the circle

[instar]

Trouble and Charlie fly to Las Vegas to get their collections of drunks. Ax, newly empigeoned, and Ethan loosely follow Renée's car back to Phoenix, so that Ax will not be stranded in an unfamiliar city obliged to demorph into Andalite form with no garage to hide in.

Renée makes a very large grocery trip. Ax deems alfalfa hay intended for consumption by guinea pigs and rabbits to be the hoof-eating equivalent of palatable; it also turns out he can eat a few other things, like carrot tops and turnip greens. He still doesn't like living in the garage, even though it's a different one. Andi finds him a little planetarium gadget that throws star-patterns onto the ceiling.

Renée installs a cot in the basement for Charlie. (His generic human morph is a man about ten years younger than him, plausibly Latino but just as plausibly not, plain and unremarkable. He also picks up a Renée morph. He will be able to drive the girls places, publicly know their names. They can tell he appreciates the opportunity, however weird it is.) Trouble is allowed to sleep on the couch, when Renée learns that he would prefer not to share the basement with Charlie.

Bella sews weights onto all the curtain hems so they won't be easily nudged aside.

The twins also collect generic-human-morphs. Both of theirs are college-age women, samples collected from going on premature college tours and shaking a lot of hands - Bella's looks maybe half Asian when she's done tweaking it, Andi winds up with a complexion much like her usual one but a surprisingly Hawaiian set of features.

Renée never asks to be enabled to morph. Bella eventually offers, "for emergencies", and Renée aggregates a number of her co-workers into the most stereotypical teacher-lady it is possible to Frolis into without requiring vision correction.

Renée makes the arrangements well in advance to homeschool the twins.

Bella quizzes Ax about all sorts of things, for large parts of each day.

Comments

[megale]

"I haven't, but I'm hard to gross out. And nobody's looking!"

[aeskhyne]

<I'm still not doing it in public.>

[megale]

"Aww. I could take you home! My parents are out."

[aeskhyne]

<If you are just that desperate to see me shapeshift, then yeah, sure. I haven't learned any mice yet, but I have a couple of owls and those are way softer than mice.>

[megale]

"Ooooh," beams Rhea, and she cuddles him to her chest and heads out of the park with him in her arms.

[aeskhyne]

Cuddles! Trouble—or Iago, if you like—snuggles up and coos contentedly.

[megale]

Pet pet pet. She gets a couple odd looks on the walk home for carrying a pigeon, but people apparently assume he's a stuffed animal or something.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble doesn't do much to dispel this illusion. Rhea is snuggly and warm and he is totally fine just huddling up here as a soft fluffy pigeonball.

[megale]

Rhea and her talking pigeon eventually arrive back at the apartment complex, and she carries him right up to her apartment, lets herself in, and puts him on her bed. "There," she says.

[aeskhyne]

<Okay. I have to go human before I go anything else, so like, don't be surprised. Also this is me reminding you that shapeshifting is gross.>

The pigeon starts growing.

[megale]

Rhea watches. Apparently she is pretty hard to gross out.

[aeskhyne]

It's more weird than gross at first; he grows until he is the world's hugest pigeon, and then his feathers and beak all slurp away and he is briefly a giant horrifying nightmare pigeon, and then his skeleton rearranges itself with a disquieting grinding noise and his hair sprouts all at once and there is a general wriggling of flesh into place, and a teenage boy is sitting on her bed in his underwear.

"Hi," he says, bouncing a little.

[megale]

"You're on a milk carton. I mean not a literal milk carton, you're in, like, the newspaper, missing person, Angel something."

[aeskhyne]

"...Yeah, that's true, I am. But don't call me Angel, I like Iago better."

[megale]

"So you're not actually my talking pigeon guardian angel?"

[aeskhyne]

He giggles.

"No. I'm just a guy who can turn into animals. Wanna see my fluffy kitty?"

[megale]

"Yeah."

[aeskhyne]

"Okay!"

Turning into the fluffy kitty seems to go a little bit faster than coming back from the pigeon, or maybe it's just that it all happens at once in a muddle instead of having that long growing stage first.

Then he is a tall spotted cat with a long fluffy tail, and he climbs into her lap and flops over and purrs.

[megale]

She pets him. "Good kitty," she giggles. "Could you always turn into animals and you went missing for some other reason or did the talking pigeon people recruit you?"

[aeskhyne]

<Not telling,> he says. <Gimme tummy rubs, they're the best.>

[megale]

She gives him tummy rubs. "So I probably should not call that hotline thing, huh?"

[aeskhyne]

<Don't call the hotline,> he says, purring up a storm. <The evil cult will get involved and it'll be bad. Also I ran away from home for, like, reasons, and they weren't even all evil-cult-related.>

[megale]

"The Sharing is involved in your missing person investigation?"

[aeskhyne]

The purring trails off.

<Yeah, my stepdad's a member. But he's been evil since way before then.>

[megale]

"Evil stepparents and talking animals and my life is such a fairy tale right now." She scoops him in her arms for comforting snugs.