No amount of self-berating could change the fact that Nadezdha ought to have redone her hair and paints yesterday, immediately after her bath, and ought not have gone frolicking with pixies. No matter how fun it had been. It had been really fun, it was sort of hard to regret that. But now they were in a rush.

"Stop feeding Nusidne sweetened pears when you think I am not looking! She had already had two breakfasts, and is getting portly under thy absurdly generous treat-giving regiment!"

Nadezdha, who was putting her weaves and beads and feathers in with frantic energy, shot a wry glance over to where his Hathran had cleared a table and started arranging herbs to protect the cottage in preparation for the meeting. She was looking considerably less grumpy as she finished up her oatmeal. The pears had only ever been opened in the first place because he'd put some into the porridge for her; and a good coincidence that was, because happy familiars did make for secretly happier witches. "I can't help it, have you seen her begging face?"

"I have, and I summarily dismiss it with the indifference which I levy onto everyone and everything else," Sheilaktar groused, which was all the more amusing because of how true and/or untrue it could be at times. "Don thine amulet before thou forgets."

Nadezdha dropped her brush and drew out the cloisonne medallion from a drawn in her desk. She quickly undid the shoulder ties of her corset that she might slip it beneath the bosom. Hmm, and this was as as good an opportunity as any to change the dressing on her shoulder. "Done." The amulet had of course turned 'her' wry tenor into that larkish soprano Sheilaktar so loved.

"Mother above us," Sheilaktar coughed into her oatmeal and then grinned wolfishly. "Years it's been, and still I don't think I will ever quite grow used to that. I am sealing the place. I don't want Yhelbruna leaving any eyes or ears behind." They heard a bump that nearly made Nadezdha leap out of her chair, but it was only the Nana The Goat, leaping off of the roof in pursuit of some tender sprig of garden weed. She normally wasn't allowed in the garden, not without some kind of magical oversight, but Sheilaktar had ensorcelled her in some manner or another to enlist her yard-keeping portfolio.

"Give not thine self away with nervousness," Sheilaktar scolded. "And hurry up!

"Well I'm sorry some of us just can't roll out of bed like angry disheveled dragons in the morning, throw on a cloak of crow feathers and call that dressed! Some of us have to actually work to look half the fabulous!"

Sheilaktar muttered to herself as she lit a bundle of sage and protecting herbs that would enforce her authority over the cottage. She smudged the room. Mushi flit about all excitedly; they'd never had a visitor before, and someone had to be excited about it if the rest of them wouldn't be...!

Nadezdha finalized her feather count and then scrabbled for her paints. She mixed the pitch on one pallet and the white titanium with a fixative on the other, and scooped up her little glass mirror. She turned the eyes hawkish or lupine by painting black around the lids, out to the brow at the side, and down the inline of the nose. She painted white around that, and down the nose and over the whole of the face, and blushed it with rose pink, and employed speckles of gold and green to turn it into something more tribal, fae, primitive. She painted the lips a dark, bold red.

"Tch," Sheilaktar came up and eyeballed her. Nadezdha kept painting; they were on a tight time-table. "That look thou is cultivating grows ever more ridiculous with each new iteration."

"And better to be odd than reviled," Nadezdha retorted. "Am I at least pretty?" She batted her eyes at her mentor.

"Thou art more feminine looking than myself, Yhelbruna, Nythra, the majority of all Wychlaran, and at least half of the Summer Fairy Court," she growled. But then she eyed him/her up and down as if taking a fresh perspective. "Thou has stuck with that particular look for awhile now."

"I like this face," Nadezdha gave a cheeky grin. "It's a way I can oust the label of 'That Thayvian Girl' in favor of something else, like 'That Girl Who Paints Herself Like a Swan.' Which, given our reverence for animals and the fact that all Hathran wear masks, is infinitely preferable despite being ever-so-slightly peculiar or vain-looking."

"Thou art certainly cultivating the appearance of vanity," Sheilaktar muttered. "Or succumbing to actual vanity, I cannot be sure which." She patted Nadezdha's shoulders, and pressed a kiss into the top of her head. "Be wise today. I will go and wait for our company, in the event thou art not quite finished betime they arrive."

Homen smiled, lifting his head into the attention. Rare were Sheilaktar's displays of affection...! "Yes, Senne-oh?"

Mushi was frantically waving her arms, attempting to communicate something she thought might be an emergency. Nadezdha frowned. Sheilaktar straightened thoughtfully. The two—Hathran and student—peered at Mushi, blinked at one another, thought about Sheilaktar's proposed course of action, and then simultaneously realized that Homen's disguise was so spectacular and complete that they had very nearly forgotten to actually transform him into a woman.

"Thy familiar is more on point than we are," Sheilaktar sighed with a rub of her brow, and a glance at where Nudisne was staring mournfully at a jar of fruit. "I am ever so slightly jealous, but then it may just be that I am not a morning person."