Chapter Text
Mirabelle stood in front of the bathroom sink and stared down at her hand, struggling to figure out exactly what it was she was feeling.
At the end of her right index finger her nail had taken on a strange shape, pointed and narrow with a sharp tip just barely coming to the end of the finger. A darker shade than the rest of her nails she couldn’t tear her eyes off of it even as the lingering tingles of Body Craft ran their course.
Her nail– well…o-okay, it wasn’t really a nail was it? It was… a claw.
Not much of one at the moment, it didn’t poke out far enough to scratch anything. But if she had done this properly…
She tried to flex a muscle she hadn’t even had before and almost went cross-eyed trying to figure out how that worked. Had she even done it right? Could she undo this? What if she was stuck with–
She found the right muscle and flexed it, the claw slid forward and curled viciously from the tip of her finger, almost a full inch long and wickedly sharp. She stared at it in amazement before reversing the motion and retracting it back. The motion was smooth and easy, she repeated it over and over again and smiled. Just like a cat! She had modeled the structure off of one after all.
Mew mew kitty claw! She giggled to herself.
Watching the claw move back and forth Mirabelle swallowed, feeling an odd twitchy sensation in her spine. She turned her hand to watch the light catch on the sharp tip then after a moment's pause scrambled to repeat her work on the other fingers of that hand.
This all had started innocently enough– well, it was still innocent, or she thought it was. She… didn’t really know what it was, honestly.
She knew how it had started at least.
It had started with wanting to learn more about Body Craft.
With the King defeated it felt like the whole future had opened up for them, so many possibilities! So much time! They could do anything!
Which was terrifying of course. Mirabelle barely felt like she could do something most days, much less anything!
But traveling with her new family was easy and fun, so she thought she could start with other things that she had always found easy and fun, like learning new types of Craft! She was, apparently, very good at that. Stopping the King had even prompted some of the other housemaidens to start using the word ‘prodigy’ again, which kind of made her want to curl up into a ball and die.
Siffrin had learned Rock and Paper Craft during the loops, which was amazing! So she definitely wanted to learn Rock craft herself now so she could join the ‘uses all three types’ club that he had joined Odile in–then they could have secret meetings and poke fun at Isabeau and it would be really great–but that involved a lot of breaking things, so best to wait until they weren’t staying in an inn.
There were other options like Crafting items with different properties (hard to do on the road), Healing Craft (which honestly she was kind of sick of for the moment, too many memories), and Time Craft (no), but she had kept coming back in her head to Body Craft. It was just so interesting! It helped people out so much and there had been a lot of amazing advancements in it lately so there was plenty to study. She even had been able to take an excellent book on it from the House when they left. The only problem was…
She didn’t want to change anything? She liked being Mirabelle, and while that made her feel kind of like a failure sometimes it also made it feel weird to practice Body Craft. She could make herself taller, or stronger, or change how she looked, but she didn’t want any of those? She liked her body, it was comfortable and cute and all of her family liked her just as she was.
Was it weird? To study Body Craft without wanting to actually Craft yourself? Isabeau, when he saw her fretting over the Craft book, had waved her worries away. ‘Just try some simple stuff.’ he had said, ‘Change a lock of hair, or something else easy to change back.’
He had even said that he thought learning Body Craft without necessarily wanting to Change anything was a great idea! Most people who learned it just mastered enough to make the changes they wanted, then moved on with their lives. So she had a real chance to understand it on a deeper level. Then if she wanted she could use that to help other people who wanted to Change, which she thought sounded amazing! She had started practicing that same day.
And it had all been really fun and normal, she had enjoyed reading about the theory and her first practice attempts had been thrilling. She had taken classes on it before, sure, but it had been a while and it was a lot more fun when she wasn’t in a classroom having to follow a lesson plan. It had all been going great!
It was just… she had gotten bored with changing locks of hair pretty fast, and there was this idea that just wouldn’t leave her…
Changing the other fingers was much faster than the first one had been. She found the process satisfying, the flesh and bone warping and molding like clay as her Craft ran over them. Moving quickly but also being careful to pay attention to blood and nerves so all the cells were still getting nutrients.
Working with meat was challenging and there were limits to how far you could push it–there was a reason Siffrin still had the eyepatch after all–but at the same time the body had a way of covering for minor mistakes and being able to feel the process was incredible! As was the moment she finished and flexed her new set of claws, watching as all of them moved in perfect sync.
She moved her hand up and ran the claws lightly across her cheek, shivering at the feeling. So sharp! She combed them through her hair and tapped their tips on the back of her neck. She had done it, this was real, she had claws, she… Wow this was a lot. Lots of feelings.
She spent far too long waving her hand through the air, clawing at imagined enemies and making *swoosh* sounds with her mouth.
*knock* *knock*
Mirabelle almost jumped out of her skin as someone rapped on the door to the bathroom. “Belle!” She heard Bonnie’s voice from the other side. “It’s late! You’ve been in there forever! Do I need to go get a doctor? Cause I don’t know how to do that but I can step outside and scream really loudly until someone comes if you want!”
“No! Don’t do that!” She yelped, scrambling over to the door and hiding her hand behind her as she opened it. Bonnie stood beyond it in their pajamas already looking groggy and ready to pass out. “I will be right out! Just wait for me in bed, okay?”
The kid made a sound of disgruntled agreement and shuffled back to their bed. Closing the door Mirabelle looked down at their hand, it would take a while to put it back to normal but… maybe she didn’t have to? If she kept them retracted it should be fine, probably, she could change it back in the morning.
The idea of sleeping with her hand like this suddenly made it truly hit home, that this was part of her body, but… she didn’t hate that? So she carefully set her notes away, changed into her own sleeping clothes, and slipped into bed.
Lying there with Bonnie lightly snoring as she hugged them against her, she was careful not to touch them with the claws themselves. It worked, it felt natural, these claws still worked for hugging her loved ones. In fact, she mused as she drifted off, couldn’t they be a bit more monstrous?
In the morning when she woke up to the sound of Bonnie running out of the room to get breakfast started–they had been insisting that every inn they stopped at let them cook–she stretched her arms out, savoring a strange rightness she felt in her body.
Then she noticed that during the stretch her claws had ripped long tears in the sheets and she panicked. Running to the bathroom to quickly return her hands to normal and stashing a number of coins under the pillow in the hopes that would pay for the sheet because she was not explaining to the innkeeper what had happened.
It would be another week before she tried something like that again. But she couldn’t stay away for long.
Mirabelle had never figured out how to put this but… she was happy that the King had used Body Craft like he had.
She might be the only one who felt like that? His massive, tyrannical form had given him incredible power, being able to smash through walls with his bare hands, which was bad. She would always remember the terrifying sight of him climbing up the House when he had attacked, hands so large and powerful they cracked the stone with every movement.
She had overheard discussions before and after his defeat that labeled him as an example of Body Craft run amok, of going beyond the limits of what anyone should do. Mirabelle disagreed! If that had been how he wanted to be then it was a good thing he had Changed to that, even if what he had done afterwards was evil that couldn’t change that.
She hated the idea that anyone should stop themselves from being who they wanted to be because they would be deemed a threat. There was a big difference between being dangerous and actually hurting people.
And given that, well, Mirabelle had defeated the King and was now, probably, pretty dangerous herself… It was a difference she found herself caring a lot about these days.
But her disagreement ran deeper, even as she had faced him at the top of the House she had been glad that he had Changed like that. She tried to imagine facing off against him without the Body Craft, hearing him say all those awful things and try to destroy them but he just looked like some guy!?! That would be worse, much worse, very very wrong.
She thought that, maybe, he had understood that? That he had known he was going to be the villain, or at least that people would try to stop him, and he had Crafted himself into a monster to suit that role. Maybe he had known that what he was trying to do wasn’t something a person could do while being human.
Standing across from him with all of Vaugarde and Siffrin shielded behind her, forced against all her wishes into the role of the Hero against the Monster, it had been terrifying but it had also felt right. Like realizing you were in a horror story but appreciating that at least it was a well written one.
The image of his colossal form, sparking with the sheer power of Craft infused into it, had stayed with her for weeks now. Reappearing in nightmares and dreams that weren’t quite nightmares.
She wondered how he had made the Change, had he just holed up in a basement somewhere and slowly worked in the dark to become something so terrifying? What would it be like, to watch your own body slowly become something out of a nightmare?
…How would it feel?
Mirabelle sat down at the table for breakfast profoundly aware of her mouth in a deeply uncomfortable way. Was she smiling enough? No, she must look worried, smile more! No! Not that much! They will see! Smile a normal amount, once you remember what that amount is, and keep your lips closed!
Thankfully her family seemed distracted. Bonnie was passing out the long sandwiches and bowls of tomato soup they had made, Odile was half asleep in her morning coffee, and Isabeau and Siffrin… were engaged in a complex game of making kissy faces at each other every time Bonnie looked away from them. Which was amazing and made it reality hard not to grin or laugh!
But if she did… it would be very hard to explain the fangs.
This was a bad idea. It wasn’t like her family would think less of her if they noticed, she knew that, but it would freak them out and then she would have to explain and she didn’t know how to explain this and–
She jumped as Bonnie set her food down in front of her. “Oh! Thanks! It looks lovely!” She blurted, only a little muffled by trying to say it without opening her lips, luckily Bonnie had caught sight of what Isabeau and Siffrin were doing and was now busy yelling at them for being gross in front of their soup, so she was left to stare down at the thick roast beef sandwich. This was a bad bad idea but… she had to try this.
Slowly she picked it up and–ensuring all the others were distracted–opened her jaw wider than she ever had before and took a bite.
At first she had just made her teeth a bit sharper and pointier but that had not felt like enough, so she had spent an hour that morning Crafting the culmination of every amazing spine-chilling description of dripping, monstrous fangs she had ever read. She had needed to alter her jaw to be able to open wide enough and change the structure of her mouth and gums to allow the longer–over two inches–fangs to fit and slide past each other but in the end she had gotten shivers just looking at herself. She needed to know how it felt to eat with teeth like this.
Now those fangs, Crafted razor sharp, sliced through the sandwich effortlessly. She jerked and almost dropped the sandwich at the sharp crunch of the fresh lettuce, but otherwise was enthralled by the feeling of the food tearing around unfamiliar teeth.
A hundred remembered scenes of monsters ripping through flesh and cracking bones, of innocent people hanging just inches out of a creature's jaws, all sprung to new life in her mind. So many of the best parts of her horror books suddenly felt just a bit more real to her. Mayonnaise and mustard sliding between her teeth like blood, and– and–
The sandwich was really good!! She groaned in satisfaction and thanked the Change god yet again for Bonnie. Years of perfectly alright food at the House of Change spiced up by trying various amateur attempts at cooking in her culinary classes meant she still hadn’t gotten used to food with so much taste and variety! She hoped that would never change, this was one thing she would happily accept remaining exactly the same.
Taking care not to give anyone else a glimpse that might make them think she had been replaced by a monster or something, she continued happily munching away at the sandwich. Awkwardly spooning soup into her mouth between bites and shivering as it ran around teeth only suited for eating bloody meat.
There was something about it, about the simple mundane activity combined with the edge of horror, that thrilled her to the bone. Merged with the lingering sense of accomplishment from how well she had done the Body Craft and it was…it was–
“Belle? You okay?”
She jumped as Bonnie suddenly appeared at her side looking concerned. As she did so she felt the unsettling sensation of her fangs cleanly biting through the metal soup spoon, the end falling off onto her tongue. Oh. Oh no.
As she stared wide-eyed at them Bonnie continued, “Cause you keep shaking and are being really quiet which is bad, but you also are eating a lot which is good, so which is it?”
Lie. Lie! Lie!!! Ignore everything you have ever told Siffrin about being honest and lie like a rug! Swallowing the soup–and not the end of the spoon–and awkwardly keeping the handle sticking into her mouth in what she hoped was not too unnatural a way, she shrugged and mumbled out, “Mkay, maybe sick?”
“Sick?” Bonnie repeated, squinting at her. They then pointed at her bowl, “More soup!”
Thinking quickly she used her tongue to shove the end of the spoon to the side of her mouth, quickly pulled out the handle and hid it in her sleeve, and then grabbed the soup bowl. Bringing it up to her mouth she tilted her head back and slurped the rest down, much to Bonnie’s obvious delight.
“Yeah!!!” They cried, throwing their hands up in excitement. “Soup!!! You will be better in no time!”
Smiling at them–not too wide–and noticing that the others were definitely looking at her weird, Mirabelle quickly mumbled something about needing to lie down and slipped out of the room, promising to have more soup later. She practically jogged up to her room and to the bathroom mirror, finally opening her mouth and spitting out the end of the spoon.
With trembling fingers she picked it up and held it up to the handle. Change, the cut was so clean! She raised a finger to her mouth and pressed it against the side of her fangs. She– she–
She had to change back, this was actually kind of uncomfortable? She was pretty sure the fangs had nicked her gums a few times and her jaw kind of ached. It also made soup really hard to eat.
It took her only about ten minutes this time, luckily the Craft techniques for reverting a change to a previous state were really well researched so she didn’t need to remember how her teeth had looked. Once she was done she ran her tongue across them and sighed in relief at not needing to worry about them cutting her. This really did feel better.
She had heard of people who Changed their bodies into strange shapes. Making themselves incredibly tall, making their eyes all sorts of wonderful shades and shapes, painting designs in the shades of their skin. She was pretty sure there was a village in Poteria where people often gave themselves extra arms! She really hoped they could visit on their travels.
And of course there were so many stories where someone Changed themselves into an animal. She didn’t know if anyone had ever done that? They probably had? She guessed that if they did, there wouldn’t really be anyone who knew about it, right? Also moving your body away from typical human limits was supposed to be really hard, though so far her experiments had seemed pretty simple.
But they had done those things because that was how they wanted to be, what felt right for them. She…didn’t? Not exactly? She liked how she was, thank you very much! She didn’t want to live with fangs or claws. It just… something about this made her feel free. Like it broke her out of just being Mirabelle and made her feel like she could be something completely different if she wanted to, even if she didn’t.
It made being Mirabelle not feel like she was stuck but instead like it was a choice. All without needing to actually Change to be someone else, she could just be something else which felt easier somehow.
Either way, she should probably go make sure Bonnie wasn’t worried, and then have some more soup. Body Crafting was hungry work!