Anneza stared intently at the paper, wishing to the Heavens that she could work out what the letter said. The wolf-girl seemed to know, but she couldn't sign...and Anneza couldn't read her canine face anyway. She had to know, she just had to!
Bernardelli could make arrangements...maybe see about some disability funding to get her a proper translation service, and then she could get back into her job...she'd only been gone a few days, after all...she was good at managing the network, they couldn't do it without her...right?
Ellen came back from a brief tour of the living room, and Anneza had to fight to keep from shoving the letter right in her tiny face. The doll-woman read through the letter, and Anneza watched her face intently...her heart sinking when she noticed that Ellen was looking...very serious.
Finally her friend looked up at her and used simple signs that she couldn't possibly misunderstand. No work. All done. Ellen gave her a look of sympathy. Sorry.
Her livelihood, the career that she'd worked so long and hard to build...gone, just like that. And if she was only gone three days, it couldn't be because of her absence...it had to mean that Bernardelli had been planning this for a while. Was it because of...the way she'd treated the fox-woman? Or..what she'd done to Toby? Or did it go back further? Had he not mentioned any problems, or had she just not been listening?
Yet...the weird part was how little she really felt about it. Her rational mind was racing, but emotionally...not nothing, but almost nothing. It was like...like peeling off sunburned skin, or popping a tooth that had already worked the nerve loose...it hurt a little, but most of what she felt was just emptiness where some great inert mass had been.
Did it really mean that little to her? She'd poured years of her life into it...she'd had a falling-out with her parents over it...had it all just been a giant waste of time? She remembered how she'd felt the other night...had she really just been a child playing at being a grown-up all along?
That couldn't be right...she'd built this career for herself. Her skills, her work history...they wouldn't just disappear because she lost her job! But...what what company would hire a manager who stood accused of conspiracy to commit assault on one of her employees...let alone one who was actually guilty? Even though she hadn't been convicted...
She laid there in mid-air, staring at the ceiling. What...what would become of her now?
"Pity you're not drinking age," the blue devil-girl grinned. "They have a great selection here..."
"Eh?" Rachel said. "If this place isn't anywhere..."
"They sort of go with whatever applies where you're from," she answered. "Only to keep anybody from getting too nosey about the place, of course. Where I'm from I can have a drink with a meal, as long as an adult orders...needless to say, anyone here'll gladly do that for you." She chuckled.
Rachel grinned. "Nice...of course, I don't know that David would be up for that anyway...she might do something terribly embarassing, like jaywalking. Just imagine!" She winked at the angel-girl in a teasing manner.
"Um, actually, I...uh, don't get drunk," David said.
Rachel gaped, eyes wide. "You've been underage-drinking? And here I thought you were so innocent!"
The angel-girl couldn't help but laugh, although she was blushing a bit. "Well, actually it was one of my sisters who found it out...so she shared some wine with me...it makes us feel pleasant, but it doesn't impair anything." Actually...it had made her feel a little bit glib and magnanimous, like the whole world was her friend....sort of like a happy drunk, only without the drunk part...
Rachel grinned impishly. "Oh, well then. You never know, though...I bet they have a pretty potent brew here..."
"Oh, you know they do," the blue devil smiled. "Never had it myself, though..."
David sipped her cola as the other girl chit-chatted with Rachel. Actually, the two kind of reminded her of each other. They were built differently - the blue girl short and waifish, Rachel leggy and fairly shapely, but there was a fire in both their eyes, a gleam of curiosity and energy that made her smile in spite of how strange her situation was.
She wondered whether there really was a counterpart to this place for...for her kind. Could she take Rachel there? Everybody here seemed...more or less accepting of her, in their own weird way. Would other angel transformees be so open? After all, if they weren't real angels, and she didn't think these people were real demons, in the sense of being connected to any great cosmic evil...then what reason was there for them to fight?
What did they even represent, anyway? There seemed to be a theme with the devils, of mischief and gleeful abandon to gut urges and desires - but not completely. This wasn't a sort of primal domination by instinct. Rachel, for example, was perfectly capable of restraint and didn't seem in any way deprived of rational control - which only seemed to increase the relish with which she purposefully ignored it much of the time, or used her knowledge of normal people's boundaries to toy with them just enough, but not too far. Was there some kind of counterpoint theme for her kind? She couldn't think of one.
Or was that really how it was? Maybe it was that people who were like this were the ones who became devils, rather than it being something they were imbued with by their change...she had no idea, she hadn't known Rachel before her transformation. Or was she just mentally enforcing a false pattern on coincidental similarities? Granted, it would be a heck of a coincidence...but those seemed to be in abundant supply this past month.
In any case...how to account for herself? She hadn't become a more noble person since becoming an angel-girl, she thought, and...her meekness was as easily attributable to the shock and unfamiliarity of her change as to some new nature she possessed. Nor had any of them been the sorts of people who seemed like they ought to become angels, before their transformation...
"Eeee!" she yelped, launched from her deep thought by the feeling of something brushing against her leg. She could already sense her sisters feeling startled and curious...
She looked to Rachel, who was looking fixedly at the blue devil-girl and not managing to completely hide her grin.
Billy kept running, glancing back over her shoulder. She knew Stacy liked her and wouldn't want to hurt her, but even so...it was a little scary. He was so big compared to her, and so powerful...but she was fast, even faster than Jenny.
The dinosaur-boy was, in fact, having trouble even keeping up with Jenny. It was one thing to walk like this, but when he was running, having his tail dragging on the ground was a major slowdown...and not really very comfortable, either. It didn't even feel right to be running like this...but this was how it was supposed to go, wasn't it? He'd seen pictures of dinosaurs like him standing up with their tails on the ground, and it was how humans walked...
But it didn't seem to work very well, and he kind of felt like...yeah, if he leaned forward...way forward...
Now his entire torso was parallel to the ground, with his head turned upwards to see forward. The tail that had been one big scaly boat-anchor was a counter-balance to the weight of his upper body, keeping him level with little effort, leaving the full power of his legs for running. The difference was immediately noticeable, and Stacy smiled to himself.
He was a good bit faster now, that was for sure. He didn't know that he'd be able to keep up with the little girls in maneuvering, but at a sprint...he grinned a big, toothy grin. Things were a little more even now.
"Sorry about that," Tim said. "She's usually a little friendlier..."
Jon shook her head. If Sarah's account was anything to go by...she shuddered. It might not even be just the one. "It's completely understandable," she said. "Completely."
"That is so weird to think about..." Karyn said. "Even though I've read they're sort of built for it...honestly, I think she's probably handling it pretty well."
The drow-boy nodded, though his feelings were more generally feeling sorry for his little sister than the empathy Jon and Karyn shared for her - even the normal human approach was enough of a pain for them.
"So," Tim said. "Uh...anything you want to do? Sorry, I'm not used to having company over...probably don't have enough time for a tabletop session, but we've got some video games upstairs by the TV, or if there's a DVD you want to watch, or something..."
Karyn chuckled. "Don't sweat it, this was pretty short notice anyway. I've never been opposed to killing a little time gaming...how about you, Jon?"
The slug-girl nodded. "Sounds all right by me. Cool room, by the way." Even if it wasn't so comfortable for her to walk-uh, slide over, it was pretty neat to see. Obviously he'd put a lot of effort into making it his own... She noticed a board with a fine grid of holes in it on a table on the far side of the room, with a bunch of assorted electronic bits laid out on it. "Is that your project?"
Tim smiled. "Thanks. And, uh, it is, or rather it will be. I'm still only getting some of the basics laid out, so it doesn't really do anything at this point. No blinky lights, even."
She laughed. "All in good time, I'm sure."
They went upstairs and played for a bit, until Tim's father came into the living room. She appeared fully human now, except for her dark green hair and a very slight blue tint to her skin. Her hair was tousled, and she looked a bit red in the face. "H-hi, kids," she said. "Jon, Karyn, we were thinking of doing chicken salad for dinner...were you wanting to stay?"
Jon brightened. "You know, that does sound good. Let me just check with my parents..."
