Chapter Text
She had been spending all day testing new sigils and signs, seeing if something would possibly work with her magic. This new one she had came up with seemed promising. It derived from the sign for “diminish”, and she hoped it would work. She set a potted plant on a stool in the back of her working area, and began to work up her magic. She traced the symbol into the loose sand on the floor with a claw, and tried to focus. Wind closed her eyes and they began to glow. When they opened, a spiral of magic had burst from her hand. She watched it squirm towards the plant, but it split and spiraled around the flowers and through the back wall.
Wind sighed, and wrote down her disappointed findings in her journal. After a long day of disappointments, she opted to go over to her friends house, since they were on her mind for a while. She checked the time, and they should be home right now. ‘They never really mind when I drop in’ she thought to herself. She climbed upstairs through her bedroom, and got ready to go. She made sure the outside doors were locked, then took off from the balcony.
The evening sunlight glistened orange on her wings, and she scoured the ground beneath her for the right rooftop. Wind, after a bit of searching, found it. She soared over to the house, and flapped herself down into the porch. She knocked on their front door, and awaited a response. No response. She knocked again. Nothing. Maybe they were watching a movie? With the volume loud?
Wind wandered over to the side yard, and peeked through the window that led into their living room. The television was on, as she suspected, but no ears poked over the back of the couch. Had they abandoned the show? ‘They never just leave the TV on unattended though,’ she thought to herself.
Wind started to get worried, as things were just happen to be getting more mad more unusual as she kept looking for clues. All of their shoes were still by the front door, and there was loose clothing in the dining room and strewn next to the couch. She just wanted to get into the house and investigate. Wind remembered that she knew the passcode to get in through their balcony, so she leaped up with a flap of her wings and trailed her tail over the guardrail. She punched in the code, and slid open the sliding glass door.
She pushed through the curtain, into the upstairs bedroom. This was Lee’s room, of course. There were buttons strapped to a table, in a colorful configuration that she recognized. Nobody was in the room. She closed the door behind her, and made her way downstairs. The TV show was playing somewhat loudly, to her expectations. There still was nobody on the couch. Wind saw another pile of clothes on the couch. All the clothes she saw were her friend’s. The ones in the dining room appeared to be Rust’s. She could tell those ones by smell.
Thinking of smell, the house had the scent of something burning. She hurriedly traced the smell into the kitchen. Thank goodness, it was only the stove. Wait. The stove had been left on? There were burnt strips of bacon plastered to the bottom of the pan. What a sad sight. Wind turned off the burner and moved the pan to the metal sink. ‘They would never waste bacon!’ She thought, then exclaimed, “What the fuck is going on here?”
She felt something rub against her heel. Wind jumped forward a bit, surprised. She turned her upper body and head around, and saw something she didn’t believe. There was a little skeleton tiptoeing behind her. Wind gasped, and one of her hands went to cover her mouth. “Oh my stars!” Wind crouched, then dropped to her knees, taken aback on what was going on. “Rust?” She picked up her tiny friend by the shoulders, and took a closer look. Perhaps her new spell did something after all!
“Woa-h careful! I'm not sure how fragile my bones are when I'm this small.” The frail skeleton tucked his tail under his legs. He was not very big at all. His standing height on the floor only got the tips of his ears up to Winds calf.
She tucked him into her arm, lifting up his pelvis, and got a closer look at his tiny body. His soul still glowed through his ribs, yet, it seemed brighter. And bigger, in comparison to the rib cage. It looks as though his soul didn’t appear to get that much smaller than when he was normal-sized. “You’re so cute! Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. Do you think you could summon some flesh to cover up these bones? Your soul is extra bright in this tiny body, maybe you could make a whole body out of magic!”
“You think? I don’t know how I got this way.. but I can try.” He focused his magic and started with a torso. The waves grew from his soul and enveloped his ribs and spine, then thickened around into a little stomach. “Hhh.. there. I have an upper torso this time. You want me to try for some limbs too?”
“Yes please! I don’t want to accidentally break anything.”
“Oh- Okay. Lemme see.” He tried to focus his magic again, and his soul glew some more. A new wave of physical magic wrapped out of his shoulders, and around his pelvis. Wind got excited to see Rust form more of a body than usual. The magic wrapped around his humerus and femur, snaking and filling out the looks of limbs. Yet, it stopped at the joints. It filled the loose gaps, and made a pair of biceps and thighs, that stopped at the elbows and knees, respectively. “Hahh.. that feels neat on my arms..”
“That looks really good! That should be enough for now, you look tired, or something else. How do you feel?”
“Small. I was just cooking some dinner for the crew and then we all started to.. uhm.. shrink.” He rubbed his hands along the new flesh. “I like having enough magic to do this though, haha!”
“Speaking of dinner, it looks like it started to burn. I took it off the burner though, must be hard to reach the stove when you’re that little.” Wind stood up, carrying Rust up, and she placed him on the dining room table.
“Yeah.. I feel really bad though.” Rust whimpered out. “Was it always this cold in the house?”
“Awe, don’t feel bad. Here. Let me get a blanket for the table so you won’t be as cold.” Wind turned off to grab a small blanket from the closet. She wanted to find her favorite soft one for Rust.
‘Damn. Was Wind always this attractive? I know I have a thing for size difference but this is ridiculous.’ Rust thought to himself. He sat down on the hardwood table, and took in more of Winds sheer height. He unconsciously formed something he could toy with, as his magic started to become aroused.