Chapter Text
"Okay, we're home! Come on out."
I climbed out of the extradimensional space and hopped up onto Mal's shoulder as she parked her bike out by the shed. Thomas was in the backyard tending the garden when we arrived, and he gave us a wave with a gloved hand. "How was school?" he asked.
"It was good! One of my classmates asked me out on a date and also turned out to be a warlock who can talk to animals, and we think my history teacher might be a mage too, but we're not 100% sure yet. And Kate was very popular!"
Thomas blinked. "Exciting day."
"Events definitely occurred," I said, nodding.
"Are you going to tell me more about this new suitor of yours?" He raised one eyebrow inquisitively.
Mal gave him a faux-innocent look over her shoulder as she headed inside through the open back door. "Sorry, Dad, no time for potentially embarrassing conversations, we gotta go finish scribing a spell!"
"Okay," he said, rolling his eyes. "Have fun, girls. Don't forget to triple-check everything!"
"We will!"
Back in her room, I leapt onto her desk, and she took her backpack off and let it thump to the floor as she took her seat in the chair. "So, what's the last step for this spell?" I asked.
"Just a couple finishing touches. Mainly, we need to lock in the verbal, somatic, and material components. This is usually the easiest part. For the verbal component, I typically just invoke the spell by name, and for the material component, we need something that symbolically represents the spell's effect—you can see here that the book recommends using a glove. And when there's a material component, the somatic component usually represents the way you manipulate the material component during the casting."
"We'll need a somatic component that I can manage in cat form, then," I said. How hard could that be? "Assuming the material component is a glove, do you have a glove that I can play with? I want to see how hard it is for me to manipulate."
Mal pulled open her spell component drawer, rummaged through it, and produced a box of disposable sanitary gloves. "Here we are. I knew these would come in handy!" She offered one to me. "Just don't chew on it."
"I know not to chew on it," I huffed.
I pounced on the glove, and proceeded to spend several minutes batting at it, tossing it around, and just generally playing with it in a traditionally feline fashion. It was probably very cute to watch, although Mal wasn't in the proper frame of mind to appreciate it; she was busy observing me in a more analytical fashion, trying to assess what might or might not work for the spell. Well, good for her, staying focused on the task at hand! Because I was totally distracted. What were we working on again?
"Oh, try that one again!" she said.
Right. Yes. Spellwork. "Like this?" I flicked the glove upwards with my paw, then snatched it out of the air on its way down.
"Yes! That should be perfect! Are you okay with that as the somatic component for the spell?"
"Sure, why not? It seems easy enough to repeat." I tried it again and successfully caught the glove a third time. I have to imagine that full-on juggling would be pretty hard when you're working with the paws and forelimbs of a housecat, but if all you need to do is toss something and then catch it again, the improved reflexes do a good job of making up for it.
Mal clicked one of her gel pens. "Then let's finish this thing!"