Peter sat quietly on the end of the old dock, idly kicking his legs in the air and staring down into the water below, while Diana stretched out nearby, soaking in the late-afternoon sunlight. Kevin had stormed off a while ago, after their narrow escape from the mysterious ship. Diana found herself wondering about the figure that had appeared and spoken to them. Kevin had thought it was a ghost, but Diana knew from her old life that it must be a hologram...or, well, whatever it was, it was what holograms were like in movies, anyway. But it had looked so much like Sarah - a different face, a different voice, but an undeniable resemblance.
"I...I wonder what that...ghost...wanted," Peter said. He'd never seen such a thing, only heard campfire stories and sailors' tales. For all that it had startled them, though, he didn't feel as terrified as he thought he probably should have, if it really was an ancient spirit.
"I don't think it was a ghost," Diana said. The bunny-boy looked at her curiously. "'Cause it only showed up when Kevin hit that thing. I think maybe it was a part a' the ship or somethin'." She knew fighter planes used an artificial female voice to communicate with the pilot - maybe the apparition was something similar? But she couldn't figure out why it would be a doll-girl like Sarah. Surely that wasn't what the 'ancients' looked like? Maybe they made creatures like that as servants, like robots in sci-fi movies?
Peter frowned. "Huh. I never hearda anything like that. Wonder what it was sayin'. An' why it made the ship act all funny and...and...disappear." He choked back a lump in his throat as he thought of how narrow their escape had been. Just a few seconds' delay and Kevin or even he himself could have been inside the ship when it vanished. He wondered what would've happened to them then.
"I dunno," she replied, subconsciously twisting around to lift a leg behind her head and scratch behind one ear, her whiskers softly twitching. "It musta been buried there for a long time. Maybe it just got old an' broke down or somethin'."
Peter nodded. "An' Kevin hittin' that crystal thingy probably didn't help neither." He stared down into the waves lapping at the pilings beneath them, feeling his ears droop. Kevin wasn't really much of a friend, but it had still been scary to see him almost trapped in there - and being zapped by the crystal. "Hope he's okay."
Diana felt her tail bristle and her ears go back a bit at that - after the way he had treated both of them, why should she care about him? But...well, just because he had been a jerk it didn't mean she wanted him to get hurt or anything. "He's...he's probably okay," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "If he could get up an' run away after it zapped him, it couldn'ta hurt that much."
Peter nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess so."
They sat in silence for a while longer, listening to the gentle rumble of the ocean. Diana wondered if there were any good fish around here, and peered down to see if she could see anything, but the sun was beginning to set and it was that magical time of day where the light was too dim for her normal vision but too bright for her enhanced night vision. She thought about them down there, or maybe down there for all she knew, anyway; of course, it wasn't like she had a fishing rod or a net or anything.
Part of her said that none of that was necessary, that she was a swift and stealthy natural predator and could catch anything she had a mind to. Another part of her gave a little shudder at the thought of jumping in the water and getting all wet and bedraggled and having to dry out and groom herself after. So she remained on the dock, feeling slightly paralyzed by indecision over whether to try catching something that may or may not even be there.
Finally, Peter broke the silence. "S-so, um..." he began, "...what're you guys here for? Why're you lookin' for that wolf lady?" There was a note in his voice like there was an unspoken question there that only tangentially related to his actual question.
Diana thought for a moment about whether she should tell him - but it wasn't like it was some deep secret she could never share, and anyway he'd already shared one of his secrets with her. "We're...tryin' to get away," she said, guardedly. "My par- the people who took me in were gonna send me away to some place where they'd try an' make me all 'ladylike.' An' I didn't want that, so I ran away."
The rabbit-boy frowned. "But you're a girl," he said. "Don't girls like that kinda stuff?"
Diana felt her tail puff out. "Nuh uh!" she said emphatically. Just a bit of a hiss crept into her voice, and Peter looked visibly startled. She was surprised by her own reaction, and dropped her gaze. "U-um, sorry," she said. "I don't wanna be like that, not just 'cause I'm a...a girl, or no other reason, an' they were gonna try ta make me not be so much of a cat either."
He nodded. "That's weird," he said. "You was born that way, right? So isn't that how you're s'posed ta be? Why'd they wanna change that?"
She felt a little uncomfortable at tacitly accepting that, because she knew that this wasn't what she was born as. But she definitely knew that she didn't want to be turned into what they wanted to make her, and that was the real point. "I...I dunno," she said. "I guess 'cause...'cause it doesn't fit with how they want things to be. Some kinds a' people just gotta make everything the way they want it..." She sighed. "Anyway, so I gotta go away where they can't find me an' take me away. An' Melia said she'd take me someplace far away where they couldn't get me."
Peter looked crestfallen for some reason. "Y-you...you could maybe stay here instead," he said. "I bet the grownups'd all keep 'em from takin' you anyplace."
Diana smiled at that. "Th...thanks," she said, a little unsure how to respond to that kind of offer. "But...it'd just get 'em in trouble, prolly. If we go far away, then they can't come an' get me there." She kicked her feet in the air, over the end of the dock.
"I...I guess," the bunny-boy said quietly. "If...if they don't come after ya...y'think yer ever gonna come back here...?"
The little catgirl found herself flushing slightly for no reason she could figure out. "I...I guess...maybe," she said. "I dunno. But I guess people are nice here...?"
Peter's disappointed expression turned into a smile, and Diana found herself smiling as well. Just then, a small bell began to toll somewhere in the village. Peter looked surprised, then looked around him. "O-oh," he said. "I guess that's the dinner bell at the inn. You probably oughta go 'cause that's for supper..."
Diana was a little surprised herself. How long had they been sitting here? What would Sarah think? But then she'd probably be okay since she'dve come looking for her if she was really worried. Jumping up and nodding politely to the rabbit-boy, she bounded off towards the inn.
Zoe stood by herself in the mall as the thinning crowd of evening shoppers flowed around her. Unlike other evenings, she wasn't here just to bum around this time. She had to admit it - hearing Athena so earnestly argue that someone was just missing from her life like they'd never existed had her pretty rattled. She didn't actually believe in magic, she assured herself, but...the idea was so eerie and stuck in her mind with such tenacity that she found herself wondering about it regardless, and Athena's sincerity seemed so genuine...
Well, she'd have a look at this thing, then. If magic didn't really exist, then it was harmless, and she wanted to see if she could figure out what on Earth about a freaking arcade game could get her best friend so freaked out. She knew the place, but she wasn't quite sure why; it felt like she used to get dragged here by a babysitter or something, but she couldn't put her finger on who that had been. Not Stacy who'd used to live at the end of the street, surely? No, hadn't it been a boy? She couldn't remember, for some reason, and for some reason that was vaguely disturbing to her.
She wandered into the arcade. It was dead quiet at this particular point in time; even the proprietor appeared to have gone off for a bathroom break or something. But it was open, and she wandered through the rows of cabinets, looking for the machine Athena had claimed was her prime suspect for whatever it was she thought was going on.
It didn't take too long to find it - it was all by itself at the back of the arcade. Zoe wasn't particularly well-versed in vintage arcade games, but she definitely hadn't seen this one before. She actually kinda dug the Frazetta-ish cabinet art; it looked like it should be an album cover for some suitably epic speed-metal band or something. And there was the manufacturer's logo, which Athena had cited as reason to suspect occult affiliation; well, okay, it wasn't a common theme, but she hardly felt like it was going to suck out her soul looking at it or anything.
Still...she did feel a little strange, standing here. She thought she heard music filtering in from somewhere, under all the noises of the various other games running through their attract modes, and it felt vaguely familiar even though she didn't actually recognize it. Everything around her seemed strange and alien despite the familiarity of the setting, and she couldn't put her finger on why. She felt an inexplicable urge to reach out to the cabinet, to touch it, to try it out...
Starting to get a little weirded out herself, Zoe turned to leave. She needed to get out of here; she shouldn't have come in the first place. Entertaining Athena's esoteric views was fine in normal conversations between friends, but not when she was feeling emotionally unstable and starting to be swayed by them herself. She'd leave the game untouched, get out of here and clear her head, and...and...
Zoe found that things were going dark all around her. Not as if the lights had gone out, but as if the room itself were fading into some elemental nothingness. She felt a lump rising in her throat, as if some small object had gotten caught halfway down, but she wasn't choking. She dropped into a dead sprint for the front of the arcade, only to find the doorway stretching farther and farther into space ahead of her as the surrounding blackness engulfed it completely. Still running, Zoe found herself without any frame of reference in a blank void.
And then a moment later, she was gone.
Jon and Maggie gradually made their way back towards the inn - gradually, since the younger harpy kept getting distracted by new things to check out on their way back through the market, and then by the shops along the main streets that had opened up since the morning. Maggie's curiosity was boundless, and Jon found mood lifted just due to the little girl's enthusiasm. And by the fact that, fortunately, she was still too enamored of her new tunic and necklace to talk Jon into buying her anything else.
They got back somewhat later than Jon had intended, only a couple hours before the dinner crowd would show up and they'd be expected to start their performance. Jon had wanted to work on some new material, but there just wasn't time; that'd have to wait for tomorrow night. She took her satchel back up to their quarters and stashed it away for safekeeping, then came back down to practice with Maggie.
That went well enough, but Jon found herself getting wrapped up in the music, and Maggie followed along, and almost before she knew it it was nearly time - she just barely had time to stretch and rest her talons for a bit and drink a little to refresh her throat before people started to filter in. She took a quick minute while dinner was gearing up to pull Maggie upstairs and straighten out her hair, which she hadn't quite thought to do at the bathhouse; then she had the little harpy give her own long red tresses a quick brushing. With that, they slipped back downstairs and set themselves up onstage.
Their second night's performance went quite well. Jon was still working on the finer points of playing this tabletop-guitar thing with her talons, but she was a little more sure of herself, and Maggie did better at staying with her now that she actually had some experience at this. At the same time, it felt a little less eventful than last night. Jon found herself looking around to see who was in the crowd, but neither Enki (who, she remembered, had said he had to leave for home) nor that strangely familiar elf-lady were anywhere to be seen.
The evening wound its way along, and soon enough the various patrons were beginning to get ready to leave. Jon drew to a close on "Ventura Highway," but it just didn't seem quite time to call it a night yet. One more good one...something a little longer...she paused for a moment as a song sprang to mind. But she hadn't practiced it - she knew how it went, and if she thought about it for a minute she could picture a way to get started on it, but she'd never even gone over it with Maggie...
...and yet something inside her just wanted to. Something about the atmosphere, the rush of getting to play music she liked, and probably the wine she'd had during the short break she and Maggie had taken earlier was getting to her, and it was almost as if the song took on a life of its own inside her and just had to come out. She nodded to Maggie and, almost subconsciously, struck up her best attempt at the opening of "The Cinema Show."
It wasn't perfect. Jon was best-guessing it through the guitar parts, though she knew the words and tune, and Maggie, who had never heard it, picked up some of the fabric streamers from the prop cabinet and did a kind of improvised ballet. But the music, despite their limitations, came to life and carried them through with hardly so much as a pause. The guitar fairly sang on the upper parts; it had a surprising amount of volume and sustain for an acoustic instrument. Jon, the rational part of her mind disconnected from the musical part as it had been the night before, wondered if there was some kind of resonator arrangement inside the box.
"I have crossed between the poles,
For me there's no mystery.
Once a man, like the sea I raged,
Once a woman, like the earth I gave,
But there is in fact more earth than sea."
Like it had the previous evening, the musical half of her brain kept on rolling, drifting into the delicate instrumental interlude, while her conscious mind did a double-take over that. She really hadn't thought about that when she'd decided to do the song, she just remembered that was how the lyrics went. It didn't mean anything, it was just...just a bizarre coincidence, one that had her cheeks turning pink as she thought about the secret coincidence that, of all the people in this room, only she knew about.
Fortunately, that didn't stop her from rolling along with the rest of the song, picking up with the vocalizations over the interlude. Maggie, although she hadn't known the lyrics, was able to catch onto the wordless singing quickly enough that it was almost like she already knew it, and began to add her own improvised harmony. She really does just take to this naturally, Jon thought. I wonder if all harpies are like that. Then, while she was still thinking about this, there came the reprise of that chorus that'd thrown her thoughts off the first time. She studiously ignored it this time, letting her voice trip lightly over the words without parsing them. Behind her, she could hear Maggie joining in this second time around.
After that, it was almost completely instrumental, as Jon's guitar lilted its way through a reprise of the main theme and dropped into the faster section of the piece. She was a little surprised by how well she was able to keep the chords up with one talon while playing over top of them with the other; her young partner busily kept time on a tambourine that she'd threaded a thin leather cord through, so that Maggie could wear it around her neck and use both wings to play it.
She wasn't really good enough to pull off the extended solo section the way it had been on the album, and that had been on a keyboard anyway, but she managed to improvise something, turning it into a call-and-response with Maggie, that kept things moving along fairly well until it built into the big triumphant finish - and then segued into a wistful, melancholy coda where she finally closed out the piece.
And the room erupted.
Jon's conscious thoughts returned to the situation at hand. Flushing with a combination of embarassment and pride, she motioned to Maggie, who was staring in awe at the crowd, to come join her. "Thank you!" she called out, unable to think of anything particularly more complicated to say. It was getting late, and they'd had a busy day. Maggie, in fact, looked to be nearly falling asleep on her feet now, and Jon was impressed that she'd stuck it out through the entire song. Waving cheerily to the crowd, she grabbed the tip plate and took the little harpy-girl upstairs to go to bed.
She helped Maggie out of her new tunic, doing what she could to neatly fold it, and set her little beaded necklace atop it on the dresser in their attic quarters. She hesitated a bit before undressing herself, but did, spreading her tunic out like a blanket over them as they settled into their makeshift nest. She found her mind drifting back to the coda.
"I don't belong here," said old Tessa out loud,
"Easy, love, there's the Safe Way Home..."
She wondered how her family was doing, wrapping a wing around Maggie as the little girl snuggled up against her chest. Were they worried about her? She thought about her mom and dad. About Mikey. About Zoe. As she wondered, she felt herself beginning to drift off to sleep.
"...can you tell me where my country lies..."
Zoe drifted back to consciousness in a fuzz of...fuzz. It felt like she was laying on a pillow made of hair, or something like that. It was warm and she could sense sunlight filtering in through the cracks between her eyelids. It was warm and sunny and her head was lying on fur and also on her arms and it took her a minute to put those last two bits together; it was the warmth and the sun that did it. Even once she'd realized that there was something odd about the situation, the caressing sunlight kept beckoning her to spend just a couple more minutes hovering between sleep and actual wakefulness.
Eventually, however, the oddness of the situation became too clear to ignore. It definitely wasn't a pillow that her head was laying on; it was her arms, and it was also a fur coat. And she knew perfectly well that she was no more hirsute than any girl her age, and it didn't feel like any kind of a blanket, and something was definitely wrong here. She seemed to have more hair than her usual shortish-but-not-quite-butch cut, too. She could feel it spilled over her shoulders and hanging down onto her arms, which was odd. Lots of her felt odd, in fact; things that shouldn't have been there seemed to be being there. As she woke up further, her brain began to assemble these bits and pieces of observation into a conclusion that something was very definitely not right here. Fighting the urge to give in and go back to sleep, she took a deep breath, lifted her head, and opened her eyes, squinting and blinking in the bright morning sun.
For a moment, all the oddities of what she felt like were eclipsed by the fact that she found herself not in bed, but looking down at a grassy, tree-dotted meadow from the vantage point of a little ledge on a rocky hillside, and then by the fact that the slope below the ledge was littered with the bones of numerous small critters, as if it was the dumping ground for some unusually tidy predator. This was a shock enough in itself, but it mostly just shocked her back to wondering why she felt so weird. She glanced down at herself, not knowing what to expect.
It started with the fact that there were a pair of animal paws where her hands should've been. Paws, yes, and fur-covered legs that should've been her arms. Not quite believing what she was seeing, Zoe tentatively willed her left hand towards her face. The paw on the left was what responded. In a daze, she turned it for a better look, seeing the thick pads on the sole and the toes. There were four primary toes, plus one further up that must've originally been the thumb. She could see the tips of claws peeking out from little folds of fur-covered skin; she flexed experimentally and got them to extend out fully.
The more she saw these strange new appendages react to her own mental commands, the more the realization began to fully hit her that somehow she had been changed. She felt the bottom slowly dropping out from the pit of her stomach. Nervously, wondering what had become of the rest of her, she turned her head to peek over her shoulder. The first thing she saw was her hair - which had been brown, straight, fairly short, and reasonably tidily-arranged, but was now jet black, wavy (curling almost into little ringlets toward the tips,) long (well, down to her shoulders, anyway,) and in a disarray that just squeaked by into "artful."
The next thing she noticed was the tufted, dark-haired tip of a lion's tail peeking out from behind the curve of a large feathered wing that was folded up against her side - both of which she realized she could feel. Suddenly wide awake, Zoe leapt to her feet (barely even taking notice of the fact that her brain interpreted "leaping to her feet" to included the feet that had until recently been her hands) and twisted around for a better look. By now she was almost expecting to see the body of a big cat.
Almost.
"What the hell!?" she yelped, then clapped a paw to her mouth, then yanked it away because she hadn't counted on getting a faceful of fur. Her voice had a huskier, animal edge to it, now...almost a snarl, when she was shocked, which she was. She turned to where she'd spotted a small pool down at the base of the hill and bounded down to it, not even noticing how strange it felt to run on four legs instead of two. She peered into the cloudy water.
Reflected back was the face of a young woman, recognizably her own face, but with a head of slightly unkempt black hair that came down a little past her shoulders. Below the neck, however, were the shoulders and legs of a lioness. Folded up against her sides, starting just below the shoulders, were a pair of wings.
She sat down in a daze, still staring into the water. With her haunches resting on the ground, her chest was pushed outwards a bit, and she could see the curve of a humanlike bosom buried under a ruff of fur. It was impossible to see, under the fluff, whether it was appreciably different from her usual modest assets. She stared some more.
"This...this can't be real," she muttered to herself. It had to be a dream - but she hadn't been sleeping, she'd been playing - no; not playing! - some old arcade game! And she'd woken up from sleep here - could you even wake up in a dream? She tried to wrap her head around that question and gave up - if this was a dream and in this dream she'd been dreaming about her normal life just before this dream had started...it hurt her brain to think about. She went back to staring into the pool. After a while, she stood back up again, and turned so that she could see her profile in it.
In the abstract, detached from the craziness of the situation, she was rather striking, despite being a bit unkempt. What was most impressive was how naturally all the parts of her - the sleek lines of the lioness body, its sinuous tail flowing artfully out of the bold curves of the haunches, the folded wings, the human head, resting on a slightly longer neck - fit together. There was a clear, unbroken line from the base of her head down her spine to the very tip of her tail, and everything along the way looked like it belonged where it was. Only her own memory told her differently - she wasn't a...a sphinx! She was a human being, and she didn't belong here, and this couldn't be real...
...but it sure felt real.
But if it was, then...what? She had somehow been transported here, wherever here was, and turned into this, because she had been...had been...
She remembered the arcade game. She had been there because of Athena, who had told her about...about...
She remembered. She remembered the older brother who'd always been part of her life, sometimes a friend, sometimes a pain in the ass, but always there. Until for some reason he wasn't, and only Athena had noticed anything was wrong, and now...
Zoe wondered if she herself had just disappeared like that. Did...did that mean Jon was here? Then she had to find him, and they had to find a way back. But...where in here was he? And...well, if this had happened to her, who knew what might've happened to him? She took a little comfort in the fact that she still had her own face; as long as he had his, she'd know him.
But...well, first she had to find him - and before that, she had to find out where, in relation to here, was anything that wasn't the grassy, hilly scrubland that stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see.
