Mrs. Gordon frowned. "Les, honey, I'm starting to get worried about you. It's admirable that you're doing all this to try and help, but you shouldn't be neglecting yourself for it. You've been working all night now, you need to get to bed, honey."
Mr. Gordon sighed. "Just...just a few more minutes, sweetie. I just want to see the results..."
"Uh-huh. And then another half-hour of jotting down initial notes, and then lying awake for hours while you keep thinking about it. I know how you work, honey. Come on, bed time."
He frowned. "Abby, please...this is important...think about Billy and Stacy. I can't just leave off on trying to help my children..."
His wife put her hands on her hips, her arms framing her belly in his view. "Yes, it's important. But remember what I was saying on Sunday? The kids need us now more than they need us at some arbitrary future date when you've figured out a cure, implemented it, tested it, and obtained approval for use on human subjects. They can get by for now; Stacy's managing all right, and even Lilly is doing better now that she has some friends her own age. It'd be a bigger problem if you were bad-tempered with them because you haven't slept enough. Those results will still be there when you wake up, and you'll be properly refreshed and ready to tackle them then. Banging your head against a wall due to sleep deprivation isn't going to help anything."
Mr. Gordon sighed, shutting off the monitor. "You're...you're right," he said. "I'm sorry, Abby, it's just..."
She nodded. "I know," she said. "It's difficult. So many of the problems our children face are child-scale, that you or I can easily see how to fix, and suddenly there's this big serious world-scale problem that we don't even understand to explain to them, let alone fix. And you? You persevere anyway, trying to find the answer. It's a wonderful thing you're doing, Les - but you can't forget that in addition to being a talented and determined researcher, you're also a man who owes it to himself and his family to take care of himself."
He got up from his desk and embraced her.
Alex thought for a bit. "I...I don't know," she said. "Even if I haven't lost much...all this is still so new to me, and Sally's the only person I know who really knows what it's like...kind of..."
The Gorgon woman nodded. "She's something of a confidant for you now?"
Alex nodded. "Yeah...it's just, she doesn't know what it's like to have been a boy, but she knows about being a girl, and I don't, and she and I both have to figure out what it's like to be dragon-people..."
"Mm. Does that mean you'd rather be in her class?"
The dragon-girl shrugged. "I don't know. I don't have a problem with the idea of staying where I am now, but if I did lose anything when I changed, and that was a problem...I guess it might be better to be an exceptional seventh-grader than a...a bad junior. And then Sally would be right nearby if I needed her..." She was a little embarassed to admit that she was starting to rely on her little sister, but how else was she supposed to figure out this girl stuff?
"Hmm," the counselor said. "Well, again, the results would hardly put you at substandard for your original age. I do, however, see your point about being close to your sister. I think, Alex, that if you're seriously looking at dropping back, you ought to talk with your teacher. Not to mention your parents."
"I dunno," Alex said. She didn't really want to have to meet with anybody or talk it over, but she wanted to...actually...what did she want?
Adam made several more attempts at getting the jeans on. She could get them unfurled easily enough, and stick a leg down them. She could even get them partway up her legs. But she always ran into the problem of trying to use her talons to pull something up the legs to which her talons were attached...when she tried to angle her legs around to pull the waistband up, it scrunched the pants around the knees and ended up pulling them down. And then there was the problem of her tailfeathers...no way would they fit inside her paints, but their base was situated at the base of her spine, well below her waist...would her pants even stay up?
She wrestled with the jeans for a while longer before giving up. This was just not going to work...if she was going to wear pants, she'd have to get some designed for her. In the meantime...what to do?
The harpy-girl looked herself over in the mirror, casting an eye at the soft, downy feathers that covered her pubic area. She couldn't just go out like this, could she? But...well, the down covered everything, such that to a normal-height observer her privates were invisible. And the sweater was long enough that it could hang down partway, and keep people from paying attention...
No, that was crazy! She couldn't just walk around without pants, flashing the entire world! Besides, what would her employer say? No, she'd have to find another solution...but what? If this house were home to a born woman, she might find a skirt, but she was pretty sure none of those were on hand. What was she supposed to do?
