Coffee shop epiphanies

[Thistle]

Theo didn't entirely understand the question. He could list off a bunch of attributes, blue eyes, mussed up hair, physically fit. Theo experenced the curious feeling he sometimes got around Kyle. A buzzing humidity. He tried to ignore like he normally did.
From the way Kyle had just talked about being human it was starting to come together for Theo that Kyle didn't consider himself human. At least, not anymore. However, looking at him now he couldn't guess why. His scrutiny had shown his aura to be different than a Sleeper but then so was Theo's own.
"You look human," there was uncertainty like he wasn't sure that was the right answer because he could feel he was missing some critical piece of information.

[Kyle Franesco]

Kyle exhaled with obvious relief. "Good." That was one crisis averted.

"Ten years ago, I caught the attention of a... thing. Then this thing went about causing as much trouble in my life as possible. At the very end of my rope this thing ripped my face off, put it on a Fetch- a Doppelgänger. And then it ate me."

Klack-Klack Kyle snaps his teeth twice in rapid succession and he looks at Theo in the dark. A plane takes off from the airfield and the running lights are reflected in his eyes.

"It ate me up in two big bites Theo."

[Thistle]

Good? Theo knew he was missing something now. Was there some illusion he hadn't seen? He hadn't noticed any spells in his scrutiny but that didn't mean there weren't any. He remembered the ley lines. Was this another example of nartural magic that didn't register as a spell? If it was, what was it hiding.
Theo listened as Kyle started his story. His first thought was that it like a traumatic Awakening but the way Kyle told it made him fairly sure he wasn't speaking metaphorically. Without realising it Theo had leaned forward in his seat to listen. It was a habit he had whenever Kyle was telling his life story. This time though it gave the impression of someone hearing a ghost story. The tension and attention told Kyle that he was believing it too.
Theo kept most of his questions silent, not wanting to interrupt and assuming that some of them might be answered later.

[Kyle Franesco]

"However you think it feels, it's worse than that. And this thing does not follow the rules in effect on this side of the Hedge. Rules like 'People die after being eaten' and 'once you get eaten there's only one way your getting out of the situation'...."

Kyle broods about how is is going to say what he plans to say next. "When I finally escape my predicament I am sans my face, which is not a feel-good situation either, so I had to make my own. Unfortunately, my only reference was the thing that had taken me."

Kyle's voice sharpens but it's impossible to tell if he's happy or sad or upset about what he says. "I'm not human any more because I'm this now."

He does not boil away the Mask, because that was amazingly difficult and dangerous. Instead he activates one of Contracts and his Mein overpowers the Mask. Theo is now sitting in the car with a man that has the head and face of a Coyote, and if he was handsome before now he is impossibly so. He is glorious and dazzling in the reflected light from below them and he isn't scary at all.

Kyle rolls 7 to SotEP (Presence + Wyrd) (10 Again)
9, 3, 9, 5, 1, 10, 1, 2 (3 successes)

[Thistle]

Theo can feel the sense of magic and then Kyle sitting there, magnificent, like a primal god of myth. It was like looking upon an overwhelming nimbus that didn't fade. It suprised him but he wasn't frightened, awed but not confused.
"Gott verdammt."
His curiosity finally getting the better of him, Theo reached up and ran his fingers on Kyle's cheek, touching the fur, down his neck, feeling where it changed to skin, and along his shoulder. He withdrew his hand when he realised what he was doing. He withdrew it hastily when he realised what he was thinking.
"Sorry," he apologized almost meekly. His eyes still traveled around Kyle's body, taking in features, coming last to his eyes. They reflected the lights of the base in a way that made it hard for Theo to think clearly.
"Seht gut aus." he admited just a little uncomfortably.

[Kyle Franesco]

Kyle shivered when Theo touched him. This was weird, he had been touched on the face more times than he could count, but never before before by someone that knew what he was. He didn't know if he liked... no that wasn't true. He liked it, he liked it quite a bit if the rest of him had any thing to say about it. He just didn't know if it was because of the person doing it or if it was because he was telling someone that hadn't experienced something similar. "You can see why I don't go out looking like this?"

[Thistle]

Theo was still having some trouble organizing his thoughts. What had done this? What was the Hedge, Kyle had mentioned? What was on the other side? How had he crafted himself a new face? What had happened to his double?
Theo kept staring at Kyle's eyes. They were still the light blue he remembered. They still looked human despite the face they were set in.
Theo readjusted the way he was sitting so to better not notice the growing feeling he was having.
"It's not that bad, but I understand," he said truthfully. Past the initial suprise, it actually looked good. Very good in fact. It wasn't something Sleeper society would understand though.
Theo could sense there was something more to this than involuntary transformation, though. Even shapechanging by Life didn't grant you the ability to cast other spells like he had felt Kyle do.
Theo's expression dropped a little. "There's more to it than just the physical aspect isn't there?"

[Kyle Franesco]

"I took more than just a new face from it. I was there for maybe a year? Time passes strangely in Arcadia, it's not all tied down and orderly like it is here. You have to change to survive there though, and the best way I can describe it is like this - if you suddenly found yourself a thousand miles under water you could do one of two things. You could drown, or you could grow gills. But when you get to land, you can't just get rid of the gills because they are a part of you now. Faerie changes the people that go there and it doesn't stop changing them after they escape." Kyle knew that Changeling of the other Seemings would have described it differently, Darklings loose something and Faerie fills in the gap inexpertly, Elementals replace themselves instead of changing themselves, The Fairest and the Wizened are twisted but to different ends and Ogres are poisoned by the abuse they suffer. But that's how it worked for him.

"I had a bad time there though, beyond the means of my arrival. At least I think I did, now that I'm not there the memories of the place have so little context that they are mostly meaningless. I must have had a bad time, otherwise I probably wouldn't have tried to come back. While I was a good little possession, It didn't really care about me beyond my intrinsic entertainment value. When I ran away I only had the memories of my old life to use as a road map through the Hedge." Kyle leans in closer to Theo and lowers his voice. "Can you imagine the feeling you get when you realize that you've spent a year away from home while home spent six of them forgetting that you've been gone? Pretending that you were never gone in the first place?"

[Thistle]

At the mention of Arcadia a flurry of theories started forming. Was it actually the Realm he was talking about or something by the same name? Was the Hedge another way of saying the Abyss? The way he'd described it sounded a little like the Primal Wilds. Theo knew Changelings had ties to Time and Fate, the two arcana of affinity for Arcadia. He had never heard of go bodily there. It was suppose to be impossible. If it wasn't, what had taken Kyle there? An Exarch? An Abyssal being? Something else? Whatever it was it hadn't done it out of kindness from the way Kyle had told it.
Theo's best guess was a being had taken him to part of a Supernal Realm under the control of the Exarchs were he'd been totured, changed in a mockery of what Awakening should be, and escaped. The theory of Kyle's potential origins might have caused other Mages to distrust or even hate him but Theo found his heart going out to Kyle.
"Your double?" he asked in a way that already said he knew the answer. He went over what he remembered of Kyle's life and where the gap would be. Kyle had described it, though not with detail. Theo hadn't noticed because most people didn't give "detail" as he saw it but now the gap seemed logical.

[Kyle Franesco]

Kyle shakes his head. "No, I've told you what happened to me. Now it's your turn for a little bit. You born a wizard? Does it run if families or is it something anybody can learn?"