Andy stopped to survey her work. The cleaning wasn't anything she really wanted to be doing, and her standards were a bit more lax than Sue's, but it was at least a good warmup for the real projects - which would themselves serve as a warmup exercise to get her back into a work mindset, or so she hoped. Monday, cripes. Four years of unemployment and suddenly she had less than a week to get ready for having a job again... But she couldn't fault her new employer, they needed someone right away to pick up on the project - and it wasn't like she would have even considered turning down the offer on account of an inconvenient start date. She'd manage; she just needed to re-adjust her expectations.
Heh. Easier said than done. After all, all she needed to do in this entire situation was adjust her expectations, but it wasn't like she could just snap her fingers and be completely at ease with life as a rabbit-woman, any more than she could show up for work after a weekend of sitting around the house concluding four years of the same and somehow be ready to go. She'd have to work at it, she'd have to ease into it. One step at a time...
Andy thought for a minute about what to do next. Well, the light over the sink in the hall bathroom had gone into obvious-flicker fluorescent-bulb death-march mode. She was pretty sure they had a spare in the utility closet in the basement, and the light fixture was low enough that she didn't think she'd need a stepstool (speaking of adjusting to things...being short was a pain.) Not a fascinating job, but something that needed doing and would make a meaningful difference. She could work with that.
Erica could see a frown on Sam's face, and she knew he was thinking the same thing as she was. What if he became something incompatible? What if he became something she...she couldn't love? She winced at the thought; that sounded so shallow! But...well, if she was no longer attracted to women, and he became a woman...but that wasn't the only thing she loved about him, was it? The most prominent at this point, to be sure - their relationship had been formed out of a hormonal fire on her part and some kind of dry spell on his. But there were other things she liked about him! And there had to be more to their relationship than that, or...um, there would be...after all, they were together in the future, weren't they? Were they? Nikki knew him as her father, but she hadn't specifically said they were still together...oh, this time-travel stuff made her head hurt.
But...Nikki. That was an argument in itself, wasn't it? Putting aside the questions of what the basis for her and Sam's relationship would be, they had a child to think about. Nikki would need her parents to be there for her, even if this timeline stuff didn't depend on it...they'd have to think about her best interests, not just theirs. That...that was going to be part of being a parent, she supposed. But...her needs weren't nothing, were they? How much could she be reasonably expected to...
Oh, screw it. She could run through an infinite number of possible scenarios and look at the questions any which way, and it still wouldn't get her any closer to a useful insight. Erica worried about what might happen, but she knew one thing she didn't want, and that was for Sam to die in the past and Nikki to never be born - and that was what would happen, if they wasted all their time dithering about it until these ripples of "correction" caught them off-guard. If what Nikki was saying was true, there was no way around it - they'd just have to go through with it.
Trembling slightly, the skunk-girl put a hand on her mate's shoulder. "Sam," she said, "you didn't bat an eye when I told you I'd been a man. If...if you do...Sam, whatever we have to do, we'll make it work." She wasn't sure she believed that herself, but if she had to give him this encouragement to save his life...she owed him that much. And he was...he was the father of her child; they had to make it work, if only for Nikki's sake.
Sam put his hand on hers, and she calmed a bit. He looked at Nikki. "You haven't told us much that you didn't have to, Poppy," he said. "But tell me this. When we're in the...in the future, and we're together...is your mama happy?"
The little skunk-girl smiled. "You both are. So'm I."
The eagle and the sorceress stared at each other for a long moment; to Kimi, it seemed to stretch on for an eternity. Morgana had a hand on the hilt of her knife, and both seemed to be waiting for the other to make a move. Then all at once, the eagle dove at her with a cry. She whipped the knife from her belt and took a stab at it, but the strike didn't seem to connect; the bird passed close to her face, but didn't seem to claw at her, wheeling around for another pass. Kimi wondered what they were doing, until she felt the vines loosen. Then it hit her: these things must take some kind of conscious effort to maintain. It was a distraction!
She struggled her way out of the tangle of her loosened bonds and stood on her feet, wincing a little as she felt another twinge in her abdomen. Thinking back to what Morgana had said, she leapt out of the circle, taking a moment to drag her foot through the markings the sorceress had made in the ground before taking off running as fast as she could manage in her current state. She was worried about the eagle - suppose that was the old man, turned into a bird through some kind of native voodoo? But she couldn't stay to find out; she hoped that if it was, he'd get away safely, or better yet, that it was just an eagle he'd sent for her. She had to go; she didn't want to be stuck in some body that had to die, she didn't want to be dragged off to some other time and place, she didn't want any of this! She just wanted to get away, out of this place and back safe to the tent so she could go to sleep and wake up to find that everything had been a horrible nightmare...
Morgana couldn't hold back a snarl of aggravation when she saw that the girl had escaped. Oh, this child! Didn't she understand what was at stake here? It wasn't as though she was robbing her of life as a whole, and from what the girl had said she should hardly have any more objection to this body than to the one she now inhabited! She would have made to recapture her, but the eagle kept coming. By the time she had fended it off, the girl was gone, or at least too far for an easy recovery. More delays!
What could she do now, then? She could pursue her and hope to catch her before she left the forest, and indeed she would make the attempt. She began to sprint after her, scowling and cursing the eagle under her breath. She knew who it was that was responsible; she knew the face of the old man who came here. It must have been half a century that he'd been making visits to this wood, and from the first she knew he could sense her presence. While she remained dormant and he merely sensed her and made no action against her, that was only a mild curiosity, but now? For him to have interfered in her affairs at the one point in eighteen hundred years when it mattered? She felt herself burning under the collar, and tried to focus her attentions back on the problem.
If she could not catch the girl, then her plan to ride the wave of correction back to the time of the new sun was thwarted. That girl must be the only sun-touched being in the entire world at this point, and now she would be out of reach! And if that were the case...how then could she get to the proper time? Unless...
A thought struck her; she almost stopped running. According to the girl's account, she had witnessed the light and then been changed; she was only an ordinary man of this time before. If the new sun's light could make such a change that even a person of this time could be drawn forward, perhaps she...? She wasn't entirely sure it would work that way; her own nature and abilities might interfere. But if it did, then perhaps all would not be lost after all...
