m hungry and…” She chuckled again. “Well…”
“Oh..” Laura turned around and noticed her friend sitting in front of the fridge, with no way of reaching for the door or picking up anything inside of it. “Wow, you’re all the way over there already? You’re pretty good at this!”
“Not too shabby, am I? As a temporary thing, it’s pretty fun to be honest!” She craned her neck and tried to wedge the door open without success. Every time she pushed too hard with her chin, she felt like going out of balance and had to lean forward again, in fear of rolling on her back once more. She huffed and puffed, slightly out of breath, almost regretting what she had just said. “But impractical.” Her confidence took a hit. “Veeeery impractical.”
“Do you need a…” Laura chuckled. “A…”
“A hand?” Fleur completed, an embarrassed smile growing on her face. “I thought I could do this alone, but I think I do…”
“Of course! I can’t put you through this and not take care of you, right?”
“Don’t say it like that…” Fleur whined, rubbing her cheek with a bony shoulder. The armless articulation rose barely high enough to reach her face.
“Hey, don’t be ashamed! You’re limbless for Christ’s sake. Besides, I promised to do so! Remember?” She walked over and got out the pack of organic strawberries which they had already washed and prepared the evening before. “Wanna sit at the table with me?”
“If it’s alright with you, I think I’d like to sit on something softer, like the couch maybe?” She waddled on her legless rump. “My ass is killing me.”
“Yeah, of course! Is it okay if I pick you up?” She asked, hands extended towards her friend.
Fleur’s embarrassment rose up a notch. She knew that there was no way in heaven or hell she would be able to climb onto the couch without the use of her arms and legs. On the other hand, the idea of needing the help of her friend to do something so simple rattled at the back of her brain. Her right hip twitched, as if trying to regrow her limb by sheer force of will.
“Laura, is there any way you could… Change me back? Like, I know you can, but.. right now I mean?” Her shoulders shrugged unconsciously as she talked and squirmed forward another few steps. “I think I’ve had enough of this. I’d like to have my limbs back.”
Laura frowned, uneasy. “Not yet, I’m afraid. The spell is really powerful and I need a few more hours to get my energy back.” She kneeled to level with her friend. “You’ll have to power through it for a bit longer, okay?”
“Yeah, okay…” She rolled her neck. “You can.. You can pick me up.”
“Come on, then. Get in here.”
Laura found it almost effortless to carry her friend in her arms. Without the weight of her arms and legs, and with Fleur’s athletic and lean figure, she felt about the same weight as a small child. She set her on the couch and made sure she felt comfortable since the thickness of the cushions tempered with her already limited range of movements. She looked back at her with pride.
Their day went on like it never had, with Laura happily assisting her friend in almost every aspect of their activities. Without arms to reach for things herself, Fleur had to be fed like a baby, craning her neck to accept bites of foods and fruits, swallowing her dignity along with every bite. Laura had removed her leggings pretty much without her consent, leaving Fleur with her panties, and the patch of smooth skin where her legs had retracted back into her body, exposed. Fleur had tried to convince Laura of putting them back on but she hadn’t listened, and there was very little Fleur could’ve done to force her from doing it anyway.
When Fleur’s hair started to tickle her shoulders and upper back, Laura tied them into a tight bun. Meanwhile, Fleur’s shoulders had been restless. She didn’t particularly enjoy people touching her hair, and being unable to do it herself made chills run down her body. Having no arms or legs had been fun for a while, there was no doubt about it. Being able to move and interact with her surroundings with her reduced body was, in some ways, enlightening. But the thrill had passed and she was more than ready to have her limbs back, now.
“Laura?” Fleur asked tentatively.
Her attention was fixed on the TV. “Hmm?”
“How’s your energy pool… thing… doing?”
Laura’s reserves had finished filling back up about half an hour before, but she was too invested in her show to prepare the reverse spell yet. She waved her hand dismissively. “Almost there, don’t worry about it.”
Fleur squirmed, arching her back to get out of the cushion she had sunken into. “That’s the problem, I think I need to go pee…”
Laura finally turned back to her friend, pulled back into reality by Fleur’s needs. The latter’s shoulders were still shrugged and twitching, but what caught her attention the most was her lower belly. Fleur’s core was tight and tense, like someone on the verge of spilling the content of their bladder. The wizard’s eyes briefly darted to her pack, thinking of the book inside, before changing her mind. “Can you hold it?
She grunted and twisted her hips. “Not really…”
“Okay…” Laura sighed. “I’ll carry you to the bathroom and then we’ll…” She motioned imprecisely through the air with her hands. “...proceed?”
Fleur’s physical discomfort translated over to her psyche, too. She hadn’t liked being carried at all when Laura had cradled her like a baby, so simply thinking about what would need to happen in the bathroom almost sent her reeling in shame.
“Are you sure you can’t turn me back… now??”
“I’m sorry..” Lied Laura. “If I try to cast a spell without enough energy, who knows what could happen to you…”
“What if you restored only one leg and one arm, then I could go to the bathroom by myself? Less limbs would mean less energy, right??” Fleur seemed desperate to find a solution.
Laura bit the inside of her cheek and stared at a corner of the ceiling, like she was lost in thoughts. “I could technically try but…” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “You know what, I really don't want to push my luck. It's my first time doing body magic and I just…” She paused for dramatic effect. “I don't want to risk it.”
Fleur groaned. “Fuck, okay.” The pressure kept building up inside her bladder and she was running out of options. “Okay, okay, let's do it before I pee myself.”
Laura smiled, perhaps a bit too wide considering the circumstances. “Come here then, my little Flower.”
She kneeled before her friend and tipped her body forward until she landed softly in her grasp. One arm below her rump, the other on her back, it really was like carrying a baby, she thought. She's my responsibility, now.
On the other side of the spectrum, Fleur couldn't wait to get control over her body again. Pressed against her friend this way, she felt completely at her mercy even though she knew Laura would never do her harm. Yet, the fact that she was being held a few feet off the ground with no way of catching herself if she was to let her go was… frightening. They passed through the door leading into the bathroom and Fleur shuddered.
Laura spoke softly in her friend’s ear. “I'm going to remove your panties, okay?”
“What?!” Fleur almost shouted, bringing her hips forwards. “But you're going to see my…”
“I won't look, I promise. But if you wet yourself we're going to have to get a lot more intimate than that.”
Fleur sighed. “Okay, sure.”
Laura lowered her arm to get a better grip on Fleur's lower back and fumbled blindly at her friend's hips, fingers slipping underneath the fabric of her underwear, intruding on her privacy. Then, both hands traveled to her ribs and she delicately sat her on the throne. Fleur's cheeks had gone tomato red.
“Well..?” Her bare shoulders rose in flusteredness. “Turn around!!”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
Laura did as she asked, hands joined in front of her. Fifteen seconds passed before Fleur's sphincters decided to let go and Laura felt another rush of pride course through her veins. You can do it, girl!, she thought. The noise quickly winded down to a trickle before stopping all together.
“I'm… Okay, I'm done.”
With a wad of toilet paper in hand, Laura wiped her friend dry and put her panties back on. Fleur cringed, shoulders hunched forward. No one had ever touched her like this and she had hated the whole 10 seconds it had lasted. She felt humiliated.
“Laura, I…”
“Come on, again..”
Without letting her friend finish, she lifted Fleur off her seat and secured her limbless torso in her arms, meaning to carry her back to the living room. However, Fleur was having none of it and arched her back away from her friend as hard as she could.
“Laura no, put me down!”
“Woah, woah..!” She stopped in the middle of the corridor and put her on the ground with her back against the wall. “What's the matter? Did I hurt you?” She kneeled and sat back on her feet, genuinely concerned.
“I can't… I need my limbs back.” She stammered. “It's not you, it's just that…” Her shoulders stretched in all directions, meaning to move arms that had long been erased off the surface of the Earth. “I can't do this anymore. I'm so helpless I feel like I'm suffocating.”
“I know, I know, soon I'll be back up to full. Let me carry you back to the kitchen and I'll pop some nuggets in the Air fryer..”
“NO!” Her hips jerked out from under her and she slumped down on her kidneys. Meaning well, Laura put a stop to her slide with a securing hand on Fleur's lower belly but she swayed again. “Please, Laura just… I can handle myself.”
“Sorry, I didn't mean to fluster you! I'm the one who put you into this mess, I just want to help..” She retracted her hand and felt a knot form in her guts as she watched her friend slide on her back.
“Let. Me. Be.”
She spat the words and pushed against the wall with her head to give herself some distance. Then, she repeated what she had done back in the park, twisting her hips and shoulders in opposite directions to flip over on her stomach. Under Laura's attentive gaze, she started moving again.
Squirming, worming, writhing, the four corners of her limbless torso rowed in the empty air.
Cheek pressed against the floor, she arched her back to try and gain traction with the exposed skin showing through her panties.
Shoulders angled down, she hoped that somehow her arms had grown back partially since her last attempts.
These accomplished absolutely nothing, apart from contributing to amplifying her anger. She looked back at Laura, still standing behind her, shamelessly looking at her inexistant progress.
“Weren’t you going to the kitchen?? Or you decided to enjoy the show while it lasts??”
“Sorry, sorry! I'll leave you alone, then.”
Stepping over her struggling friend, Laura made her way to the kitchen to prepare dinner for them.
The nuggets were long gone in her mind. Instead, she set herself up for a long recipe. It reminded her of potion making, in the same way that sometimes hours of preparation and careful tinkering can lead to an astounding result. Deliciousness was in order today and so she got to work.
Laura had already thawed chicken breasts and decided to slice them in strips before dunking them into a fragrant rosemary and lemon marinade, using her sous vide to accelerate the maceration process. Meanwhile, she measured rice and water in equal parts and got the rice cooker started. Finally, she sliced some cherry tomatoes in half and drizzled them with balsamic vinaigrette before tossing them lightly together. Laura walked out of the kitchen, pretty proud of herself, and the sight that lay before her almost put her to tears.
“No, no, no, no!!”
She hurried up to Fleur, who still laid on her stomach, barely a few inches further down the corridor than she had been half an hour ago. The ponytail she had put up earlier was now only a remnant of itself, and stray locks were plastered across her sweaty face. Despite everything, Fleur was still squirming like her life depended on it, wriggling everything her limited body was able to control.
“My poor little Flower…” She kneeled and helped her upwards, freeing her face and dropping a kiss on her cheek. “I never should’ve let you by yourself for so long…”
Fleur shrugged and tried to get away from her friend with no avail. “Get off me!”
“I just want to help!! Please, stop struggling! Look at yourself!” She picked her up against her will and they walked back to the kitchen. Laura took one look at the chairs around the table and muttered to herself. “This won’t do…” She snapped her fingers. A high chair materialized out of thin air in front of them, complete with arm rests securing both sides and a plastic eating tray in front of her. “That’s better.”
“What are you doing?!” Fleur whined, still throwing her hips around as Laura set her down on the chair. “You’re supposed to be saving your energy to give me back my limbs!”
Laura walked away to check on her cooking without looking back, unable to meet her friend’s gaze. She was so disappointed in herself… To leave her best friend lying on the floor, helpless, limbless, how cruel she had been! She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. That’s how she took care of the people she cared for? She shook her head and whispered to herself.
“Unacceptable…”
“Does that mean it’s going to take even longer for you to turn me back?” Fleur wagged her right shoulder trying to reach an itch on her cheekbone, but her reach failed her. “I can’t do this anymore, Laura. I need my arms, I need my legs, come on!”
“I’m sorry, Fleur, I can’t do it…” She turned around and came to kneel in front of her friend again. “I shouldn’t have left you on the floor by yourself, I feel terrible about it…”
“Just reverse the spell and I’ll beat you up for it, it’s okay. Just… Do it already.”
“No, no.. I promised that I was going to take care of you and I didn’t, and that’s absolutely unacceptable. I never should’ve left you alone, I never should’ve turned away from you…” She lowered her head and kept mumbling to herself.
“Shake out of it, Laura! It’s…” Fleur was getting a bad feeling from Laura’s attitude. “It’s okay I’m… I’m not mad at you. Being a torso without limbs is taking its toll on me, that’s all…”
“NO! It’s NOT okay!” Laura hit her thighs with her fists. You were at your most vulnerable, at your lowest point in life and I just…” They felt the promise’s twang in their chest again. “I’ll show you that I can be better. I’ll show you how well I can take care of you.” She stood up to stir the food again, trying to flee her own embarrassment, but turned to face Fleur again, indecisive. “And then you’ll see.”
“See what?” A chill traveled down Fleur’s spine. “See what, Laura..?”
“How good of a caretaker I can be!!” She walked back and pointed at Fleur menacingly with a wooden spoon dripping with cooking juices. “You’ll see that you’re not missing out on anything by not having your limbs! I’ll spoon feed you if I need to, brush and braid your hair, bathe you, dress you…” She ogled her friend up and down and Fleur felt as if she had been stripped naked under Laura's eyes. “Talking about clothes, I’ll need to adjust these pants of yours, they’re way too cumbersome for your new body. And buy more of these sleeveless tops, they really suit you…” She reached over and put her hand on Fleur’s empty shoulder, feeling the puny muscles tense underneath her fingers.
“Enough of it, Laura! This is crazy! Aren’t you hearing yourself?! I’m not your pet! You can’t do this to me!!” She thrashed in her high chair, unable to break free from Laura’s simple touch. “Let me go!! You’re going mad!”
“Mad?!” Laura clicked her tongue. “That’s no way of talking to your caretaker, young lady. You’re going to need to learn how to speak to me properly while you’re under my care.”
Fleur’s face was deformed with disgust. “Fuck you, Laura.”
“Tut, tut, tut… That won’t work at all…” Laura shook her head and walked over to her pack to retrieve her spell book. “Let me see…” She spoke softly to it and the pages flipped by themselves, seemingly stopping exactly where she had wanted them to. “Perfect.”
“Whatever you think you’re doing can’t be worse than this… Nightmare.”
Similarly to how she had done back in the park, Laura first read the incantation several times to herself before repeating it out loud, accompanying the words with a few precise hand motions. The room shimmered as the spell came into effect.
“Lingua sileat, vox evanescat.”
Fleur felt like the air had been punched out of her lungs. She had felt the magic course through her tiny body and was now out of breath, as if she had waddled all the way across the corridor.
“What did you do to me this time?”
Is what Fleur wanted to say. However, no words came out of her throat. Again she tried to speak and again she failed, unable to produce a single sound. She looked back at Laura although not with anger, but with fear.
Her mouth started moving again, but she remained ever silent. Laura, please… I beg of you, you don’t need to prove anything. I'm sorry I spoke against you, I know you’re a good caretaker, I know it, there’s no need to put me through this. Come on… Reverse the spell, reverse it and we’ll never talk about it ever again, I promise.. Please just…
Fleur was crying, now. An ugly, snotty, sobbing cry. In the high chair, prisoner of her friend's spell, there was nothing she could do. Nothing but cry, cry, and cry again, her limbless body shaking with sobs, her spirit trembling before Laura's absolute control. And as her shoulders quivered and her hips quailed, Fleur couldn't seem to remember how it had ever felt to have limbs of her own. She had become a prisoner of her own dismembered body.
“Don’t cry, my little Flower.” Laura said. “There is no need to cry, because I'll be there for you. Day after day and night after night, for as long as it might take us. There isn’t a corner of the Earth I wouldn't turn over for you. I'll take care of you for as long as it takes : a month, a year, or an entire decade if I need to. And when people start looking for you, I’ll wipe their memories clean too, change their souvenirs to make you appear as if you had been born this way. Then it’ll be a piece of cake. How devoted Laura can be!, they’ll say. To sacrifice so much of her time and energy to take care of her disabled friend. You will have become my sweetheart and my plaything, and in the end, you'll see how good of a caretaker I can be.”