Haru looked at the clock in the practice room. "Oh," she said, "oh, it's...wow. Have we really been here this long?"
Zach grinned. "Time flies, doesn't it? But yeah, I suppose we should probably wrap it up...they'll be wanting to prep things for the night-side students soon."
The three-eyed girl looked back at Zara. She was no longer blushing, but still seemed a little spaced-out. "You okay?" she asked.
"Huh? Oh, yeah..." the angel-girl replied. "Yeah. It is getting kind of late, though. You guys wanna do one more song before we go?"
There was unanimous agreement, and Zara licked her lips and started to work out a bass riff for the others to build on.
Will frowned. The speech had been...well, rather empty. Nice words about standing strong in the face of turmoil and showing respect and concern for our changed countrymen, and we've got our top men working on figuring this out, sure, but...well, not much else.
Then again, what could they say? Promises to fix this when they didn't even understand it yet would be obviously hollow even by Washington standards, and it wasn't like they could just magic up a bunker system to house the unchanged or something...especially not given the current economic conditions.
And besides...as far as the wolf-girl had been paying attention, it almost seemed like society was knitting itself back together, somewhat. Certainly the problems of the situation weren't just going away, but people were beginning to work around them, if only in a jury-rigged fashion.
She remembered the inital chaos of the first week, when world was nearly at a standstill during the day and hardly more active at night. But then the changed had started filling the roles that the unchanged couldn't, which had rapidly evolved into the present day/night split. It was awkward and kind of uncomfortable as a social system, sure, but it did seem to be more or less working...
Was that what the world would become? Two societies 180° apart, only intersecting at the fringes of the day? She didn't really like the idea, but it seemed like the logical conclusion, unless it reached the point where everyone was changed...or unless the sun changed back.
That seemed like a tall order, to be sure, but then, nobody had predicted the sun's change, had they? Who was to say that it wouldn't go back to normal as suddenly as it had changed? Then the only difficulty would be the re-integration of the two sides...
Will sighed. That was a heavy thought, and...it made her want to find something lighter, happier...was that an aspect of her being...young? Or just a need to cheer up? She shrugged and started looking for something to watch.
Anneza hadn't understood a word of what was being said on the TV, but even with the trouble she had reading the wolf-girl's canine face, she could pick up hints of disappointment and indifference. Not surprising, she thought. Had she been right? Were the world's governments going to shrug and go along with it, or try to act like there was a way past this?
She didn't know, and...honestly, she wasn't sure she cared anymore. She was no longer a creature of this planet...why should she feel bound to its struggles? She had the star-song to comfort her and all the infinite grandeur of the Heavens for her home...let Earth go on without her! What did she care?
But then...this planet might only be one voice in the chorus of the Universe, but it was a voice. The whistles and chirps and whoops of the magnetosphere...the song wouldn't be the same without them. And...it was the planet that had been her home for thirty-five years...and was still home to...to people.
Anneza didn't like people, in the abstract. They had seemed annoying and in-the-way when she was a human, and now they'd probably laugh or leer at her...and she couldn't even talk to them. But...there were individuals she was beginning to grow attached to, she had to admit.
This wolf-girl cop...she had shown concern when Anneza had been locked up in the station's jail, and apparently she was going to guard her, too? And Ellen...she hadn't even known the doll-woman a day, but she had agreed to be her friend, and that was as close to a real friendship as Anneza had gotten in...a while.
She could...maybe she could bring Ellen with her. If she wasn't flesh and blood, she could probably survive in space without whatever ability it was that Anneza had enabling her to live there. If the world were to go to hell, she could take her friend and flee into deep Heaven...
...but not her other friend, or any of their friends, or their friends... People were so complicated, you couldn't just deal with them in isolation. It would be like clipping the stem and flower, and expecting it to grow without its roots...so maybe this did matter, after all?
She felt confused. She had felt the call of the Heavens last night, yet...just as she was ready to leave this planet forever, first in an end to her life and now in the exploration of her new world, she was finding that she had ties she might not want to cut after all. An extraplanetary soul with very Earthly ties...why couldn't the Sun have made her truly one thing or the other?
David and Rachel caught the bus back to the devil-girl's house. Neither said much, but the awkwardness of the earlier silence was diminished. Rachel knew that, whatever her friend had thought of her little experiment, she did at least still want her around, and that said everything that needed to be said.
They went up to the porch and stood there for a moment, neither quite sure what to say.
"Well...thanks for coming exploring with me today," Rachel said.
David nodded. "Thanks for taking me. It was...fun. And, um...sorry about bailing on you last night..."
The devil-girl nodded. "'Salright. ...see you tomorrow?"
The angel-girl smiled. "See you then."
Rachel turned to go inside, tail swishing happily behind her. She paused at the door, turned and gave a wink and a grin, and went in.
David stood there for a minute before turning to go, lifting off from Rachel's porch and winging her way towards home. The thoughts from earlier returned to her...what did she feel? And...was it right for her to impose her feelings, her preferences and pleasures, on her sisters, just for her own sake?
Yet how could she help it? Everything she did was shared, as was everything they did...even the simple acts of caring for her body, cleaning and feeding and exercising it, were felt by her sisters as strongly as their own actions, and it was only by instinct that they even knew which feelings were theirs at all!
Rachel...she didn't know that Rachel was right, but she had a point, at least. Even if she restrained herself to the bare essentials of survival, did nothing else...she'd still be broadcasting alien feelings to her sisters, like it or not. And they to her, and to each other...and how long could they really go without engaging in more deeply sensory experiences?
Heck, they'd already crossed that boundary, or at least several of them had. Her coffee, which Mark didn't like but could feel her liking, the wine Mark had indulged in the other day, and shared with her, the tentative explorations, hefting their breasts or running their hands down their sides, that one or two of them had indulged in in private...was the barrier broken? Was it just a question of degree?
But where would that leave them? Was there no experience that would be wrong for them to share? If one of them fell in love, and...and...would that be okay? Or...following on that, what if one of them got p-p-
It nearly broke her brain just thinking about it. Maybe...maybe they should talk about it...sure, it would be embarassing, but they were all in this together, they'd have to figure out how they wanted to handle this, or it would be pure chaos...
She touched down gently on her lawn and went inside, ready for sleep. She was too tired to think about this any more right now...
