Solo [The Sanctuary] Morphing Isn't What You Think

[Kavala]

Timestamping: Mid Fall, 513 AV
Continued from: Another Discipline Learned

The last real obstacle Kavala had to understand before she undertook actual Morphing was something called the Square-Cube Law. She read the section in her text, got up, and began walking around thinking about it. The Healer looked for different objects in The Commons area and couldn’t find anything that was a suitable model. So she sat down, pooled res, and began crafting her own models. The res was finely wrought, shaped into two exact squares the same dimensions only one was scaled up. They were both stone cubes of pearlescent marble shot through with streaks of red and green. They were psychical representations of the diagram she was studying in the book. She used the models to help her better understand what it was the concept was trying to bring across.

Kavala wasn’t the best math student in the world, but like all children growing up she knew basic arithmetic, addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. She even knew a little about force and pressure from cooking. However, this was new material for her completely. And that she was learning it in regards to Morphing was pretty amazing.

As usual, to get her thoughts squared away, she started writing in her journal.

If’ I am going to be a decent Morpher, I am supposed to understand something called a Square-Cube Law. This is an explanation as to why things just can’t be a random size, either far larger or far smaller than they appear naturally. In math, they use the square-cube law to explain sizing, but I think in Morphing we need to use it to explain density and muscle mass and what it takes to make things move and bend and twist without damage. Here’s what I understand about it.

When a living thing is scaled up, its area increases by the square of the multiplier while the volume increases by the cube of the multiplier. That means the ratio between the area and the volume is changing on different levels. So… if you take two cubes… which I have here. And one is a specific size, and one is ten times bigger. In this case one of mine is the size of the palm of my hand and the other is so large I could use it to weigh down Tasival. The first cube, the little one – lets call it A – is a set dimension. But the second one, Cube B, is ten times the dimension of cube A. The volume of cube B is a thousand times (10x100) greater than cube A but the area of the sides of the cube are only a hundred times greater (10x10) than cube A. The surface area is ten times bigger, but inside it’s a whole lot more dense with more space and thus the weight is heavier, everything is a lot larger.

I think I understand.

Now what does that mean for Morphers though? That’s the part I’m struggling with. This law doesn’t even seem to come into effect unless you say look at an example from the world and once I’d done that, I completely understood.

Let’s take cats as an example. I like cats a great deal. But if you take a small house cat and look at its leg bone, it’s a strong slender thing of a certain thickeness. But if you scale that cat up to say the size of a night lion, things get tricky. The bone is ten times the size or more, sure but that’s where the resemblance stops. The bones of the lion are much thicker, stronger, and dense. If I scaled up a house cat’s leg bone to the size of a night lion and didn’t make it denser, it would be frail and brittle, and all but useless (and painful when broken) to the Morpher. So in your mind, when you are morphing, you need to keep in mind that this law – the Square-Cube law – means a whole bunch of things.

The Square-Cube law applies to the skeletal frame of an animal the same way it applies to the mass and size of a simple block of stone. If an animal is twice as tall then the cross sectional areas of its bones should be four times greater while its weight is eight times greater. All this equates to a great deal of frame stress and risk of broken bones. Falls become major issues at this point because the stress on their bones is so many times greater than it would be on a small animal.

So as Morphers, we can’t craft our bodies into shapes that will exceed the ultimate strength of the bone material and thus cause the bone to break. If you can’t understand this concept fundamentally, then you have no business practicing Morphing.

Okay, so Kavala understood. And oddly enough, it was because she was an animal healer that she understood so well. Years and years of healing broken bones and other injuries had taught her what the insides and outsides of animal bodies should look like and what happened when they were off.

Morphers had to be careful, understand their dimensions, or face certain death (or incredible pain and injury) as they tried to morph into giant creatures that simply couldn’t support their own weight or body structure. Kavala stood up, stretched, and paced another circle, looking at the last section of her book.

The last little section was really only nomenclature. Kavala would have normally skipped it, because she was eager to get started, but a twinge of conscious caught her and she sat down to read it.

There were what Morpher’s dubbed ‘Degrees of Transformation’ and she needed to know what those were. Kavala copied them down studiously into her own book and put them into her own words, noting examples as she did so, which was something the previous author had neglected to take care of.

The first degree was a partial transformation. This was the realm she would be most comfortable performing in. It would be unlikely that she could do more just learning the artform. Partial transformations were exactly as they sounded. Small parts of ones body was affected, manipulated, and transformed. Webbing could be added between toes while fingernails could be turned to claws. Teeth could be elongated or eyes reshaped to see better. Even novice morphers could simply alter their facial features enough to appear to be someone else as well. That was interesting and not something Kavala thought a beginner should start out with. But the possibilities, even with just partial transformations, were endless. One third of a body could be transformed, and in Kavala’s mind that was even enough to switch ones sex.

She giggled at the thought of trying out being a man for a day.

Competent Morphers could pull off full body transformations. This sounded neat, but the truth was it took a lot of time and effort. If a morpher didn’t have a model, they were looking at crude copies as well. First time transformations often resulted in chimera or really messed up versions of things in the wild. But once practiced, a Morpher could turn a crude shape into a model and then eventually an amazingly real copy.

That was why Model Transformations were so important. Morphers skilled in using models could have huge leaps and bounds on non-skilled Morphers who just pulled from their mind. If a Morpher could study another animal from head to toe for some time, it was far easier for them to pull off full body transformations and move fluidly between various shapes. These Morphers that had models were also expected to be able to change their models at a drop of a hat, micromanaging them or tweaking them to be more compatible to what they needed in that instant without study and without big concentration. Once a morpher had a model committed to memory, there was no struggle and the time it took to transform into that model was greatly reduced.

Finally, there was something called Supreme Transformations. Kavala frowned over the pretentiousness. That was, until she read on. It seemed Master Morphers, the really old ones that had been doing the art for years and years had access to a power deep within them earned through the study of morphing itself, that would allow the mage to be constantly transforming into extreme forms with little to no danger. If the morpher modeled the extreme change, then he could get the special powers and innate abilities the creatures themselves had. That meant transforming into something like a Wind Eagle or a Velispar was more than possible, if one lived long enough and studied Morphing hard enough and used enough models. But the danger in supreme transformations was that the mages who used these shapes tended to forget their original form and spend most of their time in their new shapes.

Kavala shuddered. She remembered how the book had talked about ‘loosing oneself’ before. So again, there was intense danger to Morphing, especially at higher levels. But Kavala figured that if one had family, a good life, and people that loved them and that they loved, a mage couldn’t get too lost or travel too far from home just for the sake of new forms and new found freedoms.

The Konti stood up and smiled. Despite the dangers, she was finally ready to get started.

[Kavala]

With all the theory and rules of Morphing roaming around her brain, Kavala had a far better grasp on what it was to be a Morpher and what the general parameters were. It was time to practice, even if it meant trying with something small. The Konti had to laugh a little at the whole thing. All the literature, after all, claimed morphing was the earliest magic and that it had been discovered by accident. But who in the world would discover something like this by accident? Kavala knew in order for the transformations to work, she had to suspend her disbelief. All that she’d just read convinced her of the validity of the magic. People wouldn’t write books about it if the manipulation of one’s body wasn’t possible. She knew it was. Now all that mattered was that she talk herself into being able to do it on her own. Just do it. It would work. Okay.

Kavala took a deep breath and concentrated. She knew what she was going to do at first because it was something she always wanted to be able to fix about herself. The healer was a working woman, someone who was constantly using her hands. Unlike the gorgeous of the city, people like Rosela, Kavala had no luxury to afford to pampering her nails when all she’d be doing the moment afterwards was picking up a rake or a knife or even a hoe and getting to work. Because she worked hard, the Konti was physically fit, but her fingernails look like that of a drudge. They were often short, broken, chipped and to be honest, sometimes gnawed on. Kavala would start small, having decided somewhere in the middle of reading all the dos and don’ts of Morphing, that her nails would get the first crack at a morph.

She didn’t want claws or anything, though in the future that would be nice to try. Instead she wanted long smooth nails that looked like they were well taken care of and had a high shine. The Konti closed her eyes and focused on what she wanted, clearing her inner monolog and letting her mind and body relax. Then she took her right thumb and captured it between her thumb and forefinger of her left hand. She visualized djed pooling in the digit, and reshaping the nail. Kavala couldn’t have told someone how long she sat there, stroking her rough nail, emptying her mind and thinking of nothing at all other than smooth and perfect. Smooth and perfect. Smooth and perfect. The Konti kept thinking that, feeling the djed coat her fingernail like some sort of Eyktolian enamel and bring a clear burning warmth that wasn’t altogether unpleasant to her fingers. Smooth and perfect. Never once did the Konti open her eyes. She didn’t need to. Kavala could picture the nail and all its roughness and shortness smoothing out growing sleek and long beneath the rough pad of her finger. She stroked it, swearing that she could almost feel it smooth out beneath her touch.

Slowly the Konti opened her eyes. She released her right thumb from the confines of her left hand and stared. The nail was now longer, smoother, and incredibly thick and smooth. She brought it close up, right under her nose, and peered at it like an entomologist would peer at a rare butterfly under his magnifying glass. She reached out again, grasped it with her other hand and began to pull. Kavala could physically see the djed sparkling around it, making it pliable and workable. The nail pulled, stretching out, straightening even more. Kavala smiled as she fiddled with it, having had no idea that djed could do this. Even on her own she’d never have been clever enough to pull this off or to figure this out. Bending closer, Kavala smoothed the nail even more, shortening it and lengthening it until the nail bed seemed almost perfect in her eyes.

Then she blinked, looked away, and looked back at it, concentrating even harder. The nail darkened and took on a shimmering hue, the same hue in fact her scales had. Kavala laughed, and then frowned as the nail – still being fluid – warped under her laughter, as if the sounds coming out of Kavala’s lips so close to the nail wrinkled it. The Konti cursed a bit, started over again, and re-smoothed. She could feel the djed pooled in her finger. It wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling, but more like burning warmth of power she was suddenly conscious of. And she wondered, suddenly, if she wanted to stop the morph (and the inadvertent morphs) how she would do that. The answer came immediately and logically.

Kavala had envisioned the djed pooling in her thumb to fuel the transformation of her thumbnail. Now, she knew, all she had to do was move it away and scatter it back throughout her body where it naturally occurred. Kavala closed her eyes again, looking for that inner meditative calm. She took a deep breath in, held it, and then released it slowly taking her time. There was no rush in learning this art. The only urgency was in having something to occupy her sharp mind while the baby inside of her grew. Kavala slowly focused on her right thumb again, imagining the djed inside to be like a million little sparkles of fireflies, too small for the eye to see other than the glow from their tails. She visualized them swirling around and then flying off in all directions, scattered by the world and the winds and the will of all things magical.

Opening her eyes, Kavala studied her thumb once more. There was no more burning warmth in it and the nail that had been morphed was clean and hard, smooth and long, with a shine that Kavala had never seen outside of the extremely body conscious and wealthy. Slowly the Konti smiled. Morphing indeed was going to be a magic that would come in really handy.

She took a break to make some notes in her book before she'd go back and work on the other fingers.

My first success with Morphing was such a little thing, but astonishing nonetheless. I visualized the djed inside me as a sort of light - much like fireflies give off - that swarmed around inside me and gathered in the tip of my thumb. Then, miraculously this light made my thumbnail pliable and fluid. I was able to manipulate it with my other fingers to smooth it out, lengthen it, and make it an envious pampered ladies nail. It was astonishingly easy but I think it took a bit of reading from the library literature to talk my brain into the whole thing being possible. Just willing my thumb nail on its own to smooth out wouldn't have caused the process to work.

But here's the thing. The book I read said there was no process involved. But there is. There truthfully is a step by step process. Maybe in advance Morphers things work differently, but for me I've found the whole thing clear cut.

It is as follows:

• Clear your mind, empty your random thoughts, and meditate.
• Form a true understanding of what you want to do and hold onto that thought.
• Form a clear understanding that what you want to is possible. Your brain MUST know its capable of doing so.
• Visulaize the djed inside of you as sparkles or swaths of light, perhaps like buzzing fireflies or twinkling stars.
• Draw the light, fireflies, sparkles or whatever you envison your djed to be into the area of your body you want to morph.
• Once the djed is in place, will the body parts to alter either just by thinking them to do so or by physically manipulating the now pliable flesh and bones. Thinking and willing them to change is far easier and better, but it might take more time to get past mental hurdles if you do so instead of just manipulating your body by hand.

With this simple step by step, anyone magically inclined and gifted with an abundance of djed should be able to become a successful Morpher.

The Konti sat down then to focus on her other four fingers, closing her eyes and utilizing the same meditation she had when pooling the djed in her thumb. To the untrained eye, nothing would look different. But if someone had happened to be watching her with auristics, they would indeed see her pointer finger, her middle finger, her ring finger, and her pinkie begin to softly glow as the djed built up. Then slowly she concentrated more, opened her eyes, and began to smooth the nails out, shaping them and forcing them to shimmer utilizing just her djed and a clear concise view in her mind of what she wanted.

When she was done, she sat back, admired her handiwork, and wondered how long the transformation would last. So she sat back, concentrated on her left hand, and began reshaping the nails there. When she’d completed both hands, the Konti decided it was definitely time for a break from magic and got up to do some light cleaning in the kitchen.

Cadra appeared, almost by magic, and shooed her out. By then, Kavala was preoccupied anyhow; staring at her nails and wondering when and if they were going to revert back. She slowly meandered down to the bathing room, checked to see that the whirling pool was indeed full of hot water and ready for a Konti to soak, and then climbed in to give her back some relief from packing her newest son around. She stretched out in the water and dipped her hair. Then she lathered in some cream cleanser and began washing the translucent locks. Somewhere in that moment between dirty and clean hair, her nails lost their morph and reverted back to her broken short somewhat worn digits. Kavala frowned. Almost a bell had passed. That wasn’t nearly as long as she expected and was probably a bit longer than her hands actually deserved.

[Kavala]

Kavala lounged in the bath, knowing as soon as she got out she’d have to write down her observations and experiences in her book. The Konti relaxed, letting the weight of her unborn child be buoyed up by the water. She stretched her long fingers out, frowning at the difference, and absently wondered what else she could change. Normally Kavala wouldn’t push her luck with a new magic, but she was stir crazy beyond belief and this was a way to keep her mind occupied.

Kavala was long past the time where reading her text made any difference. She’d gotten from it what she needed to do in order to start the trial and error period in her training. And sure, she was restricted to little things, but that’s all that really mattered. Little things, like the gemstone bag she’d once upon a time made for her reimancy blanks, were what got her skilled enough to complete most of The Within and the compound above. Small steps here, like fingernails and other more self-transformational things, were what was going to get her in line for the big things, like flying.

Or breathing underwater… Kavala was momentarily caught off guard. She was certain, in that moment, that she’d need to talk to Riaris about this and see if he’d be willing to learn the art as well. If he could morph, he could indeed swim, and that would allow him to follow his family anywhere. The Konti contemplated speaking to the Akalak about learning the magic. But again, she wasn’t sure he’d be interested. All she could do was suggest, not insist, for Riaris was a very stubborn person and she’d found over the course of their relationship that he liked what he liked and that was about it. If anyone tried to change his mind, he’d lock heels. She could only suggest and point out what would be the incredible benefits from learning a discipline like morphing.

And yet some deep part of Kavala also thought… “What did it matter?” She was certain, because of past experiences that this thing she had with Riaris wouldn’t last. Tasival’s father had vanished shortly before he was born. And she knew her son was desperate to find a man to be his father figure. Kavala wanted to be enough for him, but she knew that deep down, she couldn’t be. She also couldn’t hold Riaris to her. She hadn’t been able to make anything work with Ronan either. Even the mere mention of the Sunsinger clan had sent her into a mild trauma before things in her mind had started to heal. It was the worst kind of thing, being told you weren’t human enough to matter and certainly not human enough to love.

“I’m Drykas.” The Konti said abruptly. She said it loudly and proudly and even startled that the sound had come out of her mouth at all. Kavala blinked, tears welling up in her eyes. Quickly she tried to run down the things that made her life better… Vanator and his children being alive being the first and foremost among the blessings Kavala enjoyed. Without the three of them the Denusk Pavilion would have ceased to exist. The Sanctuary was another… with all the animals, especially the Denusk Horses, there was no other place she’d rather be. Then why were tears falling so easily? She swiped at her eyes for a moment, embarrassed, and was torn between wanting Riaris there to comfort her and not wanting anyone to see her cry.

It was hard to be strong all the time. And this baby was making her weak, vulnerable and she was starting to resent that. The staff treated her with kid gloves and she hated it. She was the one that told them to take breaks, picked up brooms and shovels and cleaned messes side by side to get everyone done with their chores faster. She wiped tears from others’ eyes. And she let them cry if they needed too. Kavala stroked her swollen stomach, feeling more tears falling. She felt powerless to stop them and after a few moments didn’t even try. No one was here to see her. No one would judge her. No one would even know she got sad and painfully lonely at times. Once upon a time Kavala assumed that building The Sanctuary up from the ground and operating it as a successful business would make her have some appeal to the people of the city. She’d hoped it would make her feel equal and somehow forever cleanse the taint of being a Nakivak and an ex-slave off her.

But it hadn’t. And in many ways she thought it made her less approachable. She was The Animal Healer of Riverfall. She was the one that was needed desperately when she was needed, and ignored the rest of the time because she was a bit too well off, a bit intimidating, and far too independent with a son who had no father.

And for a moment, the Konti hated herself, wishing things were different and that she could be someone that others really wanted around. Now though… now…. This was two children, all before she was truly considered more than just barely an adult. And she was a healer, a mage, a beekeeper and about to be the founder of the present day Cytali. For that moment, sprawled out in that warm water with her head against the rim padded by an eel skin pillow, she felt almost completely and utterly overwhelmed.

And so she cried. She cried a great deal until there was nothing left to cry about and no more tears in her heart. She washed her face by dunking her head backwards under the water. And then she let her hair splay out around her, floating in long silky coils stretching off from her head. Kavala reached out to finger one of the strands, pulling it delicately through her digits like finely wrought lace.

She closed her eyes, focusing on the image Kavala had formed in her mind earlier, of the pools of djed in her body shifting and rolling, moving towards where she wanted them to gather. It was hard concentrating when she kept sniffling. But she tired, clearing her mind and letting the entire damaging negativity slide away. She imagined her thoughts to be like gemstones, and she molded and shaped each one into something more positive as she floated in the water. Self-loathing turned into a burning need to improve herself so there was never a reason for another person to want to leave her. And doubt turned into a sort of ‘why not?’ feeling, because of others could do it, why couldn’t she? It took her a long time floating in the water to clear her head, relax her breathing, and think about morphing again.

And when she did finally relax, Kavala realized she was pulling strands of dark hair through her fingers now, deepened into a mahogany brown but her earlier wish to be anything other than Konti which centered on her hair being white. Kavala leaned back and combed her wet hair with her wet fingers pulling out the long strands to float around her. Dark, darker, even black, the colors that cascaded down her head reminded her of a different era, when her name had been Crescent and she’d been a human assassin for the Ruv’na.

The Konti was so busy studying the hair she’d changed with morphing that she didn’t notice Cadra slipping in to check on her. Her niece walked in with a stack of freshly cleaned towels and froze. She stared a moment then raised an eyebrow and almost purred, cat-like. “Aunt… why in the world did you dye your hair?” Cadra asked, somewhat horrified.

Kavala simply laughed.

Later, when she was alone and her niece was informed she was learning Moprhing, Kavala added more notes to her book.

Morphing doesn't necessarily have to be a conscious thing. Under emotional duress, with Djed abundant, and a will to 'change' present in one's mind, a person who is well and truly used to utilizing Morphing (or even new to the art form) can alter things about themselves inadvertently. Literature talks about insanity in regards to Master Morphers, and I can see why. If one where to raise one's hand in anger, claws could be sprung if the person had experience glowing them, and then others could get hurt.

It seems to me Morphing is one of those proverbial can of worms that some people are best not exposed too until they have an emotional maturity and reasonable sense of right and wrong. For this reason, I would never recommend Morphing be in the hands of children.

Kavala wrote on further, mostly exploring her views on philosophy and ethics in regards to Morphing. And by the time the candle burned low from her writing, she was indeed ready for bed and to catch some rest. The next day would be exciting because she was ready to try bigger and better things.

[Kavala]

Kavala woke bright and early with a mind to catch some breakfast down at the shore – raw clams sounded delicious – and to spend the rest of the day studying morphology. She had to laugh because the words Morphology and Morphing were so close. As she understood it, half the reason why she knew she was going to be successful as a morpher was because she knew so much anatomy. So, she collected her clam basket, a rake and on the way down to the Sea Gates, stopped Aweston in the commons and asked him for a favor.

“Will you do me a huge favor today, Aweston?” The Konti asked the Drykas, who was adopted into her Pavilion and technically her cousin. “Will you go down the coast to those caves we know of where we get the bat quano fertilizer and bring me back a dead bat? I know the floor always has a few of them where they fall. Age, sex, size... it doesn’t matter. I’d just like one that’s not too decayed and that has an intact wing, shoulder, and upper body structure. Can you do that?” She’d asked very nicely and her cousin said he’d do it. He was much more interested in keeping her home and if that meant taking a small ten minute trip out of his way to retrieve her dead bat, he’d do so.

Kavala thanked him a bunch and told him to leave it on the counter in the isolation lab – that she’d set out trays for such a purpose.

Then, that errand taken care of, she headed down to the beach with the Imperial Watchers from the kennels and dug herself some clams. Since being pregnant, nothing would stay down but raw seafood and bivalves from the shore, so Kavala indulged heavily in clams because they were easy for someone of her awkward weight to get too without much effort. And the side bonus was that when she was almost done with the harvest and snacking, one of the Imperial watchers, Ink, brought her a dead gull to show off. Kavala was thrilled. Seabirds often finished their lives on the shore and so it was not uncommon to see an old one dead on the beach. The dogs were particularly good at finding them, so it was no surprise that when she was ready to head back to the lab, her clam basket contained clams and a carefully wrapped dead gull.

When she got back, the dogs were returned safely to the kennel, and she headed for her lab. There, on the table, was a perfectly formed and seemingly freshly dead bat. Kavala smiled. Aweston always came through. Kavala put on her gloves, laid out the dead seabird in a tray beside the bat, and then with careful motions, she removed the skin from both of the corpses’ limbs and exposed the bones so she could study them.

Then for the next hour she did so, comparing and contrasting the bird arm verses the bat arm, and then finally adding in her own.

Modeling. This was a form of morphing that she was going to try to do to see if she could make the transformation better and easier if it involved a full arm and not just a small fingernail. Having models were vital, and she could see why that would be so. All three limbs, three if you counted Konti arms which were her first model were right there in front of her and the differences were notable.

Kavala took a break, went and fetched the book she was working on, and came back with her sketching pencils and inking pens. Then she sat down to write about her observations and to sketch in the book itself.

Interestingly enough, the bones in a Konti arm differ little from the birds in a simple black bat and that of a seagull. The only variation is on the size, shape, and length. Strangely enough, placement is identical if the variations are taken into account. That is good news for a Morpher, who simply needs to alter the size and shape of a limb to transform them into a wing rather than manipulate the whole entire bone placement.

In bats, everything is elongated. In birds, everything is condensed. Bats have grossly exaggerated fingers in order to hold the webbing of the wing which supports their weight. In birds, the joints are condensed down because the feathers take the place of fingers. Yet still, all the bones are there and all are in the same order. Morphing an arm into a wing is theoretically a simple thing, if one doe not try to take into account the feathers.

Feathers look complicated, and will be something I will tackle after mastering bone manipulation. So, taking into account the Square-Cube Law, I am going to attempt first a bat limb and then a bird limb, seeing if I can stretch and shrink my bones back and forth and assessing if that indeed causes pain.

Kavala put the pen down, leaned back and got comfortable. She stretched her arm out, and got busy concentrating on bringing djed to pool in the limb she was going to manipulate. For some reason, stretching out bones seemed easier than contracting them, so Kavala opted to try for the bat bone structure first. She was not going to add any wing material or skin flaps, only the bones encased in skin. Concentrating, she cleared her mind and worked on her breathing…. in and out… until she had a steady powerful very calm feeling in her body. Then she visualized her fingers elongating, her wrist condensing. Her fingers began to stretch outward, her wrist condensed, and staring at the model, her arm slowly transformed. She lost the Konti look to her limb and instead gained a long thin limb that had huge delicate fingers splaying out from her wrist, long thin, and very very bat like.

Kavala laughed. Then she stretched out her other arm and did the same thing until her arms looked more like tree limbs than Konti arms. There was no webbing in between them, and Kavala had to concentrate to rearrange the joints so she could fold them delicately at her side and then stretch them out again. They were long, longer than she imagined, and by far the most weirdly feeling things she’d ever experienced. She still had the sensation of having arms, but the information flooding in from where she touched.

Kavala moved about the lab, awkwardly of course, swinging her arms around and practicing extending them and folding them up. The bat limbs didn’t allow her to touch anything, nor pick anything up, and she knew the proportions were well and away off, but that wasn’t something she could truthfully adjust until she herself could test them with membranes and flight… something that wouldn’t happen until after the baby and far more Morphing training. But here and now she was just proud to have been able to alter her bone structure and get limbs that were reflective of a bat.

Then… quietly and carefully, she pulled more djed and willed them back into shape. They went, reforming into her normal arms, but only grudgingly so… like someone trying to tap maple out of a tree in the deep of winter. When they didn’t revert back immediately, Kavala got a bit worried. Worry ruined her concentration, and she had to relax all over again. Once relaxed, refocused, and concentrating on having her normal arms.

Kavala breathed a sigh of relief when eventually, thirty chimes later, she had her original arms back and was writing in her book as to her experience.

[Kavala]

The next day Kavala found herself once more playing with her hands. The act of morphing a hand wasn’t exactly taxing. She suspected the more taxing part of morphing was indeed morphing and staying morphed in a whole body scenario. And the best part of the study was that no one seemed to be willing to bother her as she walked around The Sanctuary and down on the beach sketching things. Today she had plans to sketch bird feet. She was curious in the dimorphism between species and why different feet looked different. And being a healer, Kavala had a special interest in finding out the why of things in order to see where nature had made improvements over baseline models.

And so she’d went to the source, heading out first to the chicken house, then to the mews to sketch scratching and predatory feet. They’d even had geese and a crow visit, so she was able to get enough time with them to get their anatomy down on paper. The hardest part was the short walk with the dogs into the woods to look for climbing birds. She’d found one in the form of a woodpecker and had eagerly added that to her list. It was the best she could do. Ducks were wading birds, but she didn’t have one to look at other than an obscure tapestry that showed both above and below in a pond that decorated the within. And there were ducks in that image that she was able to sketch. She though they were pretty good renditions of feet. And truth be told they gave her excellent models for all the types of birds she might possibly want to learn to morph into when she got better.

See, Kavala didn’t plan on learning all she could of shape shifting in one fell swoop. She wanted to learn Morphing like she had learned medicine… one body part at a time, one system at a time. Then, when she got good at the different pieces, she’d eventually put them all together.

So for now, she was working on bird feet. Now that she understood wing structure better, bird feet were a next step. And in that frame of mine, she filled out a chart with all she knew to help her remember structure in terms of what kind of bird belonged to what kind of feet.

Then, once her chart was done, Kavala set her pen and ink aside, and stretched out her feet so she could kick off her shoes and started practicing. First came the quieting of her mind, the deep relaxation she needed. And though she could barely see her feet over the baby, the Konti had it figured out in a short amount of time as she leaned back and put her foot up on a stool where she could see it.

Kavala focused on her breath, breathing in and out slowly, holding the breath, letting it cleans her as she felt the djed inside her begin to swirl around and focus around her foot. She concentrated further, her mind finding that magical place where her awareness expanded and her focus contracted. She pulled her toes up until just three splayed out, and a forth was behind. Bones rearranged and she thought of the structure, recreating it in her mind. Feet were harder than hands though, and she struggled to make the foot exactly like the birds. At first, it looked like rough clay a child had tried to model. She concentrated, refocusing, and tried to work on the long slim look, pushing out her nails into claws…

It was too much… it was too much to soon… and Kavala backed off as it didn’t work. She was sure since she’d had so much success with her arms she could get her feet to work. But nothing… and a headache began to form. The Konti growled in frustration, loosing her concentration and her focus. It was beyond what she wanted or needed to experience in an atmosphere of helplessness the baby was putting out by its burden on her body.


Kavala took a break, walked around the lab, and then sat back down. She cleared her mind again, pulled djed into her foot, and began to focus. Until she could be sure how things would work with foot bones, Kavala would concentrate on the nails. She stared at her toes, and decided to give each toe a different claw. One would be climbing, one swimming, one running, and one perching. Finally she’d do the grasping, and then leave the scratching for the other foot. Staring at her big toe, she willed the djed into it, and then physically felt the nail ripple and reform. It extended and hooked, perfect for digging into wood or stone. The second toe, the pointer one, she manipulated into a blunt thing that was thick and strong enough to stroke the water it would be swimming through without causing drag. That part was easy enough.

The running toe was a blunt thing that had a slight curve to it. They faced forward and were thick and tough to take the beating a running toe would take. Perching toes were easier. On the forth toe she focused and made a bird nail that was sort of a generalist. It was neither sharp, nor blunt, nor did it have a thickness or a strength. It looked graceful though, like it could wrap around something and grasp it gently. Then finally, on her pinkie toe, she formed a wicked sharp hook. Kavala had to laugh at how the deadly dagger looked on the smallest most mundane digit of her toe.

Then she leaned back, shook her head at herself, and laughed.

Tomorrow… tomorrow she’d focus on the whole foot or perhaps maybe horns. she hadn't truthfully decided yet. For now, she was going to turn to the other foot, focus, and change the rest so she could enjoy the feel of walking around with bird nails tapping on the marble of the lab floor.


Continued in: Yes You Can

[Taylani]

XP Award!

Kavala:

XP Award:

• +1 Reimancy
• +3 writing
• +5 Morphing
• +1 mathematics
• +1 meditation
• +1 organization

Lore:

• Morphing: Squared-Cubed Law Scaled up the Area increases by the square of the multiplier,
• Morphing: Square-Cubed Law, Scaled up the volume increases by the cube of the multiplier.
• Morphing: Must understand dimensions.
• Morphing: Degrees of Transformation
• Morphing: Dangers of Mastering Morphing and forgetting one’s original shape.
• Morphing: Does not have to be a conscious thing

Notes: loved this one. It was so informative and helped me to oocly understand Mizahar’s idea of morphing. I also enjoyed the softer side of Kavala’s character, that is always great to be able to see that and relate to the character. These are comments

Comments :

As always feel free to pm me if you have any concerns. Don’t forget to delete/edit your grade request.

TAYLANI