Lilly came home from playing with Jenny and Bruce - who had stayed as she knew him, a young wolf-boy - to a quietly sunlit house. The window coverings had been torn down, leaving only the curtains to filter the sunlight. She remembered Jon talking with her mom and dad about when it would be safe for them to do that, and it seemed that they hadn't waited any longer than necessary. She guessed they must be tired of living out of the sunlight for so long; she hadn't given much thought to it herself, but she supposed that had been one of the good things about being changed so early on.
She went inside to find her dad sprawled out on the couch, taking a sunny afternoon nap. Her mom was still awake, but was sitting quietly in the recliner, resting. She'd gotten so big lately - as Lilly understood it, the baby might come pretty much any day now. She worried a little about her mom, but she remembered that she'd been okay when Stacy was born, so she should be fine now, too. And anyway, she was too excited by the thought of getting to be the big sister to the baby to be too worried.
Mrs. Gordon smiled at her daughter as she entered. "Hi, honey," she said, sitting up a little straighter. "Did everything go well?"
The squirrel-girl thought for a moment, her tails twitching behind her. "I...I dunno," she said. "A lotta us didn't change back, but all of 'em were pretty okay with it. 'Cept Jon...she was really upset about somethin' when she came, an' then when she didn't change she started cryin' an' ran away. Karyn hadda go get her." She frowned. "I dunno why she was all upset...is she gonna be okay?"
Mrs. Gordon nodded thoughtfully, then shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "She seems like kind of a complicated young lady. But I'm sure she'll be okay, sweetie. She's got some good friends, and it sounds like her parents are good folks too. I'm sure they can help her through this." She scooted over to one side to leave room in the chair for Lilly, who dug in next to her. "How do you feel, Lilly?" she asked. "Are you okay with this?"
Lilly nodded slowly. "I...I think I am," she said. "Some'a this's been really frustratin', but...'m happy like this, I think...an' I got friends I didn't useta have, so I guess it's good even if some of it's frustratin'..." She looked up at her mother. "Is...'s it okay if...if 'm this, always?" she asked, hesitantly. "Really?"
Her mother smiled and hugged her. "It's absolutely okay, Lilly," she said. "You're my child, whether you're my son or my daughter, and I'm happy that you're happy this way. And the frustrating parts will get better soon enough, honey. You'll grow up into a lovely young lady."
The squirrel-girl couldn't help but give a buck-toothed grin as she hugged her mom back. After a minute or so, though, her attention was diverted when she heard someone coming downstairs. She was a little surprised; her mom and dad were both down here, and the footsteps weren't her older brother's heavy clawed thunks; had her mom and dad invited someone over?
She got up and looked to see a girl about her age enter the living room. The girl seemed familiar, but Lilly couldn't quite think of...
Her jaw dropped. "Stacy!?" she gasped. It'd been months since she'd seen her big broth...her little...her sister like this; it seemed like a lifetime ago. Yet here she was, exactly as she had used to be...
Stacy grinned a toothy grin. "Hi, Lilly!" she said, running over to hug her squirrely sister. "You didn't change back!"
Lilly shook her head. "N-nope, I didn't," she said, smiling even though it was still kind of a strange thought that she really was going to be like this for the rest of her life now. "But you did? I thought you liked bein' a dinosaur..."
Stacy smiled a little sadly and nodded. "I did," she said. "It was fun bein' big an' strong, an' gettin' to hunt an' stuff. But...it was kinda confusin'...there was a lotta stuff I didn't really get 'bout bein' a boy. It makes girls treat you weird. I dunno if I woulda liked stayin' that way forever. An' this way I get to grow up like everybody else 'stead a' just bein' older, so I guess that's good too."
"I...I guess so," Lilly said. "But I kinda thought you were always gonna be...my big brother..." She'd kind of grown to rely on having her older brother around to look after her, and she was a little worried about what would happen now. But...well, Hiro wasn't being a jerk anymore, and wherever Julian was, he wasn't picking on her anymore, so...she guessed it would be okay?
Stacy smiled. "But we can be sisters now!" she said, "It's gonna be fun to have you for a sister, Lilly. It'll be good, you'll see!"
Lilly couldn't help but smile. "Y-yeah," she said. "Yeah, it will!"
Sarah had been up early that morning, as she usually was; she'd been becoming more of an early riser since her change. It was hard to believe that it'd already been half a year since she became a harpy; so much had changed in that time... Look at me now! she thought, as she looked herself over in the bathroom mirror. Habitually naked, to the point where it no longer seemed unusual to her (and thankfully, she'd proven to be insulated well enough below her skin to not be severely inconvenienced by the arrival of winter,) sleeping in a nest she'd built herself...hell, even laying her monthly clutch had gotten to seeming about as normal as her period ever had.
Her social life had seen plenty of changes, too. She was taking a much more naturalistic approach to her appearance by necessity (she was pretty adroit with her talons by now, but reaching up to her face with them and simultaneously getting a straight, clear view of herself in the mirror was quite difficult and uncomfortable, so it was pretty much impossible for her to apply makeup with any significant level of detail,) which had further alienated her from the typical high-school upper social hierarchy (not that there had been that far left to go,) but she was making it work pretty well for her by this point, and anyway that had proved to be a good thing; with no point left to trying to conform, she'd been starting to find her place in life outside of the "in crowd." She'd taken up voice lessons, an interest she'd left uncultivated for a long time, and had found it surprisingly easy to get back into; as a harpy, there were interesting new ranges, tones, and articulations that she'd never been capable of as a human, and she was enjoying exploring the possibilities that her new body offered, just as she had with flight.
She had been out stretching her wings at a couple thousand feet late in the morning when a curious thing happened. The Sun, clearer and brighter the further up you went, suddenly changed. She'd been used to the shifting rainbow hues for so long that it was kind of surreal to see the old familiar yellow taking over. She wondered what in the world this could mean, then got a little worried when she wondered if, since the iridescent Sun had caused changes in people, the old Sun might not take away changes from people. At this altitude, that would be...problematic, to say the least. She dropped into as steep of a dive as she could safely manage, circling down to the earth below.
All the same, it didn't feel like anything of the kind was happening to her; she remembered quite well how it had felt to be changing, all those months ago, and there was no similar feeling here. She touched down on a quiet side-street in the downtown area and hurried over to the nearest window for a look at herself. No, nothing. There were the same brightly-colored feathers, the same wings, the same blue-scaled talons that had been hers for months, and not a change in sight.
On the other hand, there was a turtle-man down on the streetcorner who'd had his shell simply split and fall off, and who was rapidly resuming human form as he made a hasty entrance into the Goodwill in search of the pants he was about to need. Huh, she thought to herself. Evidently it was changing some people, but not others...not her. But...what the hey. She'd long since accepted this, long since embraced it. She already knew what she was, and she wasn't a human; she was a harpy. There was no reason to expect that to change, no reason to want it to change. Smiling and shrugging to herself, Sarah once again took flight.
Adam rolled out of bed a lot later than she'd meant to. She knew it was The Big Day, it was just that she was still pretty exhausted from The Bigger Project. Once the basic design for the underwater computer had been nailed down, her boss had pitched it to a couple of friends who dabbled in venture capitalism, and they'd decided to fund it. Then they'd gotten word that some of the bigger tech firms were doing their own investigation into the idea, and the whole project had been kicked into overdrive as they scrambled to first get working beta versions of the hardware with which to snag pre-orders and distribution deals with some of the marine-supply companies that had taken to catering to the developing undersea settlements, and then to turn the beta designs into a viable, release-quality product...
Even with the additional labor that they'd brought on board once it was a fully-funded commercial venture, it had been a hell of a hectic three months for all involved. Adding to that her own daily struggles with adapting to life in this body, and...oy. She was tired. Adam didn't know what lay in store for their little venture into computer hardware; they were first on the market, and it looked like it'd be that way for a good few months, but simply being first wasn't necessarily a guarantee of long-term victory... But it was finished, and it worked, and that was good enough for her. The product was out the door, on schedule, and she was finally getting to rest - on paid vacation, no less, as a thank-you for the hours she'd put in on this.
Still, today was the day, and she had been waiting for it. She'd had a curious few months, dealing with this; it had been so tough at first, as she struggled just to come to terms with the fact that she was this, and the idea that she might be like this forever... Even once she'd met Jon, and learned that the Sun was going to be changed back, there was still the matter of getting through the remaining months until it could be changed back...
But once the project had kicked in, she hardly had time to fret about that because there were so many more pressing concerns. Dealing with the problems of life as a harpy became just part of life in general, something to soldier on through so she could focus on the bigger stuff. As a result, she found herself adjusting to her changed form more now that she wasn't focusing on it. Even egg-laying had become...well, still a nuisance, still something that she was kind of freaked out by, but a predictable freaky nuisance, one she could more or less plan around. Honestly, it made her worry a little about whether she was getting too used to this form...
But it was okay. It was The Big Day, and it would be over soon enough. She got up out of bed, yawned deeply, stretched her wings out to their full span, shook the cobwebs from her head, and glanced at the clock. Eleven; as she recalled, Jon was going to have a little ceremony thing at noon, at which time she'd restore the Sun. Adam wasn't 100% clear on whether the effect would be immediate, but she thought so. Anyway, there was time enough for her to have a late breakfast, clean up, and then go out to see the new Sun and be restored...
Sarah flew in over her house from the front, touching down on the ridge of the roof only to nearly fall right off it in shock. Her father - the flower-woman with the rich red petals that took up probably a quarter of the back yard when spread - was gone! What had happened? There was nothing but a patch of turned-up earth where she had stood...
Sarah blinked, shook her head, and smacked herself on the forehead with a wing. Duh. She'd - he'd - changed back, probably. She glanced over the edge of the roof at the balcony by her room. Her mother's hive was still there, of course, but none of her mother were anywhere to be seen. She supposed it was probably best for them; it would suck for her dad to spend the rest of her life rooted to one spot in the yard, and if he changed back, it would be kind of an issue for her mom to still be a swarm of bees and not a human woman.
Actually, come think, she wasn't sure why what was good or bad for them should have anything to do with it; it wasn't like there was an intelligence behind the processes of the Sun, was it? But then, she herself had changed in a way that ended up benefiting her, and she'd stayed changed, having embraced her new form...but did that prove anything? ...ahh, it didn't matter. Things had worked out for her, and worked out for her folks, apparently; was it that important whether someone up there liked them, or whether it was a lucky roll of the dice?
Shrugging, she dropped softly to the ground below and went into the house. Aunt Iris was there, still a drider. Sarah laughed; of course she would be. It suited her, just like being a harpy suited Sarah. Her parents were there too, both in their old familiar human shapes, clad only in bathrobes at the moment, still looking a bit dazed. Her mom turned to her as she came in. "Oh, Sarah!" she said, smiling but visibly confused. "You...you didn't change back...?"
Sarah smiled and shrugged. "Of course not," she said. "Why would I?"
Why wouldn't I...?
Why wouldn't I? Why?
Adam stared up at the Sun, waiting as she'd been waiting for the last ten minutes. It was the right color, it was the right time, she was fully exposed...so why wasn't she changing back? She ransacked her brain, trying to think of everything Jon had told her. The color was right, the time was right, so obviously Jon had made the wish...what exactly was the wish again? People would change back under the yellow sunlight, unless...unless...
Adam balked. That...that didn't make any sense! How could she possibly be better off like this? She could barely dress herself! She had to get help to bathe! There was no conceivable way that she could be said to be better off this way, or even to have even odds...but...that was the wish Jon had said she was going to make...
...it just didn't make any sense! What, was she going to win the lottery and never have to work again if she stayed a harpy? Because that was the only reason she could think of...
Adam was distracted from her frustrated puzzlement when she spotted a familiar silhouette in the sky. By this time she was learning how to recognize different types of harpies from quite a long way away, and she certainly knew the little crow-girl a few miles in the distance; Hannah had taken something of a shine to her after their meeting. Even explaining that her name wasn't actually "Eve" and she'd used to be a man hadn't diminished the girl's admiration at all. But for some reason Hannah was flying more slowly, less smoothly; it was a bit difficult to tell simply from flight patterns, but it almost seemed to Adam that she was upset about something. She almost started up to go meet her, but she held back; it was pretty clear that Hannah was coming her way, and if she did start to change back, she'd rather that it not be several hundred feet in the air.
As she'd expected, Hannah came in for a landing in Adam's backyard a couple minutes later. She did indeed look upset. Adam came over and put a wing around her. "Hey," she said. "What's wrong?"
Hannah bit her lip. "The...the Sun's changin' people back..." she said. "But...but not all of 'em..." She sighed. "N-not...not me," she finished, choking up a little.
Adam gave her a little hug and sat her down on the grass. "...Me neither," she said, sighing as she forced herself to admit to it. It wasn't happening. She couldn't think of why it wasn't, but it wasn't...
Hannah looked up at her. "W-well, well yeah, but...'s diff'rent for you. You're a grownup, you get ta take care of yourself 'n everything...I'm jus' a kid, an' I gotta get my mom to help with..." She blushed. "...with...a buncha stuff..."
Adam shrugged. "So do I, you know."
Hannah stared at her. "You...really? But you're all grown-up an' stuff..."
Adam laughed, a little bitterly. "Yeah, but I'm still a harpy, aren't I? I've still got wings where my hands used to be. I can't wash my hair by myself, I can't cook on appliances designed for normal people, I can't do a bunch of stuff. I'm living with my mom because she can help me with all of that."
"I...I guess I didn't think a' that," the crow-girl said. "But...if both've us hafta get people to help like this, then...why do we gotta...gotta stay like this? Shouldn't we get ta change back too?"
Adam paused. She could explain to Hannah about Jon, and her wishes, but...she didn't think Jon was eager to have her secret get out to the world at large...and to be honest, as much as that would explain in a strictly mechanical sense why they hadn't gone back to their old forms, it wasn't really satisfactory as a "why." She herself had just been asking the exact same thing, after all. But...what to say to Hannah? It was one thing to just make up an answer that sounded good when a kid's question was something like "why do Santa's reindeer fly" (although as far as she was concerned, it was the Winter Warlock's magic corn, end of story,) but for a real question, about a serious, life-changing series of events...at best, it would be horribly trite to spout off some feel-good nonsense, and at worst, who knew what repercussions it might have down the road?
No, better to...well, to try to give a truthful answer, and just admit she didn't know otherwise. But still...she didn't know, did she? Why would it be like this? Why did she have to rely on her mother for help with things she would otherwise be capable of doing...?
"I...I dunno," she said, quietly. "I guess...I don't know. It's...it's not like norm-like humans...get through life without needing help from people, is it?"
Hannah frowned. "What d'ya mean?"
Adam shrugged. "Well, think about it," she said. "Nobody does everything themselves. People get food from farms run by somebody else, they get their clothes from people who work for clothing manufacturers, they see a doctor when they're sick. All kinds of people get help with all kinds of stuff from other people. Not usually with the stuff you and I need help with, but...well, that's just because they don't need help with it. And at least we have people who know us to help with that, right?" It only did so much to actually reassure Adam herself, but it did at least seem like a reasonable take on the issue...
"But...but this's stuff we're s'poseta be able to do," Hannah said. "It's...'s not like I'm a baby or somethin'!"
Adam nodded. "I know," she said. "But...well, it's different for us. We're different. We're just not...not used to being different, so we still think that we're 'supposed' to be able to do everything exactly the way we did when we were humans." She wrapped a wing around Hannah. "But...trust me," she said, "it's okay. There's no shame in needing help from other people. Everybody depends on other people for things. It's just how people are."
Hannah sighed. "D'you...d'you really think so?"
Adam nodded. "I...yeah," she said. "I do."
"Huh," the crow-girl murmured. She looked up at Adam. "But...why do we gotta stay like this? Even if it's okay for us ta need help...if we changed back like some people, then we wouldn't..."
Adam shrugged. "I...I don't know," she said. "Maybe...maybe it's better for us...?" She still couldn't wrap her mind around that, even though she knew that that was supposed to be how this worked...
"How?" Hannah asked.
"Well...don't you enjoy flying?" Adam asked. "When I met you, you were enjoying yourself so much with it. You're better at it than I am. But if you changed back, you'd never get to fly again...not the same way, anyway."
Hannah couldn't help but smile at that. She did enjoy it...in fact, she hadn't really started to be happy this way at all until Lilly had pushed her into trying to fly. All the same... "But...but 's that make up for everything?" she asked. "For havin' to get help with baths, 'n all the stuff we can't do?"
Adam took a deep breath. What had that ship-woman said to her? She tried to remember. "Look," she said. "I'm going to tell you something that someone who knows about this kind of thing told me. All that stuff? That's just social niceties. Stuff that isn't that important," she clarified. "Where it really counts, we're free - that's what she said. 'You've got the wind to carry you and the wings to sail it.'"
Hannah stared at her, almost smiling. "Y-you...you really think so?"
Adam smiled. "I...I do," she said.
