Deciding that half-kangaroo or not, he had still school tomorrow, Jon studied for a while and did his homework. Not without occasionally putting his pencil down and looking at himself in bemusement, though. It was strange, being this odd hybrid, and one of the strangest things was how when he didn't think about it how normal it all felt. For example, he'd moved the chair from in front of his desk, where it was now just in the way, and sat in front of it on his tail. This was oddly comfortable, and after a few minutes he simply forgot about it. But when he leaned back and stretched after half an hours work, he was suddenly brought back to the reality of the situation when he leaned a bit too far sideways and 'fell off' his tail, ending up on the floor with a thud.
Surprised, he laughed at himself and got to his feet, resolving to be more careful. Eventually, he finished his work and went to bed, wondering what he and Karyn were going to do about this peculiar situation.
Waking early the next morning, he stared at the ceiling for a while rather groggily before sitting up in bed. He was slightly startled when he could only get about halfway to a normal sitting position before his tail got in the way, and wondered for a second what was going on. Flipping back the covers he stared at his furry lower extremities and thought 'Ah. Right. I'm half kangaroo.' Shaking his head he wondered how he could forget something as notable as his physical changes, but realised that everything simply felt normal. Unless he did something that pointed up the difference between a completely human person and a half-marsupial one, he pretty much didn't notice the change.
Getting out of bed and stretching, he scratched his head for a moment, then hopped over to his closet and dug around for a clean shirt. Pulling it over his head he went to the bathroom. After taking care of his morning ritual, which was surprisingly similar to what it had always been, he went back to his room and packed up his schoolwork, looking at the backpack he normally used for a moment before shrugging and putting his books and papers in his pouch. As long as he had the thing he might as well use it. After some thought, he decided that the stone was too dangerous to take to school, and he left it in the fire safe under the bed. It could stay put until they could decide what the next step was.
After breakfast he decided that there was no point in waiting for the bus, and hopped off down the road, once more somewhat surprised by how fast he was, and how little effort moving like this took. It was rather fun, in fact, and halfway to school he suddenly swerved and leapt over the six foot fence next to the road with a huge grin on his face. Pelting through the leafy suburban neighbourhood, bouncing over tall fences with a single bound, he took a shortcut through a number of backyards until he arrived at the school, faint cries of irritation behind him from a man whose flowerbed he'd landed in the middle of.
Karyn was waiting outside the school, sitting on the wall next to his bike, her tail idly swishing back and forth, and looked surprised when he jumped over the last fence and nearly landed on a small dog on the sidewalk. "Having fun?" she asked wryly, seeing the smile on his face. "You seem to be making the best of it".
Jon grinned. "Yep. It's weird, this is actually pretty great in a lot of ways. I feel like I could keep that sort of thing up for hours if I had to." He thought for a moment. "Mind you, I think I'm going to have to apologise to Mr. Smith, I left some pretty large footprints in his flowers." Karyn grinned back at him.
"Right, so it's fun. We still need to find a way back to normal. Any ideas?" He shook his head.
"No. I was thinking about it last night. We could, I suppose, make a wish to either get the original stone back or to know who took it, but it might not work, and in either case whoever made the wish would end up with another change. I did think about making a wish to have us both changed back, then wishing for any animal changes to automatically revert, but I have a nasty feeling that something like that might cause some sort of paradox. God only knows what would happen in that case."
She thought about it, and nodded slowly. "You might be right. But we're probably going to have to use the stone again at some point, unless you want to stay like this for good and simply forget about getting back to normal." She looked quizzically at him.
"Well, while it's fun and all, it would probably be a good idea to get back to normal. I mean, I suppose I could live with it if I had to, it doesn't seem at the moment to be too much of a hindrance, but there might be some problems I haven't encountered yet. What about you? Any problems?" He motioned vaguely at her muzzle and tail. She shook her head.
"Oddly enough, no. I kept on sitting on my tail last night, which was a bit painful, but I got used to moving it out of the way in the end. Brushing these teeth is a bit weird but somehow I don't seem to have any problems talking or eating. No-one at home seems to notice anything out of the ordinary at all. Even my clothes have tailholes in them." She shook her head in rueful amazement. "That stone is incredibly powerful, changing reality like it does. The number of things that would need to be altered to do all this is simply
beyond belief. It's amazingly dangerous."
Jon squatted next to her, and nodded. "I know. So what do we do?" She shrugged a bit helplessly.
"I don't know. Guess we'll just have to think about it some more. I can stand to be like this for a while, if you can." She suddenly looked at him. "Where is it, by the way? Did you bring it?" He shook his head.
"No, I didn't think that was a good idea. It's locked up safely, and it's going to stay locked up until we figure out a solution." Karyn nodded.
"Good." The bell rang, and they both jumped. "Whoops, we'd better hurry or we'll be late." She stood and wheeled the bike over to the stand, locked it in place, and both of them entered the school.
The day was remarkably unremarkable. No-one noticed anything different about either of them at all, apparently to everyone they had both been these odd animal-human hybrids their entire lives, and it was simply considered normal. Jon found that his PE lessons were the only thing that was even slightly different, and that was only because he could now beat everyone on the running track.
Nobody seemed either surprised or upset by this. He did find that he didn't have to do any rope climbing exercises, though, as it was fairly obvious that with kangaroo legs he wouldn't have much luck. That seemed to be the only point where his new body couldn't do something his old one could.
Only being able to hop did cause a little problem in the cafeteria as he nearly had an accident with his lunch tray, but Karyn grabbed it before he bounced everything off it and said, "I think that I should carry this for you." She smiled at him, and he nodded thankfully.
At the end of the day they spend the rest of the afternoon trying to think of some way to both get back to normal and retrieve the original stone, but every plan one of them came up with the other shot down by finding all the problems with it. There were so many possibly loopholes and problems that they were both getting very frustrated. "At least this is teaching us about logical thought!" Jon joked at one point, and Karyn glared at him for a moment before nodding reluctantly.
Eventually they gave up for the day, and went to see a movie before going their separate ways.
This pattern repeated the next day, and the next, and the next... After a while, Jon looked up from yet another exercise in frustration at their daily brainstorming session, and said "Do you realise we've been like this for nearly three weeks now?" Karyn appeared startled.
"Three weeks? No, it can't be, it's only been, umm, today is the 3rd, hmm..." She trailed off, ticking off the days on her fingers.
"Damn. You're right. Nineteen days so far." Looking at him, she made the odd expression that he had come to recognise as a smile through a muzzle. "Are we getting anywhere at all? Should we simply forget about it for a while, and see if an idea comes when we're not trying so hard?" Jon thought about it, and shrugged.
"I don't really know. We certainly don't seem to be able to come up with a foolproof plan. I guess either we keep thinking about it, try one of the plans and accept the possible consequences, or..." he trailed off.
"Or what?" she inquired.
"Or, just forget about it. Live with the changes, leave the stone where it is, and just get on with our lives. I mean, I don't really have any problems with being like this now. Sure, if we can think of a good way to go back to normal we should probably do it, but speaking from my perspective I can live like this if I have to. It's been the best part of a month, I haven't come across any real problems, and we're no nearer a solution now than we were three weeks ago. If we do nothing we're stuck like this sure enough, but if we try and change back, and fuck it up, it could be a LOT worse!"
Karyn lay back on her bed, as they had been doing the daily thinking session at her house, and stared out the window silently for a while. "You have a point", she said after some time. She went quiet again, looking out the window and stroking one furry cheek in thought.
"Fine. Sod it. We'll forget about it for the moment, and see if something comes up. Until then, the stone stays where it is, and we just get on with life." Swinging her legs over the side of the bed she bounced to her feet and swatted him with her tail. "Come on, lets go out and do something interesting we can actually get somewhere with!" He grinned, pushed himself to his feet with his powerful tail, an action he'd become very good at, and they left the house.
Somewhere, in a darkened room, a shadowy figure watched them through a mystically produced window and shouted "NO! You're not supposed to just IGNORE it like that, you idiots! You're part animal! You're supposed to keep trying to change back..."
He trailed off, fuming, and glared at the original stone, which was sitting in a pool of light on a table near him. "This isn't fun" he muttered. "Not fun at all. Something must be done."
