I woke up in the morning to the smell of something cooking.

That was definitely off. I stretched out in my bed, “I’m finally going to be done with all that bothersome ‘work’.” I told myself with a smile on my face as I eased myself out of bed and rose to my feet.

A quick burning hot shower, and I was content, all was right with the world again.

I threw on my ‘outside clothes’ and emerged to find the cause of the odorous disturbance in my domicile… Celia was standing at an oven I’d never touched in my entire life.

“G’morning.” She said. She was still in her child sized shape, and dressed in something akin to pajamas… no, they ‘were’ pajamas. Ones covered in little animal patterns.

“Uh… yeah… it is, I guess, considering that I’m awake instead of asleep, I guess it’s fine but…” I yawned and rubbed the back of my head, “Why are you up so early, and what’s with…?” I looked her up and down.

“What’s with what?” She looked over her shoulder at me with a little smug expression on her face.

“This?!” I said and waved my other hand up and down in front of her.

“Oh.” Celia’s expression never wavered.

“Well, I did a little research on Earth after my last visit, not much, but I figured I should know how to dress at least.” She pinched the soft cloth of the yellow pajamas and gave them a little tug, “These really are comfortable, by the way, you were not wrong about humans being good at comfort.”

“And your… tiny self?” I asked, and she chuckled.

“Oh, well you are the one who said I was your niece, after all. So now I suppose I should play the part. Besides, you are a lot older than I am, by what, a few hundred years?” She asked. She spun around with spatula in hand and held it up at her side like a soldier’s saber and struck a stiff pose. “As my senpai, I think that is the word, I must look to you for guidance and instruction, and rely on you to take care of me while I am unfamiliar with everything…”

She was not sounding like a normal swapper. Then it hit me, she was much younger than I am. Young swappers are often prone to adopting the characteristics of what they imitate, we all are, really, but the younger they are the more true this is.

Another sneaky suspicion struck me, “How long have you been awake for?” I asked.

“About six hours.” She said, “I’ve been binge watching a lot!” A giant grin came over her face. “I was watching this one thing about a boy who lived with two girls, one of whom was his sister and he didn’t know which one… all the shenanigans!”

“Oh.” I dragged my hand down over my face, “Celia, how long do you usually take on the forms of other races for?” I asked.

She tapped the tip of the spatula against her cheek, “Um, I don’t know, a few hours, just long enough to do a job, I don’t do my own scouting, I’m too new for that so… maybe a tenth of this time, why?”

“Oh my… um… can you… do something for me?” I asked.

“Like make breakfast? I’m already on it, aunt Kayobi!” She laughed and spun back around and began stirring something up in whatever pan was on the stovetop over the oven. “I saw this thing where a dragon girl kept making omelets and they were too big, so I decided to try my hand at making them. Thankfully you had some stuff I could sort of improvise… I don’t know much about taste but-” She was rambling, I had to cut her off.

“That’s fine.” I interjected, “But… hasn’t anyone ever told you that you shouldn’t ‘swap’ for this long without going back or at least going to something else?”

“Yes, but it’s no problem, this is a human body after all and humans are super easy. It’ll barely be an inconvenience to shift to anything else. After all, they’re sort of shaped like us, who knows, maybe they’ll evolve into swappers too one day, if that healing factor of theirs keeps improving at least.” Celia said, she didn’t see the concerned expression on my face.

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‘This is not good. No, this is definitely not good. She took on the characteristics of a child, a human child, and those are reckless, negligent, have horrible survival instincts, and routinely dismiss danger or problems to an absurd degree. It would be exactly like a human child to neglect the obvious in favor of just doing nothing… plus she’s young so she’s even more vulnerable to these things…’ I had to suppress my groan.

If she couldn’t swap back, she couldn’t go back. Not in the ‘oh no she’ll die’ sense. Not in the ‘she’s violated a law sense and will be harshly punished’ sense either.

No… no. If word of this got back to the others, she would be absolutely disgraced and shamed beyond all reason. It’s not as embarrassing as say, waving back at someone who wasn’t waving at you. It’s a thousand times worse.

It’s more like… if a human lost control of their bowels at their job where friends and family worked. At that point you might as well quit, change your name, and start your life over in a whole new place in the world.

Celia would never be able to look at the rest of her coworkers again without a sense of disgrace… and I know Celia. She’s a nice one, sort of sensitive about even asking for help, kind of insecure, really. She wouldn’t be able to handle it, she’d have to quit.

I sat down at the table. “Celia, I want you to do something for me, and I don’t want you to panic.”

“I know, I know, you want some red peppers added on top of your omelett, don’t worry, I saw you didn’t have any, but I saved some from the pizza last night, they included a couple of packets. I didn’t throw them out, so I’ll just add those real quick to your omelet and…”

I cleared my throat. “No, no, that’s fine.” I said.

“Oh, then here you go.” She said and slid the omelet onto a paper plate and handed it to me along with one of my many plastic forks.

“I want…” I started to say, and she leaned forward, her dark hair tumbled down behind her, she was waiting for me to try her food.

I stopped. I looked down at the dish. It actually smelled really good. I usually cooked bacon in the microwave, it seemed she’d chosen to use the oven, and that paid off. I could smell the bacon inside, and my mouth began to water.

I cut into the yellow goodness and then raised a bite to my mouth, the cheese within stretched into tiny strings and I put the morsel onto my tongue.

Flavor exploded. “This is amazing!” I shouted.

She grinned ear to ear and waited for me to take a second bite. I stopped myself, I set the fork down and set my palms flat on the table. “No, no Kayobi, don’t get distracted.”

“What?” Celia asked, “You said it was good, right?” She asked.

“Yes… and it is. But I need you to do something else… something not food related.” I said, and her mouth closed before she could ask whatever was on her mind.

“Try to swap back to your natural form.” I said.

“But that’s-” She started to object.

“Just do it.” I said.

She shrugged. “Fine.” She breathed out the annoyed sigh of every teenager in the history of humanity.

I waited.

She looked down at her hand. Her feet. She looked at her reflection in the glass window on the wall. She gritted her teeth and clenched her jaw and began to grunt and groan.

“I…what…” Celia’s eyes went very wide, she kept trying.

But she also kept failing.

“I’m… stuck.” She whispered.

“Yup. Looks like.” I said, and she looked at me with an expression of horrified shame as if she’d shat herself in front of me.

I held up a hand to stop the horrified apologies or bawling or whatever.

“Relax, nobody else knows, I won’t tell anyone, and I’ll help you get back to normal.” I promised.

A few minutes later, I knew what tears of relief on a human looked like when she was asking…

“You’re really not going to tell anyone… you’re going to help me get back to normal and never say a thing, you promise?” She asked.

“Yes.” I answered.

“Thank you…” Celia whispered and began to wipe her nose, I shrugged off her thanks and took another bite of the omelet.

“Don’t worry about it but… can I have another one of these before we get to work?” I asked, and a smile slowly came back to her face as she got up to make another.

“Do you know how to fix this?” She asked.

“Nope. But I have a clue.” I said as she opened the fridge to get out more eggs, cheese, and bacon.

“How?” She asked tentatively, looking over her shoulder at me while she rummaged.

“We wing it.” I said, and for good measure, brought wings out of my back in the hopes of making her laugh.

It got a little one, and that was a start, at least.