selkiesaoirse | (no subject)

Saoirse wakes with a long stretch and a quiet groan. Then she wrinkles her nose. Her underwear is too tight. She reaches down to try to adjust it, but it rips a little from the strain. Her eyes shoot wide at the sound. She sits bolt upright and looks down at herself. Her night gown is short and tight on her body. Her underwear is digging into her skin. Her ankles are hanging partly off the bed.

"Mum!"

She rolls out of bed and grabs a blanket to wrap around herself.

"Mum!" she calls again, more urgently. She stomps through the house, her hair a wild mane. Cu groans curiously at her, then wines, and she makes her way downstairs.

"Mum! Someone's magicked all my stuff smaller!"

At sixteen, she's no stranger to magic, and all the various ways it can bugger with someone's life. She's lucky to have someone like Greta here, actually, who has a healthy respect — nay, fear — of most things magic.

She stops in front of her now, righteous indignation in her lanky limbs and expressive eyebrows, demanding some sort of recompense.

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Saoirse watches her, visibly skeptical. "Eight? Mum, yesterday I was fifteen, just like I am today." Her sweet sixteen is coming up in just a couple of months: she's not going to let Greta take this away! She eyes Greta suspiciously. "Are you going through a midlife crisis, or something?"

Greta can't help an incredulous snort at the suggestion, mostly out of surprise that Saoirse at any age is using phrases like 'midlife crisis.' Good lord, but Darrow's done a number on her.

"Yes, it's my midlife crisis that filled your bedroom with all of your eight-year-old self's furniture and clothes, changed you into something uncomfortable, and tucked you back into your too-small bed without even waking you," she says with a sort of dry fondness. "I suppose you think I hid all of your teenage things in the attic or something. It's an awful lot of effort for a very strange prank you're not even falling for, don't you think?"

She scoffs at the amount of sarcasm being leveled at her. "Well you might've," she points out stubbornly. Still, something in her expression wavers, and she holds up one finger. She goes into her room, looking for her phone. It's smaller than she remembers, and bedecked in the most hideous pink, baubly case, which she hasn't seen in ages.

She brings it back to Greta and loads up her Suddengram. That'll have all the picture proof she needs to show Greta she's supposed to be fifteen.

Except... none of the photos she remembers posting are there. In fact, there are only a few pictures of Cu, and some of her and Greta from when she was eight, and some of the sea.

"Did... did you delete my photos?" she asks. There isn't any accusation in her tone this time.

Greta just arches an eyebrow at the accusation; Saoirse must know how ridiculous an idea it is, really. Not that spontaneously aging seven years and being gifted memories to match is less ridiculous, but at least there's a bloody precedent for it.

She waits patiently as Saoirse fetches her phone and fiddles with it, going straight to her Suddengram account. When she finally speaks, it's clear that some of the wind has gone out of her sails.

"I'm flattered you think I could," she gently replies. "You know I barely understand how Suddengram works."

Saoirse frowns, scrolling through her page and refreshing it a few times, like maybe it's a glitch. Her memories of the last seven years, which felt so fresh and crisp and right only moments ago, feel now fuzzy and faded. She lowers her phone to her lap and looks at Greta.

"I... I don't feel eight..."

"Well, we do know Darrow can do things to people's memories. Though giving them new ones is... well. This is the first I've heard of that."

Greta reaches over to pat Saoirse's cheek, a fond, familiar gesture, though the shape of Saoirse's face has changed. "I know this is all very strange -- for you even moreso than me. But we'll work it out, okay?"