Beckett took the news that Dierdre had stolen his new clothes with more tact and aplomb than one would think, at first. Perhaps it was the fact that, having stood outside for the last half-hour or so without a stitch on, he had finally managed to achieve the closest thing to acclimating that he could manage. Perhaps some little anxious corner of his mind had predicted such a thing might happen, convinced that there was no chance of escape being as easy as it felt like it might be. Whatever the reason, when Wallace emerged over the top of the fence and delivered the news, the dormouse's response was sober and muted. He looked off to one side, thoughtfully. He turned back to fix Wallace with a clipped nod of understanding. Then, with his hands between his legs and his thick tail tucked along the crack of his backside, he retreated back to the manor.
For the rest of the day, he was posted in the library, poring over his book of magic. He took his bag into the room, so he could take his meals there. When he felt the need to stretch his legs, he did so by taking a lap or two of the room, book still in his paws as he flipped through its pages. He would put the thing down only long enough to test some incantation or experiment with the manipulation of his willpower. Then, he would once again be deep in the covers of his book.
Wallace found the mouse to be poor company, at that time. Once or twice, he tried to engage him in conversation. He would lean against the doorframe, arms folded, naked body on full display. Beckett had no words for him. At best, he had vague half-words, acknowledgments and assents thrown out with all the care of a half-eaten apple core to a whickering drake. Wallace had encountered this sort of behavior, before. Occasionally, he would run into a person who could place themselves in front of a task and stay there. Nothing but the pull of their bodily needs or the building they were in bursting into flame would pull them away. He had, in his travels, met a few people who fell into that state naturally. He had even robbed a few, as unsatisfying as the act felt to him afterwards. Rarely, however, had he met somebody who, by dint of life handing them a bad hand, was forced into such a workman's trance. He might have found it a pleasant surprise. He might have written off Beckett and his ability to pull himself together, and been impressed to be proven wrong.
Mostly, however, he was stymied. Wallace still had his conversation with Dierdre buzzing in his head, and was more eager to play the part assigned to him. He would make a few more passes, a few more attempts to get the dormouse's attention. After a while, however, as his blood began to cool, it became increasingly obvious that he was thrusting his crotch at a stone wall. He decided instead to skulk off to another part of the house, to amuse himself with his lockpicks.
By the time evening rolled around, he had managed to learn the trick to most of the locks in the house. He was working on getting into a room in the servant's wing when he heard Beckett call from upstairs.
"Wallace! Wallace, are you here?"
He did not jump at the sound of Beckett's voice, but he came pretty damn close to it. For a brief moment, he had forgotten he was not alone. "Aye?" he called back.
"I think I've found something." The voice coming from down the hall was supremely unconfident. "Can I ask you to come here a moment? I... I n-need a second set of eyes, I think."
Wallace was confused but, glad to finally hear Beckett say words, he tossed his picks into his bag and threw the bag over his shoulder. He padded down the hall towards the foyer, and walked around to the foot of the stairs. "What do you have, Beck? Finally learned to shoot fire... balls..."
At the top of the stairs stood Beckett, one hand clutching the elbow of his opposite arm. He was dressed, now; a monochrome green doublet and cream trousers covered his body. Wallace was confused to see clothes on the dormouse, but even more confused at the fact that being covered up seemed to do nothing to blunt his ever-present air of anxiety and exposure.
"Y-you can see them, right?" Beckett asked, refusing to make eye contact. "I-I-I'm covered? You can't see my... I'm covered, right?"
"You... are?" Wallace looked the dormouse up and down. "How did you manage to sneak those in to the house?" Realization hit. The rat's eyes widened. "Is this magic? Did you magic a bunch of clothes into existence?"
"Um..."
Beckett looked down at himself. From his perspective, he was still just as naked as he was this morning. The only thing that was different was a vague, almost imperceptible shimmer, filling the air an inch or so off of his body. It did absolutely nothing to cover him. Even his cock, stirring awake with the first flush of "fear," knew that.
"Not exactly," he explained. "It's illusion magic. I found a way to make things appear that aren't real, and used it to create a set of clothing."
Wallace vaguely knew what an illusion was. He had been around people of dubiously magical persuasions long enough. Even so, he squinted, confused. "Right. So you're telling me that you're actually still na-?"
"Yes," Beckett interrupted. "I am. Please..." Unable to fight the urge any longer, Beckett put his hands over his crotch. "Please don't stare too hard. Now that you know it's fake, you might accidentally see through it."
The rat laughed. "You know it's nothing I haven't seen before, yeah?"
"Wallace?"
He rolled his eyes, but in the face of such a plaintive, pathetic face, Wallace had no choice but to relent. "All right. So you can magic up a set of fake clothes. I suppose that gets around this Weaver lady's bugbear against us having real ones."
"That's what I thought too, but there's a problem." Beckett stepped to the side, compelled to hide part of himself around the corner, just in case. "It seems like I can only use this stuff on myself. The enchantment feeds on my willpower and it fizzles out if it's not attached to someone who can provide more."
"All right? That is a problem, then?"
"Well... I thought it would be good to make a run in town for supplies."
Wallace stared up at Beckett, confused.
Beckett blushed and shrunk behind the wall, some more. "I... was hoping I could get you to do it."
The rat paused, as the words sunk in. Then, once they did, his lips curled into a smug little grin. "Oh, well that is a problem. I wouldn't know thing one about maintaining a magic illumin thing."
"No." Beckett fidgeted. "No, I suppose you wouldn't."
"Besides, it's a bit risky, either way. I mean, I only just robbed the village this morning. What if somebody saw me?"
Indeed, Beckett thought, as an errant breeze passed right through his false clothes. Imagine being seen.
"So, what's the plan?" Wallace turned and sat down on the bottom stair. "You gonna have to make the supply run, yourself?"
"No!" The word spilled out of the dormouse's mouth, immediately and without thought. He only caught himself a moment later, at which point he was forced to pretend as though he would give the question some amount of consideration. "That is... I don't think it's going to be possible. A-as you said, the Weaver apparently has the power to bar doors. She probably won't let me leave the property, knowing I have the means to cover myself."
"I think she will," Wallace replied, idly rubbing his nails on his chest-fur.
"You do? What makes you think that?"
Wallace froze. "Uh, well... I mean, think about it." He looked back, trying to remain casual. "Taking your clothes away and refusing to let you put new ones on? Why else would she do that, if not because she wants you running around naked?" Inwardly, he ran the idea through his head, making sure it sounded plausibly like something he could have come up with on his own. Then, he pressed on with confidence. "Yeah. Obviously. This whole thing's gotta be some scheme to embarrass us. And you being forced to walk around a village with nothing but magic separating your tender bits from a couple dozen sets of eyes? Sounds pretty embarrassing to me."
Beckett made a noise, possibly meant to be one of assent and understanding, but whose meaning was muddled as it came out as a tiny whine.
Wallace laughed. "I think you should do it."
"No."
"Aye."
"Absolutely not."
"Beck."
"I'm not doing it!" Beckett disappeared entirely behind the wall. "I'm not! I can't go out there, even with illusions. I'll die!"
"Come on, Beck. You're not gonna die-"
"I will literally die!" Beckett insisted. "The heart was not built to withstand such trials! It will fail!"
It was good that he was now out of sight, because Wallace was now free to snicker to himself to his heart's content. He knew he probably should not press his luck, but ever since Dierdre put the idea of messing with the dormouse in his head, he was very keenly aware of how easy it was to do so. Having long since gotten over the danger of being in the clutches of one of the Fair Folk, he now found himself increasingly on the lookout for trophies to claim, funny stories he could tell to strangers at the tavern in the next town, while he tried to worm his way into new beds. At that very moment, the rat could think of no funnier story than this one; he was determined to see it happen.
Climbing the stairs, he rounded the corner. Beckett was sitting on the floor, knees up tight against his body, trying to cover things that, at that moment, Wallace could not see. Wallace made an effort to appear sober and serious, a skill which he had honed to an edge over the years. He might have called himself an "actor," if he had ever learned how to read scripts.
"Beck," he said, with all the gravity of a close friend confiding in another. "Listen to me, Beck. I don't think you realize the opportunity we have here."
"What opportunity?" Beckett muttered into his knees. "I've got rations, still. We can hold out for a few more-"
"No, no, no, not that. Just..." Wallace hesitated. He had spoken before he truly understood what kind of argument he was about to make, and now he needed to improvise. "This is an opportunity to... you know... get a handle on this Weaver lass's state of mind." Even as he said it, he was not sure where he was going with it. Seeing the look of interest on Beckett's face, however, encouraged him to push further. "Yeah. Just think about it, Beck. We've already established she can bar you from coming or going, if she pleases. And she's clearly watching us, while we're in this house. So you should do it. Just to see how she reacts. If she shuts the doors on you, then that must mean she's scared."
"S-scared?" Beckett looked up, wide-eyed. "Of what?"
"Of you," Wallace replied, with as straight a face as he could manage. "Of your growing power. I mean, two days ago you were doing the hand thing, and now you've got fully formed magic clothing? I tell you, if I were a magical sorcerer lady, I'd certainly be looking a little bit leery at you."
Wallace had known quite a few men like Beckett. Small creatures, physically or otherwise. The kind that spent most of their life either underfoot, or convinced they were underfoot. The rat had always found them decent company. Usually agreeable, sometimes easy to charm, modestly easy to rob. On occasion, Wallace found a trick that worked with those kinds, in particular, was to tease them with the concept of power, to convince them that they might be stronger or smarter or more important than the world at large considered them to be. Sometimes Wallace did it to see the twinkle in the eye. Mostly he did it to get them to do something foolish.
When he saw that same twinkle in Beckett's eye, he knew that something foolish was very much in the cards.
"Do you really think so?" Beckett folded his paws together, his eyes glancing off of Wallace's as he bashfully considered the hallway off to his left. "Goodness, I hadn't even considered... I mean, I knew that magic was powerful. That was the reason why..." He trailed off. His whiskers fell. The twinkle was quickly replaced with the same dread and hesitation that had come to mark most of his stay in the manor. He added "Wait. What if she doesn't? What if she... you know..."
"Lets you do it?" Wallace offered.
The mouse nodded. "That probably wouldn't bode well, would it? It probably... probably means she doesn't consider my powers a threat to her, yes?"
He flinched as the light from the windows was dimmed by a naked body. Wallace made no sound as he approached, seemingly walking on the balls of his footpaws without thinking about it. Beckett had no idea he was even approaching until he was standing over him, hands on hips, sensitive bits hanging shamelessly at eye level. Then, Wallace squatted down, so that he was almost at eye level.
"She just might," he said, confidently, "and to be honest, Beck? I think that's exactly what we want to happen."
There it was, again. The twinkle in the eye. Beckett had no idea what Wallace was going to suggest, but the fact that he seemed to so effortlessly have it to hand made it feel all the more important. Wallace, for his part, was making all this up as he went along, and taking that twinkle as a sign that he was pushing in about the right direction.
"Don't you see?" the rat pressed. "If she lets you out, it must mean she thinks you're going to embarrass yourself. Mess up the spell, lose focus, wind up naked as the day you were born right in the middle of the town square." Wallace ignored the plaintive whines of a dormouse with a potent mental image of humiliation, summoning all his fortitude to keep the smirk off of his face as he continued. "She's supernatural, right? One of those weird forest monsters that do crazy magic stuff? Well, she probably isn't used to having someone as powerful as you under her thumb. She thinks you're going to fail, that your spells are nothing more than simple parlor tricks. Imagine what would happen if you were to prove her wrong. If you defied her expectations and showed her just how powerful a sorcerer you were becoming."
"She'd stop me." Apparently, once the more anxious wheels in the dormouse's mind began to turn, they were difficult to stop. "She can take my books away, and hinder my ability to learn anything else that could help us."
"She can't, Beck. If she could, she probably would've done so by now. The Fair Folk are real particular, when it comes to their Vengeance Quests or whatever it's called. They can only do things to mortals that relate to whatever insult they've been given."
Beckett's eyes widened. Then, he grew thoughtful. "I see... I actually had not considered that she might be one of the Fair Folk, but things make a lot of sense when I think about her like that. Extraordinary. But how did you recognize her as one?"
Once again Wallace panicked. Once again he kept that panic out of his face. And a moment later, he once again had an answer ready. "I would hear stories," he half-lied. "Tales of the fairies were always passed around my family. You know, 'don't cross a graveyard without an urlison to the Goddess, don't talk back to your sire, keep your room tidy or the fairies will grab you in the night and...'"
"Orison."
"Whuzzat?"
Beckett scratched his ear, distractedly. "The word is 'orison.' You give an orison to the Goddess. It's a kind of prayer."
"Look, forget about the orleeson or whatever it's called. That's not the point." Wallace sat down on the floor across from the mouse. "The point is, you should try it. Not even should. You need to try. You're never going to beat the Weaver unless you get this magic thing figured out. Walking around town for a time seems to be as good a test as any."
For about a minute, things were quiet in the house. They were so quiet, the only sounds were the jittering of Beckett's footpaw against the floor, and the cry of some animal out in the woods. Beckett spent that time thinking over the idea. At least, he was half-thinking it over. The other half was trying to find problems, pitfalls, any reason whatsoever to discard the idea as being impossible to even try. After wracking his brain, however, he could not find any. At least, not any beyond the sheer fear the idea instilled in him. He opened his mouth to speak, his voice small. "Do you... Do you promise that you can't see anything, right now?"
"I can't."
"Do you promise you can't?"
Wallace rolled his eyes. "I promise, Beck. Your magic's strong. All I see is an ordinary mouse in clothes that are just a bit too fancy for my tastes. Even knowing the magic is there, I can't see through it. The uneducated farmers down the hill aren't going to have a chance."
Beckett frowned. He curled in tighter, still convinced that the illusion would break any second. Then he sighed. "How do boys learn to swim?"
From the moment he stepped out onto the front lawn, Beckett was convinced that he would rather drown.
The morning was cool, and he could feel the constant breeze over every inch of his body. The spell still held. He did not dare look down to check, but the little pressure at the back of his mind told him that the spell still held. So long as he focused on that, he was safe. He was covered. Nobody would see his fur, or the inches of cock that had been freed from its sheath, ever since he moved to open the door and step out onto the lawn. He marched down the overgrown path at the briskest walking pace he could manage. He threw a hand on the gate and pulled, eager to feel it resist him so he could run back inside.
Of course, the gate opened without issue. He stared at the metal in his paw, dumbly. Then, he looked back at the house. There, in the doorway, Wallace beamed and waved him onwards with both paws.
Beckett sighed. "Get in the water," he murmured. "Just... get in the water."