The mushroom melange was delicious in a way that Anneza's conscious mind hadn't expected and her subconscious had known full well it would be. It was soft and tasty and it warmed her from the inside out; it was comfort food. And really, if there was one thing she could use right now, it was comfort anything.
She slowed down a bit, taking a little more time to savor them as she looked back over the flashcards. It was encouraging that she could at least understand some of the pictures, or at least she thought she could, and she made a few attempts to mimic the signs portrayed. It wasn't difficult to understand the diagrams for them, but she was hardly used to using her hands for communication, and it didn't come very naturally to her.
She looked back at the little poem she'd scribbled. It was so frustrating that the things that came easiest to her were the things that were of no use at all - she knew she was a fluent speaker of this new language of hers, but what did that get her? And she could fly, but she had nowhere to go that she couldn't have driven to, and somehow she was prevented from wearing normal clothes as a side effect...
And all this came at the cost of basically her entire communication framework, a full half of the skill set she'd built her career on. With nobody who spoke her language...her new language, she was reduced to communicating with gestures and expressions, like a little child...why?
Sighing and drawing a little comfort from the last of her mushrooms, Anneza thought about the task that lay before her. She was sure there had to be a way to change back, but she couldn't afford to spend all of her time looking for it - she didn't even know how long she had before her job was in danger. She needed to get back some degree of communication with the rest of the world...even if she had to start from scratch.
And if she did...where to start from? ...math, maybe. She had never been particularily good at it, but it was so inevitable...she was going to have to watch her finances, and that involved knowing what they were.
She pulled out the receipt she'd got with her groceries. If she could just figure out how the numbers worked...it wasn't like actual math changed between languages. Well, the symbols, maybe, but not what they meant. She floated up to the loft, where she had her study, and grabbed the calculator off the desk.
She turned the calculator on and looked at what it showed her. The shape was blocky and jagged, but...it more or less resembled the oval character on the receipt. Was this the zero? That seemed like a reasonable assumption to start with. But which of the symbols were the other digits, and which were the operators?
She tried pressing some buttons, and was at least able to work out which were the digits, since they added symbols right onto the displayed number. So there were ten of them, then - and a little dot that, after a little experimentation, she realized was the dividing point for fractions - there could only be the one, and there was always a leading digit, even if it was zero.
Now if she could just figure out the different positions...she thought the one to the left of the dot was the ones' place, but if there were ten digits, could the one to the left of that really be the fives' place like it seemed like it should?
Anneza really wasn't sure how much progress this was, but it was progress. That was a little encouraging - but she still couldn't shake the feeling that this was just a tiny step in a truly monumental task...
...almost insurmountable...
Alex shuddered, still feeling the fear that Tiffany had instilled in him. What was she? If she felt so dangerous, why was she just being a violent, scary jerk and not a complete monster? He tried not to think about it too much...the sooner he could forget this feeling, the better.
As he and Sally made their way to the lunchroom, he though about what she'd been saying. Was it possible Steven was actually changed? He'd heard of people undergoing less drastic changes, but if Steve had changed at all, it was either very well-hidden or just so subtle as to be hardly noticeable at all.
But...he did realize that he'd never seen Steve in the locker room since...well, ever, actually. Obviously before the sun changed it was just due to his slacking off, hiding and using the time to figure out and implement pranks - but if he had changed, maybe he was hiding...?
They arrived at the cafeteria entrance. Drawing a deep breath, Alex went inside.
It was a veritable menagerie. There were indeed some students whose changes seemed minimal, but there were just as many in whom the only really human things were the basic body structure and the face. Alex even saw one girl who looked like she was made entirely out of orange slime!
They went quietly through the line and got some lunch, then looked for a place to sit down. Sally found them a spot near a girl about her age whose only obvious change was that she had three eyes. "You mind if we sit here?" Alex asked. She smiled and shook her head.
They were just digging in when Alex saw a frown on the girl's face. "You're..." She leaned forward, dropping her voice a bit. "You're unchanged, aren't you?" she asked.
"H-how did you know?" Sally gasped. Alex groaned; so much for keeping it a secret!
"I...uh, I just know," the girl replied. "Don't worry, I won't tell anybody. What are you doing here?"
Sally looked pointedly at Alex, and he stared at the table. "I...uh, I just wanted to see what it was like during the day..."
The girl stared at him. "Isn't that a little dangerous? You could...well, I guess you must know what you're doing if you got this far..."
He smiled, trying to keep from getting too cocky about it. "Well, I just kinda figured out where to stay away from, that's all."
The three-eyed girl looked at a spot beside Sally and seemed like she was about to say something, but then shut her mouth. Sally turned to look, but there was nobody there...huh.
Jenny felt so strange as she listened to the teacher talk about the history of the law... Part of her felt scared, indignant, like she was being accused of something...but she hadn't done anything, had she? She didn't think so, not that she could remember. Why did she feel this way, then?
The other part...it was just the opposite. She felt comforted, safe, like there were people who would stand up for her and protect her. This...this was what Muriel worked for, right? She tried to help people, to make sure bad people didn't hurt others...she'd helped Jenny, taken her somewhere safe when she was scared and lost, and then taken her in when she didn't have a home...
Jenny smiled. She wanted to be like that.
"Don't worry about the teacher," the witch-girl whispered. "She seems all formal, but she's really pretty nice. You can be yourself here, you just gotta make sure you're not doing anything bad..."
Jenny frowned - she thought she'd heard something like that in a dream...or was it something she'd said?
