"...Like what?" Yoshi asked. She and Teige were both lying on the stone floor, under the big skylight, with the sunlight coming in overhead. Yoshi's black hair was undone and fanned out on the floor around her shoulders; Teige lay with his head resting on his horns, and his hands clasped on his stomach.

"There's this device I've heard warlocks and the like use--you know, them who can shapeshift, but they ent natural shapeshifters, not like you and I." Teige paused, and then said ruefully, "Aah, I don't know. I wouldn't know where to get such a thing, really."

Yoshi didn't say anything. Teige flipped himself onto his side and rested his head on one hand, peering at Yoshi. "Kiddo," he said, "do you really want to keep at this? I can tell it's wearing on you. Mebbe we just wait a few more months and pick back up? Give the estrogen more time to work on ya?"

For a while, Yoshi didn't respond. She sat up slowly. "But I will still lose my shape at night in the meantime," she said at last. "I may as well keep trying." She looked at Teige. "Tell me more about this device?"

"What exactly is it, though?" Liya asked. She sat on Yoshi's bed--which was still just a mattress on the floor--fiddling with the hem of her yellow pants. Yoshi was busy searching through a greenish set of drawers which stood against the wall, kneeling on the floor at the foot of them.

"He said it is usually a ring, or a necklace," she replied vaguely. "Any sort of metal jewelry."