Harriet's mother stared off into space somewhere past the other two women. "She says she was on the Moon," she murmured. "But she can't have been there, can she? That's impossible...and an 'other mother?' There's no people there, that's absurd..."
Muriel sighed. "It does sound incredible. But, ma'am, a lot of pretty incredible things have been happening in the past month." With Jenny, she knew that first-hand. "Considering some of the other things we've seen, I guess I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility that she's telling the truth."
"Y-you can't mean that!" the human woman said. Muriel shrugged. "I don't know any more than you do," she said. "Certainly I'm not going to suggest you take everything she says as gospel truth; she is a young girl, I'm sure she's got an active imagination. But you yourself said there are unusual signs, physically, and to be honest, with as little trace as we found, I wouldn't be surprised if she was on another planet for a month. Maybe there even was someone else there."
"But how could she have survived? The sun doesn't take away the need to eat or drink, does it? What about the need for air? And isn't there that thing about...about exploding?" She shuddered to even think of that.
Muriel frowned. "I'm pretty sure that last one's a myth," she said. "But...you're right for the most part, but we keep finding exceptions. I don't know of anybody who doesn't need food, but there's various aquatic transformees who are capable of breathing water, and I know of one person who has at least a limited ability to survive in a vacuum. Maybe if Harriet did find someone there, they had food to share...I don't know."
Harriet's mother sighed. "I just...I'm so afraid that something's happened to her and she can't or won't tell me...I don't know who this Selene woman is or if she's at all trustworthy, or if those markings mean she's hurt, or what...I just got my daughter back, I want to know that she's safe and sound..."
Muriel nodded. "Of course," she said. "I guess the first thing would be to take her to the doctor and get her examined. There's a clinic just a ways from here that has a good staff with experience in dealing with the change; they ought to be able to help. If they find evidence of abuse, give us a call. If not, then...I guess you can simply figure out what the real nature of Harriet's changes are, and how to deal with them from there."
Ms. Violet found her niece in the playroom with the other girls. She stepped in and sat gracefully down, folding her legs under her; if she couldn't be dressed nicely in front of her students, she'd at least try to act exemplary. But truth be told, she was feeling a little overwhelmed still; if she hadn't been worried about Harriet as much as her sister had, she was still inexpressably grateful to see her back and safe.
Her niece turned to her. "You look like someone," she said. "Who're you?"
The elven woman smiled mysteriously. "I'm your mother's sister," she said.
The girl frowned. "Mama doesn't have a sist..." Her eyes widened. "Uncle Samuel?" she asked. "You turned inta a girl?"
Ms. Violet nodded, feeling a little wistful. "Yes," she said, "I did. But I guess I'm not the only one who's a little different anymore, huh?"
Lilly had turned to stare. Miss Violet was...she had used to be a boy?
"Yeah, I guess so," Artemis said. "Is...is Mama upset about it?"
The elven woman sighed. "Your mama is still a little confused and upset from worrying about you, that's all," she said. "She'll be okay, Harriet."
"Um, couldja call me Artemis?" the moon-girl asked. "It's my name now..."
Her uncle-turned-aunt smiled. "Of course. I like you better than the other Artemis, anyway."
"Really?" she asked. "Why's that?"
"Oh, she was kind of mean," Ms. Violet said. "She turned a boy into a girl once just for accidentally seeing her in the bath. And another guy into a deer. That wasn't very nice. You won't do that, will you?"
Artemis giggled. "I don't think I can do that!" she said. "An' I wouldn't anyway, not 'less somebody wanted to."
Her aunt smiled. "Good girl."
Steven laid there in her bed for a while, feeling this strange warmth within her and wondering what it meant. There was a gentle warmth between her legs, as well; nothing urgent or upsetting, just a feeling that...that her body wanted attention. Touch. She laid one hand atop her right breast and nestled her arm against her left, and reached the other down to her petal skirt. She didn't feel like lifting it back up again, but to her surprise it simply parted for her; apparently the petals didn't overlap so tightly in the front here. She let her hand slip down there and rested it gently on the little mound between her legs, cupping her hand around the whole. It was strange to even feel this; she'd been avoiding paying it any attention for so long, but it felt...comforting, somehow, to have something resting there.
She thought about those inner petals. When she'd changed, she'd had the privates of a human girl, as far as she'd bothered to look (which wasn't very far.) The only flower parts were the little nipple-buds on her breasts; even those had taken a couple days to come into flower. But at some point in the chaotic evening that had left her still further changed, the fleshy lips of her human privates had been replaced by...by these, these rubbery petals that looked like the plant version of what she'd already had. She didn't know what all lay inside, but then, she hadn't really known before, either; aside from figuring out that she had to wipe it out after using the bathroom, she didn't think about it at all. She supposed, if the plant theme were continued down there, there was probably a pistil, the female part of the flower, somewhere, but she simply didn't think much about it.
Steven drummed her fingers idly against her skin as she thought - or at least, she started to. She stopped shortly after the sides of her slender fingers brushed against the petals between her legs, arrested by another sudden sensation. The warm feeling was back, too, and she could smell her flower-scent...or, no, a different one; something like it, but earthier, more pungent. She yanked her hand away, and she could feel her body wanting it back, wanting more attention. It struck her suddenly what this was, or what this was the beginnings of, and her mind boggled.
How could she have been so stupid? She'd told herself that as long as she didn't know that she liked guys, or didn't know that she didn't like girls, she could keep assuming that nothing really important had changed, but for all that she'd been obsessing over them, she'd missed the question of her entirely. She'd been fooling herself into thinking that as long as she still liked girls, everything would be pretty much the same, but that wasn't true at all! It didn't matter who or what she was attracted to...she was still going to be experiencing arousal (and maybe, eventually, sex) as a woman!
She gasped as that realization hit her, as it stood up and demanded attention and could not be ignored. One way or the other, whether she was a straight girl or a lesbian, she was never going to experience this stuff as a man again. Her mother had talked about not living in denial, and now she was feeling it; this realization was so out-of-nowhere that she was taken completely off-guard, and yet it was so obvious that she felt like an idiot for not knowing from the get-go. She was so confused that she couldn't even really figure out how she felt about it...
...and she still felt parts of her waiting for further attention.
