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anon text.

[ josh is looking a bit too disconcertingly mountain man-ish to pull off video, and he's too interested in not announcing his supernatural status to go for voice. that means anonymous text, though he's slightly reluctant to send it; he's aware this is a very weird and very specific question. ]

Who has experience with witches and shapeshifters? Either or, but if you know anything about an overlap, i.e. magic being used to prevent or prolong a shift, please share with the class.

And just to clarify: magic as in black magic, the kind with corpses and soul trading and other non-refundable mistakes. Mary Poppins need not apply.

[ and by mary poppins he means you jokers with the pink hair and the antlers. but that only covers one possibility, so a few extremely reluctant seconds later: ]

Or if you've ever just heard of shapeshifters getting stuck. Like, stuck in one form. Please share that too.

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I'm sorry.

[ previous awful priorities aside, he sounds like he means it. ]

Two months now. I think it's been reversed.

Okay.

Shit.

Here's what I know.

The ananasi - yes, they are exactly what it sounds like - do this thing, where they shift and they stay that way, they live that way for...years. I don't know, I don't like them, they creep me out. Anyway, they can't shift back except once every very rare moment. But they do it by choice.

Some metis, and yes, I know, you're not metis, they can get stuck, but normal wolves, as far as I know, don't. My friend who's a wolf never has, anyway. If they do get stuck I'm willing to bet there are rituals. Spirits that can help. I could probably see if I can ask, only the spirits and me, we're not so close. But I could try. No guarantees they're even here, though.

You don't have an umbra, right?

[ so many words that make so little sense. but josh is listening intently anyway, even if there are some stumbling blocks. like ananasi, can he please never ever get a visual on that. ]

What? No, I don't have an— are asking about shadows?

[ the spirit comment's easier to follow, though, and it's a lot more relevant. ]

But I was meditating. I mean I was working on meditating, communicating with the wolf, trying to get on better terms so it wasn't so... what if I made this worse? What if I did this?

[You do not want a visual on spiders the size of cars, Josh, you're right.]

No, the umbra is like...this spirit world, shadow world, thing. Against the real world. Shifters - most of them - can travel into it, and there are spirits there.

I doubt that this is because you talked to the wolf side, but some spirits aren't...well, they like to play jokes, and by jokes I don't mean the kind where anyone laughs. You meditate, it might have caught a malignant spirit's attention.

[ that's uncomfortably close to home, actually. there's a slight pause. ]

I think you're actually on the right track. I mean, replace "spirit" with "witch", but— we did. We followed a witch back to her fake Boston. That's when it changed.

[ and he'd had a vision of the wolf attacking him, which seems highly relevant. still, it's not something he's really keen on saying out loud, so he holds back. ]

What do you mean by fake Boston?

[She's trying to puzzle things together, but she's tired, so tired.]

In meditation? You followed her back in meditation?

[ let's count the ways he doesn't want to tell this ridiculous story out loud. but he's exhausted too, and the truth is her idea's the best lead he has right now, so- ]

No, through a door. She'd set a trap to... lure souls. She was trying to get my friend's, so we went through it to stop her. It wasn't real. It was some crazy witchy thunderdome realm, and when I went through the door— it turned a switch.

The meditation was making the wolf easier to deal with. Or I thought it was.

Okay, so while you've never been in the umbra, the way I know it-

[She says, as if she's ever been in the umbra, which she hasn't-]

But let's say, for a moment, that we're working on the same set of basic rules.

She's affecting your spirit to change your body. Possibly. Does that sound - and I'm going to use the word impossible, and we both know that as people who grew up in the solid waking world it does, but knowing what we know - impossible?

That's probably one of the less insane things I've heard lately. So no, it doesn't sound impossible.

So you think it's like a curse.

[ curse on a curse. who knew they stacked. ]

I think out of all the options it could possibly be, a curse is the one with both the most potential and the most optimistic to solve.

Edited 2013-09-23 03:26 (UTC)

Not sure if optimistic is the right word.

The last time I broke a curse I had to kill someone. I'd say the biggest issue is not wanting a morally bleak repeat, but the person responsible for this one is already dead.

Sorry, I'm running on three in the last...fifty hours of sleep, you're lucky my sentences string together.

[Pause]

Has another shifter tried forcing you back?

Derek. He tried his fancy alpha trick. I think it might've been working for a while, actually, but then I went home again.

I've got a... there's a system. It's kept me from hurting anyone, but there's no guarantee that won't stop working eventually, too.

Right, Alpha Derek the dickweed. Okay, how am I getting involved? Because if you think that if you get out and I'm not getting involved, you're crazy.

Anyway, I'll keep an ear open and try the whole talk-to-spirits thing, at least.

Hey, take it easy.

[ hey guess what aidan's not here, he needs to defend another morally misguided dickweed in his stead. ]

If I need backup, I'll call you. Or someone will— I'll let Derek know you're in the loop. And that isn't dangerous for you, is it? The... talking with spirits.

Hey, I used his title.

[That's good enough in her opinion]

It depends on your definition of dangerous. Mostly I've ignored that side of things for the last fourteen years, so they might not be amenable, but I haven't actually pissed anyone off. But you're my best friend here, and I didn't get to tell you that it's been too long since I've been laid so growling at spirits on your behalf is right on my level right now.

[ wow you really remind him of sally sometimes. thanks for that. ]

Yes, because fighting with spirits is absolutely the same thing as getting laid. [ judging only slightly, but he sounds amused. ] Thank you. I mean it.

And for the record, I really am sorry for not being around.

No but it's a good distraction.

[She does it because she loves you.]

No one who thinks of their condition as a curse would prefer it to talking to people, especially if it's to me.

Not just thinks of. It is a curse.

[ that's just the facts, not semantics!! ]

But I was trying to... I was working on living with it. Not fighting it. Which has clearly gone very well, but— hopefully that's not what caused this.

It's not what caused this. If anything, accepting it would make it less painful to-

[Oh.

Oh right.]

Uh, so I might have threatened to kill George. And I had to stop a shift, I've never done that before. It hurt like a bitch.

You what?

[ yes that's the tag. DAPHNE. ]

Are you asking about the threat or me stopping my shift?

The threat. Is the stopping the shift related?

[ he's very sorry that it hurt like a bitch, and he'll get back to that, but - he does it once a month and you threatened to kill pseudo-him, so the sympathy's a little lacking. ]

To the threat? Well, in the sense that I didn't-

It's related because I'm sleep deprived and it made sense at the time. But you don't remember much from when you're a wolf, do you?

[She's trying to piece things together and she's addled]

Oh, and George is fine, I didn't even wound his pride.

Fine. As long as you're all fine, then sure, whatever, that's—

[ he's not really equipped to deal with this, exhaustion and other issues aside. not that he's always particularly tactful at the best of times. ]

You mean you almost attacked him? Why?

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