Kat took a deep breath, and sat on the arm of the sofa. She motioned for Dan to get comfortable. Dan scuttled a bit, settling down.
"So, I'm a witch."
"You don't say?"
"Can it, twerp. I'm a witch, because Mom's a witch, and this is a witch family."
Kat looked at Dan, apparently torn between irritation at having to infodump for him like this, and genuine interest in the topic. Dan sighed, and waved a claw.
"Hold up, pause for a second."
Kat looked exasperated.
"Oh, God, Dan, surely I haven't lost you already, even you're not-"
"Yeah, yeah, even I'm not that dumb. That's exactly what I mean: can we get along? Like, for the next few minutes, can we both pretend we don't hate each other's guts?"
Kat looked more than a little flummoxed.
"Uh...huh?"
"Just...give me the facts, with minimal amount of most-loathed-sibling BS, and I'll try to be as, I don't know, concise in my questions as I can be so you can get back to your party."
Kat looked taken aback, but she nodded.
"Er...alright. Um. As I was saying...We're a witch family. All witches are women..."
She looked Dan straight in the eyes.
"...in our tradition."
Dan's eyebrows raised.
"I take it there are...others?"
"Tons. From all over the world. Male, Female...I read a thing for my studies about a witch tradition in what's now Iraq that only favored gender non-binary people, dating back to Ancient Sumer."
"Weird...Wait, so if we were from another tradition, I could be a witch too?" Dan asked with obvious disappointment, "...or wizard or warlock or whatever?"
Kat shrugged.
"Any of the terms are fine; the terms aren't applied with anything like consistency. And yeah, you could have been a witch if our family's magic had been different."
"I feel cheated, frankly..." said Dan, clicking his claws in irritation. "You get magic, I get nothing!"
Kat looked up at the ceiling, suddenly uncomfortable.
"Well...not...exactly. You do get something."
"Yes, I get to be a lobster," Dan said bitterly.
"Well, yeah, it's your spirit animal. Or totem, or genius, depending on your preference of terms. But...that's...ugh."
Kat sighed, and leaned forward.
"Ok, so, our tradition seems to have come from Wales. Remember Gramma saying she still had cousins in Powys?"
"Right...and?"
"There are two halves of the family. The women in our family can cast spells. The men can change shape."
Dan looked at her, then at his claws, then back at her.
"So...I can do this myself...?"
"With practice. It's always easier if a witch enchants you first. Familial custom says that as your sibling, I'm obliged to do that for you. Otherwise, you'd start changing on your own when YOU turned 18..."
"I'm beginning to wish I had..."
"...and it would have been excruciating," Kat finished smugly.
Dan blanched.
"Huh?"
"Ever seen the werewolf movies, where they do stuff like tear their skin off to change and such? Have you noticed that your changes haven't hurt much at all? Get you out of breath, maybe, but not 'my body is changing species' level pain?"
"Ulp...ok. Point made. Er...thanks, I guess?"
Kat looked momentarily even more uncomfortable with his thanks than she had before. Dan cocked his head slightly.
"Why was that so hard to tell me?"
"It wasn't hard! I just didn't want you to have a special thing, damn it! You're such a little dickwaffle, I wanted to be able to lord it over you with my magic, damn it!" said Kat testily.
Dan looked to his claws, then to his sister again. He spoke slowly, almost confused.
"Do...you hear yourself?"
Kat looked momentarily ashamed.
"Alright. Point taken. Bad act, bad motive, bad all around."
Dan clicked his claws testily.
"And putting that other...that lobster out, that was just tasteless."
"No, tasteless was not telling you that you needed to eat it for the energy, you must be exhausted."
Dan blinked.
"Er...um. Actually, I did eat it..."
Kat leaned her head back and cackled.
"HA! You really are a lobster at heart - or did you not know they were cannibalistic?"
"...I do now."
"BWAHAHA!"