CoffeeAndTV

Your ears are full, but you're empty
Holding out your heart
To people who never really
Care how you are
So give me coffee and TV...

Glass Beaker

Transmutation

Meep meep, meep meep! Glass beakers help keep transmutation ingredients separate when crafting a recipe.

0

The screaming had finally stopped. The only sounds now were the bubbling of the cauldron, and a small, strange, insistent squeak. She looked up, her eyes following a damp trail leading across the floor to her workstation.

"What do you want now?" she asked. It squeaked again, and bobbed up and down, its translucent blue eyes fixed on the shelf above.

Coffee sighed, gave the previously recalcitrant Mammertee in the cauldron a final poke, and crossed the room. She scooped up the blue blob and dolloped it onto the shelf. She was used to the texture by now, and in fact it was far more solid than it looked, although it did leave a little damp residue behind on her feathers.

It oozed across the shelf to a jar of... something... preserved in formaldehyde. Slowly, it covered the jar with its body. Once the jar was fully coated, it settled down and let out a contented little sigh.

"Hungry right now, aren't you? That's the third time this week," Coffee cooed. As she looked a little closer, she noticed some strange, off-colour patches around the outline of the jar. "Huh. Are you feeling OK, little - " She stopped talking as a splashing sound from the cauldron caught her attention.

"Oh, no you don't!" She grabbed her rolling-pin and shot back towards the cauldron. WALLOP! The Mammertee dropped back with a small groan. Coffee frowned. She was used to bad behaviour from her alchemical ingredients. She wasn't used to her sweet little Radox behaving like this. Was something wrong?

* * * * * * * * *

In a few hours, the Mammertee was gone, reduced to a lump of gleaming, bubbling golden muck. Also gone was the jar of... whatever. Radox seemed to have expanded, and there were definitely strange, brown, bruised shades in the region of what, in an ordinary animal, would probably have been its belly.

Coffee scooped the muck into a bottle and stowed it in her bag, then picked up her pet and carried it gently outside. She found her husband perched on an old tree stump, fletching arrows.
"Don't you think you'd see if it had worms or something?" he pointed out, once she'd told him of her concerns. He gestured with his knife towards the yellow blob sat contentedly beside him. Its eyes appeared to be closed. Bits of feather and woodchips floated inside its translucent body, slowly dissolving. "Goober's been hungry too. Maybe it's just... they're fattening up for winter or something. Have you tried asking KeyChange?"

"He just says 'Get that thing away from me or Gods help it...' You'd think with all those horrible books he collects he'd be more open-minded." Coffee cuddled her little blue friend and petted what passed for its head. It responded with a sort of slow, chirruping purr.

Goober's eyes opened at the noise. Suddenly, he fizzed, and all the bits of debris inside him vanished into bubbles. He began to emit a steady peep-peep-peep sound. Radox wriggled excitedly in Coffee's arms, trying to get down.

"What's all that about?" Dixie asked, wide-eyed. Coffee set Radox down on the stump. Goober and Radox oozed toward one another, Goober still peep-peeping, Radox making a trilling noise. When they met, they began to bob up and down and change shape, stretching out tall and then flattening themselves almost into puddles. Coffee watched, fascinated: Dixie stood up and shuffled over to stand slightly behind her, eyes round and crests flattened in alarm.

The two blobs moved together till they were touching - and kept moving, till they merged. Blue and yellow squished together and slowly mixed to become one huge green mass. Coffee stepped forward carefully and examined it.

"They look like they've gone to sleep! Look, you can see their eyes - it looks like one pair but it's actually two, they have sort of overlapped each other..."

Dixie had retreated to a safe distance. "You know what? You're the alchemist. I'll, I'll just... leave this in your capable paws. Do you want, like, a jar or something to keep them in?"

She had him fetch a large beaker, and scooped the sleeping blob - blobs? - into it. She placed it on her shelf, where the jar of preserved things had been, and she tried very hard not to worry.

* * * * * * * * *

Weeks went by, and the green blob appeared to remain in stasis in the beaker - though a few things went missing from the lab, including an old book, a small statuette of a cat, Coffe's shrimp sandwich, and a couple of bottles of copper and silver muck. Coffee went about her business as usual - except that the pile of handknitted socks and gloves in the corner suddenly doubled in size, and her fellow clan members were almost force-fed a constant stream of homemade cookies, cupcakes and muffins.

One warm evening, Dixie returned to their tent with several skeins of soft purple yarn and an Ampelope pelt to use as a rug, since Coffee had burnt holes in the last one. As Coffee was discharging the static, Dixie took a look at the blob that had been their pets - and spotted something.

"Hey, honey, take a look - it's moving!"

Coffee dropped the pelt and dashed over. Sure enough, the blob was oozing its way up and over the side of its beaker. She stood up on her hind legs and carefully laid the beaker on its side. The blob rolled out onto the shelf, where it lay still again. For a moment, it looked like nothing was happening, but then in the lamplight the two dragons saw the colours start to separate. The green paled in the middle, then faded out into blue and yellow, leaving bruised brown shades in between.

Slowly, the blob separated out - but instead of two blobs, the mass formed into four, with the brown mass in the centre separating into a brighter, almost coppery shade and a darker, tarnished-looking ooze that looked a little more opaque than the rest. The four dollops of ooze started to take on the shapes that Coffee and Dixie recognised, with the flattened round "heads" and the chubby "bodies". The blue blob opened its eyes and squeaked happily.

"Radox!" Coffee exclaimed. She reached out to pick up the blob, but it squirmed away from her paws. Instead, it nudged at the two smaller brown blobs with its "head". One by one, they opened their eyes, and started emitting very high-pitched chirping noises. Finally, the yellow blob opened its eyes too, and made a contented trill as he squirmed over to greet his new family.

Coffee grabbed Dixie's paw and squeezed. The Wildclaw just stared, open-mouthed, as his wife exclaimed, "Oh my goodness, would you look at that? We're grandparents!"

Twice-Dyed Mantle

Apparel

A colorful two-tone mantle. The vibrant blending requires patience and just a little bit of luck.

250