Zoe stared off into the distance at the road, her view bobbing slightly as her wings beat the air, holding her up at what she inexpertly guessed must be a good thousand feet off the ground. She was kind of amazed that she didn't feel any sense of vertigo when she glanced downward - maybe it was just that this body was designed for this.
Well, not for this, specifically - while she wasn't losing the battle with gravity, actually hovering at a more or less fixed altitude was hard work, and it was beginning to wear on her. And anyway, now she could actually see where the road was - and one way or another, a road had to lead to somewhere that wasn't empty wilderness. With that in mind, there was little need for her to actually be up here. She wondered briefly how she was supposed to get down - while she sort of understood what it was she'd done to get up here, but she couldn't quite wrap her head around the mechanics of flight in this body.
Then again, she hadn't when she took off, mostly...trying to let go and let her subconscious mind take over, the new sphinx spread her wings wide, angled them forward, and dove forward. To her amazement, new instincts canted her wings at just the right angle for what she had intended to do, drew up her hindquarters straight behind her shoulders, pulled in all four legs, and she raced toward the distant road as a sort of big-cat-shaped kite, gliding downwards and picking up forward velocity as she went, as if she were surfing down the slope of an invisible wave.
Zoe watched the ground racing toward her with a cocktail of fear, childish glee, and raw unfiltered adrenaline coursing through her whole body. The roaring of the air rushing past filled her ears, whipped her streaming hair, ruffled her fur, strained against the surprisingly powerful muscles in her wings. She had no idea what she was going to do when she came up to the ground, but it didn't matter - something inside her knew.
The ground was looming very close now, blazing past in a blur of yellowing grass. She let her legs slip down from their positions against her body, holding them poised but loose as she tilted her wings upward, bringing her level with the ground and dropping her speed slightly, her final descent just inching closer and closer. Then, drawing her wings in, she dropped to the ground, catching the soil in mid-stride and transitioning flawlessly into a bounding sprint. From there, it was a simple matter of slowing to a stop, mere yards from the road.
Zoe stood there for a minute, her tawny-furred sides heaving as she panted heavily from the combination of exertion and post-adrenaline crash. Then she began to laugh - shallow, panting chuckles at first, then a nearly literal roar of laughter as she folded her wings, rolled onto her back, and stretched out her entire body. "YeeeeEEEEESSSSSS!" she breathed, that husky, animal edge to her voice coming through in full force. That had been incredible, like nothing she'd ever felt. The sheer thrill of it...
When she'd managed to catch her breath and come down a bit off the adrenaline high, Zoe got back on her four feet and looked around her. While that had been a hell of a thing, it wasn't hard to remind herself that she was still stuck in an unfamiliar environment, without clothes, food, or money, in a body that didn't even have opposable thumbs. She didn't know what options she had for getting any of those, or even where to start looking - she had nothing at all to go on at the moment other than the knowledge that this road must lead somewhere.
With a shrug, she folded her wings up against her sides and stepped onto the road. It was merely packed earth and loose gravel, and felt strange against her thick paw-pads, but it went somewhere. Though, she realized, she didn't know which way she ought to follow it. Looking up at the sun didn't help much either, as it was high noon and she had no idea which way was east or west - and anyway, it wouldn't have answered the question. Well, nothing for it, then - she picked one at random and started walking.
Sarah sat down on the bed across from Tom. It had been a long, long day, and she was still a bit shook up over her discovery earlier this afternoon, but it was nearly over. She still felt disturbed when she thought about seeing her blank, featureless doll-body in the mirror, but, well, tomorrow was another day, with another chance to find out something - anything - that might lead to her getting back home to her old life in her old body. And in the meantime, well...
She thought about the question the innkeeper's kid had asked. Are you Diana's mom? She sighed, feeling the gearing shift on some mechanism deep inside her. Am I? she thought. She didn't know what to think about that. She wondered what Diana would think of it. Of course she had parents of her own, but from what she understood they were exactly what the little catgirl was running away from - and if she understood correctly, they weren't really her parents either. She seemed surprisingly canny for a little girl, honestly, but she was still a child - she needed somebody looking after her. And, well, if that was Sarah, at least for now...but then, was it such a good idea to step into that role if she was just going to be returning to her old life as soon as she figured out how? But she could hardly leave Diana to fend for herself, and she seemed determined not to remain anywhere near her "parents" for now...
Sarah sighed. It was too much to take in all at once. She needed time to think about this. In the meantime, well, they'd take things as they came. She heard the door open and glanced up to see Diana, back from using what the inn had in the way of a bathroom before bed. Sarah got up and took her behind the dressing partition, helping the little catgirl out of her playclothes and into a nightshirt. She frowned, suddenly remembering her conversation with the innkeeper's boy earlier.
"Diana," she said hesitantly, the soft metallic rustling of her voice almost covering up the words, "there was someone who came by earlier, and...well, they seemed to think that you might've...been a little rough with someone."
The catgirl's ears drooped noticeably, but she said nothing. Sarah gently put a hand on her shoulder. "They said something about, well, scratching...?"
Diana turned to face her, her lower lip trembling. "It wasn't like that!" she said, starting to tear up. "Peter an' me were just playin' an'...his ears were all bobby 'n dangly an'...an'...he wasn't mad or nothin', he wasn't even hurt bad an' I didn't mean to do anythin' bad, honest!"
Sarah pulled her into a gentle hug. It was clear that Diana had already been worried about whether she was going to get in trouble for this, and from what she'd just said it was pretty clearly just a case of her feline instincts getting the better of her. Sarah wasn't really sure how to approach this - she didn't want to encourage behavior that ended with people getting hurt, but she knew that Diana's cat behaviors were already something of a sore spot with her after the way her "parents" treated her...
Well, she thought she believed Diana's account of it, anyway. And she was probably right that there was no serious damage, or they'd have heard something about it from Peter's father. "I believe you," she said. "I know you didn't mean any harm, and they probably didn't know what to make of that. But you should try to be a little more careful about that kind of thing."
"But...but...'s jus' part a' me," the little catgirl sniffled. "I thought it was okay for me t' be a cat..."
Sarah hugged her tightly. "It is," she said. "It's not a bad thing for you to be different than humans. But everybody has impulses they need to learn to control better. It's not always even bad ones, just...sometimes there's a right time and place for some things, and you need to learn to keep those feelings from getting the better of you outside of that. That's just part of growing up."
Diana stared up at the clockwork girl. She...well, she kind of knew what Sarah was talking about. When she'd been a grown-up before, she'd had to learn how to control herself in lots of ways. But...but it was different now. It was different being a kid again, and being a girl, and being a cat, and it was all so strange and overwhelming and...and...she pressed into the folds of Sarah's skirt, confused and frustrated and looking for the comfort of this strange doll-girl's embrace.
"It's hard sometimes, I know," Sarah said, soothingly. "But you'll get the hang of it in time."
Diana sniffled and buried her face in Sarah's clothes. "It was that dumb boy, wasn't it?" she said. "He doesn't like me an' it's just 'cause Peter likes me an' he's mad about it and he likes to tell Peter what to do an' stuff!"
Sarah nodded thoughtfully, getting a better understanding of what had happened earlier. The boy's demeanor had struck her funny earlier, but she couldn't put her finger on why - this explained a lot. But it probably wasn't going to help anything for there to be this kind of discord while they were staying here. "You don't know that it's like that," she said, kneeling down next to Diana and looking her in the eye. "I don't think there's a lot of kids his age around here, and they probably don't get to go other places that often. He might just not know how to share his friend with other people. Give it some time."
Diana didn't look very convinced, but she nodded half-heartedly anyway. Sarah patted her on the shoulder and helped her into bed, giving her a scratch behind the ears.
Kevin laid awake, huddled under the blankets. This was because he had, since the death of his mother, shared a room with his father, and he was still hoping that he'd be able to find a way to resolve this issue with these changes without his father knowing. So far he'd managed to keep anybody else from finding out, but he could hardly go to bed with a hat on and expect his dad not to notice. So here he was, hiding under the covers and hoping to avoid comment.
He fumed to himself. It wasn't fair! His sister got a room to herself, just because she was a girl, and "at a certain age," whatever that meant! (And now she was acting even stranger - he could've sworn that this evening she'd been making her every motion to some rhythm that only she could hear...) In his early years, he and his sister had shared a room, back when his mom was still around, but as soon as she'd hit some magical age she suddenly got a room all to herself and he had to share one with his dad just so they'd have another room free for the guests...
...girls had it so easy. They got everything - rooms of their own, and getting away with biting and scratching people when he'd get in trouble for doing the same things if he tried it, and breaking his secret fort, and...and...argh! It wasn't fair! Peter cared more about that dumb catgirl than about his own friend, and there was nothing he could do about it other than try to get her in trouble...
Sighing and pulling the covers tighter over his new ears, Kevin waited for sleep to come.
It was several hours before Zoe even saw a sign of anything. The grassy plains, broken by rocky outcroppings like the place where she'd found herself, stretched out around her to what felt like practically the ends of the Earth, at least from her new perspective of about three feet off the ground. Still, after a minor eternity of walking, with the sun definitively beginning to set behind her, she came over the crest of a particularly large hill to see the land dip down into a rocky but neatly-tilled series of small fields and orchards, ending at a flat river basin, in which flowed a wide, somewhat muddy-looking river, beside which was - miracle of miracles - a small city.
It didn't look remotely modern, but then she hadn't really expected as much. She wasn't up on things enough to pinpoint the style, but it was a rather sprawling but surprisingly regular field of flat-walled mud-brick buildings without much in the way of architectural ornament - but they were definitely full-fledged urban buildings and not just simple huts. Well, there were smaller one-room houses out toward the periphery, but anyway, it was a city, which meant people, which meant some chance to ask where the hell she was. Finding her second wind, Zoe bounded down the slope to the city.
Walking through a crowded city on all fours was an unusual experience, to say the least. Zoe was miffed to find that her head was just about at everyone else's ass level, but fortunately they tended to give her a wide enough berth that it wasn't a problem (beyond giving her the impression that she was walking through a very peculiar forest.) She wasn't sure if that was because she was mostly a large predator, or if it was just that they were as eager not to trip over her as she was not to tangle with their legs, but what the hell, it worked.
The thing that really took her off-guard were the smells. As she thought back on it, she realized that she'd been able to distinguish a lot with her nose ever since waking up in this body, but out on the plains there were only so many things to notice; an open-air market in the late afternoon in a civilization that hadn't invented the refrigerator, on the other hand, was a tapestry of scents, ranging from slightly questionable meat to rich spices to musty carpets to vivid fruits to sweet tobacco and more. There were moments where she had to stop simply because she was too busy taking it all in to concentrate on walking.
Ultimately, though, that stuff was for people with money, not someone with literally not even the clothes on her back. And besides, how would she carry any of it? Zoe wondered if she could feasibly balance stuff on her back, or if the slinky, shifting feline gait she found herself moving with would make that impossible. Probably she'd have to get some kind of a satchel or purse, at least provided she could find a way to scrape together any kind of funds at all. She briefly considered trying to shoplift one, but she had no idea if this was the kind of country where you tended to lose appendages if they caught you doing that. Hopefully not, but it was hardly worth the risk.
Anyway, there wasn't much point in worrying about stuff beyond the basics of food and shelter until she figured out where she was even going and what she was looking for there. She knew that Jon must be somewhere in this world, but there was no particular reason to think that he was anywhere nearer than the opposite side of the globe, other than blind hope. She needed to figure out how to even start looking for him first, and then maybe they could find a way to get back home to their own bodies. She wondered if he was even recognizable in whatever shape he might've wound up in - but then, she'd kept her own face, even if everything else had changed.
She was gradually making her way across the square toward the fountain in the middle when the crowd parted in front of her. She briefly thought that people had decided to steer even clearer of her, but she realized that the path they were clearing wasn't the one she was taking, and stopped to see what was coming. To her astonishment, it was another sphinx. This one was flanked by several people that she assumed were assistants or bodyguards or something, and she was a far cry from what Zoe had become in multiple respects. To begin with, her skin was a rich, coppery brown, and her coat was a light, almost creamy golden color, compared to Zoe's dusty tawny fur. Her facial features were more angular, with high, well-defined cheekbones, and her black hair was straight, voluminous, and almost (but not quite) coarse. She was quite beautiful, and she carried herself like she knew it.
Furthermore, while Zoe had arrived in this world wearing nothing at all, and in a state just this side of plain old wild, this girl was obviously concerned with her appearance. Her hair was neatly arranged and she was wearing carefully-applied makeup, with her eyes outlined in black eyeliner and lids colored with heavy eyeshadow, and she had a fairly astonishing amount of jewelry on. A small circlet of gold wire was threaded through her hair, along with several other golden hair ornaments, she had several copper-and-turquoise bands at the base of her tail and around her ankles and wrists, and she wore a sort of chest-plate made up of metal discs, along with several other chains, necklaces, beads, and the like. She wasn't actually clothed per se, but she did wear a white linen shawl over her shoulders (and apparently fastened with a clasp over her bosom) that seemed to serve primarily to indicate that she wasn't some naked animal either.
Zoe didn't realize she was staring until, all of a sudden, the other girl slowed to a halt and turned to her. She regarded Zoe with that feline combination of curiousity and feigned indifference. "You look as though you've never seen a Khemeti sphinx before," she said in a bemused voice; Zoe noticed the same animal edge that her own voice had taken on since her change, though more subdued - or perhaps more just hidden under the surface. Her accent was strange, but her delivery was familiar - it was the kind of thing you heard from people who were trying too hard to sound upper-class. Zoe knew it from a couple of kids at school who'd transferred in from New England and were apparently convinced that people in the Midwest should view them as some kind of nobility because they'd been to Kennebunkport.
"I, um, I've never seen any kind of sphinx before, actually," she said. The other girl laughed. Even her laugh was a bit pretentious, but it was genuine, at least. "Surely not!" she said. "Even out in the wilderness there are pools and streams to look in..."
Zoe shrugged. "Well, yeah, but I wasn't even a sphinx until this morning. I'm supposed to be human."
The other sphinx's eyes widened; the effect was accentuated by the black outlines she had painted around them. "Really!" she breathed. "How fascinating! You must come with me back to my apartment; I must hear your story. Come, walk with me. It's not far; I was just on my way back from the embassy." She turned and resumed her walk as if the possibility Zoe might hesitate in following along never even occurred to her.
As a matter of fact, Zoe was a little hesitant, but she went after the other girl while debating it. She didn't want to get sidetracked; she was here to find Jon and then find a way back home, not socialize with some random rich kid with whom she just happened to share a species now. On the other hand, the odds of her getting a start on finding her brother today were pretty slim, considering she didn't know where she was, didn't know where anything else was, and had no idea at all where Jon might be, and she had no money to boot. She wasn't sure how much hanging out with this girl could offer her in terms of any of the above, but it was hardly possible for her to get less ready to start than she already was.
Additionally, she had to admit she was kind of curious about this. She'd sort of assumed based on her own circumstances that, if there were any more creatures like her, they probably also lived out in the wilderness and preyed on small game. To run into one who seemed to be living about the most cosmopolitan lifestyle Zoe could imagine being available in a world like this one was definitely intriguing.
Anyway, she thought, as she caught up to the other sphinx and slowed to match her stride, maybe she'd get a meal out of it.
Jon stared blearily and angrily at the note in the dim light of the early morning. She thought about stomping out to find whoever the hell had left it for her and make it clear in no uncertain terms that his attentions were unwanted, but...ugh, screw it. It was too early for this and she didn't even want to think about it anyway. She supposed that it was probably inevitable, if she were going to make a living as a performing artist, that she was going to have to deal with creepy obsessives at some point, and by those standards this was probably one of the less creepy possible interactions, but...ugh, worm pie? Good God no.
Crumpling the offending note up in one talon and tossing it into the little crate they were using for a wastebasket, she returned to the little nest and snuggled back in next to Maggie, pulling her tunic back over them and trying to get back to sleep.
Only problem was, she was too irritated to get to sleep, and then there were the muffled but raucous voices downstairs. Must be the breakfast crowd, she thought. She tried to shut it out, but her hearing was just too damn sharp in this body.
"...oung fool with a crush, jus' like dozens o' others, nodoubt..."
"...im a break, ev'ry man 's ever lived been through it..."
"...ay off, I just think she's pretty, 'lright?" said a younger voice.
Something twinged in her brain and she began to realize that they were talking about this stupid secret admirer. From there, irritated as she was, she couldn't help but listen.
"...ght, right! An' the stories o' how...pliable they is got nothin' to do with it, I'm sure!" Jon felt her cheeks beginning to burn hot. You sleazy asshole!
"Hah!" snorted an exceptionally gravely voice. "Stories like that lead a man to any number o' bad ends. Mermaids or harpies or anything you please, they all got stories from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend says they're easy to bed, an' then some damn fool young buck goes an' tries it an' not half a year later his 'easy' girl shows up in a family way an' with a dozen o' her friends an' family an' there's all hell to pay."
"And you're the voice of experience, I suppose, y'ol fool!" jeered Asshole.
"I'm the fellow who's stood by an' seen it happen to some bigger fool!" the gravely voice thundered back. "An' until you've seen a man dragged off kicking an' screaming into the wild by a pack o' wolf-kin, an' still think it's worth it, y'might take my advice an' think twice about 'easy' prey, y'idiot! Or d'ya think them talons on a harpy is only for show?"
Asshole muttered something unintelligible, but made no further reply, and the conversation died back down to a dull murmur. Jon sat there, blood boiling, feeling mortified for even having overheard this. She felt a new empathy for the girls in her school back home; she'd overheard things every bit as sleazy and even more crudely direct in the guys' locker room, and even this little snippet made her feel like she needed a shower in boiling bleach. Well, gravely voice was absolutely damn right about her talons, anyway; she flexed them underneath the covers, feeling reassured by the sharp points.
Maggie stirred next to her. "J-jen?" she murmured. "You're all hot. You a'kay?"
Jon nodded, wrapping her wings around the little harpy. "I...'m fine," she said. "It's nothing."
"Oh, you simply must try the dried figs," said the sphinx, whose name was Khuit. "I have them imported from home every summer. The ones they grow here don't begin to compare." She nodded to one of her servants, who took some from a tray and offered them to Zoe, who was beginning to lose track of all the things she simply must try. She ate them; they certainly weren't bad, but they tasted about like any other fig anything she'd ever had. She didn't know if that was because she wasn't a connoiseur, but she wasn't going to look down on somebody for missing the taste of home. She'd been spoiled for store-bought chocolate-chip cookies by her mom's recipe pretty much since birth.
Suffice to say, she was definitely getting a meal out of it. She'd also gotten a bath (alongside Khuit, at the hands of her servants, which was a little weird,) been perfumed to cover up the resulting wet-cat smell, had her hair done (it was still loose and wavy, but it was at least a little more neatly arranged,) had her coat brushed, been decked out with what her hostess apparently considered the minimum amount of jewelry necessary for eating a light supper, and probably would've gotten a mani/pedi if she'd still had nails instead of claws. They'd tried to do the makeup, too, but she'd declined; she never had gone in for it much, and anyway she thought she'd probably look like a raccoon with that eyeliner against her much paler complexion.
(She was half-expecting someone to be sent to wipe for her if she went to the bathroom, and wondered if there was a polite way to tell them that she'd rip their limbs off if they tried it.)
And now she was actually, honest-to-God lying on a divan with servants feeding her fruit by hand. She hadn't thought that even happened outside of cartoons. All in all, this was possibly even more of a surreal experience than waking up with the body of a lioness had been.
Khuit, she'd learned, was the sixth child of the seventh person in the order of succession to the throne of Khemet, which was some country which evidently wasn't this one. She wondered briefly if the whole country was sphinxes, but considering that the servants were human but otherwise shared the same general look as their mistress, that probably wasn't the case. Was it just the one branch, then, or the whole royal family? Zoe had no idea. In any case, it seemed pretty obvious that her cushy apartment in a foreign land was a way of ensuring that she didn't feel any need to try to maneuver herself any closer to the throne - not that she seemed at all the type, but Zoe supposed when you were a king it probably didn't pay to take chances. She wondered how many of Khuit's relations were similarly well-kept.
Her hostess took one of the shallow brass bowls that served as drinking vessels in her paws, lifting it to her lips and delicately lapping up the cool, sweet white wine with her rough, sandpapery tongue. Zoe found it amusing to watch someone going to such trouble to act dignified and classy while drinking like an animal. It was, she reflected (as she did the same herself,) perfectly like a cat.
Then Khuit turned her attention to her guest. "Now," she said, curiousity shining in her amber eyes, "you must tell me about yourself and your situation. You said that you were human until only this morning?"
Zoe spent the next hour or so being plied with questions about her experience and doing what she could to explain things to her hostess - she left out the bit about the arcade machine in order to avoid having to try to explain what that was. Khuit seemed taken by certain aspects of the story - her friend who seemed preternaturally sensitive to mystic matters, her quest to find her brother - but eventually grew plainly bored with the lack of lost loves, sorceror's curses, treasures with monstrous guardians, or anything else in that vein. Zoe felt a little miffed at that, and briefly considered trying to spice things up a bit, but that would only lead to trouble down the road, she was sure.
Finally, when late evening had turned into night proper, Khuit got to her feet. "The hour grows late," she said in that same please-notice-how-elegant-I-sound manner. "I'm afraid I must retire. Of course, my servants have made up the guest quarters for you."
"U-um, thanks," Zoe said. This entire experience had been surreal enough, but she definitely hadn't expected to be invited to stay as a guest with this random stranger. But then, Khuit clearly found her to be an intriguing novelty, even if her story was rather short on romance or derring-do, and it wasn't terribly surprising that a bored rich girl living in semi-exile (no matter how cushily) would latch onto anything novel that should happen to pass her way.
Khuit took her leave, and Zoe was left in the parlor with a couple of the servants. One of them, a rather well-built young man with the same dusky copper skin as his mistress, nodded politely to her. "Shall we show you to your quarters, milady?" he asked.
Zoe frowned. "I'm not 'milady,'" she said.
"Any guest of milady's is 'milady,' milady."
She sighed. "...right. Sure, thanks, that'd be great."
"Right this way, milady."
Rolling her eyes, Zoe followed him down a passage to a small but comfortable-looking bedroom on the other end of the house. She noted as they went how much the design of the house seemed to be intended to look more palatial than it really was - there were architectural and decor touches, columns and reliefs and murals that belonged more in monuments and public buildings than a personal apartment, and it all felt a little bit claustrophobic as a result. She wondered if this wasn't Khuit's way of reminding herself of home.
The bedroom itself was fairly nice, but clearly intended as a guest room - aside from a bed (or rather, a thick mattress covered in heavy cotton sheets set directly on the floor, with a four-poster canopy set above it) and a small vanity similarly laid out at sphinx-level, there wasn't much to it. But hell, she thought, it beats sleeping out in the wilderness.
"Is there anything more I can do for you, milady?" the young man asked. Zoe shrugged. "Um, get this jewelry off of me?"
He obliged, setting the various ornaments on the vanity, then bowed and left the room, shutting the door behind him. With his lamp gone, the room was lit only by the moon filtering in through the open window, but Zoe found that her night vision was vastly improved in this body. She stared into the mirror at the strange new form that she now inhabited; she'd seen herself in the pool that morning, but this was the first time she'd really gotten a clear look at herself. As bizarre as this all had been, and as intimidating as the prospect of trying to find her brother and escape this world was, it was at least comforting to be able to recognize herself in this altered reflection.
Curling up on the mattress and laying her head down on her folded paws, Zoe drifted off to sleep.
