Robert finished her bath, enjoying the soothing embrace of the warm water, got out, and dried herself. She climbed into bed; it wasn't all that late, but she had more to get done tomorrow, and she'd had her second very trying day in a row. She laid there for a half-hour or so, occasionally tossing and turning and feeling weirded out by the resultant cascade of small collisions between her breasts.
This was no good, she wasn't sleepy yet. Come to think of it, she hadn't been last night, either. However, she wasn't about to follow the same course she had then; she blushed bright red at the mere thought of it and clamped her hands around her tail preemptively, though it made no moves for the moment.
But what, then, should she do? She wasn't sleepy; in fact, she felt a bit restless. And she didn't want to simply lie in bed waiting for sleep for who knew how long. She didn't have any projects to do at home, at least none she wanted to tackle at this hour...
Almost without thinking about it, she decided to go for a walk. It wasn't that late, the weather was still acceptable, and while her neighborhood wasn't exactly nice, it wasn't dangerous. Maybe a couple laps around the block would get her tired enough to go to sleep. She got up and headed out; she had almost opened the front door and stepped out into the night when she realized she was still naked from the bath. She blinked. Why...why hadn't she noticed?
Robert frowned, returned to her room, and grabbed some ordinary clothes, a pair of jeans and a soft cotton T-shirt. Neither fit especially well, but they were comfortable and good enough for the purpose. She hesitated for a minute, then took a pair of scissors and cut a crude tail-hole into the jeans. She'd need to get some different ones anyway, and this probably would make things easier on her, even if she wasn't quite comfortable with the idea of...of admitting to any of her new body's unusual features.
She headed back to the front door and instinctively went to put her shoes on, then had another moment of mental-disconnect confusion when she realized they wouldn't fit over her hooves. She sighed and took a light jacket from the closet; this would help hide her...unusual chest, and anyway it was getting a bit brisk out lately. Thus equipped, she opened the door and stepped out into the night.
It was a bit cooler than she'd expected tonight, but nothing unmanageable. She set off at a gentle stroll; there was no hurry, she wasn't trying to get anywhere. But rather than laps around the block, she found herself rambling aimlessly; she didn't know why. No, not quite aimlessly, she...she kind of felt like going in this direction, like there was something over here...
At some point she realized there was a smell of something, a meaty kind of smell that...felt like it was calling her. She didn't understand why she felt this way, but...well, she didn't have anything else with which to kill the time tonight. She followed it, the aroma leading her through more run-down areas, until at last she stood in front of a ramshackle old restaurant building with a neon OPEN sign in the window.
She hesitated, surprised. What was this doing here? How would it get any decent business out here? Maybe she should go back home. But...it smelled good, and something...something told her...to go inside.
Adam had not been having a particularily good evening thus far. Being changed into a harpy was bad enough in a theoretical sense, but since she hadn't brought many of her own things with her, and couldn't drive her car to go get them, she was left with not a whole lot to do besides continue sorting through her grandmother's effects. Most of the big stuff had already been taken care of by the executor, but there was a lot of personal memorabilia and such to sort through.
Still, if nothing else, it had kept her busy, and had kept her mind mostly off her predicament. But it wasn't very enjoyable work, even though she liked her grandmother; she'd never realized before the sheer amount of detritus that a person accumulates over the course of their lifetime. Box after box, postcard after photo after misplaced billing statement, and she couldn't simply throw it out, in case there was something she'd actually want to keep...and to top it all off, she was getting really hungry, too.
She was taking a brief break from the sorting when the doorbell rang. She jumped at the sound, having spaced out for a bit; she probably would have nodded right off if she hadn't been hungry. Adam thought for a moment and then remembered her request to her mother; she dashed downstairs as fast as she could manage on her still-unfamiliar legs, and pulled the door open.
Her mother was standing there. She was a small, stocky woman, not portly but thickly built; it dawned on Adam that this was where she got her height from as a girl, if not her build. She stared at the new harpy, who was still clad only in a bathrobe, and gasped. "My God," she said, "Adam? Is that really you?"
Adam nodded. "Yeah...I guess it is. It could've gone better, but I guess I'm kind of stuck with it now..."
"Oh, you poor thing," her mom said. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
The harpy-girl smiled. "Well, if you could cook something? I'm starving..."
Her mom smiled. "Of course. We can talk about this over dinner..."
The inside of the building took Robert by surprise; for one thing, she wasn't entirely certain it was shaped like the outside of the building. More stunningly, though, it was full of devil-changed. Every single person in the building was one, and they came in far greater variety than she had ever thought possible.
Something unusual seemed to be going on, too. This place was obviously a bar & grill, but there was some kind of meeting going on, and people were holding onto signs reading...wait, what...? They were some kind of religious-themed taunts, apparently...why? Were they going to stage some kind of protest?
"E-excuse me," she stammered, tapping a devil-man on the shoulder. "What's going on here?"
He grinned at her in a way that seemed to convey a couple different messages. "Oh," he said, "we're organizing a counter-protest to the protest tomorrow against some church having a devil for its pastor. Gonna bait those assholes real good, and then we'll be clear to teach 'em a lesson. They deserve it, too, I heard they were trying to kill him or something."
Robert took a moment to process this, then gaped. He was talking about her! And they were apparently planning for this to get violent!? "N-no, you can't do that!" she said. "It's bad enough they're harming others, but for us to...to..."
He frowned. "What? Christ, it's not like they don't deserve it. Even if they didn't attack the guy, they're still opposing us just for existing and looking like something they're uncomfortable with."
Robert frowned. If they did this, and this escalated into further violence...where would it end? She had to stop them, make them see...!
She gasped. What if...what if this was why she was here? Perhaps the Lord had led her here in order to stop this before it started. Perhaps...perhaps this was His purpose in allowing this to happen to her in the first place, that she might minister to these people who might not otherwise listen...
