"Are you anxious to change back, or do you want to stay small for a bit?" Joe asked the tiny woman sitting in his palm, trying not to stare at her perky breasts too much.
Mary tilted her head, thinking for a moment. "I think I'd like to stay small a little longer, though it is a bit chilly in here!" she glanced down at her erect nipples and back up at Joe with smirk. "Do you think you could grab a tissue or something for me?"
"If you insist," he sighed dramatically, returning her smirk with one of his own. He gently lowered her to the dresser where she clambered out of his hand and stood next to the box of vials, arms wrapped around her torso. Joe located a box of tissues and pulled one out, carefully handing it to Mary who proceeded to fold and wrap it around herself like a tiny toga.
"Well..." she piped, settling to perch on the face of a watch sitting nearby. "What would you like to try, Joe?"
He tore his gaze from miniature Mary to look over his options, flicking through the vials and puzzling over the labels. "Hmm, knowing that magic is real and all these are possible, I don't know how I'll ever choose!"
"Don't overthink it, really. With the 'revert' vial you can always change back and try something else! Just pick one!"
"Speaking of returning to your normal self, maybe I should make that more readily available to you, in case whatever I choose partially incapacitates me!" Joe left the room and Mary could hear his rummaging around in the kitchen before he returned with a shallow bowl. He then took the 'undo' vial and dumped the contents into the bowl, watching in amazement as the vial refilled when he returned it to it's spot in the box. "This way you can try to change back on your own if I... don't have arms or something!"
"No arms?! What are you going to become, a snake, Joe?" Mary didn't want to tell him what to do, but the idea of him turning into a reptile was not very appealing to her.
Joe chuckled at the distaste that had crossed her face at that thought. "No, not a snake, don't worry. I was thinking of trying something small, like you, but a little bit more ... mobile." he watched the relief suffuse her, followed by puzzlement. "Do you want me to tell you or let it be a surprise?"
"Oh what the hell - surprise me!" Mary cheered, bouncing her tiny knees with glee.
Before he selected a vial, Joe dumped the 'undo' potion into the bowl another time. "Just in case we need two doses to revert ourselves." Then he pulled a vial from the animal section of the box, careful to hide the label from Mary. "Bottoms up!" he said before tossing the entire contents back.
"Ooo! The whole thing!" Mary yelped, knowing he'd turn into much more of an animal than she had. 'I wonder if he'll retain his human thoughts?' she wondered with a touch of worry.
Joe backed up and sat on the bed like Mary had, waiting for the changes to start. He been so excited to try something himself that he hadn't even thought of only drinking a portion of the vial. As a sudden shudder wracked his frame he knew it was beginning. He closed his eyes for a second, trying to focus on the sensations assaulting him.
Mary yelled across the open space in her tiny voice "It felt like a pressure from all sides was compressing me as I shrank! Is that what you're feeling?"
Frowning slightly, he shook his head. "Pressure? No, not really. In fact, I feel something like the opposite - I feel lighter and lighter, like gravity is weighing on me less and less." His voice had a song-like nature to it all of a sudden, like he was singing his words.
"Well you're definitely getting smaller!" Mary called.
Joe's eyes popped open and rounded as he took in the enormous room around him. He too had shrunk until he was sitting on the bed inside a pile of his own clothes, maybe only a foot or so tall at this point. His legs and arms were tingling, but he couldn't see if anything was happening to him beneath the heaping fabric. It felt like tiny pin-pricks were lifting the hairs on his arms, something pushing out and catching against the cotton fibers of his shirt. Meanwhile his feet were cramping, the bones shifting and grinding but without any pain. Still rapidly shrinking, Joe allowed the fabric to cover him completely, ducking his head inside until he was surrounded by the tent of his white shirt.
"Where'd you go, Joe? What's happening over there?!" Mary couldn't contain her curiosity.
Beneath the fabric Joe was undergoing some major changes, so much so that when he tried to reassure Mary that all was fine, all that came out was a muffled trill of birdsong. His dark brown hair had thickened into feathers and darkened to black, standing up in a crest somewhat smooshed by the fabric above him. More feathers had pushed out, the black spreading down over his neck and shoulders before changing to bright blue plumage everywhere else. As he watched, long blue and black flight feathers grew on his arms, concealing his changing hands as the bone reshaped into wings. His legs darkened, black scales covering them even as they thinned to bird-like proportions, his feet already reformed into the tiny talons of a blue jay. A flutter near his butt signaled the arrival of his tail feathers, and he twisted his head easily to look back over his shoulder as they pushed out and lengthened.
All that was left of Joe's humanity was his face, but since he'd drunk the entire vial, that too was quickly changing. His lips darkened, pushing out with his nose to form a pointed black beak as his eyes rounded and grew, the irises darkening and the whites disappearing as tiny black feathers covered the last bits of pale skin.
Fluffling and squirming, Joe the Stellar's Jay emerged from his clothing and proceeded to preen his feathers back into place before hopping to the edge of the bed and training a glossy eye on Mary who now stood at the edge of the dresser. He stretched out his wings and gave them a few experimental flaps before launching into flight and quickly circling the room, executing quick flips and turns with the natural grace of a born bird!
Mary was flabbergasted. A bird! Joe was FLYING around her bedroom as a blue jay!!