"You know, you could make some money out of this." - Giggled Maple during the break.
"Well, true." - Said Cass - "At least it seems I can make the anime thing permanent on objects. You saw the jacket, it was outside my aura. I don't know if it lasts, but still."
Maple nodded. "Lots of stuff we don't know about our changes, I guess..."
Cass looked at Maple. "You're thinking about something, aren't you?"
Maple nodded. "Cass... did you study Jung at college?"
Cass nodded. "Let me guess. Collective unconscious and archetypes."
Maple blinked. "So, lots of people already mused to you about the changes involving this, I guess."
Cass nodded, seeming a bit tired of explaining it. "Working with the notion of collective unconscious, it may well be that we are getting some changes from it. Otherwise the dragon-changed couldn't fly, nor could the angel-changed. And it would be hard to explain my own transformation."
Maple nodded. "Right. Animes aren't a myth per se, but texture changes aren't simple changes to one's body."
"Exactly." - nodded Cass - "The problem is that this explanation does little, by itself, to tell us why or how. Furthermore, it's fairly hard to argue that anime itself, for instance, is old enough to be ingrained into the collective unconscious like this. Flood myths, yes. Mermaid types, yes. But animation is recent, and there are animated people now."
"You're looking at this backwards." - Said a voice going into the room. Mary Summers kept going. "We just happen to have a wider myth pool, so to speak, now."
Cass looked a bit annoyed at Mary - she still hadn't forgiven her completely for the whole episode with Lucas. "What do you mean?"
Mary shrugged. "Suppose there was an age in which the myths were actually real."
"You mean this age?" - quipped Maple.
Mary shook her head. "No. What if it is a cycle of sorts? Myths are created, they then begin existing. Then they cease to. Then more myths are created, then the additional and previous myths begin existing as well..."
"So. Let me get this straight. You're postulating that myths existed before, possibly with magic too, and became myths somehow, and that, then, after a while, they went back to existing with the addition of new myths?" - Said Cass.
"It's as good an explanation as any other." - Said Mary - "Not that it changes much. But the fact is the sun changing may force us to reconsider some ideas about history itself."
"That doesn't explain the plain bizarre changes." - Said Cass. - "So far as I know, female office-chair-taurs aren't a myth, so they shouldn't "exist" now that myths do. Yet I know one. She still has arms and can move her wheels on her own. Lucky enough not to lose any functions."
"Never said it was a perfect explanation." - Shrugged Mary. - "But it may have been someone's weird idea someday. Maybe they made up a story about one, for instance."
"I'll look it up on my spare time." - Said Cass. - "Until then, I gotta get to class. See you guys later."
Cass got up and left for her next class.
Maple looked at Mary as the anime aura wore off of them.
"I don't mean to pry, but, you know, she seemed a bit... bothered by you..."
"I had a... disagreement with her and her girlfriend. But I think they'll thank me in the long run."
"Right..." - Said Maple, not fully understanding it - and not sure she wanted to.
