break the spell

[marycatelli]

So three characters have been turned into animals, and she has to turn them back.

She will kiss her betrothed husband and tell him that she knows it doesn't work, but that's the very thing some witch will try one day because everyone knows it and then that it won't work.

Hmm -- the flower in the woods is too unusual -- marrying doesn't work when there are three of them -- chopping their heads off bugs me and would end the story too soon.

Kill the witch then.

I suspect I'm going to have to decide whether this is the same witch she met earlier. She would at least have to disguise herself if the witch is the same. Then I have to set up the death, whether she falls from an enchanted bridge that is two-thirds disenchanted, or gets shoved in an oven, or drowned in a flood. . . .

Fortunately she has three animal companions to help her. PLUS a magical helper. (BUT -- did she not get changed because the witch didn't realize she would be one of the party? Decisions, decisions.)

Comments

[nodrog]

How about, not changed into but placed into?  Their human bodies hijacked or simply swapped, now housing innocent and quite unhappy forest critters.

To undo this might require bringing the manimals and the animen together at the full Moon, maybe at a Druid henge or some such.

[marycatelli]

Nah, not fairy tale enough.

Indeed, in fairy tales, you're often enough connected that you can just take off your skin and walk around as human and then put it back on again when your time is up.

[nodrog]

And yet there would be a plot-driving time element involved:  Cut a hologram in half and you don't get half the picture, you get the whole image with half the information - grainier, lower resolution.  Cut it again, it gets worse.  Eventually it will become indecipherable - but still technically the entire image.

Fit a human mind into a dog brain and you don't have room for all the information.  Moreover, the less complex synapses are losing what there is.  If you don't undo this soon, you'll have nothing but a dog who answers to the character's name.

[marycatelli]

Except of course in fairy tales animals routinely are smart enough to talk.

[nodrog]

Hey, it was just my tuppence' worth.  You spoke of the problem, I saw a possible solution.  La!