"Let's see, shift your arms back to their original shape first. Now that you have some basic understanding of anatomy it should proceed better than yesterday," Lawson orders. You are actually relieved at this point, having been nervous that Lawson would change you even more and leave you in worse shape than before. Closing your eyes, you concentrate on the proportions of your hands, trying to remember what it felt like when Lawson changed them for you. Up to this point you have acted largely on instinct, but you do recall the sketches which you studied that morning, and they help to adjust your bone length and thickness. However, you also find yourself recalling details you can't remember reading, like the average size of a female human's hand versus that of a male, the width of the wrist, and so on. Even though you can't pinpoint the source of the information, you gladly utilize it in attempting to return your arms to normal. When you open your eyes, you gladly discover that your arms have returned to their normal size and length...but with one small problem: they are still covered in black hair.
"Better, but you still have a ways to go," Lawson nods, scrutinizing your handiwork. "This time don't forget to adjust the skin and the hair." Frowning, you try again, and while you do manage to make your hands look more like their original form this time, you suddenly feel exhausted at the effort and end up sitting on the ground, panting. "Not very efficient use of energy, though," Lawson criticizes, looking down at you. Suddenly, the sensation of exhaustion seems to alleviate a bit, and you see Lawson concentrating. "There, that should be enough magic energy for you for now, let's try it again." You groan, but get up and proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon altering various parts of your body to match that of a gorilla, or as close as you can come.
**********
"Have you finished memorizing that volume on primate behavior?" Lawson asks as he walks around the stump on which you are seated.
"Yes, although I don't know what good it will do me to know the finer points of orangutan mating calls," you reply irritatedly, your voice oddly unfamiliar to yourself. Of course, that was due to the simple fact that you were currently in the form of a chimpanzee. You had mastered shifting into every primate close to a human in size to a point which met with Lawson's approval over the past two weeks, and the process was driving you to distraction. If you had to be a familiar, why couldn't you be able to shift into something cool, like a gryphon or a pegasus? Even being a fox would be preferable to this. At least you had figured out how to maintain a human voicebox throughout each shift so that you could speak, even if your voice did sound like it belonged to a cartoon.
The lessons did not end with the loss of daylight, however. Every evening, Lawson would personally shift part of you into some other form to teach you the way magic moved throughout your body. Surprisingly, giving you a bird's beak was far less annoying than when he gave you eight eyes like a spider. You weren't sure what was worse, the tendency to walk into objects or the motion sickness. Nevertheless, even though you were weirded out by this strange new world and the circumstances you found yourself in, you could not bring yourself to hate Lawson for dumping you here. He worked twice as hard as you, both teaching you and caring for the house, as well as carrying on his own studies. In fact, you were not sure when, if ever, he slept.
"Yes, I think it's time," Lawson mutters to himself, and you catch a hint of a thought. Over the two weeks, you had also begun to learn to communicate with Lawson mentally, but while he found it relatively easy to dig into your thoughts, you could only get a general sense of what Lawson was thinking, even when he concentrated on sending his thoughts to you. This time, the sensation you received could only be described as "sink or swim." Before you can ponder the meaning, Lawson extends his hand, his palm facing you, and recites a quick incantation. A strange light rises around you, and then a flash.
As you blink in confusion, you feel a thought sent from Lawson: "Observe...blend in...learn." Looking around, to your shock, you find yourself no longer in the clearing, but somewhere unfamiliar...