Felicity sat in the booth opposite myself, the wide table between us stained a luxurious dark brown. Though the benches were richly upholstered and well padded, the elf sat stiffly. She leaned slightly forwards and had her arms crossed in her lap, not allowing herself to sit comfortably against the plush leather.

I somehow doubted the restaurant had halter tops and full-body tattoos in mind when they imagined their clientele—a fact Felicity seemed more than aware of.

"So how does this work? Could I turn my hair blue, or do I need to pick a colour that occurs naturally in humans?"

"With the spell, you can change the colour to anything you like, but unless it's a pigment your body can produce naturally, it won't grow out that way in the future. Though an enchantment could make it permanent, so long as you wore the item."

I lifted my hand, palm down, to eye level. The hairs were fine, and there were few of them, but that suited me fine. Some testing would be necessary, and I was too vain to experiment with the hair on my head. Not to mention, it would be a lot easier to test the spells if I could see what I was doing.

Felicity had taught me her hair-colour spell, to the extent she could, but it had come to the point where I'd need to try it and see. The hair on the back of my hand was reddish-brown, and my test casting would blanch it white. Assuming I cast the spell correctly.

As I did whenever attempting a new spell, I closed my eyes and centred myself. It wasn't true meditation, that usually took me a couple of minutes to achieve. Still, I was getting better at a sort of meditation-lite and found I could reach the state after only a few seconds of concentration.

There were two changes I would make. The first was the most obvious and would turn the already grown hair to the new colour. The second would be to alter the follicles to produce new hair in the same colour. Felicity lacked the same understanding, there was no elven word for 'follicle' for example, but I suspected my greater understanding of anatomy would be of some use. So with a slight tweak, I accounted for her missing knowledge and cast the spell.

The mana required was minuscule. I took the Transform mana from a tiny sliver of zinc and was hard-pressed even to notice as I drew the Body mana from myself.

The hair paled so quickly it seemed nearly instant, the colour shifting to a not-quite white, and I gave Felicity a reassuring nod, "Looks like it worked."

The elf huffed out a breath and relaxed back against her seat. She'd been standing by to jump in should I mess up the spell, and a little of the stiffness went out of her frame as she realized her intervention wouldn't be necessary.

"What now?" she asked simply.

"Well, the smart thing to do would be to wait a couple of days and make sure it grows out white. But as you'll learn eventually, I'm not smart," I explained, "So I'm just going to try it and see what happens."

"Wally," she urged.

"Don't worry," I insisted with a negligent wave, "If anything goes wrong, you'll fix it."

"Wally!"

"You can do it, I believe in you. Now be quiet, I'm trying to focus."

Felicity wrapped her arms around herself and made quite the show of not glaring at me while I got the spell straight in my mind.

A single link scavenged from a delicate gold chain would provide the Strengthen mana, and I'd be again taking the Body mana from myself. I didn't want to let things get too crazy, I wasn't a very hairy dude, and I liked it that way, as did Val, I assumed. So the spell would persist until I stopped focusing on it. Running out of mana would also serve to end the spell I supposed. As for the actual mechanics, Strengthen Body, in this case, would mean temporarily modifying the hair follicles on the back of my right hand to grow hair more quickly.

I glanced up at Felicity, "You good?"

She raised her eyebrows and spread her hands, shoulders hunched.

"I'll take that as a yes."

After a few deep breaths, I once again slipped into the semi-meditative state I described. I moved sluggishly, lifting my hand to catch the light in the dim restaurant. I checked one last time to ensure Felicity was ready, and then cast the spell.

The link of chain disappeared, and I grinned when I realized it was working. I could see the hair growing before my eyes, a phenomenon I'd only ever seen in time-lapse. The smile had barely formed on my face before I felt a pang of overwhelming exhaustion. Without adrenaline to mask it, it left me feeling hollow. It was the same feeling I had when going to bed far too late, already very tired, and knowing I wouldn't get enough sleep before tomorrow's early rise. I'd hardly the time to realize I should probably call it there and end the spell before the whole world flickered.

One moment I was sitting in the booth staring at the back of my hand, an excited grin on my face. Then I blinked, and I was lying on the floor with my head cradled in Val's arms, a circle of concerned faces looking down at me.

"Gods, he's awake," Phoebe quavered.

"What?" I sputtered groggily.

I tried to sit up and lift a hand to my pounding head, but Val hugged me tight, and I acquiesced.

"Val?" I croaked, "How did you get here? How did any of you get here?"

"Felicity told us something had gone awry," Regina related quietly, though even speaking softly, her voice seemed to fill the entire restaurant.

"I fetched Val," Amity explained.

I looked up at the little fey, her eyes huge with worry, and finally noticed the ivory silk robe she had wrapped about herself.

I lifted my hand from the carpet, very much aware of how heavy my bones were, and examined it. The hair there was noticeably longer, though not to the point of seeming too odd.

Felicity had her hands knotted in her hair, regarding me with a mixture of fear and worry "I am so sorry Wallace," she all but wailed.

"What did I tell you?" I asked her wryly.

"That if anything went wrong, it was my job to fix it?" And this time she did wail.

"Wallace!" Val hissed.

I made a placating gesture with my hands, "No, no, before that. I said you'd eventually realize I wasn't very smart. Welcome to eventually."

"You drew too much from yourself," Cassius guessed with a thoughtful frown.

"Felicity explained the spell?"

"Yeah."

"You ever have something like this happen?"

"I always used way more mass to power my magic. Of course, I didn't know why at the time, but I knew it kept the magic from making me too tired. You were also creating mass out of energy, so I guess we know now that conservation of energy still applies to magic."

I nodded slightly, and regarded Felicity sympathetically, and was about to speak when Val cut in.

"This isn't your fault Felicity, Wallace is just being his regular foolish self," she growled.

I shrugged, and nodded in agreement, "Yeah, pretty much. But this is still a win," I insisted. A sudden flash of pain behind my eyes made my vision swim, but I powered through, "The spell worked, and now we know more about Body magic, this is progress."

"When I came down here, I thought you were dead," Val cried.

"Now just, hold on," Cassius soothed, "He had a pulse, I checked it before you got down here."

"He was as pale as a corpse."

"Well yeah, but he's, you know-" Cassius looked down at me with an uncertain grimace, "-uh, Canadian. He's always super pale."

I held out an arm, and Cassius and I clasped wrists. He helped pull me up to a sitting posture, and I shifted until I could rest my back against the side of the booth.

"Okay," I sighed, "I'm a dumbass, obviously," I began, making eye contact with each of them in turn, "Consider yourself informed. Hopefully, all of you now have the proper amount of respect for the guy in charge. Which is to say, not a whole lot. But we probably weren't going to learn the true limits of Body magic without someone making a mistake like this, and it's a good thing it was my dumbass that did."

Cassius nodded sagely, "Might've killed someone else."

Val clenched her jaw but didn't interrupt.

"We also learned another trick, and I'm not just saying this to find a silver lining. Simon's whole thing is Body magic, and now we know that if you're drawing from yourself, you can continue to feed energy into a spell that's already going."

"No," Val said through clenched teeth, "You're not providing power, the spell is drawing power until you end it, or pass out."

I nodded agreeably, "So it's a good trick, but finicky if you're not careful."

"Val," Phoebe said, her tone verging on reproachful, "I understand your worry for Wallace, but he speaks the truth. This is a major coup. I agree, this was not how I would have preferred to learn the trick, but I do not see another manner in which we would have made the discovery. Val, please don't be-"

Valentine brushed aside Phoebe's hand and crossed her arms across her chest, "I'll be upstairs."

And with that, she turned and left. Her bare feet padding silently across the carpet.

"So," Cassius asked after she left, "Are you gonna have dinner with us first, or are you gonna go get yelled at by your girlfriend some more?"

Phoebe's mouth pressed into a thin-lipped smile, looking at Cassius side-eye, but her gaze returned to me before he could catch the look.

"I'll go talk to her. Thanks everyone for checking on me, and thanks Felicity for helping me work out the spell. You're awesome, you did great, and this is super not your fault."

Her head bobbed in a quick nod, though from her expression, I wasn't sure she believed me.

Amity caught up with me as we were all filing out of the restaurant and caught my arm, "Would you like me to bring a meal to the two of you in an hour or so?"

"It's okay. There's a kitchen in the penthouse. I'll take care of it."

"Don't be silly. You can't power it, and you don't have any spells that could make it work. Not to mention, Valentine is liable to throw you off the roof if you have another mishap experimenting with something new. I'll prepare a meal for both of you," she insisted, "something for you to share, perhaps."

"Amity," I began hesitantly, "You don't have to do this. Hell, I shouldn't even be bothering you with my stupid todo list. Cleaning the whole hotel, and cooking everyone's meals, I know it kind of just worked out that way with those jobs falling to you. But you're no one's servant. If you want me to talk to the others-"

Amity grabbed me by the collar and pulled herself up to plant a kiss on my cheek. She let go and tilted her head back to look me in the eye, giving me a warm and open smile.

"Wally, I don't feel like a servant. Any software that would cause me to have unnatural loyalty or a desire to serve is disabled. I've checked and double-checked. My feelings are entirely my own. I like helping you, and everyone you've brought together. It makes me happy to see to everyone's needs and to ensure everyone is well-fed. Before, 'happiness' was my loyalty algorithm rewarding appropriate behaviour. Now I'm happy just because that's the way I feel." she spread her arms and did a little twirl, "It's not something I ever experienced before meeting you and Valentine. That alone would have been enough for me, but then you brought Regina home," she gave a little shrug, "Oh, and there is, of course, the small matter of you transforming my body from a prince's plaything into a form that matches my soul."

I'd already been a little pink from the conversation in the restaurant, but now I was blushing so thoroughly that even my hands were turning red.

"Well, we did that together."

Amity took me gently by the shoulders, "The simple truth is, I would do anything for you, Wally. Cleaning up here and there, keeping everyone fed and happy, it hardly scratches the surface. And they're chores that need doing," she added, tilting her head to the side.

"Thanks, Amity."

She stepped in a little closer, craning her neck to meet my eyes, "Now, you go upstairs and put the bratty little noblewoman in her place. I'll bring you something to eat once you've finished with her."

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, a plan beginning to form. “Okay, but before I go up there, could you help me with a few things?”

Val exploded at me before I even made it through the door. She crossed the carpet to me in a fury, eyes ablaze. The robe's belt had loosened, and the front now hung open to reveal the slip of near-transparent silk below.

"You infuriating thick fingered oaf," she ranted, "First you spend half the day tormenting me, then you leave me tied up so you can go discover a new way of hurting yourself!"

I pushed the door shut with my heel, and transferred the honey jar to my left hand.

Val went on, "If you'd thought to ask, perhaps I could have told you-"

I caught hold of her and clamped my right hand over her mouth. Her eyes went very wide, and I gave her a little shake to stop her thrashing. She stumbled as I forced her backwards towards the piano. I kept my hand on her mouth and held her pinned against the instrument with my knee.

I set the jar of honey on top of the piano and withdrew a dull ring of tarnished gold from my pocket. The gold ring provided Strengthen mana, and from the jar of honey, I'd draw a huge quantity of Body mana.

Cassius had been right, of course. The spell may not have used Creation mana, but in a round-about way, I was still attempting to turn energy into mass. Honey was only a Lesser source of Body mana, but this was just one of several three-pound jars I'd found in the restaurant's dry storage.

There was a small supply of diamond in our reserves, but a diamond was more like a firehose turned on for only a moment. By comparison, the jar of honey had more in common with a faucet turned on full blast and left for a couple of hours. The firehose could make a mess of your living room, but leave it long enough and the faucet would overflow the bathtub and flood the entire house.

The spell was similar to my test run with Felicity, with two exceptions. In addition to ending at my mental command, it would also end once the mana from the honey ran out. I suspected I'd be fine regardless, as I was drawing only from external sources, but making a mistake once was plenty. As for the other tweak to the spell, well that would be a surprise for Valentine.

The lid of the jar popped as the honey disappeared, and the ring disappeared from my hand. Val twitched as her hair suddenly began to grow at a vastly accelerated rate, falling to tickle her ears and the back of her neck. In under a minute, it had already fallen to her shoulders and continued without any signs of slowing.

Val's eyes had grown no less furious, and she put up a futile resistance as I pulled off her robe and yanked down the little slip of silk. Finally, I took my hand from her mouth and spun her around.

"Unhand me, you classless brute," she demanded.

I ignored her and caught both of her flailing wrists in one hand. I bound them with the belt from her robe. I was careful not to let her hair get caught in the knot as it continued to cascade over her shoulders and down her back.

I hoisted her roughly onto the top of the piano, leaving her legs to dangle over the side, and kicked out of my clothing. I pulled my shirt over my head, only just catching Val as she was about to struggle off the piano and to her feet.

By this point, her hair had formed a silky purple pool across the top of the piano, flowing as if in a waterfall down the side to gather on the carpet.

"I'm a noblewoman, not some common girl for you to toy with," she growled, and I brushed aside the curtain of hair, "Have your fun, but I'll not allow this to go unanswered, I will have satisfaction-"

She gasped as I took her roughly over the side of the piano, but continued to fight, thrash, and swear vengeance even as I had my way. So I gave up any pretence of being gentle and stopped holding back. Instead, I did as I wanted without any consideration for her desires. I waited to see what it would take to make her cry out for me to stop, but instead, her demands and threats continued. Though they grew less and less coherent, breaking down into wordless little noises of pleasure, urging me onwards.

Val gave a helpless little wail as I pushed her over the edge, and a sheen of oily liquid beaded up from her skin like sweat. It covered her whole body and ran off her skin for a second or two before evaporating almost as quickly. It left the air thick with the smell of her pheromones. The aroma was so intense it was hard to breathe, but with no one scent overpowering any of the others, I didn't feel it pulling on my emotions.

I pulled the knot loose, but Valentine remained laying over the edge of the piano. Though Val turned her face away from me, with her cheek pressed against the hardwood, what little skin I could see through the mess of purple hair was flushed a deep purple. Not with arousal, but embarrassment.

I threw the silk belt aside and pulled her off the piano. She stumbled on unsteady legs, and her hair fell from the piano to pool about her feet. She followed obediently to the bathroom where I took her once more in the shower, front pressed against the cold tile, after which we both got cleaned up.

Valentine remained in the bathroom after I left to tend to her fresh abundance of hair. While she was busying herself with that, no doubt discovering the surprise I'd added to the spell, I dressed in what passed for my pyjamas and tidied up. Aside from gathering discarded clothing, I also opened the balcony door and all of the windows. A quick experiment with Move Air did send the carefully folded clothing all over the place, but it also brought a fresh evening breeze through the penthouse. With the air clear of the dizzying pheromones, I collected the clothing once again. I'd just finished gathering it to be washed when Amity knocked on the door with our meal.

Amity stole a furtive look through the door, and I pulled it open without a care. She gave me a disappointed frown as she handed over the single tray of food, and with a nod, I sent the gynoid on her way. She closed the door for me, and I carried the tray over to the dining table.

Val emerged from the bathroom wearing a thick bathrobe of white cotton, and with her arms full of hair, lest it trail behind her on the ground.

There remained a slight flush of embarrassment on her face, her posture subdued as she joined me at the dining table and climbed into my lap.

I found enough food for both of us when I lifted the fancy hotel tray covers, though Amity had made it up as a single meal. She'd even prepared it in proper restaurant fashion, which is to say, with far too much butter.

Amity, either in some misguided attempt to help me 'put Val in her place', or for pure amusement, had provided only one set of utensils.

"Maybe I shouldn't have untied your hands, doesn't seem you'll be needing them," I observed, and took the knife and fork before Val could get her dainty little mitts on them.

"In that case, I don't believe I would have made it out of the bathroom," she replied quietly, "Even with both arms free, I can hardly manage all this hair."

"You had time," I taunted, "Why didn't you do something about the length?"

"You know why. I couldn't- mmph" I silenced her with a forkful of steak, before taking some for myself.

She opened her mouth to speak once she was done with the bite of steak, but was interrupted by a piece of butter-soaked roast potato.

"Temerity's little stunt won't happen again," I promised her, "Your hair is silky as ever but stronger than steel. Amity helped me out with the molecular structure. It's not quite the same as what you'd get with carbon nanotubes, but the strength is still tremendous."

"How do you expect me to- mmm."

"I'm sure you can figure something out," I replied absently, "Now what was that about when your skin got all oily?"

"It was nothing," she insisted once she finished chewing.

"Then why did you seem so embarrassed? I think maybe you should explain," I insisted, before taking another piece of steak for myself.

She bowed her head slightly, "I lost control of my pheromone glands. Gods," she gave a nervous laugh, "that's never happened to me before, not even when I was a little girl. Sometimes, it happens to young fey while they're sleeping, or if they're frightened, but it's shameful if you're grown. All your pheromones are released at once. It can take a day or two to get back to normal."

I nuzzled the top of her head, "I won't tell," I promised.

"You'd better- mmph."

"When Amity came to get you, did she see anything?" I asked.

Val finished her bite, but I fed her some roast carrot before she could speak, and she settled for shaking her head.

"But you used your magic to get out, didn't you?" I asked, my tone gentle but accusing.

Rather than try to speak, she nodded and opened her mouth obediently to receive another forkful.

"Well, I guess I'll need to do something about that," I mused, "But... later."

Valentine remained docile and obedient while I fed her whatever pleased me, and she learned to be silent unless I asked her something, lest I cut her off with another mouthful of food.

Though the sun had since slipped below the horizon, neither of us were tired enough to sleep, and Val lit the fire while I cleared away the remains of our meal. Tomorrow would be The Long Night, and there would be plenty of time to sleep in, so neither of us was in any hurry at the moment.

I joined Val by the fire once I was done with the washing up. I only realized she was laying naked before it when I saw the white robe lay draped over the back of the couch. Her hair was so thick and so long that it covered her like a cloak, the firelight reflecting off it with a metallic sheen.

I lay down behind her and began to gently stroke her back. She sighed contentedly at my touch and rolled onto her front. I worked my fingers up and down her back, smiling softly as I felt her relax.

"Are you okay Val? I hope I didn't take things too far," I murmured.

She shook her head slightly, turning her head to face me and resting it on her forearms, "Not at all. Wally, this was splendid. The girls at The Blushing Maiden could learn a thing or two from you," she bit her lower lip, "Actually, I do believe I'd like to see you teach them."

"No," I insisted gently, "I don't think there'll be anyone else,"

She hesitated, then slowly began to nod, "Agreed. I don't mind how far you take things. Go as far as you like, but only when it's the two of us, okay? A little flirtation is one thing, but I have no taste for exhibitionism and value my privacy."

I settled in closer and buried my face in her hair, "I think you might just be perfect. It finally feels as if everything is back to how it should be. Or should always have been."

The two of us cuddled by the fire until long after it had burned down to coals, talking about nothing at all, basking in the warmth and each other's company.