"Umm...," Amy murmured as she surveyed the dozens of bracelets on the shelf. They were disorganized from her previous use of them. "Lina, yowwrrr going to kill me, but..."
"You can't remember!" Lina screamed. Amy jumped several feet at her outburst. Before Lina was acting very subdued. "I can't believe this!"
"Nowww...hang on, maybe it was this one!"
"Don't rashly choose, young lady," the old man said. "To make the proper counterspell I need to know EXACTLY which of these you used. Now, I know only a handful of these is capable of transforming another at a verbal command..." He picked out seven bracelets, but they all looked so shiny and pretty to Amy she couldn't determine exactly which one she had found so attractive. They even went so far as to have Amy try each one on to see if some had the wrong fit. They were only able to eliminate one that way.
"I'm sorry, but you're going to have to give me some time to figure out which of these was recently used and capable of your specific method of transformation," the old man said wearily. "I will ask you to please come back tomorrow."
"Toooomorrow?!" Lina shouted again. Amy detected a strange deepness to her voice. "I can't leave looking like this! Neither can she!"
"Well, I have the perfect answer to that," he said more cheerfully. "Come with me."
Further down the aisle was a display of accessories with "Incognito Charms." The old man picked up a brass cowbell and attached it to the single silver fastener at the front of Lina's collar. "These will render you human to others. The only people who can see your true form are any others wearing an Incognito Charm.
Amy blinked several times. It seemed to be working, because from the moment she heard the "click" on that collar loop she could see a perfectly human Lina standing in front of her. "Wow...you even look fully clothed, just like when you walked in the store!"
"You're not just pulling my leg, right?" Lina asked skeptically.
"No! Here, take that off for a second."
Lina tried working the clasp on the collar, but her new thicker fingers made it nearly impossible. The man was kind enough to help her remove it. Meanwhile, Amy picked out a bell of her own--it was another black collar with a small sleigh bell attached. She put it on and Lina was instantly convinced. Amy appeared normal, wearing shoes instead of bare paws and a normal baseball cap without holes in them for cat ears. "Will these also hide the small changes in our voices?" Lina asked.
"Unfortunately no, so be careful about that. I doubt anyone will even notice, though. Kids these days are too concerned about themselves to have a good enough view of the world around them anyway. Well, just remember to keep those charms on whenever you're in public, and you, miss, must remember that the collar I placed on you is applying a freeze on your transformation. The minute you remove it, you'll continue to change, and depending on which bracelet your feline friend here used, that change could go all the way to a full cow."
"Will you be able to get things fixed once we come back tomorrow?" Lina asked.
"I can't make any promises. You girls should have known better to fool around with the things in here. By the way, that's twenty-eight dollars for your new clothes, little kitty. The charms and collars are free of charge...for now."
Amy paid the man, said a meek thank-you and waited for Lina to retrieve her pants from the clothing aisle. When asked how well they fit, Lina simply said "Let's just get home so I can take them off." Ignoring the man's suggestion of purchasing udder-and-tail-fitting pants, they left the store. Their bells jingled and clanged occasionally as they walked.
"These look like they're wwworrrking," Amy said confidently as five people passed by without giving the girls a second glance.
"Please, just...don't talk to me," Lina said, clopping her hooves faster than Amy to get ahead. Amy almost tried matching her speed, but decided that it would be best to let her go. The two parted company for good shortly after that, when Lina took one street and Amy another in the directions of their respective homes.