And now, on page 54, we witness  Zarko’s transformation. The cracked glasses, like the jellyfish on page 51, were inspired by Sam’s gorgeous images back on page 43.

Remember that? It looked kind of like this:

Page_17A (3) cropped

Sam said she put the teeth and the jellyfish in there to symbolize Zarko’s transformation by contrasting the hard, solid teeth with the fragile, airy jellyfish. That’s great; I wouldn’t have thought of that. I tend to be more tediously literal. Which is probably why I wrote actual jellyfish into the scene.

You’ll notice that the dialogue in the above image foreshadows the scene we just completed, with “Magic is transformative,” “distilled to its essence,” and “Professor, could you check my work?” all making appearances. It’s fun to drop clues like that. See, we have a plan, and totally know what we’re doing.