The next thing he knew, there was a knock at the door. Then another, more worried-sounding knock. Then, the sound of a muffled voice that he recognized immediately, even in his half-awake state. "Hi, Tim," Mindy was saying, "it's me. I just wanted to make sure you were alright after everything that happened last night. Are you in?"
Tim had no time to try to push himself up off the floor, or even to fully remember why he was lying down face-first on the carpet, before Mindy realized that his door was still unlocked. He could hear the squealing of the door on its hinges, and then a gasp. "Oh my god! Tim!"
And then he was being heaved back into an upright position. He squinted in the broad daylight that was now streaming in through the window - it had to be close to noon by now. There, holding him up by his branches was Mindy, still in her full-on witch regalia. "Are you okay?", she asked, and then the two of them just stared at each other, knowing that question had already been answered. Tim struggled to even form a sentence. This was a nightmare he was not waking up from.
Seeing his distress, Mindy jumped in. "Wait a minute, wait a minute," she said frantically, as though Tim was going to interrupt her. "You're going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay. I was just watching the news and they were saying they can fix-" She spotted a remote lying nearby and grabbed it, figuring she was better off showing rather than telling. She flipped Tim's TV on and was about to start changing it to a news channel, but she found she didn't have to. This was being carried on every channel.
"-obviously came as a complete surprise to all of us," a man was saying the moment the TV came on. A caption at the bottom of the screen identified him as the "Assistant Regional Director of FEMA". He was flanked by officials in various important-looking uniforms, and a few of the Kansas witches whose faces were now instantly recognizable to anyone who'd been watching the news - that is, just about everyone in the country except for Tim. "But we've been working around the clock with our partners across the nation and these... subject matter experts here to develop an emergency response plan as quickly as we can."
The man gestured to a large poster-board, covered in details that could barely be read through the high-definition screen. "As it turns out, there are hundreds of experienced magical... practitioners scattered all over the country. And just about all the ones we've gotten in touch with have agreed to volunteer their time and effort to restoring folks to their normal bodies. But there are millions of people that were affected by this, so we're going to have to prioritize the most severe cases first - what we in the medical field call triage."
He pointed at the first in a row of color-coded boxes, which was labeled "Phase 1-A" in bold red text. "The first stage of reversals will be for people whose lives are in imminent danger from their changes - those who became perishable foods, for example. And those whose changes have left them completely unable to move or communicate. If that applies to anyone you know, I've been told to reassure you that your loved ones are not dead, they're just... inert right now. But you will need to make an appointment for them if they can't."
"Once our team has dealt with as many people in the first stage as possible," he went on, "then we can move on to the second group, which is for people with severe disabilities that will prevent them from performing basic tasks – such as missing limbs." At the sound of that, Mindy turned back to Tim, with a look on her face that said "that includes you, doesn't it?" Tim would have nodded in response, but he wasn't sure how to.
And the news broadcast went on like that for a while. It was impressive, Tim thought, to see the bureaucracy of government working so quickly. It hadn't even been 24 hours since this all started, and they had already come up with all these carefully defined categories for every conceivable type of magical transformation you could have. He was getting the sense that, even if it thankfully wasn't permanent, fixing all of this was still going to take a long time.
When the man on the screen opened up the floor to questions, the assemblage of reporters in the audience practically erupted. The camera panned through the crowd to focus in on a small black paw that was sticking up alongside all the human hands. There was a cat standing on its hind legs atop one of the folding chairs, its head barely poking out above the heads of those who were still seated. "John Switzer, Associated Press," the cat said when it was called on. "If all of this was caused by a single magic spell, why not just cast another spell to undo it?"
One of the witches took the mic at the podium. "I think I can answer this one," she said. "As we were explaining earlier, this whole thing happened because of a completely accidental human sacrifice at exactly the wrong moment. The only way we could put that much power into another spell would be to have another person die, and this time on purpose." There was a frustrated mutter in the crowd at that. "Now," she continued, "I'm sure plenty of people out there would be willing to sacrifice themselves to bring the world back to normal. But that sort of magic is also completely unpredictable. We had no idea it would affect this many people, after all. So there's no way we could make sure that it actually fixed everybody up. It might just make matters worse."
After a few more questions along those lines, the broadcast cut to the inside of a studio. "In world news today," said an otherwise normal-looking anchorwoman with pointed elf ears sticking out of her blonde hair, "the Pope has made a statement expressing his sympathies to those affected by last night's events. But he stopped short of condeming the witches as 'demonic', as many of his cardinals have already-"
Mindy hit the mute button on the remote and turned to Tim again. "So it's not going to be permanent," she said, trying to reassure the both of them. "I can help you sign up for the appointment, as soon as they get the website up and running."
Tim still felt totally numb. "Do you think they can fix this before Ch- Chr-" He would have swallowed hard if he still had a throat. The noise that he involuntarily made instead was similar enough. "Before December?"
"I don't know," Mindy admitted. "But it looks like you're in one of the top categories, at least. I'm sure they'll get to you as soon as they possibly can."
With that, Tim was suddenly aware that he was not the only one in this room who would need to wait indefinitely for a magical savior in order to return to a normal life. "If you don't mind me asking, why are you still... you know? I mean, you can see what happened to me, but you're still wearing all your clothes from last night..."
Mindy sighed. "I guess I wanted to see if I was really this color all over. Even in the places I didn't bother to put paint on."
"Were you?", he asked, coming off a little bolder than he meant to.
She smiled. "Let's just say the grass is even greener on the other side."