While Selena and the basketball team had fun with the Ring of Embraces in the school gym, Dani Romero-Marquez and Vivi Faye raced home to relieve Morgana from her harrowing duty of forcing open the magical gate to Japan. The three of them would take two-hour turns performing the ritual until the student exchange occurred at 5:30 AM tomorrow.
Soon, the girls reached Grimm Street and the unearthly storefront of Morgana's Services for the Strange came into view. Dani and Vivi charged through the door, across the main store, and into the back room. They found Morgana standing in front of a fading section of wall surrounded by magical sigils, her fingers pressed to her temples. The witch looked worn out. She had dark bags under her eyes, and her face was almost as pale as a vampire's.
Morgana smiled weakly at her apprentices. "Hi, girls. Believe me, I could really use your help right about now."
Dani's cat ears stiffened as she beheld Morgana's exhausted face. "ˇSanto cielo, Morgana! You look malísimo!"
"You okay, Mom?" asked Vivi, her face full of concern.
"Oh, I'm fine," Morgana sighed. "Just outrageously tired. Your turn, Vivi."
Vivi stepped into the spot where her mother had been standing. She helt her fingers to her temples and began to concentrate on willing away the stone wall and warping the distance between her mother's shop and Kyūri-sensei's sumo heya. She pushed aside her own doubts, reminding herself that, as a budding witch, her will was law in the universe. Time and space would bow to her whims. She smiled as the wall faded further, revealing a clearer view of Kyūri-sensei's cherry trees.
As Vivi worked her magic, Morgana glanced at Dani's arms sticking out from the sleeves of her T-shirt. The cat-like witch's caramel-colored forearms were now blanketed by a generous layer of black hairs. "I see you had fun at the sleepover with werehyenas and the vampires," Morgana chuckled. "I'd recognize the effects of my hair chews anywhere."
"Sí, I used a few," Dani said, somewhat embarrassedly. "It isn't that I have a fetish for being velludo, precisely. I was hoping that they'd give me fur to move my catgirl transformation further along, but it turns out that body hair and fur aren't the same thing."
Morgana chuckled again as she ruffled Dani's cat ears. "Indeed they aren't. To grow fur, you'll have to apply the animal transformation salve again and concentrate on the changes you want to make. Don't worry, I've found being hairy often assists in growing fur, feathers, or scales. But that's for another day. Come, you can help me run the front shop."