Re: The Mirror/The Illusion
"You," she said, the word like punctuation, a sliver of an exclamation point. Those little changes were noticed, how they moved into her touch like a touch-starved cat. Not all cats were thus, they were haughty little creatures, beautiful hunters whether domesticated or wild. She had one, a tuxedo waiting or her at home, likely ready to demand his dinner as soon as she opened the door.
Then the shift began in earnest, eyes to the color of the darkening sky, hair to bloody dawn and she straightened fully, her hand still outstretched but palm up. Sparks dripped from her wand, but it wasn't needed for anything more than show. And they deserved that, didn't they? She swirled the tip around her palm. It was going to go wrong, it always went wrong, but she tried to think of something as she promised anyway. A chinchilla, hair perfectly soft, a little something sweet for them.
A shadow of it appeared first, then the fur. The fur was at least right, gray and thick, soft against her palm. The size was correct too, and Friday held her breath as the thing moved, then appeared to start to roll over, only its bones snapped in the joints, rotating with it until what she thought was its back was its stomach. It turned, and the head had no face, only a crosshaired slit. She sighed again, disappointed even as the slit widened. There were no eyes, only sockets, and it trilled like a kitten, mouth slit opening to revealing dozens of tiny silver teeth.
It hissed at her as she raised her wand again. "Beautiful and terrible." She should send it back, but she hesitated with the little creature still on her palm.