"Well . . . yes." Morgana still felt as if she had not explained herself very well. "It's like . . . a little permanent glam. Like fayerie."

"I don't know if it is," Cara replied. "Fayerie is still...when you use fayerie, do you have to understand the mechanics of a thing, or can you just conjure it?"

"I don't believe so. I mean," she laughed, lightly, "I've always been told Shifting's kin to fayerie, and I've no idea how a bear works--no more than I know how, say, a dog does, or a sheep, or any other beast on four legs."

Cara nodded. "But you have to have a feeling for the...the essence of the animal, I suppose, don't you?" she asked. "I don't need to know anything about an animal's essence; I just have to understand its skeleton and musculature."

She gave Cara a teasing smile. "I know not. If I'm particularly bear-like in any wise, I don't see it. I could not explain how a glam crosses o'er into a fayerie. All I know is that glams are seeming, and fayerie are . . . I suppose they are glams that believe they're real."

"Being," Cara said thoughtfully. "These...my toys," she said. "They are real, but they are not anything like the thing they try to represent. Just like a painting is never like its subject, even if it is a very good likeness. These are more like paintings. Art in their own right, but not the thing the look like."

Morgana was in slightly deeper than Morgana usually cared to go. She looked a bit dazzled. "Then it is more like a glam. It's--" She paused, a little embarrassed--it seemed like boasting, coming after Cara--but then pressed her hands together and presented a yellow field butterfly, far out of its element in this weather. "Enough to trick someone who didn't know how to look at it. Or someone who wished enough to be fooled."

"If your purpose is to trick, I suppose," Cara replied, nodding. "But I never really intended to fool anyone. I wanted to learn about how things work. Because if you can do it on a tiny scale, it only stands to reason that given the right materials, you could do it on a large scale."

"Enormous butterflies?" Again, Morgana possessed next to no sarcasm. "It would depend on how large you wanted it, I suppose. And what you wanted it for. You couldn't use wire; too much large and it would be too heavy to fly. Lindenwood, or aspen . . . " She caught herself and laughed. "Sorry, now I'm plotting it out."

Cara laughed. "Not giant butterflies," she answered. "Although the idea sounds intriguing. Flying people. I know it's probably not so fanciful to you, but to humans...that's an impossibility."