Even under the roof of the top floor of the tower, even with the high-altitude breeze rushing through the open veranda, Karyn could feel the heat blazing off the desert sands below. She'd actually been down there early that morning for training with Fazalune, but as it got steadily hotter they'd sensibly retreated to the shade. Now, at the height of the noonday heat, she, Fazalune, and even the Lady were having a more-or-less mandatory siesta. Not that she minded; it'd been a busy couple of days, and the respite was entirely welcome, even if it mostly boiled down to lying around in a lethargic daze waiting for things to begin cooling down.
It had been a bit of a whirlwind, actually. The fact that the Lady knew something was afoot with one of her erstwhile acquaintances, but not where or when it would come about, meant that things were rather urgent, and Karyn was getting a crash-course in everything that the she and Fazalune could impart to her in the time they had before the Lady felt that she would need to leave. Yesterday had covered some basic wilderness survival stuff; today they had focused on self-defense. Karyn had been a bit surprised that this was necessary, considering that she had a deadly weapon hanging off her backside, but while they did go over how to effectively use her stinger when necessary, Fazalune pointed out to her that any close-quarters combat should be avoided if at all possible, for the simple reason that her scorpion body wasn't terribly agile (she could move fairly quickly and pitch forward to sting in a flash, but a body the size of a desk with six legs didn't exactly turn on a dime) and presented a large target. The tough carapace meant that it was less vulnerable than her fleshy bits, to be sure, but it was hardly invincible.
So instead, the focus had primarily been on teaching her basic archery. Karyn gathered that this was something of a tradition for her new race, since Fazalune actually had more than one longbow and a passel of arrows among her possessions. "They say that to train a great bowman, you start with his grandfather," the older scorpion-woman had said with a wry smile. "But we should be able to manage a passable one in a few days."
And so they'd spent most of the morning going over that. It hadn't been that bad, for the most part - it took a lot of effort in muscles she hadn't used that much before, but it was kind of fun getting a feel for how it all worked and learning how different factors affected her aim. Unfortunately, the fun part came to an abrupt end when Karyn had screwed up on the draw and nearly dislocated her shoulder. That had, to put it mildly, hurt like a bitch, and they'd changed focus to giving her some first lessons in healing.
This was even more of an unusual experience. Karyn wasn't really sure what she'd expected, but she'd thought it would be something RPG-ish like waving one's hands and having a nice soft magical white light make everything better. Instead, Fazalune had none-too-gently poked and prodded around the joint to make sure it wasn't actually dislocated, then given Karyn a stiff belt of something that made her head swim and rubbed an assortment of strange, pungent liniments into the skin over her aching muscles, so that her shoulder was covered in oily gunk and she smelled like her great-uncle's medicine cabinet.
Still, it was hard to argue with the results - the skin on her shoulder felt like it was on fire, but the actual pain from the injury was steadily decreasing at a much faster rate than it should've been. And on top of that, Karyn found herself actually kind of understanding what her teacher was doing. She wondered idly whether she was able to follow this stuff because she'd designed her character as a support/healer role, an eternity ago when this was just an arcade game. She wondered how she'd tell if that were the case, or whether it really mattered. After all, however you sliced it, she was here, in these circumstances; nothing about such philosophical inquiries would change that fact.
She laid there, resting her upper body on a couch of sandstone (with a layer of soft sand for a cushion) that the Lady had conjured out of the tower for her, as her scorpion body sat flat on the floor. It was a strange position to rest in, but everything about this body was a little strange. She felt the heat pressing in, but she found that, despite it all, even now, she could cope with it. It was so strange to be in this body, where what would be an outright murderous environment for her old self was only a dangerous and challenging one. And it was so strange to be here, with this old nomad woman and this strange mystic demi-goddess, both teaching her new things in preparation for she didn't even know what...she wondered where it would all lead, in the end...
It was strange to realize that, for the first time since she'd arrived in this world, in this body, Jon really didn't have any pressing goals at the moment. When she'd first woken up as...as this harpy-girl, her immediate reaction had been to try to find a way to change back. Then she'd stayed with the centaurs for a few days trying to find out about ways to do that, begun her long trek to the city, scrambled to recover her stolen possessions, unwittingly fallen asleep in the witch's house, tried to get back on track, met Maggie, finally made her way to the city, tried to find a place to stay...and now it was mid-morning in this bustling little port and she really didn't have anything that desperately needed doing.
Not to say that she wasn't hoping to find out a bit more about possibilities of returning to her own body and world, but for the first time since she got here she didn't feel like she had to be going someplace or doing something. The city was here, whatever answers it held could be investigated at her leisure, she was probably going to need to save up some money anyway, and her "shift" at the tavern didn't start until the evening. Besides which, after the week she'd had, she hardly felt like getting too involved in anything strenuous right this very minute. A quiet morning and a leisurely exploration of what this town had to offer might be just what the doctor ordered.
"Ooh, look! Look! Jen, lookit all these necklaces an' things! C'mere!"
Well, to the extent that any time spent with Maggie could be counted as "quiet," anyway. Jon smiled in spite of herself; the little harpy was a bundle of energy, and if she was a bit, er, flighty and a bit of a handful (wingful?) it was still fun to have her around. She'd kind of forgotten how infectious a kid's enthusiasm could be, especially when practically everything around the younger harpy was new to her, or at best seen at a distance before now.
Jon walked over towards the stall where Maggie was eyeing an assortment of jewelry. She felt weird walking around in public like this; it had been one thing when she was by herself in the wilderness, or even with a small group like at the centaurs' farm, but being in a crowded public market... She found herself intimately aware of the weird steppy, birdlike gait that she walked with thanks to the avian form and proportions of her legs, and the way it made her swing her hips, which were on the broad side for a human, though she was too thick at the waist and her legs were far too spindly below the knee for her to have anything like the idealized cartoon "hourglass" figure that she usually thought of hips like these on. (Really her whole lower torso was oddly shaped, deeper front-to-back than usual - more like a bird's lower body than a woman's, though there was still a definite feminine curve to her thighs and buttocks.)
And while her breasts weren't huge, they were definitely noticeable, and she could feel whatever it was that she had in the way of natural supports keeping them perkier and less floppy than a human girl's, while still being entirely obvious that she was braless, even under the fairly loose tunic she was wearing. And maybe it was just perceptual due to being a girl now and looking up at the various men around her, but she felt so short now - not even petite, not with her hips and bust, just short. She felt like she'd somehow fallen into a strange fantasy world but ended up in the body of a...a postal worker, or something. But not an unattractive postal worker, ohhh no, because she could feel people staring at her, feel their gaze upon her, feel...
She shook it off. She was okay; she could cope with this. It was just weird as hell, that was all. She'd get home, to her own world and her own body, and she'd be okay.
...she had to be okay, in fact, because right now her charge was trying to appropriate most of the vendor's stock, and that was a much bigger concern than anything she felt about her own personal situation at the moment.
"Hey, hey, Maggie, cool it!" she said hurriedly, rushing over to the stand and placing a firm talon on her shoulder. The little harpy-girl looked put-out, but at least turned to listen to her. "You can't just take stuff from people," Jon said. She hadn't counted on having to explain that theft was, y'know, illegal, but she supposed that as much as Maggie may have observed humans from afar, she couldn't really assume that she'd picked up on all the little nuances of human society.
Maggie looked confused and frustrated. "But...but she's not usin' 'em!" she said plaintively. "She's not even lookin' at 'em!"
"But it's still her stuff," Jon said. "How would you feel if somebody came along and tried to take something of yours without asking?"
The younger girl bit her lip. "But...they're just sittin' there..."
"Yeah, that's because she needs to sell them for her living." Jon sighed. "Look, I know you didn't mean anything bad, but if you want to spend time in human cities, you need to follow their rules, and this is one of them, okay?"
Maggie sighed. "...okay."
Jon felt a bit sorry for her. She really didn't mean any harm... "Look," she said. "If you want, I think we could get one of the cheaper pieces. They're all pretty shiny, right? Let me talk with her and we'll see what we can settle on."
Looking at the little harpy-girl's face, it was as if the sun had burst out from behind the clouds. Jon couldn't help but feel like she was honor-bound to get something for her, even as she recognized the effect. Oh, she's going to have them wrapped around her little...um, claw...when she gets older, she thought to herself. She turned to the vendor. "Look, I'm sorry," she said. "She's not used to human laws yet. But if you have something a little more affordable...?"
Maggie stared at the racks of clothing in awe. "There's so many of 'em..."
To Jon, who was familiar with mall outlets with hundreds of square feet of floor space and row upon row of racks with hundreds or thousands of items, the seller's little stall seemed somewhat less overwhelming - but she did have to admit that it was an impressive variety all the same. There were tunics like the one she was wearing, long drapey affairs folded over at the waist and pinned at the shoulder, voluminous shawl-things to go over them, lighter cloak type pieces that draped over the front and back and hung open at the sides, and even some more familiar styles of dresses, shirts, and pants (though there were fewer of these than of the local fashions.) Some were brightly colored, but most were white, sometimes with decorative patterns.
She felt a little more at ease in the market now that she'd actually bought something. She wasn't really sure that she'd gotten the best price on the little necklace of bright copper wire and colored glass beads that Maggie now wore (and kept turning her attention to,) but it had at least she had a handle on how the system worked here. She'd never really had any experience with haggling before now, but the basic concept wasn't difficult, and she'd discovered that she could ruffle her feathers somewhat to appear a little more imposing. (Though she was going to need to ask Maggie for help getting them all smoothed back down later.)
Jon started rifling through the different outfits on the rack, looking for something that would be suitable for Maggie to wear. Probably something like the tunic she was wearing; the more elaborate getups would be impractical for someone without hands, and while the more familiar shirts were simple enough, the sleeves were much too small for her wings to fit through. Finally, she found something that looked right, a tunic in about the right size, steel blue with a cheery blocky goldenrod trim pattern. Like the one she'd gotten from the centaurs, it only came down to about the waist, but that was just as well - feathers would cover the rest, and it wouldn't mess with her aerodynamics too badly.
She turned to the seller. "We're looking for something for my...sister...to wear," she said. "Do you mind if I have her try this on?" She was a little unsure about calling Maggie her sister, but the younger harpy was sticking to that story, and anyway Jon was already used to having a little sister - just not being an older one.
He nodded silently. Balancing carefully on one talon, Jon lifted the other and took the tunic off the rack. "Let's have you try this," she said to Maggie. It took a little bit of experimentation for her to get the hang of putting it on, but she managed to wriggle through, and Jon helped her straighten it out once she'd gotten it mostly situated.
The younger girl took a look down at herself and grinned. She gave a little twirl and broke out into giggles. Jon chuckled softly to herself; she'd worried that Maggie was just trying to please her with this, but she really did seem to be enjoying it. The garment looked good on her, too - it added a splash more color to her mostly black-and-white plumage, and the trim went nicely with her golden hair. "I think it'll do," Jon said to the seller. "How much were you asking?"
Jon had a better idea of what she was doing this time, and managed to negotiate the seller down a bit further compared to his asking price. She still wasn't sure whether she was getting a particularly good deal or not - the problem with a system where the seller expected to get more than the buyer wanted to pay and the buyer expected to talk the seller down to lower than what the seller would like to get was that it left her with absolutely no idea what constituted fair market value - but she at least felt a bit less overwhelmed. She'd contemplated buying something for herself, as well (she could hardly keep wearing the same clothes every day indefinitely, particularly as it would mean going naked when they needed washing,) but decided it'd be better to wait for now - she didn't know if last night's tipping was typical or not, and didn't want to blow through their savings too fast.
Instead, she'd taken Maggie down to the end of the market where several people had set up food stalls, and they'd had a little lunch; this being a port city, there were sellers catering to a variety of tastes, and it didn't take much looking before Jon found a stall selling pasties, which she remembered from an ill-fated family camping trip in Michigan (the pack with their food in it had gone into the drink when one of the canoes tipped over, and they'd ended up in a truck stop in Wakefield eating pasties while their clothes dried on the minivan's heater vents.) These were actually a good deal better than those had been (probably because they hadn't been sitting in a freezer for six months before being microwaved to something approaching edible temperatures,) and they were easy to eat with only talons.
"Jfhn," Maggie began, her mouth full of meat and onions. Jon gave her a bemused glance, and she swallowed her mouthful. "Um, we get to do the music again tonight, right?"
Jon nodded. "Yep. That's our job, for now."
Maggie grinned. "It was fun."
Jon smiled. "Yeah. And you did a good job, too."
It seemed like the entire plaza lit up when the little harpy beamed back at her. Then, without skipping a beat, "So we can come back here an' buy more things, right?"
She tried and failed to stifle a chuckle. "Well, yes, but we can't just go spending all our money on jewelry. Anything we need besides room and board we have to pay for out of what we earn in tips, plus I need to save up in case I need money to follow up on any leads I get towards getting back to normal, and at some point we might want to look at getting you some kind of instrument as well." I'm probably going to have to just give her an allowance at some point, she thought.
Maggie frowned. "But I didn't need any a' that stuff out in the wild."
Jon shrugged. "Well, no. But you did want to learn more about human cities, and that's how things work here. Plus, you found things you didn't know you were interested in before, like that outfit, right?"
The little harpy frowned as she thought it over. "Human stuff is kinda complicated."
Jon laughed. "You don't know the half of it." She looked around the plaza, taking in the scene. The market plaza was clearly the economic center of the city; in addition to the dozens of smaller stalls set up in the market itself, many of the buildings around the square were businesses, most directly or indirectly related to shipping and trade. She wondered what people came to this island for, anyway - was there something particularly valuable here, or was it just an important stop on the way from somewhere to somewhere? She thought about what she was here for; would a bunch of miscellaneous merchants know anything about magic, transformation, or travel between worlds? Maybe if there was some magic shop or something...but maybe she should look somewhere else? Centaur-Athena had mentioned something about wizards that worked in this region; she wondered if they hung out somewhere other than the business district.
Come think, as she looked down one of the main streets leading away from the plaza, Jon could see a different plaza at the other end, with a large building dominating it. It was a large stone structure with columns supporting the roof; Jon initially guessed it was a temple of some kind, and wondered briefly what kind of gods they worshipped around here, but she noticed after a moment that the columns were actually fake, done in relief on the face of the building. (The front steps weren't even covered.) I don't think they'd cheap out on a god they actually believe in, she thought. And if they don't, why waste time and money on something so huge? Was it something else, then?
The answer came a minute later when she noticed (at some distance - it was still strange to have such sharp vision by human standards) people carrying jars of something or other and towels into the building. It's a pool, or something, she realized. Oh, it's a public bath, isn't it? She remembered reading about them; in the days before running water, when most people couldn't afford to have their own bathing facilities, cities would build public baths to improve hygiene. Jon realized, to her chagrin, that this was why she hadn't noticed anything like a proper bathroom in the living quarters above the tavern; there was a sort of outhouse structure out in the alley behind it, but clearly they weren't going to go to the trouble of building a private bath when there was a perfectly good public one in the city center.
She sighed. She was never fond of communal showers in P.E., and she wasn't thrilled about the prospect of having to get naked in front of total strangers any time she wanted a bath in this town - and now that she'd found out where the bathing facilities were, she was increasingly aware of how long it'd been since even her cursory splash-bath in the river the other day. On top of that, she supposed it'd be with...with other women, which was a whole new level of awkward. And she really didn't have any idea how even small-city cosmopolitan ladies would react to someone like her, either - would they see her as just one of the girls, or would the fact that harpies seemed to be largely creatures of the wilderness in this world make things awkward? She had no way of knowing...
