Brittany turned her attention back to her work for a bit, and Jon took the opportunity to pretend to look back over her own notes. In reality, however, she was thinking about what she'd just learned.
Granted, just because this girl seemed prone to some sort of poetic trances or whatever those were, it didn't mean she was infallible. But then, Jon knew from first-hand experience that magic was real - a healthy skepticism on any given claim was good, but anything further would verge on denial. Was it really so improbable that, whether the stone had greatly altered reality or not, other forms of magic did exist, or at least had?
If that were true...well, it would imply some very interesting things about human history, for starters. But more immediately, what did it mean for her? Jon knew that the stone would be able to change the sun back in another five months; but if other magic did exist, if it was indeed coming back as Brittany had claimed, then perhaps she could find something to change her into a more agreeable form until then?
But...if she pressed too hard for information, then it was possible the strange Briton girl would get suspicious. And if she used the stone to obtain it, she might interfere with its gradual recovery from her unwittingly massive wish, and then it wouldn't be ready in time for the alignment that would allow it to affect the sun again...
No, she certainly couldn't do that. Brittany was her best bet at the moment, but she'd have to be cautious. And...well, she didn't want to hang around someone purely as a means to an end. That was something that Tiffany would do, not her.
Jon was distracted from this line of thought entirely when Brittany, coming to a difficult problem, smacked down her quill onto the desk and began ranting just barely under her breath in something that sounded, to Jon, like Gaelic, or at least like she'd heard it in an old John Wayne movie. She stopped suddenly when she noticed the slug-girl's curious look.
"That, uh, that wasn't English," Jon said, feeling a little stupid for having pointed out the very obvious. "Um, is that why your...?"
Brittany nodded, half-smiling. "My speech is archaic, yes. This tongue does not come so easily to me as it once did; it is a strange, Saxon thing." She pronounced "Saxon" with just a hint of venom.
Jon nodded. "So you're bilingual? That's pretty cool."
She smiled, looking a little proud. "I also speak some Latin, though it is the common language of the soldier or merchant, not that of the scholar. I am afraid I speak neither as well as I do my...my own tongue."
Just then, the door opened. Michael had made her way back into the classroom a couple minutes before, but she had been discreet about it, or at least as much as a young woman with the lower body of a dinosaur could be. The devil-girl, however, made no attempt at subtlety as she marched back into the room, as proud and forward about her body as before.
She had found and put on a bikini, chosen so as to cover very little, but not one of those string bikinis that make a "look at me, I'm so naughty, tee-hee" game out of not technically being naked. It fit her pretty well, though she'd had some trouble working the bottom around the base of her tail, and had obviously given up halfway into the attempt.
She stepped gracefully but forcefully back to her seat, moving with that same womanly assurance she'd displayed when naked, and began diligently filling out a form that Jon wasn't quite sure what it was. The teacher looked for a moment as if she was going to object, but merely rolled her eyes and returned to the lesson.
Harry cornered Zoe in the hall just as they were heading to lunch. She waited a moment until the other students had gone on ahead, and they were by themselves.
"Okay, Harry," the slime-girl said, looking a little annoyed, "what's this about?"
Harry couldn't quite believe what she was saying, but she had to say it; she couldn't stop the words from coming out. "Am I a real girl?" she asked.
Zoe was a bit taken aback by the force and directness of the question; Harry, who was constantly stammering and trying to work up the nerve to say the simplest things, had just dropped this doozy on her without so much as a pause.
"I dunno," she answered, still a little miffed about being late to lunch. "We could go in the bathroom and check, if you want. Unless you mean that in some other sense?" She frowned. "Wait, this has to do with Ken, doesn't it? What did he do?"
The three-eyed girl was plainly trying to keep her composure, but she was trembling just enough to be visible. "K-Ken isn't the r-real reason," she said. "I...I've changed so much - I don't even recognize myself in the mirror, and I'm so confused by everything that I feel...I only want to know if I'm one thing or the other!"
Zoe paused for a moment, then placed a sympathetic (and squishy) arm around Harry's shoulder. "Look," she said. "I can't tell you what you are. I'm only just getting to know you, and you're so withdrawn that it's hard to tell anyway. And I can't really tell you what makes a 'real girl' - even if there is such a thing, I have no basis for comparison. Being a girl is all I've ever known. You might as well ask a dolphin what makes a real dolphin."
Harry sniffed, fighting back tears. "But really," Zoe said, "you are what you are. Figure that out before you go agonizing over whose definition of what group out of whose list of groups you fit into. You'll understand a lot more if you broaden out the question."
The Chinese girl nodded, taking a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Still, she wondered about Ken. Was that really what he had meant? Was he rejecting her for not being "real" as soon as he thought she was gone? Or was he just as confused as her?
What was she, really?
Effie perched on Mikey's shoulder, watching her host partake in another lunch that she didn't really need, strictly speaking. Mikey's friend was there, now as unclothed as any piece of classical statuary, and the plant-boy was there as well, soaking in both the sunlight and the conversation.
Effie felt a little jealous at the good time they were having. At least she wasn't as alone as she had been, but Dennis was...maybe not quite the same kind of companion, she had to admit. He was seated next to her - or rather, she was seated next to him.
She wasn't sure why, and she was careful not to get too close up against him, but...for some reason, sitting beside him calmed her nerves. The teenage desires she'd felt at that first careless imagining, and later when the image kept popping back into her mind, were subdued, and a kind of gentle (but anxious) contentment took over.
It was like a nicotine patch, she told herself. She could control this, get the hang of it, and then she wouldn't have to worry about it. She just had to keep herself under control, that was all.
