[Writing] The Mundane Travesty

[Rebel Rebel]

This board isn't letting me put the whole story in the one post, so I should point out that the only break intended is the one marked - I didn't want to post it separately since it's more of a coda than an epilogue, so I broke it at a different, opportune place.

Leaning on one wall, Dale stared at the suit she'd bought, traipsed on one of the chairs at the dinner table, as she waited for her boyfriend to emerge from behind the partition they'd set. It should not have taken her longer to find a fuku that fit her than him to make one that fit him. She fidgeted with the vest that she was in theory no longer wearing as she glanced at the curtain. Finally, she heard Trevor's voice.

"Ready, Dale?"

She took a few steps away from the wall, turning to face the partition as she moved to unbutton her vest. "Ready and waiting."

Trevor stepped out from behind the curtain with perfect poise in his slippers. The skirt of his uniform was cinched tightly around the waist his corset created, coming to just above his knee, accentuating the firm, bare calves below. With arms tight yet sleek, he fixed the ascot on the suit above the chest, pushing it out just barely. Only the corset gave the illusion of breasts, small as they were, feminine enough. His natural, luxurious auburn hair shimmered as it cascaded down his back, framing his face, beautiful, even as clearly as one could see its male nature. He looked down at his girlfriend. "I thought you'd be dressed when I got out?"

She smiled as she opened the first button. "Why?" She walked toward him in a silly kind of half-dance that made him chuckle more than anything else, unbuttoning her vest as she went. She slipped off her sneakers as she got to the last button and, inches from her beloved, thrust forth her chest as the vest slid back off her arms, revealing the beige straps of her bra above her tube top.

She reached for the back of his neck, and hoist herself up to eye level, giving a peck on the cheek before lowering her right arm to his back, so she could support her weight in relative comfort to him as she kicked her legs out into space. His eyes widened as she used her free hand to unbutton and pull off her jeans, kicking them across the room. Otherwise transfixed by the display, his only motions were small, careful adjustments to right himself against the momentum of this display.

Taking hold of one shoulder with her left hand, she moved her right to the other. Now supporting herself by these, she split her legs across his waist and slid down to the point where she could feel human warmth replace the cool plastic of his corset. There she locked on tightly, clasping his legs together with all the strength in hers. He wiggled one leg slightly to acknowledge his helplessness. She let go his shoulders and hugged him tightly below the arms, pressing her face to his upper chest, to the warmth she was just barely able to reach.

Dale then let go with her arms, leaning back. She reached down to the base of her top and pulled it slowly up to her chest, taking hold of the strap of her bra as she reached it. Upon grabbing it, however, she could feel Trevor wobble slightly beneath her, and quickly reached forward to right herself. As she snapped back up, Trevor pulled her to him, regaining his balance handily as her short, black hair fell over her eyes and nose. With his right hand, he brushed it back for her as she took a moment to catch her breath, and his left hand he placed on her hip.

"Here. Let me."

Looking up at him, she raised her arms to the air, and taking it in both hands he pulled the tube top up around her, leaving the bra in place. As he dropped it to the ground, she reached behind herself, only to be stopped by a gentle hand on her arm. She pouted. "Spoilsport."

With a laugh, he took her beneath her arms as she unlatched her legs, and lowered her to the floor. "We really should get going, futurecop."

"Tsk." But still she went over to put on the suit, the skirt brighter blue and shorter, the ascot almost identical. This one was, however, clearly tailored to fit a rather endowed woman of her height. The three parts, however, were sewn together at points to allow the illusion of separate articles while keeping them from being separated - it was, after all, a single costume. As she buttoned the shirt, she could swear she heard a male voice, higher than Trevor's.

"Hello."

"Huh?"

"I didn't say anything," Trevor replied.

"I did," came the voice.

"...who?"

"The suit."

Dale paused a moment at that. "Dale? Dale, are you all right?"

She ignored her boyfriend for the moment. "The suit."

"Yeah! That's right, me!"

There were many, many questions to be asked, but somehow, one was paramount. "Did... did you see all that?"

"Well... yeah, but it doesn't really matter."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, well, now I can kind of... feel you."

At that Dale pulled the top three buttons open in a single motion, popping one right off, and pulled the fuku over her head, skirt and all, tearing a sleeve.

"Dale? Dale!" said Trevor, rushing toward her.

"I'm fine! I'm fine!" Before her eyes, a strand of thread reached out like a tentacle, grabbing the button and reattaching it. Her eyes darted to the seam she was sure she'd ripped, and sure enough, it was as if nothing had happened. At that she fell to the floor and curled up into a ball.

"You don't look fine."

"Put it on! The suit! My suit! Put it on!"

Trevor looked down at the suit where it lay on the floor. "It, uh, doesn't look like it'd fit me."

That was enough to drive her to get up. She picked up the suit and tore a deep gash into the collar, ascot and all, surprised at her own strength. It stitched itself shut behind her. Trevor took hold of it in awe, and held it up to see where the tear should have been. Seeing nothing, he sighed.

"All right."

Dale didn't bother to get dressed, but only sat down at the chair, resting an arm on the table as she watched her boyfriend take off his own suit. When he was down to the corset and panties, he examined her suit, undoing the remaining buttons. The elastic stretched over his arms, and contracted over his waist, without difficulty. He shrugged as he tried to pull the bottom button shut, and it, too, buttoned... without difficulty?

He heard Dale scream. Trevor ran his hands around his waist, seeing it was smaller. His abdominal muscles were unmistakably becoming atrophied, and what little fat there was running down toward his swelling hips. He reached up to his chest, the faint stubble on it now almost imperceptible as... his breasts were growing. Even as they grew, he shrank in height, and felt an unbearable pain as the corset pierced his breasts; he unlaced it as quickly as he could, far more quickly than he would have thought possible, and threw it to the floor. Mercifully, the bloody sores it had left healed as quickly as the tear had.

As quickly as he'd registered it, it was over - his body was that of a woman. He could see that his build was Dale's - the build that fit the suit, of course. He took a few deep breaths - easier without that blasted thing on, as much as the sound of his own breaths now terrified him - to clear his thoughts. No problem. Should be no problem. He unfastened the one button, and slipped the skirt down off his feet.

He stood proud in his false body, waiting for the changes to reverse themselves. The suit was off now. It should come at any second, come as quickly as it came on, as quickly as the suit could heal itself. It would come. He stood, closing his eyes, simply waiting, waiting for it to come, when it should come. It was on the verge of coming. Soon. Soon. Soon, the woman opened her eyes, and saw herself. Trevor saw a woman standing in her exposed body, naked but for a pair of ill-fitting panties.

"Oh, my God," said Dale.

Trevor fell to his knees, covering his wholly female body, shaking all over. "It's not your fault. It's not your fault."

Dale saw the woman before her pull the fuku over herself. It fit perfectly as she buttoned it up. What she saw next was a one-sided conversation, as if the woman had been on on an invisible telephone.

"Was it you Dale was talking to?" "Did you do this?" "Well, I don't." "Well, fix it then!" "Good point."

The lovers' terrified eyes met. "What did it say?"

"'If I could do that, you think I'd be a sailor suit?'"

Dale nodded. "That... is a good point."

"Mmm."

"Well... I guess this deep-sixes the con."

Trevor gave a visibly insincere smile. "It doesn't have to...?"

Dale chuckled. "Yes, it does."

The smile vanished as Trevor simply nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, it does." He thought for a moment. "I'll have to call out on Monday."

"They've seen you in drag before."

"Sure, but they'll probably catch on if I'm ten inches shorter."

"Point."

The new woman sighed. "Why didn't you warn her?" The suit's response was met with a nod. "No time. Of course."

Dale went off to get dressed as Trevor's body sat alone with his thoughts, well into the evening, occasionally trading a sentence or two with the suit. When Dale stepped out of the bedroom, having (among a thousand other electronic wastes of time) tried and failed to scalp their Saturday and Sunday passes, Trevor immediately went in to raid her wardrobe. Trevor clearly not wanting to speak just yet, Dale went to get something from the kitchen. She ate as slowly as she could, but with three more hours gone, she had had it with picking at crumbs.

Going into the room, she found the strange woman in her bed in one of her nightshirts. She stripped down to her panties and crawled in beside him. She stared at the back of her lover's body, so similar to her own without seeing the face. After a moment's reflection, she pressed her body againt... hers? Feeling her own clothes (her own bra?), her lover's female body, Dale realized she could no longer think of Trevor as anything but "her," any more than herself. And her voice sharply answered Dale's gesture.

"Off."

She relaxed her grip, but still rested one arm over Trevor's side. "You know, I don't... I still... I still want..."

"I'd figured you would. But I don't. I can't. I'm sorry."

"I understand."

Dale turned over, inching away. She stared at the curtains covering their bedroom window, hardly blinking. The brastrap she'd felt.

"You know, you'd sleep better without the bra."

"Probably." But Trevor didn't stir.

Neither slept well that night. Indeed, it was one of those nights neither could confidently say they'd slept at all, even though their relative vigor told them they must have had episodes of microsleep. When they got out of bed, they went through their morning routine as though it were any other free day. They dressed from the same closet, of course, but other than that, it was as though nothing had ever happened; they even showered together, albeit chastely, to the extent it could have been chaste in such an apartment's shower.

The rest of the day was aggressively normal. They picked up the strewn clothes reminding of the previous afternoon before even putting the coffee on. All that day, they talked, joked, and laughed about whatever topic came to their minds, except for anything relating to the elephant in the room. They got some cleaning done, and well into the evening Dale came up with some errands to be done and headed out. By the time she was back, Trevor was asleep on the couch - Dale tiptoed past to bed.

As she was trying to get to sleep, Trevor walked in the door. She could hear her tiptoeing close, and finally, standing over her. Dale made a point of remaining still, since "waking up" might frighten her off again. After a minute or two of dead silence, Dale could feel her lover pressing down on the bed, feel her lover's body brushing against her own, feel a gentle kiss planted on her cheek. At that, however, she heard her lover leave as quickly as she had come. Dale sat up in her nightshirt just in time to see the door close.

Sunday morning, Dale woke up to the disturbance of her girlfriend at the foot of the bed, where she was struggling to put on a pair of jeans.

"You know, I don't think I've seen you wear pants outside work in months."

"Yeah, well, if there's a time for a change..." She shrugged. "Although that reminds me, I do still need to call the bank."

"You haven't?"

"Well, I have to still be sick tomorrow."

"I'll call right now."

"I'll call... noonish."

"You'll call?!"

Trevor made her voice quiet, raspy, and as deep as she could, making it yet weaker. "Yes... I'll call... noonish."

Dale nodded. "Will do."

Once dressed, Trevor sat on the edge of the bed, lost in thought. Dale could only watch her, trying to understand, until she spoke. "Dale, Kyle... the suit, that's its name, Kyle... it used to be human, well, 'sort of,' it said, but human."

"So?"

"It told me that if I hunt down the witch that cursed him, tomorrow night, she'll probably change me back."

"Probably?"

"It's what he said."

"So you're going to a mad witch, who goes around turning people into clothes, so that you can 'probably' be a man again?"

"I asked him about that. He says I'm not in danger."

"You trust him?!"

Trevor took a moment to work out how to answer. "Well, not really, but..."

Dale got up and wrapped herself around her lover. "Trevor... I still love you like this. I'll always love you. I still... still want you. You don't have to do this."

"You know I do."

"Please, Trevor, sweetie. It's not worth it."

Trevor hung her head. "Dale, you're always talking about police academy - isn't that worth it?"

She jumped back. "That's different."

"You said yourself, a mad witch who turns people into clothes - doesn't she merit justice?"

"You're not bringing her justice."

"Maybe not. But do you want her to keep doing this with impunity?"

Dale began to tear up at that, and latched onto Trevor with all her strength. "Just promise me one thing."

"What?"

"You'll let her. If it looks like it will help save you at all, let her get away with it. Don't take a single risk for the sake of justice; I'm not going to lose you for something we don't understand."

Trevor turned to her, nodding slighty. "Mm."

Dale pulled up and kissed Trevor; to her delight, she kissed her back. Dale swiveled around onto Trevor's lap, and gave her a sweet smile, which was only met with a flat expression that caused the smile to fade from her own face. She got up off her. "I'm going to go get myself breakfast."

"There are some pancakes out."

A pained smile came to her. "Thanks."

Trevor called into the bank around noon, and they spent the day hardly talking, hardly able to look at one another, engrossed in computers, books, and comics. After supper, Dale dug out an old bottle of vodka and two shot glasses, and did a quick shot in front of her lover, then poured one for her and a second for herself.

"If this is our last night together, sweets..." she lifted her shot glass, and Trevor tentatively lifted hers, "let's party!"

She put out her glass for a toast, to which Trevor halfheartedly lifted her own, and they downed them respectively likewise. She picked it up to pour another shot, but Trevor put a hand on her shoulder.

"Dale - put that away."

"I'll put it away!" She laughed, then sighed. "I'll put it away." She put it away and sat down. She looked up at her love.

"Maybe... I could go?"

"He said the best time to go was around nine."

"...I had to take noon to eleven to get this weekend."

"I know."

She stood up. "I'm going to bed." Trevor looked at the clock - a quarter to seven. "All right."

Trevor spent the rest of the night finishing House of Leaves, which he'd left up on the bathroom shelf long ago. Years he'd been meaning to get through it, and this of all things had given him the excuse. When he was done, he proceeded to bed.

He saw that Dale was wide awake, facing the ceiling. "Hey."

"Hey." As he sat down on the bed to get his jeans off, she turned on her side, propping herself up on one arm. She watched intently as he walked over to her wardrobe for a nightshirt, pulling off his top and bra as he went. He froze as the lamp came on behind him.

"Strip."

He turned to his girlfriend. "What?"

"Strip."

He gestured to the exposed female body he now stood in. "Um, I think I'm kind of already stripped?"

"All the way. I want to see every inch of you."

With a nervous giggle, he pulled his panties down to the body's ankles, and kicked them off along with his socks. Dale spun a finger in the air and he did a twirl for her.

"Looking good."

In spite of himself, he blushed in pride. "Thanks."

"Come here." She lifted the sheet, showing she had nothing on underneath; Trevor took an instinctual step back. She pulled it around herself and sat up. "Trevor, I don't want... I know... I'm not asking you to... just hold me. Can you just do that? Please?"

After a moment's reflection, Trevor nodded. Her eyes lighting up, Dale turned out the light, and they went to sleep in each other's arms.

That morning was again fairly normal, but not like Saturday's had been - already, it was as though this was normal. They showered separately, dressed from the same wardrobe, and went through their routines as usual. As noon approached, the two of them kissed in a passionate embrace before she said goodbye to him, perhaps for the last time.

Trevor changed into the fuku. "Hey - you still there?"

"Of course I'm still here! Where was I going to go?"

"Dunno, thought you might... I dunno."

"Hmm."

"Are you sure it's safe?"

"Of course. She's not going to transform a mundane. Not in public."

"So, wait... you're not a mundane?"

"I'm not a mage, if that's what you're asking. But there's a lot between mages and mundanes."

"And I'm still a mundane."

"Basically. Or you may as well be."

"Will I still be after tonight?"

"Well... let's just say it's your call, Tootsie."

And so that night, he grabbed his own pink purse, that he'd had from fifteen, and went off to meet his destiny. He went deep into an alleyway, and per the suit's instructions, pressed both hands against a wall. Leaning forward, he found himself passing through - not falling through, really, but being pulled through, as though his feet had been on wheels and something had caught his hands. Where he was now seemed to be some sort of lobby, narrow, facing a door with what appeared to be the Eye of Providence at its center, watching him. He turned around, and behind him was an endless, starless void, the shock of which caused him to jump back against the wall.

"Yeah... you're going to have to go through that if you want to get home, Lola. But we'll talk about that later. For now, look at the eye."

Turning back to face the eye, he focused on it as it looked over his false body and human fuku. After what seemed like an eternity, he blinked and the door opened; "annuit coeptis," he muttered under his breath.

"Yep, that's the idea."

Passing through the door, the first thing that caught his attention was that behind the dance floor, which looked ordinary enough initially, was what appeared to be the minotaur acting as DJ. The people on the floor, he soon realized, he probably should have noticed: there must have been about a hundred on the thing all told, maybe 60/40 in gender from what he could tell, including at least a half-dozen catgirls and half as many catboys. Another half-dozen people seemed to have skin of a somehow beautiful shimmering green, most of them with wings. There were others with angel wings, maybe five that appeared to be demons, and other forms he didn't care to take stock of.

"You'll find her at the main bar, about four o'clock from where you're looking."

Kyle directed Trevor to the bar, in a room off from the floor, and its four customers. A woman of Mediterranean features, sitting alone in a wide-necked sleveless black dress, nursing the last drop out of a cocktail glass; an ostensible couple, male and female, enjoying themselves over beer and whiskey respectively; and a foxgirl, just grabbing a glass of white wine. Trevor's eyes fixed on the foxgirl as he heard the first woman address him - or rather, his outfit.

"So he led you back here, did he?"

"That's her," Trevor heard the suit say, "Puran."

Trevor's hands involuntarily clenched into fists beside his body's hips, shaking uncontrollably as he took a step forward. "Yes." He averted his eyes in an empty attempt to hide his fear. "For justice!"

At this, Puran broke down laughing. "Is that so." She turned to the bartender. "Hey, Mikey, can I get what's coming to me?"

Busy with the glasses, he seemed not to hear her over the din from the dance floor. She flicked a finger, and his skin hardened into wood, his joints remaining. He turned, revealing a wooden face.

"Can I get my comeuppance?" The wood of his face contorted into something resembling a grainy smile, as what felt like a breeze began to blow in their little room.

"Thou hast sown the car..." A mighty wind gathered in the bar section, somehow sucking the liquid from the bottles, streams running through the air as the bartender raised his wooden limbs.

"...now reap the sidecar!" The streams coalesced and spun, becoming a single color as a tiny layer of frost came to formed around it. Like a lightning-bolt, the streams found their way into her glass, which filled in an instant, spilling not a drop. She stared at him with a whimsical half-smile, obviously trying to keep from laughing. Letting out a few titters, she raised her hand, and bark began to grow on the bartender's legs, fusing them together.

"Oh, come on!"

"No! You, were asking for this."

He rolled his eyes as the bark shell came to cover his hips. "Oh... all right." He raised his arms straight above his head, looking up. The bark climbed over his shoulders, over his head, encasing him and continuing until all that remained was a pillar, running from floor to sealing, not even resembling the shape of a man. Still fighting back a laugh, the witch took a sip of her sidecar. She turned to Trevor.

"So... still want to hear about the 'innocent victim' you're wearing?"

Trevor looked around, hyperventilating. The couple were still chatting happily, as if they hadn't even noticed. Had they? Had the witch... oh, God, what he gotten himself into?

What calmed him down was feeling a slight breeze cross his face. It swept up the couple's empty glasses, and deposited them in the sink. The woman of them put up her hand - "another for me?" As with the witch's drink, a stream of scotch arced into the bottom of her glass. On taking a sip, she quipped, "mm - hint of oak."

Trevor turned back to the witch. "Um... are you planning on turning him back?"

The question seemed to catch her by surprise. Taking another sip, she thought on it for a moment, and gave a wicked smile. "No. Absolutely not."

"You're not going to turn me into a tree, are you? Or a dress?"

She shrugged. "I might. Dunno yet."

At that, Trevor bolted up. "Now that, I would not do if I were you," said the witch. Her words froze Trevor in place for a moment, causing him to breathe a sigh of relief when he realized it was just nerves. In his head, he could hear the fuku laughing.

"Relax, Edna. Sit back down and you'll be fine. Maybe have a drink?"

He nodded and reached into his purse, but the witch interrupted. "Bartree! Well vodka for my friend, straight."

The shot glass and liquor blew before him in a unified motion, and he drank it down just as quickly. He plopped back into his seat as the glass blew away.

"So now do you want to hear?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"I could always wipe your mind, zap you home, and try to figure out how a mundane got a hold of Kyle. Kind of what you'd call nowadays a red pill, blue pill, thing."

"Well... that wouldn't really work, since, um..."

"Well then, worst-to-worst, I could always shrink you and keep you as a pet!"

He glanced at the tree trunk. "...red pill."

With a chuckle, she took another sip. "Kyle was a rather mischievous apprentice of mine at one point. Had a bad habit of turning himself into things that had a way of ending up in women's bedrooms, mostly mundane women - and mundanes around him had a way of disappearing."

"Disappearing?!"

"That's right. Not good for my reputation - I mean, transforming mundanes is one of those things, it happens, you don't mean too, really, but you get caught, you go a few rounds with Scratch, cost of doing business - too often and everyone just turns on you, you know?"

"No."

"Of course not. Well, anyway, I found him in this form, and locked him in, and locked his powers to fit the suit."

"So that's why he turned me into a girl?!" He put a hand over his mouth.

"Turned you into a girl?" She took another sip. "Well, I locked its powers as regards transformation, except to the extent it can, with discretion, restore itself, or its wearers. Of course, that was with the understanding that it would fit its wearers... so..."

Trevor took a moment to register what she was saying, grabbing two bunches of fabric from the suit's blouse. "Hey!"

She laughed and nodded. "Yep! That's right!" She raised her glass for a silent toast, nearly falling off her stool, but for an invisible barrier righting her.

"Well, what? Did you think I was going to spend the rest of my life adorning 'mundane Divine' here?"

"Shh!" He turned to the witch. "So can you turn me back?" Trevor winced as her only answer was yet another sip.

After stirring the glass a bit, she spoke. "So... what was that about 'justice'?"

"Oh, heh. I guess my girlfriend fed me that line... sort of, kind of, no, but yes, she did."

A wicked grin came to her. "Really? Justice, is that a theme with her?"

"Well, it's how I got her to let me meet you. She keeps saying she'll join the force, too - probably never will, but..." he sighed, not having noticed that the witch's eyes had just lit up. "She's beautiful."

The witch nodded. "All right." With her finger, she shot a beam of light across the floor to the DJ, who casually raised a palm to catch it. "I'm not going to turn you back here. Here's what you need to do: have her wear Kyle, and take this wand to her."

"...wand?"

She held up a finger. "One last drink."

She spent about twenty minutes nursing the remainder of her sidecar, as Trevor simply sat in silence, the wind serving customers, listening to snippets from the couple - Kevin, and Caerah? He thought that was what he'd heard. What was actually said, however, might as well have been a software cost/benefit analysis read to an Amorite.

When a quiet drum riff began, the witch quickly sank the rest of her drink, and dropped her glass to be borne away by the wind. As she made her deliberate way to the dance floor, Trevor noticed that the patrons on the floor were all glancing at her. Two dozen and some politely walked or teleported away, as a handful of obvious non-dancers eagerly made their way to the floor.

The drums became louder, and some feedback entered the mix, accompanied by a few slow, yet earsplitting bass chords. She stood at the center of the floor, all eyes briefly on her as she rose a few inches off the ground. As they turned, she reached across her chest, grabbing each shoulder of her dress with the opposite hand. As a fast synthesizer track began playing, she tore her dress in two, leaving only her body, floating in the air with a half in each hand. Trevor's eyes widened in shock, but could see no one else was bothered or surprised.

The halves of the dress unravelled into two perfect black ribbons that she waved above the crowd, moving them and her body alike with impossible grace. A bend in one ribbon touched the catgirl nearest the witch on the head, and she abruptly vanished into the air, causing Trevor to stand with a start. At this the witch met his eyes, and perhaps to assure him nothing was wrong, flung the end of one ribbon his way.

Even as he flinched from it, the end landed on the woman from the bar, Caerah, now dancing with Kevin at the edge of the floor. Almost too fast to see, her body unravelled into black threads, which were swallowed into the ribbon. Her boyfriend, however, seemed almost not to notice, continuing to dance as though she'd never been, even as he tried, naturally as he could, not to slip on her garments, and to keep an eye on them.

All around the crowd, Trevor could see the empty spaces left by people as the ribbon touched them, and they vanished. No one cared; indeed, they seemed to welcome it, outstretched hands grabbing for the ribbon and disintegrating into thread at the touch. As the music came to a crescendo, the witch spun in the air, pulling the ribbons into a tight spiral around herself and dipping slightly. Within seconds, everyone within six feet of her had vanished - easily twenty in all - a veritable rain of fabric descending to the ground behind them.

As a theremin came in and the song slowed, the witch let go the ribbon, and it flew into the air, where it seemed to swim, rising and dipping, but never quite low enough to claim anyone - although a few still were able to grab it. The witch herself rose into the air, high above the crowd, reaching over them, changing them.

Nearby, he heard a yelp as some unfortunate girl slipped on the strewn clothes, instinctively grabbing another girl, only to pull her down with her. Before they could hit the ground, however, their skin and joints flash-fossilized, leaving a pair of startled marble statues locked together in a precarious balance. Where the man from the bar, Kevin, had been, Trevor realized, was now a woman, of the same proportions as his - late? - girlfriend, in her clothes as his own now dotted the floor. And yet, the face, feminized as it was, was unmistakable. "Nice touch switching the outfits," he heard Kyle mutter.

The witch continued to turn in the air, waving her hands over the crowd to ensure not one of them escaped unchanged. Before Trevor's eyes, some grew fur or scales, and two or three with such things lost them. A dozen or so of the men became women - a few, like Kevin, would swap outfits at an opportune moment in the change with one on the floor, footprints and all. Three or four of the women underwent the opposite transformation; however, she seemed to reserve some women, and women exclusively, for a different change, where at some beautiful position in their movements, their bodies would harden, into marble, wood, silver, and other beautiful things he couldn't identify - maybe ten in all. Finally, at the edges, where there wasn't much chance of being trod on, two men and a woman vanished suddenly, as those claimed by the ribbon had, and annoyed-looking cats pawed their way out of their clothes.

At last, the synthesizer and guitar cut out entirely, leaving only the slow, eerie theremin. The ribbons shattered to pieces, each length becoming what looked like a tiny woman flitting on gossamer wings, and they - nearly forty in all - dispersed in all directions. The dancing had largely stopped at this point, as one of these women flitted over to Kevin's new form, landing on her outstretched hands. In her free hand, she conjured a kerchief for the fairy to cover herself with, and kissed her forehead as she did so.

Trevor's attention turned to the clearing in the center of the room, where the witch had risen far above the crowd, her hands and legs locked firmly together, pointing toward the ceiling and floor. As Trevor thought of the way the bartender had raised his hands to the ceiling, he met Puran's eyes a final time. As she closed them, her body became a wand - no, a staff - nearly four foot long of crimson, wooden with diamond studs, and clattered to the floor just as the music stopped. Those who were still capable of doing so - about twenty still on the floor, plus the fairies and onlookers - broke out in uproarious applause.

"Give it up for Puran!" bellowed the therian DJ, as Trevor darted into the center to grab the wand, ducking around the fairies. He thought for a moment someone might question his right to it, but as he bustled through with the body of the witch who'd been the main entertainment seconds before, not to mention a regular paying customer, no one seemed to take any notice of him at all. He made a mad speedwalk for the door as the next song came on.

"Hey, where ya goin', Bridget?"

"Anywhere else!"

[Rebel Rebel]

Trevor arrived at home with the wand. The moment he was through the door, he literally tore Kyle off in pieces, remembering how it had fixed itself before, and surely enough, it had before it hit the ground. He waited like that, holding the wand tightly to the body, for over an hour, until thinking better of changing back in Dale's underwear: he dressed in a modest red housedress of his own, naked underneath, since in a body where even this showed a hint of cleavage, his usual underwear stood no chance.

"Trevor? You're still up?" She turned on the light. "Still a girl?"

Trevor nodded. "Put him on."

"What?"

Trevor gestured to the suit. "Him. Put him on."

She nodded as she hung up her coat, and she pulled off her work clothes in the den, as casually as she could. With a few shakes to the fuku, she threw it on.
"Now hold this," he said, extending one end of the wand to her.

She took it - "hello there!" came the witch's response. Dale fought her surprise to keep a stern face in the matter.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the wand - I'm your wand!"

"Whose?" asked Trevor.

"Hers! Don't you want to be a warrior for love and justice?"

Dale cocked her eyebrow. "A what?"

"Do you think our world doesn't need law enforcement? You're to serve as a magical bounty hunter, essentially. Well, not really, something of a... well, a something."

"...what's wrong with a regular old bounty hunter?"

At that Trevor butted in. "Never mind that! Don't we have some business to get through first?"

"In a moment - Dale, I'm going to ask you to imprint on me. That will make me your possession, and you'll have access to my magic - the suit as well."

Trevor mouthed the word, "possession." "No, Kyle, you don't," he heard the wand say.

"To change her back?" Trevor mouthed the word, "her!"

"And to become a hunter."

Trevor shook his head, but Dale just breathed a sigh of resignation. "Fine. I accept."

A jolt passed through the wand, causing Trevor to fall back, as Dale felt, and even saw, electricity run up and down body and the fuku. "Dale!" Dale fell to the floor,
hyperventilating, as in her head a primal scream echoed from the suit, and she herself could not help but scream. Trevor rushed over to her lover, but before she could reach, a beam shot out from the wand, hitting her. Her body changed, stretching to fill the dress - her legs and arms grew their former lean muscle, and her shrinking chest as well, covered in a hair much finer than before, but still distinctly male. He was a he again.

Dale heard the wand's voice: "shouldn't you have changed his clothes?"

"No," she and the suit replied in unison.

Trevor pulled her up off the ground roughly, embracing her with all his might. "Uh... ow?"

"Sorry, sorry... I'm just glad to be..." he paused, looking at the wand.

"What?"

"I just remembered... Dale... that wand... she... it said you possess it?"

"Forever and always!" she heard it pipe up.

"'Forever and always,' she says."

Trevor sighed. "Dale... less than four hours ago, that wand was a living, breathing woman."

"What?" She held the wand up to her eyes. "Huh..."

"She did a strange kind of dance, and turned into that wand."

"A naked kind of dance, he strangely fails to mention."

Dale decided to ignore that. "You... used to be human?"

"Yeah, well, so did I!" the suit chipped in.

"Eh, I thought being a wand might be a nice change of pace for the next few eons. Better than dealing with psycho-pervy apprentices."

"Hey!"

"If the fuku fits..."

"So this is permanent?"

"Not much of a posession if I randomly turn into a witch, now, am I? Nope, I'm your wand 'till death, or one of a couple other things, do us part, which is probably a lot longer than either of us have been alive."

"How old are you?"

"What a thing to ask a scepter! I'm still in the triple digits, for what it's worth."

"Hundreds of years... just to end up here?"

"Hey, I've got a couple thousand of loyal service in me yet, so don't talk like I'm some broken chair leg."

Trevor interrupted their conversation. "So it is permanent?"

"Yeah. Yeah, wicked permanent."

Trevor bit his lip. "Could I speak to her?"

He could see from Dale's face she was getting a message. She held up the wand, firing a beam of light directly into his chest. In his head, he heard the witch's voice.

"It!"

"Right. Yesterday... the bartender... all those people... are they stuck?"

"What? No! Mikey's probably already back. The statues and cats, too, even though there's always a few who stay - used to have a nice collection, probably being sold off as we speak. We have - I guess you'd say 'living wills in Akashic records' - we just call 'em 'wills.' The rest are probably going to turn back when they get around to it, or just not bother - magic workplaces are more understanding, of course."

"But you said you weren't going to turn the bartender back."

"Of course not - I'm a wand now!"

"...of course. All right, Dale - turn it off now."

The wand addressed Dale. "All right, now as part of the deal you just sort-of struck, Dale, don't deny it, I made it clear, you didn't listen, that's your problem, heard it all before, 'EULA for your soul,' blah blah blah..."

"I heard you the first time."

"Good. Now, my former apprentice here got what was coming to him - didn't you?"

"Probably, kind of," said the fuku.

"But I've got a real problem with whoever was selling him to mundanes. In the name of the moon, we really shouldn't stand for this sort of thing. Fortunately, the thing about a self-aware fuku is that it's self-aware, so it can tell you more or less who's been buying and selling it to whom."

"Will you make me human if I do this?" asked the fuku.

"Not up to me, Kyle."

Dale took a sharp breath. "We'll discuss it."

"Good enough for now. Basically, some mundane girl stole me."

"Stole you from where?" asked the wand.

"A warlock's manor. Name of Theophilus, I think"

"Why was there a mundane girl in the manor of name-of-Theophilus-I-think?"

"I think he'd kind of kidnapped her."

"Kidnapped her."

"Well, kidnapped him. That was kind of the point of putting her in me, he felt he had too many statues."

"Statues. From mundanes."

"He decorates with them."

"Surgeport?"

"Surgeport."

"So you left a surge with no identity, no clothes of her own, who'd lived her entire life as a man, running around in an unfamiliar region of the mundus?"

"Yep."

"Lucky break. I'll send out a beacon. Do you think you can find his manor?"

"Probably, with some probing."

"Let's go then."

"Wait, wait" - Dale butted in - "this guy goes around decorating his house with petrified mundanes like me, and you want me to face him?"

"Not like you. They don't have wands."

Dale exchanged a look with her boyfriend. He shrugged as if to tell her it was to be her decision.

"Fair enough."

As long as Dale wore him, Dale, dressed in Kyle and carrying Puran, went through a non-Euclidean road through a tapestry of strange fauna and architecture, until reaching a mansion that seemed isolated by the universe itself, the boundaries of its courtyard made of what seemed to be plasma. By pressing her wand ahead of her, however, Dale could simply pass through to the path, dotted by statues, nudes, proud and beautiful women of stone, and glass, and jade, and anything else she could imagine, punctuated by the occasional Adonis. Still, there was an asymmetry to the arrangement she could pick out, as if it was in the process of being set up, and suspected she knew all too well why.

"Are they...?"

"'Fraid so. Mundanes, too - almost every one... some here longer than I've existed."

She shuddered a bit.

"You can turn back if you want."

"What?"

"You can turn back."

"...I thought the whole magical bargain thing was forcing me."

A laugh came from the wand. "That wasn't really a magical bargain. Nope, just a regular old, break-it-and-break-my-wooden-heart bargain that was."

Dale looked up and down the wand, as if the immoble dowel could have some kind of tell.

"I'm going."

"Thought so. Grab me in both hands, and hold me above your head." Dale pointed the wand at the sky. "Other way." She turned it. "All right. I've sent out a beacon; if there's no news in a year or two, they'll probably dig you out."

"Lovely," she said, approaching the door through the eerie sentries.

"Okay, knock, and fly right the hell up out of the way."

As soon as the knocker hit the door, it exploded in front of her; she closed her eyes, preparing for the wood to tear through her, only to hear the voice from the wand: "move, you idiot!" She opened her eyes to see the wood apparently frozen in time - no, but moving very slowly - and leapt up and back. Her own movements were slowed, but she handily outran the wood as she flew into the air, a ray of fire zipping beneath her feet.

With time back to its normal speed, she dipped back into the door frame to look into the eyes of the warlock inside. He raised his hands, and a beam of white light struck the exposed part of her arm. She tried to turn to where she felt it, but could not even turn as her neck, as every other inch of her body, became inflexible chrome in a tenth of a second. The statue that had been the warlock's rival dropped onto the stoop with a clang.

The warlock stepped forward. "Now who were you?" He walked up to his newest acquisition, the solid chrome girl now there laid in her fuku, a deathgrip on her wand. The grim determination on her face showed him that she hadn't even had time to register her fate. Good. A nice, organic expression to have, when and if he decided to fix her pose - and she certainly knew her fate now. "What kind of cheap costume is that...?"

Behind him, all his cages of miniature people made a futile attempt to hide themselves from the terrible display, exposed in their roofless glass cage. The chained, brutish beastmen and beastwomen dotting the walls howled and screamed in echo of his victorious glee. He would have to see if she had sent out a beacon, but he still had a few minutes, inasmuch as whatever this woman was, she was not a hunter. The hunters would not have sent a lone soldier against one so powerful. Stroking one of his living dolls, he looked around the indoor statuary for a good fit.

The doll felt the pressure of his hand cease as a beam struck him from behind, and his had unravelled into thread, retreating into his body. Across the room, the chrome of Dale's body quickly retreating to soft flesh, her arms were free enough to point the wand where the warlock had been. She first dragged her stiff legs, then walked to the spot where the warlock had been. She fished through his clothes, until finding what the wand must have made of the warlock. "A fuku. Of course."

She "heard" something like a sound, albeit something other than audible, behind her and turned. Before her eyes appeared fifty or more creatures, materializing out of thin air. Half of them looked roughly human, witches and warlocks as she might have seen them on TV mixed in with what looked more like army uniforms. Alongside them were therianthropes and fae of all shapes and sizes, and less human creatures, dragons, djinn, and things she could neither identify nor describe. The statues became flesh one by one, some trying to hide themselves, many just letting the brisk air wash over them in ecstasy, or kissing the ground.

"Did I say year? Huh," said the wand.

As most of the soldiers tended to the outdoor statues, a few ran past Dale to restore those indoors, as well as the dolls and beast people. They could tranquilize the beast people, but it took several to each pair of manacles, the locks warded too well. Dale could only stand and stare, taking in the sight before her - somehow, what struck her more than all she had seen in the past five days was the sheer professionality of it all. The sheer... was "mundaneness" the right word?

The wand spoke. "You see, Dale, what you have to understand is that you're not even really a minority - pretty much, the mundus is just an experiment. A cruel experiment, but an experiment nonetheless. You're lucky that you've made a possession of one of the most powerful witches out there - they'd have saved you, but to a quite ignominious future. Welcome to the world you were never meant to see, and will never forget."

Dale nodded in silence, trying to process the spectacle before her, until the suit interrupted her thoughts. "Uh, Dale... we can go now."

"Oh... right."

As the cleaning crew picked up the mess, she flew away. In the air, she addressed her wand.

"So... they're going to leave him like that?"

"Probably. It's a little complicated, but in a case like this it basically boils down to 'why not'?"

"And the pets and statues?"

"They'll be restored, a few of the more recent acquistions mindwiped, most initiated, like you."

"Into Sailor Moon wannabes?"

"No - that's just you."

"Of course."

The fuku piped up again - "hey, ah, while we're on the subject..."

"When we get home," said Dale.

"Oh... all right."

When they did arrive, however, just as she was getting her keys, she was stopped by a voice from her wand: "Dale, er, you should know Trevor's decked out the bedroom, and he's wearing a very nice... um... dress. It looks like he has plans."

Dale shrugged. "Is the door to my closet shut?"

"...yes."

"All right. One thing at a time, then - can you move us into my..." it appearead around her. She mouthed her next words to the wand. <And soundproof it?>

"Done."

"Good."

She began to take off the outfit when the wand interrupted her.

"Hang on - one thing. When Trevor put him on and turned into a girl... did you think that was automatic?"

She froze at that. "It wasn't?"

Both female voices were silent, as the suit stammered in Dale's head. "Well... it kind of was, in a way... it's the only way I can change people, I mean..."

Dale had heard enough. She ripped off the suit with all the vigor she had that first day, and threw it to the ground, where it predictably repaired itself. "Repair this." She pointed the wand at the suit, and it grew into a blonde girl of her own build, despite the darkness curled into a ball to hide herself. She averted her eyes from Dale in something between shame and fear.

"A taste of your own medicine; from now on, you're this girl, or that suit. As long as I don't need you, bonded as you are to me, it's entirely up to you." She pointed the wand at a wall. "That wall should connect to the outer hall now, as long as you're covered up." A beam shot from the wand, causing the wall to glow for a split second. "Everything in this closet should fit you, just like it fit Trevor before."

Kyle looked down at his new body. "Is... is there anything I can do to be male again?"

"Oh, sure! Turn into the suit, and you'll regain your own persona."

"...and physically?"

"Not in this century." She smirked. "But ask again in two."

The girl sighed, and her body again collapsed into fabric. Dale nodded. "Thought so." With a glance at the closet door, a mischievous smile crossed her face, as she buried the fuku and wand beneath a pile of blankets.

Out in the bedroom, her boyfriend lounged on the bed in a beautiful evening gown of radiant purple, sipping a full, but sweet red wine. He turned with a start as he heard the closet door open, only to see his lover step out without a stitch on. He jumped, spilling the wine onto his dress. "Dale! How--" However, seeing she was running toward him, he quickly tabled all questions to set the wine on the table. She tackled him off the bed, and answered his unfinished question in a bad French accent: "Hey - it's a kind of a magic!" He rolled his eyes as they kissed, and right there on the scratchy rug, they made love for the first time since the whole mess had begun.

Two hours later, with Trevor cleaned up and dressing, Dale was still busy getting the wine out of her hair, from when it had tipped on the bureau, spilling the sticky manifestation of her boyfriend's sweet-tooth all over her head, and adding to the carpet's many woes. It was only when she felt she had enough of it out to be confident she wouldn't have to figure out how a buzz cut suited her that she remembered that having a literal magic wand at her disposal might have resolved the situation much more cleanly. It was, moreover, no sooner she'd had this thought than that said wand appeared in front of the bathroom sink.

She picked up the wand and held it in front of her, somewhere between having forgotten and no longer caring that it was sentient and she, naked. "So all I have to do is think of you?"

"Basically, yeah. Imprinting. Powerful witch. Et cetera."

"And Kyle?"

"You mean the fuku? I'll summon it right now."

"Um... some underwear first."

It seemed to appear on her almost before she got the words out. At the same time, the fuku flowed out of the wand before her, and she threw it on.

"Dammit - I hope you know you're not getting that outfit back."

"So you did go out after all?"

"Of course I did! Even if I've got to be a woman, at least I'd like to get some fresh air once in a while."

Something about this sentence caused Dale's face to erupt into a huge Cheshire grin. "You know, I think you're onto something."

"What? What are you talking about?"

She lifted her bare feet a few inches from the floor, and silently phased through the bathroom door. On the other side was her beautiful boyfriend, having put on a glittering silver dress to replace the stained one, sleeveless as it wrapped fully around his shoulders, the folds of the skirt exposing his toned legs. He was tying up the scarlet heels he had custom-ordered to fit his not gargantuan, but still quite male feet. Slowly, silently she floated toward him, waiting for the exact moment as he finished fastening them. And when that moment came, she grabbed him.

"Dale?" She lifted him off the ground, and before he could even react, outside the outer wall. The two of them passed over the city streets, a glamour the wand had set up with only Dale's half-wish keeping them from prying eyes, one of the many half-desired spells the witch would cast that night. Holding him by his firm chest, Dale carried the two of them higher and higher, until they could see the whole city beneath them, and further. Soon they had breached the highest clouds, to the point that only a conjured air current allowed them to breathe, before Dale stopped.

Dale whispered in her boyfriend's ear. "Trevor, do you trust me?"

"Of course."

With a soft smile, she dropped him without warning. His dress flipping up in the wind, he turned, his face expressionless as he tumbled to certain death. He reached out to her, and she only looked down in satisfaction as he fell. As they became miniscule specks to one another, she finally reached out her hand, and it was as though the
world had stopped around Trevor; there was no jolt at all for the sudden halt to which his fall came.

The thread slowly tightened between them, pulling Trevor up through the clouds, until they faced one another, level, a hundred feet apart. A tender smile came over Trevor's face as they circled one another, drawing ever closer in the air. Under the illumination of the stars above, and beneath the clouds, the city below, they gazed into each other's eyes as they came close enough to join hands. Far above the Earth, they kissed in a tight embrace.

They again let go of each other, Trevor now standing on a fixed spot in the air as Dale held out the wand. Beneath them, the earth itself vanished, and the stars above. All that was left was a void, filled with light from all directions, but an ethereal light that only lit them, allowing no shadow or reflection. They could breathe, and hear sound, but could both feel that what they were breathing was not air.

Only a single, tiny star of white punctuated the impossible curtain around them, and their eyes naturally drawn to it. Despite the difficulty in frame of reference, it was not long before they realized they themselves were falling into the star, a falling Dale soon realized she was powerless to stop. "Kyle? Wand? Any help?" No answer, from either.

She fell into Trevor's arms, and saw that the serene smile had not left his face. Nervously, she tried to return it, and over what felt like years, the star grew in their field of view, until it wholly encompased it. Clinging tightly to her lover, and he to her, they were immersed in the light, and finally, the wand that had been Puran spoke to both of them.

"Welcome, former mundanes, to the mouth of the cave."

----

It may interest the reader to know that Mikey had not, in fact, been restored as quickly as the witch had expected. It was true that he knew plenty of mages with more than enough power to fix him, but had fallen out of the habit of making the kind of conversation with his customers that could have caused them to change him back, since he had no mouth. Meanwhile, everyone - including Trevor himself, who'd been quite surprised when his wife had a case nearby some forty years later - had just assumed that if he wanted out, he'd have been able to tell them. After all, he was skilled enough at manipulating drinks and tabs, so it couldn't have been hard to write a note, could it? Ultimately, when the concept of a nightclub had vanished from the mundus, when the failure of the indoor glen built around him that had replaced it led to his reluctant animation for transport, he would admit that they had been right. This did not, however, lessen his irritance at the assumption, or the extremity of the action he ultimately took through the mages he knew still alive and practicing by then - but that would be another story.

Two people who might have asked directly were Caerah and Ciaran (which had always been his name), who had been at the bar with Trevor, since they'd seen the tone of the incident, but they never visited again. This wasn't because they had a grudge against the bar for having transformed them, both having freely gone into "harm's" way, but really just happenstance. No, not only did they not hold a grudge, but they took a vow that very night that neither would return to her old form. Ciaran's job decorating was sufficient now that Caerah was no longer human-sized, so she merely spent her time studying magic, at which she soon far exceeded Ciaran's petty conjurings, and within a decade had begun renting herself out as a mage for hire.

One day, coming home to see Ciaran resting on the sofa, the whim came over her to flit over and shrink her to her own size. Landing on the clothes now strewn about the sofa, she looked around until she came across the wriggling lump under what had been Ciaran's top, and levitated the fabric to find her smiling beauty in a familiar kerchief dress. Caerah took hold of her, and carried her up into the air, what might have been a hundred feet above the floor, where they kissed in midair, flying off into their new lives. Caerah opted never to give her lover wings, or any other means of self-sufficiency, but forever keep her as Ciaran had kept her the first few years after they changed. She didn't mind a bit.

Indeed, about a third of the faeries created that night never went back to their previous form, simply having no reason to, although most took a new form soon; the humanoids that ever went back to their immediate previous form were in the minority, and every one of these had changed sex. Two of the cats had been changed back the next day, according to their wills, but one of the men had not kept a will, trusting his rather literally angelic wife, who had excused herself from Puran's dance, to take care of any situation that might require one. Leaving the floor, he went over to the eagle-winged woman, off sitting with a gay couple they knew.

"Well. I hope you're happy."

The cat rubbed against her legs and purred, eliciting a laugh from her tablemates. She picked up the cat and put it in her lap.

"I'm not changing you back, you realize that, right? Ever!"

The cat purred again, as she petted it. She wasn't sincere at the time, but after a few weeks, she realized she'd already fallen into something of a routine of living alone, treating him as a cat. One evening, she sat down on her bed and patted her lap.

"Here, kitty, here, kitty, here, kiy-kiy-kiy!"

The cat came to her in just the way a "real" cat never, ever would, and leapt into her lap. She began to pet it.

"You know I was kidding about leaving you this way at first, right?"

The cat mewed.

"But you should probably know now I'm really thinking about it - they fired you long ago - so... do you... want to be turned back?"

There was no reply from the cat that she could recognize.

"You must have known they fired you, but you didn't do anything to object." She paused. "You know I'll probably start seeing someone else, right?"

The cat gave what she could only describe as a shrug at that. So it was listening.

"Hmm." She sat for a while that night, stroking him, lost in thought.

Most of the statues, likewise, had been restored within a few days, or at least within the year, with three - or perhaps two - exceptions.

The first had simply made it her will that if such a thing ever happened, her boyfriend, who collected conscious statues, should appraise her and put her on display if he felt it appropriate, for as long as he felt appropriate, and this is precisely what he did. He found the silvered girl's perfectly frozen motions the picture of perfection, just as a good boyfriend should, and as a good collector should, he maintained her perfection for the world to see, for posterity to see, ad aeternam. Eventually, however, the pain of his memories, and the closeness of their subject, became too much to bear, and he would contact her, through a certain fae mage; she only laughed at the attempt, assuring him she was fine, proud, and happy - but maybe check back in another few years.

The second was, of course, the unfortunate girl who had slipped on the discarded clothing, and the third the girl she grabbed. This was an unfortunate choice to finish an unfortunate life, from the day an accident by her six-year-old self had banished her parents to another realm, as far as any scientist could tell, one not supportive of human life, leaving her older sister to raise her. It was unfortunate that the third, the girl she'd grabbed, was one fascinated all her life by the arbitrariness of the world, how quickly one's life could change totally and permanently, shaped by ephemeral, external factors. As such, she had made sure that if any transformation overcame her of a nature that left her unable to express her wishes, that it be known that her wish was to remain in that form absolutely for all time, returning to her previous form if and only if her current was in danger of destruction, or otherwise "had" to be changed, not wanting the nature of her beautiful trap subject to her own desires.

As such, the transformation could have been easily ended if the will of the girl who'd grabbed her said otherwise, but she had no will. She'd tried to write one that, essentially, said that she would absolutely not accept such a thing, but her psi connection broke just as she was uploading it, three times in a row. Likewise, her next of kin, her sister, could have overridden the other girl's desire, but she had never really forgiven her for the (probable) death of their parents, and decided the idea of leaving her a statue for all time seemed eminently reasonable. Therefore, the two girls, their clothes magically laminated, were placed in their clumsy tangle on exhibition at the center of a corridor in a six-dimensional shopping mall, a placard notifying any future owners of "their" desire never, ever to be restored - and if they are not living, there they are indeed still.