A Summoning: Part XI

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XI

~Empress~

Well, this is gonna be an awkward conversation, Jess thought. Maybe you should let me do the talking if you're not any good at bluffing?

Solid plan. I don't think I'm bad at it, but I'm sure you're much better than I am.

...About our explanation, though. This person might be a normal human still under the Veil. What do we do if she doesn't believe us?
Show her some magic, Zotha shrugged. The Veil takes intent into account. If you just want to use magic to do something then enveiled people will be blind to it, but if your goal is explicitly to show someone magic then it lets you do it. But you can only do that right in front of someone's face, not remotely like through TV or radio, or it'll make itself look fake. I would guess that clause was added as mass media appeared in order to keep things from going out of control.

Well...I guess that's that, then. Jess stepped up to the doorbell, and pressed her finger on it. The two of them waited a moment for the person inside to hear, wonder who it could be at this hour, slowly get up and walk to the front door...and eventually, to open it.

It was a woman, maybe in her thirties, with hair the same shade of brown as the werewolf. She was about average height and build, dressed casually, and had on an expression of deliberately muted annoyance, though at the same time there were clear signs of recent stress and exhaustion showing on her face. “Hello?” She said, looking between the two of them. “Can I help you with something?”
“Possibly,” Jess said, taking the lead as planned. “Did someone who lives here go missing the night before last?” She paused just long enough for a response to almost be formed, and then: “Someone who was also injured within the month prior to that? Especially mauled, scratched or bitten?”

“...Yes...do you, know something?” she said, a look of surprise quickly turning to suspicion.

“Well—I'm not sure how to put this but bluntly. The two of us were taking a walk by some woods today, when we encountered a werewolf.”
“A—” she started, obviously not believing the story so far.

Jess cut her off: “He seemed mostly feral, but we were able to use magic to subdue him without harming him. Excuse me, maybe we should've introduced ourselves first. My name is Jess, and this is Zotha; we're witches.”
Their host frowned at this point. “Seriously?”

“Sure.”

“Jess, I don't think she knows about magic,” Zotha said. “I should give some demonstration that we're serious.” She raised a hand, palm-up, and made a ball of fire appear floating above it, starting in her characteristic purple before shifting down through the colors of the rainbow, ending in a bright red before disappearing again with the closing of the hand to a fist, and then dropping said hand back to her side. The woman at the door watched this closely, intently, visibly trying to reconcile what she was seeing with her own prior understanding of reality and failing.

She stared, mouth agape, for another moment or so, then looked between the two of them, who remained silent, letting her process it. “..Okay, I...guess I can at least tell you...” She sighed. “Come in, please.”

They were led to a living room not far from the entryway; a laptop was sitting half-closed on an end table next to a chair, which she sat down on while indicating a couch to one side for the two 'witches' to use. They took the indicated seats, watching her.

“Sure. Okay. My brother disappeared night before last. The police wouldn't even list him as a missing person at first because they said it looked like he jumped out the window himself.” She shook her head. “They accused me of keeping him trapped here or something, but once I convinced them I hadn't...they still couldn't find him. And yes, a couple of weeks ago, I sent him out for groceries and the next thing I know he's in the hospital with a chunk taken out of his arm. Said some kind of bear attacked him out of nowhere, and he got it to run off, but..” She looked down, shaking her head. “I thought that was the worst of it. He recovered fast, and they cleared him within a couple of days.” Then she looked back up. “And you're telling me that—bear—was really a werewolf biting him?”

Bear? Jess wondered.

It's a logical thing for the veil to put in place of a werewolf when it's too big to 'be a regular wolf', Zotha guessed.

“I don't imagine he was looking very carefully at the animal attacking him,” Jess replied.

“I guess not.

“So—what did you do? After, 'subduing' him?” she said.

“That's why we're here now,” Jess said. “It was obvious he wasn't in his right mind, or in control of himself. Turning into a werewolf the first time is extremely painful and difficult. Zotha tried out an experimental spell to calm him and try to get him back in control. It worked surprisingly well, but there were some..side effects.” Zotha nodded.
“Side..like what?”
Jess held up a hand. “Before we get into that, I should explain why it took us until now to find you. He really did almost go feral. It seems to have wiped a lot of his memory. We're...hoping that's only temporary, but right now he doesn't seem to even remember his own name.”

Zotha nodded. “If you don't mind, I'll...” she stood up.
“Right. Let's get your brother in here,” Jess said, while the demoness went to the front door to get the werewolf's attention.

The woman on the chair watched, leaning herself forward as far as she could to see the 'witch' head out the door briefly before coming back with someone in tow behind her. She followed Zotha nervously, wringing her hands and making a concerted effort to keep herself entirely obscured the entire time—at least until they came into the living room. Once they were there, the demoness stopped, turning her head half around and waving her to come out. She peeked her head out slowly, and then pulled the rest of herself out into view. Her ears were folded back and her tail only giving the occasional nervous twitch.

Her sister watched this with wide eyes, slowly standing up from her chair. Jess watched her expressions carefully, and was surprised to see real, genuine recognition mixed in there. After a long moment looking at each other, she took a couple of steps closer.

“Damon! It's you! Y-you're alive!” she said, taking the next several before grabbing the werewolf girl in her arms, a tight, almost motherly hug, which was returned immediately following a brief shudder of surprise and relief.

“S-sis...” Damon leaned on her shoulder, starting to cry right away. “I-I was so scared you wouldn't recognize me...”

After letting the hug go on for a while, she pulled back and patted the short, wolfish girl on the head a couple of times. “Y-you big goof, you don't think I'd know my own brother?” she said, her voice cracking and her own eyes flooding with tears by this point.

How is she recognizing her, anyway? Jess wondered.

I don't know..some kind of magic? It happened right when they looked in each others' eyes, Zotha replied. I admit I really wanted her to, and I could feel that she wanted to and that Damon wanted her to...so maybe I accidentally made a little miracle?

After sniffling a few times, and wiping her eyes on a sleeve, Damon's sister said. “So you..don't remember anything?”
“N-no..not a whole lot, anyway. I c-couldn't 'member my own name 'till you told me,” Damon said. “And like, I-I know you're my sister but I don't remember your name, either!” she said, folding her ears back again in distress.

“It's Onida. Got it?” she said, reaching over to wipe a few of the tears off with a hand. “I was..I really thought I'd lost you for good this time.”

“I thought I lost me for good too,” she said sadly. “But Masters helped me with that!” she added, getting a small smile and looking toward the two who had claimed to be witches.

“Uh..'masters'?” Onida said, giving them a suspicious look again.
“Like I said, she's not exactly all there right now,” Jess said. “The wolf side still has a lot of influence, it's just that it's tamer and friendlier right now. So..”

“It's easier for her to make it do what she wants it to do by telling it we're her masters and told her to do it,” Zotha said. “That shouldn't be necessary forever. But I'm uncertain whether the more helpful effects of my spell would disappear if I tried to undo the...side effects just now, which is why we haven't changed her back yet.”
“I see...” The explanation seemed to make sense to her. She looked between the two of them again, and then back to her transformed brother. “And I'm gonna guess there's no cure for 'being a werewolf', huh?”
“Not once the first full moon comes,” Zotha said, drawing from some knowledge granted her as a deity. “It..fundamentally alters a person's nature, more or less making them part wolf for life. That's a big part of why it can be so difficult to control oneself at first.”

She sighed, looking back at Damon. “So I guess you're stuck like that for a while, huh?”
“Yep. Um..it's okay, though. Like, I'm sure I'll get better soon..” she said, looking less certain than her words suggested. “A-at least..with your help...”
“I just wonder what your viewers will think. I guess I could just tell them you're 'sick' though, until you can at least turn back into a guy...”
“Viewers?” Jess said.
“Yeah. My brother's a streamer,” Onida said, turning back to the witches. “He barely got out of the house lately, which is why I sent him after groceries that day. Stupid me.”

“Come on, you didn't even know werewolves were real,” Zotha said. “Even those who do don't generally expect someone to get attacked by one. It's quite rare.”

Damon, meanwhile, had been busy slowly tilting her head, getting a thoughtful expression. “That sounds..super familiar, yep. Streaming's...playin' games for people to watch, right?”
“As far as I understand,” her sister said, nodding. “If you didn't even remember that much, I guess we have a long road ahead of us...”
“There are some people you could contact for help,” Zotha said, producing from a pocket (actually creating, of course) a piece of paper with a phone number and address on it. “They deal with magic-related incidents like this one. Maybe they have better advice on how to help fix lycanthropy-based amnesia than the two of us would.”

She took the paper, staring at it for a long moment, and then nodded, looking back up to them. “Thank you two. Seriously. I thought...I really thought he was dead this time.” She looked at Damon for a second or two, then back to them. “I think..both of us need some time to process all of this. I hate to kick you out so soon, but...”
“I understand completely,” Jess said. Zotha offered another piece of paper.

“Our numbers. If you ever want to get in touch.”
“Of course,” Onida nodded. After that, the two of them politely left, shutting the front door behind them.

“I think that went pretty well,” Jess said while they walked around to between the buildings to disappear back to their dorm room. “There...are no signs that she was mistreating him or anything, right?”
“I could feel Damon's emotions when she saw her sister,” Zotha. “It was a rush of happy familiarity, all the way down to the core. There would've been at least a tint of anger or fear or something if we had anything to worry about.” She rubbed the top of Jess's head a bit. “We can always check back quietly even if she doesn't contact us. But I think there's nothing to worry about.”

“Heheh...good..”

In a swift motion of shadow, their surroundings became the dorm room, the demon goddess's domain. “You know something else? Even though neither of them explicitly know I'm a deity, I could feel the gratitude rolling off of both of them into me, same as always,” Zotha said. “I guess all it takes is knowing I was responsible in some way, if even that—and without needing to really know who or what I am exactly.”

“Um..y-you're hand's still on my head, Master,” Jess said with a faint blush.
“So it is.” The demoness gave a mischievous grin. “I think you've earned some reward today. We do need to get up tomorrow morning for classes, but I'm sure we can play a little first~.” She picked up her little priestess into a close hug, trading out their day clothes in the process—no bra for either of them, just panties and a T-shirt for Zotha, an open, long black bathrobe for the smaller girl. Jess's blush intensified quite a bit while this happened; she squeaked, returning the hug, and then leaned in to gently rub her cheek against Zotha's. It was going to be a fun night.

---

They talked for what felt like hours. Onida showed the strange, wolf-eared girl her brother had turned into scores of pictures—her former, male self; her parents; some of her online friends. For many she expressed familiarity but wasn't able to identify the names. It wasn't right to expect a lot of progress all at once, but the more the girl recognized people and responded to her the more she was convinced this really had been her brother—was her brother, rather—after being half-accidentally changed into something else. She talked a little bit like a complete ditz, and kept making weird...dog noises all the time; she was probably shedding all over the furniture; but...she was alive. And—well, maybe not entirely sane right now, but also not murderously insane.

Her brother was alive, and there was a chance to bring her—bring him all the way back, too. A real chance; she could see it. Eventually the adrenaline from the shock of seeing him alive again—recognizing him, somehow, in a small girl's eyes—wore off, and Onida yawned, beginning to have difficulty keeping herself awake. It was no good; she had work tomorrow, too. What was she supposed to do—tell her to stay at home and be a good girl? Well—after all, her brother had disappeared, her friends and coworkers knew that. Maybe taking a day off, citing stress, would be forgivable.

Damon noticed the worry, the thinking in her eyes right away. “What's wrong, sis?” she said.
Onida sighed. “I don't know...what we're gonna do with you. With us. I dunno how to explain to anyone what you..got turned into. I dunno how to deal with keeping it a secret that you've come back, either. And I'm so tired...”
“You should sleep, then! I'll keep you safe,” the werewolf girl said, with all the eagerness of a friendly dog.
“What, are you gonna bark at anyone who tries to rob the place?” she said sarcastically.

“Noo, I thought I might rip their throat out though. Mmh!” Damon's eyes widened, her hand over her mouth for a second or two—not believing she'd said what she'd just said. Her sister didn't believe it either; Damon was—to say the least—not a violent person at all. “S-sorry. I, I dunno where that came from,” she said after a moment.
“I guess you still have a wild animal in your head,” Onida said. “And it...thinks that's the right thing to do to any threats to the pack. So I should feel lucky I count as a member, huh?”
“I-I'm so sorry...I should, shouldn't let the wolf say such awful things no matter what.”
“It's fine. We'll..figure it out as we go.” She still made a mental note to try not to make Damon angry in the near future. If lycanthropy was as contagious as certain myths and stories suggested, even a relatively light attack from her could be a problem. Then again, those witches had only said it wasn't curable 'after the first full moon', so maybe those people they'd given her a number and address for would have some...anti-lycanthropy shots available or something? But if they had something like that, why not include it disguised as part of the regular vaccine regimen that all kids took?

Her head was running away with her again. “Look. The point is, I'm gonna go to bed. You should..try to rest too,” Onida said, getting up. “I'll...probably call in sick to work tomorrow so we can keep trying to fix your memories for a while. If we get you close enough to normal then maybe those witches can turn you...well, sorta mostly back at least?”
“Mm-hm.” She had a concerned look. “But, you can't give up work forever for me! How'll you pay for food and stuff, then?”
Her sister's throat caught for a moment. It was so close to something Damon had said before...back when he was quitting college, coming to move in with her—just before he started getting some real success as a streamer. “I..I know. Just for tomorrow, though, that won't hurt. After that we'll just, work on you whenever I'm home from work,” she nodded. “Good night.”
“'Ni~ight,” the werewolf girl said, waving cutely. Onida stared at this sight for only a moment before turning to head to her bedroom. It was going to be difficult to get used to her brother being...cute, she thought.

---

The plan was beginning to form. Thursday was April 1, a very special day for Kitsune for fairly obvious reasons. There were still some details to work out, but it seemed like they had a good idea now. As Anika climbed into bed, pulling the covers over herself and solidifying her illusion to stick around while she was asleep, she just couldn't stop thinking about it.

She had never had such a long conversation with her roommate before. It had gone on and on, all the way through supper and beyond. They were trading ideas back and forth, talking not just about the plan but all kinds of things—his life growing up as a Kitsune, laughing together over a number of the pranks he'd pulled on her before she was one...and her life as a magic-oblivious human too. And the more they talked, the more she found she liked him. Before, there had always been a certain amount of liking and trust, a vague understanding that Steph's pranks were friendly, but..it was hard to say that Andrew had ever fully considered him a friend. Now there was no question; they were friends, allies...

Anika's heart skipped a beat. She caught herself thinking about Steph's face, his body. He was...cute. Oh no, he really was, wasn't he? Her stupid girl body wasn't going to stop at being female and saying it was, it was attracted to men, too. Not, like—ravenously attracted or anything, but just enough for it to sneak up on her like this now, directed right at the person she'd just determined she liked as a friend. She gritted her teeth and tried to tell herself no like a bad dog or something, but this was a matter of her body and it wasn't very obedient when it came to attraction. Well—she'd even kept it from herself until now, right? So maybe it wouldn't be so hard to keep it under wraps until she could turn back to normal...sure...

The Kitsune turned her focus back to Thursday's trick, the parts they hadn't ironed out yet. It was easy to keep it occupied with that, and distract her from thinking specifically about the fact that Steph was shirtless in bed not ten feet away from her. Stop stop stop! Dumb pink elephants thing! Anika lightly bonked a fist against the side of her head, disguising the noise from being heard, trying to manually readjust her thoughts. Maybe it would be better to just use magic to put herself to sleep at this point; that was evidently another thing she knew how to do, after all...

---

“Aaand...done.” Prama set down the last of her textbooks for the semester, finished reading and understanding the contents. She glanced over at the clock: 10 PM, about an optimal time to start getting ready for bed. She stood up, stretched, and tossed off her day clothes, putting on one of her old (boy-type) t-shirts to feel like she was 'decent' even though nobody was really going to see her at this time of night. Part of her thought it would be fun to show everyone else up this coming week—knowing all the answers now, after all—but she knew full well that participating in class at all was going to be difficult. It was so strange how confident she felt alone, and how...not so around a bunch of other people, without magical help.

Magic...now there was something that seemed like it would be worth learning. If she could learn a few spells—or maybe how to brew potions if that was a thing?—it would serve her better than all the mathematics in the world. Bottle fame, brew glory, put a stopper on death itself, she thought, humming quietly to herself as she undid her hair. Depending on what kind of magic system they lived in, this was either a highly realistic career path for her newfound brainpower or a total dead-end, but she wouldn't know until she tried, right?

The only question for now was how to find a reference to read, or ingredients for potions in the first place. Just searching the Internet wasn't going to work...but Zotha's followers did have a few 'magic-aware' people in the ranks. All she had to do was ask...err, get Jess to ask those people where they would go to get potions, then ask the potion-makers where to find a good reference to learn the craft...which still meant asking a complete stranger for something. It was no good, she'd need to engage in some interaction at some point. Well—that was alright, she would just have to learn to cope with it.

Just because her attributes had been traded around didn't mean she couldn't improve the ones that had suffered, Prama reasoned. She could—if she wanted to—exercise to become strong. And she could practice talking to people to get better at it. That was it, that was what she needed to do—she gave herself a determined nod, sitting up on the side of her bed just before swinging over onto her back. Practice. Push herself into it whether she wanted to or not, and after a while it would be second nature..again. Like it was before. And if she did learn to make potions, then maybe the ingredients of a confidence booster wouldn't be too expensive to get together as a...temporary measure, until she really had all that confidence herself. It wouldn't do to become dependent on something like that for her success forever, after all...

---

Damon sat in the living room, wagging her tail, for several minutes. She was completely and totally awake, either nocturnal now or—possibly had already been nearly so before the whole werewolf thing, and moreso now because of it. The animal part of her was perfectly happy with sitting here all night, keeping a careful watch on the house to make sure nobody mean came around to disturb her sister or mess them up some other way. But...after a few minutes...it became increasingly clear that her human side was not so happy. In short, she was bored.

Damon stood up, stretching her arms up and making a quiet “Rrr~rf.” Well, maybe it wouldn't hurt to look around the house a little more and see whether she recognized the layout, or if any of the stuff here sparked a memory? She began taking a tour of the house and indeed found the whole place encouragingly familiar. She knew her sister's bedroom door, which was closed, right away, the kitchen and dining area, the extra bathroom...

Her own room was upstairs, the knowledge came unbidden. Before long Damon found herself quietly tiptoeing up that way to take a look. There was just a small hallway there, separating her room and her bathroom, with an attic in the door at the end. The knowledge of where each room was jumped into her head as soon as she saw the hallway, and she quickly decided to check out the bedroom.

Opening the door, she found the room...almost exactly how she must have left it upon the sunset of the full moon. It was a complete mess which every glance at reminded her what had happened when the wolf first appeared: Thrashing all over the room in pain, grabbing things and knocking them over all around, ending just as the transformation did with a sudden tumble out the window. A small path had been cleared through the mess from the door to the window, and the window boarded up, but apart from that it seemed Onida hadn't wanted to be in this room at all, much less clean it up.

The werewolf girl slowly picked her way through the room, trying to remember who..what kind of person she'd been before that transformation. What had she been doing, before she noticed the moon? Her eyes settled on the computer at the desk, a giant desktop with two big monitors hooked up to a tall, fat tower standing between them. There was a microphone on the floor, the cord ripped out and the whole thing thrown there early into the transformation, but apart from that and the chair (of course) being on its back with the cushions slightly ripped, the device itself seemed fine. She reached forward with a sense of half-curiosity, half-familiarity, slowly pressing the power button on the tower and listening to it softly click. The machine whirred to life, both screens lighting up. She tapped the keyboard a couple of times, making the lock screen give way to one demanding a password, and frowned.

Damon..could not remember her password. Concepts, objects, events—those tended to be things the wolf side let her remember almost immediately, once she saw the right cue. But it was words—the names of people, locations, titles perhaps—that she found the toughest. And a password, surely, was a word. She shook her head with a frown, disappointed she couldn't exactly see what she was doing on this thing before. But maybe it was for the best—a computer was the thing that connected her to the outside world, to those people her sister had said were here 'online friends'. They...wouldn't recognize her, and it'd be too weird for anyone to accept, she thought.

Before turning away from the computer, the werewolf girl leaned in, looking at a weird orb-shaped thing sitting on top of the tower; a little red light at the bottom had turned on when the computer did. She reached a finger forward, poked it a couple of times, and shrugged, turning away and toward the miniature couch and big screen TV set up on another side of her room. She had clawed the back of the couch a little bit, but the space between it and the TV was by far the least destroyed from the transformation process, and some unidentifiable part of her felt relief when she saw the shelves surrounding the TV, their contents unharmed and even entirely undisturbed. She looked around and found the thing that was supposed to turn on the TV, and pushed the power button. Then she went up to one of the several devices lining the shelves—a 'Super Nintendo Entertainment System' in its own words printed upon the bricky piece of gray plastic—and pushed the 'power' thingy to turn it on. There was already a cartridge in it, and the game on the cartridge showed up on the TV screen right away, suddenly making a noise and startling her, making her jump back a bit.

The werewolf looked around in a panicked state briefly before identifying the source of the noise and...remembering. The title screen felt infinitely familiar, even comfortable, to her; the volume was, thankfully, quite low, so it probably hadn't woken her sister, either. She knelt closer again, picking up the oval-ish controller carefully in her hands. Her long fingernails made it a little weird to hold at first, but it felt good, familiar, in her hands. She slid down onto her butt, sitting cross-legged and looking up at the screen, and started playing. Her tail wagged happily—this was fun! It was just what her human side had wanted, and...somehow the virtual violence on-screen, filtered through the half-remembered understanding of her human side, even seemed to satisfy that little leftover wild part of her that had wanted to tear an intruder's throat out before. In this way, if only for a little while, Damon felt she was at peace.