"Yeah, exactly, that stuff," breathed Lily, still staring up at the canvas ceiling.
"This witch doctor class, is it… good?"
Rina rubbed her brow with the side of her finger. "It's a rare one to get, very rare, I've never come across someone having the Affinity for it, I suppose that's why I wasn't aware we had the book. In any case, I do actually know something of the Class if only through word of mouth and rumour."
Lily slowly sat up and looked at her hands, spreading her fingers, rolling her knuckles.
"...How do I use the Class? I feel like I instinctively know stuff, I just don't know what that stuff is…"
"Does the word Voodoo bring anything to mind?"
"...Yes? No? Maybe. I don't know, everything is so- I can't explain it."
"That's fine and perfectly normal for a new Class, you will learn to intuit things better as time goes by and you grow more comfortable with it."
Rina slithered around the desk as she spoke and ducked down to rummage through the draws. She stood back up holding something in hand, a teddy bear.
"For the kids when a parent is picking out a Class," she explained. She snaked over to Lily who had climbed to her feet and was furrowing her brow in introspection, trying to get comfortable with her altered state of mind.
She got the otterkin's attention by waggling the bear at her.
"Now I might not know a great deal about the Class but I do know its first key Skill. Effigy transference. It boils down to taking a doll, the closer the approximation the better, and having things that happen to the doll transfer to the target."
A flicker of understanding appeared in Lily's eyes that quickly caught and grew into a small bonfire of knowledge as her Class fed her understanding.
"So if I snapped a doll in half it would snap whoever I wanted in half?"
"Perhaps. It depends."
Rina leant down and handed the bear to Lily. Due to their height difference she had to bend down quite a distance.
"This will likely be a very ineffective effigy since there aren't any bears around or anything like that but it should do for an example. Er, you will need something of who you are targeting, hair or fur or anything that comes from their body."
"H-hey now," said Fey, "You can't just test a dangerous thing like that for the first time on a living person! What if something goes wrong!"
"You'd be able to heal them though, right Fey?"
"Well, yes, but only if they survive, I can't bring them back if you go too far, please don't do this!"
Lily bit her lip but then nodded her head.
"You're right Fey," she hesitated then rummaged in her pocket until she pulled out a small green feather. "I got this from the green bird things that pull the caravans. Could I test it with this?"
Rina eyed the feather then shrugged. "Fine enough with me, the transference should be very minor since you are brand new to the Class and the effigy is nothing like a pobo."
Lily nodded then flipped over the bear, she tugged at the buttons on its back until enough had come free that she was able to push the small feather inside. She buttoned it back up and turned it over, examining its button eyes.
She concentrated and a dark purple glow oozed from the bear's silhouette before fading to nothing. It was done, she had used her Class for the first time.
"How will we know if it works?" muttered Lily.
Kayla and Rina had already moved over to the door flap. Kayla turned and waved her sister over.
"Come on, we can see the pobos from here."
Lily blinked. "Oh, right." She followed the others outside. The pobos, the green birds who pulled the caravans, were tied up around the other caravans, many of them huddling together communally or scratching at the ground looking for seeds, their green parrot-like feathers bright and exotic in the late afternoon light.
Lily held the bear up. Then she tilted it to the side. Nothing happened.
"You'll need to do something a bit stronger than that I'm afraid."
Lily glanced up at the towering lamia then stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and lifted the arm of the bear. Yet again, nothing happened.
"No, that's not going to transfer, they don't have arms like a bear for one. Hold on, I have an idea."