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Amelia told the anomaly to hold its breath for as long as it could, and it did. She ordered it to breathe deeply in and out while she monitored the beat of the pulse at its wrist, and it obeyed. She asked it to stick out its tongue, and Hazel rocked back on the tree stump, poked a fat pink tongue out at her, and blew a messy raspberry.
Amelia raised an eyebrow.
The girl clapped both hands over her mouth, succeeding not at all in hiding the giggles. This, of course, delighted the cluster of young field mice in patched overalls peering over the fence, who went into a squeaky paroxysm of mirth themselves.
Amelia would have indulged in a roll of her eyes towards the ceiling, but having already made eye contact with the beaming cornbread-yellow sun once, she wasn't in a hurry to do it again.
"Hilarious," she said instead, deadpan. "Are you quite done?"
Hazel folded her hands down into her lap, one little fist on each knee, and looked at her with a solemnity undone by the gap-toothed smile still insistently pushing past the affected attentiveness. "Yes, Amelia."
The good mood was to be welcomed, Amelia supposed. Hazel had not been an ill-tempered child overall - so quiet in the first days, in fact, it had been rather more like acquiring another piece of baggage on convenient legs. One that did as directed, ate ration bars uncomplainingly, and looked at her often with familiar sad eyes under an unruly mane of blonde hair.
Shoes had broken the uncertain peace. It was their first real disagreement, and even if Amelia had won the argument in the end - she had no intention of pausing every few cars to deal with splinters or stubbed toes - it seemed to unlock something in the girl. The realisation Amelia was trying to depart from her days of threatening children for the crime of having their own will, perhaps. Or wind.
"I only did what you said," Hazel said, waving at the young mice, who returned the gesture enthusiastically until a larger mouse in a straw hat swept through with its hoe hefted over one shoulder, chasing them back to the planted rows with scolding chitters.
"This time, try doing what I mean. You should know the routine as well as I do by now. Mouth, open." A second's pause, and Amelia remembered to add, "Please."
Hazel obligingly yawned her mouth wide, flopping her tongue out with an exaggerated blegh. The space inside was, once again, a healthy pink, studded with approximately the correct number of human-like teeth. An unparalleled accomplishment all on its own. Edison had nothing on the number of ways Amelia had learned how not to create a human.
She tabbed up the page with her stylus to review. No changes in three weeks to fundamental presumptions about blood flow and respiration. No great abnormalities in diet or sleeping patterns. The most interesting outward change to date was the single centimetre of growth in height, the meaning of which she was still brooding on.
"Good. Now, it's time to change. But," Amelia added, briefly inspired, "I want you to change only your head this time. No scales below your neck. No shell."
"Buh thass har!" Hazel protested.
"It should be getting easier." Hands on hips, she eyed the girl. "You're doing your exercises, aren't you?"
"Yeth," was the reluctant response, and the tongue slowly withdrew to be pinched between the human-like teeth in affected concentration. The button nose crinkled until scattered freckles began to slide together like eggs in a pan, skin greening and gaining pebbly texture. Chapped lips hardened and drew out into a pointed beak; the hair remained a soft blonde waterfall down her spine, only barely restrained by the hair-tie keeping it in an ponytail.
Bent on one knee, Amelia examined the result with the mingled urge to laugh and crawl into her sleeping bag for a week. A few scales had slipped beyond the boundaries given, but it was overall what she'd ordered: a turtle head balanced precariously on a human body. Thirty-three years to successfully turn one wretched handkerchief into the mascot of some over-sugared breakfast cereal.
Small squeaks of strain were starting to slip out, greening knuckles digging into the stump with increasingly sharp nails, so Amelia nodded acceptance of the effort. The girl let it go in an expulsive rush, green giving way to red cheeks and a tired phew, bright eyes watching uncertainly as Amelia rose to standing.
Her control was undeniably improving. Meaning - what? That a similar level of control could be attained over her body no matter the shape? Was that the trick, to prompt a sort of gradual evolution? If she'd had access to more of her own data, if she could narrow down the specific inputs, the timeframe - but One was a very particular firewall. And best kept apart from these explorations, for now.
"Amelia? I did okay?" The query was a little wobbly, and when Amelia pulled her gaze away from glaring contemplation of the tablet she found Hazel plucking at the hem of the sweater she refused to be parted from. "I'm healthy?"
Ah. Because of course that was the primary reason for daily tests. Likely telling a child that her anomalous state might not be stable wasn't the most appropriate route to take, but it had at least guaranteed acquiescence with the tests. Amelia sighed, rubbing briefly at her temples.
"Yes, congratulations. As per usual, you appear to be perfectly normal for a human while also making no sense at all as a humanoid turtle, which in turn makes you perfectly normal for a denizen." A last impatient flick up the spreadsheet, rows upon rows of data bracketed by almost as many question marks as when she'd started. "As far as I can tell anyway. Ugh. If I'd wanted to bother with biology I would have gone to bloody Cambridge."
This unexpectedly drew out another, quieter giggle as Hazel rubbed a hand under her nose and bounced the heels of her despised shoes off the ground.
"Good golly, Tim," she said, in the over-enunciated tones of a recital. "I'm annen- an… an engineer, not a doctah."
The stylus skidded sideways on the screen.
Star something. Journey. Trek. Yes, that was it. Alrick had adored the show so. Little props dancing about space on crackly VHS, a warm fleece blanket around their shoulders, his elbow in her ribs every time she pointed out flaws in the mechanical science. Dramatics over blood drawn by a potato peeler to make him laugh. Damn it, Timmens! I'm a doctor, not a doctor!
"Jim," Amelia said unthinkingly, and Hazel blinked up at her, puzzled. "The quote is referring to a man called Jim, not... oh, nevermind."
"Tim's better," Hazel confided.
"Yes," Amelia said.
She hesitated a moment more, then tabbed across to the other sheet and made one last mark - a tally for observations of a different sort - and folded the tablet shut with a snap. Hazel followed the gesture, smile dimming.
"We're finished? But..." Stubbornness started to shape the girl's chin, a childish determination. "I'm not tired! I can do the rest."
"It's enough for today," Amelia said, tucking the tablet away. Stuffing any tightness of the chest away with it. "No, don't fuss, I'm not in the mood. We have at least a few more cars to get through today and I have a terrible feeling one of them involves thespians."
"Okay," Hazel said, subdued.
Amelia swung her bag back around, settled it comfortably on her shoulders. The girl picked up her own little satchel and did likewise, then stood there, fidgeting quietly - with the infernal sweater vest, as always. Amelia swept a loose tuft of hair back behind her ear, and took a breath.
"You did… well." Good lord. Her usurped kingdom for a version of events where she didn't end up half a thespian herself, delivering stilted lines in the vague hopes of finding their natural rhythm. At least the audience couldn't be called discerning. "I appreciate your patience with all this." Before she could stop herself, she added, "I can't imagine you like tests any better than he did."
Hazel shrugged, but the peeping glance she took at Amelia was a little brighter, and mercifully she didn't ask who 'he' might have been. "It's not that bad. I did exercises with Tuba too. Climbing an' running an' hiding."
"Running, hm?" Amelia gazed down the dirt road to the familiar red door, studded in a barnyard wall. This was a breather car, no real conditions that needed fulfilling as far as she could see. There shouldn't be much in the way of obstacles. "How would you like to see how fast you can reach the door from here?"
"A race?"
"If you like." She tapped her watch. "There. I'll time you. It's a race against yourself."
The look on the girl's face suggested Amelia was not really getting the spirit of the activity, which was nothing new, but in the next moment she had whirled around, fingers clutched tight around her bag's strap to keep it in place. "You have to say go if it's a race."
"Oh, for - yes, alright. Ready, set, go."
Well, Amelia thought, watching blonde hair fly down the road and young mice abandon their labour yet again to run to the fence to squeak excitedly at her passing, if nothing else it was an additional data point.
Her neck itched briefly, a sensation so familiar it rarely registered. A gentle shift in her sentence, then; up or down, she didn't know. Until she did, it wasn't one of the things worth tracking.