=::= Beth's PoV =::=

The living-room seemed to spin around me as it faded, and a moment later I was standing just inside the front door of Samantha and Nicole's large home. My girlfriend appeared by my side at almost the same time, while Mom and Jenny were already moving away from the entrance.

"I will never get bored of that!" Tally announced with a big grin.

I smiled back as I looked around, "Me neither. I wish we could just teleport everywhere, it's so much better than cars or busses."

It looked like almost everyone else was here already. Sam and Nikki were talking with Jess and Kara, Tanya and Brandi were chatting with Dana and Stacey from QSAW.

Stacey was actually the newest coven member, she was initiated back in February. She didn't need someone to teach her about magic though. Apparently she was one of the few people who knew Cindy personally, so she learned a bunch of stuff directly from the famous sorceress. She was also the only other demi-human present, along with Tally and me.

I also spotted Amanda and Sadie and their girlfriends off at the far end of the large open-concept space. As usual the four college students had gathered around a tray of snacks so they could fill up on free food. And all four of them were taking advantage of the free drinks too.

Mom and Jen were heading over to join them, so Tally and I followed them there as well.

"Hey kids," Sadie greeted the four of us. Then she teased, "Shouldn't you be back home studying? Don't you all have another exam tomorrow?"

Mom rolled her eyes, "So do you Sadie. I'm pretty sure out of all eight of us I'm the only one who's not in the middle of her exams. But Sam and Nikki asked everyone to attend tonight's meeting, and we all know better than to ignore a request like that."

"I hope it's nothing serious," Amanda frowned. "Every time they do that it reminds me of the first time, when the Brotherhood were after us."

Ashley shook her head, "Don't sweat it Amanda. The Brotherhood are long gone, Cindy made sure of that."

Britt was munching on a little mini-sandwich but she quickly gulped it down and asked, "Speaking of, do you suppose Kat and Zoe will be coming too? I know they're not technically part of the coven, but if there's some big announcement maybe it involves them?"

Mom and Sadie both shrugged at the same time, and I couldn't help noticing they had almost identical expressions on their faces. It was kind of funny actually, every time I saw mom and Sadie and Amanda together it just reinforced how our mom had become the third twin. She and Sadie actually looked more alike now than Sadie and Amanda, since they both had dark hair and they both kept it long. Amanda's dirty-blonde hair just barely reached her shoulders by comparison.

The shared mannerisms thing was another reminder that mom and Sadie were originally siblings anyways. The two of them grew up together the first time around. Which kind of made Amanda more like the third twin, even though technically she was the first. After all, Sadie and mom both looked like her, not the other way around.

About the only real difference was Sadie's personality was definitely that of a young woman, same as how I really was a teen now. Mom was still an adult inside, and she still acted mature and everything like ninety-percent of the time.

"Do you think this will be a late meeting tonight Ms. Watson?" Tally asked. "They know we all have exams and stuff tomorrow, right?"

Mom nodded, "I'm sure they're aware. And while I doubt there's any kind of emergency, I also know Sam and Nikki wouldn't have asked everyone here if there wasn't something important they wanted to discuss."

Then she smiled, "And I already told you Tally, you don't have to keep calling me 'Ms. Watson' ok? You can just call me Maria."

"In fact you're all welcome to call me Maria if you like," mom added. She was mostly looking at Ashley and Brittany when she said it, but she seemed to mean that for all of us.

And of course Sadie took it as another opportunity to tease, "Is that so? You know it was only a few years ago we were all angsting over whether we should stop calling you Maria and start calling you mom. Now we're going to be stressing about whether we should stop using mom and start saying Maria again? You should just make up your mind."

"I'm sorry Sadie," mom grimaced. "You don't have to call me Maria, and I don't want any of you to stress over what to call me."

Sadie smirked, "How about we start calling you 'sis' this time? Since it looks like your 'temporary' experiment with youth has - oof!"

Ashley's elbow in my brunette sister's side finally brought an end to her teasing, but to be sure the tall ravenette leaned closer and stated "That's enough Sadie."

To make sure the subject was well and truly dead Amanda brought up something completely different. She looked at me and Tally as she asked, "How'd the big spring formal go last week? We saw the pictures, you girls all looked amazing. Beth, Tally, you two were absolutely adorable in those dresses!"

"And Jenny," she added as she looked at our tall blonde sister, "You looked really smart in that outfit!"

"Where'd you even get that stuff from Jen?" Brittany asked. "It looked cool, but you looked like you were one tricorn hat away from commanding a frigate in Her Majesty's Navy or something."

Jenny just rolled her eyes and smiled, but before she could respond we were all distracted by something going on behind us. We all turned to look, and discovered someone I'd never seen before had just arrived.

She was a catgirl demi-human, her cute ears and tail were both covered in pure white fur to match her pure white hair. She wasn't old though, she looked like she was in her early twenties. Although there was no telling her actual age, since she'd obviously used Cindy's spell.

What really made her stand out though was her size. She was actually shorter and smaller than me. Since becoming an arctic foxgirl I was the smallest person in the whole coven, even smaller than Brandi.

Then as Stacey hurried over to greet the catgirl it suddenly hit me who she was. She had to be the taller foxgirl's sister, which was even more of a surprise. Katie was sort of semi-famous as a human rights activist, and she was the first demi-human to win an election in Canada. She lived in Vancouver and was was an MPP in British Columbia.

"That's Katie Saunders!" Tally exclaimed quietly a moment later. "What's she doing here?!"

Mom shook her head, "I'm not sure? Maybe Sam and Nikki asked her to come and speak to the coven? She's worked with us at QSAW over the last couple years, and I know she's still fighting for demi-human, trans, and queer rights and equality. I didn't know she'd be here tonight though, nobody said anything to me about..."

Mom's voice suddenly trailed off and she looked like she just remembered something, but whatever it was she seemed to decide to keep it to herself. Unfortunately I wasn't the only one to see that in her expression.

"What was that look for?" Amanda asked. "You know something's up, don't you mom? Spill it."

Our mom rolled her eyes and shook her head, "If it's what I'm thinking, you'll find out soon enough. And if it's not, then I'm wrong and it doesn't matter anyways."

Then Tally moved closer to me and asked quietly, "Do you think Katie would mind signing my book? I could teleport back home right now and grab it."

"Are you reading one of her books?" Britt asked. "I thought you were into biology, not law or human rights stuff."

My girlfriend blushed, "It's not one of Katie's books, but she wrote the foreword to it? It's called 'From Welland to Wye River: In Search of the Girl Who Changed The World'. It's a biography about Cindy, by someone called Tamara Stevens."

"It just came out last week," I added. Then I smiled as I teased her a bit, "Tally's barely put it down. I'm surprised she didn't bring it with her tonight, to be honest."

Mom shook her head, "Maybe you can ask Katie after the meeting Tally? But I don't think there's time right now. It looks like people are starting to get settled down around the big table."

Ashley suggested, "We should probably go join them."

The others agreed, and all eight of us headed over to where the rest of the coven was starting to take their seats. What was originally just a really long dining table was now more like two dining tables pushed together, so there were four seats across the end then seven chairs along each side.

Sam and Nikki sat side by side at the head of the table, with Jessica to Sam's right and Kara on Nikki's left. Then down the right side of the table from Jess sat Ashley, Sadie, Amanda, Brittany, Jenny, me, and Tally was the last one on our side of the table. On the other side Mom sat to Kara's left, followed by Tanya, Brandi, then the empty seat for Becky, then Dana, Stacey, and finally Katie was in the last seat on that side. Which put her directly across from my girlfriend, which I could tell made Tally happy.

With everyone seated Nicole stood up at the head of the table. As usual she was dressed all in black, with some chunky silver jewelry. She'd got her slim figure back by now too, she'd been putting in the work exercising and everything in the year since Rebekah was born.

Nikki smiled as she began, "Thank you all for coming tonight. Sam and I try not use the 'mandatory attendance' call too often, but we have some announcements tonight that we really wanted everyone present for."

"And I know some of you have exams tomorrow," she added as she looked to our side of the table, "So we'll try not to keep you all here any later than necessary."

Then Samantha took over, "Our first and most obvious announcement has to do with the new face as the end of the table. Tonight we will be welcoming another new member to our coven."

That surprised me, and I could tell by the reactions that a few others around the table were just as surprised. Everyone in the room was local, we all lived in the area and it felt like half the people worked at QSAW.

After a brief pause our priestess continued, "I'm sure most of you are familiar with Katie Saunders' work, in fact several of you have already met her or even worked with her during her many visits to QSAW over the last couple years. That's actually one of the reasons we've invited her to join us here now in fact, as thanks for her ongoing work in support of queer, trans, and demi-human people across the country."

Nikki took over again at that point, and there were some introductions around the table since while we all knew who Katie was she wouldn't know all of us. Especially the seven of us on our side of the table. Even though our mom was the boss at QSAW and worked with Katie a lot, neither I or my sisters had ever met her ourselves.

After that Katie stood up and was officially sworn-in and got her enchanted coven tattoo on her wrist. That was as underwhelming as ever, then she sat back down again while her sister quietly congratulated her.

The next part of the meeting was probably very important but honestly it was also really boring. Mostly it was about politics, and how having a popular up-and-coming politician like Katie in the coven was part of some long-term strategy thing. Even though the tiny catgirl currently had nothing to do with our part of the country, lots of people already expected her to make the move from provincial to federal politics before long. And now that she was part of the coven she'd have divine backing, which definitely wouldn't hurt.

The political stuff went on for at least thirty or forty minutes but I was only half listening by that point. Apparently Katie and Stacey had already discussed at least some of this stuff with Sam and Nikki, since all four of them seemed to be on the same page with the stuff they were saying. And maybe the goddess was involved too. Kat and Zoe's names also came up at one point, which got my girlfriend excited so I started paying closer attention again.

It turned out the stuff being discussed in our little coven in Welland was a lot bigger than I expected. They were saying that in as little as ten or twelve years Katie could potentially be Prime Minister. That was kind of wild, realizing that the small catgirl sitting across the table from me and Tally could someday soon be running the whole country. And now she was a witch, she was one of us, and people around the table were talking about how this would give our coven and our Goddess some serious clout in only a few years time.

Not that there'd be any publicity about that, Katie wasn't going to come out and say she was part of a coven or knew magic or anything like that. It was all secret, behind the scenes stuff, which atually made it seem even more exciting.

"It really is amazing, you know?" my girlfriend whispered to me as she leaned closer. "It's only been three years since Cindy shared her spell with the world? And a tiny queer catgirl's already been elected to serve as a provincial member of parliament. Can you imagine what it'll be like when she's in Ottawa, running the whole country? I bet by the time that happens there'll be dozens of other people who've used Cindy's spell in office as well."

I whispered back, "You're not thinking of going into politics are you? I thought you wanted to study demi-human biology?"

Tally shook her head, "Definitely staying with biology. But by the time I'm done university I bet it'll be easier to get research grants and everything? I want to be able to help make things better and safer for demi-humans everywhere."

Before I could respond my girlfriend and I were both reminded that we weren't the only ones at the table with sensitive directional ears.

"Tally is right," Katie spoke up. "As more of the population take advantage of magic, we'll be grateful to have people like her who are familiar with demi-human biology and physiology."

The tiny catgirl was smiling as she looked across the table at the two of us and continued, "You young people might not remember this, but it wasn't so long ago getting an openly gay or trans person elected was considered a big deal. Even just having an openly queer person running for public office was newsworthy. Thanks to Cindy, that's quickly changing. Along with public opinion towards all things queer, which nowadays includes demi-humans like you two, and like my sister and I. Which definitely means there will be more research money heading in that direction, as products and policies adapt to recognize and accommodate people like us."

By that point Tally and I were both cringing as we tried to shrink out of view, while everyone else in the coven was staring at us. Fortunately nobody looked angry at us for interrupting things, but a few of them looked mildly amused.

Then Samantha suggested, "Why don't we all take a short break now, so we can stretch our legs and enjoy some refreshments. Or before we pause, does anyone have any questions?"

"I do," Jen spoke up, which got my mom and me and our other sisters worried. Jen was usually pretty good at coven meetings, but she was also kind of a smart-ass about stuff sometimes. Or most of the time.

Samantha nodded, "Go ahead Jenny, what's your question?"

My tall blonde sister smiled, "I was wondering if I could invite someone to join the coven? Maybe for the next meeting? She's queer, she transitioned about six months ago using Cindy's spell, and I can vouch for her."

That's all my girlfriend needed to hear, she quietly started to slump downwards in her chair like she was trying to sink out of sight and escape.

Meanwhile the two coven leaders glanced at each other, then Nikki asked "Who is she? And what makes you think she'd be a good fit?"

Jen was still smiling as she replied, "Her name is Lina Lambert, she's Tally's sister. She's currently studying social sciences, with a focus on how society is changing and evolving thanks to the introduction of magic and the way that's changing our definitions of what it means to be human?"

The coven leaders exchanged another look, then Samantha responded "Nikki and I will talk to you about this later Jenny. For now, let's all take a little break."

There was a murmur of agreement as almost everyone got up from the table. Jen headed over to talk to the coven leaders while mom moved to intercept her, and the rest of my sisters and their girlfriends drifted over towards the drinks and trays of food. Me and Tally stayed in our seats though, and so did Katie Saunders.

She gave us both a friendly smile and asked, "It's all very exciting isn't it? Like you said, it's only been three years but we've all come so far already."

"Yes ma'am," my girlfriend smiled back. "Me and Beth have only been foxgirls for about a year, but it's been a really great year! I can't wait to see what comes next."

"Same," I added as I leaned closer and slipped an arm around Tally's waist. She wrapped hers around my shoulders and pulled me into a side-hug, and like usual our tails ended up on each other's lap.

Three years earlier Cindy changed the world with her magic. A year ago Tally used that magic to change herself into a cute foxgirl, then a month later I did the same. Now we were part of a powerful coven, watched over by a real live Goddess, meeting and making friends with an important politician.

Maybe in another few years my girlfriend and I, and the coven we belonged to, would help change the world even more.

~ The End ~

PurpleCatGirl

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