Chapter 1 - Returning Home

Susan sighed and flopped onto her bed.  Nanase’s excitement after their visit to Tedd’s “basement of temptation” had not stopped for the drive home, she’d talked Susan’s ear off the entire way.  If there had been time before Nanase’s date with Ellen, Susan would have stopped off to feed her garrulous friend.  Instead, she had arrived home exhausted.

Exhausted, but triumphant.  Susan rolled over and picked her purse off the floor, opening it to reveal the second pair of dolls she’d smuggled past her Mother.  The dolls in her purse hadn’t left room for Nase, but as luck would have it the fairy doll had vanished just as Susan pulled up to her house.  Sighing again, she stood up and padded over to her magic chest.  Best to get these dolls hidden as well.

Susan tucked them into her magic chest, arranging all of them side by side in a neat row.  Original Nanase, two-tone hair Nanase, Tedd, Grace, and finally the doll shaped mostly but not entirely like herself.  Shorter (much shorter!), and with the sort of hips that Susan wished she had.

Susan closed the lid, reminiscing about how it felt to be “not lanky”.  Her hand went to the so-called watch on her wrist, where she’d put it after Tedd had nonchalantly handed it to her.  Press a button, think a number, and change.  It seemed too simple, and yet there it was.

Susan’s finger hovered over the button.  Despite having used several such watches less than an hour ago, it seemed incredible that such a small thing could change her.  In Tedd’s basement of magic anything seemed possible, but this was home.  Her bedroom, her fortress of solitude.  She’d used her magic here to summon things, but transformation felt entirely different.  Not fraught with the baggage her magic carried.

Curiosity chanted “one, one, one” in her mind.

Susan’s Logical side rolled her eyes at Curiosity.  “Must you?”

“We must!” enthused Curiosity.  “So much to try!  You know you want to!”

Susan nodded, and her thoughts echoed Curiosity’s chant as she pressed the button, visualizing the change.  The room grew around her as her perspective shifted, making everything seem bigger, even bigger than before that cursed growth spurt.

Susan danced over to her standing mirror, studying herself.  Definitely shorter, the top of her head was no longer threatening to leave the frame.  She swished her hair playfully, pleased at how it draped about her hips.  Nobody was around to see her smile, so she didn’t bother to suppress her glee.

Susan danced, letting her inner catgirl lead her around her spacious bedroom, spinning and twirling with her hair flaring and following like a streamer.  She stopped abruptly when she came face to face with her closet.  A hand that she half-expected to look like a paw pushed the door and she stepped inside.  Curiosity drew her deeper into the walk-in closet than she’d ventured in some time, to the old clothes she hadn’t worn in years.

There, in a drawer.  She knew what she’d find before she pulled it open.  Her favourite pair of spotty-cat pajamas.  She had outgrown them years ago, and picking them up gave her a powerful sense of nostalgia for simpler days.

“You could fit them again,” enthused Curiosity. “Two, two, two!”  Susan’s finger was already on the watch, and she dwindled once more.  The drawer with her old pajamas in it had been chest height on her, and now she couldn’t see inside it.  

Susan giggled as she looked around at the closet.  It was huge!  She hadn’t been this small since she was ten.  She felt like a little girl.  The mirror told her otherwise, her hips and chest were very different than what she’d looked like at ten.

The pajamas still fit, though not well.  The hips had been a challenge, and the top bulged in ways it hadn’t when she’d last worn it.  Susan studied herself in the mirror, grinning childishly at how cute she looked.  She pawed at the air and meowed.  “I wish I had a pair of these that fit.”

“You could, you know,” suggested Logic, drawing an incredulous look from Curiosity.

“What?” asked the catgirl in Susan’s mind.  “How how how?”

“The watches adjust clothing to fit.  Your third and fourth options are normal size with different hair.”

Susan was already pressing the watch button.  Curiosity chanted “three three three” for her, and she was growing, hips narrowing, and the black in her hair washed away to blonde.  That deserved some extra swishes, and a spin.  She ended up in front of the full-length mirror in the closet.

The pajamas fit better than they had, no longer tight over her hips.  They looked almost tailored for her bust, as well.  Susan turned from side to side.  The pajamas were no longer cute, they were... sexy?  That felt wrong.  She hurriedly stripped out of them, and put them back in their drawer.  She was mildly annoyed that they wouldn’t fold properly due to the curves, and slammed the drawer.

As Susan turned to leave the closet, other racks of clothes caught her eye.  Cute tops she’d outgrown still hung there, waiting.  She carefully picked through them, finding a strappy green top she’d bought on a whim three summers ago, but never worn in public.  Susan glanced around, then chuckled softly at herself.  Nobody here to see.  She pulled out the top, and measured it against herself.  It wouldn’t fit now, but...

A minute later Susan was back in front of her mirror, wearing the top over the slacks she’d had on earlier.  Her hair was blonde to her shoulders, and black past that.  She swished it once more, then studied the top.  The watch had adjusted it from too loose to a nice, comfortable fit.  She would have to thank Tedd for that.  And ask how long it would last.

The top also left a bit of Susan’s midriff bare.  Maybe this summer?  Susan shook her head.  Too easy to brush against something.

“Susie!” called her mother.  “Dinnertime!”

Susan was almost out the door before she noticed her hair was still two-tone.  She used the watch to revert it to normal, then took the watch off and tossed it onto her bed.

Susan schooled her expression as she left her room.  Outside her sanctum, her smiles were only on the inside.  

When she entered the kitchen, her mother smiled at her.  “That’s a pretty top.  When’d you get it?”

Susan looked down at her bare arms and the green strappy top.  “A while ago.”

“You had a top like that years go.  This one fits you better.  Where’d you get it?”

Susan looked away.  “Does it matter?” she asked, more sharply than she’d intended.

“No,” sighed her mother.  “I suppose not.  I just... you seemed more cheerful wearing it.”

“I...”  Susan looked down at how exposed she was.  “It’s more revealing than I like.”

Her mother shrugged.  “I suppose.”  She gestured toward the table.  “Dinner’s done.”

Susan looked over at the kitchen table and failed to suppress a small smile.  “Carrots?”

“You seemed skittish when you came home, I figured I’d add your favourite.”

Susan frowned, glancing over her shoulder at her room, and the spellbook tucked away in her bookshelf.  “Thank you.  They do help.”

The two ate in silence for a time, then Susan’s mother asked how her day had been.  Susan sketched out her afternoon with Tedd and Nanase in as few words as she could manage, since most of what they’d done and discussed had to do with magic.

“Tedd was polite?” asked Mrs. Pompoms.  “I suppose that’s the best one can expect.”

Susan rolled her eyes.  “He has a girlfriend, Mother.  He’s head over heels in love with Grace.  She’s been good for him, he’s much better behaved now.”

Her mother snorted.  “Sure.  For now.”

Instead of listening to another diatribe, Susan excused herself, cleared the table, and put the dishes in the dishwasher.  As she worked on making the kitchen spotless, she imagined she felt the top tightening around her as it tried to shrink back to normal.  She had no idea how long the change would last, but her compulsion to clean won out over her worries.  

Susan retreated to her bedroom with haste, and shucked the top off the moment the door was closed.  It lay there on her bed, stubbornly not changing size.  Susan rolled her eyes, and made a mental note to ask Sarah how long clothing changes would last.  She put the top in her hamper, then decided it was late enough that she could ditch her bra and put on pajamas instead.

Susan considered resummoning Nase, now that interaction with her mother was over for the night.  But she had other dolls now, she could summon herself instead...  Before that, however, she wanted to know the limits of the spell.  So she summoned nothing, and paced over to the bookshelf.

Tucked among other similar sized books was “The Ecology of Anteaters”, a title that always made Susan shake her head.  She pulled it out and went over to her desk to study it for changes, while doing her best to avoid thinking about the day she’d received it.  Fortified by the carrots from her mother, Susan finally opened the book for the first time in months.

The entry for the hammers was unchanged, but her summoning spell had grown.  To her annoyance, the clause about “profligate pyrotechnics” when the fairies were unsummoned was still there.  She skimmed forward, to find pages and pages of addendums and alternatives.

As was typical with the spellbooks, the volume of text didn’t lead to a lot of useful information.  It took an entire page to clarify that she could now summon three items, rather than one at a time.  The whole thing read a little like the “Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch” scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  After being run through machine translation from English to Hungarian and back again.  And then all the words had been replaced with the longest matching entry in the thesaurus.

At least the spellbook made one thing clear-ish, that summoning a fourth item would unsummon the first.  With all the attendant consequences.

Susan read further, taking notes as she managed to parse each section of the dense prose.  Summons would last for different durations if she put more or less energy into the spell, that was useful to know.  Calibrating it would take practice.  Learning how to control the energy she used, likewise.

Susan carefully summoned a sword to hand, then her eyes widened.  It was glowing, a pale energy flickering around it like a flame.  That was new...  She unsummoned the sword, breathing a sigh of relief when it did so quietly, despite the new energy.

Susan reapplied herself to the book, determined to learn what this new thing was.  Her eyes widened when she finally worked out the implications.  The vampire in France had been right to fear her.  Not only were her weapons more durable now, the glow made them even more dangerous to aberrations.  Exactly how that worked was less than clear, and she hoped she wouldn’t have cause to find out any time soon.

Susan shuddered, and determined not to summon any more weapons.  Instead, she popped a compact mirror into her hand, followed by a hairbrush.  A bottle of hand sanitizer was next, and she set them all in a row on her desk.  Calling a sweater made the mirror pop out quietly, confirming that part of her reading.

Susan started a timer on her phone, to see how long the hairbrush would last, then returned to her reading.  The next section pertained to her dolls, and while it was short on instructions as to how to change her level of control, she’d had some practice at it already.  Tedd’s insights helped her parse the thicket of words.

What she was hoping to find was there, at the very end.  If the doll was unsummoned or vanished while she was in control, no permanent harm would be done.  Disorientation... well, it sounded like disorientation.  She could deal with a little dizziness.

Susan took a deep breath, carefully opened herself to magic, and tried to limit the power as she summoned the doll that looked like her.  Little Suze danced through the air, trying out her new wings.  Susan watched in wonder, marvelling at her tiny almost-clone.  Little Suze settled on the desk after a minute, sitting on top of the spellbook and looking up at her seriously.

“Next test, is it?”  Susan closed her eyes, and suddenly was looking up at herself.

“Oh.  Wow.”  Susan stared up at the titaness in front of her, momentarily glad that she wasn’t moving.  She snickered when she realized she’d just been scared of herself.  Susan stood up carefully, feeling out her balance in this tiny body.  The wings dragged behind her, and she flexed them up and out of the way.

Susan’s expression of wonder grew even wider.  “I have wings.  I wonder how hard it is to fly like this?”

Thinking of flying drew her up into the air, effortlessly.  Her wings fluttered by her side, but it took her only a moment to realize they were mostly for show.  Her motive power was magic.

Testing that theory led to her first crash.  Tucking her wings against her back made turning much harder, and she hit her headboard hard enough that she expected bruises.  Patting down her tiny body found it entirely unharmed.  Susan said a brief thanks to Newton's Second Law of Motion and her tiny mass.

Emboldened by her lack of injury, Susan launched into the air once more.  She firmly told Curiosity that she was testing the interaction of wings and magic, but the test soon devolved into racing around her room as acrobatically as possible.  When she realized that her mother wouldn't be able to hear her a doll’s voice, she added hooting and hollering as well.

After ten minutes or so of exulting in her newfound power of flight, Susan started to tire.  She settled to the bed, where she wobbled dizzily once, wondering why she felt utterly drained.  A moment later she flickered out of existence.

*** *** ***

Susan gasped, and flailed upright in her chair.  Opening her eyes revealed a room that felt too tiny to contain her.  How did her room get so small?  Just turning to look at it made her body feel huge and ponderous.  She stumbled from the chair to her bed, hoping that a lie-down would help make it go away.  But just breathing felt weird.  Her body was wrong, wrong in every way.  Too big.  Too narrow.  And she desperately wanted to lash her tail, but didn’t have one.

Susan lay there, waiting for it to pass.  It didn’t.  Everything continued to feel wrong.  Just lying there felt like she was being pressed in a vise by her own weight.

Groaning, Susan crawled out of bed to locate her phone, and called the one person who might be of help.

“Tedd’s Basement of Wonders.  Hey Susan, is something wrong with the watch?”  The voice on the other end was bubbly and female.

“Grace?” asked Susan curiously.

“Oh!  No, this is Tedd.”

“Right.  You mentioned Grace wanting an all-Grace party, so you’re starting early.”

“Something like that,” chuckled Tedd.  “You don’t sound good.  What’s wrong?”

“Stupid first person view.  Book said it’d be disorienting if the body vanished.  But it’s so much worse.  I feel like I’m still supposed to be a fairy, my body’s all kinds of wrong.”

“Ouch, I know that feeling, though I generally have options now...  Right, sorry.  Did the book say how long it should take to fade?”

“No.  It happened twenty minutes ago, and it’s still not fading.  What do I do?”

Tedd hummed in thought for a few moments.  “If I could see it I’d have a better idea.  Absent that... have you tried turning it off and back on again?”

“What?” cried Susan, annoyed at the tech support-ism.

“It’s not as silly as it sounds.  Resummon the doll, take up first person view again, then back out to your body.  The part of the magic that adjusts your proprioception probably didn’t get a chance to act.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” grumbled Susan.

Tedd’s cringe was almost audible.  “I still think it’s your best shot for a quick fix.”

“And a slow fix?”

“Sleep it off.  This shouldn’t be a permanent change, so at some point it will wear off.”

Susan sighed softly.  “Quick fix it is.  Hold for a minute?”

“Sure.”

Susan closed her eyes and summoned the little copy of her.  Immediately everything felt right once more.  When she opened her eyes, she was standing beside an enormous phone, held in an equally enormous hand.  “Hey Tedd,” she chirped.  “I think it’s working.  I reappeared in first person.”

“Good to hear.  Switch back.”

Susan opened her eyes cautiously, then wiggled her fingers and toes to test out the feel of her body.  She sat up, and put the phone back to her ear.  “I think it worked.  You’re a life-saver, Tedd.  Thanks.”

“Anytime.  Seriously, any time you like, I’d be happy to look at your spell in action, or whip up another watch, or...”

Susan cut off his excited gushing.  “Okay, okay.  I get the picture.  Are you sure you’re not Grace?”

Tedd giggled.  “Her bubbliness is infectious.  Are you okay?”

Susan twisted from side to side, looking over her back for nonexistent wings.  “Mostly.  I still half-expect to see wings on my back, but it’s not overwhelming.  Go give Grace a hug for me.  And ask her to give you one from me, too, okay?”

Tedd agreed readily, and ended the call.

Susan gave her hips a little wiggle.  “I still feel too bony.  Maybe the watch...”

Curiosity chanted “five five five” in her head as she reached for it, making Susan smirk.  “Okay, fine, there is one I haven’t tried yet...”  In some ways, it was the smallest change of the lot, as her height and hair stayed the same.  Susan patted her widened hips and nodded.  Much better.  She felt almost whole.

The little Susan doll fluttered in front of her, then zipped over to the chest and patted it.  Susan chuckled softly.  “What is it, Suze?  You want some friends to play with?”

Suze nodded emphatically.

Susan smiled at the little one indulgently.  “I suppose I could join the Grace party by proxy.”

The Grace-doll poofed into existence beside the other fairy, and promptly hugged her tight.  “Hey!” protested Susan, then she suddenly frowned.  She could feel Grace hugging her fairy doll, and it wasn’t bothering her at all.  No risk of contamination...

Susan closed her eyes, and opened them to see Grace’s grinning face right next to her own.  “Oh!  Wow.  This is even better.”

The Grace doll nodded, then put a finger to Susan’s lips.  It darted back to the chest once more, fluttering over it excitedly.

Susan rolled her eyes.  “You want Tedd?  This goes against my better instincts, but... just this once.”

Susan returned to her own body to center herself.  She focussed carefully, remembering the feel of casting a short-duration summon from before.  A tiny lick of power brought the Tedd-doll into existence beside the Grace-doll, and she heard Grace’s squeal of excitement before she even opened her eyes.

By the time Susan’s eyes had focussed on the dolls, Grace’s outfit was already fluttering to the floor.  “Hey!  What are you...  Grace, no!”

But the dolls paid her no heed.  By the time it occurred to her she could force the issue, the merest thought of occupying either one filled her with bleak dread.  “Seriously you two, I’m going to find a spray bottle,” she protested.  “Not here...”

Susan briefly considered unsummoning the dolls, but the last time she’d done that in the house, it had gotten her mother’s attention, and she’d had to lie through her teeth to explain the noise.

So all she could do was watch.  Watch with her cheeks pinkening, and her breath coming in short gasps.  Little Suze was watching as well, just as avidly, fluttering above the coupluating dolls with a view that made Susan briefly jealous, until she projected herself into the doll.

Susan moaned, being so close, watching so intensely as the Grace-doll made such expressive faces...

Grace collapsed, wrung out.  The Tedd doll cuddled up to her, then softly and silently vanished away.

Susan fluttered to the lid of the chest, crouching just beside the spent little doll.  Grace smiled up at her, and blew her a kiss.

Susan nodded slowly.  “Thank you for your gift.”  Then she chuckled softly.  “What part of me was that?”

The Grace-doll pointed at her heart.  Susan rolled her eyes at the idea.  Grace repeated the gesture twice more, then pointed at Susan’s gargantuan form and back at herself.

“Oh!”

A moment later, Susan was looking out of the Grace-doll’s eyes.  More significantly, her whole body tingled with the afterglow of what the Tedd and Grace dolls had been up to.  Susan slumped, purring softly to herself and letting the world go away for a time.

She woke from her “nap” feeling refreshed and energized, and looked about the room.  How long had it been?  She sat up to find Suze sitting by her feet, watching her with a worried expression that shifted to a small smile.  Suze patted the chest they were both atop of, as if to ask for one more summon.

Susan stood up, bouncing on the balls of her feet.  This doll felt completely unlike the others.  Energized, almost giddy.  Letting go of control sent the Grace-doll soaring into the room, dancing through the air.  Susan glowerd at it when she realized it was still naked, and the Grace-doll, abashed, retrieved her point little fairy-dress and put it on.

Susan thanked the little doll, and it curtsied.  She chuckled, and as the Grace-doll resumed its dance, she focussed on the last new doll, Nanase mark II with the two-tone hair.  To her surprise, this didn’t feel much like Nase.  Nase was serious and helpful, this Nanase-doll was almost as excitable as Grace.

Suze fluttered over to sit in Susan’s lap, as the two of them watched the other dolls dance.  They were still at it when Susan yawned, pulled up her sheets, and burrowed in to sleep.  Before she drifted off, she felt two little bodies land on her, cuddling in to sleep as well.