Anneza grabbed the hem of her dress, feeling the strange silvery fabric against her fingers, steeled her nerve, and pulled it up. She felt her breasts drop free as it came off, and cringed at the sensation. She made to bend over to pull it over her head, but by some instinct, as she arched her back forward, she clasped her legs and tightened the muscles.
Much to her surprise, she slid up into a more upright position, as if her body was an arc on a circle she was rotating around the center point of. She gave a little yelp and pulled the dress off, trying to see what was happening to her. As soon as she had, she loosened her legs, and the motion stopped. Now she had two strange things to comprehend: the motion she'd just triggered, and the sight of her own naked body.
She gaped and stared at the girl in the mirror. Her body was petite, hardly 4'6", and slender (but not scrawny - she was nicely padded everywhere she needed to be.) Her skin was creamy and smooth as satin. She wasn't extraordinarily leggy, but they were just long enough to look elegant. Her breasts seemed large on her, but they were small enough that they were pleasantly perky nonetheless. A triangle of fine hair, the same warm green as that on her head, rested just above her transformed genitalia, which seemed perfectly human in appearance, at least on the outside.
Her face was soft and rounded, more a girl's face than a woman's, and framed by silky green hair. The hair-band...thing framed the upper half, resting between her bangs and the rest of her hair - she couldn't tell whether it was in front of or behind the antennae. They were wiry things, seemingly metallic like the hairband, tipped by mirrored spheres, and they looked ridiculous.
Possessed by curiousity, Anneza craned her head back over her shoulder, twisting her body, trying to get a good look. She was a little less startled when her body responded to the twist by rotating, putting her back to the mirror. She was relieved to see that she appeared as human back there as she did in front, but she was further unsettled by the sight of her derriere - while not particularily prominent, it had definite pleasant curves to it.
With the inspection over, she found herself freaking out again - how could she be a woman!? This couldn't be right! This couldn't be happening! She was not guilty! Didn't that mean anything? She had to...
She had to calm down. There had to be a way out of this, but she wasn't going to find it by panicking. For want of something else to think about, she returned to the other oddity, the movement she'd attained by...what, flexing her leg muscles? That hardly made sense, but then, none of this did.
As an experiment, Anneza placed her feet together and gently tensed up. She found herself gently accelerating upward - or, well, actually it seemed more "forward," where her head was the front and her feet were the back. Of course, she could still feel Earth's gravity pulling in what would be "backward," since she was more or less at a right angle to the floor, but it seemed less confusing to think of it in terms of relative directions.
She relaxed her legs. So this was under her control, after all - that was encouraging. Then...what next? She leaned to one side, and found herself turning in that direction - and applying forward motion with her legs, she gently turned a corner, coming to rest on her side near and parallel to the ceiling. This left her breasts hanging sideways, which was uncomfortable and distracting, so she twisted herself around to face the ceiling. She leaned forward a bit and came to a reclining position, but knocked her head on the stucco. "Dyze!" she muttered.
Further experimentation revealed that she could move perpendicular to her "forward" direction by arching her body sideways. It seemed that the waist was the dividing point - angling on just the forward side resulted in a turn, but if both her legs and her upper body were angled, she moved towards the direction her waist was, relative to the rest of her. This gave her free movement in five of the six directions relative to her body-line - she couldn't figure out a way to back up, but she did at least seem to be able to brake by pulling her knees up to her waist (and brake more sharply by bringing them up further.)
So that was that figured out, more or less - anything further probably just boiled down to practice. Of course, she didn't think she'd prefer this to walking, but at least she wouldn't be stuck at an angle like she was on the way home - so annoying!
Anneza pulled her legs up and folded them into a sitting position, resting midway between floor and ceiling. With that out of the way...now what? What would she do from here? Well, first things first, she'd have to learn...whatever it was that people here spoke; if she couldn't communicate with others, she could hardly carry on with business. She knew this would take time - she'd probably have to take a leave of absence, but she could manage that; she'd already known the language, so it'd probably only take a month or two to get back into it, right? It couldn't really be gone gone - the trauma must just have knocked it out of her.
After that she'd have to see what she could find out about ways to change back - surely someone must have figured this out by now, or very nearly. Maybe she could manage life in this form for a couple months, but she certainly had no intention of doing this long-term. And the closer she could get to "normal" in the meantime, the better. She'd dye her hair, clip these stupid antennae, get sane clothing...
Actually, she could do some of that right now, couldn't she? Swooshing over to where she'd left the shirt and pants, and picked them up. She put the top on first, and was surprised - she'd thought it would feel more comfortable, but it actually felt...confining, somehow, even though it was actually quite a loose fit. It felt like fabric that didn't breathe, sort of, only not quite the same. She only half-noticed that she seemed to be sinking a bit.
After this, she pulled the pants over her waist. With a shriek, she dropped like a stone, landing on the carpet. After a minute of wincing and massaging her bruised buttocks, she stood up. It felt so odd and unfamiliar to feel her full weight on her feet again...but she'd manage. At the very least, it seemed that something about these clothes nullified her flight, which was good. She wasn't just going to float around everywhere like a damn bug!
Anneza set off towards the bathroom, with a brief stop at the supply cabinet to grab a pair of scissors. It was slow going - she seemed less used to walking than she ought to be, and with the way her pants were too baggy to stay up by themselves and long enough to hang down past her feet, she nearly tripped and fell several times. But she made it.
Standing in front of the mirror, she tried once again to remove the hairband, but it seemed to be firmly fastened to her skull somehow. She'd get it off, she knew that, but she might have to get a surgeon to do it for her. Well, another day, then. For now, she'd get rid of these stupid antennae and then dye her hair to some saner color. She felt out the closest she could get to the base of her right antenna, threaded the scissors around it, and clipped.
She screamed like a little girl; her knees folded under her and she nearly collapsed, but managed to prop herself against the sink. The pain was perhaps not the most intense she'd ever felt, but it was so very direct that it shot right past all her defenses. It was like she'd made a direct attack on a major nerve. Through the haze of tears that filled her eyes, she saw that the antenna was still perfectly intact, the scissors closed just up to the point where they pinched against it. If even that felt like this...
Somehow the pain brought the reality of the situation crashing down on her, blowing right past any kind of anger reaction and hitting her with an emotional gut-punch that left her crying like a child, with nobody there to comfort her. Anneza was trapped in a strange body, a woman's body, friendless and alone, in a world where nobody even spoke her language, and she spoke nobody's. All her earlier attempts not to think about that were just denial. She sank to the floor, dropped clumsily down onto her side, and cried herself to sleep.
Harris had followed the prosecuting attorney to a quiet little bar not too far from the courthouse once the sun was safely down. It was a nice place, small and simple but well-maintained. They sat at a table in one corner and ordered their drinks. "So," the snake-woman said. "Figure it out yet?"
He shook his head. "Sorry. I...I know I know this; the information's in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to find it. How about you just tell me?"
She sighed. "Ah well...I suppose that happens when you have to work a day shift after a month of nights. So, let me see...where do I start?"
