Mike looked around the cavern while Agent Hawkins was off trying to find a way for them to get out. It was interesting; the surface of this world seemed to be mostly barren rock, and even the dirt seemed to be just sand and dust without much in the way of life. Dry and lifeless...what a world to get stuck in!
Down here, though, only a little ways beneath...well, it still wasn't all that Earth-like, but it seemed more organic. The crystalline roots might be only rock, but the moss and mushrooms were clearly living things, and where there was water, she knew, there was life. And as the dust from the collapse settled, she could smell an earthy smell from the dirt in the floor of the cavern. Did life simply exist underground in this world? Maybe there was surface life in other parts of the world, but that certainly seemed to be true here. Well, except for that thing they had come across, but maybe it only travelled on the surface...
She was interrupted from her train of thought when Hawkins returned, lugging a broken shard of one of the crystal spires behind him. Despite his quiet, detached demeanor, he was breathing rather heavily. Mike gawked. "Did you break this off?" she asked. The shadowy figure had a certain wiry toughness about him, but she wouldn't have pegged him as possessing a truly unusual amount of strength...
He shook his head. "Found it. I think it might have broken off with the tremors during the incident; it's not very dense. Can you help me set this down? We want to make sure it doesn't hit Jen."
The raptor-girl nodded, and he did his best to lower it in gently, though it made a nice thump as it hit the cavern floor. She pulled the base back as far as she could without running into Jen, giving them a makeshift ramp. He shuffled carefully down into the cavern and looked Jen over. "I don't think there's anything broken," he said. "Should be safe to move. I'll try to take her top-first, if you can support from the other end."
She nodded; it was the least she could do for the devil-girl, considering she was responsible for her being in this state to begin with. Hawkins carefully lifted Jen's torso onto the crystal ramp and began to pull her up, and Mike did what she could to push from below. It was slow going, as Jen was on the more heavily-built side of things, and her wings just plain got in the way, but they did succeed in getting her up.
Mike scrambled up after; the crystal wasn't quite so soft as gypsum, but her talons had no trouble digging into its surface enough to give her a solid grip. She fairly leapt out of the pit onto the rocky ground, then turned to the mysterious figure. "I-is she going to be all right?" she asked.
Hawkins sighed. "Not sure. I'm no expert at this stuff...no broken bones that I can find, and the cut on her leg seems to be clotting, but she's still unconscious...if we can wake her enough to get her back to the hotel, there's bound to be more qualified medical personnel around."
Eric sighed and folded up her letter, sticking it in the pocket of her dress she was keeping the other letters in. Nikki was probably right and they should get some sleep; it was still kind of early in the evening, but she was feeling a little tired, and anyway she pretty much had to assume that the little skunk-girl knew more about this stuff than she did. Maybe tomorrow night she could sneak into the church and leave the letter for her future-past self, but for now...yeah.
She got down on her hands and knees and squeezed into the den, which was actually a bit larger than it had looked from outside. Not a whole lot, though; she wound up curled up against the wall with only a bit of wiggle room. Nikki followed her in shortly and snuggled against her, making things even more of a snug fit. Still, it worked, and it was kind of nice to have the little girl nestled in her arms.
"'night, M...Mom," she said, sighing contentedly. Eric still didn't care for the term, but it would be easier to go along with it for a week, until she could get the kid back to her real mother. "G'night, kiddo," she said.
The teenage skunk-girl thought back on everything that had happened. Nikki must have had her memories changed in the transformation to think that Eric was her mom, right? That would explain everything, how she had confused her for her mom, how she knew everything she remembered learning from her misremembered mother, how...
...wait, that didn't quite make sense. Eric knew that the sun could cause memory loss, but could it invent memories out of whole cloth? Introducing new behaviors, yeah, but Eric herself experienced some minor degree of that, and it was all instinctive; it hadn't caused her to remember learning how to spray her scent from her mom or anything. Yet Nikki knew a lot about survival in the forest and remembered learning it from someone...
What if she hadn't been quite right? She'd told Nikki the sun must have changed her memories, but what if there was a different explanation? Obviously she couldn't really be Eric's daughter, but she may have simply confused her for a...another skunk-woman, right? But if time travel was involved, as it evidently was, who was to say that she couldn't have come from a time some years down the road? Maybe she was always a skunk, raised by a mother who was also one? That seemed like a simpler explanation, given that she already knew time travel to be possible...
She sighed as she felt the little girl drop into a gentle breathing pattern indicating she was asleep. It was time for her to drop off as well...
Robert stood before the bathroom mirror. Her tongue, she had found, rested in a compact shape, human-sized, within her mouth. It wasn't until she stuck it out it that it extended. It was very elastic, and she found that it could grow to closer to three times its original length, though its breadth diminished as it stretched. She had also discovered that it was forked, like a reptile's...ugh! Thoughts filled her head of what she could do with this new tongue...
No! She had to fight, she had thought...but how? The doctor had claimed that she didn't suffer from any kind of chemically elevated drives like some species did, but the urges that had come upon her...every action had led into another as natural as breathing...how was she supposed to resist that? She had never had to fight this off before! Yet she knew God would not cause her to face a temptation she could not overcome...
...so if the Lord had let her experience an urge she...she could not resist, (she couldn't! How could she!?) then...did He want her to...to do...she shivered at the memory of what she'd done. But how could that be? She'd always thought of this as dark and dirty; sex itself was a necessary evil for the continuation of the species, wasn't it? That's what she'd always figured. Yet...as much as she knew she should feel guilty...it was becoming harder to make the feelings stick. Intellectually she knew it must be wrong, but...
Oh, God, this was confusing! Confusing and frightening...what next? If she continued to give in...where would it end? What would the next perversion be that she would inflict upon herself? Would she...if there was a man around, if she went to a bar or something and there was a man there willing to...would she...?
The thought sent a great, heaving shudder down her spine. She...she wanted...she just wanted.
