Jonni heaved a sigh as she finished stuffing her clothes into the box. One thing she could say for skirts, they were more space-efficient than pants had been. And by this point, she was pretty well used to them. She gestured, and her hair straightened itself out from the disarray it'd gotten into in the packing process. That was fairly well on the simple side of the magical spectrum; hair didn't ordinarily move on its own, but it didn't have any objections to flexing one way instead of another. And it was certainly quicker than brushing it out, in a pinch.
She was exceedingly glad that Karyn was coming with her; even apart from their being best friends, this would be the first time she'd face life as a young woman on her own. The college wasn't out of driving distance from home, but it was far enough that she couldn't just run back here any time she needed comfort and familiarity, so it was good to know that Karyn would be there to support her. Perhaps they'd even get to share a dorm room. And of course it was just as comforting to know that Tim would be there too.
On the other hand, she was a bit sad that some of their friends and classmates were going elsewhere. Sarah was apparently getting some interest from a few area bands looking to try out the abilities of a non-human singer, but she'd taken her aunt's and parents' advice and opted to postpone her singing career long enough to finish college...but of course she'd been accepted to a music school out-of-state. The harpy-girl was happy about it, though, and as far as Jonni could tell, she'd gotten good enough at taking care of herself that she could more or less get by without her aunt's assistance now.
Brittany, too, was parting ways. That was a more sobering thought than Sarah's departure, with as much as Jonni owed to the Briton girl. But she knew Brittany had been longing to return to England ever since she left - before her arrival in this time, even. She seldom spoke of it, but it wasn't hard to pick up on, and Jonni had let her know that she had no intention of holding her back. It had taken some work, but she'd been accepted at Cambridge - indeed, they'd shown as much enthusiasm as Jonni expected an 800-year-old institution could allow themselves at the prospect of claiming as an alumnus a woman born and raised in pre-Roman Britain. Jonni was going to miss her friend, but she couldn't be happier for her.
And Max was just taking a year off before deciding where to go from there. The slug-girl had always thought that if she'd let herself do that, she'd probably lose her motivation for going to college at all, but she supposed it made sense for Max; she still had a lot of adjusting to do, and she probably didn't need the pressure of keeping up with studies and college social life while she was still trying to get used to being a six-breasted catgirl. Indeed, Jonni supposed that her unusual bust would be reason enough to stay out of any kind of college environment for a while...even if there were schools in the state where frat-boy rowdiness was kept well in check.
Even at home things were different. Becka had gone home to her parents, who had returned to their old forms in the wake of the restored Sun, though she still maintained a connection with the Madisons, coming over to visit on a regular basis. Jon still found it odd to think that the plucky little girl had once been a much less likeable classmate, but she was happy to have her around; for one thing, it was comforting to know that if anything dangerous ever came up, her family was likely to have one of the Numbers around, and for another...it just felt like Becka was happier this way. She seemed to have carried over most of Biff's good qualities while losing the most pronounced of his bad ones. She'd gotten a bit upset and nervous when puberty had come calling (at an early age, to be sure,) but she seemed to find comfort in having three honorary older sisters to support her; and Micki (officially Michelle, a name she had adopted with the same easy, casual acceptance as she had the rest of her changes) was just happy not to be quite so much the baby of the family anymore.
So many changes! Six months on from the day she'd changed the sun back...a year since this whole thing had started. Hard to believe it was only a year ago, really. So much had changed in that time...not just her own transformation, or the mass of changes to people all over the world, or even the confusion of dealing with her own place in a magical legacy and the attendant (loose) involvement with the battle against threats to the entire world...
Well, okay, those things were pretty astonishing. It was just that Jonni kept finding herself more surprised by the changes to herself. She never could quite figure out whether they were really as pronounced as they felt to her, but she certainly would never have expected to find herself in this situation. Yet here she was, a young woman with a boyfriend, packing to go off to college with both him and her best friend...and she was okay with it.
She still didn't exactly know what she thought of all that. She didn't really feel girly in a poofy-dresses-and-ponies way, and she didn't think she ever would...but by now, she did feel feminine in a simpler sense, without the frilly implications. She had lived as a girl for a year now; she'd experienced both the hardships and some of the joys that came with it. She'd gotten used to having breasts, wearing a bra, caring for her body, being perceived as a girl by society, and so on. She thought of her body in terms of female beauty, and while she didn't really bother with makeup, she still found a little satisfaction in looking nice. These days there wasn't even a question about it; she self-identified as a woman, not because it was something she was reminded of when she looked in the mirror, but because it was a simple fact. She didn't just have the body of a girl, she was a girl.
Not that there wasn't still some adjusting left to do. She was still getting used to being "Jonni," for one. For a nickname that Karyn had started to use half-jokingly a little while after the Sun had changed back and she hadn't, it had kind of stuck; "Jon" was too obviously a boy's name, and while that wasn't much of an issue with her friends and family, it had started to get old having to deal with funny looks and short-version explanations when she gave that name to other people. "Jonni" was close enough that it felt familiar, but drew less attention to her in public situations...but it still felt a little odd sometimes.
The big not-really-addressed issue, though...yes, it was sex. As much as she'd gotten used to day-to-day living in this body, as much as it felt like her natural shape now, the question of her sexual identity was still something she found kind of frightening. It wasn't that she was in denial anymore - she couldn't be, she did experience arousal as a woman, stimulated by heterosexual attraction (she did have a boyfriend, after all,) and it did feel good to her - but it felt like a big thing, kind of a very last link to her old male self. It was just kind of scary to think of letting go of that last piece of her old self, taking that last step into this new life. Scary to think of...of letting him into her, of opening herself up so completely.
But...at the same time, she knew she couldn't put off dealing with it forever. By this point, there was really no point in going back. Probably the stone was capable of changing her back now, but it would take more time and more effort to re-adjust to life as a man, and what would it get her? Nothing that she could see, nothing worth giving up what she had now for. She could stand up to pee and not have to deal with a menstrual cycle, and she could have a girlfriend - but by this point, as much of a nuisance as her period was, it was just part of life, and she simply wasn't attracted to girls anymore. She could still understand what was attractive about them, still appreciate it, but it didn't do anything for her anymore - she knew now that that had been true ever since her change.
Besides...how could she do that to Tim? She loved him. There was a part of her that still found that odd, but even that last little remnant of her old self couldn't find it objectionable. He was her boyfriend, and she his girlfriend, but it wasn't just a little high-school romance; they were in love. She couldn't just walk away from that. Even...even if it did intimidate her a little, wasn't that just part of being in a relationship, learning to trust each other that completely? And he was so patient with her, so gentle about moving forward in their relationship...she was so grateful for that. He was completely understanding about her reticence, willing to wait for her to be ready...
She did and she didn't know how it would all play out. She couldn't keep him waiting forever...it wouldn't be fair to him, and deep down she knew that it wasn't what she would want, either. But she wasn't sure about when she would be ready. Or was she? Her body knew what it wanted...the way she got a bit flush and tingly on those occasions when she saw her drow-boy with his shirt off (she knew he wasn't any kind of masculine ideal, but she found she preferred his softer, gentler look to any of the more chiseled guys she'd observed over the summer,) the dreams she sometimes had...was she just fooling herself? Maybe so. She was in love with him, she was attracted to him physically...and she did trust him. She...she could be intimate with him. It was silly to pretend otherwise.
But that didn't mean they should rush into it. There was still college to get through, after all, and while they had no intention of letting their relationship languish, the fact was that they'd have a lot of other stuff to focus on as well. And while she wasn't sure how Tim's parents felt about it, she knew that hers would prefer that they wait until they were married.
That was quite a thought...but not so earth-shaking an idea as she'd have found it a year ago. By this point, it was starting to feel like the natural progression for things. Again, probably not something for them to jump right into, but she supposed that if Tim asked her tomorrow...she'd say yes. How could she not? Eventually they'd get married...perhaps they'd even have children. (Perhaps, or probably? It was a more intimidating prospect than sex, even, but there was a part of her that did find the idea appealing...) Like everything else in this area of her life, it was a scary thought, but of course it was. It would be a big change; those are always scary.
But she'd made it through one big change, hadn't she? One very big change - from human boy to slug-girl, from a world and life she knew to an unfamiliar body in a changing world. In some ways it seemed strange that the slug part of that took less adjusting than the girl part, but either way...she'd managed. She'd adjusted. Life was different in many ways, but the broad strokes were close enough that she was able to get used to this. And for what it was worth, she'd gotten her wish. This was interesting. Fascinating, even.
She looked out her window, the window through which the light had first reached her. Shading her eyes, she glanced up towards the sun. Yellow once again, but sometimes she thought she caught a glimpse of the old iridescence. Jonni wondered what the future held in store; what kind of world would her children grow up in? (Well, if she had any...?) She'd tried to do what she could to not change the world much further than she already had, and as long as she had the stone, she intended to preserve the good parts of the old world. But who knew where it would all end up, in time? In two thousand years, the world of her birth would probably seem as strange to her descendants as Brittany's did to her. But she hoped...she felt...that it would be a good future.
