Shim's Circle 1: Connected

[packbat]

"How much did this cost?"

"Four thousand, nine hundred and seventy three dollars and sixty eight cents. About half of that was these epaper displays for the runes" - Shim tapped a claw on the floor just outside the ring next to one of the little squares ey were examining - "and most of the rest was honestly just the computer I use."

The human in the circle whistled, impressed.

"It wasn't too bad - academic magicians use a lot of unusual and expensive ingredients and medical technology gets pretty steep pretty fast. Mostly I was worried that I wouldn't be able to convincingly demonstrate that it would fill a need."

The human nodded. "Hence the survey."

"Hence the survey." Shim stood up. "Thank you for ticking the box that said we could contact you with updates, by the way. And for volunteering."

"Had to! No question. I can't afford to commission a transformation - this is such a good opportunity, I couldn't pass it up." The human grinned.

Shim, the kobold, grinned back, turned, and hopped up on the stepstool behind eir computer. "Right then. Ready?"

"Ready", the human said, and closed her eyes, still grinning.

---

She heard Shim typing a handful of keys, and then she was floating.

She was floating. The room was near-silent - faint sounds of traffic from somewhere, quiet whirring of fans. She was floating and ... starting to notice her body?

There were air currents in the room - slight, but she could feel them in the hair on her arms. She tried to stay still as she was instructed, but she could feel air motions - and stronger, now, ruffling over her fur.

Fur! She grinned, and felt the motion of whiskers in the air. Felt the feeling she'd often had of her phantom tail lashing in exitement, and tried to still again.

But the air was moving, and she had fur. And her ears twitched, twisting to catch Shim making a small sound. The tip of her tail twitched - in the wrong place, too short, but ... she twitched it again, and it was closer. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her excitement, and felt fur moving against the hospital gown she was wearing.

Her tail twitched again in excitement.

It twitched and it was right. It lashed back and forth once before she managed to still it.

Suddenly there was a chime - startlingly loud, even though it wasn't and Shim had played it for her before. She opened her eyes before she remembered not to, and saw Shim staring between her and something just to her right.

Another catgirl, just to her right, floating beside her. Asleep. White fur with a black face and hands, unlike her own dark gray.

And then the levitation let go and she was catching the other cat so she wouldn't fall over.

---

The two cats stared at each other. Their ears twitched in unison as the kobold jumped down from the stepstool and hurried over to outside the circle, but they started at each other.

The light cat closed her eyes and got a thoughtful expression. Dark cat stared.

"...I can see", Lightcat said, and reopened her eyes. "We're connected."

"May I?" Darkcat asked, thinking about trying to move Lightcat's hand.

"Yeah, go ahead", Lightcat said.

Darkcat tentatively waved Lightcat's hand as Lightcat watched. "I don't--" they said in unison, and cut off in unison.

"I don't think I like that", Lightcat finished.

"Yeah, me neither." Darkcat replied.

"What's going on?" asked Shim.

The two cats looked over at Shim, blinking, as ey looked back at Darkcat. "You're not acting surprised but you didn't say anything about this in the paperwork."

"We did not expect this to happen", said Lightcat. "We--"

"PLURALITY!" yelled Darkcat, and Lightcat winced at the loudness. "Sorry," Darkcat said to Lightcat, "but we're a plural system, that has to be it."

"Two people in the same body", Lightcat agreed. "Or more, but if there were more, I assume there would be, uh, more."

Shim stared into space. Lightcat shifted awkwardly as Darkcat adjusted her hospital gown.

"I'm ... going to call my advisor. And do the post-transformation checklist", Shim said, eventually. Then ey looked at each of them with a serious expression. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah", they said in unison.
"We're fine", said Lightcat.
"Good!" said Darkcat, "We're really good."

---

Originally posted 2020-10-10