#also ik the outfit doesn’t have earrings in game but these were so perfect for it?? i couldn’t say no

[viatrix-glow]

pleiades night wip!!! it’s been a while sorry i am going thru it w classes right now

also look at these earrings i found at the craft store. they’re perfect

[scurvgirl]

*throws at @justanartsysideblog*

Probably fits best with Muppet AU but it can honestly be any AU where Mel and Kass have All The Babies.

**

Asaaranda always had the dreams. They were nightmares when she was little and unable to protect herself from the dark visages of the Fade. Nanae figured it out quickly, though, and they helped her. She has lots of nice dream memories of them showing her the Fade, their dark form a comforting pillar that kept all the actually scary things away from her. 

As far as discovering if one is a mage, Asaaranda was discovered early. At two, she was waking up screaming from the terrors. Nanae would whisk her into their and Mama’s bed and curl around her. She remembers a shadow sliding over her like a blanket and being eased back into a much more peaceful sleep. 

At seven, Asaaranda has learned how to keep her dreams nice almost all of the time, and when they’re bad, she can usually fix it. She knows she is very lucky to be able to do this and to have a nanae and older siblings who are so good at helping. Well, sometimes. Aelynthi and Selene are in college now and can’t help her as much as before, but they did when she little! And Ash helps with what she knows, but her magic is so different that she doesn’t get it a lot of the time. Nanae gets it, though. They know tricks and things and it makes Anda feel safe. 

Nanae has said that out of all their kids, her magic looks the most like their own. It makes sense, Anda thinks. Nanae adopted Selene and Ash and Aelynthi has two other parents. It makes Anda feel special to be like her nanae. Not that her siblings aren’t also special! Ash and Selene have the prettiest fires and Aelynthi is very good with his Super Secret Magic. But Anda is like Nanae, and she likes that. 

When Nanae said her magic was the most like theirs, she beamed. Later, she got to thinking - could she do things like Nanae? Making lightning at her fingers turned out not to be hard, but she thinks Aelynthi can do that too. She wants to do something only she and Nanae can do. The only thing she can think of is shape-shifting. 

Anda saw Nanae do it once. Normally they come out of their room looking a little different, but she saw them do it once. She was playing dress-up and Nanae has the best jewelry. They have a box full of stuff they said she can use if she’s careful and Anda is always careful. She was in their closet, going through the box when they came in, talking to Mama about...something. She looked up and saw them take off their shirt. They had a bra on like Mama wears, and Ash and Selene. They undid the bra and then they began to change. There was a ripple of magic around them and their chest changed until they almost looked like Aelynthi. 

Then their ear twitched and they turned to see her covered in their jewelry.

“Playing dress up again, da’len?” They asked and she nodded, still staring at them. 

“Does that hurt?” She blurted and they shook their head.

“No, because I know how to do it correctly.”

“Oh.” 

That image stayed with Anda for the last few weeks. She doesn’t know many mages who can do that. She thinks one of Aelynthi and Selene’s friends can do that, but she doesn’t know for sure. Maybe some people are just born with pointy teeth.

She thinks about their Nanae shifting a lot. They said it doesn’t hurt and she knows they do it a lot. Or it seems like a lot. She thinks about her nanae shifting and how her magic is the most like theirs.

Finally, Anda plucks up the courage and locks herself in the bathroom she’s supposed to share with Ash. She climbs up on the counter and stares at herself in the mirror. She needs to pick something to change, something small. So she stares long and hard at herself, picking at herself, trying to think of what will be best to change.

One of her teachers once told her she looks like a doll with her big eyes. Anda doesn’t think she looks like a doll, she’s never seen a doll with horns. Sometimes she sees a doll with elfy ears, but her ears are smaller than her nanae’s and Aelynthi and Selene’s. They’re bigger than Ash’s and Mama’s, though. She’s all in-between, she thinks. 

Mama is always saying Anda is so beautiful and pretty. Nanae says it too, but not as much. They say she’s smart and clever and observant. Anda likes to think she’s all of it. She’s elfy and Qunari and smart and pretty and clever and beautiful. 

She doesn’t want to change her ears. She likes them, and she thinks it’s a bad idea to try and change her horns. Nanae goes to the salon to get their hair done, so she doesn’t think she can change her hair. She thinks about her nose but remembers that awful game when she was little where  adults liked to pretend they stole her nose. She...always believed them and screamed. So no nose. The mouth won’t work either because what if it goes away and she can’t eat? She needs to eat! Mama is making cookies tonight and she wants them. 

Anda stares and stares and ah-ha! Eye color. It’s perfect, it’s small and if it won’t go back, she doesn’t think it will be that bad. 

She takes a deep breath and leans forward, focusing completely on her eyes. Mama told her that they named her Asaaranda, which means thunderstorm, because of her eyes. She said they  reminded Mama and Nanae of a thunderstorm at sea, with the grays and blues and greens all together. They’re nice eyes, if big. She blinks slowly and thinks about her stormy eyes becoming darker, earthier. She imagines them turning brown like her friend’s. She can see it in her mind, the gray-blue-green giving way to brown. Almost like her pupil expanding so that it overtakes her iris.

After she has the picture in her head, Anda brings up her magic. It’s not difficult, her magic is never far away. It feels thick and strong, like syrup. It moves inside her and she feels it tickle her eyes.

She blinks slow and she pauses with her eyes closed and counts to ten, picturing her eyes being brown when she opens them. There is a tingling sensation behind her eyes and when she reaches ten, she cautiously opens her eyes. 

Anda screams. It worked! It more than worked, her eyes are now black! As in the entire eyeball! Black! She looks like a demon!

She scrambles away from the mirror and falls off the counter.

“Ah!” She yells as pain shoots through her body as she lands on the tile.

“Asaaranda!” She hears her Nanae yell and then the door is yanked open, the doorknob cracking as it swings into the hallway. 

“Nana-a-a-aee!” Anda sobs on the tile.

“Baby what hap - your eyes,” they exclaim, getting on the floor with her and pulling her to them. 

“I-I-I wa-a-anted, to, be....li-ike you-u-u,” she cries, gasping as she leans into them. “Maake it go away!” 

“Shh, take a deep breath, da’len. It’s okay, shhh,” they whisper, holding her close. “I want you to think about your eyes, your beautiful, green-blue and gray eyes. Do you remember what they look like? Here I have a picture,” they say and somehow pull out their phone and open up the pictures and select one she had taken of herself the other day in one of her outfits. 

“See? That’s you. Look at yourself, look at your eyes. It’s working, da’len, the black is going away, keep looking.”

They keep coaching her, telling her to look at the picture and to think about the specific color of her eyes. Her sobs slow and she feels her magic swirl inside of her again. She squinches her eyes shut and when she opens them, Nanae smiles.

“There, back to normal.” They smooth her hair back and she leans into them. She pushes the selfie button on their phone to look at her eyes to see that they are back to normal. 

“Did you try to change them on purpose?” Nanae asks and she nods. “You wanted to be like me?” She nods again, feeling a little embarrassed. She really messed this up, didn’t she?

But Nanae just sighs and holds her close, “That is very sweet, da’len.” They kiss the top of her head, “And I am very proud of you for figuring out how to change your eyes on your own, but you need to be careful about shifting. It can really hurt you if you’re not careful.” They pet her hair like they do when she’s woken up from a nightmare and slowly she starts to feel herself relax from the scare of her eyes. But now she feels bad about not being smart and doing something so stupid. 

“I’m sorry, Nanae,” she whispers.

“You are a very talented little mage, Asaaranda. I can show you how to safely shift so you you don’t scare yourself or hurt yourself.”

Anda shifts in their lap to look up at them. They’re looking down at her, their silvery eyes all soft and nice. 

“I’d like that,” she says. 

They smile and kiss her forehead, “Good.”

“Did you scare yourself when you tried it the first time?” She asks and they tilt their head slightly like they do when thinking.

“I have scared myself before. Sometimes your own magic can be scary, that’s why you have teachers who can help make it less scary.” 

“Oh.” All calm now, Anda’s mind starts to whirl and questions start to fill her head. She has so many questions now! She wants to ask Nanae about their teachers and what they’ll do first, and how much she’ll have to practice, and -

“Let’s go see if Mama can make the cookies now. Your tummy is about to be very hungry.” They pick her up and start walking down the hall while Anda’s eyes go wide with excitement.

“Cookies!”