She had closed her eyes instinctively as it had begun happening, to shut out extraneous distractions and focus only on the feeling. As she felt the little currents moving through her and around her, she heard Aelfric speak.
“Mm. As I expected,” he said.
Demi was so surprised by hearing spoken words that she opened her eyes and found herself staring at him.
There were two dark ears standing up on the top of his head, and when she looked down she could see a luxuriant tail behind him.
She did not have to think to know what he was, even though it was a little bit surprising (while also not being surprising at all).
A wolf.
A black wolf.
Aelfric’s soul animal was a black wolf.
(And not a silver fox, as it was in the light novels.)
Then she heard him say, “Reflection,” and she was surprised to find that a mirrorlike surface had appeared to one side of them. When Demi turned to look, she saw her soul animal for the first time.
She had brown ears that were gently rounded, but pointed at the top, where the color became a sooty black. She also had a short tail, rather like a rabbit’s, brown on top but a snowy white underneath.
Just as she had understood Aelfric simply by looking at him, she understood herself.
“A doe,” confirmed Aelfric. “A white-tailed doe, I believe.”
He released her hands and she was surprised to see that her ears and tail remained. She was circulating her own mana to sustain them.
Ahhh, she thought, looking at herself in the reflection spell. I somehow got even cuter than before.
Of course, she immediately raised both her hands to the top of her head to touch her ears. They felt warm and alive, not like a pair of costume ears. They were soft and very slightly cooler than the rest of her body. She could move them around just by thinking about it, and sometimes they moved around entirely on their own, apparently subconsciously.
Then she felt around to her bottom to catch hold of the little tail. It was also soft and alive. She could move it from side to side, even wag it, but by far the most impressive thing she could do was raise it like a little flag, so the snowy white underside was on display.
That’s what they do to communicate danger, she thought to herself. But it makes it extremely cute. Like a bunny tail!
Aelfric cleared his throat as a way of drawing her attention away from admiring herself. She saw that he had disappointingly already dropped his ears and tail.
She had wanted very much to touch them.
Probably that was a very rude thing to think.
But.
But but but but but.
She just couldn’t help it. They looked eminently touchable.
I wonder if they would squeak if I squeezed them gently? she mused, thinking back to a certain manga about a dog demon.
Unfortunately that mystery would have to be resolved another day.
“Imagine exhaling slowly,” he said. “Let all your breath out.”
She did, closing her eyes again and slowly breathing out.
When she opened them again, her ears and tail were gone.
“Well done,” he said simply, then moved back to the worktable.
Demi followed him, full of questions.
“How does that work?” she wanted to know. As an Archmage, she felt that he ought to have special insights.
And in a way, he did.
“It happens according to the logic of this world,” he said, glancing up as he measured out ingredients.
“The logic of this world?” she asked curiously.
“Mm,” he answered nonverbally, as he often did, then added, “It’s simply how things function.” Seeing that she apparently wanted further information, he continued. “The phenomenon cannot be isolated from the use of magic. It is intrinsic.”
“Ah, I suppose I understand,” she said thoughtfully.
It must be an element of the system. Maybe that’s what he means when he says “according to the logic of this world.” It really means “this is how the system was defined, and how it functions,” she thought to herself.
“Ara,” she said at once, finally realizing something. “When you had wolf ears, your elf ears disappeared!” she said in surprise. She moved her hands up to the spot where her deer ears had been, then down to gently cup her own ears. “It didn’t feel as if my ears changed,” she said. “I was still hearing normally, but now that I think about it, I couldn’t see my ears either. I mean, my ordinary ears. Does our anatomy change when we use magic?” she asked, her eyes wide.
He glanced up and she caught the faint move of his mouth. She thought he had smiled briefly.
“No,” he answered shortly. “It’s merely cosmetic, to eliminate the visual confusion and dysphoria we would experience at seeing ourselves having two different sets of ears. Your actual ears still function. They’re simply invisible. You can still touch them, and they work as they ordinarily work.”
Demi went to sit on a stool near the worktable.
“What did you mean when you said ‘as I expected’?” she asked curiously, watching him work.
He didn’t look up this time, but answered as he continued to prepare ingredients.
“There are times when you meet someone and get a sense of what they might be,” he said. “Particularly once you have been using magic for a long time. You gave me the sense of being a doe the first time I saw you.”
“Oh, when you told me I ought to have left you there in the woods,” she recalled.
“Mn.” He made an ambiguous sound and continued working.
Synthesizing the cyprianus was a multistep process, and he involved her in it as much as he could. She was grateful for his time and attention, and she learned a great deal simply by watching how he did things.
They made extremely fine paper, ink with a number of complicated properties, and composite boards. Each of these items had involved multiple steps and ingredients. This was how the simple items from the forest could be transmuted into such a complex tool.
It was a marvel to watch Aelfric work and to work alongside him. He worked swiftly but carefully, always checking the state of his ingredients. He had incredible attention to detail, and a precision that was breathtaking. He could tell how a synthesis was going simply by looking into the cauldron, and could accurately determine the temperature of things by moving his hand over them briefly.
Every time he did something new, or made a deliberate choice on how to proceed, he explained what he was doing and how he was doing it. She was an apt pupil and soaked up every word.
Finally, all of the constituent ingredients were prepared, apart from one.
He picked up a sharp blade from the worktable.
“I need a lock of your hair,” he explained. “I’m sorry to spoil your curls, but it should grow back in time. About four inches in length should suffice.” He paused, eyeing her hair. “Fortunately, you do seem to have an abundance of it.”
Demi’s hands moved up to her hair and she gently patted it.
“Ah, yes, I suppose it is my one vanity,” she admitted with a smile.
(It was far from her only vanity, but it was perhaps the greatest of them. She took great pride in her curtain of curls, and went to great lengths to care for and protect it.)
But Aelfric allowed that polite fiction to pass without comment.
He moved around behind her and then knelt, but after a moment, he got to his feet again.
“It’s too awkward to cut it at that height and angle,” he explained. “I am afraid I will cut more than necessary.”
He laid the blade aside and cleared a space on the worktable.
“Please excuse me,” he said, and then without further comment he picked her up and put her on the table.
She was so surprised that she didn’t even react, just sat there, flushed and amazed.
He selected one of her tresses and tied a thread around it, then holding it very carefully between his fingers, he cut the appropriate length.