"What do you mean?" Mandy asked, puzzled by the statement. Before she had time to think, Jacinth's appearance began to shift subtly.
Fine strands of silver threaded through Jacinth's midnight black hair, like moonlight streaming through darkness. The youthful smoothness of her face gained subtle character lines around her eyes and mouth - not wrinkles exactly, but the gentle marks of wisdom and experience. Her entire bearing shifted, taking on a more mature presence while maintaining her inherent grace.
Within moments, Jacinth had transformed from appearing as a woman in her twenties to someone who could have been Mandy's contemporary. The change was so natural, so perfectlyexecuted, that if Mandy hadn't witnessed it herself, she would have sworn this was how Jacinth had always looked.
Mandy stared, her mouth falling open. There were no words…
Jacinth giggled, the sound musical and light. "We can go the other way too." Her form shimmered like heat waves rising from desert sand.
In the blink of an eye, where her friend had stood moments before, there was now the most adorable toddler Mandy had ever seen. Huge brown eyes dominated the tiny face, framed by impossibly long, curling eyelashes. The child-sized version of Jacinth wore a miniature bedouin dress, complete with tiny embroidered details, and her smile could have lit up the darkest night.
"Oh. My. God." Mandy's voice came out in a squeak. "Now I want to hug you and squeeze you and take you home and call you George!"
The toddler version of Jacinth burst into peals of laughter, the sound like tiny silver bells. Her miniature form bounced with delight, dark curls dancing around her cherubic face.
A moment later, the adorable toddler shimmered and transformed back into the familiar form of Jacinth. Mandy had to bite back a small sound of protest - that tiny version of her friend had been absolutely precious, and Oh. Em. Gee. She really did want to keep her!
Jacinth's dark eyes sparkled with mischief as she settled gracefully onto the floor beside Mandy, who was still swishing her mermaid tail - just because she could.
"I can teach you, you know. If you wanted to look younger..."
"No." Mandy shot her friend a mock glare, though she couldn't quite keep the smile from tugging at her lips. "I earned every one of these silver hairs and laugh lines the hard way,thank you very much! They're battle scars and I wear them proudly."
Jacinth's musical laugh filled the room. "I should have known you'd say that. You're quite remarkable, you know."
Mandy fixed Jacinth with a stern look, refusing to be distracted by shape-shifting shenanigans, no matter how adorable.
"Let's get back to the wardrobe discussion. I'd rather focus on practical matters like being able to change clothes instantly - especially since I keep having to go back and forth between here and Qaf." She gestured at her mermaid tail.
Mandy paused, pursing her lips, considering the implications. "Wait - does the clothing have to actually exist somewhere, like this tail that I bought, then visualized onto myself?" She gestured at the gleaming scales. "Or can I just imagine any outfit and make it appear?"
"Well, you can do that," Jacinth replied, holding up one elegant finger as she temporized. "However, it requires considerable visualization and magical effort. You have to picture every detail perfectly - the texture of the fabric, the way it drapes, how the seams lie, everything. Personally, I find it's not worth the effort most of the time. But then..." Her dark eyes twinkled with mischief. "I'm nine hundred years old and have quite an extensive wardrobe already."
Mandy nodded slowly, processing this new information as she adjusted her position on the floor, the mermaid tail's scales catching the afternoon light. Moving her legs, she admired the swish of the tail fins. "I can see how having centuries to accumulate a wardrobe would make creating clothes from scratch seem like too much work."
A thought struck her. "But where do you keep everything? I mean, nine hundred years of collecting clothes..." She gesturedaround her small apartment. "That's got to take up an enormous amount of space."
"In my home in Qaf, of course." Jacinth's musical voice held a note of amusement, as if the answer should have been obvious.
"And you can just..." Mandy waved her hand vaguely in the air.
"Access them whenever I want? Yes." Jacinth's dark eyes sparkled. "It doesn't matter where they're stored - in Qaf or here in the mortal realm. I simply visualize wearing them, and..." She snapped her fingers with a flourish, her outfit transforming into an elegant silk gown before shifting back to her original casual wear.
"The best part is," Jacinth continued, leaning forward conspiratorially, "if you do go to the trouble of creating clothing from nothing, once it's manifested in the real world, it belongs to you as surely as if you'd purchased it at a store. So it can go in your wardrobe to be called on at any time."
Mandy's eyes widened as she thought of it. All those historical costumes she'd dreamed of wearing, the elaborate fantasy gowns she'd sketched in her notebooks - she could actually create them, wear them, keep them.
Mandy rubbed her hands together, unable to contain her glee. "Oh my gosh, I'm going to need a new closet!"
Jacinth's musical laugh filled the room. "You're going to just love this next part." Her dark eyes sparkled with that familiar mischievous glint that always preceded something particularly magical. "You can magically expand your closet to be as big as you want."
Mandy stared at her, mouth slightly agape, the scales of her mermaid tail forgotten as she processed this new information.
"What do you mean, expand my closet?" She glanced toward her bedroom where the small walk-in closet barely held her current wardrobe.
"It will look exactly like your regular closet from the outside," Jacinth explained, her musical voice carrying that patient tone she used when teaching particularly exciting magical concepts. "But once you step inside..." She spread her hands in an expansive gesture. "It can be whatever you create it to be."
The possibilities made Mandy's head spin. Her writer's imagination immediately conjured images of vast rooms filled with rolling racks of costumes, walls of shoes stretching into the distance, mirrors everywhere to catch the light. Like something out of a fantasy movie - bigger on the inside, like...
