Age

Daniel set his eyes on the younger woman who was infront of the directory map. There were enough people around that if he stepped in it wouldn’t be as obvious.

So Daniel took a breath in and sauntered over to the map with a mission in mind. He had no idea which string contributed to what attribute but he surely he couldn’t learn without trying? This was simply an experiment. If he took something else it would be no big deal.

Looking at the blonde in her nice vacation dress and long sandal heels, Daniel smiled and grasped his hand out for her core of strings pulling one out at random.

What came back as he opened his hand was a vibrant yellow string that tried to circle around itself instead of flying around.

A startled click of heels took Daniel’s attention back to the young woman. She paused looking confused for a moment before her height plummeted down to a mere 5 foot. Her long blonde hair rearranged itself almost as if being done by a ghost, into two long pony tails. Her makeup smeared off her face and her large breasts shrank back into her chest leaving her bra empty.

Soon enough her bra morphed into the something more age appropriate and her dress began to sprout designs of a children’s cartoon character on its bottom with floral flowers surrounding it. Her heels became cheap plastic flip-flops and her carryon luggage shrank with her becoming a cute pink suitcase.

She still looked confused but by different reasons as reality rewrote itself to accommodate a preteen being left alone in a train station. Tears began to brim in her eyes looking around for any sort of parental figure she could have lost.

The mother Daniel had seen before rushed over enveloping the new preteen into a hug and started to talk about the dangers of walking away in an unfamiliar place.

Daniel smiled watching the touching scene as a walked back to the bench, his new yellow string of age finding its place next to the green in his baggie.