Jon woke up the next morning feeling somewhat more comfortable; as with the previous night, she'd wound up working her way half out of the tent and resting her slug half in the dewy grass, but the temperature was a little more agreeable. In fact, she was comfortable enough to where she just laid in place for a good ten minutes before it even occurred to her to get up.
Jon got the fire going again and left Michael to tend to breakfast as she went to check on Zoe. She found her by the rotting log, as before. As Jon had suspected, Zoe's change had continued; she was larger now, about the size of a young child. She was also somewhat more normally proportioned, with a smaller head in comparison to the rest of her body, though she was still nowhere near her normal mid-teen build. Her features were more defined, as well.
As she saw her sister approach, Zoe's face lit up. "Jon!" she said, in a high-pitched but clear and intelligible voice.
Jon smiled. "You can talk again? That's great!"
The slime-mold girl stared curiously at her, then smiled again. "Jon!"
Jon frowned. Maybe she couldn't talk just yet, after all. Still, this was progress. She patted Zoe on the squishy head and headed back to the campfire.
"It's not fair! Why do I hafta wear a dress an' she doesn't?" The little girl who had until recently been Biff Meadows stomped her foot on the floor and glared at Mikey. If it was meant to be intimidating, it wasn't working.
"We've been over this, Becca," Mrs. Madison said. "You have a lot of adjusting to do, and you won't be able to get used to being a girl if you keep trying to pretend you aren't one. Mikey doesn't have to do this because she's not trying to pretend that nothing happened to her. Besides, these are the only clothes we have that will fit you right now."
Further fuss was made, and Mikey turned away and tuned out. That was one more in the list of neat discoveries she'd made; she could simply block out external input from her conscious mind and subconsciously filter it for anything of importance. It was especially useful for situations like this.
Why was Biff - uh, Becca - even making such a fuss over it, anyway? It wasn't even a really girly dress; heck, the nightgown her mother had given her was frillier, and she didn't have any problems wearing it. Was it just that Becca had spent much longer as a boy than Mikey, and so it was more important to her?
She'd wondered about that, about how easily she was slipping into her new life. Was that weird? She'd seen Jon struggle with taking care of her new body, and she'd heard her express her unhappiness at becoming a girl, but it hadn't really bothered Mikey that much. She wasn't finding herself wanting to have tea parties or play house or anything, but she honestly didn't feel upset about switching gender. She'd actually had more trouble getting used to being a robot than being a girl. Did that somehow make her abnormal?
Well, abnormal or not, it was something she was more or less okay with. If it spared her the chagrin she'd seen in Jon or the anger from Becca, she could live with abnormality.
Sarah sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. After her transformation, she'd become extremely diurnal. As soon as the sun was up, so was she. The problem was, Karyn was definitely not a morning person, and Sarah couldn't get dressed without her help. And that meant she couldn't leave the room. It wasn't like she could just walk around naked, after all; she'd done it the one time, walking from her house to Jon's after her mom attacked her, but she'd had no other options then.
She wondered what had become of her parents. The last she'd seen of her mom was when she'd taken flight from the attack; she was standing on the balcony, just staring at Sarah with that blank, crazy stare. She'd been in pretty direct sunlight then; had she been transformed, or was the early morning light too weak to effect a change? What might she have become? Sarah shuddered at the thought of her mother turning into some kind of hideous monster. And what about her dad?
She didn't know, but she wondered if she shouldn't go check on them. It had been two days by now; what if something bad had happened? She'd have to take someone with her, but she had to at least look and see.
She looked over to Karyn. Her hostess was sleeping soundly, the morning light making strange patterns on the octopus tentacles that made up her lower body. Sarah couldn't understand how Karyn could not be weirded out by that, but not only was she not freaked, she seemed pretty happy with them. Then again, Karyn always had been a strange one.
Strange or not, though, Sarah did appreciate Karyn's help. It wasn't entirely grudge-free, but Sarah had to admit that that was at least partially her fault; she hadn't been all that nice to Karyn in school. But in any case, Karyn was pretty good about helping her, and Sarah admitted to herself that she really did need it right now. Maybe, with people there to help her, she'd get through this all right.
