She felt the ear on her left begin to change shape amid a sharp pain, as though a needle were piercing through it from the inside out—the edge of the auricle stretched longer, the cartilage extended backward and upward, and the tip became sharper and thinner than a normal ear.
She showed no sign of pain. She merely sat there, her gaze resting on the flat slab of stone at the old oak's roots, watching the dark green dragon scales peeled from the dragon gleam in the dusk before her.
Her breathing did not change. Her fingers lay flat on her knees; the skin of her fingertips, burned by dragon blood, had grown somewhat thicker, and the pale crescents at the tips of her nails were visibly becoming sharper.
She pressed the dragon scales onto the left side of her face one by one, beginning at her temple and arranging them downward along the curve of her cheekbone. She repeatedly checked the placement of every scale with her fingertips, deliberately staggering the seams between their edges.
Once everything was ready, she raised her wand before her, pressed its tip to the temple on the left side of her face, and softly recited the fusion spell she had found in her master's old notebook.
After coming into contact with the dragon blood spread over her skin, the scales began to writhe like living things. Each one adjusted its angle and depth of attachment, its edges piercing the surface of her skin and extending down into the dermis, establishing a sensation between the scales and the fascia of her facial muscles that she could clearly recognize through touch.
That sensation lasted for about the time it took to brew a cup of tea before gradually stabilizing. The scales' surfaces shifted from dark