After a few minutes, Jon lazily drifted her way back down from both the altitude she'd reached and the high she'd achieved. As she came back to earth, she began to get her wits back about her. She wasn't sure exactly what made her feel so blissed-out when she did flights like that one, but she thought it might be a kind of endorphin rush like a "runner's high" from the prolonged exertion. She would be feeling that later, she was sure. And besides, she needed to get back inside for class, and it was still kind of cold out, being mid-March, and...well, her nipples were reflecting that, and it was freaking her out.
Thus far, Jon had managed to at least partially ignore most of the non-flight aspects of her change; her privates only really mattered when she went to the bathroom, which was a half-automatic process anyway (although she was due in for a shock in another three weeks or so,) her shapely legs and hips didn't really affect much, especially since she didn't do nearly as much walking now, and she'd gotten her hair trimmed back to a shorter cut, although it was still longer than she'd worn as a boy. Even her changed voice was getting less jarring; it hadn't changed as drastically as Mikey's, and she only half-listened to herself when she spoke.
But the breasts...those were hard to ignore. Even though she didn't suffer the backstrain problems normal-sized girls did, they were an obstacle any time she wanted to change clothes, and she'd had to start wearing a bra to keep her now more sensitive nipples from being rubbed raw, which meant she had to deal with them directly when getting dressed, rather than just throwing a shirt on over them. On top of that, despite her tiny stature, she'd begun to get looks from some of the boys at school.
And that was the thing. Now that the endorphins had worn off, Jon began to realize that some of the things she'd been thinking up there in the clouds were a little silly. Yes, it was true that she didn't have to pursue a relationship if she wasn't ready to, but that wouldn't keep people from being attracted to her. She could avoid thinking too much about being a girl, but it would still affect the way people saw her. And she couldn't make her hormones and sexuality go away just by not thinking about them, either; sooner or later she was going to have to deal with that question, whether she was ready or not. She hoped she would be.
Mikey wasn't having as bad a day as that fateful day she'd lost her hands, but it could have been going better. Class was kind of boring, but she was used to that. What she was still getting the hang of was using her talons to manipulate things. The school had got in a special desk set up for someone with her disadvantages; it was set at such a height that she could work comfortably with her talons while not having her legs blocking the view too badly, and instead of a horizontal surface, it was angled like a drafting board so that she didn't have to strain her feet forward when lifting her legs to the desk. On top of this, it was adjustable, so she could keep using it as she grew.
And she'd been having a pretty good time doodling with it until she'd gotten caught. The teacher wasn't particularily harsh, but Mikey felt bad about getting found out. It must have been her smile that gave her away; she'd have to learn to look disinterested when drawing. Still, that had been only one part of a pretty mediocre-unenjoyable day. There had been lunch, when the cafeteria was serving fried chicken; she actually found the meat more delicious than before her change, but it had inspired a number of taunts, and the awkward, graceless way in which she ate with her feet didn't do her any favors, either.
Then there had been earlier, when she'd hit the bathroom before gym. Using the bathroom as a girl wasn't actually difficult, but cleaning up afterwards had been hard ever since she lost her hands; although her legs bent backwards and could theoretically serve the purpose, it was an awkward proposition, but since her wings were completely unusable, it had to do. Unfortunately, the difficulty in doing a thorough job combined with the fact that Mikey didn't wear anything besides a shirt had led to her getting made fun of by one of the other girls and sent back to try again.
She was still burning from that. How was she supposed to get used to life as a harpy when she was having such trouble with both the people around her and her own body? She hadn't tried to fly yet, but even if she could, she didn't feel it would make up for being a girl, having no hands, laying eggs once a month, and being made fun of any time something even remotely bird-related came up.
Zoe was having a pretty good day. It had been kind of awkward, her first day back at school, to meet those of her friends who'd been transformed months or even years before she'd left for California; they knew her, but she only kind of half-knew them. They were all essentially the same people they'd been in the old reality, but they all wore different shapes. Some were animal-people, some were mythical creatures, and a few had even changed sex. She had done her best to treat them just like her old friends, but it was still kind of bizarre and disconcerting.
The whole thing was, really. Coming home to a town ravaged by a virus that stripped you of what you were at random? It was amazing the victims had handled it as well as they had, but it sounded like, in the alternate reality, they'd had upwards of forty years to get used to it. The '60s must have been an even more turbulent time in this weird alternate world that her hometown had become a piece of.
Zoe was feeling a little turbulent herself. She knew she didn't want to change, but she kind of worried that she'd make Jon and Mikey upset if she were the only one in the family who got to stay normal. And if she did change, it would be nice to have Athena change as well so they'd have that in common, but she felt bad about wishing something like that on her best friend. The whole thing was confusing and scary, but really, there were only two things that mattered: she wanted to remain a girl, and she wanted to be able to play her harp. The rest she could deal with as it happened.
