Anneza...Anneza, not Anneza...oh damn it...couldn't understand it. She understood what she was saying - she knew the words and spoke them without a second thought, just as naturally as she had spoken...as she had spoken...whatever it was that she had spoken. She couldn't even think of the name...why couldn't she? It was gone, it was all gone...as much as she tried, she couldn't even speak one word of her previous language. It all came out in her native tongue...no! No, that was wrong, this wasn't...oh God this was confusing...
She noticed for the first time that Jay, the stupid fox-woman who'd gotten her into this mess, was standing nearby and watching. Was this some kind of spectacle, what had happened to her!? She felt a rage building within her. Who did this stupid animal think she was?
Jay noticed a change in the space-girl's face - Anderson was moving from confused and panicked to angry. "Jay!" she snarled. "Chasun ta dyet do, korra unaget!" She lunged forward, and Jay nimbly darted back.
Anneza was distracted by realizing that she was standing on air, appeared to trip on nothing at all, and face-planted into an equal amount of nothing, lying prone a foot off the ground and causing some very unsettling sensations in her chest...it seemed her outfit didn't include much in the way of restraint. She felt her face burning red as she heard Jay laughing at her.
And another unsettling discovery: the sounds Jay was making meant nothing to her. She could tell they were speech (interspersed with laughter,) and some of the sounds seemed a little familiar, but there was no meaning she could attach to them. No, no! She couldn't have lost everything! If she couldn't even understand her old language...
Toby walked towards the entrance to the courthouse. She felt...well, a little dejected - after all, the case had been lost and the man she knew was guilty got to go free...but, well, at least it was over. She'd seen this sort of thing happen in many other cases, and the victims there had it a lot worse than she did...she smiled as Terri put his hand on her shoulder. Things might not be perfect, but they sure could be worse.
She thought of the defense lawyer she'd walked by...he wasn't looking too good. She knew he was only doing his job, though she still felt a little peeved that he'd gotten Anderson off...but she was hardly going to make a big deal out of it - she knew what it was like to actually have to work with that dick. Poor guy.
As she and her husband exited the courthouse in the last rays of the sunset, she saw Jay standing on the lawn, slapping her knee and laughing at a woman who appeared to be levitating face-down a little ways off the grass. Curious, they walked over towards her.
It took the fox-woman a moment to get herself together. "Oh, Toby...oh, you should have seen it. Collins comes waltzing out of the courthouse like he's king of the world, and then he realizes the sun's still up...it was gold. And now she's talking some space-language or something..."
Toby had to work to suppress her own guilty amusement at this discovery - she could still remember how she'd felt when she woke up for the first time in her new body, but it was still difficult to keep from bursting out laughing like Jay had. She looked at Anderson, and the new transformee looked up at her from her prone position.
Anderson's face was one of shame and despair. "Toby..." she moaned. "Ny loesna ta jhyun damin!"
Toby did her best to restrain herself, as much as she wanted to rail at the girl. "You have nothing at all to complain about, Anderson," she said. "You're hardly worse off than I was, and much more deserving." She turned to Terri, who was staring with amusement (and a bit of fascination) at the space-girl or whatever she was - Anderson's skirt had crept up a bit higher than normal during the fall, and combined with her loose-hanging breasts, presented quite a sight for someone who had only been male for about a week. "Come on, dear," she said. "Let's go home."
