"My skin... Feels strange..."

It was true. Tilda already felt like her skin was tight, but something... Something was happening. She could feel something shifting inside her.

No. She could feel herself shifting, starting from her insides.

It wasn't comfortable. If anything, it was... Tilda couldn't describe it. It wasn't pain, but it was. It wasn't heat, but it was. Everything was coming from her core. Everything really started, she had time to realise, with her core.

But that was all the time she had, before her vision was filled with something (String) and her body expanded, crumbled apart, her sense of self disintegrating too, blackness...

...And, for another brief moment, string, everything was string, she was string.

Her senses returned, and with it, two sounds, one of which should not have been.

The gasp of Zildra, mingled shock, curiosity, awe, horror.

And the clatter of metal.

It took Tilda a few moments to understand, not least because Tilda still couldn't think clearly, her self, her mind reassembling (like string, a ball of string.)

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Her hand, the hand that had held something since she was born, since she opened her eyes, was empty. Her head felt a little heavier. She looked down.

...

...

She could look down without bending at all.

Her dress was still green, but the ribbon was gone, replaced with a belt made of slightly fuzzy cloth.

Actually, everything had become fuzzy cloth, and her dress had become a green almost-shirt, bordered by an almost jacket that became an almost-dress... She couldn't describe it any better than that, she didn't know enough about clothes.

Even her hands and legs were fuzzy, and she felt lighter. Flimsier? No, not... Strictly true. She wouldn't shatter, or crack. She would rip. She would... Lose stuffing?

She looked up at Zildra, who still had her eyes wide, and opened her mouth, confused.

And then closed it, and reached up. Her mouth... Opened? And moved?

She looked up again, her eyes... Widening.

She couldn't process. She couldn't think. But Zildra, picking her up (still so easily!) cleared her head, while saying the strangest thing that was, nonetheless, true.

"Ahhhhh, what a cute fuzzy doll you've become, and a witch too!"

A witch. She reached up (thankfully her arms were free), and, experimentally, clasped the something that had briefly caught her attention.

A hat. A hat she could take off. And look at in confusion.

A dark green hat with a big, floppy brim.

Tilda looked at Zildra, and Zildra was looking... A little strange. Tilda tried to find the word.

Enraptured. That was it.

Because Tilda was... Cute?

No, Tilda still didn't understand. And so, it was Zildra who began explaining first, after some strange cooing noises that didn't feel like they came from either a woman or a snake.

The explanation would only add to the confusion.

At first, at least.