For a long time Mikey just sat on the couch, fighting back tears, a mass of numb dread. Becoming a harpy would've been enough trouble without turning into a girl on top of that, but now she was going to lay eggs, like a freaking chicken? At least if she'd just become a human girl she wouldn't have to give birth unless she wanted to have kids, but if her mom was to be believed, she was going to lay an egg or two every single month until she was old and grey, whether it had a baby in it or not! This was something she would not stand for, but what could she do about it?
As upset as Mikey was, deep down she knew it was futile. Changes that were permanent really were permanent; nobody had ever found a way to reverse them in all the fifty-ish years this disease had been around. She could fume all she liked, but fifty years from now, she'd still be this bird-girl thing. But that wasn't going to stop her from fuming now. Fifty years was a long way off, and she still planned to fight this every step of the way.
But you can't wage war on an empty stomach, and Mikey hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast. And with the depletion of energy that came with the transformation, she was starving. Letting her scowl relax to an expressionless stare, she hopped off the couch and walked into the kitchen in search of something to munch.
She shuffled moodily up to the fridge, talons clicking on the linoleum, and opened it, unsure what she was even supposed to eat anymore. Not much really appealed to her until she opened up one of the drawers and beheld a bag of corned beef. Yes, that would do nicely; she grabbed the bag, took it to the table, and tore it open. She munched a little, but...it seemed that cold meat didn't do much for her anymore.
Dumping the contents of the bag onto a plate, Mikey put it in the microwave and nuked it for about a minute, then took it back to the table and tore greedily into the warmed lunchmeat. The thought crossed her mind that she had warmed it to about body temperature, but she pushed it to the back of her mind, trying not to think about her situation as much as possible. Similarily, she wasn't in the mood to be thankful for anything, even when she noted that at least hands had completely disappeared into her wings like most mythological depictions of harpies. Determined to make her problems go away by ignoring them, she continued eating.
Jon sat on the back of the bus seat, eager to get home. Today hadn't turned out nearly as bad as she'd anticipated, and she'd even kind of enjoyed certain aspects of being a pixie, like flight, but she was anxious to get this whole mess straightened out and get back to her old body. She flitted excitedly off the seat as the bus approached her and Karyn's stop.
"C'mon!" she said, as the two of them exited the bus. "Let's get this fixed!"
"Sorry," Karyn said, her ears drooping, "but I've got some homework I've gotta take care of before anything else. For now, just get the stone out and keep it safe. And don't make any wishes."
Jon nodded and flitted off to her house. She slipped through the mail slot and zoomed upstairs, not even noticing the changed Mikey sitting at the kitchen table. Arriving in her room, she turned her attention to thnightstand, whee she'd left the stone...
...and it wasn't there. Staving off panic, for the moment, she looked on the floor by the bed, but it wasn't there, either. In fact, as her detailed and increasingly nervous search revealed, it didn't seem to be anywhere in her room. Jon desperately hoped her mother had just moved it or something, because she didn't want to think that she might be spending the rest of her life like this...
