Steven tried to walk nonchalantly back to class, but she couldn't keep from thinking about what had just happened. She wanted to play it cool, wanted to forget about it...but last night had pretty much forced her to come to terms with the fact that ignoring issues like this didn't mean they would go away. She...she didn't want to think any more about it, but she'd better not ignore it. On her way back through the hall, she slipped into the girls' bathroom for a moment.
Inside, she gently, nervously, let her blouse open. Yes, inside, caught in one of the creases, was a...a seed. A little grain of a thing, with a wispy tuft of something attached to it, like a dandelion seed...she blinked in surprise, staring at it for a moment before it hit her. She had produced this! The flowers on her breasts, their centers looking a little defoliated...they had produced seeds! They had...reproduced...oh God. That...that couldn't be right! Her mother had said they looked to be only male...where could the other component have come from...?
Panic siezed her as she realized that last night she'd had her hands on her breasts, on the stamens, the male part of the flower, and then in...in...no! No, that couldn't be happening! ...wait, of course it couldn't. She sighed in slight relief as she realized that it couldn't have worked like that - how would seeds have been transferred from that part of her up to her chest? But that still left the question of how this had happened, and what it meant...
She fished around for her phone before remembering that, as she wasn't wearing any actual clothes besides her underwear, she didn't have any pockets, and sprinted back to the classroom to get it from her bookbag, telling the teacher she had to ask her mom about a personal issue. Back in the bathroom, she dialed her mother and waited with baited breath for her to pick up.
"M-mom!" she stammered. "I...oh my God, Mom, there were seeds! On my, my breasts...ohmygodmomican'tbepregnantcani!?" She realized she was hyperventilating, and tried to calm herself down.
"Are you okay, Steven?" her mother asked. "Did you say seeds?"
"Y-yeah," she said, trying not to start babbling again. "I...I felt funny, and I went outside, and all these seeds like dandelion seeds came loose in the wind from...from inside my top...I thought you said there were only male parts on my b-breasts! I thought you said I wasn't going to...to s-self-p-pollinate..." Her breasts... It felt so odd to be even acknowledging them as part of her...
"I said that's what it looked like," her mom replied. "Guess I was mistaken on the stamens-only thing. I'd still bet you haven't self-pollinated, though - might be apomixis."
"Apo...mixis?"
"It's reproduction without pollination having occured. It happens in some flowers. But that's not going to be anything at all like full-fledged two-parent reproduction - the seeds probably only have half as many chromosomes as you, for starters. I'd guess that all that's going to happen is you might find some flowers out there that look like yours in a few weeks...well, weather permitting, but I wouldn't bet on that at this time of year."
Steven frowned. "But...I mean, just flowers? If it's produced from my body, wouldn't it be...?"
Her mother chuckled. How could she be laughing at a time like this!? "Steven, honey," she said, "something as complex as a child doesn't just form on its own in the ground. Even lower animals have a more complex process than that. And a human child, and probably any humanoid child, takes the better part of a year to form, in a doubly-enclosed, sheltered environment especially designed for the purpose. Trust me, you're not going to wander the woods and find children you didn't know you had."
The flower-girl breathed a little easier. "But...but, if it's possible for this to happen even without...pollination, then with whatever's in my...my..."
She heard her mother sigh. "I suppose that's technically within the realm of possibility," she said. "But I'd be surprised if it were the case. As I said, most apomixis in flowers results in a seed that has only half the chromosomes of the parent; that's certainly not going to form into a child. It might be possible that your body would produce a seed that's a full clone, but I'd be surprised if that's how you work...it'd prevent the introduction of genetic diversity to your species, and genetic diversity seems to be the name of the game in this whole affair."
"S-so then I'm not going to be p...pr..."
"Well, not unless you've been doing some 'cross-pollination' you haven't told me about..."
There was mirth in her mother's voice. Steven flushed bright red. "Mom!" she yelped. Her mother was just...just so...casual about all this...she'd been a bit of a free spirit before, but ever since her change...to be suggesting that!?
"Sorry, honey." She could hear her mother just barely suppressing a chuckle. "I only mean that that seems like the only real probable method by which it would happen. As for the rest of this, I wouldn't worry about it unless something else crops up. Are you going to be okay? Do you want me to come pick you up?"
"Uh, n-no," Steven said. "I'll be okay."
"So," Jon said, "this stuff you see, it's all kind of...kind of metaphorical?"
Haru shrugged. "Yes and no...the stuff I saw with Brittany was pretty straightforward. I don't know what governs the, uh, 'literalness' of what I see. It's just kind of there."
"Huh," the slug-girl mused. "So do you see stuff with everything?"
Haru shook her head, smiling as she thought about the talk she'd had with Ken. "Nope. Most people are pretty normal, so I don't see anything out of the ordinary with them. I guess I might see into their history if I really tried, but I don't like to pry."
Jon smiled. "That's thoughtful of you." She thought about asking Haru what she saw in her...but shouldn't she be a little more sure about dealing with her before that? On the other hand, if there was something noticeable about her, wouldn't Haru already have seen it? And what if she could tell when Jon was holding something back?
Her thoughts were interrupted when Tim arrived back at the table from the lunch line. Well, now she had an excuse not to bring it up...she didn't know if she wanted to let the drow-boy in on this. What if...what if he wasn't as nice a guy as he seemed? But she didn't like thinking that...he hadn't given her any reason to distrust him! But then, that didn't automatically mean that she should share world-changing secrets with him...but...augh, she got all confused when she thought about it.
"Hey!" he said, smiling. "So how's it going!"
"Hey," she said, smiling back. "Pretty good...class was a little interesting this morning, though."
"Oh, that's right, you're in Tiffany's class, aren't you?"
The slug-girl nodded. "Yeah, we share Ms. Wilkins's social-studies class as well as homeroom. Ms. Wilkins brought it up, and it kind of sparked an impromptu debate between Sarah and...whatshisname, the mad-scientist kid..."
"Uh, Matt, I think," Haru said. She'd seen him around now and again.
"Right, Matt," Jon said. "So there was that...and then there was the eclipse, too."
Tim nodded. "That was kinda freaky, all right. Still, it's not every day you get to watch one. I'm just surprised we didn't hear it announced beforehand, though...I thought they were getting pretty good with predicting this stuff."
They continued to talk for a while. Haru noted with moderate interest that the "glow" she perceived around Jon had taken on a different hue...kind of warmer, kind of more...energetic. For some reason it made her wonder where Ken had gotten off to.
