Lilly mulled over the idea as she tried to pick up the scent again. She'd seen something moving over this way, she just didn't know what. She was...she was going to be a big sister? She still felt uncomfortable thinking about growing up as this, the idea of growing into a young woman instead of the young man she had been. Some of the specifics escaped her now, but she still knew that she'd probably get curves and breasts like Mommy had...maybe more, considering the four nipples she'd found she had. That was weird enough to think about, without whatever else there was that she couldn't remember... But she supposed Jenny was right; her mommy was going to have her baby...some time, she couldn't remember how long it would be, but it was a while yet. She would have a baby brother or sister, and she'd be their older sister as they grew up...
It would be nice, she thought, to have a little bit of that responsibility back. Sometimes it had been a pain looking out for Stacy, but on the other hand, it made his mom and dad proud of him, and it made him feel good, too. If she had a little brother or sister, she could look after them like he did for Stacy...and like Stacy was doing for her, she remembered, frowning a bit. And maybe...if she couldn't be like her dad by being a boy, could she at least be like him in other ways? She liked that he was smart and wanted to help people with his smartness; there wasn't any reason girls couldn't be like that, was there? Even though right now she was just a little girl and couldn't remember the things she'd learned as a big kid...
It was a lot to think about, so that for a minute she didn't even notice that she'd picked up the strange scent again. She looked around, trying to see if she could spot what was moving. Jenny looked at her. "D'ya smell somethin'?" she asked. Lilly nodded. "I think it's over there," she said, pointing. The two girls dashed towards what looked like a small clearing of some kind...
Jon couldn't help but notice Karyn smirking as they drove back from the supermarket. She tried to focus on driving at first, but eventually she couldn't avoid asking. "What?" she said.
Karyn grinned, a bit sheepishly. "Just, uh, thinking about that lady in the store."
Jon sighed. She glanced at the backseat; okay, Becca and Mikey were busily talking about something. One confidant was plenty, especially when she was also a bit snarkier than was entirely fitting. "You're thinking about that last thing she said, aren't you?" she asked. "You think it's just funny as hell."
"Well, it is...though I suppose you don't feel that way."
The slug-girl shrugged. "I guess it's kind of funny, it's just that it bothers me the number of assumptions in there. I can understand her thinking that I'm a born girl, it's not like there's some distinctive signifier or something..."
"Well, your body language is different," Karyn said. "But it really just makes you look like a tomboy."
She sighed. That was small comfort, all things considered...it was a comfort, though. "Yeah. But...once I told her? I guess she meant well telling me that I make for a pretty girl, but telling me I'll surely go on to have a happy relationship with some guy..."
The cecaelia-girl raised an eyebrow. "So...you don't feel attracted to guys, then?"
Jon frowned. "I don't know. I haven't really thought about it, and I'd like to keep it that way. Whether I'm straight or lesbian as a girl, I'm only going to be a girl at all for another few months. Any relationship that happened in the meantime would be compromised as soon as I change back, so I'd like to just put any such stuff on hold."
"Huh," Karyn said. "I kinda wondered...I mean you never made a pass at me."
"Well, yeah, but that's because we've known each other forever. I think you're cute, but you're practically my slightly-older sister; that doesn't really have any bearing on my sexual preference."
"Ah." Karyn twiddled a couple of her tentacles nervously, feeling a bit awkward for bringing it up. "Still, don't you think you're making some pretty sweeping assumptions of your own? I mean, you've only been a girl for almost six weeks; who knows how you'll feel about it in another fourteen?"
Jon sighed. "Look, I just...I don't know, okay? It hasn't been some kind of awful nightmare life, but there's stuff like periods I'd just rather not hassle with, and I was perfectly happy as a guy. It's not totally awful to visit, but I don't see why I'd want to live here."
Karyn shrugged. "I guess."
Inventory was, as always, tedious and uninteresting, but it did leave Adam time to think. Or rather, time to obsess a bit over whether she had any new instincts she hadn't noticed until now. It was the old "don't think of pink elephants" problem: simply trying not to think about it led her to think about what she wasn't thinking about, and that led her back to the original subject. She tried, at least, to focus her not-thinking on the nesting instincts (or theoretical lack thereof;) the alternative was the question of whether she liked guys, and really, she just wasn't ready to even consider that.
She did at least manage to do things fairly well with just her talons; it wasn't as convenient as having hands, but it was surprisingly workable. She thought, as she pulled, counted, and replaced items, that she might indeed have some kind of instinctual urge to build a nest; the idea seemed to trigger something within her. If she did, it certainly wasn't all-consuming, which was a relief. But she did find herself going back to the thought of a wicker chair in her grandma's house; it was a large bowl-shaped frame with a soft pad inside. It pivoted on the base, so she could tip it up and it would almost be a nest...
She frowned. Even though on an instinctive level she liked the idea, it kind of bothered her that she had this instinct. If she had the one, did that mean she would have others? What if she started wanting to hunt things? (What did swallows eat? Bugs, she thought...ew.) She was trying to live a normal life here, not turn into some kind of feral...
Okay, maybe that was overstating it a bit. It wasn't fair to assume that just accepting instinctual drives would make someone a monster. Her boss teased her about it, but she was feeling a little bit scared by this new world she found herself in. And...she was a little scared about the prospect of being part of it. She wanted to maintain as much of a civilized life as she could, given her circumstances, but...if there were other changed people who gave into their instincts, was that something they chose, or was it just something that...that happened to them?
"Hey, Earth to Adam!"
She snapped back to reality. "Uh, sorry. What?"
The alligator-man chuckled. "We're done. C'mon, let's get out of here."
They shut off the lights and left the store. Adam turned to do the shutter, and frowned. She couldn't just reach up and pull them down anymore; even if she weren't worried about breaking the primary feathers on her wing-tip, the simple fact was that she was no longer tall enough to reach up there. She sighed. "Don't suppose they're going to be motorizing these any time soon..."
He shrugged. "I'll make a suggestion to the mall owners, but I wouldn't cross your...uh, wouldn't count on it. Any ideas?"
She frowned. She knew he was testing her, seeing how much trouble she would go to to avoid admitting her inability. She knew him well enough to know that he wasn't looking for a weakness to attack; he probably just wanted to make her understand that she had to consider her own limits now. But she hardly needed to be reminded of that. And...she didn't want to just give up on anything that presented a difficulty.
She looked at the shutter. It was the folding-bars kind, and with it hanging a ways down from the ceiling (nobody ever bothered to put it all the way up,) there were visible gaps between the bars. If only she could reach a talon up there... A though struck her, and she glanced at her wings, hanging not-quite-folded at her sides. That might work...
"You better be good for something," she muttered to them as she spread them out and lifted them up. Her boss watching with interest, she crouched down, then sprang up, thrusting her wings downward as she did. It gave her a solid boost into the air, and she brought her feet up and caught the grating. Adam had a bit of difficulty keeping her balance as she gripped the bars, but the idea basically worked; her weight pulled the shutter down close to the floor, and she hopped off and pulled it the rest of the way with her talon.
The alligator-man smiled. "Not bad. Not bad, harpy."
