Heather peered at the popup in her game.  “Congratulations on reaching level 10.  As one of the first in your area to reach this goal, you have been given a complimentary RealityPlus upgrade pack.  Expect it to arrive shortly.”

She shrugged, and closed the popup.  “Cool, I guess.  I wonder what it does?”  She continued her stroll around her neighbourhood, using WitchyWays on her phone to overlay the local flora and fauna with information about their potential uses in the game, and tapping on the more interesting tidbits to harvest them.  She’d need them for online duels with her friends later.

As she circled back toward home, she made sure to head over the bramble patch on the hillside.  The blackberries were nearly ripe, and the game made a big deal about anything that could be harvested and eaten.  She got several dozen for the game, and even found two that she judged ripe enough to eat.  They were on the tart side, but juicy enough to make it seem worthwhile.

The remainder of her walk gave Heather a variety of plants and several interesting insects to harvest, though she wasn’t quick enough to catch the birds.  When she got home, she noticed a delivery van pulling away.  On the doorstep was a small box, so she picked it up and carried it into the kitchen.  She kicked off her shoes and then waved the box at her mother.  “Hi Ma.  Delivery came.”

Her mother glanced up from the soup pot she was stirring.  “Oh? Who’s it for?”

Heather peered at the label.  “Me?  But I didn’t order anything...”

“With your budget, I should hope not.  Any luck finding a job?”

Heather sighed morosely.  “Nobody’s hiring yet.  Soon.”

“It’s almost summer, surely things will pick up.  What’d you get?”

Heather brightened, and tugged at the tape on the box.  Inside was a small metal object, about the size and heft of a battery pack.  There were no connector ports, and just the one button recessed into the side.  “I don’t know.”

A slip of paper inside the box congratulated her on her new Technicon MT-472 RealityPlus modulator.  It also included instructions on how to pair it with her phone, so she did that.  A couple of pages of legalese popped up, followed by the usual access options list, which Heather accepted without thinking about.  Once she was done, her battery indicator started flashing, showing that it was charging.  “Huh.  Seems to be some kind of wireless charger.”

“I guess that’s handy, but it sounds like you expected something more interesting.”

“Yeah, WitchyWays made a fuss about it when I hit level 10.  Thought it... I don’t know what I thought.”

“You and that game,” grumbled her mother.  “At least it gets you out walking regularly.  You’re looking much healthier since you started playing it.”

Heather grinned.  “I feel better, too.  I think I’m even getting a bit of a tan.”

“It’s a good look on you.  As long as you’re happy.  And home for dinner on time.  Do you actually look for jobs on your walks?”

Heather nodded affirmatively.  “Yes, ma.  I walked as far as the mall today, and checked for postings in the shops.  They’re open, but...”

“The little strip mall down below?  They never really closed.”

“No, I went as far as the actual mall.  It’s not that far, I timed the walk back.  Half an hour.  Wouldn’t be too hard to commute on foot, or bike it.”

Her mother pulled the soup off the stove.  “Well, I hope you have an appetite.  Dinnertime.  Call your brother, then set the table please.”

“Sure thing.”

*** *** ***

The next day Heather was inordinately pleased to see a deer cropping the grass at the side of the road.  The game had flagged them before, but noted that she couldn’t capture them until level 10.  So she pulled her phone out of her pocket, and fired up the game.  Before she could even lift the phone up to peer through it’s window onto the witchy world, the deer was highlighted.  “Wait, what?”

Heather glanced around her.  Familiar sigils tagged the rosemary bush by the walk, the flowers at the edge of the road.  Up until now she’d only seen them through the screen of her phone.  The menu sigil was floating in the air just to the right of her vision, where it would be in the game, and when she lifted her hand to it, it flared out even more ornately than she was used to.  There was a new option highlighted: Battle.

Heather licked her lips, then tapped on it.  The highlight around the deer turned red, and then a ghostly version of the deer reared up and faced her.  She quickly summoned her potions and  woodland allies: two crows, three squirrels, and a cat.  Enhancement potions made them into formidable beasts, and they charged the deer.  The fight took several minutes, and ate heavily into her potion stash, but her practice in online battles with her friends had given her the skills and reflexes needed to heal and buff her pets to victory.

When she was done, Heather was surprised to find herself panting softly.  “Wow.  What a rush.  I wonder what I get...”  The victory menu included the usual options “Harvest”, “Blessing” and “Capture”.  After a moment’s hesitation, she tapped Capture.  The deer sparkled away just like her summons had, motes of light swirling into her hand.  She felt an odd weight there.  A moment later, her interface flashed, and splashed up a message congratulating her on her new capture and showing its power level.  The deer was vastly more powerful than her cat, and the experience from the capture bumped her up two levels.

Heather’s grin from the achievement faded, though, when she realized that the deer was nowhere to be seen.  She replayed the scene in her mind.  Had she... disintegrated the deer?  She pawed frantically for her phone, and turned the game off.  All the overlays vanished, and the deer reappeared.  Its head popped up as Heather approached it, and it darted away, tail flagging but otherwise looking none the worse for wear.

Heather breathed a sigh of relief.  Then she licked her lips, and launched the game once more.  She tucked her phone into her pocket, grinning giddily at the magical world around her.  She set off to her favourite bramble patch, and found some new highlights there.  Somebody had dumped a fast food bag into the brambles, and the crows or something had gotten into it, scattering litter along the side of the road.  A half dozen taps later the mess had vanished from her view and given her a tidy little power boost as well.

Instead of heading fruitlessly to the mall, Heather decided that a stroll around the nearby golf course was in order.  Hopefully there’d be some ducks at the pond.  WitchyWays didn’t offer the capture option for them, but she’d been feeding them and getting feathers in return in-game, and she was curious to see if her new levels gave her new options.

She sat at one of the park benches on the edge of the pond, and dug through her purse.  The bag of birdseed had migrated to the bottom, as usual.  A few scatters led to almost a dozen ducks squabbling their way toward her, all of them highlighted in game.  Several popped up the harvest option before she even fed them in the game, and she got several feathers for her trouble.

The real prize came when she tossed a few of her harvested blackberries out.  Two of the ducks lit up with “blessing”, which she hadn’t seen on them before.  Tapping on them gave her a prickling sensation in her shoulders.  Heather craned her neck and soon her eyes widened.  Wings!  Wings were growing out of her back.  She flexed her shoulders, and they flared and flapped.  “Holy crap,” she murmured.  “This feels so real.”

Once the ducks had eaten her handful of seeds, they moved along to the next bench, where an older woman was tossing out some kind of grain.  Heather waved to her, and got a startled expression and pointed finger in return.  She rolled her eyes, gave her shoulders a little shake to settle her wings on her back like a cape, and strolled off.

During the days, the path around the golf course was rarely busy.  She smiled and waved to the few joggers she met, and mostly got ignored as usual.  One called out “nice cape”, which was odd.

A rich stretch of blackberries kept Heather’s attention for a while, then a new alert popped up.  A red arrow pointed off to her left, and she followed it curiously.  A few minutes later she saw a boy about her age, headed her way.  He was highlighted in red, like the deer had been.  When they got to within about twenty feet of each other, a new popup asked if she would like to duel “Flint”.

Heather looked him over.  “Is that your name, Flint?”

The guy nodded.  “So you’re Heather, then?  How long have you been playing?”

Heather shrugged.  “Pretty much since it came out. Three weeks?  The duel thingy says you’re level eleven, so I guess you’ve been busy too.”

Flint nodded.  “I’ve found all kinds of cool stuff.  I’d... kind of like to see how the duel works, I have some new augments I want to try.”

“Sure.”  Heather tapped the icon, got a brief “waiting for other player to accept” message, then it went away.  A ten-second countdown gave her time to bring up her allies menu, and slot some augments for them.  Her crows kept his robins at bay, and her cat bravely faced down the dog he summoned.  She’d added her best growth potion to its augments, and it was not only the size of a cougar, but it had armour formed of vicious brambles.  The dog did not fare well.

Then Flint summoned a trio of squirrels.  Heather countered with two of her own, but when Flint’s squirrels gunned them down with eye-lasers, she realized she had a problem.  The squirrels shot down her crows, then started attacking the cat.  The bramble armor started to show scorch marks.

Heather pulled out her big gun, the deer.  It charged into the fray, and in moments the battle was over.  A shimmering victory sigil hovered over the battlefield, and Flint stood there highlighted like a defeated animal.

“Flint?” called Heather softly.  “Are you okay?”

Flint made a few garbled noises, then a soft “hmm-hmm” that seemed at least somewhat encouraging.

Heather tapped the victory sigil, and it spread out into options like usual.  Harvest and Capture were familiar.  Gift and Curse were new.  She tapped Gift, and then got presented with several of her allies, and a notation that “giving a gift did not give away the selected ally”.  She grinned, and tapped the deer that had defeated him.

The outline of a stag lept toward Flint, making his eyes go wide.  It passed into him and settled around him, and he gained a few inches of height, some muscle, and a pair of cute little antlers on his forehead.

“Oooh,” giggled Heather.  “That’s a cute look for you.”

“What did it do?” asked Flint.  He dug out his phone and pulled up the mirror app.  Then he put a hand to the antlers.  “Are they real?”

“This reality augmentation tech is pretty impressive,” giggled Heather.  “Did you get one of those RealityPlus thingies too?”

“Yeah.  Wow, it really feels real.  This is so cool.  Want to duel again?  I like how this one worked out.”

Heather nodded eagerly.  This time, she threw the fight by not summoning her cat or the deer, and quickly lost.  The glowing light cocooned her, preventing all but the slightest of motion.  She wondered what gift he’d give her.  Laser eyes would be cool.

“I wonder what capture does,” mused Flint.

Heather’s eyes went wide, but her attempt at protest only came out as a muffled “hmm!”

Flint looked up at her.  “Come on, you have to be a little curious.”

Heather sighed, and nodded the tiniest bit she could.  And then the sparkles wrapped around her.  She felt her hands tingle, and when the sparkles flowed away her hands were gone and the tingling was rapidly spreading up her arms.  She only had time for two panicky breaths before her vision blacked out, and the world went away.

Flint stared at the spot where Heather had been.  “That looked so cool.  Heather?  Uh... can you hear me?  Are you still there?”  He took a step forward and waved his hand through the space she’d been occupying.  Nothing.

Flint pulled his phone out with shaking hands, and closed the WitchyWays app.  Heather did not reappear.  “Holy...  Did that really happen?  Heather!” he shouted, wondering if she’d run off.  No response.  He banged his hand on his forehead to exhort himself to think, and winced.  He lowered his hand and stared at it in confusion.  Blood?

Flint reached up and touched his forehead.  The antlers were still there.  The game was off, and the antlers were still there.  “It’s... real?”

Flint quickly relaunched the game, and pulled up his inventory.  At the top of his allies list was Heather, looking startled.  After a moment, she smiled at him, and waved.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

Heather nodded, and her lips moved but no sound emerged.

“Sorry, can’t hear you.  Maybe if I summon...”  A tap later sent sparkles spiralling outward from his hand, and Heather’s form re-emerged from the display.

Flint darted up to her and hugged her tight.  “I’m so sorry!  I didn’t know this would happen.”

Heather hugged back, sighing happily.  It felt so right to be in his arms.  “It’s okay.  I feel really good.  Like...”  She struggled out of his hands, and took a step back, starting to pant.  “I feel like I need you, and have to protect you.  I don’t even know you!”

Flint looked her over.  “Yeah, you show as an ally, still.  But there’s a timer, says I have about seven and a bit hours.”  He made a hand gesture.  “Says you have dinner then.”

“Oh yeah.   The game was very insistent I set up my schedule of when I was needed for various things.  So... I’m only stuck until my game time ends?  That’s not so bad.”

“There’s an icon that lets me free you early, too.  Should I?”

Heather bit her lip, then stepped closer to Flint once more.  “I know I should say yes, but...  I like how this feels.  Like I finally belong somewhere.”

“Sounds nice,” sighed Flint.  “Maybe you can capture me tomorrow.”

“It’s a deal.  Hey, if I’m your ally, do I have augment slots?”

Flint made some gestures in the air, then nodded.  “Yeah, a bunch.  There’s one item already slotted, blessing of ducks.  I guess that’s where your wings come from.  Says it gives you a speed boost, and the ability to glide short distances.  I wonder what it would take to make you small enough to fly.”

Flint’s eyes went wider.  “I just got an ingredients list.”

“Ooh.  For?”

“Ally resizer.  Can grow the ally up to eight feet tall, or shrink them to six inches.  If you were duck sized, you could fly.”

“Eeee!  Yes!  Please?  Pretty please?  I’ll help you gather the ingredients.”

Flint grinned.  “That sounds like a great quest to embark upon.  Some of this stuff is pretty obscure, we might need all afternoon.”

Heather hugged him tight.  When Flint hugged her back she wiggled and purred.  He petted the top of her head and her eyes slitted closed.  “What are you doing to me...” she breathed.

Flint pulled back.  “Are you okay?”

“Mmm.  Blissy, but coming down from it.  Starting to wish I hadn’t set my schedule.”

“Seriously?” asked Flint.  “That would let me keep you like this.”

Heather grinned languidly, and stretched to show off her body.  Her wings flared to frame her, and she smiled at the avid look that produced from Flint.  “You’d like a pet girlfriend, I bet.”

“Heck yes.  But you’re not in your right mind.  I should free you.”

“No!” protested Heather immediately.  “I... you promised you could make me fly.  Please?”

“Okay.  We work together to get you the augment, you fly, then I free you and we see how you feel.  Deal?”

Heather nodded.  “Deal.”  She shivered.  “Something happened. What did you do?”

Flint looked above Heather’s head.  “There’s a new icon.  Conditional bond activated?  Oh, I see.  If you help me gather the ingredients, you’ll automatically get the augment, and your freedom shortly thereafter.”

Heather nodded slowly then started to grin.  “So it’ll enforce deals?  Cool.  Let’s go!”

They spent several hours gathering the ingredients.  Some were natural items, like an insect’s chrysalis and a bird’s feather.  Heather knew exactly where to find them.  Others were technological in nature, such as bits of wire, metal scraps, and a lens.  Heather helped with that last, as a dewdrop made a lens good enough to meet the recipe’s criteria.  The time on their quest passed swiftly, with the two of them eagerly comparing notes on what they could find.  Getting the right kinds of stone was the trickiest bit.

Finally, it was done.  An outcrop of granite on the far side of the golf course had provided the last bit of rock, and then was accepted for the “craft near something large” part of the recipe.  The ingredients in Flint’s inventory shimmered and vanished.

“Well?” asked Heather after a moment.

“I can’t find it.  It should be in my inventory, right?”

“Remember the deal?” she asked.  “Check me.”

Flint smiled as he looked at Heather.  “Oh, right!  It’s right...”  He reached toward her, and suddenly she towered over him.  “Whoops!  Wrong way.”

“No, this is cool too.  How do you like having a giant girlfriend?”

Flint chuckled.  “The view’s impressive.  But I promised flight, and I shall deliver.”  He gestured toward her again, and she dwindled.  In moments her eyes were level with his, then with his shoulder, his waist, his knee.

Heather gawped up at Flint.  “Holy...  You’re huge!”

“No, you’re tiny.  And the blessing of ducks now says you should be able to fly, so try!”

Heather flared her wings wide, and gave them a few experimental flaps.  “I don’t think I can get off the ground.  Give me a boost?”

Heather squirmed as Flint’s hands wrapped around her body, her breath going short at the sensation of such strength around her.  Then she was soaring into the air, and sorting out her wings took all her focus.  She managed a clumsy glide back to Flint’s feet.  “Again!” she cried.

Flint grinned down at her, and dutifully lifted her up once more.  “Ready for a big toss?”

“Do it!”  Heather soared high into the air, and snapped her wings out into gliding position once she’d peaked.  She circled out over the bluff, then tried a few tentative wing-flaps.  The first few tries cost her a few body lengths of altitude, but she soon got the hang of it.  Gaining altitude proved tiring, so after flying two laps around Flint she glided in for a landing at his feet.

After tumbling to a stop, Heather grinned up at him.  “Thanks.  That was amazing.  Can you make me big again?  I really want to hug you.”

“Sounds good to me,” chuckled Flint.  Then he frowned.  “Uh... I can see the augment, but I can’t control it.  Oh, right.  You’re free.”

Heather got up and dusted herself off, then craned her neck to look up at him.  “Great.  So how do I grow?”

Flint shrugged.  “Check your own augments?”

Heather looked herself over.  “I can see them, but... how did you make the grow thing work?”

“You have to sort of twist it, like the knob on an old stereo.”

Heather shook her head.  “No dice.  Are you sure you can’t change it?”

Flint tried again.  “I can see it, but the dial won’t turn.  I guess it only can be changed while you are a pet?”

Heather harrumphed as loudly as her little body would let her, crossing her arms in dismay.  “This bites.  I could unbind it, but we spent hours finding all that.”

Flint made some gestures, then suddenly his antlers went away.  He lost a couple inches of height and some muscle tone.  “You can suppress augments.”

Heather shot up to full height, but kept the wings to wrap around Flint as she hugged him.  “You did it!  This is great, now I can fly and be normal, all I have to do is enable the augment and...”  Suddenly Flint had his arms around a cat-sized figure.

Flint skritched Heather’s head and chuckled at the fake purr she gave him in return.  “Still want to be a pet?”

“Kinda.  Can I ride on your shoulder?”

Flint laughed and helped her up to it.  “I wonder if more bird blessings would turn you fully into one.”

Both of them stopped laughing after getting matching popups.  “Three blessings?” whispered Heather.  “You have robins, I have crows, I already have the duck blessing.”

“Yeah, but how would you get a crow augment?”

“Crow augment, crow augment,” murmured Heather as she consulted the game’s grimoire.  “All I need is a shiny ribbon, I’ve got the others.  Then I can trade it to you, and you can apply it to me next time you win.”

Heather felt her body tingle, and her wings grew.  “What’d you do?”

“You gave me a gift when you won.  That allowed me to give you one in return.  Gift of the robin.  Bonus to singing, uh...  and acrobatics?  Someone behind this game is a Joker.”

Heather laughed and jumped from Flint’s shoulder.  This time, she flitted nimbly about in the air, then raced skyward until she was little more than a speck.  She dove back down, mantling at the last moment to hover before Flint, then flutter over to his shoulder and land once more.

“Thanks.  This is awesome!” Heather sang.  Then she giggled.  “Ooh, my voice got prettier.  Do you think?”

Flint nodded bemusedly.  “You got another enhancement from it.  Your chest is, erm...”

Heather looked down and giggled.  “Prominent.  You like?”

“Is it okay to admit I like big boobs?”

Heather shot him a smouldery look.  “If it’s me you’re looking at, yes.”

“Then yes.  Within reason, anyway.  I’ve seen some stuff online... bleh.  Natural is best.”

“And magically enhanced unnatural?” asked Heather, growing back to full size for emphasis.

Flint’s eyes were glued to her chest.  It filled out her shirt very well indeed.  “Uh...  Right.  Yes.  Magic is yes.”

“Let’s go find that ribbon, then, so I can become your pet bird.”

They hunted high and low for an hour.  Heather even resorted to scouting flights and checking bird nests.  As she landed on Flint’s shoulder after another fruitless search, she twittered a complaint.

“I didn’t catch that, use your words?”

“We could have walked to a dollar store and bought a ribbon by now,” groused Heather.

“Sounds like a better plan than fighting birds for their nesting materials,” agreed Flint.  “Let’s go!”

As they left the golf course, Flint suggested they suppress their augments to avoid odd looks.  A moment later his antlers vanished, as well as the less obvious changes from the blessing of the deer.  Heather’s wings vanished, but after a few moments Flint noticed her chest was still prominent.  “You didn’t suppress the robin?”

Heather giggled.  “The wings go with the blessing of the duck, it seems.  I like it.”  She flashed him a winning smile.  “No objections?”

Flint gulped audibly, then nodded.  “No objections.”

At the store, WitchyWays wouldn’t let them just take the ribbon, they had to buy it properly before it would accept the material.  It only took a couple feet, so Heather tucked the rest of the ribbon into her purse.

They strolled outside the mall, then Heather pulled up the crafting glyph.  Moments later she had a crow augment ready to go, but they discovered she couldn’t just give it to Flint.  It had to be a trade.

Flint pondered that for a bit.  “What if I made a squirrel augment?  Then you could apply it to me.  That plus gift of the cat...”

“And you’d be able to turn into a cat or a deer!” cheered Heather when she realized what Flint was driving at.  “Probably not a tiny squirrel, though.”

“As long as I get the tail,” chuckled Flint.

Heather giggled along with him.  “Oh, we have to do that!  I want to see what you look like with a big bushy tail.  What are you missing?”

“I need some acorns, but don’t they usually show up in the fall?”

Heather pondered that as they walked back toward her neighbourhood.  “There are lots of oak trees around here, thanks to them being a protected species.  There must be some squirrel’s forgotten cache of acorns around here somewhere.”

Finding said cache was another matter entirely.  They checked at the base of dozens of trees, looked for little hollows here and there.  Eventually Heather figured out how to send some of her squirrel and crow allies out looking, and one of the crows spotted a cache high up in a tree.

Heather checked for watchers, then enabled all her blessings and augments.  With a boost from Flint, she followed her crow back to its prize, and collected four acorns.  Once she was back on the ground, she fetched out a bit of ribbon and gave it to the crow.  He accepted it proudly, and the game turned it into a jaunty little scarf for him to wear.

Heather then solemnly handed the acorns over to Flint, and as he harvested them in the game, they vanished from her hands.  Heather frowned.  “Does everything we harvest vanish?  The deer didn’t disappear when I captured it, but the ribbon looks like it’s actually shorter.”

“I think part of the game is to get us to clean up the neighbourhood?” offered Flint.

“Sneaky.  It gave me a boost for cleaning up some trash earlier, so that fits.”

A trading table appeared between them, and Flint set a squirrel augment on it.  Heather set out her crow augment, and they made the swap.  “So... duel again?  Do we have to fight with the animals?  I hate it when they get hurt, even if they’re fine next time I summon them.”

Flint shrugged.  “Okay, then I challenge you to a game of rock paper scissors.”

A familiar flare of light announced the start of a duel, making both of them grin.  The counter timed down, and they threw their symbols.  Heather’s illusory paper was the same purple as the ribbon, and it wrapped around Flint’s rock.  “Nice, it even animates it.”

Flint was unable to comment from the loser’s cocoon.  A moment later, he had the gift of the cat, and Heather was admiring his perky triangular ears, and cooing over how cute his whiskers looked.  Flint’s tail swished, and when he noticed it he batted it against Heather’s side.  Instinctively, it wrapped around her like a furry belt, drawing even more giggles as she petted it.  “I can’t wait to see you as a cat for real.  You look a little different, too, not just the ears and tail.”

Flint twisted his body back and forth.  “I feel more limber.  Like I could sneak through small spaces, given a chance.”

Heather pressed down on Flint’s head, and to both their surprise he scrunched up smaller, losing a foot of height before she stopped.  “Oh.  Wow.”  She let go, but Flint didn’t immediately grow.  “Um, Flint?  Are you okay?”

Flint straightened up and jumped half his height into the air.  “Yeah!  It feels like both my augments became more powerful.  Like a set bonus, or something.  Two more augments to go, time to duel for captures.”

Heather’s scissors beat Flint’s paper, and she found she had a little control over the victory animation, cutting a heart out of Flint’s silvery paper.  It floated midair after the flourish was done, and she pressed it against Flint’s forehead with a giggle.  It left a small silvery heart just under his hairline, that flared brighter when she chose Capture.  Sparkles wrapped around Flint, vanishing him away much as Heather had vanished earlier.  She watched in fascination, and was amused to see the sparkling silver heart was the last thing to vanish.

Heather pulled up her ally list, and waved at Flint.  He waved back.  She studied the glyphs around him, and touched the one that looked like a mouth.  “Can you talk, now?”

Flint tried, then shook his head.  Heather shrugged, and applied the squirrel augment, then chanted, “I summon forth my mightiest squirrel!” as she called Flint out.  The silver moon led the way, appearing about waist height.  A squirrely head appeared attached to it, followed by the rest of a three foot tall squirrel’s body.  Flint checked himself out once he was able to move again, then glanced up at Heather and his eyes widened comically.

“You’re so cute!” gushed Heather, crouching down to Flint’s level.  The squirrel immediately darted forward to give her a big hug, chittering happily at her.  “Um, can you talk?”

Flint chittered at her more, then shrugged.  Heather pondered the glyphs around him, and touched the mouth one again.  “How about now?”

“Testing... yep!  Cool.”  Flint fluffed his tail forward and back.  “This thing feels like a parachute.  I wonder if it’ll let me glide.”

Heather giggled, and studied Flint’s augments.  “Set bonus says yes.  You can fall from any height without harm.  Want to try jumping from the bluff?  I can fly down, you can try gliding?”

“Race you there!” challenged Flint.  Heather started running, and Flint kept easy pace with her.  She could tell he wasn’t going flat out, and enabled her blessing of ducks for a speed boost.  She laughed as she ran, exulting in her effortless speed.

As the bluff came into view, Heather called out, “Duel, winner is first to the top.”

“Accepted!” chittered Flint.  He darted ahead of her with a bound.  Heather enabled her last augment and flew the rest of the way, but Flint’s headstart was insuperable.  When she caught up to him at the peak, golden light shimmered around her and pinned her mid-air.  She grinned as she felt her body get erased into Flint’s capture.

Moments later Heather was free again, and could feel her new augment.  “Now... how do I pick which bird to be?  Oh!  Right, order matters.”  A moment later, there was a robin standing where her reduced body had been.  She chirped prettily at Flint, then took to the air and fluttered down to land on his shoulder.

Flint smiled at her, and returned to human shape.  His fluffy squirrel tail dwindled to the slimmer tail of a cat.  “Mm, a tasty little morsel sitting on my shoulder.  Is she lunch, or a familiar?”

Heather tweeted at him indignantly, and Flint laughed.  “Was that a yes on the offer to become my familiar?  I would use your power wisely... oh.”

Heather slipped back into winged human form as both studied the glyph of binding that had sprung up.  “What will you give me in return for the boon of my power?”

“I don’t even know what this will do,” protested Flint.  “This seems like a much bigger deal than a capture.”

Heather smiled at him warmly.  “Capture feels nice, this should be better.  It seems this will pool our powers, boosting your strength... a lot.”

“I don’t know what that will let me do, but it sounds cool.  I need to offer something in return for the contract to work, right?”

“Make it good,” agreed Heather.  “I’m only offering to be your familiar until dinnertime.”  She studied the glyph carefully, and nodded when she saw the duration was clearly annotated.

“Okay.  I promise to use my powers to your benefit as well as mine, and when the bond is over, I... automatically lose a duel to you.”

“Oooh!” giggled Heather.  “Accepted.”  She gasped as the glyph flared and filled her body with light, washing in like a tide, then back out again.  The glow suffused Flint’s body, and settled around him.  Heather fluttered to Flint’s shoulder and landed there, breathing heavily.

“Hey there,” cooed Flint.  “Are you okay?”

Heather fluttered her wings then settled them.  “This is weird.  All my interfaces are gone.  So used to it being there, and it hasn’t even been a day.  The compulsion is way stronger, too.”

“Compulsion?”

Heather bobbed her head.  “The very idea of l... l... leaving you.  I can barely even say it, thinking it is... impossible.  You own me.”