Jakes eye's widened at the sight. “Whoa,” he whispered. “You actually changed him. Uh, her.”
“You could see it this time?” Zelda asked.
“Yeah, I could,” Jake nodded. “What's different this time? Is it because I knew you were gonna change him before it started? Or was it because he- uh, she, is family? Or were you doing something to let me remember?”
“If I was, I wasn't doing it consciously.” She gave it some thought. “Maybe it's because I was holding your hand while it happened? We can try it out more when we go out tomorrow, maybe try to narrow it down.”
“...You're serious about this, aren't you?”
Zelda grinned. “Why wouldn't I be?”
Jake opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. “Well, I am glad Axel seems to be enjoying hims- herself, again. And that the house is so clean. It feels like an improvement all around.”
“Yep.” She nodded. “So, how about one for you, then?”
Jake stammered halfway through a word, when he was interrupted.
“Hey,” Pablo called, holding up his controller. “Do one of you guys want a round here?”
“Sure!” Jake said hastily, rushing over to pick up the controller.
Zelda sighed and shook her head. Well, she'd get through to him eventually.
----
The evening went on uneventfully. The two other friends Jake had invited, Anthony and Bert, both had to cancel at the last minute, one due to “mandatory overtime” another due to sudden family issues that Jake felt no need to pry into, leaving the four friends alone to play, chat, and eat (the two that were still alive in the traditional sense, at least). Zelda didn't talk with Jake about the pendant for the rest of the evening, though she did, out of curiosity, quietly attempt to use it to change one of the video game characters, and wasn't too surprised to see that it, naturally would only work on an actual human being.
After a good night's sleep, (or sleep mode, in XL's case, while Zelda simply let herself “zone out” in a simulation of sleep,) and breakfast for those that ate, the four had agreed to take a trip to the local mall to pick up a new game. But there was a small issue of transportation.
“Aw, come on,” Jake groaned. “None of you would like to hitch a ride with me?”
Pablo shrugged. “I'm just fine flying.”
“I'm really in the mood to spread my wings for a bit.,” Zelda added.
“I'd rather fly, too,” XL said, before her screen “eyes” lit up in the shape of a pair of exclamation points. “Oh, I've got an idea! You could fly with me!” Four metal cuffs emerged from the back of her arms and legs. “I've only got the most basic parts of this mod ready, so it wouldn't be a comfortable flight, but I promise it would be a safe one.”
“...No thank you.”
“You know,” Zelda slid up beside him, “I might be able to use some of my magic connections to let you fly with us...”
“I'm not ready for that yet,” he muttered. “Look, I just wanted to be able to shoot the breeze and listen to some tunes with someone on the drive over, that's all.”
“Eh, I can do that,” Zelda said.
He gave her a long, hard look. “...Do you promise not to try to sell me on that magic on the way over?”
“Yeah, I won't bring it up.” She nodded. She had some other ideas for tests in mind.
After getting in Jake's car (with a little difficulty due to the seats not being made with her wings in mind,) and getting out of the driveway, Zelda looked for a target. She found one at the corner of the suburban block, an old woman was tending her garden.
“Hey Jake, do you see that little old lady?”
“Maddy Smith?” He said, slowing down as his car neared the corner. “Yeah, what about her?”
“I'm gonna change her.”
Jake glanced back at Zelda through the rear-view mirror. “Uh, why?”
And with that acknowledgment, Zelda let the pendant's magic loose. The woman's skin rapidly turned from pale and sagging, to black and firm, her body becoming longer and thinner, her arms and legs doing the same, each limb now ending in little claws. Her nose and mouth joined together into a single, long, curling proboscis, while above each eye, a little antenna rose up, bobbing cutely. A second set of arms grew beneath the woman's first as her clothing dissipated, each one seemingly as dexterous as the originals. From the woman's back, four wings unfurled, each with dozens of patches of deep orange separated by lines of black. She fluttered them gently, rising off the ground as if by magic.
The new butterfly woman continued to tend to her garden without a care in the world.
“so,” Zelda said, beaming, “What do you think of the new Mrs. Smith?”
Jake blinked back at her in the rear-view mirror. “The new Mrs...? Wait, are you telling me you changed her too? When?”
The car began to move again, pulling out of sight of the butterfly. “Just now. I just got done telling you I would change her.”
“I didn't hear that... Woo boy, this'll take a lot to get used to.”
That confirmed to Zelda it wasn't knowing beforehand that someone would change that had let Jake remember how Axel/XL had been before. She thought about changing his father or mother next, to test if the memory was due to Axel being his brother, but she quickly realized that she'd never seen Jake's mother, and Jake's father was out of town. She wasn't sure if the pendant's magic was limited by distance, but she felt like waiting until later to test that.
-----
“Pablo and Axel said they’d wait for us by the east fountain, right?” Zelda asked as she and Jake walked through the parking lot toward the mall entrance.
“Yeah, they probably got here ahead of us, and- oh!” Zelda stopped as she saw a man sitting under a tree planted on a small island of grass in the parking lot, his clothes tattered and filthy, and his gray beard raggedy, with a sign in his lap, asking for money or food. She reached for the pockets on her belt loop to get some money, but didn’t have time before she also noticed a female police officer heading the man’s way.
Then she remembered she had another method of solving this.
Not only that, she could run a few tests while doing it.
“Hey Jake, could you hold my hand for a second?”
Jake gave her a confused glance, but held out his hand anyway. “Uh, sure…”
She held his hand tightly, and focused on the idea of the man becoming another ice golem like her, a little sister for her, around six. She’d always wanted a little sister. And maybe, with a change of histo-ry, she could have even more than that…
But unlike before, the man showed no signs of change at all.
Zelda blinked, and pointed at the man with her other hand. “Change him… now!” She whispered.
“Change him?” Jake looked at her. “He still looks human. Did you make him an angel in disguise?”
She shook her head. “No… it’s not working.”
“Wait.” Jake let go of her hand. “What were you trying, there?”
“I … I wanted to see if I could turn that homeless guy into my little sister… Young enough that to have him, my mother would have survived the cancer that killed her.” She sighed. “I had a feeling it wouldn’t work like that, but, it’s worth a shot.”
“Well…” Jake put a hand to his chin. “Maybe that didn’t work because it required your mom to have still been alive. You could try turning him into some kind of doctor with healing magic, which he used to heal your mom," Jake suggested.
"Wait, now you're encouraging me to change him?"
"I’m still having a hard time taking this in, but it'd probably be a good thing for both of you," Jake said. "Go on, give it a try."
Taking Jake's hand again, she focused on the homeless man, and imagined his new changes in history, particularly the man saving her mother's life. But once again, nothing happened.
By this point, the police officer had reached the man, and was motioning for him to move. Zelda shook her head and sighed.
The man suddenly started to change, white feathers poking out from his face and upper arms, their pris-tine appearance a sharp contrast to his filthy clothes. Speaking of those, they were quick to disappear, save for a velcro band around his arm to hold his wallet and other belongings, revealing a torso already coated in more white feathers.
Jake's face lit up. "Hey! I think it's working!"
Zelda just kept watching as the changes progressed, the man’s gaunt body gained mass, bringing him back to a healthy size. The man’s hands and feet alike both grew pale yellow scales, while little claws stretched through the fingers and toes in place of nails, his toes specifically growing longer and splaying wide, the little toe on each foot moving back. His nose seemed to shrink back as his mouth stretched out, teeth vanishing as he grew a short, conical beak. His ears, too, shrank away into little more than holes in the sides of his head. Finally, a set of tail feathers and brilliant white wings.
The officer, meanwhile, suddenly stood up straight, as grey, feathery wings grew out behind her. Her shoes vanished, as her hands and feet both became longer and thinner, growing black scales as the nails became talons. Her clothes unraveled as well, the feathers covering her form an unassuming grey and black, while the remaining fabric reformed into just a vest and belt to hold her badge and equipment.
In a blur, the man shifted from sitting down with his sign, to standing upright, checking the time on his phone. After a few moments, the dove man put away his phone, flapped his wings, and lifted off. The officer, meanwhile simply stood around, keeping watch.
“That was great!” Jake cheered. “It actually worked!”
Zelda sighed. “It didn’t.”
Jake blinked. “But he just changed right in front of us. And if you can change people’s pasts, then that means he was around to help your mother, right?”
Her head hung low. “…It only happened after I consciously chose not to make him saving mom’s life part of his ‘backstory.’”
“Oh…”
She shrugged. “On the plus side, the fact that you remember this means that you touching me while I change someone means you’ll remember it too.”
“Huh, I didn’t think about that. Good to know, I guess.” He looked back at the police officer. “So, why didn’t her head change?”
“I turned her into a siren, the oldest depictions of them were birds with women’s heads.”
“Okay. Why?”
“I probably won’t be able to make a world where police aren’t needed, but I can at least give them some non-lethal methods of capturing criminals.” She looked back toward the officer. “I also wanted to test how much it can control a person’s future. In a little bit, she should stretch, right leg, left leg, right arm, left arm, right wing, left wing, in that order. Not long after, a shoplifter will run out, and she’ll sing to stop him.”
Jake watched, curious to see if it would really play out as she said.