Julian - or Julia, or whoever it was that she was now - hadn't gone straight home after school. She was not exactly in the mood to interact with her parents, not after the way they just...just changed her name on her! Not that she wasn't going to have it out with them later, but...gah! She was in no mood to be trying to form a coherent argument.
So she meandered downtown, looking for something to take her mind off things. It wasn't as good a plan as it seemed at first; wandering through some of her old haunts only reminded her how drastically different her life was now, now that she was prey, now that she was a she, now that she was...was "Julia..." Heading down to the arcade was a little better, but...it was uncomfortable. She was mostly managing to not think too much about the fact that she was a girl now - and a fairly attractive one, at that, at least for being a...a deer-thing... - and out on the street, it was easy enough to go unnoticed, in crowds of other changed people. Everybody looked like so many different things that she didn't seem in the least bit unusual out there.
But a girl in a video arcade - a real arcade, with real video games and not just a bunch of ticket scams - now, that stood out a bit more, even in this day and age. Whether it was her instincts making her focus on situational awareness, or the novelty of the situation for her, she was incredibly aware of how much attention she drew. She took comfort in the fact that at least she wasn't attired in a revealing or particularly feminine way - jeans and a T-shirt, and a light hoodie on top of that. But...even these were cut to fit a body like hers, like the body she wore now...the jeans weren't tight, but they still showed the curve of her legs a bit, her tail still poked jauntily out of the fly in the back, and even under two layers the curve of her breasts was visible, thanks to her bra...there was no hiding what she was now, and it was clear that more than a few people there noticed.
Still, she persevered. She had a hard time not noticing the extent to which she was noticed, but she managed to project enough intensity that anybody who might have been interested refrained from approaching her; and in a way, it was kind of a good distraction from her other problems. She stayed at the arcade until late in the evening, when she was too hungry to focus on her game any longer. She had left the arcade intending to go get a slice of pizza or something - she was still unclear on whether or not her system could handle meat, or whether she'd even enjoy it anymore, but cheese and tomato sauce should be fine at the very least, right? But her plans changed the moment she stepped out and looked into the night sky.
Nothing was there. No stars, no moon, not even the periodic blinking of satellites. Just blackness - a blackness she knew intimately. She didn't even have to look twice to know that this was the work of the Enemy.
Her reactions were mixed. Part of her remembered the rush of power, remembered the malleable, easily-manipulated nature that had so readily given him power beyond what he could ever have attained as a mortal wolf. Part of her remembered how easily they'd goaded him into...into giving up his self to their indistinction, and then how they had cut him...them...off from the main entity with such clinical, unfeeling readiness the moment he'd run into trouble. Part of her felt outrage at being promised the moon and then thrown into this mess and abandoned, as if she were some floozy and they were her...her...but that was ridiculous. She wasn't going to have a...she wasn't. She was conflicted; she wanted to beg to be taken back, to be a god again, and she wanted to spit in their rat bastard non-faces...
...but mostly, she wanted to get inside, at home, hidden as safely away from Them as she could possibly be. The deer part of her knew that she was in a wide-open space in perfect view of a very dangerous creature; the only comfort she had was that she had the feeling They were focusing on something else. What, she wasn't sure, and she didn't care. When you stumble into a clearing where a cougar is mauling something, you don't stick around to find out exactly what it's mauling. She ran to the bus stop, wishing she hadn't stayed out so late, wishing she could just be home already, wishing the bus would hurry up and get here...
It did, and she got on, huddling in one corner all the way home. She ran inside; all thought of her intention to argue had, for the moment, been pushed to the back of her mind. She shared in her parents' evening breakfast, feeling, if nothing else, grateful to have other people around if the Enemy should suddenly take an interest in her again, and went to her room, where she hid in bed, curtains drawn, until she sank into a restless sleep.
