Didoozy landed on something soft but pokey. Not like a stick kind of pokey, more like an elbow. Didoozy scrambled to her feet hoping that all of the small grunts of pain had come from only her. Was someone already hiding here? Silverbush leaves were thick about her, and she tried to resist the urge to feel about for the suspiciously body like substance she had just been touching.

The silverbush was big enough that Didoozy was able to rock back on her heals, bump into a few more branches and still not stick herself out of the bush's camouflaging edges in any direction. Another person could definitely be hiding within this bush's shiny depths.

The problem with silverbush was that the leaves were so small and dense that it made looking out at what was chasing you nearly impossible. It was even harder to find a comrade or enemy within its branches without just grasping at random body parts. The tiny leave, shaped like little spades, brushed against her with a shivery tickle every time she moved.

Didoozy decided curiosity was the better part of hiding and reached out, grasping blindly until she felt something fleshy with just a bit of give. She pulled the flesh thing closer until through the dense silver foliage she saw first a foot then a pale meaty calf. She had to drag the person into her bubble of leaf disruption to see them and even then the shimmering leaves made the skin of the creature appear sort of translucent and sickly. Or maybe they were ill… or dead?

The person, if it was in fact a person, was too warm to be dead; especially laid out in the shade of a silverbush. Plus the leg was moving, pulling against her rough handling. A squeak and a gasp came from the leaves beyond Didoozy's leaf bubble and the leg pulled from her grasp.

"Who are you?" Didoozy asked in common. Mayhap she would get lucky and it would just be an over-sized very pale Kin. She had heard of Kin with no color to their skin, this might be one of them. It would be better than the alternative; that the pale leg belonged to a Tall.

"Who are you?" a voice that sounded almost familiar responded from beyond the leaves’ shine.

"Didoozy, who are you?" Didoozy asked again. The leaves rustled and Didoozy felt herself being lifted from the bush bodily, two dark strong hands with one too few digits and one too many knuckles pulled her up by the tender tissue under her armpits. So much for Talls hating silverbush, then again the hands that held her were beginning to develop tiny round sores. This might just be a very stubborn Tall; it would explain all the dramatics just to catch her.

And the Tall had caught her, her feet dangling a good half meter above the ground. Didoozy felt her frustration overflow, this was getting annoying. She leaned down and sunk her teeth into one of the sore riddled hands that held her. She could feel a couple of what must be blisters pop against her teeth. She ignored the flavorless fluid and bit harder until a new taste sprang forth, something earthy with thick metallic tones.

"Who are you?" the almost familiar voice asked again from somewhere within the silverbush.

"Who is your friend?" the Tall asked through gritted teeth as she tried to shake Didoozy free of her hand without dropping her. Her voice was deep and a bit husky, as if it had gone too long without use.

"N'n mmm fwenn," Didoozy mumbled unintelligibly into the Tall's skin. She was not opening her mouth for anything; not unless the Tall dropped her.

"Who is your friend?" the voice from the silverbush asked, it was deeper this time and closer. The person with the pale skin was approaching; they must be a Tall then, no Kin would willingly get closer to a Tall. Why was the pale Tall talking so strangely though? Didoozy pondered the strange speech patterns while grinding her teeth, chewing into the dark Tall’s hand with determination.

The woman holding her finally gave in and threw her to the ground, letting some of her skin be taken with Didoozy's insistent bite. She hadn't managed to chew a finger off but the chunk of flesh she pulled from inside her mouth was substantial enough to provoke a smile of satisfaction from Didoozy.

The injured Tall whispered something awful and painful in a language that should not be allowed, her injured hand swiping a thin trail of blood across her bicep. Didoozy felt her body snap backwards against the ground, her arms and legs spread prostrate.

Talls and their sneaky cheating magics. It wasn't fair that they had a way to cheat at every turn. Not only were they bigger but they had all the secrets, all the things that made them unstoppable. It was infuriating how small and powerless she felt, able to shift only her eyes, she couldn’t even open her mouth to curse the cheating woman out.

The Silverbush shifted and rippled. A leg, long and pale emerged followed by a shadowed face, eyes larger even than a Kins’ and filled with the colors of an orchard during harvesting: greens and oranges, pinks, purples and the palest of yellows.

The face and body were not right, even from her odd vantage on the ground Didoozy was certain her eyes were deceiving her. The stranger was all the wrong proportions, her legs different lengths, her arms wavery in a way rigid bone did not allow.

Didoozy blinked hard. The pale naked female was shifting, stretching and darkening. Her opalescent skin swirled dark dollops of color like bark tea in milk until it finally settled on a soft brown. The limbs contracted and went rigid, joints fully defining themselves, skin contracting before loosening once more. The chaotic shifting made Didoozy’s stomach twist and she considered closing her eyes but the form settled before she had too.

The girl was standing no taller than Didoozy when she was not pinned to the ground, her Kin like ears poking above dark brown hair, the fur caramel and short over the rounded shells of each ear. Her eyes had paled and stabilized into a rich hazel, large and round like Didoozy’s own. She looked too much like Didoozy, she was even missing a tail, the only thing that marked her as not being a natural born Kin.

The experience of looking at someone who looked almost exactly like her was starting to mess with Didoozy’s mind when the girl suddenly shuddered and shifted, her skin rippling like water disrupted by a skipping stone.

Her limbs stretched, fingers elongating, thumb shifting backwards on her palms, one finger fading into the rest of her flesh, each remaining finger growing an extra knuckle. Her ears retracted, replaced by hairless pointed shell shapes that sat low near the top of the jaw. Thin white horns sprouted in front of where the Kin style ears had been and the nose flattened and broadened. The final touch was the hair retracting, mimicking the Tall woman's shaved head.

As the strange chaos of her flesh stilled Didoozy had to twist her eyes back to the Tall she had bitten, just to double check there were still two of them. The shapeshifter had morphed herself into the mirror image of the beautiful Tall that had chased Didoozy off an airship.

Didoozy glanced back at the naked and shoeless shapeshifter. It was strange but her lack of shoes was the most interesting thing about her right now. The shifter had created the strangest feet. Didoozy thought back to when the shifter had mimicked her own form, the feet had seemed right then, even with Didoozy having boots on and her feet covered. Mayhap the shifter did not need to see the details to know a species' shape, that seemed useful. Though not as useful as being able to make clothes.

Didoozy glanced back and forth between the Tall's shiny platform boots and the shifters strange feet. Mayhap the Tall was not wearing platform boots at all, she might be wearing boots designed for the two toed hooves the shapeshifter was now perched atop.

Didoozy's observations were interrupted by the rippling of the shifters skin as she began to change once more her body contracting. This third time was easier to watch, as if Didoozy's mind was slowly adjusting to the chaos of what she was witnessing... it hadn't seemed like something one could get used to the first time she had watched it happen.

The next time the girl was static she had split the difference, a little too tall to be a Kin, too short to be a Tall. Her hair was a dark brown halo of curls, her eyes smaller than a Kin’s but just as colorful as when she first appeared. Her ears were fleshy and low on her head like the Tall’s but rounded like Didoozy’s own.

The effect was strange. She looked almost real yet strangely impossible at the same time. If Didoozy had not watched her shift and saw her in the Tall uniform she could probably mistake her for one of them… probably. But she had never heard of a Tall that could shift their shape like that, not without tattoos which the girl was completely lacking.

‘Yeah, that the weirdest part,’ Didoozy realized with a start. Not once in all of her form changing had the stranger’s skin born a single Tall tattoo.

Didoozy could not pin down a good guess at the girl’s age. She sort of looked almost full-grown and yet something about her screamed a kind of innocence only found in the very, very young. Didoozy had never heard of a young Tall. There were theories that they had to have young but no one had ever been able to confirm the existence of a any Tall children.

"Are you all right?" Didoozy called out from her prostrate state on the lumpy ground. She wished the rock digging into her hip would disappear. The appearance of a random shape changing child was a nice distraction, but she could not completely ignore the stone's pointy parts.

Didoozy twisted her eyes to a painful angle to search out the Tall's face. Did she recognize the girl? Was she distracted by her as well? Was that why Didoozy had been able to speak? Was it possible her spell might completely fail if she were distracted enough?

"Are you? Alright that is?" the Tall asked when the girl did not answer or parrot back Didoozy's last question. ‘Oh yes, you are interested,’ Didoozy thought triumphantly, did that mean the Tall didn’t have any idea who the girl was either?

"Alright. Are you?" the girl asked, her voice halting and staggering over each word. Didoozy tried not to give herself a headache as she darted her eyes to their farthest edges trying to catch every facial expression and twitch on both of their faces. There had to be a way out of this damned spell.

"What's your name? Are you new to the area?" Didoozy asked the girl in a conversational tone.

"Name? Didoozy name?" the girl asked. The Tall was scowling; maybe Didoozy should have left the talking to her. She tried to twist her eyes lower so that she could see the damage her teeth had inflicted on her stubborn pursuer. Her head ached and a spike of pain lanced behind her eyes. Trying to peer through her own cheek may not have been a great idea.

"She is Didoozy?" the Tall asked, gesturing at Didoozy with her less injured hand.

"She is?" the girl asked gesturing at Didoozy as well, "She is Didoozy?"

"Fine, but who are you?" The Tall asked.

"Who are you?" the girl parroted.

The Tall's face contorted in frustration, mayhap she was getting distracted. Didoozy fought to raise her hand off the ground. There was nearly a slight give but nothing that would count as actual movement.

"Yeah! Who are you?" Didoozy yelled at the top of her lungs, trying to startle the Tall.

The Tall barely glanced at her. Instead she focused on the strange girl, taking half a step closer to the stranger. “I am Rain, who are you?”

Didoozy tried to scowl but only her lips moved. She did not like knowing the names of Talls; it was easier when they didn’t have names.

"I am... I..." the girl said, her delicate features contorted with focus, "I am... who am I?" each part of her question staggered, as if stringing the words together confused her.

"You can be whoever you want," Didoozy yelled from the ground. This time she was able to lift her hand the tiniest bit; the press of pebbles lessening for a moment.

"Be silent halfling," the Tall snapped, glaring down at her. Didoozy ignored the slur but kept quiet while Rain glowered at her. 'The Tall' Didoozy corrected her own thoughts, this was no time to go acknowledging names. 

The Tall’s scowl eased in to a neutral frown as she turned her attention back to the shifter, "not you, you do not need to be silent. From you I just need to know who you are. If you are on the list of known persons this is all over and done with before it even begins. But I need to know who you are."

Didoozy prepared to pull against the spell's hold once more with the Tall’s attention back on the young shapeshifter. 

"Who I am?" the girl asked with an innocent giggle. The laughter was like a toddler’s, a melody only the newest forms of life could produce. The sound pulled at the memories buried in Didoozy's mind. The things she kept locked deep within, in dark and forgotten places. She wouldn’t look… but it didn’t matter. The sound of the girl’s laughter had already opened doors that were supposed to stay closed.

She tried to hold back the tears but it was only a moment before her body was wracked with sobs, the jerking painful as she unintentionally fought against the spell’s restraints. Her sinuses began to fill, her eyes streaming rivulets of salty tears that pooled in her hair. She felt like she would choke on her own tongue if the Tall didn't set her free soon.

Mayhap the Tall had similar feelings about Didoozy's theatrics. She released her spell with a touch to the tattoo on her bicep. Didoozy felt her freedom as a weight lifted off her chest and extremities. She rolled to her stomach; lifting herself onto her hands and knees she sobbed her grief onto the jagged rocks that blurred through her tears. It was the kind of weeping that was reminiscent of vomiting in its violence.

She did not let herself see the memories that had been loosed, the feelings were already too much; she could not bear to see their faces or hear their voices. She hid inside her mind, letting the pain spill from her unexamined. If she was patient it would stop soon, leaving behind a wrung out feeling of exhaustion and a dull headache.

When the tears finally slowed Didoozy became aware of the quiet. The other two women had fallen silent, watching her despair with drastically different expressions. The shapeshifter looked confused and concerned, one small hand outstretched towards Didoozy as if she might be able to offer some aid.

The Tall was frowning, her arms crossed. She looked bored and irritated, as if Didoozy’s pain was a poorly performed play she was being forced to suffer. One of the Tall’s fingers was tapping the tattoo on her forearm, a blade… the threat was clear; Didoozy was still caught spellbound or not. 

Didoozy plastered a smile across her face and said "with a laugh that sweet she must be merry." She sat back onto her haunches as she spoke, settling into a posture that was meant to scream: I have no intention of running. If Didoozy could convince herself she had given up on running mayhap the Tall would believe it too. She focused her attention on the newcomer, ignoring the Tall's cold gaze.

"I am Merry?" the girl asked Didoozy then turned to the Tall and proclaimed proudly, "I am Merry."

Didoozy wished she could take it back for a moment. But then the moment was over and she had named someone. The thrill was deep and resounding. She had named this girl. She had marked her. Mayhap she even owed her... she didn't like having debts. How could she repay the girl for this thrill of naming?

‘I'll just keep her safe from the Tall,’ Didoozy reassured herself. That would repay the debt, and protect her investment... just in case naming her made her Didoozy's now.