The basement of the inn was nicer than Sarah had anticipated. She was expecting some dank, moldy dungeon or a dirt-floored oversized crawlspace, but it was constructed with fairly well-fitted stones and well-sealed enough that it was only cool and no damper than the rest of the village. It was, however, dark enough that she had to borrow a lantern from the innkeeper in order to see anything outside the meager pool of light filtering down the stairs.
Even being able to see, there was still the problem of finding what she was looking for in a minor labrynth of shelves and crates. If this place was organized to any meaningful extent, it was beyond her ability to tell. Halting for a moment, she stood still and listened, trying to hear over the sound of her own mechanisms...
"Do we really gotta stay down here?" It was the voice of a young boy; there was a bit of a quaver in it. "It's awful dark..."
"I can see alright," said a little girl's voice. "And we don't know if the grownups are done bein' upset yet..."
"Well, but my dad's gonna wonder where I am if I'm not back for dinner..."
"You sure you're not just afraid a' the dark?" There was a playful, teasing note in the girl's voice.
"N-no!" the boy protested. "I...um, I'm okay with bein' down underground...since I got like this, anyway..."
"Ow, Peter, you're grabbing my tail!"
"J-just 'cause you wrapped it around me an' I didn't know what it was!"
Sarah swung around the last row of shelves to the place where the voices had been coming from. The flickering lantern-light splashed across the corner of the basement, revealing Diana and Peter huddled up next to each other. The rabbit-boy started and let go of the cat-girl's tail, which was slightly puffed out, her ears standing up straight.
"O-oh, Sarah!" Diana said, unwrapping her tail from Peter's waist with a look of embarassed surprise. "Wh-what're you doin' down here?"
Sarah smirked. "Looking for you, kiddo. The innkeeper said he'd seen you guys sneaking around back here earlier; what are you doing down here?"
Diana looked sheepish. "We, um...the grown-ups were all upset about everyone changin', an' Peter was worried that they'd be mad at us 'cause it happened when we got here, so we decided to hide out down here..."
Sarah was a little surprised - that was actually a more reasonable answer than she'd expected. (From what she knew about boys and girls at this age, she'd half-expected to come down here and find them playing "doctor.") Still...she did her best to smile reassuringly. "I don't think you kids need to worry about that," she said. "I don't think we had anything to do with that, and as far as I can tell the village leaders are more worried about people who might come here to investigate than they are about what caused it."
Diana's ears perked. "R-really?"
Sarah nodded. "It looks that way at the moment. Anyway, I think they'll be too busy worrying about investigators and whatnot to worry about us before Melia gets here, and after that it's not our problem."
Peter looked to the strange machine-lady in surprise. "A-are you...goin' away...?" he asked, then immediately realized that it was a silly question. They were travellers coming to a port city to meet someone with a ship - of course they were leaving. It was just...if Diana had to go, too...
Sarah smiled at him sympathetically. "We kinda have to," she said softly. "There's people down in the city that might come looking for Tom and I, and Diana's parents might try and take her back, too."
The rabbit-boy looked troubled. "I...I didn't know," he said quietly. "But...um, a-are...are you ever gonna come back...?"
Sarah sighed. "I don't know," she said. "Everything's so up in the air right now, it's hard to say." Especially if I actually do find a way home, she thought. Would I ever come back here? Would I even be able to? "...but I imagine Tom's going to want to return home eventually," she continued, trying to find a way to give him a little reassurance, "so we might be passing this way again..."
Peter smiled slightly, but he still wasn't sure how to feel about that. The closest thing he had to a friend his own age was Kevin, who'd gone missing, and now his new friend was probably going to be leaving in a couple days...?
Sarah shrugged. "Anyway, you kids probably shouldn't be playing around down here. C'mon, let's go back upstairs, it's ne-"
There was a brief pause while they waited for her to finish what she'd been saying. Peter wondered why she'd just leave off in the middle of a sentence like that, but as his sensitive ears listened for her voice, he suddenly realized that the persistent ticking noise that accompanied the strange doll-woman everywhere had stopped. Sure enough, when he looked closer...
"Sh-she's not movin'!" he said to Diana, feeling a little worried. Had...had something broken? She wasn't...dead, was she!? He felt a little shudder at the thought.
Diana, on the other hand, giggled and flashed him a fangy grin. "'Sokay," she said. "That jus' happens to her sometimes, is all. Look, see, you just gotta wind her up again." The little cat-girl slipped around back of the doll-woman and grabbed hold of the loops on the big metal key that grew out of her back, and began to pull on them. She tugged at them for a moment, then turned to Peter. "Hey, why don't you try?" she said. "I hafta do this all the time anyway, when Tom isn't there." And...maybe it's a little easier for him, since he's a boy...? she wondered. She was certainly able to do it, but he was at least a little taller than her, even if he was maybe a little girly-looking for a boy his age...
Somewhat hesitantly, Peter came around to the other side of Sarah, where Diana was indicating the winding key to him. He gently reached out one hand to touch it, feeling the cold, smooth surface of the metal. Diana giggled again. "Don't worry!" she said. "It's not gonna break or nothin'."
A little less unsure of himself now, the rabbit-boy grabbed hold of the loops at either end of the key and tugged them in opposite directions. "It, uh, it goes 'round clock-like, right?" he asked. Diana nodded, and he began to wind it in that direction, feeling the rattling slippage of the ratchet somewhere inside the body of this strange clockwork girl. What a weird situation this was, he thought - it was one thing for someone in the village to suddenly have rabbit ears or to get a little wolfy when that one ship came by, but Ms. Sarah was actually a whole different thing, a machine that was just like a person! And here he was, winding her up like a clock or a music box - he didn't know what to think about that.
When it began to feel like the spring inside was getting tight, Peter released the key and Sarah's mechanisms began to whir back to life. "-arly dinn...huh?" she said, looking around in confusion before turning to discover the children standing behind her. "Gahh, it happened again, didn't it?"
Diana nodded. "I showed Peter howta wind you," she said, grinning. "He was really worried, like he thought you were broken or somethin'!"
Sarah laughed. "I'm fine," she told the boy. "It's nothing serious, just a bit of a hassle. Thanks for the help."
Peter stared at her, trying to process the idea that she really was a machine, even if she was also a person. "Wh...what's it like when that happens?" he asked.
Sarah shrugged. "It doesn't really feel like anything. Everything just stops for me...or, well, I guess I stop and things keep going. Like, for me, I was talking to you and then suddenly you were standing behind me."
"And...Mary's like that now, too, right?"
Sarah nodded. "Yeah, after this morning. I guess you folks are gonna have to help her with that while she's like this...is it really true that these changes just go away in time?"
Peter shrugged. "Kinda, I guess. Lotsa times people just go back to the way they were, but not always, and not always all the way. Like, Ms. Rachel up at the mill gets all wolf-ey when that Melia lady comes 'round, then she goes back to normal, but it kinda seems like the more it happens, the more wolf-ey she acts even once she's all human again. Some a' the older kids say she eats raw meat sometimes, when the moon gets full..." He frowned. "An' some a' the people who got turned inta animal-girls stayed girls even when they turned human again, an' some a' them even kept their ears an' tails from when they were more animal..."
Sarah nodded thoughtfully. If all that were true, there was really no way of knowing what might happen to Mary in the future...she still felt a little responsible for that, despite everyone's assurances that it was probably coincidence. Maybe...if she did find a way to return to human form, she probably would have to come back here before she could return to her own world, if only to make sure that Mary had that option...
"Anyway," she said, "c'mon. It's nearly dinnertime, and Diana at least needs to get to bed at a reasonable hour."
Jon drifted into wakefulness the next morning in a bit of a haze of mild irritation. She felt off, kind of like waking up with a headache only she didn't actually have one. What she did have was a heavy, bloated feeling in her gut, like she'd eaten too much last night and was due for a reckoning in the bathroom later. Well, like that, only the distribution was all wrong - the weight too far forward and the latent pressure following the wrong course. Great, she thought. Even the plumbing is weird in this body. Only...well, no, she'd been like this for over a week and she knew full well how that all worked. This...this was different. So what was it?
Stirring, she slid the makeshift blanket off of her, leaving Maggie covered up. She'd need it later when it was time to go down for breakfast, but there was no need to wake her young companion now just because she couldn't stay asleep. Rising, she yawned and stretched her wings, the full span reaching all the way to the (admittedly low) rafters of their little attic home. Of course, without her tunic, she was naked, at least if she didn't feel like going through the effort to put on that robe affair she'd picked up the other day. It was odd to feel her breasts exposed to the open air as she went about her morning business, but as long as nobody was looking she wasn't too uncomfortable with it. (Though the way her nipples stiffened up in the cool air was...a little distracting.)
It was strange how much this was starting to feel routine, she thought, as she sat down atop the trunk that held most of their meager possessions and began to brush the tangles out of her hair. It wasn't that she wasn't aware of just how different everything was in this body, but now that the chaos of the initial few days had settled down and her life had something resembling a schedule to it, it was getting to be less of a challenge just to get from one day to the next. There were still things she didn't understand, and certainly things she found to be a pain - the number of things in daily life that were designed for people with hands could fill a book all by itself - but it was no longer a matter of being caught off-guard by realizations of oh yeah, I'm a harpy/a woman every half-hour or so.
Which was a little unsettling, to be honest. Jon didn't actually feel like she was in any danger of forgetting who or what she used to be, but there was always that question nagging at the back of her mind - was there a point where she would stop being Jon the human boy turned harpy, and become Jen the harpy who remembered having been a human boy? Or who didn't remember? She shuddered slightly at that thought, then pushed it to the back of her mind. That hadn't happened yet, and she wasn't going to let it happen. She'd find a way back to return to her old life first - she had to. Even if...
She sighed. Even if it disappoints Maggie... It wasn't that she wanted to hurt the little harpy-girl's feelings; as much as she could be a handful, she was getting pretty fond of the kid. But she couldn't very well leave her entire life behind and never see her friends or family again, even if she somehow could get used to the prospect of being...this...for the rest of her days. She wondered again if it would turn out to be possible for her to take Maggie back with her, and if it would be anything like a good idea if it were...it might seem like a recipe for disaster to bring a "monster" into the human world she knew, but if she had the stone to back her up, surely she could make it work...?
Jon was interrupted in her thoughts by Maggie stirring nearby. The little harpy yawned, sat up, and stretched her wings, the tunic that served them as a makeshift blanket sliding into a rumpled heap around her. She blinked, looked around the loft, then turned to Jon with a look of surprise on her face. "Jen," she said, curiously, "you're not wearin' clothes today?"
Jon stared at her for a moment, then looked down at herself in surprise. "O-oh," she stammered, "I, uh..." I'd almost forgotten, she thought, as she realized that she did in fact have nothing on. "It's...um, I just didn't want to wake you," she said. "It's not so important in private..."
Maggie thought for a moment, then smiled. "Right! 'Cause it's just us harpies up here, so nobody minds."
Jon flushed slightly at that, but it was true that she didn't feel all that awkward being like this around Maggie anymore, not when she was so nonchalant about it. At the same time, it was a reminder of how much the little harpy saw her as just "one of the girls," and now that she was up...Jon hurriedly picked up her tunic from their little "nest" and slipped it over her head, shivering slightly as the coarse fabric brushed against her stiffened nipples on the way down. Drat these things, she thought to herself, trying vainly to ignore the sensation. "A-anyway," she said, "it's about time we got some breakfast."
Mary hummed softly to herself as she made her way about the inn's kitchen. Some part of was still confused and a little scared about what had happened to her yesterday, but focusing on work helped her keep her mind off it...mostly. She still couldn't quite get used to the experience - the rhythmic ticking and whirring within her, the gentle, metallic tinkling of her voice when she spoke, the curious lack of any feelings of fatigue even as she knew that the spring that was driving her was slowly winding down.
It was strange even to think about that. She was no longer as worried about the prospect as she'd been at first - Ms. Sarah seemed to think of it as just another inconvenience of this life, and Mary herself had run down overnight and knew what to expect next time. It was just strange to think of her entire self as just stopping periodically - it wasn't even like going to sleep, it wasn't like she was still moving and breathing and feeling in that state. Indeed, the closest thing she'd felt to dreaming since this had happened was when those voices had come into her mind...
She frowned. Out of all of this, that had to be the most disturbing part. The strange person...creature...thing that had spoken to her in her mind seemed to come from nowhere and couldn't give her any clear answers, yet it wanted to know about..."mother?" Her mother? Or just what a "mother" was? Why would it want to know such a thing? She hadn't even known how to answer that, and as far as she could tell the presence had just left her after that. But thinking back on it...it made her think about her own mother. How many years had it been? She still remembered Mama, and she knew that Kevin did, too...and where was Kevin? Was he okay? What had happened to him?
"Device 'Mary,' please acknowledge."
Mary jerked back to the present with a start, feeling some mechanism within skip and catch itself. That voice...or that feeling like a voice...
"Device 'Mary,' please acknowledge?"
Oh, this was the last thing she wanted right now...wasn't it enough for her to be dealing with these changes, and her own brother's disappearance, without this being trying to bother her again? She groaned. How was she even supposed to deal with this? She could tell her father, maybe, but how could she explain to him about voices that only she could hear? But who else could she talk to?
She thought for a moment, then brightened. Ms. Brook was still in town, and she dealt with all kinds of strange things. Maybe she might have some idea what to do about this...
A little while later, they were down in the market square sitting at one of the few food stalls that was actually open in the early morning; many of them seemed to do most of their business around the lunch rush, but there were a handful open for most of the day, presumably since the market's vendors themselves probably wanted a decent meal without having to leave the premises. This particular stall was manned by a heavy-set fellow who looked porcine enough that Jon wondered if he wasn't yet another variety of demi-human she hadn't encountered, but she dismissed the thought after some consideration; it didn't seem like anybody in this world was that subtly hybridized.
She'd been a little concerned about eating food made by someone who appeared to be coated in a thin layer of grease at all times and was perpetually chawing something that may or may not have been a cigarette at one point, but she'd been drawn over here almost irresistibly by a smell that she hadn't expected to ever encounter in this world - and to her delight, the stall did serve honest-to-God pancakes with syrup. Okay, admittedly, it wasn't actual maple syrup, but it was a whole lot better imitation than the lightly-flavored corn syrup you got at a McDonald's, at any rate. And the pancakes were just the right balance of dense and thick and soft and fluffy...even if she had to hold the utensils with her feet, just to have these here...
Then there was a clang and a clatter from beside her, and her head swiveled almost instinctively to where Maggie was sitting. The younger harpy had been a little too enthusiastic in grabbing the carafe of syrup that was sitting on the counter, and it was now lying in her lap - thankfully, it was intact, and the noise was only from her silverware hitting the ground. On the less fortunate side, it meant that the harpy-girl now had a lapful of imitation maple syrup, which was slowly dripping off the stool and onto the ground.
With a flurry of stammered apologies to the cook, who didn't seem particularly bothered once he learned that his crockery hadn't been broken, Jon picked up the dropped items and did her best to contain the spill with a rag the cook handed her, getting a fair quantity of it on her own lower body in the process. Maggie looked up at her with visible embarassment. "Um, 'm sorry, Jen," she said, "it was just so tasty I hadta put more on, an' I...sorry..."
Jon sighed, smiled in spite of herself, and ruffled her "sister's" hair with one wing. "It's okay, Maggie," she said. "Everybody has a clumsy moment now and then. Just be a little more careful next time, okay? It's not like the food's going anyplace." Though, she reflected to herself, that might not always be true for someone who grew up in the wild, with a flock of only loosely-civilized scavenger predators. She looked the younger girl over and frowned. "Hm. We're gonna want to get that out of your plumage before it dries, or you're going to smell like syrup for the next week."
Maggie smiled back, sheepishly. "Um," she said, "can...can we finish eating 'em first?"
Brook frowned. "So this 'voice' - it's like someone else is speaking to you inside your mind?"
Mary thought about it for a moment. "I...guess you could say that? But it's not really a voice, it's not like I can hear it or anything...it's more like reading words off a page, except there's no page to read..."
The spider-woman nodded thoughtfully. "And it's the reason you were having all that difficulty when you changed, right?"
The clockwork girl frowned. "I...I think so? It was trying to find out things about me and I couldn't move right until it decided to let me...it seemed like it was confused about me or something..."
"And now it's back?"
She nodded. "It just started talking to me again...it wants me to answer, but I haven't. I just want it to leave me alone, but I don't know how to make it go away..." Her voice quavered a bit as she said it.
Brook sighed and thought for a minute. "You want it to leave you alone, but you don't sound like you're all that afraid of it. Does it feel like it's dangerous to you, Mary?"
Mary looked confused. "I don't know...it was awfully scary when it wouldn't let me move and it was digging around in my thoughts...but then it stopped, and even now that it's back it didn't try to do that again. I don't think it meant to do that...but I'm kinda worried about letting it try anything again..."
"That's understandable," the spider-woman said. "But if you can't just make it go away on your own, there might be no other way than talking to it. If it's not trying to hurt you, the least you can do is find out what it wants."
Mary sighed. "I guess...that's why I wanted to ask if you had any ideas, 'cause you know about a lot of strange things..."
Brook smiled. "I suppose I do - but this is new to me as well. I'm afraid all I can really offer is to keep an eye on you while you talk to this thing, dear."
"I...I guess," Mary said, with an air of resignation. She didn't really want to, but if there was no other way to deal with this...
"Are you still there?" She wasn't really used to thinking at something, but it felt like she was doing it correctly.
"Device 'Mary,' response has been acknowledged," came the voice. "We request your assistance with a problem."
"What problem?" she responded. "Wait, no, I just wanted you to stop talking to me...!"
There was a pause. "These requests are mutually exclusive. Do you wish for more information, or to cease communication?"
Mary was conflicted. Honestly, she liked to be helpful, and if there was somebody somewhere who needed help that this creature couldn't give them, it felt like she ought to do what she could, but all she really wanted was to get this strange voice out of her head! But...if someone needed help...
She sighed. "Please, tell me what kind of problem you need help with..."
There was a brief pause. "Our guest 'Callie' is undergoing emotional distress as a result of medical treatment. We have attempted to offer assistance, but our ability to help in this regard is limited. She has requested the company of 'a REAL person!' but we have no other guests at this time."
Mary frowned. It had sounded from the "voice's" imitation of this girl's request like she really was upset, and she could definitely understand how talking to this strange being that spoke intelligently but didn't really feel like a person wouldn't be very comforting. But...this "Callie" girl wasn't even here, was she? "What is it you want from me?" she responded.
"You are unlike the other device nodes on the network, device 'Mary.' While your schematics are mostly familiar to us, your thought patterns as assessed in our first contact more closely conform those of a sentient being. As such, you are the closest match we have to fulfill the request of our guest. May we requisition you as a companion to guest 'Callie?'"
Jon and Maggie entered the bath house not too long after, the younger girl still absent-mindedly licking crumbs and syrup from her lips. It was still a bit early for their next free bath, but Jon had managed to talk the tiger-man attendant from last time into letting her fudge things a bit due to the circumstances. It was odd, she reflected, as they made their way down the hall, how sometimes people just seemed more amenable to her requests now. The cook from before, and the tiger-man, and...
She cringed suddenly as she put the pieces together. It wasn't like she'd even consciously been attempting anything like that, but she'd been a grown male herself, and she knew enough to realize that even a pretty girl who wasn't trying to play up her attractiveness could more easily get a guy's attention and play on their subconscious. But I wasn't trying to do that, really! she told herself. But...hell, sometimes that only makes it more effective...
Frowning, she opened the door and led Maggie into the pool room, noting as she lifted her talon to the handle how the weird bloated feeling from earlier had developed into a full-fledged heaviness in her gut. She huffed slightly in irritation. At least they'd be able to get cleaned up, even if she felt a bit awkward about the idea that she might've gotten in by the use of "feminine wiles." I mean, I'm not even actually a girl, she fumed. I'm not even supposed to have any!
Lost in her thoughts, she brought Maggie over to the pool and helped her out of her tunic, then doffed her own clothes. They got into the bath together and Jon began doing her best to work the syrup out from the downy plumage between her "sister's" thighs. It took some doing, as it had already begun to dry on the way over, but thankfully the water was warm enough to soften it back up again, and as she worked at it there was less and less of the sticky buildup in Maggie's feathers, not to mention more and more of a steamy imitation-maple aroma in the air as it evaporated off the surface of the pool.
As usual, there were a handful of different types in the women's bath, in addition to plenty of ordinary humans. Nisha, the naga-woman from the curry stand, was there again. There was a lady with what looked to be a wolf's ears and tail, a short, stocky woman that Jon assumed must be a dwarf of some kind because she had the figure of an Oktoberfest waitress, the build of a linebacker, and the bearing of an Amazon, a rat-girl who looked to be a few years older than Maggie, and a second naga, who had pale skin and wavy golden hair and a pattern of green scales with yellow "racing stripes" down the length of her tail, which Jon thought she recalled seeing on garter snakes. Like before, they were clustered into a few smaller groups, chatting among themselves, but she did note that there were a few human women intermingled with their various little social circles.
Once she'd more or less gotten Maggie taken care of and cleaned herself off as well, Jon started to wonder if maybe she shouldn't go say hello. After all, even if she wanted to get home as soon as possible, there was no way of knowing how long she'd be living here, so it made sense to at least get to know people a little, even if she wouldn't be making any lifelong friends here. And she already knew Nisha, anyway...after a moment's hesitation, she nodded to Maggie and they began to make their way over. Jon frowned as she waded through the pool; whatever this feeling was, it was getting hard to ignore. She wondered if she should be worried about it; the last time she'd felt anything like this kind of heaviness in her gut, it'd ended with a long, uncomfortable night in the bathroom. But this was different, somehow...she just wished she knew how.
Nisha noticed and waved as they made their way over. "Hello!" she said. "Jen, was it? And Maggie?"
Maggie grinned and waved one wing. "Hiya! You're the lady with the curry!"
The naga laughed. "I'm glad you remember my curry, little one." She looked over to Jon. "Is something wrong?" she asked. "You don't look well."
It wasn't until she said this that Jon realized she was grimacing slightly. She sighed and shrugged, trying not to let her irritation with whatever this discomfort was show as much. "Oh, I'm...okay," she said. "I just...feel a little off today, for some r-ngh!" She winced, feeling a sudden convulsion in her gut as the weight that had gathered there shifted, sliding down some part of her to her pelvic floor as something inside her began to stretch. "Augh!" she groaned. "I...I better get out..."
Jon hurriedly tried to climb out, but with no hands she couldn't pull herself up, and lifting her leg all the way up to the rim of the pool only made things worse. In a last-ditch attempt to get out of the water before she had what she assumed would be the Mother Of All Bathroom Emergencies, she spread her wings and gave a powerful downward sweep, launching herself out of the water and sending a minor tsunami rippling out towards anybody else in the same corner of the pool. She landed on the tile a few feet from the pool's edge; her legs nearly gave out when she hit the ground, and she only avoided falling over with another quick flap of her wings.
It was far from over, however. Dropping into a hunker on landing only helped whatever this was along, and she felt something beginning to work its way out from her nether regions. Realizing at last what was actually happening here, Jon's brain more or less went into overload; she was still conscious and could feel everything that she was experiencing, but the shock of knowing what this was and that it was happening to her made stopping to think about it something that she just plain didn't have the focus or energy for at the moment.
It wasn't until several minutes later that Jon's faculties fully returned to her. She was still crouched on the tile at the edge of the pool, aching and breathing heavily, three cream-colored, lightly-speckled eggs on the floor beside her. They had felt obscenely huge, but in reality they were perhaps only half again as large as an emu's egg. She stared at them, trying to disbelieve in the reality of what she'd just experienced, but they stubbornly continued to exist. It wasn't until Maggie came around, eyed them curiously, and then said "wow, that's a big clutch!" in an admiring tone that it fully, undeniably hit home and Jon burst into tears.
Nisha slithered up out of the pool as Jon sat there bawling and Maggie tried to comfort her. "Are you sure you're alright?" she asked, gently holding the harpy by the shoulders. "I've had some bad layings, but I can't say I've ever been as distraught as this after."
Jon was in too much of a state to even begin trying to find the words to explain just how many degrees of wrong this was, but the naga-woman's embrace was some small comfort at least. Maggie looked at her with concern. "Is...is she gonna be okay?" she asked. "It didn't look like anythin' was wrong..."
There was a guttural expression of annoyance from nearby, and they all turned to see the other naga, who had risen a couple feet out of the water on her tail and had her hands on her hips. "Nothing's wrong with her," she said irritatedly, "but for the love of all the gods, girl, can't you tell when you're due? Do that at home, for heaven's sake!"
Nisha bristled visibly at that. "Leave her alone, Annika. We've all had times where it catches us off-guard or we push our luck a little too far. It's nothing to be ashamed of."
The other naga scowled and turned away, heading off to the other side of the pool with a muttered "Harpies..." Nisha took Jon in a gentle, motherly embrace. "Don't let her get to you, dear," she said.
Maggie frowned. "Is...is it 'cause Jen useta be human, maybe?"
Nisha stared at the young harpy in surprise. "She did?"
Maggie nodded. "I'm helpin' her learn ta be a harpy, an' she's teachin' me about human stuff. But I dunno what human laying is like, so maybe she got surprised?"
The other women who had gathered around during the common broke into titters, and the naga-woman chuckled. "Humans don't lay eggs, little one. They work a different way."
Maggie stared at her. "Really? But...how do they have babies, then?"
"The baby grows inside the mother's body," the wolf-eared woman put in, her wagging tail belying her serious expression. "It doesn't come out until it's ready to live outside - like when one of your kind hatches."
The naga-woman nodded, then turned back to Jon. "But it's no wonder you were shocked, if you're used to a human woman's cycle...poor girl."
Maggie frowned. "But how does a human's cycle work, if they don't lay anything until a baby's all grown?"
The wolf-woman laughed ruefully. "It's not pleasant. Lotta blood involved, and it goes on for days. Not that you have to worry about that, of course."
The young harpy stared off into space, slightly gobsmacked. "Wow..."
"Are you going to be alright, Jen?" Nisha asked. "I guess that must've been quite a shock for you, but it looks like everything went normally."
Jon stared at her, truly paying attention for the first time since this had all started. "That was normal!?"
She nodded. "If it makes you feel any better, you don't have to go through day after day of it anymore. That should be the last of it until next time."
Jon didn't say anything, just staring blankly at the floor. Nisha looked down at the eggs. "They're not fertilized, are they?" she asked. "You'll want to get them bundled up if they might have chicks inside."
Jon looked back up at her, blankly. "Huh?" She spent a moment trying to understand the question, then sputtered in surprise. "O-oh! N-no, no! Not...no way, th-they're not..." She felt her cheeks burning crimson.
The snake-woman nodded thoughtfully. "I see. Then...if you're not going to keep them, do you mind if I take them?"
Jon nodded absent-mindedly, hardly paying any attention to the question. Dear God, she thought, I have to get back to normal...
