A Summoning: Part XXI

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Part XXI
~The World~

A while after sunset, Zotha and her high priestess returned to their dorm room for a late meal. At a time like this, being able to make something fully-cooked instantly was tremendous boon. The goddess didn't feel hungry, of course, having more or less “fed” all day long, but Jess tore right into her food.

“Busy day, huh? At least it seems like everything went off without a hitch,” she said.

“Mmnghf.” Swallowing her food, Jess replied: “It's not too bad. If anything, keeping people happy is a little easier than keeping them scared. I don't have to intimidate followers into watching each other and have our 'bosses' watch the watchers who're watching them...”

Zotha nodded. “Speaking of the 'bosses', seems like they were all pretty successful, too. Between the two of them, Riana and Kamari healed between ten and twenty people who might not have survived the night, and yet there's nothing on the news sites about it, and no gods swooping down to yell at me so far. Anika not only fooled Damon's friend completely, but also blessed him on our behalf—which he is most grateful for.”
After swallowing some more food, Jess added: “And Prama convinced that alchemist to test her, which she said was the best that could be hoped for. Anyway, she seems really..happy about the opportunity to take a test itself.”

“Well, she wants to feel a sense of accomplishment, and for others to see how great she is. A challenge like this provides both.”

---

Around seven thirty, Damon's ears twitched around toward the front door and she sat up, looking that way. Onida heard a car door shut, and stood up, waving for her wolfish sister to stay put for the moment while she went to go open the door. No sooner had Sam knocked a couple of times than she reached it and pulled it open. He was wearing a Triforce shirt and jeans now, no hoodie, and waved awkwardly once fully in view.

“Hey.”
“Good evening,” she replied, more or less out of habitual politeness, and waved him inside. “We, already had supper.”
“Oh, yeah, me too,” the tall werewolf nodded, following her direction so she could shut the door behind him. They went back to the living room.

“Hi, Sam!” Damon waved, sitting up.
“Hey. You, feeling any better?”
“Yeah!” she said, leaning up slightly with her tail wagging. “I slept aaalll day. I feel um, a little more in control of myself right now.”

“That's good. Yeah, I contacted some folks in between some power naps,” he said, half-turning toward Onida. “Friends of friends of my family, and such, who'd know a little more about this kinda situation. New werewolves turn suddenly nocturnal, it can take some work to get back to a normal sleep schedule. This situation's aah, still far from normal of course, since she doesn't seem to have the usual aggressive instincts.”

“Um..they're still kinda there,” Damon said while her sister indicated for him to sit down, and did the same herself. “I feel like I could go totally berserk if someone seemed like they were threatening me, or someone I like.”

“Huh. Some kind of...redirecting of pack instincts, then? Well, at least you don't have to worry about biting your sis, right?”
“Uh-huh,” she nodded.

“Anyway, memory loss is..rare, but happens sometimes. It means the wolf side has, kinda, too much control over the mind? Or had it for a little too long. The best way to get memories back is to relive experiences from the person's human life, as much as possible. Soo, thankfully, that should be pretty easy. Being at home with family is a great start.”
“I don't suppose playing video games would help too?” Onida said.
“I did that last night aand the night before!” Damon interjected helpfully.

“Yeah, maybe. I bet watching some of Damon's old streams would help too. You know, see your own play, hear your own voice. I'd love to help as much as I can, too.”

“Ooh! Could we play together?” Damon asked, leaning toward him slightly.

The elder sister sighed. “For a couple of hours, I guess. Eventually we diurnal people have to sleep.”

“Eeh,” Sam started. “I've slept a lot through today. I could stay up probably most of the night, I bet. But uh, I guess it's understandable if you don't trust me to stick around after you go to bed.”
“Hmmh.”

Onida stared at the visitor for a moment, then looked over at her werewolf sibling again. “Damon, how much do you remember about Sam?”
“Um...not a whole lot specifically,” she said. “But I...um, like, it feels..familiar, being with him. I feel like I'm looking at an old friend...”

“You feel like we can trust him?”
“Sure!” she answered instantly, with no hesitation.

“Well. I sure hope I can trust you, then,” she said, looking back at the tall, thin werewolf. “For my sake and yours. Maybe werewolves aren't all monsters, but if you did hurt her you'd have a real one on your hands.”
“Eeh, um..understood?” Sam said, folding his ears back in a display of fear.

“Until she gets better, I have a job to do, to keep our bills paid and food on the table,” she continued. “I can't be up all night helping her. So I'll give you a shot.”
“Okay. I'll, try to make sure your trust in me isn't misplaced. Aah, actually—hmm.” He paused, seeming uncertain whether he should continue whatever line of thought he'd just begun.

“What?”

“Well, I made contact with one of those witches today, and made kind of aaaa, strange request? Maybe, at least one that probably would sound strange to most people. Which was granted. It'd be easier to show you than explain it, maybe.”
After staring at him for a moment more, Onida waved his way. “Go ahead, then, I guess?”

“Okay.” He took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. As he exhaled, his body shrank rapidly downward and inward, his shirt tenting out around him. His feet pulled up through the leggings of his jeans as they bagged out a bit too, and his hair grew even longer than usual. Within a matter of seconds, the tall werewolf had diminished to an even smaller size than Damon, and looked...quite girly at that.

Sam inhaled through the nose, and said “There” in a high, squeaky voice, tugging at the shirt a bit and letting its collar hang down off a shoulder. Now that it had finished falling across the werewolf's form, a telltale pair of—fairly large—bumps were visible there, confirming that he had, in fact, suddenly turned into a small girl.

“Soo, yeah,” she said, looking back (up) at Onida. “I was magically given the power to look like this whenever I want. Maybe I look..a little less like a threat this way?” she said, tilting her head just slightly.
“Um..that's for sure,” Onida said, uncertain what to make of this situation. “But you can, just change back whenever, right?”

“Yes, but. I don't just look smaller, I really am a bit more helpless like this, so if I stay this way it's kind of a token of mutual trust. Plus it's, y'know, psychological? I know my aah, usual appearance, is kinda threatening to people the first time. It's part of why I wanted, a new look. Biig new look.”

“You're cute!” Damon, who had been staring this entire time, blurted out. “Isn't she cute, sis?”
“Umm, yes. I suppose so?” Onida said. Encountered in any other situation, this girl would be, and—to be honest—she also wore oversized male clothes bizarrely well. “Well, either way, I already agreed to let you try and help her get her mind back tonight. For now though, we can all talk in here a little longer. How did you two first meet, anyway?”

---

“Well..you seem really happy with yourself,” Cameron said. He was taking his girlfriend out to eat; then it would be goodbye for the night, since they'd both agreed he should go back to his dorm and focus on catching up on some homework that was piling up.

“I'm happy with both of us. I'm happy with Zotha, too. We saved lives today, Cam,” she said, pointing at him with a fork. “Unique individuals who would have been gone, lost to the world forever, brought back.”
“Well, yeah. But, uh..not to put a damper on that, but it's more complicated than that, isn't it? I mean, some of those people prolly owe the hospital a lot of money. And then there's like, mental problems that we can't fix, and..”
“Sure, but. When a person is dead, it's over. Until then, there's always a chance,” she said. “We gave those people, and whoever cares about them, another chance. That's as much as I'd ask for, in their shoes.”

After taking another few bites, she sighed. “I just don't get it. If there have been people with this kind of power around for so long..why are people even dying of old age at all, in the first place?”

“Uh, maybe it doesn't scale too well?” he guessed. “Orr, like, the other gods' domains would make it too costly to heal people? Maybe, there's some reason they feel like they can't. Or like..maybe each of them felt like they'd get in trouble with all the others, or one really important one, for doing something like this.”
“Ugh, politics. I'm fine, with negotiation and deliberate cooperation, instead of starting holy wars or whatever,” she said, waving a utensil around in the air. “But when it comes at the cost of people's lives, I have to draw the line. Or—I want to, anyway. Zotha's right, too, I can't let idealism get in the way of thinking about things realistically. If what we did today is deemed too much, though, I don't care who I have to talk to, someone is gonna have words with me.”

The wolf-man tilted his head a bit. “You're gonna yell angrily at one of the gods?”
“All of them, if I have to. What're they gonna do, break the stalemate by directly attacking one of Zotha's followers? Politics are two-edged sword, you know.”

“I think they prolly just have the option of, like, leaving and ignoring you, though,” he said.
“Maybe. But I can't be the only—I'm not the only one who feels this way. You agree with me, right?”

“Well, yeah, saving lives is great,” he said, nodding.
“And Zotha does too, at least in principle. I bet there are lots of people who, if I told them magic could be used to save lives and isn't, would be all kinds of furious. If they believed me, at least.”

“You're, uh, not planning a wide-scale coup tonight, though, are ya?”

“Mmnah.” Riana shook her head. “It's way too soon. We don't even know what their reaction to today is, yet.”

---

Dai and Thomas agreed to meet for supper in a restaurant within walking distance of campus. The dragon-girl still drove there, so she wound up having to wait; her Oni friend showed up in female form, striding over to sit across from her. She was grinning from ear to ear, clearly happy to have power-walked the whole way there.

“So, how'd your first day of bein' a girl go?”

“...Fine. I got a few people staring at worst. Feels like, even people who can't see that I'm a dragon can still sort of,” she waved a hand, “'feel' that it'd be a bad idea to mess with me. Anyway, I'm far from the first person this week. Anyone comment on your change of appearance?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” she nodded. “It was a little weird, actually. Lots of people just acted like I got ripped when they weren't payin' any attention to how I looked? Like, the same as if I'd done it normally, over the past few months or somethin'. I even had some girls flirt with me!” she said, flashing her teeth in a further grin. “Oh, and I went to the campus gym to see how much I could lift. It was a lot~.”

Thomas yawned. “I had some trouble sleeping last night,” she said, deciding not to share the news that she could apparently lift entire buildings now.

“Oh, yeah? Did you use the gooold?” Dai said teasingly, leaning in.

“Uh-huh. Zotha was right. I guess that'll teach me to ignore a goddess's advice,” the dragon-girl said quietly.

“So, what if someone steals it? I mean, those apartments are sorta secure, but they're exactly fort-knox rated.”
“I guess I'll have to ask for some more,” she shrugged.
“Yeah, but, wouldn't you also track down whoever took it and use your acid breath on 'em?”

“..I would be, tempted, if it had actually cost me anything to get in the first place. But I think I'd still be happy getting enough of it back to get a good night's sleep. Actual face-melting seems kinda extreme to me. Why, do you want some?”

“Uh, me?” Not expecting this, the blonde Oni-girl fell back against the chair for a moment. “Nnnah. I got enough money to live on, and I dunno who to sell gold stuff to anyway. I was just wondering, y'know, how close real dragons are to stuff from D&D or Lord of the Rings.”

“Maybe it's more like that pony show,” Thomas suggested, “and I'll get greedier when I'm older. Or was that the other way around?”

“I dunno, I never watched that stuff.”

“Suuure you didn't.”

“Well, not past the first season, anyway!”

Their conversation continued throughout dinner, the rest going much the same as any other conversation between the two of them. However upside-down the world had turned, and whatever they had become, they were still—more or less—themselves. There was hope that the same was true of Zotha, even if her new position in the world made her too busy to hang out quite as often as before.

---

Anika was sitting at her computer chair, working on some almost-too-long-neglected homework, when Steph came in, shutting and locking the door before starting to almost immediately shift back to his native form. “Well, you look pleased with yourself,” he commented in a changing voice, coming over toward her as he shrank and shifted.

“Hmn? Well, uh, I pulled off a small trick on Zotha's behalf,” she said. “Just—filling in for Jess. But it was a convincing performance, even if it was for someone who'd never met either of us. At the very least, he never realized I wasn't human.”

“Not bad,” her roommate said, arriving just behind her chair and already finished shifting back to the female form. She reached over and rubbed the base of each of Anika's ears with a hand for a second or two before letting go, drawing some pleased churring and making her squirm in her seat a bit.

“H-hey, easy..I've still got some stuff to catch up on,” she said, turning the chair around and feeling a blush on her cheeks.

“Yeah, me too,” Steph nodded, wearing a wide, sort of goofy grin. “Need to free up tomorrow for our final preparations. But those ears are pretty hard to resist.”

“..Hey though, I was wondering,” she said, backing up a couple of steps with her ears lowered slightly. “Do you wanna, combine our beds in the middle of the room?” Her index fingers tapped together a couple of times as if to illustrate this. “It'd give us both a little more floor space, y'know, aand..neither of us. Would be against a wall.” It was her turn to blush, and she hesitated for a second before backpedaling: “I-I mean, unless you don't wanna—”

“Done,” Anika interrupted her, snapping a finger for dramatic effect. Three simultaneous poofs of white smoke accompanied the effect of both of their beds disappearing, and a bed with their combined width, and with covers and sheets made out of the material of both, each girl's pillow on the side matching her side of the room, appearing in the center. “And I can always split it up again if one or both of us need space.”
“Heheh, yeah,” Steph said, still a little uncharacteristically nervous. Then she retreated back to her own desk to get to work.

A few hours later, they wound up in the bed again, Anika wearing only one of her boy-sized t-shirts and a pair of panties, while Steph had on a tank top and gym shorts. It was just as pleasant as the night before, but a little more abbreviated in time, a sort of silent mutual agreement being reached between them to calm down and just quietly snuggle the rest of the way to sleep so they'd get a full night's rest in.

After this, she found herself back in the dream room again, and the Ruler of Foxes appeared before her in much the same way as before, with an equally smug grin. “Uh..hi,” Anika said, feeling a blush on her cheeks from the knowledge that this deity knew full well what position her actual body was in right now.

“Welcome,” Fox said. “I couldn't help but notice you transformed someone else today, and enjoyed it. Didn't you?”

“Uh..yeah,” she nodded. “Was that..wrong?”
“Couldn't be farther from it,” the fox god chuckled. “It's always fun to look in on someone's first time doing something like that, and you've got quite a creative touch besides. I'm glad to see you're also coping with your curse situation.”

“If..you wanna call it that, I won't complain,” Anika said, feeling her ears lower slightly.

“Listen,” Fox said, leaning in toward her slightly, “The way one feels about one's body is a very individual matter. Some, when offered any form they'd like, just want to stay the same; others will try anything and everything, and never settle. You shouldn't be upset that you find a curse upsetting; I couldn't call it a curse if I wasn't reasonably sure you'd find it an inconvenience for more than a couple of days. Finding some islands of happiness in that inconvenience is better than moping your whole life, now isn't it?”

“It is,” Anika nodded. It was strange to see the trickster goddess taking on such a...what?...motherly tone with her. Equal parts comforting and worrying, she thought, that the being basically 'in charge' of what she was had such a side to her.

“Anyway, enough pleasantries. I just wanted to drop a small message to Zotha through you, neither urgent nor lengthy enough to necessitate a big, dramatic visit like last time. If you wouldn't mind relaying it for me?”
“That falls under our Deal, doesn't it?” Anika asked.

“Not its letter, but certainly its spirit,” she said. “You've no obligation, which is why I'm asking rather than telling. Anyway: If you like, let her know that she has the right idea with the hospital, for now. Sol complained a little bit, but mostly just to keep up appearances; his people are perfectly capable of keeping up with the present volume.”

“I..guess I will pass that on, then,” the four-tailed Kitsune said, thinking: It sounded like information Zotha wanted, even though she didn't actually know the full context of it.

“Good girl,” the fox goddess grinned, and returned her immediately to an ordinary dream.

---

When it was time to get up off of the couch again, Sam excused herself to run out to the car and grab some more fitting bottoms she'd picked up after supper, and then to the bathroom to put them on. She returned wearing boyshorts with gym shorts over that—though the male-sized t-shirt totally hid them unless it was pulled up far enough—and then went upstairs with Damon after they said good night to the new werewolf's sister.

“Alright, let's see if we can get into your computer, first of all.” Sam tapped at the space bar a couple of times until the login screen showed up.

“I just can't figure out the hint,” Damon said sadly.

“Well, what is it?”
“It said 'my main', but..my main what?”
“Well, a person's 'main' is whatever they primarily use in, like, a fighting game or the sort. I bet I can answer this if we can figure out which game it means.”

“But it doesn't say! Just 'my main'.”
“Welp,” the smaller wolf-girl shrugged. “Guess and check it is.”

It only took her a few tries to pick the right game, and thankfully Damon's password just to unlock the desktop wasn't terribly secure—merely the name itself with no extra numbers, symbols or capitalization involved. Once past that, it became a bit clearer how the stream of two nights ago had gone out.

“Ahh, see?” She pointed. “This is the recording software. You must've been planning to stream the night of the full moon. And, I mean, why wouldn't you? So when you, aah, left unexpectedly, it put itself to sleep from being inactive, but it was still set to broadcast when you pushed 'space.' And it took that input through the lock screen.”

Damon gave her friend a blank stare and a couple of blinks. “Soo, like, it recorded because I told it to earlier?”
Sam shrugged. “Close enough. Anyway, let's see...” She tapped at the controls a little longer. “..Yeah, you've got a local archive. How d'you feel about watching a few of your old streams, huh?”

“Um..okay, I guess?”

“Cool. I'll go find me another chair, you can take this one.”

---

After dinner, Jess went to her computer and finished up the last of the notes before calling her goddess over to look through them. Zotha pored through them, leaning in toward the screen with intense interest, for over an hour. Eventually, however, she leaned back, nodding to herself.

“What do you think, Master?” Jess asked, looking over.

“In a way, it's kind of what I expected? That probably sounds, a little strange. But anyway—my 'innate knowledge' of magic tells me that none of these methods would have worked before my 'ascension', and...now, it's essentially become a new form of magic fueled by me. The ritual language acting as 'prayers' is sort of just the beginning; it seems like a lot of the rituals and symbology you stitched together from this stuff can channel my powers in distinctive ways, sometimes much more efficiently or precisely than the 'praying', or else send stuff the other way—toward me. Suffice to say, though, you can't make another new deity with any of this, because I've sort of 'claimed' it.”

“Politically speaking, that's kinda a relief, right? The other gods don't have to worry about this method being repeated, I mean.”
“Right,” she nodded. “The nature of the ascension itself, however, still feels mysterious and ineffable to me. It involved using a consistent, focused set of things that were not real magic, in conjunction with enough people believing strongly enough in those things, all focused toward a single person. I wonder what would've happened if you'd focused your 'faith' on two people at once, or an animal or a statue or something.

“Yet..I also feel that the actions of a bunch of people in that forest over a number of months are still not actually enough to account for what happened. I feel like..there was a 'confluence'.” She brought her index fingers up and pressed them together as if to illustrate this word, before dropping her hands again.

“Confluence?” Jess asked, her head and ears tilting a bit.

“Yes,” Zotha nodded slowly. “Like a much greater multitude of people, or something else more singular but still much bigger than us, wanted or—needed, I'm inclined to say, for a being representing 'change' to come into existence, and it either cooperated with or outright used your efforts to make that being a reality.”

“You think there's something bigger than the gods?” Jess asked.
“I don't know,” she said with a shrug. “What I 'feel' in this case is impossible to put into words accurately, and I'm not even sure if I can communicate the thought into your mind in a way that would make complete sense. But I believe the salient point is that even if someone—say—followed just the same path as you did, but with different non-magic rituals and such, and even if they gathered two or three or four times the followers with five times the faith, that alone wouldn't be enough to 'make' a new god. There's a...secret ingredient there, that no one person or group of people, not even the gods, have complete control over whether it's present or not. Maybe—it's not even possible to tell if it's there until after the fact.”

“So, again, less worry for the gods. At worst they might feel inclined to quash any more weird cults like mine that show up,” Jess said. “And, I can't help but think of that as a good thing.”