changer ❧ j.sc | ✔

book two ❧ [ix]

Pushing open the door to the next shop on this street, you were pleasantly surprised by the calm, quaint atmosphere that you were greeted by. The bright red and gold pillars outside of the toy and watch shop had suggested otherwise, but inside of it were a few display cases filled with watches and other pieces of jewelry, while the other half of the shop had shelves upon shelves of toys. Every item in the store seemed handmade, and even to your untrained eye, you could tell that several had magical properties. A girl about your age was behind one of the watch and jewelry counters towards the front of the store, which also had the register on it. She was fiddling with an open watch, and you watched as she readjusted the light of the lamp above her with just a flick of her wrist—not touching a single button or switch on the device. All the jewelry and other accessories she was wearing already made you think she might've been a witch, but that just locked it in for you.

Some music played throughout the store, though you couldn't quite tell where it was coming from, as there were no visible speakers on the ceiling or elsewhere. Briefly dragging your eyes over the display cases as you strolled up towards the employee, you spotted quite a few watches, of course, as well as necklaces, rings, earrings, and small trinkets. But nothing that quite stuck out to you as what you were looking for.

The witch perked up as you came to a stop in front of her, setting her tiny tools down on the small rag alongside the watch pieces. "Hi! Welcome in. Is there something I can help you with?"

"This is a magical kind of shop, right?" You asked curiously. Apothecaries usually stuck out as such, but having a witch and a couple things that glowed didn't guarantee anything.

"Yep! This place is ran by my coven!" She told you proudly. "We make everything in here by hand in the back, fine tune the mechanics and the magic ourselves. Are you looking for any particular kind of magic thing?"

"Yes, well, sort of..." You trailed off sheepishly. "I'm kind of gift shopping right now."

"What's the occasion?"

After a split-second internal debate, you figured this witch had probably dealt with weirder, and you would definitely need her insight and experience when it came to the magical properties of all of the options in front of you.

"My boyfriend is giving me his mating bite in a few days, but I don't want to show up empty-handed, you know?" You scratched at the back of your neck. "Like, it's not an engagement-level thing for us, but it's still big, and I want to be able to give him something too..."

She didn't seem thrown off in the slightest, instead seeming to ponder this for a moment, tapping her chin, before her features lit up, and she slid over to the other end of the display case. You followed her down.

"Now, I'm guessing you already know about moonstone—" She explained, pulling out a small display of rings. "Helps their shifts."

You nodded as you looked over the many rings inlaid with opalescent stones like the one on Jeno's necklace. "Yeah. And, I mean, his aren't that bad. Just sort of... disorienting and confusing. Though I hate how sickly he gets the day or so after."

The witch gave you an intrigued look. "He's... half-werewolf?"

Darting your eyes back up to her, you wondered which part of what you just said had given it away. The less intense shift? The 'sickly' bit?

"And half-human?" She took your silence as an apparent cue to finish her guess.

You slowly nodded.

Immediately, the rings were whisked away from under your nose. She was practically alight with excitement as she flitted over to a completely different display case, grabbing just one singular piece from there and bringing it back over to you. It was another ring, a thick silver band of one width, with no obvious gem settings or other such features.

"So, you wouldn't really be worried about the shift itself, then. Or, at least not the pain part, which is really what the moonstone helps werewolves with. Easing the transition into and during the shift." The employee rambled enthusiastically. "The symptoms that he really has a problem with are about getting back into balance after. Since he's half-human, his body has to work a lot harder to return to homeostasis after an ordeal like a werewolf shift."

"He's said something about that before. Homeostasis."

"Then what you really want is something like this—" She offered the ring out for you to take, depositing it onto your palm. You curiously looked it over closer. "Instead of moonstone, like most things designed for werewolves, this has concentrated moonflower essence in the chamber that makes up most of the band."

You tilted the ring and could in fact see a small amount of mostly clear, but shimmery iridescent cobalt blue liquid shift around in the light. The container that held the liquid must have been incredibly thin to fit along the ring whilst adding negligible bulk.

Moonflower was of course familiar to you from Magical Botany Club. While the plant itself wasn't magical, it had a slew of magical applications, and could be distilled down to a magical essence. Much like moonstone, which also wasn't in and of itself magical, it had an effect on magical beings that were also tied to the moon, most notably, werewolves. Moonflower paste was a common ingredient in traditional werewolf medicine, and even in modern pharmaceuticals, many medications with different formulations for werewolves—or formulated to treat diseases that only werewolves got—often had ingredients derived from the moonflower. In addition to healing properties, the smell tended to have a calming effect on them as well, both in and out of their shifts (unlike moonstone, which exclusively aided their shifts).

You had a moonflower plant in your own apartment, which had been useless for any werewolf purposes as of late with Sungchan never coming over, but hopefully it wouldn't be that way for long. It had been slightly altered so that it would be suited to growing indoors; moonflower was typically a vine, which was difficult to keep in a one-bedroom apartment with limited balcony space, so after a little bit of help from Jaemin, your moonflower grew as a cute little potted bush instead.

But there was still one more feature on the ring that hadn't been explained to you. A single, silver, almost-circle on one side of the outside of the ring, entirely flush with the top of the container that held the moonflower essence. The outline of the rest of the circle was there, but it wasn't quite filled in all the way, a small crescent of darkness keeping the silver from being whole.

"And this?" You gestured to the symbol.

"Tracks the lunar cycle. Waxing gibbous, we're just a couple days away from the full moon. He probably instinctually knows what phase of the moon it is, but it doesn't hurt to have an extra reminder."

Turning the ring over in your hand again, you found yourself nodding and smiling. "Yeah. This is perfect."

"And you said it's happening in a few days? So after the full moon, right?"

"Oh, uhm, yes."

"We could totally make another by then, if you wanted a matching set," she offered.

"Really? So quick?"

"A lot of the initial process is the R&D," the witch explained with a laugh. "But we already know how to make this one, it'll be easy. Promise."

You thought this over for a moment. After telling so many people that it wasn't marriage or engagement, getting matching rings... But the whole point of exchanging mating bites in the first place was to match. Well, almost, since no two werewolves would have the same bite. To coordinate. To give each other your own version of the same thing. Your own version of the same thing.

"Do you think you could make it without the chamber with the moonflower essence, actually?" You asked. "Like, still with the lunar tracker. Just the main band and the little part that tracks the lunar cycle."

She lit up. "Absolutely! Should be even quicker, actually. Probably have that done by the end of business tomorrow, morning after tomorrow at the latest."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah! Say the word and I'll start as soon as you leave."

"Yes, please!"