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Mirror, Mirror...

Just a Little Change

Updated February 26th, 2012

My eyes opened. I felt very refreshed. No fuzzy head. No blurry eyes. I felt more awake than I had in a long time. Especially the past few days. I took a quick mental inventory. I was in my bed, though I could have sworn I fell asleep on top of it. It was light enough here. No furred body was pressed against mine though.

I sat up, stretching a little and looking around. The mirror sat behind my dresser, but it didn't look as wavy as it had when I first got it. There was no sign of the cat anywhere. My brow creased. Was it all a dream? Maybe it was just a normal day now.

Then I noticed the odd lighting. It was still everything lit from everywhere all at once. That didn't happen normally, so perhaps it wasn't a dream.

"It wasn't," the cat that was suddenly beside me said. "I've been trying to make some food for you. But I realized I don't know what you like."

"Oh? But you can read my mind," I pointed out accusingly.

"Your forethoughts and sensations, yes. That doesn't mean I can see your memories or background stuff. None of that unless you actively think about them." The feline rubbed against my arm. "So what do you like?"

I considered. "Well, I normally just eat cereal or a hot pocket and make microwave food most days, or eat at McDonald's."

"Cereal is boring. McDonald's is gonna be a weird place in a few decades too, so don't get used to it," she warned. She noted my confusion. "Remember, I've been a famulus for hundreds of thousands of years. Wizards don't live linearly. You'll get used to that in the future also. Or in the past, relatively speaking, maybe."

"Wait... So you've been in the future? And in the past?" I had to think about that as the kitty nodded. "If I'll probably go to the future and past, does that mean we may have met in my future and your past?" I blinked. "I mean... Your past, not the world's past... like, maybe the world's future... or..."

The cat laughed. "You're making sense, even though you don't think you are. Yes, you mean my past. Think of it like a thread. I go one way along the thread, so that's my timeline. You have your own thread and you go along it too. So far your thread has been following along at the same rate as the rest of most of the world also. You'll be able to skip part of the world's thread, and go forward and backwards. I've done it too, because of my prior masters and mirror."

I nodded. I guess I could wrap my mind around that. "So... do you think you've met my future... thread?... in your past?" I was curious about what I was like in my future. I also had an odd philosophical thought about it.

"Nope. Never could have." The cat moved to sit on my lap. "Your future thread doesn't exist yet, so I couldn't have met it."

I blinked. That answered the philosophical aspect of it all maybe, if it made sense. "So... Wait..." Maybe it didn't and I was just confused.

"If you think it's confusing now, wait until you start to experience it," the black feline warned me. "Time threads for things are forever branching and splitting. Infinitely every instant." It laid its ears back. "I guess I should give you the lowdown now, since you asked about it."

My lap was left empty as ... I guess she...? sat in front of me. "Okay... So your future thread doesn't exist yet, so even if you will see me or even your past you in your future, we don't know it yet until your future you does it. But that's weird too... You can't really see your past self that you were. The moment you appear to your past,or do something that would substantially change what path the future is going down, it's no longer YOUR past but one of your possible pasts. So even then you wouldn't ever remember having seen yourself in your own personal past because you didn't. An alternate possibility of you saw you, but you didn't."

I opened my mouth to ask a question before I realized that I wasn't sure what I was going to ask. I felt a little more than confused.

She gave my finger a lick. "It really is confusing, honestly. Some wizards have tried to seek true immortality by trying to do things with their alternate threads. It always gets ugly. After all, there's always going to be alternate threads where you don't exist anymore and ones where you're a complete jerk, and all sorts of things." Her head tilted. "It's actually kind of amazing if you think about it. With infinite possible threads out there, that we are on the ones we are on. Some people wonder if, with infinite splits at infinite infinitesimally separated points in time, how we actually exist. Are there an infinitely growing infinite copy of us? Does the universe or multiverse just keep expanding with infinite-cubed new things every split?"

I thought about it, and shook my head. "So, if i went back in time and killed my own grandfather, I wouldn't suddenly create a paradox and destroy the galaxy?"

"Silly. That would be mean to him. But no, you wouldn't. You'd be on a thread that didn't have your past self in it at that time though."

My lip got a twitch in it. "So... if I go back to the future from there, how do I even get to the right one where I do exist?"

"Thankfully you have a natural affinity for the one you are currently following. But it's a good idea to overlap by a fraction of a microsecond so you get back on the right line. Even that small change is liable to change the ongoing main thread you have, but at least it's a generally familiar world and the past of it is already set."

My mind somehow was doing a mental acrobatics set that would make circus performers jealous. But she licked my hand. "You probably won't have to worry about it until many, many years from now. Anyway, in theory, as a wizard, your eventual goal is to be aware and present in whole in all of the infinite possibilities at all times in all cases completely. That makes my head hurt though just thinking about it though."

I had to agree with her about the head hurting part.

"Okay, so, what do you want to eat?"

I really couldn't come up with anything to say, so she finally had me just think of memories of tasty things and she decided on her own. It wasn't long after that before her humanoid form came in carrying a tray to deposit with me, sausage, pancakes, eggs, and syrup all on top.

I felt a bit self-conscious as I ate with her watching me. "Do you eat anything?"

"I don't normally, no," she said, then smiled. "I can, of course." She picked up a sausage and took a bite, then offered the rest to me. I smiled and let her feed it to me.

"I could swear I've asked this way too many times, but, what now?"

"Well, now I think we need to start figuring things out, get you trained enough to take care of yourself, and see from there. Honestly, this is new for me also." She pointed at the mirror. "I'm no longer bound to that at all. It's empty now. I'm free in your world." She gazed at me with a smile. "I'm linked to you though. So I'm a famulus for you."

Her gaze dropped a little. "Obviously the old bindings don't mean anything. You could die without destroying me." She rushed to reassure me. "Not the normal way, but..." Her voice was meek. "I don't want anything to happen to you." She shook her head. "Anyway, I don't know if normal stuff like you willingly unlinking from me and passing me to a new owner is possible, for example. But I can feel your world by my own will. I can go anywhere, even when you're not there and not willing it. I'm more free and more enabled than I've ever been in your world."

I smiled a little. "Who knows... maybe in a few months you'll want to go off on your own and leave me."

"Don't say that!" she cried, grabbing my hand. I was taken aback at her vehemence.

"I... wow..." Apparently I was not the only one surprised by it. "I've never felt this way about anything before. Just the thought of losing you frightens me." Her eyes widened. "I mean, most of my prior masters I didn't want them to die for my own sake, and some were good to me, but I could take them or leave them and I don't feel any remorse for having gone on to a new one afterward. I shouldn't, since I'm just a mirror famulus. What is this? Why do I feel this way about you?"

I could sense her confusion. I could feel her fear too. This was a different kind of fear than I was familiar with. I focused, and I could sense her more. I realized just how alien she was to my mind, despite all this time. It was odd, but I dug and searched, just so I could try to help her.

I looked at her finally, confused, but with a feeling. "Do you love?" I asked.

"Love? Like the emotion your people have? No, it doesn't exist in my world." She pondered how to explain. "We don't work that way. Self-preservation and the physical and mental emotions that go along with that, like fear. Desires and the physical and mental parts of that, like pleasure when you stroke my back and when something good happens. We also end up emulating your emotions to a degree, but it's always playacting and reaction. That's why we end up getting stolen from our world to become famuli so often. Good and bad make sense to us, and we can learn from positive and negative experiences. Plus we emulate well enough that wizards are comfortable."

I swallowed. "I think you love me."

She looked up at me and frowned a little. "How can I if we don't even have such a thing?"

"I don't know," I admitted, helpless. "It's the only thing I can think of though."

She was pensive for a moment, then patted my hand. "Think as much as you can about love," she said softly.

"What?"

"Think about it. I want to see why you think it. I want to know."

I swallowed hard and thought. I could feel her presence in my mind, watching, learning. I thought of things I loved platonically. I thought of what I knew about the idea. I thought of people I loved, and tried to get to the root ideas of the emotion. Her presence was strong and feeding back to me a little.

Then I remembered the feeling I had when I was dead and looking at myself. I remember how I felt about her, and the pain I had experienced. I remembered what went through my mind, and even now it brought a tear to my eye. I tried to turn my mind to happier things related to love and I realized that just sharing this, being here, was so good. I smiled a little, realizing I was staring at my knee, and looked up.

The moment my eyes met hers I was pounced. She tackled me, knocking me back against the wall and holding me close. I wrapped my arms around her as she sniffled, trying to snuggle closer. Then she looked up at me again and she was smiling despite her recent tears.

"I think you're right," she said with a purr. Then she shuddered. "It's... it's kind of scary... but I wouldn't have it be any other way. It's scary because it's new, but it's a thrill scary." She put her hands on my shoulders and backed off to arm's length. "The thought of losing you is more scary though. Not like a thrill scary, but mind-numbingly terrifying."

She hugged me again. "What's happened to us?" she whimpered. I was worried for a moment but then I felt her meaning. She did feel the thrill of it, she just couldn't help but whimper as she was in such a new situation.

It dawned on me. Despite her hundreds of thousands of years of experience, she was in a completely alien situation as much as I was now.

She nodded. "I haven't felt this uncertain since I was first torn from my home to be bound to the mirror. But this time it's different. Then it was nothing but scary. I was bound, I had no idea what was going on, and nothing was good about it at all." She rubbed her cheek against my chest lightly. "This... this feels good. You feel good."

"You feel good too," I murmured. "Not just physically. When I pay attention, I can feel you in my mind. I can feel yours. It's not at all like mine. It feels good though." I slid my hand down her back and to her rump but stopped when I hit something hard. My lips pursed and I frowned a little. "Umm..."

"What?" she asked, sensing my concern.

"You're sitting on the plate of breakfast."

"Eek!" She vanished, leaving me suddenly chilled before she reappeared on the bed again. I felt the bed move under her weight and I realized that before I had never done so. The few remaining pancakes were quite squished. "Oh, that's not good," she pouted.

The smaller, feral version of her padded over to sniff at the plate before looking up at her larger self with mild disdain. "You squished his breakfast."

"It's okay, I'm full anyway," I quickly assured them. Then I stopped and looked back and forth between them. "Wait... You're both you... but you're addressing yourself?"

The smaller cat looked scolded and vanished. Her humanoid form looked embarrassed. "Sorry. Force of habit. I'm so used to self-duplication that my mind works almost as a separate entity with its own mind in each part of me. It's one of the reasons that daemons from my world are so sought after as famuli. We are self-aware but also completely independent of ourselves. Sometimes mildly differing opinions occur."

I made a face, then burst out laughing. "I can't really say much about it, given the recent events."

She took the tray and hurried to the kitchen, but I could sense her mild embarrassment. Then she just reappeared as a small cat on the bed again. "Okay, you've had enough rest for now. You need to start learning and I'm the one who's supposed to teach you. So let's get you taught."

I chuckled. The voice was male and I could still feel his embarrassment. "You're the boss, then."

Another cat appeared for just long enough to push the bedroom door closed while the first cat sat and stared at me thoughtfully. "Okay. You're a sorcerer. You ARE magic. This makes things easier and yet more dangerous at the same time. Most types of wizards and other magic-wielders need to learn how to wrangle magic as an external resource. It's foreign to them and they have to work hard to make any progress at all to force it to their will. By comparison, you are magic, so not only can you mold yourself to your will, but other magic is as natural as a third leg to you."

He noticed the look on my face. "Oh, um... well, not a third leg, but in the sense that if you could have a third leg any time you wanted just by grabbing one and working it..." He huffed, realizing he was only digging himself deeper.

"Sorry, I haven't trained a sorcerer before," he admitted meekly. "Not a new one at least. I've been a famulus to a few, so I know how you operate, but all of them already had themselves figured out and their minds made up as to how things work."

I patted his head comfortingly. "It's okay. I get the meaning."

He relented and purred, then took a deep breath and continued. "Now, a mage of any type has to learn first how to manipulate the energies, then has to work long and hard from the very most basic of things to even build up their capabilities as a conduit for the energy and their will. They start out with no capabilities and only a mindset to do it and maybe get better. If they overextend themselves, they burn out. That's pretty horrible. Usually kills them.

"In their case, a famulus acts as a safety net to a degree. The famulus would help them focus and stay safe, and act as a quick stop should they get into dangerous territory." He paused and looked at me piercingly. "As a sorcerer, you have no ability to burn out. A burn out for a mage or other learned entity pretty much destroys the conduits. Being completely magic yourself, you have no conduits that can be damaged. They are all magic."

He lifted a paw and put it on my knee. "Before, I thought you were going to have an energy burst for example. You probably were honestly, but it was interrupted by your death. You have a physical form that follows certain rules because you don't know otherwise and are used to it. It's begotten of pure magic though. The amount of energy inside of you is tremendous, and even more, you can manipulate the energies around you just as if they were you."

"Like a third leg?" I asked with a grin. "Though according to old sayings, if I manipulate that too much, my palms will get as furry as you are."

"Pay attention!" he scolded, lightly pressing his claws against my knee.

"Sorry," I said, unable to hide my smile. I could feel his amusement though.

He stared me down for a moment, then continued. "Using magic for you will be as completely natural as learning to use your own body. Walking, eating, scratching your back, rubbing..." His ears went back. "Don't say it. I know you want to. Just don't."

At least the training was fun so far. I couldn't help but enjoy it.

"Anyway, remember the thing that's the same: You didn't know how to walk or feed yourself or..." He paused and grumped. "Fine. Or wank... right away. You had to learn how to do that. It's the same with this, just a bit easier. Then you need to remember the one thing that is completely different: Unlike your physical body, your magical capabilities have almost no limitations."

He squinted at me. "ALMOST is the important word. You are not any god. Though you can become extremely powerful, there are always things that you can never do, and there are always things that are a really bad idea. Pissing off other powerful things to the point that they have a desire to destroy you, or worse, team up together to do so, is an excellent example. Like the discussion about time pointed out, you also can't know the future. You can only know a future amongst infinite ones. You can eventually know likely futures."

I nodded. "Pissing things off does indeed strike me as a bad idea. Okay, so how common are magic users anyway?"

He shrugged. "Common enough. Probably about one in every 140 in the human population have some degree of capability."

"Wait... That's a lot of people." I did some mental calculations. "Why don't we see people doing magic ever then?"

He smiled. "You're ahead of me, but just by a bit. Okay, so that's the other limitation. Magic-aware people are about one in 140. That being said, almost every single human on this planet uses magic all the time and in an exceptionally powerful manner."

He stared at me, waiting, and I tried to figure it out, but I finally had to give up. "How?" I asked.

"They are trained in disbelief by the disbelief of society itself. It's a self-feeding, ever-growing thing," he said, nodding sagely. "Their impression of how the world SHOULD work is constantly imposed on the magical spectrum. That imposition suppresses other magic, and even works reactively. Small things like parlor tricks cause little enough disbelief to be able to sneak under the radar. Huge, dramatic things would be met with even greater disbelief than the power capable to bring about the huge, dramatic thing. So the bigger a wizard tries to do something in plain sight, or that would have a lasting effect, the bigger the rebound of disbelief and the more suppressed it is."

I rolled this around in my mind. "So... there are no people flinging fireballs or walking through walls with magic because the rest of the people's disbelief makes stronger magic that prevents it?"

He brightened. "Yes, exactly!"

"Okay, so how does anybody do any magic at all then?"

"It has to be completely unnoticed by the general populace," he said. "ALL of the effects. But even then, the various concepts of positive and negative energy have a lot of weight also." He looked thoughtful. "Let's see. Karma. Threefold. The Golden Rule. Heard of any of those?"

I nodded. "Karma is like payback for things you do. If you do good things, you get good in return. Bad things get bad return. The golden rule is 'Do unto others as you would have done to you', which I guess means do good things because you want other people to do good things to you."

"Exactly," he said. "Threefold is a similar concept, just with amplification. Anyway, those are pretty much real, especially in the magical world. It tends to make doing bad things generally dangerous as a whole. Probably kind of annoying because everybody has their own impression of what is good or bad. So base it on the primary impression. If most people and things would think it's bad, then it's going to receive negative energy from them. If the positive output from the rest doesn't outweigh it, then you're in trouble."

He caught my look of concern. "Don't worry. As a general rule, you need to be malicious in intent to get into real trouble."

I was becoming oddly sensitized to his paw on my knee. It was comfortable. Pleasant. Just strangely intense.

"Anyway," he continued, "Your abilities are almost limitless in respect to a mage as a comparison for example. Mages need to keep their physical mind intact in some manner. Your mind is not in your physical body. A mage who appears to become a crow has actually translocated their brain and is protecting it magically because a crow's body cannot hold the mental capacity needed to manipulate energies. That takes a LOT of work, and so is exceptionally rare. By comparison, you could become a crow in a heartbeat with hardly an effort."

His amber eyes burned into me. "A mage needs to logically learn and precisely control what they do. They are limited by what they can learn and do learn. You don't do. You are. You are limited only by the metamagics I've described and the influences of others. You are only limited by your own imagination."

My vision narrowed to focus only on those eyes. I imagined what he just said. The ability to become a bird would be easy? I could imagine feathers, strong wings pulling me through the air. I closed my eyes as I saw the wide sky above me and the ground far below. The idea was exhilarating.

"Well, now. See how easy that was?" he asked with a purr from above me, his huge paw patting my back gently. "Not bad for a first time."

I opened my eyes to a world that looked tremendously different. I saw too much of the room. It made me dizzy and I put an arm out to steady myself, but it was not as effective as the light paw against my back. The bed was huge!

Wait...

So was the black cat...

No. I was small. I froze. Some effort to look myself over. I was a black bird. I was a crow!

I woke to a soft lick on my face.

"Bit much?" he asked worriedly, peering down at me. "It's only bad the first time they said. But they were all alone for that. They all felt the trauma of being alone and trapped limited them in the future."

"I fainted?"

"Just for a moment. You're okay now."

"How...?"

He licked me again, interrupting me. "I guided you for this. Normally you'd learn a lot of other things before you would ever come close to shifting. As your famulus, I help you guide your energies. I act as your backup still, but more as an empowerment than as a safety net. More as a partner than as a kill switch. Close your eyes."

I nodded and did so. This time I barely felt the change, mostly my increase in weight. His paw touched my knee again and I opened my eyes, looking down at him. A quick glance showed my body back in the human shape I was used to.

"See? You're fine," he purred. Then he sat down and looked at me seriously. "My old sorcerer masters lamented their first shift. Almost all sorcerers shift sometime. The first time is nearly always accidental. They are terrified, alone, trapped. Many die without making it back. The rest are usually so traumatized that they create blocks on their abilities and limit themselves."

I gave a shiver as I felt my arm. It was a thrill of excitement. I was a crow. I was really a crow. What he said finally digested, and I gazed down at him. "You helped me not have that happen."

"Once you've changed back to your original form once, you'll always have the instinctual ability to do so," he agreed. "Not terrifying for you, and now you can never be trapped."

I gathered him up into my arms and hugged him warmly, making him jump in surprise. "And I wasn't alone." He relaxed and purred. "Thank you," I murmured. I also decided to try something, and willed a part of my mind to be closed.

He was silent for a moment and his purring stopped. I knew he noticed the block. I could feel his curiosity. Finally he asked. "Why are you so happy?"

I grinned and set him on my lap. "Two reasons. One is because I learned how to hide little things in my head from you, so I can keep surprises."

He stared at me intensely, his curiosity obvious.

"The second is the secret itself." I smiled. "You did that because you care about me."

He blinked, confused. "Of course I care about you..." he started, but I leaned down and kissed his tiny lips, stopping him.

"You care about me even though you don't need to," I murmured. "That's a huge part of loving somebody."

"I..."

"You should be about my size and shape, and female. I honestly don't think I can handle it all yet, but damn, I want to hold you close."

He shut his mouth and the weight on my lap was promptly multiplied as a lithe, humanoid feline took her place there. She purred and wrapped her arms around me. I pulled her close and buried my face against her neck, enjoying the warmth and closeness.

"I could..." she started to say with a purr, but I knew what she was thinking and my finger found her lips, silencing her as I looked into her face.

"I'd enjoy it immensely if you did, but I don't want to form this relationship based entirely on mind-blowing orgasms," I said with a wry grin. "I want to love you. Part of loving you is enjoying just being with you, hearing your stories, spending time, getting comfortable."

I scooted enough to lie down and brought her with me, relishing the soft fur against my skin and getting lost in her exotic, golden eyes. Without the distraction and vulnerability of sex, I could relax. I could get used to it more easily. "Tell me about you. Tell me what you like. Tell me what you don't like." I kissed her nose lightly. "When I know you and we have a good, stable relationship, we definitely should strengthen it with the mind-blowing orgasms," I said with a wink.

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