When we finished dinner Soneya and I gathered up the dishes then took them back into the kitchen. I got started with the washing up, while the wolfgirl seemed to be lost in thought as she stood by the door.
After a half minute or so she reached over and picked up the kettle from the counter and slowly turned it around in her hands as she stared at it.
"Did you want to make some coffee or something?" I asked as I continued washing the dishes.
She shook her head, "I was thinking about something Gaia said earlier, about practicing our magic and being creative. And before that she mentioned something about alternative ways to move vehicles and produce electricity, stuff that doesn't burn fossil fuel."
I shrugged, "I know it's different in other parts of the world, but I'm pretty sure we get most of our electricity here from hydro and nuclear. And I know nuclear isn't perfect, but at least it's not burning coal or oil."
"Same with hydro," I added. "Building dams and blocking rivers comes with its own ecological problems, but it's still a hell of a lot cleaner than fossil fuel."
Soneya shook her head again, "That's not what I had in mind. She specifically told us to be creative and imaginative, right?"
I nodded as I started drying the dishes, "I guess so, yeah. So what did you have in mind?"
"Can you fill this with water?" she asked as she held up the kettle. Then she clarified, "Not from the tap. I mean with your magic?"
That made me frown, but after a moment I shrugged. "Yeah I guess so. I can't just conjure water up out of nowhere, at least I don't think so? But there's enough moisture in the air I can condense it out and into the kettle."
"Want me to do that now?" I asked.
She nodded, "Yeah please do."
It took me a few seconds of concentration. Once again it was like flexing muscles I still wasn't that familiar with. Soon enough I could feel the water vapour in the air around us, there was actually more of it in the kitchen than the rest of the apartment since I'd been using hot water to wash the dishes and some of that evaporated.
I slowly gathered it up and pulled it towards a point in the air between the wolfgirl and myself, and we both watched as it condensed into a wobbly ball of liquid. Then I guided it into the kettle.
"Only about half full but it's good enough," Soneya stated after she looked inside. Then she closed the lid and shifted her grip so she was holding the tin kettle by its base.
After a second or two I asked, "What's going on?"
She shook her head, "Just give me a second here."
"Sorry," I grimaced as I got back to work drying the dishes.
I was just finishing up with the last plate when my ears twitched as I picked up the faint sound. A moment later the kettle was whistling loud enough for humans to hear it. And a second or two after that it was loud enough for the humans next door to hear it.
My ears folded back as I winced, "Ok I get it! You used magic to boil the water, now please stop?"
The wolfgirl lifted the spout cover which stopped the racket, then set the kettle down on the stove to let it cool off. Finally she turned to face me and asked, "Do you know what that means?"
I shrugged, "I'm guessing it doesn't involve coffee or tea."
"You never heard the story about James Watt?" she asked. "It's BS, he didn't actually invent the steam engine. He got the credit for it though, and the story was he got the idea from watching a kettle boil."
Soneya gestured towards the kettle as she stated, "You and I just proved the same concept can be done with nothing but magic. Pure clean energy, from nothing but our minds. Imagine steam engines generating electricity or pulling trains, moving boats around, all that stuff?"
"Weren't steam engines kind of slow?" I asked. "And they were huge and clunky, and noisy too."
She explained, "Nineteenth-century steam engines were pretty inefficient by today's standards, but nuclear power plants are basically steam turbines and we know how to make them fairly efficient. And they can be small enough to fit in ships and submarines, which means they can probably fit in a train engine?"
I frowned as I looked from her to the kettle, then back to her again. "We're just two people though. How much power can we generate? If I had access to a river or lake I could probably move a few hundred litres of water relatively easily, but could you boil that much water? And how much power would that actually make?"
"No idea," she shrugged. "It shouldn't be that hard to figure out, though? There's formulas and calculations, we can figure out how long it takes me to boil a known quantity of water and extrapolate from there. And maybe this is why Gaia told us to practice? She probably wants us to get stronger, along with figuring out more ways to use our powers."
After a few seconds to think it over again I finally nodded, "Ok. It makes sense, and it was a good demonstration. And it would be kind of cool, right? Like I don't know about you but a clean magic-powered steampunk aesthetic sounds kind of neat."
"How'd you figure all this out anyways?" I added. "The kettle and the steam engines and turbines and all that stuff? I thought you said you just graduated computer science, not engineering."
Soneya blushed slightly as she replied, "Yeah I'm the computer geek, but my dad's an engineer. I told you we moved to Williamsport after he got a job at a place that made airplane engines, right? He got hired to help design the jet engines. So I got a lot of this stuff from him while I was growing up. I guess he kind of taught me about problem solving, looking at stuff from different angles. Or 'outside the box' thinking, he called it."
"That's really cool," I smiled at her. Then I grimaced, "I admit when you said he worked in a factory that made airplane engines, I assumed you meant he actually helped assemble them. Designing them is pretty amazing though, your dad must be really smart."
She looked a little more awkward and embarrassed as she shrugged, "I guess. Anyways I'm going to go look up some more information online about modern steam turbines, just to make sure I'm on the right track with this stuff."
"Ok Soneya," I smiled. "I'll be with you and Lia in a minute, I'm just going to put away these dishes and finish tidying up the kitchen."
It only took me a couple seconds to put the dishes away, then I was just giving the counter one last wipe-down when I was startled by a burst of impatient knocking at the apartment door.
"I'll get it," I called to the others as I moved around the corner from the little kitchen into the short front hall.
At the same time I couldn't help wondering who it would be this time, considering we'd already had one unexpected visitor this evening. It crossed my mind that perhaps Gaia was already back with the contracts that Soneya asked for, but something told me even she didn't work that fast.
The frantic knocking continued until I opened the apartment door, then a smallish figure darted past me before ducking into the kitchen. For a moment I thought it was Gaia but there was no overly-friendly greeting, and whoever it was they were a lot shorter than the planet's human avatar. They weren't dressed like Gaia either, I got a glimpse of loose baggy clothes and a baseball cap pulled down low.
"Hey!" I frowned as I closed the door then stalked into the kitchen after the uninvited guest. "Who are you and what are you -"
I froze in mid-sentence as I finally got a good look at them. To my shock it was none other than my friend Derek. Except he'd lost a significant amount of height. In fact he'd shrank even more than I did when I changed. There were other noticeable changes too, like while his face was still recognizable all his features had softened up a lot. And there was no trace of the five o'clock shadow he had when he visited earlier, his skin actually looked as smooth and soft as mine.
From what I could see of his hair sticking out under the hat it had grown at least fifteen or twenty centimetres in the last couple hours, and the colour had lightened up from its original dark brown to a sort of reddish greyish beige. He was in the same clothes as before, but they were now hanging off his much smaller body. The ball cap was a new addition, he hadn't been wearing that earlier but I recognized it as his.
"She cursed me!" my friend stated, in a voice that sounded younger and higher-pitched than before. "Tori what am I going to do?! Is this what happened to you? Did she curse you too?"
I sighed, "Gaia didn't curse you Derek, it's because of the water. You were drinking the water in our fridge, right? You helped yourself to a couple glasses from one of the jugs in there."
Derek glared and stamped one of his feet, "What?! Man that's harsh! She cursed me just because I took some of your spring water? I know that stuff's expensive and hard to find nowadays, but I was gonna buy you all dinner!"
"I said she didn't curse you," I stated again. "And that wasn't spring water! That's what I'm trying to tell you, ok? That's water we brought back from the Gaspésie. That's what we were drinking when we were camping, and I'm pretty sure that's what changed us."
"What?!" he demanded as he glared up at me. He stamped his foot again, "Why the hell were you keeping it in your fridge?! Why even bring it back here?!"
The foot-stomping was really distracting, especially because I couldn't remember him ever doing that sort of thing before. It was almost as distracting as the fact that he'd become even shorter than me. And the way his face and voice had changed, it almost made me think he was a little kid again, except something told me that's not what was going on.
I sighed again, "Just try and calm down, ok?"
"It's kind of hard to calm down when I've got this going on!" he stated as he pulled off his cap and glared up at me.
As soon as the hat came off two tall furry rabbit ears popped up into view, and his tiny stature suddenly made more sense.
For the next couple seconds I stared quietly at him. Then I twitched my fuzzy red fox ears and said, "Welcome to the club."
Then I explained, "Look, that water's in our fridge because I didn't know what else to do with it. I was worried that if I poured it down the drain it'd make its way into the whole water supply around here. I didn't think anyone would go helping themself to it, ok?"
Derek continued glaring up at me for another couple seconds, before he finally sighed. His shoulders slumped as all the anger and tension seemed to finally drain from his small body. Then he reached up and rubbed his forehead, before running his hand back through his hair until reaching his new bunny ears.
"What am I going to do Tori?" he asked as he scratched at the base of his right ear. "I don't know how to deal with this. You've already been through it, right? What am I supposed to do?"
I frowned as I looked down at him, and for the next few moments I sort of studied his features. I was looking at his face, and what I could see of his body shape under the oversized clothes. And what I saw reminded me of Soneya back when we first met.
In Derek's case I was automatically using he-him pronouns because that's what I knew for him, but if I'd only just met him for the first time I'd be using they-them. My friend was definitely a bunny-kin but he looked androgynous, the way Alpine did when she was only halfway through her changes.
After another sigh I decided I knew my friend well enough to just give him the most direct answer. I kept my voice down as I told him, "First off I don't think this is over yet. I didn't just grow fox ears and a tail, remember? I also fully transitioned. I'm not saying for sure you're going to turn into a girl? But um, if that's something you wanted then it's probably going to happen. So you might want to think about a new name for yourself, if you haven't already got something in mind."
His eyes widened and his tall fuzzy ears drooped slightly, but he didn't say a word.
"If you don't want that then maybe it won't happen?" I quickly added. "I'm no expert on this stuff alright? I'm just going off my own experiences. Anyways that's the first thing? If you want to be a girl you can just be a girl. If you want to be a boy then you can be a boy. And if you want to be somewhere in between, all or none of the above, you can do that too. Gender's a multi-dimensional spectrum and you can be whatever you want. That goes for anybody by the way, but I'm pretty sure it's even easier with magic enchanted water."
I continued in the same quiet voice, "Second thing, you're probably going to get some kind of magic by the time you've finished changing. Again I don't have a lot of information on this, but it seems to follow elemental archetypes? My magic involves controlling water."
I gestured towards the kettle since I knew it was half full, and its contents flowed upwards until it formed a wobbly liquid sphere in the air. My friend watched with his eyes wide and his jaw hanging open as I guided the water over to the sink, then let it drop in there with a splash.
"One last thing," I told him. "If you want it, I can offer you another glass or two of the Gaspésie water. I'm pretty sure the more of it you're exposed to, the faster your transformation will finish. And the sooner you'll get access to some magic."
He was still staring at me with his big dark eyes all wide and his long fuzzy ears hanging down on either side of his face. His long hair was kind of messy from the ball cap, and his clothes all hanging loose off his little body. He honestly looked adorable, but I didn't want to say anything incase it upset him.
After a few more seconds his eyes flicked from me to the kettle then the sink, before settling on the fridge for another second or two. Then he finally looked up at me again and gulped, "May I have another glass of water please Tori?"
"Of course," I nodded as I moved to get the jug out of the fridge.
I didn't bother asking what sort of decisions he'd made or what he was hoping for. I had a feeling I'd see the results for myself soon enough.
Ah hah! As egg-spected!
A bunny in a house of foxes and a wolf, though? Someone's gonna get...eaten.