Tiffany gazed into the mirror, stunned by the sight. All across her body...lines of white, not the pale flesh tone of her changed skin, but the pale white of her hair, glowing just slightly brighter than the rest of her, such that she hadn't even noticed a difference under the robes. They were abstract patterns, like a full-body tattoo entwined around her torso, branching like a tree and curling like vines, leading down to a central "trunk" line that spread out "roots" around her...oh hell no.
She noted too that her hair down there was the same pale white as that on her head, fine and downy... She winced. Under her clothes she was even more of a freak...she had to admit the lines were artful, never crowded or busy, mapped elegantly to the contours of her body, but...they weren't supposed to be there at all! She traced a finger along one. There was no tactile distinction between it and her normal skin - so much for her brief idea of rubbing them off. As if all this wasn't bad enough, now she was stuck with built-in body art?
She turned and looked back over her shoulder. They were there, too, curling around from the front to decorate her back. The lines wound their way up over her shoulders, but remained clear of the collar area, only just peeking in on the tops of her breasts; a low-cut blouse would show them, but the robes she'd been wearing hadn't. They extended out onto her arms, but only down the deltoid muscles, easily covered by short sleeves.
On the other end of her torso, they extended further out, coming most of the way down her thighs, inner and outer. Tiffany scowled - if she wanted to keep anybody from seeing them, she'd have to dress conservatively. Not that she was an exhibitionist or anything, but still...
This was it, then? This was her? A glowing not-albino with a horn and glowy tattoos...she knew there were worse things she could have become, but still, she wasn't happy about it. But what could she do? She could hardly change herself back into a normal human, to say nothing of...what she had been, and her teacher...her teacher had talked like her original change was a different kind of thing than a change from the sun...maybe even she couldn't change Tiffany back; and Tiffany had no illusions about the possibility of convincing her to try.
Was she really stuck as this, then? She could dye her hair, maybe, but the rest of her...even if she could tan her skin, it wouldn't be the same as her original color (and would it still glow? She had no idea.) The lines weren't things that could be removed, apparently. And the horn...she supposed it would be possible to cut it off, but that would just leave her with an ugly stump on her forehead...
Tiffany was torn. She didn't want to be this. Yet if she went to such lengths to hide it...would that be admitting defeat? If she could stick it to them by living like this...but that was all wrong, the whole point was that she didn't want this. She was confused...she needed sleep. Only 8:30, but God she needed sleep. So tired...when was the last time she slept? She couldn't even remember. It was all catching up to her now...another weakness of her old body and her new body...
She threw on her pajamas, noticing the way they blocked the light more effectively than the robes had, and climbed into bed, asleep almost instantly. She dreamt of the music box playing its song.
Mr. Saunders sighed. "She hates me..."
The teacher shrugged. "She's still sorting things out, I think. In your daughter's mind, she's still been robbed of a beneficial change, by force...I think she even felt she was dying, when she lost control of her body during the operation..."
"Will she...come to see it differently?"
"Difficult to say," she said. "You must understand that only the corruption was removed...Tiffany's human flaws are still present and accounted for. She's just as capable of holding a grudge...but then, she does love you, whatever she feels on the surface."
He stared at her, confused. After everything that had happened...even though she felt betrayed, even with the way she had treated him...?
The woman noticed his expression and nodded, smiling. "There's a reason I asked you to take that risk, and why it was so effective. Tiffany is seventeen years old, and you've been there every day of it, haven't you? And her sole provider and parental figure for...?" For some reason she didn't ask permission to inquire, but he didn't even think of not answering.
"Nine years..." It still hurt to think about, sometimes. Eliza had gone off to "find herself" and never come back, except for the occasional visit...he admitted that their marriage wasn't the best, but it seemed like she'd loved Tiffany as much as he did...how could she just abandon them like that?
She nodded. "Nine years. Of course you matter to her...but you know how teenagers can be, and coupled with what was inhabiting her..."
"But it's gone now, isn't it?" If she was really free of the darkness that had taken hold of her...how could she still act this way?
"It is. But like I said, she's still sorting her feelings out...even if her spirit is free of its influence, those residual emotions don't just vanish right away."
He sighed. If only she could understand how horrible he'd felt, subjecting her to that, driven to it only by the need to save her from the threat of...of erasure...assimilation...but he would wait, if he had to. He wasn't a mighty hero, but he was a patient man...he would be there for her, when she finally forgave him.
Even after spilling the secret to Karyn, Jon's mind kept racing. The book and the stone were somehow tied together, and Brittany was somehow tied to the book, or whoever had left the book? Did that person know that Jon had the stone that could unlock it? Or was it an improbable coincidence?
She laid back on the bed, stretched out fully, over eight feet from her head to the tip of her foot. Close to nine if she counted the antennae. The end of it hung over the end of the bed; not uncomfortably, at least. She took a deep breath and sighed heavily.
How much of any of this was known to whom?
Did Brittany know? About the stone, or the book, or who had sent it? What was she? Evidently human, more or less comfortable in the modern world, yet she herself seemed like a person drawn from another time...was that something done by the sun, or did she really have roots in some other time? Had she known about this back then?
Had her grandfather known? Jon knew the finding of the stone couldn't have been the only strange thing he got up to...by her mother's account, he was an eccentric adventurer while she was still in school. What else might he have discovered in his years of travel and treasure-hunting? She wondered again whether he was really dead...
And what did it all mean? It was obvious that the stone and the book were linked, and that Brittany might also be...but if they were all a part of something, what was that?
Effie sighed happily and leaned on Dennis's shoulder. Right now, no implications or existential quandaries were coming within a mile of her mind...she was just glad to be here, now, in the company of her friend. The machines were chattering their assorted noises, music was playing somewhere, lights were glittering...
She was distracted from the experience when Dennis suddenly tensed up. She sat up and looked around, noticing only some flower-girl and a boy playing a dance game...no, wait, the boy...there was a stream of packets emanating from his direction; she could see them as little sparkles of data, in the strange visual metaphor that made up her world. A robot, then?
Effie plucked one out of the air and examined it. Unencrypted, a standard query for identification...that was stupid, why aim it at them? Their host handled network traffic, and she wasn't even in here. The stream continued for several seconds, a couple hundred identical requests, all of which were useless in attempting to find out about the two digital fairies...why didn't he realize that after the first dozen?
Still...this was strange, but it didn't explain why Dennis was so freaked out. She knelt beside him, looking him in the eye. "You okay?" she asked.
The DOS fairy shuddered. "It's him..."
She gasped.
Steve was having a hell of a time even keeping up. She wasn't so great at these games, but she knew the song. But placed up against Hiro...he was just too good, dammit! He didn't have to know the song, he could just track the arrows as the came down the screen and respond accordingly, his movements as closely synchronized with their arrival as his physical capabilities would allow...how could she compete with that!?
All of a sudden, though, he started to slip, like something was distracting him...the flower-girl grinned and siezed the opportunity, redoubling her efforts to get ahead while he was occupied by something or other...
