Robert had watched sadly as some of the other people left. Like any church, this one had been through congregational splits before. Some were more severe than this; only about a dozen people had left today, and she guessed that three or four would probably be back in a week or two. But still, this was the first one...that she had been responsible for. At least, that she knew of.
She was supposed to be leading these people, helping them in their walk with God...but she had driven them away. Sure, their reasons were all wrong...but she was the one who had taught them to think this way. If only she'd known, if only she hadn't jumped to such conclusions about the changed...but she couldn't change what she had done. She could only trust in the Lord's forgiveness and strive to do better. She wasn't so sure that Father Maxwell was right, that she should continue serving, but who else did her congregation have? She would, as best as she could.
She sighed, took a deep breath, and stepped down to greet the remaining churchgoers as they made their way out. Some of them still weren't comfortable with interacting with her, even if they hadn't left. But...she hoped they would come around, in time. Others were, encouragingly, more pleasant and at-ease around the devil-woman. One man even came up to her and shook her hand. "Thank you," he said. "I think we all needed to hear that."
Gradually they all filtered out, until she was once again alone in the church. She took a breather, trying to let out some of the stress from the encounter with her antagonistic parishioners, then returned to the cleanup. Even as contained as the fire had been, there was so much left to be done, so much work left to fix her mistake...but she would manage, somehow.
"Wake up, sleepy-head!" The pleasant but distinctly synthetic tones of Cecilia's voice filtered into Nathan Hawkins's brain and he regained consciousness. He looked around, still not quite fully settled into the little motel room in Hedgeton that had become their base of operations in this area.
"What time is it?" he asked, still feeling a bit groggy. He tended to regain his mental faculties faster when waking up since his change, but the rest of the body still took a while to catch up, usually. Oh well, so it went...
"Time to go," the robot-woman said, smiling pleasantly. "Four hours, like you said."
He nodded. "Thanks for getting me up. This house we're going to visit...any luck figuring out who we'll meet there?"
She shook her head. "The owner's death was only a few months ago, and if the executor of her estate has submitted any records, they haven't shown up online yet. I did a little asking around, though...sounds like one of her grandsons made out pretty well, but I didn't catch whether that included the house or not."
"Okay," Hawkins said. "We ought to be careful. If that house was the epicenter of this event, who knows what kind of forces may or may not be at work there."
The gynoid grinned. "Ready to bolt like a startled grouse, sir."
Jon met Max coming out of class at the end of the school day. "Hey," she greeted the cat-girl. "How'd your first day go?"
Max shrugged. "I...dunno, really," she said. "School was about usual. Everything else...well, the, um, the bra definitely helps in a lot of ways, but...I think I still felt people staring at me..." She blushed under her fur.
The slug-girl nodded. "Yeah. I think you need to understand, everybody winds up getting stared at on their first day or two here, pretty much. Besides, I hate to break it to you, but...your chest is only the most obviously different of the things that are going to draw attention..."
"R-really?" Max asked, wondering whether she really wanted to know. "A-am I really th-that...?"
Jon shrugged. "Not much more than a lot of other...other girls," she said. "It's just...anybody with a cat tail winds up looking sleek and lithe...even the guys. Maybe an artist could tell you why, it's just something I've noticed."
Max cringed. "But...I never wanted to become...you know..."
"Pretty?" The cat-girl nodded meekly. Jon sighed. "You're not alone...but that's just how it went. I don't know if any of us have really come to terms with that yet, but...I just thought you should know." Once again, she felt so strange being the one in the position of giving out advice, when she barely even had her own act together. And the reminder that she, too, was an attractive young woman, even if it was a pretty average, understated sort of attractiveness...she didn't know what to make of that.
