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Kyrie slept like a little kid, curled up around a raggedy golden teddy bear with a tiny smile on her face, like she was having a very good dream. It was, in fact, her favorite to have thus far, some kind of fantasy about a world filled with rainbows, unicorns, and no demons at all. In short, wish fulfillment fantasy, the dream equivalent of Twilight.

That made being awoken by her demonic master even worse. She shot up with a breathless little shriek and dusted her bangs out of her eyes, glanced to the clock and made an annoyed sound before remembering who she was snarling at. "Good morning, Lord Seere," she mumbled, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and glancing over to the bunnies. "Thank you for Cookie, he is a very cute rabbit." After all, who else gave her bunnies?

As she rambled out of bed, she paused and then flushed bright red. She whipped around to stare at Seere, saying in a highly offended tone, "I am not decent turn around so I can get dressed!" Then she rushed over to her closet, threw him a last dagger-edged glare, and hurried to pull on a pair of jeans and a rather conservative sweater (for Kyrie, anyway).

"He is a nice bunny," Kyrie said grumpily as she pulled on her sneakers. "Even though he gets out of the cage all the time, I mean, how am I supposed to take care of him if he keeps followin' me around? I mean gosh, really, Cookie? I'll probably have to get them a bigger cage, is all." It wasn't like she didn't have the money to do it, resourcing paid very well, but still! She should not have to get a new cage for just three bunnies. It was frustrating! But her face was affectionate as she patted her bunnies good morning and offered them carrots through the mesh.

When she was done, she straightened and stared at him, a somewhat angry look on her childish face. "Well it's your fault," she said, a foreign, sullen bitterness in her voice. "Normal, non-demon-bound people grow just fine, you know. Do I have time for tea?"

She set a pot of water on the burner, asking, "Would you like some?" Without waiting for an answer, she thumped two mugs down on the table and set about measuring tea leaves into a diffuser. Kyrie did not like this topic at all! Not at all! She gritted her teeth as he spoke and put away her little tea containers.

It was true that some stories made immortal form as a teenager sound appealing. Heck, she'd even thought such a thing before it had actually, you know, happened to her. Now she just wished she'd been given an option between eternal youth as a seventeen-year-old or eternal youth as a twenty-one-year-old. Of course, that wasn't an option anymore, because once you were stuck, you really were stuck--

Kyrie removed the whistling kettle from the burner and poured the hot water into her teapot, trying to keep her hands steady. It can be fixed? She could get just a little older? She would like that, she wanted to grow up and be all adult-like. Even just being her right age, being nineteen, that would be... that would be wonderful.

She poured the tea - it smelled deliciously spicy and sweet - and pushed the black mug with little Studio Ghibli characters on it over to Seere. Trying hard to keep the whiny, hopeful tone out of her voice, she asked, "You can do that?"

New attributes...

Kyrie poured sugar into her tea, only stopping with a jolt when she realized just how much she had put into the cup. It didn't matter - she liked sweet things. But there was something about that phrasing that niggled at a memory, something vague in the back of her mind --

"It's probably a good thing, at least for me, that you're frozen like this," said Mr. Fauste casually as he checked off items on his list. "After all, as you get older, there would have been... new attributes."

Curiously, she peered over the back of the armchair she was sitting in, much to Mr. Mhin's displeasure. "What kind of new attributes, Mr. Fauste?"

The man coughed discreetly. "Well, the sort that might attract more attention from sensible men than might be pleasant, Kyrie."

"He means they'll want to ******** you," said Mr. Mhin bluntly.

"I wouldn't have put it that way," Mr. Fauste said, but he didn't protest the summary.

-- as Kyrie recalled that encounter, a look of growing horror came over her face. "I'm not going to sleep with anyone," she said, her voice high and squeaky with terror. No no no no no, boys were disgusting and she wasn't going to have anything to do with that, permanently stuck at seventeen otherwise or not! Never, no matter how much Daddy hinted at it!

The worst part was, she knew that if Lord Seere wanted her to do it, she would. Because of the order, she'd need to do it, and the look of terror mixed pitiably with pleading and something like betrayal. He couldn't mean what Mr. Mhin had said. He just couldn't.

Okay. Okay. She had just overreacted. Still watching him warily, she sat back down with her mug of tea and listened quietly. Her hands, wrapped around the mug, were white-knuckled. None of this sounded like anything she would want to do, ever, not in one million years! But... she had to do this, didn't she? There wasn't another choice.

Kyrie pulled on a lock of her hair, suddenly disinterested in her favorite blend of tea. "I don't want one," she muttered. She flicked the side of the cup and watched the ripples spread across the dark surface of the liquid. Did she really have to touch them?...

"My right age," said Kyrie, clearly trying to sound tougher than she was. She actually sounded sort of like a kitten that thinks it could take on a lion and win, only much more uncertain than that - almost like she was kind of afraid. After all, she had been seventeen for almost a year now, a year longer than it should have been. So, doing the math, she should be nineteen... It wouldn't hurt to be nice, though, because he didn't have to make her older. "Please, Lord Seere?"

Kyrie shivered, involuntarily glancing up at Seere's hand - his wrist, really, because of the angle - and then closing her eyes very, very tightly. Then that power - the intoxicating power she remembered from her encounter with Sera - coursed through her and she felt - more awake. Uncomfortable, like she'd just run suicides in gym for a few hours, but that faded and she was left with just the delightful energy for a few moments. That faded too, and then she noticed that... Her shirt didn't fit right anymore.

She frowned for a moment, and then caught sight of herself in a mirror. For a few flabbergasted seconds, she stared, and then she smiled. It didn't look quite right - she felt like she shouldn't have such large breasts - but she was nineteen!

Her shirt did have to get changed, though. And her jeans, too. These were sorta too small now. She pulled out a larger pair of jeans - a pair she'd borrowed from her father, so they were rather beat up and didn't quite fit right, sort of like the T-shirt and jacket she pulled on over that.

"Who's Razz," she asked Lord Seere when she sat back down at the table to retie her sneakers. The shoes still fit - for which she was grateful - but she'd neglected to untie them while pulling them off to change.