Diana stared up at the wolf-woman. "Ch-charged?" she stammered. It was one thing to help this lady out when people were trying to kill her, but to get involved in...in whatever kind of thievery this was? But the woman had said she'd be taking it back...?
Melia gave her a sly doggy grin. "I'm certain they won't," she said, her tail wagging gently. "After all, you didn't take it, you're just returning it."
Diana frowned. "But...didn't you steal it? Why are you just givin' it back?"
"Heh," she chuckled. "I was contracted to get it for these gentlemen." Her ears went back and a low growl crept into her voice. "I have no real interest in the piece itself, and after their behavior I'd like to make sure they don't get what they wanted. Bad for business if the word gets around that Melina will just roll over and play dead for anybody that pulls a weapon on her at the dropoff."
The cat-girl looked up at her. "Does...does this happen a lot?"
The wolf-woman laughed. "I am, shall we say, an acquirer of rare antiquities. Sometimes from people who aren't interested in getting rid of them, for people who aren't interested in getting permission to take them. It's an occupational hazard."
Diana regarded her warily. "But why do I hafta take it back to them?"
"Because it'll get you into their good graces, kid, and that's the least I can do for you after you helped me out. And because I've got to get back to my ship before those guys wake up and come gunning for me."
The cat-girl's ears perked up. "You've got a ship!?" She'd almost kind of forgotten her original plan when she got out of the house and free of Diana's adoptive parents; she couldn't even remember what had possessed her to come out towards the forest instead of making her way toward the ports, other than just being sick of human society here and wanting to get as far away from the threat of recapture as possible - but if she could bum a ride on a ship going off to some far shore... Then she frowned. "Wait, what if they come after me?"
"I doubt they will," Melina said. "They'd never guess that I'd just give it back, because they wouldn't. They'll think I've run off with it to find another buyer, and scramble off to the port just in time to see me wave goodbye." Her tail wagged at that. "But I'll see you safely to the outskirts of the village. Time enough to do that before these guys wake up." She grinned. "And I do indeed have a ship, though I can't imagine what cat-kin like you would want to go out on the water for."
Diana found herself getting a little twitchy at the mention of the water; she hadn't really thought that far ahead. But still... "I...I'm...runnin' away," she said. "I need to get away or they're gonna send me off to boarding school..."
The wolf-woman's face took on a more serious expression. "Ah, them," she said. "I've heard of places like that. Can't say I blame you. Not right to take animal-kin and try to drive their nature out of them, not right at all." She sighed. "Listen, kid. I've gotta get a move on, and I can't afford to wait around for you to return this thing and then make your way outta there. And I can't say I'd advise you in good conscience to leave a safe little life like yours to go running off on your own. A kid like you oughta have somebody looking after them, and a village like this could take you in and let you be as much of a cat as you like. Much better advice than running off into the wide world with nobody to take care of you, trust me."
She shrugged. "But I can't tell you what to do with your life, and I do owe you. In a few days, after the heat's died down a bit, I'll put in at Robin's Heath; it's a little fishing village about twenty miles north of here. Nice little windmill catching the breeze off the inlet, that's how you can tell it. If you meet me there, we'll talk about this some more. Now c'mon, let's get moving here."
Diana nodded. She picked up the case Melina had been carrying and was about to head into the village when she felt a twinge inside and realized she hadn't actually gotten around to doing what she'd come to do.
"U-um," she said, blushing and cringing slightly, "I...I gotta go to the bathroom first..."
It wasn't quite as bad as she'd feared, but it was...an experience, to say the least. The process itself was mostly just weird and unsettling, but cleaning up afterward had been a real pain; she'd wound up having to use leaves off of a nearby bush. And something about her cat nature was irked by this and felt like she needed to bathe herself to get properly clean... Shuddering and hoping that, whoever she wound up staying with until she found out how to change back to normal, they'd at least have something like a real bathroom, Darrin made her way back out of the brush to rejoin Melina.
Taking the case from the wolf-woman, she turned toward the village, wondering if they really would believe that she wasn't the one who took it. Melina leaned down next to her. "Tell 'em they should keep it hidden for a while, in case these guys come back for it," she said. "And good luck, kid. I'll see you at Robin's Heath, if you don't have the sense to stay here. Look for the cutter Lady Fairweather." With that, she retreated to the treeline, and Diana headed off toward the little village, as dawn was just preparing to break over the horizon. She was already at the entrance to the village before she realized she had absolutely no idea what a "cutter" was.
Sarah's first concern at hearing about the theft was that somehow the villagers might get it into their heads that she and Tom had stolen it, or something - not that there was any evidence of that, but her mind readily conjured up ways in which it would look suspicious for their (apparently) valuable artifact to go missing right after two strangers showed up requesting asylum. The strange emotional stability this body seemed to impart kept her from getting too panicky about it, but she felt like her body couldn't quite drop back down into idle, to use what was only kind of a metaphor. She found herself wondering if this confusion wouldn't be a good opportunity to get back on the road.
Fortunately, however, nobody seemed to even consider the idea, probably because they'd been at Millicent's house all night, and because neither of them had any place to hide the stolen goods anyway. Not too long into it, they overheard a couple of anthropomorphic German Shepherds discussing the theft; according to them, the freshest scent at the shrine was that of a wolf, but not any of the wolf-kin in the village. She and Tom had a little chuckle over that; neither of them had actually considered the possibility that the villagers themselves might be able to track the thief down. Guess there's some advantages to being part-animal, Sarah thought to herself.
By this time, the villagers were already beginning to organize a hunting party. As the three of them stood on the edge of the crowd, observing the commotion, Sarah turned to Millicent. "Why is this thing so important to you guys anyway?" she asked. "I thought you figured it was just an art object."
The vixen nodded. "Well, yes. But it's been a treasure of our village for centuries, and there's always been the feeling that maybe it's some kind of good-luck charm, like having any kind of connection between us and the Ancients might help keep us safe and sound...it's difficult to explain if you didn't grow up with that thing always there."
Sarah nodded thoughtfully. "I guess. It just seems kind of-"
She was interrupted by a small cough from somewhere behind them. They turned to look in the direction of the village entrance, and found a young cat-girl, of the mostly-human variety, carrying a smallish case. "U-um, 'scuse me," she said. "I...I met someone out in the woods, an' she asked me to give you this..." She held it out to Sarah, who took it.
"She s-said to hide it for a while, in case the people that...took it...come...?" Darrin trailed off as she noticed that the person she'd given the case back to seemed to have a large brass winding key sticking out of her back, and on top of that, that she seemed to be slowing to a stop. In an objective sense, this probably wasn't much weirder than her own situation, or seeing a wolf wearing clothes to cover a rather voluptuous figure, or...or, apparently, this fox with a full head of hair and a human-like expression on her muzzle...? But it was pretty arrestingly distracting.
Sarah felt herself "losing steam," figuratively, as her mainspring ran down. She supposed that it probably had something to do with being woken in the middle of the night, not to mention running on high idle as she worried about whether they'd get blamed for this. Fortunately, she felt Tom move behind her and grab her winding key. She smiled as he began to wind her; it was a nice feeling. Millicent didn't seem too surprised by this, but the little catgirl was gaping in astonishment.
Sarah shot a smile back at Tom. "Thanks," she said, before turning her attention to the case. Setting it down on the ground, she opened it up. Sure enough, it was the "ancient artifact." Curious, and with nobody moving to stop her, the clockwork girl lifted the laptop out of the case and flipped it open. It was old for sure, though she didn't know computers enough to know exactly how old. And somehow, despite apparently having been here for centuries, it came right up to the screensaver she'd seen before. I guess whoever brought it here figured out how to make computers immortal or something, she thought to herself. There wasn't a touchpad, just some kind of weird little nubbin in the middle of the keyboard and a pair of buttons. She tapped one of them, and the screensaver vanished, replaced with a login prompt.
Damn. She'd been hoping to figure out something more about what this was doing here, but she had no idea what the password would be, and not nearly enough knowledge of computer stuff to figure out how to work around this. She turned back to Tom. "We should probably get this back to the villagers," she said, then turned back to the cat-girl. "You too, uh...what's your name?"
The cat-girl hesitated for a moment. "D-Diana," she said.
Sarah nodded, smiling. "Right. C'mon, Diana." She turned and led the way as the sun began to rise over the village.
Jon drifted slowly back to consciousness. She'd been having some strange dream she couldn't quite remember or put her finger on, something about school and birds and witches...? She woke up with a start as she remembered her last conscious moments, being in the house of the Green Witch and collapsing into a heap on her floor, wondering what was happening to her...
She sat up, remembering this time to let her tailfeathers get clear of her butt before trying to lean forward. It was dark out, but it was the kind of darkness tinged with deep blues and purples that you got just before dawn. She was sitting on the ground, in the middle of the forest. The witch's house was nowhere in sight. She sighed with relief as she saw that her satchel was sitting on the ground a few feet away, then with annoyance as she noticed that her tunic was sitting neatly folded beside it, and not on her body. Geez do they ever press the point, she thought.
She looked up overhead. The canopy of the forest was still too thick for her to take flight. Dammit, if she could only get into the air she could get her bearings and get back on track...but no, she was going to have to spend probably another half-day finding her way out of this stupid forest, or at least far enough out that she could take off. She tried to remember...the setting sun had been off to her left when she'd run into that storm, so she must've been heading north-ish when she was last in the air, and the mushroom grove had been off to her left...so she'd headed west going into it, right? But she really hadn't been keeping careful track when she'd gone further into the forest in search of her belongings, and by the time Aria had led her on that little chase she hadn't been paying any attention at all.
Still...as long as she headed east she'd come back to the open plain eventually, right? Even if she was closer to another side of the forest now, it was the direction she knew would lead her out. It was still too dark to tell exactly which direction the sun was going to rise in, but in another hour or so it ought to be clear enough. In the meantime, her stomach was growling again. As much as she'd been able to eat her fill last night, her body evidently still figured she had some catching up to do.
Shrugging, Jon moved over to her satchel and rummaged through it until she found some of the food that Athena's family had packed for her. It wasn't exactly gourmet, but at least it was fresh stuff; she'd been worried that they were going to give her a bunch of hardtack or other nonperishable-because-nonedible travelling rations that she remembered reading about, but for a trek of (hypothetically) only a day or two, it probably hadn't been necessary. Fortunately, even with all the delays, it hadn't started to spoil yet. She fished around in the satchel with one talon, pulling out an apple, a small loaf of bread, and a lump of cheese. Heck, they'd even packed her a breadknife. She picked it up in her talon and regarded it appreciatively. It looked good and sharp, and while it wasn't exactly stainless steel, it wasn't rusted or anything.
All of a sudden someone leaned right over her shoulder. Startled, Jon yelped and awkwardly tried to leap back from a sitting position. All this really accomplished was to throw her back almost to a supine position; she caught herself with her wings before she toppled all the way over. Standing over her and staring eagerly at the knife was a small harpy, who edged around her outstretched talon in order to get a look at Jon without having to stop staring at the knife.
The other harpy was a girl, maybe ten years old. She had springy, wavy golden hair arranged in something like a rough-edged approximation of a pageboy cut. Her wings, which she held out partly folded in front of her in a manner that reminded Jon of the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park, were white at the shoulder and kind of an iridescent black-dark-blue-dark-green down the rest, but white with black-tipped primary feathers on the inside. The plumage on her lower body was black with a large white patch up the front and on the insides of her thighs, and her long tailfeathers were the same iridescent black as her wings. The scales on her talons were black. She stood with a kind of hunched, bird-like posture; on a humanoid, it gave the impression that she was perpetually just about to spring into the air. She grinned at Jon. "Can I have that?" she asked.
Still a bit ruffled, Jon stared at her. "Huh? I...what? No!" she snapped, then, seeing the girl look a little crestfallen, "I, uh, need it. Sorry."
"Aw, but it's so shiny!" the younger harpy said plaintively. Jon shrugged. "Well, it'll be covered in cheese in a minute, and then it won't be so shiny." She glanced back up at the interloper, realizing that she wasn't wearing anything (not that she had much of anything to hide at this age,) and then realizing with a start that she herself wasn't, either. She yelped and covered her breasts with her wings, snatching up her tunic from the ground and tried as best as she could to toss it over herself with only one talon while steadying herself with the other and using both wings to keep herself covered. It didn't work very well.
The younger girl eyed her curiously. "Why do you wear human clothes?" she asked. "Nobody minds that stuff with us."
Jon sighed. What was with people out here in the woods? "Well, I mind," she said, picking the breadknife back up and cutting into the loaf. "For me, anyway."
"Is it for attracting a mate?"
Had Jon been drinking, she would've done a spit-take. "N-no!" she said. "It's...sort of the opposite." She wasn't sure she wanted to get any further into detail than that, but then she had no idea what this kid's frame of reference on the subject was anyway. She supposed there were cultures where sex and nudity didn't go hand-in-hand, maybe whatever harpy society there was around here was one, but...argh, she just didn't want to be talking about this right now.
"'Cause they wear all kinds a' fancy stuff sometimes," the girl said. "I've seen some of 'em doin' their festivals in their villages 'cause I go an' fly over to see all the stuff they're doin', an' they get all dressed up fancy, an' I think they do do it to attract a mate. 'Least sometimes." She looked around briefly, as if searching for her train of thought, then turned back to Jon. "I'm Maggie. What's your name?"
"Jon," said Jon.
Maggie giggled. "That's a funny name for a girl."
Jon grimaced. "I'm...not a girl. Or at least I wasn't. I used to be human, then I got turned into this."
Maggie's eyes got big. "Wow! You really useta be human?" Jon nodded.
The younger harpy whistled. "Well you got turned into a pretty harpy, so I guess that's good."
Jon sighed. She thought about objecting, but there was really no reason to drag this little girl into her own personal drama, so she just said nothing. Taking a slice of bread, she shaved off some of the soft cheese and spread it on. "Can I have that?" Maggie asked.
Jon thought about it for a moment; part of her wanted to tell this girl to buzz off and find her own food, but Maggie wasn't really trying to be a pest, and if all went well she'd be in the city by dinnertime anyway. Shrugging, she handed it over to Maggie, who sat down on the ground and held it up in one talon, taking a huge bite. "Thif if rlly gd," she said. "Uh wif if wafn' juf frm pefl thf md chzz."
"Don't talk with your mouth full," Jon said, cutting a slice for herself. Maggie eyed her curiously as she swallowed her mouthful. "Why not?"
Jon chuckled to herself. "Well, if for no other reason, it's hard to understand you when you do that." She took a bite herself, munched on it for a bit, then swallowed. The cheese really was good. "Anyway," she said, "what are you doing here?" She wasn't sure what a little harpy-girl would be doing in a place where she couldn't really fly to begin with.
Maggie brightened. "Oh, the witch sent me," she said. "She says you're gonna take care of me now."
This time Jon really did spit-take, sending particles of apple flying across the glade. "She what!?"
"I guess it must be 'cause you useta be human, an' I always wanted ta know more about them," the little harpy said chirpily. "So you can teach me all about human stuff, an' I'll teach you how ta be a harpy!"
Jon felt like she imagined cartoon characters did when someone opened a trapdoor under them with a bottomless pit underneath. "I...I...she...what? How did...I don't even...!" Her, take care of somebody else's kid? While she was trying to find out how to get back to being human? It was just...just ridiculous! She gave Maggie an awkward little smile. "I...listen," she said, trying to compose herself. "I, um, I...kinda can't."
Maggie seemed taken aback. "You...can't?" she said. "But...she said you were gonna..."
Jon sighed. "She didn't ask me first. Listen, it's nothing personal, it's just that I have things I have to do. I've got to get to the city and see if I can find somebody to help me with...well, with this." She gestured down at her body with her wingtips. "Besides, don't you already have somebody to look after you?"
The little girl sighed. "Um...not really...just some other flocks, sometimes they let me hang out with 'em." Then she brightened again. "But I can go to the city with you! I always wanted ta see a place like that! Please please pleaaase?" She looked up at Jon eagerly.
Jon was torn. It was enough of an undertaking to have to try to find some wizard or whatever that could change her back into a human male, to say nothing of getting her home; she really didn't need a full-time babysitting gig on top of that. And it would be one more person to provide for if she had to stay in the city for any length of time, too. And she had no idea if she'd even be able to find someone else to look after this girl if she did find a way to get home. Did...did they have orphanages here? Were they any place you'd ever want to leave a child, or Dickensian sweatshop horrors? She had no idea whatsoever. It was just so much additional complication and responsibility, and she had enough on her plate as it was...
...but...but...aw dammit all, she couldn't just leave a little girl to fend for herself out in the middle of the wilderness, even if she seemingly had managed to survive thus far. She couldn't; there was no way her conscience would let her do it. And it wasn't like Maggie herself was responsible for this situation, anyway; that damned witch had put one over on both of them. Jon had half a mind to go looking for her again, but getting screwed over by her once had been quite enough, and anyway she had a sneaking suspicion, given how difficult it had been to get to her hut with the fairy to guide her, that it would prove basically impossible to get back there on her own. That was probably completely by design.
She sighed. "...Okay," she said. "I'm not gonna just leave you by yourself. You can come with me, at least for now."
Maggie squealed with glee. "Oh thank you!" she said, wrapping her wings around Jon and nearly bowling her over in the process. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou! This is gonna be so much fun!"
