Shifti - User contributions [en]

Ratted Out

2014-03-26T03:36:07Z

MarianLH: Finished Act 1

{{WIP}}
{{Universe|Paradise}}
{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Ratted Out
|user= MarianLH}}

'''Tuesday, September 5, 2006'''

Skylar hesitated when she saw the two older kids already waiting at the bus stop, then took a deep breath and forced herself to keep going. ''They can't see it'', she told herself. ''Just act normal''. Sure enough, they only glanced at her―or rather, at the empty air above her head―and then ignored her.

Skylar wouldn't have believed it three weeks ago, but now starting high school wasn't the biggest thing in her life.

"Hey Skylar!"

Skylar turned to see her best friend, Brandi, hurrying up the street. She fought off an urge to run and hide, fixing a smile on her face. ''Just act normal''. Behind her, the school bus was just coming around the corner. "Good timing," she called out.

"Haven't seen you since you got sick in August," Brandi said as she caught up. "How are you? How was the rest of your summer?"

"Sucked," Skylar said. The understatement of the year. No, the century. That was when it had happened, three weeks ago―she'd been sick for days, with like the worst flu ever, and then just when she was feeling better, ''bam!'' She'd woken up to find herself halfway through being transformed into a giant rat-person.

A giant rat-person no one else could see. Her parents, her bratty little brother, hundreds of people at the mall during back-to-school shopping―they all saw the girl she used to be. That had scared her at first, made her think she was going crazy. But she didn't think a delusion would be this vivid, this lucid. She could ''feel'' her fur. And besides, there were things about rats she hadn't even known about until she became one. How could she hallucinate bruxing, for instance, or the need to gnaw, when she hadn't known rats did that?

So she didn't think she was going crazy. Most of the time. But she couldn't talk about it either, not without ''other'' people thinking she was crazy.

Not even with her best friend. Before Brandi could ask any awkward questions, Skylar turned the conversation around. "What about you?" The gambit worked; Brandi chattered on about her own summer while they boarded the bus and found seats.

Which brought her to her first rat-form challenge of the day. She'd taken to wearing skirts exclusively since her transformation, since there was no way she could hide big holes in her jeans from her mom. But that meant she had to sit on her tail all the way to school.

She'd tried on some low-rise jeans during back-to-school shopping, but they hadn't been quite low enough. For her tail, that is―they ''had'' been low enough for Mom to take one look and say, "Forget it."

Nope...no matter how she sat, her tail felt pinched. At home she could slouch forward a bit and make it work, but there wasn't enough room here.

Brandi was looking at her oddly. "Ya got ants in your pants?"

Skylar froze inside, and forced herself to sit still, no matter how uncomfortable it was. "I'm fine," she said. ''Gotta say something quick'', she thought, ''change the subject''. "So, um...are you gonna do band again this year?"

"No," Brandi said sarcastically, patting the black plastic case by her hip. "This is just for show."

"I didn't notice it," Skylar said lamely. She managed to keep the conversation going for the rest of the trip, but it was awkward. And it bothered her the way Brandi looked at and spoke to her forehead. Before her transformation, they'd been about the same height, but now Brandi was nearly half a head taller. She'd gotten accustomed to her new height at home, but seeing her friend looming over her brought it back.

Then there was her enhanced sense of smell. Like her height, she'd mostly gotten used to it around the house, but now she was surrounded by new scents. Everyone on the school bus had their own unique odor, accented by different soaps, shampoos, and other additives. Several of the girls were wearing cheap perfume, one of the seniors used the same bodywash Brandi did, and a boy up near the front was a smoker. Two of the girls had their periods. Then there was the diesel fumes from the bus, the food scents of various lunches, and the cork grease from Brandi's clarinet. And the bus driver needed a shower.

Skylar was glad her mother had forced her into that back-to-school shopping trip the week before. She'd turned into a hermit after ''it'' happened, and Mom had to twist her arm to get her to go, but the experience stood her in good stead now. She'd spent the first half hour or so at the mall completely disoriented by all the scents assaulting her nose, but somewhere along the way, she'd somehow gotten used to it. Now she just registered different scents the same way she saw different colors. It was kinda cool, actually.

The bus finally pulled up at Jefferson High School, and Skylar catapulted up out of her seat before it stopped moving, earning her a glare from the unwashed driver. The base of her tail ached. ''I'm gonna walk to school from now on'', she thought. ''It isn't THAT far''.

Everyone else was getting up too; she stood in the aisle and shouldered her backpack, waiting for the crowd to start moving. Then Brandi moved out behind her...and stepped on her tail. Stars of pain shot up her spine. It hurt so much it was like fireworks exploding in her head. "Brandi!"

"What?"

"Move your foot to the left!" she hissed.

"What? Why?"

"Just do it!"

"Okay, okay, jeez." And then the pressure was mercifully gone.

As soon as her muscles unlocked, Skylar crouched down, awkwardly in the tight confines of the aisle, and picked up the end of her tail. The tip looked red and swollen, and pain radiated out from it in pulsating waves. It felt ''exactly'' like getting a finger caught in a slamming door.

The bus was finally emptying, and she started moving up the aisle toward the door, still holding her tail up.

"Hey, are you crying?" Brandi said. "What the hell?"

She wanted to snarl. ''Tears of pain, bitch'', she thought angrily, and then immediately felt contrite. It wasn't Brandi's fault she couldn't see her tail.

The bus driver hadn't forgotten her, either. "Stay seated until the bus comes to a complete stop," he snapped when she reached the door. Feeling dogpiled from all sides, Skylar just nodded submissively and hurried out, blinking tears from her eyes.

"Asshole," Brandi said. "Are you okay, Sky? What's wrong?"

"Never mind. It's nothing." They were passing through the front doors of the school now, and Skylar just wanted to get away, before Brandi asked her something she couldn't answer. "I―I want to find my locker before first period."

"Me too," Brandi said. "Catch you later." And then, thank god, she was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

Skylar moved carefully down the packed hallway, checking locker numbers and doing her best to shield her tail with her body. She had to let go of it for a minute when she found her assigned locker, to fish out the slip of paper with the combination from her backpack, but she kept a close watch around her and managed to keep it out from underfoot.

She made it to her first class just before the bell rang, sliding into the first empty desk she found. The backs of the seats all had a hole at a convenient height for her tail, but she was still worried about getting stepped on. Besides, it would tent out the back of her skirt, and the last thing she needed was more attention.

The knee-length skirt was loose enough that she was able to slip her tail around her hip, laying it along the outside of her thigh. ''Wish I'd thought of this on the bus. Maybe I won't hafta walk home after all''.

The tip still throbbed, and she began to get seriously worried. ''What if it's broken?'' she thought. ''How's a doctor gonna treat it if he can't even see it? Crap, what if I get hit by a car or something?''

{{Separator|k}}

In another classroom, senior Erik Metzger sat at his desk, doodling in his notebook. He smelled his friend Jeremy coming up behind him, but didn't look up...until the ziploc bag of oregano landed on his desk. "Ha ha," he said. "You could at least use real catnip."

"Don't want to be an enabler," Jeremy said, deadpan. "Besides, your mom loves Italian cooking." He sat down in the next desk over, slinging his backpack over the seat back. "Listen, I think there's one of your people among the new frosh."

"Seeing through the Veil now, are ya?"

"If only. No, she was holding something invisible in her hands. Saw her getting off the bus, and she looked like you do when you're supposedly playing with your tail. She also looked pretty freaked out, but that's probably just cus she's a freshman." He gestured toward the bag of oregano. "Better hide that. Teacher'll think it's pot, eh?"

"From what I hear, the new teacher's more likely to ask me to share than confiscate it. Point me at this freshman when you get a chance, willya?"

The new teacher in question walked in at that point, and despite his breezy assurance, Erik did scoop up the bag of oregano and stuff it in his backpack.

"Hello, class. My name is Ms. Rodriguez. I just transferred here from Boston, so you're all going to go easy on me, right?" Various hoots and catcalls greeted that, and she grinned. "That's what I thought you were gonna say. Let's do roll first, and then we'll start handing out textbooks." She picked up a clipboard. "A lot of Scandinavian names," she mused. "Is that a Minnesota thing?"

"The Vikings didn't pick their name out of a hat, ya know," one of the guys said. Everybody laughed.

{{Separator|k}}

By the end of third period Skylar was starting to feel really frazzled. Sitting with her tail to the side was a partial solution, but it wasn't perfect. She still had to sit forward a little, without the support of the seat back, or else slouch down. And the Phys Sci teacher had gigged her for it, too, telling her to "sit up straight." At least he hadn't thrown chalk at her, like that asshole Mr. Lang in eighth grade.

Her tail wasn't hurting as much, but it was still sore, and her teeth were beginning to ache too. She had a bag of popsicle sticks in her lunchbox, but finding the privacy to gnaw was a problem she hadn't solved yet. ''It's only my first day'', she thought as she trudged out of Civics into the hall, ''and it's only half over. How am I ever gonna manage four YEARS of this?''

"Hey frosh, want some cheese?"

Skylar whirled around with a squeak. Right behind her was another animal-person. He towered over her, almost as big as a grownup, with a feline face and a grin full of fang.

Frightened out of her wits, Skylar backpedaled into someone, who shoved her, and then she was running, hurtling down the hall in a blind panic.

"Hey, wait," the cat-man called after her. "I was only kidding!" But she didn't hear him.

{{Separator|k}}

She ended up in an empty girls' bathroom at the long end of the L-shaped main hallway, hiding in the last stall and shaking like a leaf. Her heart was going a mile a minute. She heard a chattering noise and realized she was bruxing.

The door creaked open, and a male voice said, "Hello?" She recognized the cat-man's scent, and froze.

"Hey, don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt you. C'mon out; we've got a lot to talk about." Skylar stayed silent, sitting as still as possible. "My sense of smell is just as good as yours, ya know," the voice continued, sounding a little impatient now. "I know you're in there. Look, you're not in any danger. Despite appearances we're still mostly human. No predator/prey shit, I promise."

After a beat, he added, "Besides, you'd probably give me heartburn." Skylar still couldn't bring herself to move, but she smiled a little at that.

When another minute had passed without her saying anything, he sighed. "Okay, I'll leave you alone. You can find me later if you wanna talk. There's a lot more of us, ya know." She heard the click of his claws on the tile floor as he walked off, and then the sound of the door swinging shut.

Skylar realized she was being silly. She hurried out the bathroom and saw him walking back up the hall. "Hey!" she called out.

He turned and smiled. "Glad you changed your mind." He came back over, offering his hand, "I'm Erik."

"Skylar."

"Nice to meetcha, Skylar."

Despite the needle-sharp teeth, his smile seemed just friendly now, not predatory. He was a calico, mostly white fur with orange and black patches that clashed badly with his blue and silver letterman jacket.

The bell rang, then. Erik jerked his thumb toward the gym. "Ya got lunch this period?"

{{Separator|k}}

"'Changed', huh?" Skylar mused. "That sounds better than 'rat-person', I guess."

They were eating lunch in a corner of the empty gym, instead of the cafeteria, which gave Skylar some privacy. Erik had been filling her in on what had happened to her while she gnawed. Her and over 500,000 other people, apparently.

She fished another popsicle stick out of her lunchbox and went to work on it. The bruxing she'd done in the bathroom had taken the edge off, but it was still a relief. "We won't get in trouble for eating in here?"

"I never have," he replied. "Nobody cares as long as we don't leave a mess. Clean up your splinters when you're done, by the way."

With her free hand Skylar caught hold of the end of her tail and looked at it. The redness had faded to a purple bruise, and it was still tender to the touch.

"That'll give ya hairy palms, ya know," a new voice said. She looked up to see another senior walking over, lunchbag in hand. Unlike Erik, he was still an ordinary human.

"Jeremy," Erik said, "palms are the one place we ''don't'' have hair. Well, palms and tail, in her case―she's a rat. Jeremy, Skylar, Skylar, Jeremy."

"Nice to meetcha," Jeremy said, sitting down across from them. "A rat, eh?"

"Yeah," Skylar said shyly. She looked at Erik. "He...."

"He's Known," Erik said.

"Known for what?"

"Lots of different things," Jeremy quipped, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. Skylar giggled.

"I guess I walked into that," Erik said. "No, the Known are what we call people who know about us, but aren't Changed themselves. Bass-ackwards, I know, but it rolls off the tongue better than 'Knowing' or 'Knowers' or whatever."

"I voted for 'Know-It-Alls', myself," Jeremy put in.

"You would."

By the end of lunch hour Skylar felt a lot better. Jeremy was obviously one of the senior class clowns, and he kept her in giggles, with Erik as the occasional straight man. And just knowing there were other people out there, that she wasn't alone, made her feel so good she was almost floating.

{{Separator|k}}

Brandi was in her English class, and had gotten there first and saved her a seat. "Missed ya at lunch," she said as Skylar slid into it. "Where were ya?"

Skylar froze, not sure how to answer. "Um...."

"Wow, Sky, didja meet a guy already?"

"No! I mean, yes...I mean, it's not like that. He's a senior―"

Brandi's eyes bugged out. "You got hit on by a senior?"

"No!"

Fortunately the teacher came to her rescue by starting the class. But she could tell Brandi was giving her the side-eye as the period wore on. She castigated herself for not having anticipated this and come up with an excuse―she'd been so wrapped up in the revelations Erik was sharing that it never even occurred to her that her absence at lunch wouldn't go unnoticed.

At least, judging from the processed-cheese smell on Brandi's breath, she hadn't missed much. Cafeteria pizza, yuck.

''I'm gonna hafta be more discreet'', she thought to herself. ''Otherwise Brandi's gonna figure it ou―'' Her thoughts skidded to a halt as the obvious solution presented itself. ''Wait, why keep it a secret? If Erik's friend Jeremy can be a―what was it? A 'Known'? Then why can't I tell Brandi?'' The more she thought about it, the more perfect it sounded.

When the bell rang, she turned to Brandi and said, "Okay, I did have lunch with a guy. Two guys, actually, but it's not whatcha think. I'll tell ya the whole thing after school, if ya don't mind walking home with me."

"''Walking'' home? Why?"

"Because I want to tell you, not the whole bus," Skylar replied. As she slung her bookbag over her shoulder and stood up, she couldn't resist adding, "Besides, I don't wantcha stepping on my tail again."

"Huh?"

{{Separator|k}}

Of course the last two periods dragged on forever. Worse, her last class was Gym, so she had to change clothes afterward. Fortunately they hadn't actually done much, it being the first day, so she could skip the shower. She made a mental note to ask Erik what to do about gym showers in the future. Even with her short fur, getting dry took awhile.

Brandi was waiting at the exit. "Okay, so what's this big secret?" she asked, after they'd been walking a few minutes.

Skylar hemmed and hawed a bit. Now that the moment was here, it was surprisingly hard to actually say the words.

"C'mon, Sky, spill aready."

"Sorry, it's just―"

"Yer gay."

Skylar sputtered. "No, I'm not gay."

"Yer pregnant."

"No, I'm not pregnant!"

"Yer―"

"I'm a giant rat."

There, it was out.

"Uh...what was that again?" Brandi asked.

"I swear ta god it's true. Remember when I got sick in August? It happened then. I thought I was going crazy because no one else could see it, but it's too ''real'' to be a hallucination. I look like...oh, an animal character in a Disney cartoon or something. Mostly still human-shaped, but with a sorta-ratlike face, and big ears and a tail. And fur.

"And then today I found out it isn't just me. There's thousands of people this has happened to. Hundreds of thousands. The number doubles every year. Next year it'll be over a million. Nobody's noticed because they're all invisible. Like me. Um, except to each other."

It wasn't going well. She could tell from Brandi's expression. "Thousands of giant rat-people running around?" she said skeptically.

"Not just rats, all kindsa animals," Skylar said. "Well, not all kinds. Only mammals. No birds or frogs or anything. But the guy today was a cat. And he told me there's dogs and sheep and horses and deer and foxes―the very first person this happened to was a fox, supposedly." She sighed at the look on her friend's face. "Brandi, I'm telling the truth, I swear. I wish I could show you, somehow. Make this stupid Veil drop, just for a minute."

"Veil?"

"The thing that makes us invisible. That's what it's called. Well, one of the things it's called. I gather there's other slang terms in other regions. Field, mask, whatever."

They walked on in silence for a bit. Skylar felt frustrated and cross. This wasn't going at all like she imagined. How had Eric done it?

"What's that noise?" Brandi said abruptly.

Skylar realized she was bruxing again, and forced herself to stop. "It's my teeth," she said.

"You're grinding your teeth?"

It's called bruxing. Grinding my incisors together. It's...a nervous habit, I guess."

"Ohhhh-kay. Whatever."

"I never heard of it either before this happened. That's one of the things that convinced me I hadn't just gone off the deep end. I mean, how could I hallucinate something I dint even know about?"

"Sounds like ya know a lot more now."

"You betcha. I did a lot of googling after this happened. Didja know a group of rats is called a 'mischief'? Also, my fur color is classified as 'Berkshire Pearl' by the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association. Before three weeks ago, I never woulda imagined there's such a thing as an American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association."

They were at their neighborhood now. "I gotta get home," Brandy said. She was looking everywhere but at Skylar.

She sighed. "Yeah, okay. Brandi, please, don't tell anyone. Not our parents, not friends at school, not David Renner―''especially'' not David Renner." They'd known David since kindergarten. He'd pulled on her pigtails at Brandi's 7th birthday party, and hadn't noticeably matured since.

"Sure, Sky, you betcha. After all, who'd believe me?" She headed off toward her house.

Skylar wanted to bite something. ''What did I do wrong?''

'''Wednesday, September 6, 2006'''

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[Category:Anthropomorphic]]
[[Category:Rat]]
[[Category:Paradise]]

User:MarianLH/Future Tails

2013-04-26T04:57:28Z

MarianLH: Found a typo

{{WIP}}
{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Future Tails
|user= MarianLH}}

"Is this the charter boat to Thalassinia?"

''Must be my last passenger'', Mark thought as he turned around toward the pier. And froze in surprise when he saw her. Rolling up in an old-fashioned unpowered wheelchair was a mermaid. Her heard a gasp from one of his other passengers—probably the little girl.

She was sitting with her tail curved around so that it went underneath her and up her behind her back, with her caudal fin spread out behind her shoulders like a peacock's tail. It made for a pretty striking sight.

"I should have guessed when you mentioned the wheelchair," he said, trying to recover some aplomb. He hopped back up from the ''Half Moon'''s deck to the pier.

"Not many paraplegics left in the age of biotech," she agreed as she rolled up to him. She locked the wheels on her chair and held up a webbed hand. "Judi Mrozinski."

He shook it. "Mark Wheeler. Nice to meet you. Need a hand getting aboard?"

"Please. I'm not very mobile on land."

He had to pick her up, and he gave a silent thank-you to those muscle grafts he'd picked up a few years back. She put her arms around his neck to hold on, and he tried not to blush. Thankfully she was wearing clothes—a ruffled skirt that would have been knee-length on a human, and a t-shirt that said "Jersey Girl—you wanna make somethin' of it?"

She was attractive—well, everybody was attractive these days, but she'd managed to find a more original face, distinct from the "off-the-shelf" prettiness most people chose. He got her settled in one of the seats built into the rear deck, then went back for the wheelchair. It folded up easily after he removed a totebag—apparently her only luggage—that was hanging from the handlebars.

When he turned back around, he saw she'd stretched her tail out to its full length. It was easily five feet, maybe closer to six, tapering to a very narrow peduncle, then flaring out into a deeply forked caudal fin. Probably a carbon fiber monofin implanted in there too, he thought. With more than half a century as a boater and fisherman, Mark knew something about fish, and he could tell that Judi had opted for performance over looks. ''She'll be a rocket in the water''.

{{Separator|k}}

While Mark drove the boat, Judi was getting to know the other passengers. David and Mindy Curtis and their nine-year-old daughter Lyra, from Iowa. They looked unmodded, although the kid was almost certainly genefixed given her age.

Lyra very much wanted to be a mermaid when she grew up. "That's why we're making this trip," David was saying. "When she didn't give it up after a couple years, we figured it wasn't just another phase she was going through. So we thought we'd visit Thalassinia and see what it's really like, and if she really wants to do this."

"Can I touch your tail?" Lyra asked.

"Sure, honey," Judi replied with a smile. She lifted her tail off the deck so it was easier to reach. Lyra tentatively ran her fingers along the frilly edge of the caudal fin.

"So howcum you're taking a boat with us?" she asked. "Couldn't you just swim to Thalassinia?"

"Sure I could," Judi answered, "but it would take a long time and be very tiring. You have legs—would you walk from Miami to Fort Myers instead of taking the maglev?"

"Oh, right, duh."

"Going home after vising the mainland, huh?" David said.

"No, actually I'm from Fort Jefferson. I'm in town visiting my parents—they're at Jackson Memorial getting de-aged. Unfortunately there's nowhere to stay in Miami, not that caters to mers. I found an apartment in the Thal, and I'll be staying there for the duration."

"So what do you do for a living?" Mindy asked. Then she blushed. "Sorry. Old habits die hard."

Judi laughed. "I know what you mean. But actually I do have a job, albeit a very part-time one: I'm a physical therapist. Mostly I teach new mers how to breathe underwater."

Lyra, who'd been running her hands over Judi's scales, looked up at that. "Is it very hard?" she asked, obviously interested.

"Not really. Most people get the hang of it very quickly. But there's a lot to remember, about how deep you can go, and how fast you can ascend without getting the bends...things like that."

"Mers can get the bends?" David asked.

Judi nodded. "Yeah. We have some adaptions that unmodded humans don't, but even whales get the bends." She turned back to Lyra. "If you're serious about becoming a mer, well, obviously they won't let you have the surgery till you're sixteen, but in the meantime you could take scuba lessons. They'll teach you a lot of same stuff you need to know."

Seeing the parents exchanging a concerned look, Judi hastened to reassure them. "It's not that bad, really. We're shallow-water fish, most of the time. Mers seldom go down past 60 feet or so, and we've all got diving table apps loaded in our phones. If you need to decompress, your headware will tell you."

"You have phones underwater?" Mindy asked.

Lyra rolled her eyes. "Duh, Mom, of course they do," she said, making that "grownups are dumb" expression kids were so good at. "Where do you think all those videos I watch come from?"

Judi smiled. "If living underwater meant giving up the internet, there'd be a lot fewer mers. You start dropping connectivity past ten fathoms, but I seldom go that deep anyway." She tilted her head and pulled her hair back, to show the waterproofed mUSB port behind her ear. "I've got a Tsutano Aqua, myself. Had it implanted last year."

After giving them a good look, she sat up and let her hair fall. "Don't get me wrong, I love cruising the reef. It's beautiful down there. But you can only spend so much time admiring the scenery. Mostly I'm spending my time the same as everybody else."

"Can I see your gills?" Lyra asked. She made the most adorable puppy eyes. "Pleeeeease?"

"Sure." Judi pulled her shirt off and bent over. "There's not really much to see, though; they only really open up in the water. No, down here honey—below the shoulder blades. See how they follow the ribs?"

"Coooool," Lyra said, running a finger along one seam. "They look like shark gills."

"Actually they're modeled after manta rays'," Judi said. "But you're right, sharks aren't that much different. Closer to them than a regular fish's, anyway."

"Your skin's really cold."

"Of course. You know we're cold-blooded, right? We have to be, there's not enough oxygen in the water to fuel a warm-blooded metabolism."

"Yeah, I read that online," Lyra said, "but I guess I never really thought about it. Is it...different?"

"It's just fine when I'm in the water, as long as I don't go too deep. I prefer it, actually—back when I was a biped it always seemed like my apartment was either too hot or too cold. Now I never have to fuss with a thermostat. But it makes visiting land difficult. Extreme temperatures won't kill me, but anything below 70 or over 95 is really uncomfortable. So's any air-conditioned building."

"Which is pretty much every building in Florida," David said drily.

"Yeah. Visiting my parents in the hospital was...pretty tough. ''Two'' sweaters, a giant tail-sock and a tailfin-cozy, and my teeth were still chattering. Thank god the sushi bar near the hospital had an outdoor patio."

"Is there anything you miss?" Mindy asked. Her eyes flicked to Lyra, who had moved on from her gills and was now exploring her dorsal fin. ''She wants to give the kid as much information as possible about her decision'', Judi figured. ''Especially the downsides''. Not that Judi minded; she'd figured as much from the beginning, which was why she'd put up with all the questioning.

After thinking it over for a minute, she said, "Ice cream. And a lot of the other land foods we can't have, but ice cream most of all."

"You can't visit land and have them?" Lyra asked.

"Some of them, sometimes," Judi replied, "and when we get to Thalassinia you'll see we've got restaurants, and a wide variety of food, just like you have on shore. But not ice cream. It was already really fattening back when I was warm-blooded; now it's like fifteen times worse." She sighed. "Same goes for anything else that has a lot of calories. When I think of some of the epic chocolate binges I had back in the day...they'd probably kill me now."

{{Separator|k}}

Up above them in the pilot house, Mark signed off from his radio exchange with Thalassinian harbor control and turned the boat over to google with a sigh. It was old-fashioned of him, he knew, but he preferred to drive rather than letting the boat pilot itself. That wasn't allowed in the harbor, though.

Thalassinia was named after a fictional mer kingdom in some old children's novel—or so Mark had heard. Located in the same place, too, at the outer end of the so-called "Bimini Road" off the Bahamas. It was the newest and smallest of the three mer colonies in North America, but it was also the most tourist-friendly, which was probably why the Curtises were going here instead of, say, Fort Jefferson.

Thalassinia's harbor was actually outside the town proper, and powered boats weren't allowed inside—the locals understandably didn't want to get run over while they were swimming about. The harbor itself was just a circular platform surrounded by a breakwater, with docks radiating out from it like the spokes of a wheel, and a small terminal at the hub that housed the harbor control and a departure lounge. A central trunk ran down to the sea floor—less than thirty feet down, here—where air-breathing tourists boarded a monorail that took them to the town, running through a clear tunnel on the sea floor.

The ''Half Moon'' was slowly cruising around the harbor. As usual there wasn't an open berth—the Thalassinians had really underestimated the amount of tourist traffic when they designed the place. He turned around to tell his passengers there'd be a delay in docking, and froze, going beet red with embarrassment. Judi had lost the shirt sometime during the trip, and was now getting rid of the skirt as well, stuffing them both in the canvas totebag from earlier. Contrary to all the old jokes about "the mermaid problem", her...ah...equipment...was plainly visible. As he'd heard, it looked pretty much like a dolphin's.

She didn't seem the slightest bit uncomfortable letting it all hang out, and neither did the Curtises. Times like this, he felt every one of his 64 years. Modern medicine could rewind his biological clock back to 25—or earlier, if he'd chosen—but it couldn't help him acclimate to all the cultural changes.

Doing his best to put all that out of his mind, he cleared his throat and called down, "folks, it looks like there's gonna be a delay docking. Harbor control says it'll probably be 15-20 minutes."

"How come your face is so red?" Lyra asked innocently.

''God...bless...little girls and their unique combination of perceptiveness and no tact'', Mark thought. As soon as she'd spoken, all three of the adults had looked sharply at him, then started smirking. "Uh...just a bit of sun," he said lamely. He knew he wasn't fooling anyone except the kid, and probably not even her.

And of course, being a kid, she didn't see any reason not to say so. "It's not that hot today," she said. "If it was, Judi'd be in trouble." She turned to Judi, who was trying not to laugh. "Right?"

Finally, Mindy came to his rescue. "Lyra, hon, is there anything else you want to ask Judi before we dock?" She too was trying to control herself. "I assume you're not taking the monorail with us," she added to Judi.

The mer nodded. "As soon as I can get a dock robot to take care of my wheelchair, I'm going over the side. I've been out of the water since early morning; my gills are starting to itch."

"I could take care of it for you," Mark offered.

"That eager to get rid of me, huh?" she teased.

"No! I mean—uh, it's fine, I just...I mean...." He trailed off, flustered. She was leaning back in her seat to look up at him, and he was obviously looking everwhere except straight down.

"Wow, Mark," she said, "I got the impression you were a bit old-fashioned, but...don't you run a charter out here, like, two or three times a week? Don't you see mers all the time?"

"Not out of the water," he said. "Heck, you hardly see them out here in the harbor at all."

"I see. Well, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. If you'll have a bot take care of my things, I'll get out of your hair."

"No, I—" but she was already gone, disappearing over the side with a splash.

Lyra's "grownups are so dumb" expression was back.

{{Separator|k}}

Judi flew through the water, swimming with powerful, angry strokes of her tail. The last bubbles of air blew out of her lungs, and she switched the valve in her trachea and started breathing water. As the sea began flowing through her parched gills, it soothed away an ache she hadn't realized was there.

It didn't take her more than a minute to find the monorail tunnel and oriented herself. That's also how long it took her to cool down and start feeling guilty. So Mark was a bit of a fuddy-duddy. So what? It hadn't been an attack on her.

She swam through a shoal of damselfish and startled a bonnethead. The little shark took one look at her and skedaddled. ''That's right buddy, keep walkin'. You know who the bigger fish is''.

And now she was snapping at sharks. This was getting ridiculous.

She owed Mark an apology, that was clear. Fortunately in this day and age that was an easy thing to take care of. Pulling up his website—the same one she'd originally booked passage through—she found the little "contact us" link at the bottom and started mentally composing an email.

:::::Mark,
:::::
:::::I apologize for flying off the handle like I did. I overreacted,
:::::and I'm sorry. I'll be heading back to the mainland on Tuesday,
:::::and I'd be happy to hire your charter again.

:::::I'll keep my shirt on. Promise. ^_^

:::::Judi.

She hit SEND, feeling much better.

Thalassinia was below her now, and she dove down for a closer look. The town consisted of concentric rings of houses radiating out from a huge central building—the famed Coral Palace. As the name implied, it was styled up to look like a castle made of coral. The outlying buildings were also designed to look like organic structures.

It all looked like something out of ''The Little Mermaid'', a storybook Disney idea of an underwater fairyland. To Judi, who lived on an ''actual'' coral reef, the result was somewhat gauche. But real corals and barnacles were already colonizing the structures. Another generation or two, and this place would be just as much a living reef as her home.

There was a waypoint on her phone's augmented reality display, highlighting her new apartment, but she ignored it for the moment. She wanted to check out the Palace.

She'd seen pictures and videos of it, of course. The Coral Palace boasted of being the first building designed to create "a shared social space" for mers and air-breathers. The three upper towers were completely dry; they contained hotel rooms for the bipeds and weren't much different from any landside hotel, albeit one decorated in a coral-castle motif.

But its real claim to fame was the Promenade, a gigantic half-flooded mall where mers and air-breathers could intermingle. Depth varied, but most of the shops, restaurants, and parks were around three feet deep. Waist-high on a biped, and just deep enough for a mer to sit with their head above water. Judi had read several accounts of the place; she was looking forward to experiencing it for herself.

The price of becoming a mer was a certain isolation from the surface world. As Judi had found out firsthand, there were a lot of challenges facing a mer who went back to land. Most mers didn't bother, especially when modern social media made it trivially easy to stay in touch from a distance. But despite her hippie naturalism, Judi was an old fuddy-duddy herself, in her own way. Augmented reality may have come a long way since the first smartphones, but it still wasn't the same as physically being there.

Judi missed her old friends, the ones she'd been close to before going to the sea. Not to mention her parents—she'd been very close with them, before they went into suspension. A few more days and they'd be waking up, for the first time in over a decade. A phone call just wouldn't do.

But she couldn't visit them either, not very often. Being out of the water was just too much of an ordeal. She'd lied to the Curtises, a bit—extreme temperatures ''would'' kill her, if she was stupid enough to stay out in them long enough. And a typical summer day in Florida counted as "extreme" by her standards. The hospital and the rest of her family had been willing to accommodate her, scheduling her parents' treatment for early spring, but in a few more weeks she'd be unable to go ashore at all.

So a place like the Promenade, where her friends and family could come to ''her'', and they could spend time together without killing her or making her miserable—that was something Judi was very much interested in.

There had been attempts at creating warm-blooded mers, of course. And biotech firms continued to make progress on some of the engineering challenges—just last fall Pelagia had announced a new subdermal nanofilm that insulated as well as blubber, without adding more than a few nanometers of bulk.

The real killer was endurance. A warm-blooded mer ''had'' to be an air-breather—as she'd told Lyra, there just wasn't enough oxygen in the water. And even with cetacean myoglobin, military-grade hyperlungs—including a big third one in the tail—and every other possible genemod the boffins could cram in, a warm-blooded mer could only stay under for an hour and a half. That was still an impressive feat of engineering, considering that nature's champion diver, the sperm whale, had an endurance of only 45 minutes even with trolley-sized lungs.

But for the kind of person who wanted to become a mer, 90 minutes didn't cut it. Not even close.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[category:Mermaid]]
[[Category:Science fiction]]

User:MarianLH/Future Tails

2013-03-09T19:19:16Z

MarianLH: A page's worth of new material, plus several tweaks and word changes to the existing text.

{{WIP}}
{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Future Tails
|user= MarianLH}}

"Is this the charter boat to Thalassinia?"

''Must be my last passenger'', Mark thought as he turned around toward the pier. And froze in surprise when he saw her. Rolling up in an old-fashioned unpowered wheelchair was a mermaid. Her heard a gasp from one of his other passengers—probably the little girl.

She was sitting with her tail curved around so that it went underneath her and up her behind her back, with her caudal fin spread out behind her shoulders like a peacock's tail. It made for a pretty striking sight.

"I should have guessed when you mentioned the wheelchair," he said, trying to recover some aplomb. He hopped back up from the ''Half Moon'''s deck to the pier.

"Not many paraplegics left in the age of biotech," she agreed as she rolled up to him. She locked the wheels on her chair and held up a webbed hand. "Judi Mrozinski."

He shook it. "Mark Wheeler. Nice to meet you. Need a hand getting aboard?"

"Please. I'm not very mobile on land."

He had to pick her up, and he gave a silent thank-you to those muscle grafts he'd picked up a few years back. She put her arms around his neck to hold on, and he tried not to blush. Thankfully she was wearing clothes—a ruffled skirt that would have been knee-length on a human, and a t-shirt that said "Jersey Girl—you wanna make somethin' of it?"

She was attractive—well, everybody was attractive these days, but she'd managed to find a more original face, distinct from the "off-the-shelf" prettiness most people chose. He got her settled in one of the seats built into the rear deck, then went back for the wheelchair. It folded up easily after he removed a totebag—apparently her only luggage—that was hanging from the handlebars.

When he turned back around, he saw she'd stretched her tail out to its full length. It was easily five feet, maybe closer to six, tapering to a very narrow peduncle, then flaring out into a deeply forked caudal fin. Probably a carbon fiber monofin implanted in there too, he thought. With more than half a century as a boater and fisherman, Mark knew something about fish, and he could tell that Judi had opted for performance over looks. ''She'll be a rocket in the water''.

{{Separator|k}}

While Mark drove the boat, Judi was getting to know the other passengers. David and Mindy Curtis and their nine-year-old daughter Lyra, from Iowa. They looked unmodded, although the kid was almost certainly genefixed given her age.

Lyra very much wanted to be a mermaid when she grew up. "That's why we're making this trip," David was saying. "When she didn't give it up after a couple years, we figured it wasn't just another phase she was going through. So we thought we'd visit Thalassinia and see what it's really like, and if she really wants to do this."

"Can I touch your tail?" Lyra asked.

"Sure, honey," Judi replied with a smile. She lifted her tail off the deck so it was easier to reach. Lyra tentatively ran her fingers along the frilly edge of the caudal fin.

"So howcum you're taking a boat with us?" she asked. "Couldn't you just swim to Thalassinia?"

"Sure I could," Judi answered, "but it would take a long time and be very tiring. You have legs—would you walk from Miami to Fort Myers instead of taking the maglev?"

"Oh, right, duh."

"Going home after vising the mainland, huh?" David said.

"No, actually I'm from Fort Jefferson. I'm in town visiting my parents—they're at Jackson Memorial getting de-aged. Unfortunately there's nowhere to stay in Miami, not that caters to mers. I found an apartment in the Thal, and I'll be staying there for the duration."

"So what do you do for a living?" Mindy asked. Then she blushed. "Sorry. Old habits die hard."

Judi laughed. "I know what you mean. But actually I do have a job, albeit a very part-time one: I'm a physical therapist. Mostly I teach new mers how to breathe underwater."

Lyra, who'd been running her hands over Judi's scales, looked up at that. "Is it very hard?" she asked, obviously interested.

"Not really. Most people get the hang of it very quickly. But there's a lot to remember, about how deep you can go, and how fast you can ascend without getting the bends...things like that."

"Mers can get the bends?" David asked.

Judi nodded. "Yeah. We have some adaptions that unmodded humans don't, but even whales get the bends." She turned back to Lyra. "If you're serious about becoming a mer, well, obviously they won't let you have the surgery till you're sixteen, but in the meantime you could take scuba lessons. They'll teach you a lot of same stuff you need to know."

Seeing the parents exchanging a concerned look, Judi hastened to reassure them. "It's not that bad, really. We're shallow-water fish, most of the time. Mers seldom go down past 60 feet or so, and we've all got diving table apps loaded in our phones. If you need to decompress, your headware will tell you."

"You have phones underwater?" Mindy asked.

Lyra rolled her eyes. "Duh, Mom, of course they do," she said, making that "grownups are dumb" expression kids were so good at. "Where do you think all those videos I watch come from?"

Judi smiled. "If living underwater meant giving up the internet, there'd be a lot fewer mers. You start dropping connectivity past ten fathoms, but I seldom go that deep anyway." She tilted her head and pulled her hair back, to show the waterproofed mUSB harbor behind her ear. "I've got a Tsutano Aqua, myself. Had it implanted last year."

After giving them a good look, she sat up and let her hair fall. "Don't get me wrong, I love cruising the reef. It's beautiful down there. But you can only spend so much time admiring the scenery. Mostly I'm spending my time the same as everybody else."

"Can I see your gills?" Lyra asked. She made the most adorable puppy eyes. "Pleeeeease?"

"Sure." Judi pulled her shirt off and bent over. "There's not really much to see, though; they only really open up in the water. No, down here honey—below the shoulder blades. See how they follow the ribs?"

"Coooool," Lyra said, running a finger along one seam. "They look like shark gills."

"Actually they're modeled after manta rays'," Judi said. "But you're right, sharks aren't that much different. Closer to them than a regular fish's, anyway."

"Your skin's really cold."

"Of course. You know we're cold-blooded, right? We have to be, there's not enough oxygen in the water to fuel a warm-blooded metabolism."

"Yeah, I read that online," Lyra said, "but I guess I never really thought about it. Is it...different?"

"It's just fine when I'm in the water, as long as I don't go too deep. I prefer it, actually—back when I was a biped it always seemed like my apartment was either too hot or too cold. Now I never have to fuss with a thermostat. But it makes visiting land difficult. Extreme temperatures won't kill me, but anything below 70 or over 95 is really uncomfortable. So's any air-conditioned building."

"Which is pretty much every building in Florida," David said drily.

"Yeah. Visiting my parents in the hospital was...pretty tough. ''Two'' sweaters, a giant tail-sock and a tailfin-cozy, and my teeth were still chattering. Thank god the sushi bar near the hospital had an outdoor patio."

"Is there anything you miss?" Mindy asked. Her eyes flicked to Lyra, who had moved on from her gills and was now exploring her dorsal fin. ''She wants to give the kid as much information as possible about her decision'', Judi figured. ''Especially the downsides''. Not that Judi minded; she'd figured as much from the beginning, which was why she'd put up with all the questioning.

After thinking it over for a minute, she said, "Ice cream. And a lot of the other land foods we can't have, but ice cream most of all."

"You can't visit land and have them?" Lyra asked.

"Some of them, sometimes," Judi replied, "and when we get to Thalassinia you'll see we've got restaurants, and a wide variety of food, just like you have on shore. But not ice cream. It was already really fattening back when I was warm-blooded; now it's like fifteen times worse." She sighed. "Same goes for anything else that has a lot of calories. When I think of some of the epic chocolate binges I had back in the day...they'd probably kill me now."

{{Separator|k}}

Up above them in the pilot house, Mark signed off from his radio exchange with Thalassinian harbor control and turned the boat over to google with a sigh. It was old-fashioned of him, he knew, but he preferred to drive rather than letting the boat pilot itself. That wasn't allowed in the harbor, though.

Thalassinia was named after a fictional mer kingdom in some old children's novel—or so Mark had heard. Located in the same place, too, at the outer end of the so-called "Bimini Road" off the Bahamas. It was the newest and smallest of the three mer colonies in North America, but it was also the most tourist-friendly, which was probably why the Curtises were going here instead of, say, Fort Jefferson.

Thalassinia's harbor was actually outside the town proper, and powered boats weren't allowed inside—the locals understandably didn't want to get run over while they were swimming about. The harbor itself was just a circular platform surrounded by a breakwater, with docks radiating out from it like the spokes of a wheel, and a small terminal at the hub that housed the harbor control and a departure lounge. A central trunk ran down to the sea floor—less than thirty feet down, here—where air-breathing tourists boarded a monorail that took them to the town, running through a clear tunnel on the sea floor.

The ''Half Moon'' was slowly cruising around the harbor. As usual there wasn't an open berth—the Thalassinians had really underestimated the amount of tourist traffic when they designed the place. He turned around to tell his passengers there'd be a delay in docking, and froze, going beet red with embarrassment. Judi had lost the shirt sometime during the trip, and was now getting rid of the skirt as well, stuffing them both in the canvas totebag from earlier. Contrary to all the old jokes about "the mermaid problem", her...ah...equipment...was plainly visible. As he'd heard, it looked pretty much like a dolphin's.

She didn't seem the slightest bit uncomfortable letting it all hang out, and neither did the Curtises. Times like this, he felt every one of his 64 years. Modern medicine could rewind his biological clock back to 25—or earlier, if he'd chosen—but it couldn't help him acclimate to all the cultural changes.

Doing his best to put all that out of his mind, he cleared his throat and called down, "folks, it looks like there's gonna be a delay docking. Harbor control says it'll probably be 15-20 minutes."

"How come your face is so red?" Lyra asked innocently.

''God...bless...little girls and their unique combination of perceptiveness and no tact'', Mark thought. As soon as she'd spoken, all three of the adults had looked sharply at him, then started smirking. "Uh...just a bit of sun," he said lamely. He knew he wasn't fooling anyone except the kid, and probably not even her.

And of course, being a kid, she didn't see any reason not to say so. "It's not that hot today," she said. "If it was, Judi'd be in trouble." She turned to Judi, who was trying not to laugh. "Right?"

Finally, Mindy came to his rescue. "Lyra, hon, is there anything else you want to ask Judi before we dock?" She too was trying to control herself. "I assume you're not taking the monorail with us," she added to Judi.

The mer nodded. "As soon as I can get a dock robot to take care of my wheelchair, I'm going over the side. I've been out of the water since early morning; my gills are starting to itch."

"I could take care of it for you," Mark offered.

"That eager to get rid of me, huh?" she teased.

"No! I mean—uh, it's fine, I just...I mean...." He trailed off, flustered. She was leaning back in her seat to look up at him, and he was obviously looking everwhere except straight down.

"Wow, Mark," she said, "I got the impression you were a bit old-fashioned, but...don't you run a charter out here, like, two or three times a week? Don't you see mers all the time?"

"Not out of the water," he said. "Heck, you hardly see them out here in the harbor at all."

"I see. Well, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. If you'll have a bot take care of my things, I'll get out of your hair."

"No, I—" but she was already gone, disappearing over the side with a splash.

Lyra's "grownups are so dumb" expression was back.

{{Separator|k}}

Judi flew through the water, swimming with powerful, angry strokes of her tail. The last bubbles of air blew out of her lungs, and she switched the valve in her trachea and started breathing water. As the sea began flowing through her parched gills, it soothed away an ache she hadn't realized was there.

It didn't take her more than a minute to find the monorail tunnel and oriented herself. That's also how long it took her to cool down and start feeling guilty. So Mark was a bit of a fuddy-duddy. So what? It hadn't been an attack on her.

She swam through a shoal of damselfish and startled a bonnethead. The little shark took one look at her and skedaddled. ''That's right buddy, keep walkin'. You know who the bigger fish is''.

And now she was snapping at sharks. This was getting ridiculous.

She owed Mark an apology, that was clear. Fortunately in this day and age that was an easy thing to take care of. Pulling up his website—the same one she'd originally booked passage through—she found the little "contact us" link at the bottom and started mentally composing an email.

:::::Mark,
:::::
:::::I apologize for flying off the handle like I did. I overreacted,
:::::and I'm sorry. I'll be heading back to the mainland on Tuesday,
:::::and I'd be happy to hire your charter again.

:::::I'll keep my shirt on. Promise. ^_^

:::::Judi.

She hit SEND, feeling much better.

Thalassinia was below her now, and she dove down for a closer look. The town consisted of concentric rings of houses radiating out from a huge central building—the famed Coral Palace. As the name implied, it was styled up to look like a castle made of coral. The outlying buildings were also designed to look like organic structures.

It all looked like something out of ''The Little Mermaid'', a storybook Disney idea of an underwater fairyland. To Judi, who lived on an ''actual'' coral reef, the result was somewhat gauche. But real corals and barnacles were already colonizing the structures. Another generation or two, and this place would be just as much a living reef as her home.

There was a waypoint on her phone's augmented reality display, highlighting her new apartment, but she ignored it for the moment. She wanted to check out the Palace.

She'd seen pictures and videos of it, of course. The Coral Palace boasted of being the first building designed to create "a shared social space" for mers and air-breathers. The three upper towers were completely dry; they contained hotel rooms for the bipeds and weren't much different from any landside hotel, albeit one decorated in a coral-castle motif.

But its real claim to fame was the Promenade, a gigantic half-flooded mall where mers and air-breathers could intermingle. Depth varied, but most of the shops, restaurants, and parks were around three feet deep. Waist-high on a biped, and just deep enough for a mer to sit with their head above water. Judi had read several accounts of the place; she was looking forward to experiencing it for herself.

The price of becoming a mer was a certain isolation from the surface world. As Judi had found out firsthand, there were a lot of challenges facing a mer who went back to land. Most mers didn't bother, especially when modern social media made it trivially easy to stay in touch from a distance. But despite her hippie naturalism, Judi was an old fuddy-duddy herself, in her own way. Augmented reality may have come a long way since the first smartphones, but it still wasn't the same as physically being there.

Judi missed her old friends, the ones she'd been close to before going to the sea. Not to mention her parents—she'd been very close with them, before they went into suspension. A few more days and they'd be waking up, for the first time in over a decade. A phone call just wouldn't do.

But she couldn't visit them either, not very often. Being out of the water was just too much of an ordeal. She'd lied to the Curtises, a bit—extreme temperatures ''would'' kill her, if she was stupid enough to stay out in them long enough. And a typical summer day in Florida counted as "extreme" by her standards. The hospital and the rest of her family had been willing to accommodate her, scheduling her parents' treatment for early spring, but in a few more weeks she'd be unable to go ashore at all.

So a place like the Promenade, where her friends and family could come to ''her'', and they could spend time together without killing her or making her miserable—that was something Judi was very much interested in.

There had been attempts at creating warm-blooded mers, of course. And biotech firms continued to make progress on some of the engineering challenges—just last fall Pelagia had announced a new subdermal nanofilm that insulated as well as blubber, without adding more than a few nanometers of bulk.

The real killer was endurance. A warm-blooded mer ''had'' to be an air-breather—as she'd told Lyra, there just wasn't enough oxygen in the water. And even with cetacean myoglobin, military-grade hyperlungs—including a big third one in the tail—and every other possible genemod the boffins could cram in, a warm-blooded mer could only stay under for an hour and a half. That was still an impressive feat of engineering, considering that nature's champion diver, the sperm whale, had an endurance of only 45 minutes even with trolley-sized lungs.

But for the kind of person who wanted to become a mer, 90 minutes didn't cut it. Not even close.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[category:Mermaid]]
[[Category:Science fiction]]

User:MarianLH/Future Tails

2013-02-23T18:29:25Z

MarianLH: typos and tweaks

{{WIP}}
{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Future Tails
|user= MarianLH}}

"Is this the charter boat to Thalassinia?"

''Must be my last passenger'', Mark thought as he turned around toward the pier. And froze in surprise when he saw her. Rolling up in an old-fashioned unpowered wheelchair was a mermaid. Her heard a gasp from one of his other passengers—probably the little girl.

She was sitting with her tail folded around so that it went up her behind her back, with her caudal fin spread out behind her shoulders like a peacock's tail. It made for a pretty striking sight. "I should have guessed when you mentioned the wheelchair," he said, trying to recover some aplomb. He hopped back up from the ''Half Moon'''s deck to the pier.

"Not many paraplegics left in the age of biotech," she agreed as she rolled up to him. She locked the wheels on her chair and held up a webbed hand. "Judi Mrozinski."

He shook it. "Mark Wheeler. Nice to meet you. Need a hand getting aboard?"

"Please. I'm not very mobile on land."

He had to pick her up, and he gave a silent thank-you to those muscle grafts he'd picked up a few years back. She put her arms around his neck to hold on, and he tried not to blush. Thankfully she was wearing clothes—a ruffled skirt that would have been knee-length on a human, and a t-shirt that said "Jersey Girl—you wanna make somethin' of it?"

She was attractive—well, everybody was attractive these days, but she'd managed to find a more original face, distinct from the "off-the-shelf" prettiness most people chose. He got her settled in one of the seats built into the rear deck, then went back for the wheelchair. It folded up easily after he removed a totebag—apparently her only luggage—that was hanging from the handlebars.

When he turned back around, he saw she'd stretched her tail out to its full length. It was easily five feet, maybe closer to six, tapering to a very narrow caudal peduncle, then flaring out in a narrow, deeply forked caudal fin. ''Probably a carbon fiber monofin implanted in there too'', he thought. With more than half a century as a boater and fisherman, Mark knew something about fish, and he could tell that Judi had opted for performance over looks. ''She'll be a rocket in the water''.

{{Separator|k}}

While Mark drove the boat, Judi was getting to know the other passengers. David and Mindy Curtis and their nine-year-old daughter Lyra, from Iowa. They looked unmodded, although the kid was almost certainly genefixed given her age.

Lyra very much wanted to be a mermaid when she grew up. "That's why we're making this trip," David was saying. "When she didn't give it up after a couple years, we figured it wasn't just another phase she was going through. So we thought we'd visit Thalassinia and see what it's really like, and if she really wants to do this."

"Can I touch your tail?" Lyra asked.

"Sure, honey," Judi replied with a smile. She lifted her tail off the deck so it was easier to reach. Lyra tentatively ran her fingers along the frilly edge of the caudal fin.

"So howcum you're taking a boat with us?" she asked. "Couldn't you just swim to Thalassinia?"

"Sure I could," Judi answered, "but it would take a long time and be very tiring. You have legs—would you walk from Miami to Fort Myers instead of taking the maglev?"

"Oh, right, duh."

"Going home after vising the mainland, huh?" David said.

"No, actually I'm from Fort Jefferson. I'm in town visiting my parents—they're at Jackson Memorial getting de-aged. Unfortunately there's nowhere to stay in Miami, not that caters to mers. I found an apartment in the Thal, and I'll be staying there for the duration."

"So what do you do for a living?" Mindy asked. Then she blushed. "Sorry. Old habits die hard."

Judi laughed. "I know what you mean. But actually I do have a job, albeit a very part-time one: I'm a physical therapist. Mostly I teach new mers how to breathe underwater."

Lyra, who'd been running her hands over Judi's scales, looked up at that. "Is it very hard?" she asked, obviously interested.

"Not really. Most people get the hang of it very quickly. But there's a lot to remember, about how deep you can go, and how fast you can ascend without getting the bends...things like that."

"Mers can get the bends?" David asked.

Judi nodded. "Yeah. We have some adaptions that unmodded humans don't, but even whales get the bends." She turned back to Lyra. "If you're serious about becoming a mer, well, obviously they won't let you have the surgery till you're sixteen, but in the meantime you could take scuba lessons. They'll teach you a lot of same stuff you need to know."

Seeing the parents exchanging a concerned look, Judi hastened to reassure them. "It's not that bad, really. We're shallow-water fish, most of the time. Mers seldom go down past one atmosphere—that's 33 feet—and we've all got diving table apps loaded in our phones. If you need to decompress, your headware will tell you."

"You have phones underwater?" Mindy asked.

Lyra rolled her eyes. "Duh, Mom, of course they do," she said, making that "grownups are so dumb" expression kids were so good at. "Where do you think all those videos I watch come from?"

Judi smiled. "If living underwater meant giving up the internet, there'd be a lot fewer mers. You start dropping connectivity past five fathoms, but I seldom go that deep anyway." She tilted her head and pulled her hair back, to show the waterproofed mUSB port behind her ear. "I've got a Tsutano Aqua, myself. Had it implanted last year."

After giving them a good look, she sat up and let her hair fall. "Don't get me wrong, I love cruising the reef. It's beautiful down there. But you can only spend so much time admiring the scenery. Mostly I'm spending my time the same as everybody else."

"Can I see your gills?" Lyra asked. She made the most adorable puppy eyes. "Pleeeeease?"

"Sure." Judi pulled her shirt off and bent over. "There's not really much to see, though; they only really open up in the water. No, down here, honey—below the shoulder blades. See how they follow the ribs?"

"Coooool," Lyra said, running a finger along one seam. "They look like shark gills."

"Actually they're modeled after manta rays'," Judi said. "But you're right, sharks aren't that much different. Closer to them than a regular fish's, anyway."

"Your skin's really cold."

"Of course. You know we're cold-blooded, right? We have to be, there's not enough oxygen in the water to fuel a warm-blooded metabolism."

"Yeah, I read that online," Lyra said, "but I guess I never really thought about it. Is it...different?"

"It's just fine when I'm in the water, as long as I don't go too deep. I prefer it, actually—back when I was a biped it always seemed like my apartment was either too hot or too cold. Now I never have to fuss with a thermostat. But it makes visiting land difficult. Extreme temperatures won't kill me, but anything below 60 or over 95 is really uncomfortable. So's any air-conditioned building."

"Which is pretty much every building in Florida," David said drily.

"Yeah. Visiting my parents in the hospital was...pretty tough. ''Two'' sweaters, a giant tail-sock and a tailfin-cozy, and my teeth were still chattering. Thank god the sushi bar near the hospital had an outdoor patio."

"Is there anything you miss?" Mindy asked. Her eyes flicked to Lyra, who had moved on from her gills and was now exploring her dorsal fin. ''She wants to give the kid as much information as possible about her decision'', Judi figured. ''Especially the downsides''. Not that Judi minded; she'd figured as much from the beginning, which was why she'd put up with all the questioning.

After thinking it over for a minute, she said, "Ice cream. And a lot of the other land foods we can't have, but ice cream most of all."

"You can't visit land and have them?" Lyra asked.

"Some of them, sometimes," Judi replied, "and when we get to Thalassinia you'll see we've got restaurants, and a wide variety of food, just like you have on shore. But not ice cream. It was already really fattening back when I was warm-blooded; now it's like fifteen times worse." She sighed. "Same goes for anything else that has a lot of calories. When I think of some of the epic chocolate binges I had back in the day...they'd probably kill me now."

{{Separator|k}}

Up above them in the pilot house, Mark signed off from his radio exchange with Thalassinian harbor control and turned the boat over to the google with a sigh. It was old-fashioned of him, he knew, but he preferred to drive rather than letting the boat pilot itself. That wasn't allowed in the harbor, though.

Thalassinia was named after a fictional mer kingdom in some old children's novel—or so Mark had heard. Located in the same place, too, at the outer end of the so-called "Bimini Road" off the Bahamas. It was the newest and smallest of the three mer colonies in North America, but it was also the most tourist-friendly, which was probably why the Curtises were going here instead of, say, Fort Jefferson.

Thalassinia's harbor was actually outside the town proper, and powered boats weren't allowed inside—the locals understandably didn't want to get run over while they were swimming about. The harbor itself was just a circular platform, with docks radiating out from it like the spokes of a wheel, and a small terminal at the hub that housed the harbor control and a departure lounge. A central trunk ran down to the sea floor—less than thirty feet down, here—where air-breathing tourists boarded a monorail that took them to the town, running through a clear tunnel on the sea floor.

The ''Half Moon'' was slowly cruising around the harbor. As usual there wasn't an open berth—the Thalassinians had really underestimated the amount of tourist traffic when they designed the place. He turned around to tell his passengers there'd be a delay in docking, and froze, going beet red with embarrassment. Judi had lost the shirt sometime during the trip, and was now getting rid of the skirt as well, stuffing them both in the canvas totebag from earlier. Contrary to all the old jokes about "the mermaid problem", her...ah...equipment...was plainly visible. As he'd heard, it looked pretty much like a dolphin's.

She didn't seem the slightest bit uncomfortable letting it all hang out, and neither did the Curtises. Times like this, he felt every one of his 64 years. Modern medicine could rewind his biological clock back to 25—or earlier, if he'd chosen—but it couldn't help him acclimate to all the changes.

Doing his best to put all that out of his mind, he cleared his throat and called down, "folks, it looks like there's gonna be a delay docking. Harbor control says it'll probably be 15-20 minutes."

"How come your face is so red?" Lyra asked innocently.

''God...bless...little girls and their unique combination of perceptiveness and no tact'', Mark thought. As soon as she'd spoken, all three of the adults had looked sharply at him, then started smirking. "Uh...just a bit of sun," he said lamely. He knew he wasn't fooling anyone except the kid, and probably not even her.

And of course, being a kid, she didn't see any reason not to say so. "It's not that hot today," she said. "If it was, Judi'd be in trouble." She turned to Judi, who was trying not to laugh. "Right?"

Finally, Mindy came to his rescue. "Lyra, hon, is there anything else you want to ask Judi before we dock?" She too was trying to control herself. "I assume you're not taking the monorail with us," she added to Judi.

The mer nodded. "As soon as I can get a dock robot to take care of my wheelchair, I'm going over the side. I've been out of the water since early morning; my gills are starting to itch."

"I could take care of it for you," Mark offered.

"That eager to get rid of me, huh?" she teased.

"No! I mean—uh, it's fine, I just...I mean...." He trailed off, flustered. She was leaning back in her seat to look up at him, and he was obviously looking everwhere except straight down.

"Wow, Mark," she said, "I got the impression you were a bit old-fashioned, but...don't you run a charter out here, like, two or three times a week? Don't you see mers all the time?"

"Not out of the water," he said. "Heck, you hardly see them out here in the harbor at all."

"I see. Well, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. If you'll have a bot take care of my things, I'll get out of your hair."

"No, I—" but she was already gone, disappearing over the side with a splash.

Lyra's "grownups are so dumb" expression was back.

{{Separator|k}}

Judi flew through the water, swimming with powerful, angry strokes of her tail. The last bubbles of air blew out of her lungs, and she switched the valve in her trachea and started breathing water. As the sea began flowing through her parched gills, it soothed away an ache she hadn't realized was there.

It didn't take her more than a minute to find the monorail tunnel and oriented herself. That's also how long it took her to cool down and start feeling guilty. So Mark was a bit of a fuddy-duddy. So what? It hadn't been an attack on her.

She swam through a shoal of damselfish and startled a bonnethead. The little shark took one look at her and skedaddled. ''That's right buddy, keep walkin'. You know who the bigger fish is''.

And now she was snapping at sharks. This was getting ridiculous.

There had been attempts at creating warm-blooded mers. And biotech firms continued to make progress on some of the engineering challenges—just last fall Pelagia had announced a new subdermal nanofilm that insulated as well as blubber, without adding more than a few nanometers of bulk.

But the real killer was endurance. Even with cetecean myoglobin, military-grade hyperlungs—including a big third one in the tail—and every other possible genemod the boffins could cram in, a warm-blooded mer could only stay under for an hour and a half. That was still an impressive feat of engineering, considering that nature's champion diver, the sperm whale, had an endurance of only 45 minutes even with trolley-size lungs.

But for the kind of person who wanted to become a mer, 90 minutes didn't cut it. Not even close.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[category:Mermaid]]
[[Category:Science fiction]]

User:MarianLH/Future Tails

2013-02-23T17:04:15Z

MarianLH:

{{WIP}}
{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Future Tails
|user= MarianLH}}

"Is this the charter boat to Thalassinia?"

''Must be my last passenger'', Mark thought as he turned around toward the pier. And froze in surprise when he saw her. Rolling up in an old-fashioned unpowered wheelchair was a mermaid. Her heard a gasp from one of his other passengers—probably the little girl.

She was sitting with her tail folded around so that it went up her behind her back, with her caudal fin spread out behind her shoulders like a peacock's tail. It made for a pretty striking sight. "I should have guessed when you mentioned the wheelchair," he said, trying to recover some aplomb. He hopped back up from the ''Half Moon'''s deck to the pier.

"Not many paraplegics left in the age of biotech," she agreed as she rolled up to him. She locked the wheels on her chair and held up a webbed hand. "Judi Mrozinski."

He shook it. "Mark Wheeler. Nice to meet you. Need a hand getting aboard?"

"Please. I'm not very mobile on land."

He had to pick her up, and he gave a silent thank-you to those muscle grafts he'd picked up a few years back. She put her arms around his neck to hold on, and he tried not to blush. Thankfully she was wearing clothes—a ruffled skirt that would have been knee-length on a human, and a t-shirt that said "Jersey Girl—you wanna make somethin' of it?"

She was attractive—well, everybody was attractive these days, but she'd managed to find a more original face, distinct from the "off-the-shelf" prettiness most people chose. He got her settled in one of the seats built into the rear deck, then went back for the wheelchair. It folded up easily after he removed a totebag—apparently her only luggage—that was hanging from the handlebars.

When he turned back around, he saw she'd stretched her tail out to its full length. It was easily five feet, maybe closer to six, tapering to a very narrow caudal peduncle, then flaring out in a deeply forked caudal fin. ''Probably a carbon fiber monofin implanted in there too'', he thought. With more than half a century as a boater and fisherman, Mark knew something about fish, and he could tell that Judi had opted for performance over looks. ''She'll be a rocket in the water''.

{{Separator|k}}

While Mark drove the boat, Judi was getting to know the other passengers. David and Mindy Curtis and their nine-year-old daughter Lyra, from Iowa. They looked unmodded, although the kid was almost certainly genefixed given her age.

Lyra very much wanted to be a mermaid when she grew up. "That's why we're making this trip," David was saying. "When she didn't give it up after a couple years, we figured it wasn't just another phase she was going through. So we thought we'd visit Thalassinia and see what it's really like, and if she really wants to do this."

"Can I touch your tail?" Lyra asked.

"Sure, honey," Judi replied with a smile. She lifted her tail off the deck so it was easier to reach. Lyra tentatively ran her fingers along the frilly edge of the caudal fin.

"So howcum you're taking a boat with us?" she asked. "Couldn't you just swim to Thalassinia?"

"Sure I could," Judi answered, "but it would take a long time and be very tiring. You have legs—would you walk from Miami to Fort Myers instead of taking the maglev?"

"Oh, right, duh."

"Going home after vising the mainland, huh?" David said.

"No, actually I'm from Fort Jefferson. I'm in town visiting my parents—they're at Jackson Memorial getting de-aged. Unfortunately there's nowhere to stay in Miami, not that caters to mers. I found an apartment in the Thal, and I'll be staying there for the duration."

"So what do you do for a living?" Mindy asked. Then she blushed. "Sorry. Old habits die hard."

Judi laughed. "I know what you mean. But actually I do have a job, albeit a very part-time one: I'm a physical therapist. Mostly I teach new mers how to breathe underwater."

Lyra, who'd been running her hands over Judi's scales, looked up at that. "Is it very hard?" she asked, obviously interested.

"Not really. Most people get the hang of it very quickly. But there's a lot to remember, about how deep you can go, and how fast you can ascend without getting the bends...things like that."

"Mers can get the bends?" David asked.

Judi nodded. "Yeah. We have some adaptions that unmodded humans don't, but even whales get the bends." She turned back to Lyra. "If you're serious about becoming a mer, well, obviously they won't let you have the surgery till you're sixteen, but in the meantime you could take scuba lessons. They'll teach you a lot of same stuff you need to know."

Seeing the parents exchanging a concerned look, Judi hastened to reassure them. "It's not that bad, really. We're shallow-water fish, most of the time. Mers seldom go down past one atmosphere—that's 33 feet—and we've all got diving table apps loaded in our phones. If you need to decompress, your headware will tell you."

"You have phones underwater?" Mindy asked.

Lyra rolled her eyes. "Duh, Mom, of course they do," she said, making that "grownups are so dumb" expression kids were so good at. "Where do you think all those videos I watch come from?"

Judi smiled. "If living underwater meant giving up the internet, there'd be a lot fewer mers. You start dropping connectivity past five fathoms, but I seldom go that deep anyway." She tilted her head and pulled her hair back, to show the waterproofed mUSB port behind her ear. "I've got a Tsutano Aqua, myself. Had it implanted last year."

After giving them a good look, she sat up and let her hair fall. "Don't get me wrong, I love cruising the reef. It's beautiful down there. But you can only spend so much time admiring the scenery. Mostly I'm spending my time the same as everybody else."

"Can I see your gills?" Lyra asked. She made the most adorable puppydog eyes. "Pleeeeease?"

"Sure." Judi pulled her shirt off and bent over. "There's not really much to see, though; they only really open up in the water. No, down here, honey—below the shoulder blades. See how they follow the ribs?"

"Coooool," Lyra said, running a finger along one seam. "They look like shark gills."

"Actually they're modeled after manta rays'," Judi said. "But you're right, sharks aren't that much different. Closer to them than a regular fish's, anyway."

"Your skin's really cold."

"Of course. You know we're cold-blooded, right? We have to be, there's not enough oxygen in the water to fuel a warm-blooded metabolism."

"Yeah, I read that online," Lyra said, "but I guess I never really thought about it. Is it...different?"

"It's just fine when I'm in the water, as long as I don't go too deep. I prefer it, actually—back when I was a biped it always seemed like my apartment was either too hot or too cold. Now I never have to fuss with a thermostat. But it makes visiting land difficult. Extreme temperatures won't kill me, but anything below 60 or over 95 is really uncomfortable. So's any air-conditioned building."

"Which is pretty much every building in Florida," David said drily.

"Yeah. Visiting my parents in the hospital was...pretty tough. Two sweaters, a giant tail-sock and a tailfin-cozy, and my teeth were still chattering. Thank god the sushi bar near the hospital had an outdoor patio."

"Is there anything you miss?" Mindy asked. Her eyes flicked to Lyra, who had moved on from her gills and was now exploring her dorsal fin. ''She wants to give the kid as much information as possible about her decision'', Judi figured. ''Especially the downsides''. Not that Judi minded; she'd figured as much from the beginning, which was why she'd put up with all the questioning.

After thinking it over for a minute, she said, "Ice cream. And a lot of the other land foods we can't have, but ice cream most of all."

"You can't visit land and have them?" Lyra asked.

"Some of them, sometimes," Judi replied, "and when we get to Thalassinia you'll see we've got restaurants, and a wide variety of food, just like you have on shore. But not ice cream. It was already really fattening back when I was warm-blooded; now it's like fifteen times worse." She sighed. "Same goes for anything else that has a lot of calories. When I think of some of the epic chocolate binges I had back in the day...they'd probably kill me now."

{{Separator|k}}

Up above them in the pilot house, Mark signed off from his radio exchange with Thalassinian harbor control and turned the boat over to google with a sigh. It was old-fashioned of him, he knew, but he preferred to drive rather than letting the boat pilot itself. That wasn't allowed in the harbor, unfortunately.

Thalassinia was named after a fictional mer kingdom in some old children's novel—or so Mark had heard. Located in the same place, too, at the far end of the Bimini Road from the Bahamas. It was the newest and smallest of the three mer colonies in North America, but it was also the most tourist-friendly, which was probably why the Curtises were going here instead of, say, Fort Jefferson.

Thalassinia's harbor was actually outside the town proper, and powered boats weren't allowed inside—the locals understandably didn't want to get run over while they were swimming about. The harbor itself was just a circular platform, with docks radiating out from it like the spokes of a wheel, and a small terminal at the hub. A central trunk ran down to the sea floor—less than thirty feet down, here—where air-breathing tourists boarded a monorail that took them to the town, running through a clear tunnel on the sea floor.

The ''Half Moon'' was slowly cruising around the harbor. As usual there wasn't an open berth—the Thalassinians had really underestimated the amount of tourist traffic when they designed the place. He turned around to tell his passengers there'd be a delay in docking, and froze, going beet red with embarrassment. Judi had lost the shirt sometime during the trip, and was now getting rid of the skirt as well, stuffing them both in the canvas totebag from earlier. Contrary to all the old jokes about "the mermaid problem", her...ah...equipment...was plainly visible. As he'd heard, it looked pretty much like a dolphin's.

She didn't seem the slightest bit uncomfortable letting it all hang out, and neither did the Curtises. Times like this, he felt every one of his 64 years. Modern medicine could rewind his biological clock back to 25—or earlier, if he'd chosen—but it couldn't help him acclimate to all the changes.

Doing his best to put all that out of his mind, he cleared his throat and called down, "folks, it looks like there's gonna be a delay docking. Harbor control says it'll probably be 15-20 minutes."

"How come your face is so red?" Lyra asked innocently.

''God...bless...little girls and their unique combination of perceptiveness and no tact'', Mark thought. As soon as she'd spoken, all three of the adults had looked sharply at him, then started smirking. "Uh...just a bit of sun," he said lamely. He knew he wasn't fooling anyone except the kid, and probably not even her.

And of course, being a kid, she didn't see any reason not to say so. "It's not hot today," she said. "If it was, Judi'd be in trouble." She turned to Judi, who was trying not to laugh. "Right?"

Mercifully, Mindy came to his rescue. "Lyra, hon, is there anything else you want to ask Judi before we dock?" She too was trying to control herself. "I assume you're not taking the monorail with us," she added to Judi.

The mer nodded. "As soon as I can get a dock robot to take care of my wheelchair, I'm going over the side. I've been out of the water since early morning; my gills are starting to itch."

"I could take care of it for you," Mark offered. "The wheelchair, I mean."

"That eager to get rid of me, huh?" she teased.

"No! I mean—uh, it's fine, I just...I mean...." He trailed off, flustered. She was leaning back in her seat to look up at him, and he was obviously looking everywhere except straight down.

"Wow, Mark," she said, "I got the impression you were a bit old-fashioned, but...don't you run a charter out here, like, two or three times a week? Don't you see mers all the time?"

"Not out of the water," he said defensively. "Heck, you hardly see them out here in the harbor at all."

"I see. Well, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. If you'll have a bot take care of my things, I'll get out of your hair."

"No, I—" but she was already gone, disappearing over the side with a splash.

Lyra's "grownups are so dumb" expression was back.

{{Separator|k}}

Judi flew through the water, swimming with powerful, angry strokes of her tail. The last bubbles of air blew out of her lungs, and she switched the valve in her trachea and started breathing water. As the sea began flowing through her parched gills, it soothed away an ache she hadn't realized was there.

It didn't take her more than a minute to find the monorail tunnel and oriented herself. That's also how long it took her to cool down and start feeling guilty. So Mark was a bit of a fuddy-duddy. So what? It hadn't been an attack on her.

She swam through a shoal of damselfish and startled a bonnethead. The little shark took one look at her and skedaddled. ''That's right buddy, keep walkin'. You know who the bigger fish is''.

And now she was snapping at sharks. This was getting ridiculous.

There had been attempts at creating warm-blooded mers. And biotech firms continued to make progress on some of the engineering challenges—just last fall Pelagia had announced a new subdermal nanofilm that insulated as well as blubber, without adding more than a few nanometers of bulk.

But the real killer was endurance. Even with cetecean myoglobin, military-grade hyperlungs—including a big third one in the tail—and every other possible genemod the boffins could cram in, a warm-blooded mer could only stay under for an hour and a half. That was still an impressive feat of engineering, considering that nature's champion diver, the sperm whale, had an endurance of only 45 minutes—and that was with trolley-size lungs.

But for the kind of person who wanted to become a mer, 90 minutes didn't cut it. Not even close.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[category:Mermaid]]
[[Category:Science fiction]]

User:MarianLH/Future Tails

2013-02-23T17:03:25Z

MarianLH: typos and tweaks, and a bit more story

{{WIP}}
{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Future Tails
|user= MarianLH}}

"Is this the charter boat to Thalassinia?"

''Must be my last passenger'', Mark thought as he turned around toward the pier. And froze in surprise when he saw her. Rolling up in an old-fashioned unpowered wheelchair was a mermaid. Her heard a gasp from one of his other passengers—probably the little girl.

She was sitting with her tail folded around so that it went up her behind her back, with her caudal fin spread out behind her shoulders like a peacock's tail. It made for a pretty striking sight. "I should have guessed when you mentioned the wheelchair," he said, trying to recover some aplomb. He hopped back up from the ''Half Moon'''s deck to the pier.

"Not many paraplegics left in the age of biotech," she agreed as she rolled up to him. She locked the wheels on her chair and held up a webbed hand. "Judi Mrozinski."

He shook it. "Mark Wheeler. Nice to meet you. Need a hand getting aboard?"

"Please. I'm not very mobile on land."

He had to pick her up, and he gave a silent thank-you to those muscle grafts he'd picked up a few years back. She put her arms around his neck to hold on, and he tried not to blush. Thankfully she was wearing clothes—a ruffled skirt that would have been knee-length on a human, and a t-shirt that said "Jersey Girl—you wanna make somethin' of it?"

She was attractive—well, everybody was attractive these days, but she'd managed to find a more original face, distinct from the "off-the-shelf" prettiness most people chose. He got her settled in one of the seats built into the rear deck, then went back for the wheelchair. It folded up easily after he removed a totebag—apparently her only luggage—that was hanging from the handlebars.

When he turned back around, he saw she'd stretched her tail out to its full length. It was easily five feet, maybe closer to six, tapering to a very narrow caudal peduncle, then flaring out in a narrow, deeply forked caudal fin. ''Probably a carbon fiber monofin implanted in there too'', he thought. With more than half a century as a boater and fisherman, Mark knew something about fish, and he could tell that Judi had opted for performance over looks. ''She'll be a rocket in the water''.

{{Separator|k}}

While Mark drove the boat, Judi was getting to know the other passengers. David and Mindy Curtis and their nine-year-old daughter Lyra, from Iowa. They looked unmodded, although the kid was almost certainly genefixed given her age.

Lyra very much wanted to be a mermaid when she grew up. "That's why we're making this trip," David was saying. "When she didn't give it up after a couple years, we figured it wasn't just another phase she was going through. So we thought we'd visit Thalassinia and see what it's really like, and if she really wants to do this."

"Can I touch your tail?" Lyra asked.

"Sure, honey," Judi replied with a smile. She lifted her tail off the deck so it was easier to reach. Lyra tentatively ran her fingers along the frilly edge of the caudal fin.

"So howcum you're taking a boat with us?" she asked. "Couldn't you just swim to Thalassinia?"

"Sure I could," Judi answered, "but it would take a long time and be very tiring. You have legs—would you walk from Miami to Fort Myers instead of taking the maglev?"

"Oh, right, duh."

"Going home after vising the mainland, huh?" David said.

"No, actually I'm from Fort Jefferson. I'm in town visiting my parents—they're at Jackson Memorial getting de-aged. Unfortunately there's nowhere to stay in Miami, not that caters to mers. I found an apartment in the Thal, and I'll be staying there for the duration."

"So what do you do for a living?" Mindy asked. Then she blushed. "Sorry. Old habits die hard."

Judi laughed. "I know what you mean. But actually I do have a job, albeit a very part-time one: I'm a physical therapist. Mostly I teach new mers how to breathe underwater."

Lyra, who'd been running her hands over Judi's scales, looked up at that. "Is it very hard?" she asked, obviously interested.

"Not really. Most people get the hang of it very quickly. But there's a lot to remember, about how deep you can go, and how fast you can ascend without getting the bends...things like that."

"Mers can get the bends?" David asked.

Judi nodded. "Yeah. We have some adaptions that unmodded humans don't, but even whales get the bends." She turned back to Lyra. "If you're serious about becoming a mer, well, obviously they won't let you have the surgery till you're sixteen, but in the meantime you could take scuba lessons. They'll teach you a lot of same stuff you need to know."

Seeing the parents exchanging a concerned look, Judi hastened to reassure them. "It's not that bad, really. We're shallow-water fish, most of the time. Mers seldom go down past one atmosphere—that's 33 feet—and we've all got diving table apps loaded in our phones. If you need to decompress, your headware will tell you."

"You have phones underwater?" Mindy asked.

Lyra rolled her eyes. "Duh, Mom, of course they do," she said, making that "grownups are so dumb" expression kids were so good at. "Where do you think all those videos I watch come from?"

Judi smiled. "If living underwater meant giving up the internet, there'd be a lot fewer mers. You start dropping connectivity past five fathoms, but I seldom go that deep anyway." She tilted her head and pulled her hair back, to show the waterproofed mUSB port behind her ear. "I've got a Tsutano Aqua, myself. Had it implanted last year."

After giving them a good look, she sat up and let her hair fall. "Don't get me wrong, I love cruising the reef. It's beautiful down there. But you can only spend so much time admiring the scenery. Mostly I'm spending my time the same as everybody else."

"Can I see your gills?" Lyra asked. She made the most adorable puppydog eyes. "Pleeeeease?"

"Sure." Judi pulled her shirt off and bent over. "There's not really much to see, though; they only really open up in the water. No, down here, honey—below the shoulder blades. See how they follow the ribs?"

"Coooool," Lyra said, running a finger along one seam. "They look like shark gills."

"Actually they're modeled after manta rays'," Judi said. "But you're right, sharks aren't that much different. Closer to them than a regular fish's, anyway."

"Your skin's really cold."

"Of course. You know we're cold-blooded, right? We have to be, there's not enough oxygen in the water to fuel a warm-blooded metabolism."

"Yeah, I read that online," Lyra said, "but I guess I never really thought about it. Is it...different?"

"It's just fine when I'm in the water, as long as I don't go too deep. I prefer it, actually—back when I was a biped it always seemed like my apartment was either too hot or too cold. Now I never have to fuss with a thermostat. But it makes visiting land difficult. Extreme temperatures won't kill me, but anything below 60 or over 95 is really uncomfortable. So's any air-conditioned building."

"Which is pretty much every building in Florida," David said drily.

"Yeah. Visiting my parents in the hospital was...pretty tough. Two sweaters, a giant tail-sock and a tailfin-cozy, and my teeth were still chattering. Thank god the sushi bar near the hospital had an outdoor patio."

"Is there anything you miss?" Mindy asked. Her eyes flicked to Lyra, who had moved on from her gills and was now exploring her dorsal fin. ''She wants to give the kid as much information as possible about her decision'', Judi figured. ''Especially the downsides''. Not that Judi minded; she'd figured as much from the beginning, which was why she'd put up with all the questioning.

After thinking it over for a minute, she said, "Ice cream. And a lot of the other land foods we can't have, but ice cream most of all."

"You can't visit land and have them?" Lyra asked.

"Some of them, sometimes," Judi replied, "and when we get to Thalassinia you'll see we've got restaurants, and a wide variety of food, just like you have on shore. But not ice cream. It was already really fattening back when I was warm-blooded; now it's like fifteen times worse." She sighed. "Same goes for anything else that has a lot of calories. When I think of some of the epic chocolate binges I had back in the day...they'd probably kill me now."

{{Separator|k}}

Up above them in the pilot house, Mark signed off from his radio exchange with Thalassinian harbor control and turned the boat over to google with a sigh. It was old-fashioned of him, he knew, but he preferred to drive rather than letting the boat pilot itself. That wasn't allowed in the harbor, unfortunately.

Thalassinia was named after a fictional mer kingdom in some old children's novel—or so Mark had heard. Located in the same place, too, at the far end of the Bimini Road from the Bahamas. It was the newest and smallest of the three mer colonies in North America, but it was also the most tourist-friendly, which was probably why the Curtises were going here instead of, say, Fort Jefferson.

Thalassinia's harbor was actually outside the town proper, and powered boats weren't allowed inside—the locals understandably didn't want to get run over while they were swimming about. The harbor itself was just a circular platform, with docks radiating out from it like the spokes of a wheel, and a small terminal at the hub. A central trunk ran down to the sea floor—less than thirty feet down, here—where air-breathing tourists boarded a monorail that took them to the town, running through a clear tunnel on the sea floor.

The ''Half Moon'' was slowly cruising around the harbor. As usual there wasn't an open berth—the Thalassinians had really underestimated the amount of tourist traffic when they designed the place. He turned around to tell his passengers there'd be a delay in docking, and froze, going beet red with embarrassment. Judi had lost the shirt sometime during the trip, and was now getting rid of the skirt as well, stuffing them both in the canvas totebag from earlier. Contrary to all the old jokes about "the mermaid problem", her...ah...equipment...was plainly visible. As he'd heard, it looked pretty much like a dolphin's.

She didn't seem the slightest bit uncomfortable letting it all hang out, and neither did the Curtises. Times like this, he felt every one of his 64 years. Modern medicine could rewind his biological clock back to 25—or earlier, if he'd chosen—but it couldn't help him acclimate to all the changes.

Doing his best to put all that out of his mind, he cleared his throat and called down, "folks, it looks like there's gonna be a delay docking. Harbor control says it'll probably be 15-20 minutes."

"How come your face is so red?" Lyra asked innocently.

''God...bless...little girls and their unique combination of perceptiveness and no tact'', Mark thought. As soon as she'd spoken, all three of the adults had looked sharply at him, then started smirking. "Uh...just a bit of sun," he said lamely. He knew he wasn't fooling anyone except the kid, and probably not even her.

And of course, being a kid, she didn't see any reason not to say so. "It's not hot today," she said. "If it was, Judi'd be in trouble." She turned to Judi, who was trying not to laugh. "Right?"

Mercifully, Mindy came to his rescue. "Lyra, hon, is there anything else you want to ask Judi before we dock?" She too was trying to control herself. "I assume you're not taking the monorail with us," she added to Judi.

The mer nodded. "As soon as I can get a dock robot to take care of my wheelchair, I'm going over the side. I've been out of the water since early morning; my gills are starting to itch."

"I could take care of it for you," Mark offered. "The wheelchair, I mean."

"That eager to get rid of me, huh?" she teased.

"No! I mean—uh, it's fine, I just...I mean...." He trailed off, flustered. She was leaning back in her seat to look up at him, and he was obviously looking everywhere except straight down.

"Wow, Mark," she said, "I got the impression you were a bit old-fashioned, but...don't you run a charter out here, like, two or three times a week? Don't you see mers all the time?"

"Not out of the water," he said defensively. "Heck, you hardly see them out here in the harbor at all."

"I see. Well, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. If you'll have a bot take care of my things, I'll get out of your hair."

"No, I—" but she was already gone, disappearing over the side with a splash.

Lyra's "grownups are so dumb" expression was back.

{{Separator|k}}

Judi flew through the water, swimming with powerful, angry strokes of her tail. The last bubbles of air blew out of her lungs, and she switched the valve in her trachea and started breathing water. As the sea began flowing through her parched gills, it soothed away an ache she hadn't realized was there.

It didn't take her more than a minute to find the monorail tunnel and oriented herself. That's also how long it took her to cool down and start feeling guilty. So Mark was a bit of a fuddy-duddy. So what? It hadn't been an attack on her.

She swam through a shoal of damselfish and startled a bonnethead. The little shark took one look at her and skedaddled. ''That's right buddy, keep walkin'. You know who the bigger fish is''.

And now she was snapping at sharks. This was getting ridiculous.

There had been attempts at creating warm-blooded mers. And biotech firms continued to make progress on some of the engineering challenges—just last fall Pelagia had announced a new subdermal nanofilm that insulated as well as blubber, without adding more than a few nanometers of bulk.

But the real killer was endurance. Even with cetecean myoglobin, military-grade hyperlungs—including a big third one in the tail—and every other possible genemod the boffins could cram in, a warm-blooded mer could only stay under for an hour and a half. That was still an impressive feat of engineering, considering that nature's champion diver, the sperm whale, had an endurance of only 45 minutes—and that was with trolley-size lungs.

But for the kind of person who wanted to become a mer, 90 minutes didn't cut it. Not even close.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[category:Mermaid]]
[[Category:Science fiction]]

User talk:MarianLH/Future Tails

2013-02-21T05:10:45Z

MarianLH:

== Story Notes ==

I had an epiphany a few years ago: "if and when the technology exists, real life will look like ''Second Life''." By which I mean that, if they could, a lot of people would modify and customize their real bodies the way they do an online avatar. And from what I've been reading over the last year, the technology is more a question of when than if. This story is set in a future where that's come to pass, but it's still relatively new enough that the more extremely-modded "parahumans", like mers and furs, are rare and subjected to a lot of curiosity.

This story doesn't (and won't) have any sex, but there is some nudity. Par for the course with mermaids. I don't think it's enough to warrant an XXX tag, but if anyone disagrees, let me know.

User:MarianLH/Future Tails

2013-02-21T05:08:45Z

MarianLH:

User talk:MarianLH/Future Tails

2013-02-21T01:53:45Z

MarianLH: Added story notes

User:MarianLH/Future Tails

2013-02-21T01:50:39Z

MarianLH: New story

User:MarianLH

2013-02-21T01:16:57Z

MarianLH: Added a new story link

==About Myself==
Marian is my real name. I am a transsexual woman, went "full-time", as we say, in 1998, although I couldn't afford the surgery until 2010. I discovered Shifti via the TV Tropes page for Jon Buck's [[Paradise (Setting)|Paradise setting]].

Growing up with gender dysphoria, I was attracted to transformation stories from a very young age. Especially TG ones. Some early favorites were Piers Anthony's ''Crewel Lye'' and John Varley's ''Steel Beach''. I discovered the furry culture in the early 90s, and spent most of that decade hanging out on FurryMUCK and SPR as a snow leopard named Shaia.

==My Stories==

Where the Tree Fails: this is a self-indulgent portal fantasy set in the world of the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game. (Species)
*[[Chapter One|Chapter One: A Wizard Did It]]
*[[User:MarianLH/Chapter Two|Chapter Two]]

[[User:MarianLH/Kissin' the Day|Kissin' the Day]]: This was the first Paradise story I began writing, although it will probably be the last one finished, as it's the most personal. It's the only one to include a gender change. (Gender & Species)

[[Ratted Out]]: My second Paradise story. Skylar gets hit by the Change right before starting her freshman year of high school, and soon finds out who her real friends are. (Species)

[[User:MarianLH/Down the Rabbit Hole|Down the Rabbit Hole]]: My third Paradise story. This one looks at the Change from the outside, as Emily slowly discovers that the man she's dating isn't quite what he seems.... (Species)

[[User:MarianLH/Masks|Masks]]: After a magical artifact very publicly transforms him into a girl, Tyler has to adapt to the changes in her life--and so does everyone else. (Gender)

[[User:MarianLH/Future Tails|Future Tails]]: Romance between a mermaid and a human in a near future setting where biotech body modification is just beginning to become common.

==Favorites==

Disclaimer: I have yet to read more than a fraction of the stories on Shifti, so if your story isn't here, it's not necessarily a comment on its quality.

[[User:Robotech_Master/Romancing_the_Changed|Romancing the Changed]]: I like the [[Paradise (Setting)|Paradise]] shared universe, I like romance, and I love the movie ''Romancing the Stone'', so this story was a perfect storm of squee for me.

Most the rest of the Paradise stories could also go on this list, but that would take too long, so I'll just call out a couple more that I especially like: Jetfire's [[User:Jetfire/Special Care|Special Care]] and the sadly unfinished [[User:Nikon/Coming Home|Coming Home]] by Nikon. I live in Ohio too and I've driven by Coon's Candy many times. Oh, and JonBuck's [[User:JonBuck/Family Tree|Family Tree]]. I absolutely died laughing at the LOLcat references.

Alveric's merfolk arc in the [[Xanadu (setting)|Xanadu]] shared universe: [[Hannah's Tale]], [[Alex and Hannah]], [[Wynd, Skye and One White Mouse]], [[Mermaids of Xanadu]], and [[Girl With the Sea-Green Eyes]]. After elves, mers are my second-favorite species.

User talk:MarianLH/Where Tree Fails Chapter One

2013-02-20T00:22:43Z

MarianLH: Added story notes

== Story Notes ==

*This story is set in the world of the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game, specifically in the World of Greyhawk setting. I'm basing the "rules" of the world on the 3.5 edition of the game, hence some of the retcons, like elves having night vision instead of infravision.
*The dungeon in Chapter One is from an actual published D&D adventure module (props to whoever can identify it first). All of the details are taken from the text, except that I moved the rack next to the skeleton. The wizard who built the place was known for his magical experiments, and dimensional travel via magic is hardly unknown in the D&D multiverse, so it seemed like a convenient way to get Mel into that world. My basic idea is that he built the book as a sort of instant ticket home while dimension-hopping—rather like a hearthstone in WoW—and then lost it on Earth. Mel was transformed in order to "acclimatize" her, because she's not a native of that world; the book chose a native form that made for a reasonably close analogue of what she had imagined.
*The elven language is based on a couple of Dragon Magazine articles: "An Elven Lexicon" (''Dragon'' #279) and "By Any Other Name: Elves" (''Dragon'' #251). But they're pretty limited, so I'm stretching the hell out of them. I've managed to avoid making up too many new words so far, but verb conjugations are another matter. The letter "c" is always hard (k), not soft (s). Unlike English, "e" is never silent—I've stuck accent marks on some of them as a reminder.
*Because I haven't given Mel any magical translator microbes, there's also a bit of Aerdish (AKA the Common tongue) here and there. If you're one of those people that hate "made-up fantasy words", don't worry, Mel will start learning Common in Chapter Two.
*One more note on languages: ''hannon le'' is Sindarin (Tolkien elvish) for "thank you." From what I've read, the consensus of most Tolkien linguists seems to be that it should actually be ''le hannon'', but Mel is remembering it ftom the Peter Jackson movies, where they got it backward.
*I did some googling on starvation in order to try to depict it realistically, but there's surprisingly little information available. As one of the sites I checked noted, it's somewhat difficult to ethically do studies on the subject. So my portrayal may not be the most accurate. I did my best.
*The violet eyes are not—repeat, NOT—an allusion to a certain gary-stuish drow ranger. This is Greyhawk, not the Forgotten Realms. ^_^ Mel's eye color is a reference to something, though. I hadn't planned on it, originally, but then it occurred to me that I could use it to bring a certain kingdom's political shenanigans into the story.
*I haven't forgotten that D&D elves don't sleep. The Reverie has already been hinted at, here and there, and will be dealt with in more detail in Chapter Two.

User:MarianLH/Where Tree Fails Chapter One

2013-02-19T22:39:56Z

MarianLH: Typos and syntax errors

{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Chapter One: A Wizard Did It
|user= MarianLH}}

In the years to come, Melanie would look back on the girls fondly, if only out of gratitude, but on that blustery February day they were driving her up the wall. The two teenagers were chatting away, oblivious to how inconsiderate they were being to the rest of the library patrons. Mel had tried shushing them once—she wasn't actually a librarian, just a minimum-wage book-shelver—but they didn't know that.

Not that it made a difference. They were back up to full volume in less than ten minutes.

Finally they left, giving her a baleful look and muttering just loud enough about "the fat old bitch". It stung, not the least because it wasn't entirely untrue. She was overweight, and if 39 wasn't yet "old", it certainly wasn't young either. ''I was their age once'', she thought bitterly. ''I used to have a future to look forward to''.

More to distract herself from brooding than because there was any real rush, she stood up and went to reshelve the books they'd left lying on the table. One of them was a romance novel, with a hunky guy dressed up as a too-clean pirate, distressed damsel lying passively in his arms. ''Oh, to have some romantic adventure'', she thought. The pirate was gazing out of the cover with his cheeky grin, seeming to look right at her, and she imagined him pulling her into the story, his hand coming up out of the book like in that 80s music video. ''I wouldn't be some silly delicate maiden, though''. She looked scornfully at the woman on the cover—probably what passed for the book's heroine. ''I'd be right there beside him in the big battle, cutlass flashing, like Geena Davis in that pirate movie. Like Xena. Or Tauriel''. She'd just heard about Evangeline Lilly's upcoming appearance the second Hobbit movie, and couldn't wait to see it. She spent a few happy minutes imagining herself as some kind of badassed warrior-elf like Lilly's character.

''Okay, that's enough self-indulgence for one day''. She gathered up the books on a cart and started putting them away.

When she got to the end of the cart there was a book she didn't recognize, a large hardcover with plain brown binding. It looked old. She picked it up, and there was a flash of light, then nothing.

{{Separator|k}}

When Melanie came to, the first thing she felt was cold. She was lying on something smooth and hard and chilly, which proved to be a marble table top of some kind when she opened her eyes. It was covered with dust, except where her movements had brushed it away.

She sat up with a moan, and the next thing she noticed was that she was completely nude. For a moment she was so shocked her brain simply locked up, refusing to process what was happening. Her first thought, when she could think again, was that she'd been abducted by some horrible creepy stalker. ''The cops'll find my body buried in his backyard in an oil drum, like that guy in Kansas''. But how could he have gotten her body out of the library without anyone seeing? There was no way anyone have possibly—then, in her mind's eye, she again saw the strange brown book, her hand picking it up, and the flash of light....

''The book. Holy shit. It had to be''. Part of her brain was still trying to argue, to insist there had to be a rational explanation, but it was arguing with the part of her that was freezing-ass cold, naked, in a dusty dark room. Hard to argue with reality. Especially when reality meant "horrible creepy stalker." Please let it have been the book....

She pushed herself off the table and stood up, looking around. She felt lightheaded and off-balance, and her first few steps were tentative, with one hand on the table for support.

The room was dim, with no obvious source of light, but she could see about as well as on a moonlit night. There was dust everywhere, like on the table, and the air smelled musty. It was about as big as the library's front lobby, and there were several other tables scattered about, seemingly at random. Unlike the first one, they were made of wood. One of them had been smashed to pieces, and she stepped carefully around it. The last thing she needed was a splinter in her foot.

Going around the table brought her face to face with a gruesome skeleton hanging in a corner of the room. She shrieked, jumping back and bumping into a table, which gave way beneath her as one of the legs snapped. The loud crash echoed through the empty room.

For a moment she stood still, heart pounding, until the adrenaline wore off. Then, feeling a little silly at her overreaction, she stepped back up and took a closer look. The skeleton looked real, yellowed and old, with a long crack in the skull. Whoever it had belonged to must have been a really big guy in life.
Next to it, against the wall, was a tall wooden thing that looked like a bookshelf or rack of some kind. It was empty, and discolored by a long vertical stain, and she went cold all over as she realized it was dried blood. Then she found the rotted remains of leather straps, just in the right places to be wrist and ankle restraints....

''Shit shit shit, this is not good'', she thought. ''Just because some stupid magic book transported you to Narnia or Deverry or wherever, it doesn't mean you can't still be axe-murdered by a crazy person''. She whirled around, half-expecting to find a guy in a hockey mask sneaking up behind her right that moment. But there was no one. The room was just as empty and silent as before.

She was genre-savvy enough to turn around again and make sure the skeleton hadn't started coming to life behind her as soon as her back was turned. But no, it still just hung there, like some grisly taxidermy experiment.

Something was still off, a feeling that something wasn't quite right, but she couldn't put her finger on what. Still creeped out, she resumed exploring the room, but with purpose now, rather than curiosity. She wanted to find some clothes, and maybe something she could use as a weapon.

The broken table leg did for the latter. It was thick enough to make a sturdy club. She swung it a few times, thinking ''Just try it, Leatherface. I'm on to you''. But although she went over the whole room, there was nothing that would pass for clothing. Not even drapes or a towel.

There was only one door, and it opened onto another identical dusty room full of tables. It didn't have any other doors either; there seemed to be no way out. It did have shelves full of glass jars and clay pots full of various unknown substances, but she left them alone after finding a whole black cat in one of them, preserved in some kind of clear liquid.

She found some footprints in the dust—large ones—which gave her a bit of a fright at first. But upon consideration they didn't look recent. They were just somewhat less dusty than the rest of the floor.

It was only after she'd given up the search, and was sitting on another table looking forlornly down at herself, that she realized what had been feeling off this whole time. Her body had been...altered.

The absence of flab about her middle was the first thing she noticed. She touched her stomach, and it was firm and hard under her fingertips. ''Holy crap, the magical diet. If I could bottle this I'd make a killing in LA''. After awhile, though, she realized the changes went beyond just losing weight. Her breasts were different too—not just smaller, but differently shaped. They'd been round and a little saggy—okay, a lot saggy—and big enough that she hovered between a B and C cup, depending on the bra. Now they were tiny little things, barely an A, and instead of being round they were pointed and curved up. The kind of shape a friend of hers had once sneeringly referred to as "ski-jump tits" back in college.

Everything else was smaller too. Her arms and legs were, well, not skinny—they felt toned and muscular, just like her belly—but they looked narrower, more slender. So did her torso and hips. And her skin was smooth and unblemished, no varicose veins, no wrinkled knuckles. She felt good, too, limber and energetic. Young.

She was thrilled. Sure the place was gloomy and creepy, and there was no apparent way out, but there definitely seemed to be some perks as well. She was starting to feel good about the whole situation.

That, of course, was precisely when things went to shit.

{{Separator|k}}

The first sign of trouble was a scraping sound, stone on stone. Off to her right, a section of wall pushed inward, and then swung open like a door. Stepping through the threshold was—

''Oh fuck''

—a big, green, mean-looking creature the size of Andre the Giant. He was carrying a long pole tipped with something sharp and ugly. ''Shit, that's, like, a spear or something''. He turned his head and spotted her instantly, despite the dimness. And he had three more friends who followed him into the room.

Melanie scooted off the table, and the creature followed her with the spear-tip. She dropped her makeshift club, knowing it wasn't going to do her any good, and raised her empty hands. "Um, I surrender?"

The brute gave her a toothy grin, that turned into a leer as his eyes traveled down her body. She was reminded of her nakedness, and felt hideously vulnerable. Was she about to get gang-raped by a bunch of big green ogres? Fear clamped her tight—a loathsome, clammy fear, curling in her belly.

But no, thank god, he just gestured with the spear, while his buddies spread out around her. He was pointing toward the doorway, and she started to move toward it—slowly, in case she was misinterpreting him. He just gestured again, more impatiently, and she quickened her step.

In moments she found herself moving down a hallway, being guided by shoves and the occasional jab with a spear—the butt end, thankfully. The creatures towered over her and made her feel tiny—the top of her head barely came up to their chins. And they were ''ripped''. Her body—her new body—was toned and athletic, but these guys had biceps and pecs that rivaled Sylvester Stallone in his glory days. They had broad faces, with heavy brows, and heavy jaws with a prominent underbite, but they could have passed for humans—really big humans, anyway—if it weren't for the olive-green skin. Well, and the yellow tusks that jutted up from their lower jaw.

Just to add insult to injury, they stank.

After several twists and turns, they came to a medieval-looking wooden door, closed with a crude iron padlock. One of them produced a key and unlocked it, then pulled it open and shoved her inside. Immediately the door slammed shut again behind her, and she heard the sound of the lock.

The room inside was filled with warm yellow candlelight, the first real light she'd seen since her arrival. It lifted her spirits, even as she realized she wasn't alone.

Sitting on a decrepit bed was a large, heavyset man, looking at her in astonishment. She felt another moment of naked vulnerability, but at least he wasn't leering at her. He just looked deer-in-the-headlights stunned, and the absurdity of the situation began to overcome her embarrassment. Remembering a line from a movie, she mustered as much dignity as she could, stood up straight, haughtily crossed her arms and said "I want a meal and a bath" in her best Sean Connery.

That broke the spell, at least. The man looked away, and stood up, walking over to where a long coat hung on the wall and taking it down. Still averting his eyes, he thrust it at her, saying something in a language she didn't recognize. She took it, noticing as she did that he towered over her just as much as the green guys outside did. Big guy. His coat—no, it turned out to be a cloak, of all things—was big on her too, puddling around her feet. And it was scratchy wool and smelled a little, too, but it was better than nothing. For the first time in what seemed like hours, she felt warm.

He said something else in his own language, and she shrugged. "Sorry, buddy, I can't understand you. Hablo ingles? Sprecken-zy...uh...dutch? Dootch?" He just shook his head, and spoke again. It sounded like he was trying a couple different languages too, but not only did she not understand them, she didn't recognize them at all.

He was very dark-skinned, with curly black hair, but he didn't look African-American. Or African, for that matter, not that she was an expert. He didn't look Indian either. Pakistani, maybe? Iranian? She was pretty sure she'd recognize Arabic if she heard it, but didn't Iranians have another language?

Then again, with everything else that had happened, she was probably on another planet. Maybe another universe. ''Transported here by a magical whatsis'', she thought, ''and of course I woke up starkers''. It was almost funny. ''Just call me Joan Carter. The question is, of where?''

They did have one breakthrough, eventually. Remembering how it was sometimes done in movies, she pointed to herself and said, "Melanie," then pointed at him. After a couple times back and forth he figured it out, or seemed to, and introduced himself as "Panharam."

{{Separator|k}}

Some time later, the door opened again, and one of the green brutes pushed in a bowl and pitcher, then shut and locked the door again. The bowl had some kind of nasty greasy stew in it, and the stuff in the pitcher tasted like flat beer. They ate and drank anyway, using their hands since there were no utensils, and wiped off afterward with a moth-eaten blanket. Later still, nature took its course, and the man introduced her to the back corner of the room he'd been using as a privy. From the evidence, he'd been imprisoned for at least a few days already. She gagged at the smell. There wasn't any privacy, but he pointedly turned his back while she did her business, and she did the same for him when his turn came.

{{Separator|k}}

That set the pattern for the next several days—at least she assumed they were days. It was hard to tell, but it certainly didn't feel like they were fed very often. She was hungry all the time, and Panharam seemed to be suffering even more. As big as he was, he was probably used to eating well.

On the plus side, infrequent meals meant infrequent bathroom breaks.

There wasn't any toilet paper, of course. Panharam had already torn the bed linens into strips, and they did well enough while they lasted, but it didn't take them long to run out. Remembering something she'd once read about Middle Eastern customs, Melanie started eating only with her right hand and cleaning only with her left. She tried not to think about cholera.

{{Separator|k}}

They did their best to breach the language barrier, but without a language in common they were reduced to pointing at things and learning each others' words for them. And there were only so many things to point at.

''Some adventure'', she thought glumly, sometime after the sixth meal. She was pretty woozy from hunger at that point. ''Sure, those guys didn't impale me on a spear, or...or worse, but I'm not exactly saving the day''. She glanced sideways at Panharam, who was sleeping. ''And he's not exactly Fabio''. That thought made her feel guilty. Sure he was plump, heavyset and old enough to be her father—about as far as you could possibly get from a romance novel hero—but he'd been nothing but kind. Despite the fact that they were both starving, he never tried to hog what little food they were given. He respected her privacy when she had to relieve herself, and never tried to take advantage of her—or even peek—even though he was so big he could easily overpower her. She was still wrapped in his cloak, for want of any other clothes.

{{Separator|k}}

She drifted in and out a lot, falling into a trance she assumed was some kind of hunger-induced fugue state. Then, sometime after meal thirteen, Panharam shook her awake. He nodded at the door, and she heard shouting and banging beyond it. There was a heavy thump that shook the door, something that sounded like gasping, and then silence.

After a lingering moment, she heard the key in the lock, and the door opened. The first thing that came through was one of the green brutes, making her start. But he was obviously dead, liberally splashed with blood, and the way he fell in implied he'd been laying against the door. Hands grasped the body and pulled it back out of view, then a man stepped in.

He was deeply tanned and rugged-looking, with a thick bushy red beard, and like everyone else so far he towered over her. He was wearing some sort of medieval-looking metal ring armor, which after everything else she'd seen shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it was still kind of mind-bending to see it for real. And to cap it off, he had a bloody sword in his hand.

He spoke to her cellmate first. "Panharam bala Tenh?"

Panharam nodded, looking ecstatic. "''Ardat ji''," he replied. "''Ardat ji, Ardat ji!''" He'd said the same phrase to her a few times during their captivity; from the way he used it she'd guessed it meant "thank you." The newcomer helped him to his feet, then turned to her. She struggled to stand as well, before they could help, although the effort left her lightheaded and trembling. He asked her something, and Panharam replied for her—telling him she didn't speak the language, probably. They talked back and forth a bit, obviously about her, then the man called over his shoulder. "Naithuanna."

Another person appeared in the doorway, and Melanie's eyes bugged out in disbelief. It was an elf, a female elf. She couldn't be anything else—it wasn't just the pointed ears, her whole face was inhumanly exotic, and there was just something, well, ''alien'' about her.

Melanie felt well and truly beyond the looking glass now. Her head swam. ''Is this Middle Earth after all? Am I in Moria or Dol Goldur or someplace?''

''No, Tolkien's elves were as tall or taller than humans. Galadriel was, like, over six feet or something. This elf is my height. She barely comes up to the bearded guy's shoulder.''

''She's...she...my height....''

Slowly, as if in a dream, Melanie raised her hands to her own ears, feeling along the upper edges...and found pointed tips.

"Of course," she said, "I should've known." And then she fainted.

{{Separator|k}}

When she came to, she was lying on the bed, with her cloak—well, Panharam's cloak—draped over her like a blanket. He and the bearded man were gone, and the door was closed, but the elf sat on the floor, eating something. When she saw Melanie was awake, she stood up, picking up a bundle of what looked like clothing and bringing it over. She set it on the bed, and then added what looked like a square of shortbread she took out of a cloth wrapping. "''Tenya ent clatha''," she said, "''nes nehel''."

"Uh, thanks," Melanie replied, sitting up. She held the cloak to her chest, and reached for the food. It proved to be some kind of hard, flavorless biscuit. It certainly wasn't ''lembas''. She didn't care; after who knew how many days of near-starvation, she'd eat anything. It was gone in three bites.

"Thank you," she said again. "Um, ''hannon le''." It was one of the few elven phrases she remembered from the Tolkien movies, but this elf showed no sign of recognizing it.

"Naithuanna ''ynili''," she said, "''ent'' 'Meloni' ''ynehel, cyëf?''"

Well, that was easy enough to puzzle out. She must have gotten the name from Panharam. "Close, Melanie." She pointed to herself and repeated, "Melanie."

"Melehni?"

"Close enough," Mel replied. She pointed to the elf. "And you're...Nigh..thwanna?"

"Naithuanna," the elf corrected. "''Esti nehel doës hinual?''"

Melanie sighed. "I'm guessing that's 'Don't you speak elvish, you dork?' I'm sorry, but I don't." She gestured to the clothes. "Do you mind if I get dressed?" The elf looked at her uncomprehendingly. ''I really need to stop thinking of her as 'the elf''', Melanie mused. ''I'M an elf. Holy fuckballs, I'm an elf!''

It took some emphatic gesturing, but Mel was finally able to get across that she wanted Naithuanna to turn around. She looked puzzled, but finally turned her back.

The clothes turned out to be a pair of pants that laced up the outside of each leg, and a long shirt with sleeves that were closely fitted to mid-forearm and then belled out over the hands. The material felt like silk. ''Probably her spare clothes'', Melanie thought. Naithuanna was wearing some elaborate leather costume studded with metal bits—presumably some kind of armor—but from what Mel could see of it, the clothing underneath was similar.

It felt almost sinfully luxurious, to be wearing clothes again. And it was nice to feel warm. On the down side, she felt the cold stone floor more keenly now under her bare feet, despite having endured it for almost two weeks. Too bad Naithuanna didn't have a spare set of boots.

Seeing Mel was ready, Naithuanna opened the door and led her out. There was a small crowd of people in the hallway outside, Panharam and the bearded man among them. The others included—didn't it just figure?—a tall man with a wizard's staff, and a hobbit. The wizard didn't have a pointy hat or a beard, at least. He looked like a guy in his twenties. And the hobbit was a girl-hobbit. That was different.

But far more salient, at the moment, was the little campfire the hobbit was tending, with a bubbling stewpot perched over it. Seeing the way Mel's eyes lit up at the sight of it, the hobbit laughed and dished up a bowl. She said something incomprehensible but cheery-sounding as she handed it over, adding a spoon and a hunk of brown bread.

Everyone else was already eating, so Mel didn't stand on ceremony. She sat down next to the hobbit and dug in, doing her best to eat like a civilized person and not scarf it down like a starving animal. She almost succeeded. When Panharam, who had a head start on her, showed no compunctions about asking for a refill, she followed his example.

He'd deteriorated a lot, she realized, even in the two weeks or so she'd known him. He'd been a fat man, and he still was, somewhat, but not nearly as much. His skin hung loosely on him, and his face was gaunt. There was a chalky undertone to his dark skin. She wondered if she looked similarly starved.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was having a confab with the red-bearded man, the alleged wizard, and another armored man who kept casting suspicious glances her way. He was bearded too, and she mentally dubbed them "Redbeard" and "Brownbeard" to keep them straight in her head. They were obviously talking about her. As she watched, Naithuanna asked the wizard something and got a headshake in response.

When everyone was done eating, Brownbeard got up and made some kind of announcement, gesturing at her, then walked purposefully over to her, fiddling with something around his neck. Mel began to feel nervous, but everybody else seemed calm, and the hobbit-girl said something reassuring to her.

The "something" around Brownbeard's neck turned out to be a gold pendant in the shape of a stylized sun, with squiggly rays all around it. He thrust it at her like it was a cross and she was Dracula, intoning something. Mel couldn't help but wonder if he was saying, "Back! Back, creature of the night!" She tensed up, wondering if he was about to stake her—or conjure a lightning bolt out of the sky to smite her, for all she knew—but nothing happened. After a moment everyone seemed to relax minutely, including the priest, if that's what he was. His expression softened, and he gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and turned away. Everyone else started packing up.

"What the hell was that all about?" she asked plaintively, but no one answered.

Naithuanna picked up a long bundle that Mel realized was a quiver, containing an intricately-carved bow and several arrows. To her surprise, the other elf offered it to her, saying something in elvish.

"I don't know how to use that," she protested, holding up her hands and shaking her head. Naithuanna's eyebrows rose in astonishment, and Mel could practically read her mind—''What kind of elf doesn't know how to use a bow?'' Everybody else looked surprised too.

Naithuanna then offered Mel her sword instead—she had a long, slender one buckled to her waist—but Mel shook her head again. The other elf shrugged, as if to say "suit yourself", and slung the quiver over her shoulder. This was followed by a leather pack, and then she picked up an odd-looking contraption that could have passed for modern art at the Met. Only once she'd buckled it to her left forearm did Mel realize it was a small shield of some kind. One that strapped to the arm and left her hand free for the bow. Redbeard and Brownbeard had shields too, but theirs were more historical-looking round ones that didn't leave their hands free. Brownbeard's shield had a sun painted on it that matched his pendant.

Redbeard and Hobbit-girl used the campfire to light torches, then the fire was put out. Mel realized she was still carrying Panharam's cloak, and went over to offer it to him. He demurred, though, gesturing that she should keep it, so she wrapped it around herself again, rolling it up at her shoulders to keep it from tripping her. Away from the fire she was still a little cold, even in Naithuanna's spare clothing. ''One of the perils of being thin'', she mused. ''I guess it's a fair trade''.

They set off down the corridor, with Redbeard in the lead. It was the same one the green guys had brought her through—she remembered the way it zig-zagged. After maybe half an hour, they came to an intersection she recognized, and around the corner the hallway straightened out.

It was then that Mel noticed she didn't see Naithuanna anywhere. Redbeard was in the front, with the wizard behind him, then Panharam, then herself and the hobbit girl, and Brownbeard was bringing up the rear. Naithuanna was nowhere in sight.

Had she left? Was she so disgusted by an elf who couldn't use a bow—or even talk—that she'd taken off on her own? A niggling little voice of doubt in her mind insisted it was so. ''Yeah, zapped into a fantasy universe and given a full-body Mary Sue makeover, and you're still a worthless loser''.

Hobbit-girl noticed her looking around, and guessed the reason. "''Kandad beh'' Naithuanna?" She pointed ahead and said something more, and Melanie recognized the word ''haskat''—corridor—from Panharam's vocabulary lessons.

"Scouting ahead?" Mel guessed, making a show of peering about with her hand shading her eyes. The hobbit grinned and nodded. Then she pointed to herself and said, "Leske." In case there was any doubt about her meaning she then pointed at Mel and said, "Meleni," then back at herself and repeated "Leske."

"Leske, huh?" Melanie said. "Nice to meet you, Leske."

The hobbit nodded. "Leske Thindelgabben."

''Don't laugh, don't laugh, it might be a mortal insult to laugh, and her sword may only be a foot long but that's still enough to gut you like a fish''. It was hard—''Thindelgabben?''—but Melanie managed to keep a straight face.

And besides, for all that Leske was about eye level with Mel's belly button, she didn't look like someone you'd want to laugh at. Like Naithuanna, she was wearing leather armor, although hers had a different cut, more utilitarian and not so, well, elvish. The effect was pretty intimidating—less Frodo, more Emma Peel. Well, Emma Peel's mini-me, anyway.

In addition to the sword, she was armed with at least three hatchets tucked into her belt. They reminded Mel of the tomahawks Daniel Day Lewis had been throwing around in ''Last of the Mohicans''. Contrary to the Tolkien stereotype she wasn't barefoot either, and her feet didn't look especially big.

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They walked for another couple of hours, occasionally turning corners and passing side-corridors and doors. At one point, Melanie was pretty sure she spotted the hidden stone door to the rooms she'd first arrived in.

Around the next turn after that, there were some...corpses. More of the green brutes, shoved out of the way to one side of the corridor. Mel stared at them in horrified fascination—it was one thing to read about dead bodies in a novel, or even see them on TV. Encountering them in the literal flesh made her skin crawl. And the stench was horrible.

The bloodstains on the floor were still relatively fresh, and nobody else seemed surprised to see them, so Mel figured her new companions were responsible for their current unbreathing state. Despite trying to step carefully, she managed to put her foot down in a sticky puddle of blood, and cursed under her breath.

Naithuanna was waiting at the next intersection, with her bow drawn and an arrow ready. As the rest of the group came up she put a finger to her lips and nodded her head to the next corridor. Redbeard and Leske immediately doused their torches, plunging the hallway back into moonlit darkness. Behind Redbeard's back, the wizard opened a complicated-looking pouch on his belt and took out something that glowed faintly. While they had a quick whispered conversation, Leske and Brownbeard moved up to the intersection. Leske shrugged off her pack and plucked a tomahawk from her belt, while Brownbeard took out a nasty-looking metal club.

Melanie felt her pulse racing, and not in a good way. ''Holy shit, there's going to be a fight'', she thought. ''This is really happening''. So much for being a heroic adventurer. ''I think I'm going to hurl''.

At Redbeard's nod, Naithuanna and Leske darted out into the intersection and opened fire. Shouts and bellows of pain came around the corner. They each got a second arrow or hatchet off, then hurried back. A spear clanged off the stone wall, just missing Naithuanna.

The wizard was next, tossing whatever he'd taken out of his pouch into the intersection and shouting something arcane-sounding. The little bit of whatever-it-was exploded into a bright golden light, filling the hallway and prompting cries of pain from around the corner.

The sudden light hurt Melanie's eyes too, and she covered them with the heels of her hands, turning away. As a result, she didn't see what happened next, but she could hear the clanging and banging, the shouts, and some awful meaty thunks.

By the time her eyes stopped hurting it was mostly over. Naithuanna joined her, holding a bloody sword, and checked her eyes. She said something in an amused voice, and Melanie could guess what it was. ''Don't look directly at the light spell, dummy''.

The two Beards came back around the corner then. Both of them also had bloodstained weapons, and Brownbeard was limping a little. Naithuanna wrinkled her nose, and Mel couldn't blame her—the guys smelled like a gym locker. ''I guess swordfighting is quite a workout''.

Leske came rushing up then, sounding excited. She had a little pile of gold coins in her hands, which prompted a lot of interest and babble from everyone. Redbeard called Panharam over, and he picked one up and looked closely at the design stamped on it. Melanie saw his eyes narrow in speculation. There was some back-and-forth conversation between him and Redbeard and the wizard, and his expression grew angry.

''It must have something to do with why he was being kept prisoner here'', she thought. She wondered what the story was, but unfortunately there was no way they could tell her. She made up her mind then to start learning the local language.

Everyone went around the corner again, and when Melanie followed she saw them all wiping their weapons on the dead guys' clothes. Ew. The bodies were still more of those big ugly green guys.

Remembering their earlier vocabulary exchanges, Melanie nudged Panharam and pointed at them, saying, "Orcs?" They didn't really look like Tolkien's orcs—or Warcraft orcs for that matter, although that was closer. But she didn't know what else to call them.

As before, he responded with the word in his language: "''Genka''." Naithuanna, noticing the exchange, added what Mel assumed was the elvish word: "''Cehakar''." She was trying to carefully work one of her arrows out of an orc's ribcage, but despite her best efforts it snapped off, right behind the arrowhead, and she sighed.

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The new corridor was very long, but at the far end she could see a tiny dot of daylight. It took the better part of an hour to reach the exit, and Melanie was tired and footsore by the end, but finally they emerged into a bright, sunny day.

They were standing on a rocky hillside, above a broad meadow. It was a cloudy overcast afternoon, but Melanie didn't care. The cool grass felt so nice under her bare feet. It was wonderful to be out of that dank, smelly...what the hell was that place, anyway? She turned around to look at the opening. It looked like a natural cave from this side, partially obscured by vines and other vegetation. There was no hint of the huge, obviously artificial underground complex from the outside.

"'Dungeons deep and caverns old'," she quoted, shaking her head in wonder.
They didn't stop, once they were outside. Redbeard led them on across the meadow, and Melanie bit back a complaint. Even through the clouds she could tell the afternoon was getting on. They weren't going to walk all night, were they? Despite the psychological lift she'd gotten from seeing daylight for the first time in a couple weeks, she was pretty sure she couldn't go much further. Panharam looked as bad as she felt. And Brownbeard's limp was getting worse.

Finally they stopped, where a small river meandered through the meadow, with copses of trees along its banks. Leske immediately got to work kindling a fire. Melanie sat down with a groan, and for a moment she just sat there in an exausted stupor. Until she noticed everyone else was busy working, setting up camp. Guilt warred with fatigue and eventually won, but when she tried to get up and help, Leske quite firmly gestured for her to stay put. Panharam got the same treatment, and what sounded like a stern lecture as well. The hobbit even shook a ladle at him. Apparently there were some perks to being the rescuee instead of the hero.

So she sat, for some unknown amount of time, lost in a kind of exhausted trance, while the sun went down and the daylight dimmed. Eventually Naithuanna came over to join her, carrying two bowls of food.

She wrinked her nose again as she sat down, and this time Mel couldn't blame it on the guys. ''Yeah'', she thought, ''I probably stink. Who knows how many days without toilet paper, with that nasty gunk they fed us running through my system, not to mention no bath or shower. It's a wonder they didn't just throw me in the river''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''And then she just lets me put on her clothes, without a complaint''. "Thank you," she said, trying to put as much sincerity into the words as possible, hoping it would get her meaning across.

It seemed to work, because Naithuanna smiled and nodded. "''Coësen ynehel''," she replied.

Melanie looked speculatively at the river. Maybe they could bathe after dinner? Naithuanna followed her gaze, and shook her head with another smile. "''En clatha, fuamelèd''," she said in a teasing tone. Mel guessed that meant something like, "Eat first."

Whatever Leske had put in the stew, it was savory, and she found herself mopping up the last of it with a piece of bread. As before, Panharam and she both went for seconds. She felt full and warm inside for first time in who knew how many days.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was rummaging through her own pack, setting out various items. Among them were a cake of hard soap, an ivory comb, and an earthenware bottle. Then she pulled out what looked like a flannel blanket, and Melanie had to suppress a smile. ''There's a frood who really knows where her towel is. Hoopy''.

Leske joined them when they trooped down to the river, after speaking very firmly to the guys—probably saying something like, "Don't you dare peek." Naithuanna found a spot with a good thick line of trees between them and the camp, set down the blanket and supplies, and then pulled her tunic over her head without a trace of self-consciousness. Her pants followed as quickly as they could be unlaced, and then she was striding out into the river.

Melanie's eyes bugged out. ''No wonder I had such a hard time getting her to turn around so I could dress. I guess elves aren't big on modesty. I suppose it fits, though—elves are usually a bunch of nature-loving free-spirited tree-hugging hippies. It stands to reason they'd be shameless nudists too''.

Leske apprently didn't share the elven disdain for modesty, though. The little hobbit had disappeared behind a bush to disrobe. Melanie was sorely tempted to emulate her, but Naithuanna was giving her a Look. ''You're one of us, girl'', it seemed to say. ''Don't puss out on me this time''.

With a sigh, she started unlacing her pants. Behind her she heard running and then a splash, as Leske dashed from the safety of her bush to the concealing water.

She finished undressing, remembering how she had stood on her dignity with Panharam, those first few moments before he'd given her his cloak. She did it again, managing to walk calmly into the water instead of dashing like Leske. Naithuanna seemed to approve.

The water was cold, but Melanie was so eager to get clean she didn't care. She took the soap and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was raw. And the earthenware bottle proved to hold some kind of shampoo. Leske declined—apparently special hair soap was a prissy elven thing—but Melanie luxuriated shamelessly in it, much to Naithuanna's amusement.

Night had completely fallen by the time she was done washing. She relaxed for a bit, floating serenely in the cool water. It was a bright, moonlit night, with the kind of ethereal, glowy light that only happened on clear nights with a full moon.

Except when she looked up, there wasn't any full moon.

She did find a moon—two moons, as it happened—but they were both slender cresents, and partially obscured by clouds. Naithuanna followed her gaze, and pointed upward. "''Tel'cenodel''," she said, "Lafael ''ent'' Celên."

But Melanie didn't care about moons at the moment. She was looking around at the brightly-lit night, and remembering. Remembering how the dungeon rooms and corridors had seemed dimly lit, even though there was no light source at all before Panharam's candle. Remembering how it had seemed like a bright sunny day when she first emerged from the dungeon, even though the sky was overcast and cloudy. Remembering how much the light spell had hurt her eyes.

''I can see in the dark'', she marveled. ''Right, because I'm an elf now, and of course elves can see in the dark''. Somehow that was the last straw, the final bit of weirdness that really brought home to her what had happened. ''I'm an elf. I'm not human anymore''. She stood up, waiting for the water to calm, and then looked at her reflection.

For the first time, she saw her new face.

Her coloration was different, and she was still gaunt from her ordeal, but otherwise she looked a lot like Naithuanna. She was paler, and her hair was silvery-blond instead of black, but she had the same kind of narrow, finely-boned face, the same high cheekbones and delicately swept ears. The same eyes, almond-shaped and slanted inward, and just a bit too large for her face. And unlike Naithuanna's green, hers were an utterly unhuman shade of violet.

She felt a wrenching, disorienting sense of loss. She had a vision of herself—her original, middle-aged, overweight, ''human'' self—reaching out to her from across a chasm, and she reached back, but the chasm grew wider, and she couldn't reach....

She realized she was crying when the tears dropped on her reflection, rippling it. Naithuanna came over and put an arm around her shoulders, saying something that sounded soothing, but her alien-ness, her inhuman features and incomprehensible language, just reinforced Melanie's sense of isolation. She pushed away, walking deeper into the river.

''I'm not me anymore'', she thought. ''And if I'm not ME, then who the hell am I?'' She suddenly felt like her own body was something ''other'', something separate, not a part of her, a prison of flesh that enveloped her. She was smothered by it. She wanted to shout and rage at the heavens—but even the sky was alien, here.

She looked up at the moons again. ''Moons'', plural. It was more than just herself that was wrong, it was the whole world.

Melanie didn't have anyone who would miss her. No husband, no boyfriend, no real friends. Her parents were gone. She wouldn't particularly miss her job. And she certainly didn't ''like'' pushing forty, or struggling with her weight. And yet she mourned the loss of her world, of everything familiar. She'd never see a movie again. Never eat a cheeseburger. No more chocolate, no TV, no ice cream. Never hear English, except when she talked to herself. Never drive a car. Never take that vacation trip to Japan. Ever.

It was too much. She felt overwhelmed, consumed. The sense of loss was too great, too all-encompassing. It rose up and swallowed the world.

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Eventually the emotional storm passed. Melanie wasn't sure how long it lasted, but when she looked around, Naithuanna and Leske were on the riverbank, and Leske was dressed and looked dry except for her hair. Naithuanna was kneeling in the grass and drying her hair with the towel.

She felt spent. Empty. Unbidden, a line from an old story wafted into her mind: "You lost a whole world. That's a lot to grieve for." Somehow, that thought made her feel a little better—it put things in perspective, at least.

She swam to the riverbank and joined the others. Both of them gave her a concerned look, and she mustered a wan smile. When she pointed at the towel, Naithuanna didn't hesitate to hand it over. "Sorry for the waterworks," she said as she began drying off. "I'm better now."

Leske gave her a sort of one-armed snug, and then headed back to camp. Naithuanna waved goodbye to her and then sat back and started plaiting her hair into some elaborate braids. When Melanie had finished towel-drying hers, Naithuanna did the same for her. It was nice and relaxing. ''I've missed having girlfriends'', she mused.

By the time Naithuanna was done it was starting to get chilly. Mel cringed at the thought of getting back into soiled clothing after she'd gotten so nice and clean, but to her surprise their clothes were clean and dry when she picked them up. Her expression must have betrayed her, because Naithuanna smiled a smug little smile, and said, "''Cinreth nili deynal hlei''."

"I hope that means 'I used a magic laundry spell' and not 'you were out of it so long I had time to hand-wash silk and hang it up to dry'."

Naithuanna didn't understand, of course, but Melanie's wry, bantering tone seemed to reassure her. "''Fuatenyal, fonkin''," she replied in a teasing tone, and picked up her tunic.

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She shared a tent with Leske and Naithuanna that night, but found she couldn't sleep. Naithuanna didn't seem to want to sleep either; instead, she sat cross-legged in some kind of meditative pose, and went into a sort of trance. Melanie left her to it, lying on her back and staring at the canvas roof of the tent.

''Why an elf?'' she wondered. ''Why didn't I come over as myself? Or at least still human? Or if not human, why not, say, a hobbit? Or an orc, for that matter? Would anyone who picked up that book have become an elf? Or been transported at all?''

She thought back to that moment when she'd touched the book. ''I was dreaming of an adventure. Maybe that's why—the book somehow picked up my wish, and gave me an adventure?'' She snorted in wry amusement. ''It could have given me a nicer one. Not so much with the starving''. Oh well, she HAD thought the pirate on the romance novel cover looked too clean to be real. That wasn't a problem she'd had, after her ordeal.

Still, why an elf? She thought back, trying to reconstruct what she had been thinking about, and then it came to her. ''Tauriel. I was thinking about Tauriel. Miss 'I can do everything Legolas did, only backwards and in high heels'.''

With the conundrum resolved, Melanie felt herself slipping away. Her last thought was, ''Maybe those muscles on my arms aren't just for show''.

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She got a chance to find out the next morning. Naithuanna shook her awake shortly before dawn, and after they'd dressed, took her out to a copse of trees for archery lessons. And sure enough, she was able to draw the bow. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't as hard as it should be, either.

There was some muscle-memory working in her favor, too. Her body sort of knew what it was doing when she drew an arrow and nocked it. But she wasn't magically imbued with new skills. Her shooting was probably better than it should be for someone who'd never used a bow in her life, but she still didn't come anywhere close to matching Naithuanna's speed or accuracy.

When her arms started to get tired, they put aside the bow and Naithuanna drew her sword. This started a whole new round of lessons, with Melanie holding the sword and Naithuanna standing behind her like a golf pro, guiding her hand and arm through a series of different swings. Despite its length—the blade alone was almost three feet long—the sword moved easily through the moves Naithuanna was putting her through. The heavy pommel at the bottom of the grip seemed to be acting as a counterweight, and whenever she hit that balance "sweet spot", the sword seemed to almost flow into place.

That didn't happen often, though.

Melanie's arms felt like lead when Naithuanna finally called a halt. She'd also begun to feel the call of nature—to put it delicately—during the exercise, and was wracking her brain trying to figure out how to tell Naithuanna without humiliating herself in the process.

Fortunately, it turned out to be unnecessary; Naithuanna had to go too. Or at least that's what Mel thought it meant when she led her into the privacy of the trees and started plucking some particularly large, broad leaves. She gave Melanie an inquisitive look, as if to say, "You need some of these too?" When Mel nodded she plucked more and shared them out.

Two weeks ago Melanie would have been disgusted to settle for using leaves as toilet paper. She'd never been an outdoorsy person, and had regarded the few camping trips she'd been on as something to be endured, not enjoyed.

But after her ordeal in the dungeon, leaves were a step up. All she felt was grateful.

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When they got back to camp everyone else was up too. Brownbeard was kneeling, facing east toward the rising sun. He seemed to be praying to it. Redbeard was standing outside his tent, holding a leather sack that he was shaking vigorously, and from the ''shnk-shnk-shnk'' metal sound coming from it, his armor was in there. The wizard was reading a book, and Leske was cooking breakfast.
"I really should learn the rest of their names," she mused. Naithuanna looked curiously at her. She shrugged and did the pointing thing again, starting with herself, then Naithuanna, Leske, and Panharam, saying each name in turn. Then she pointed at Redbeard.
Understanding dawned in Naithuanna's eyes. "Denys," she said, also pointing at Redbeard. Brownbeard was "Galthesar," and the wizard was "Crosus."

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After breakfast, Crosus stood up and beckoned Melanie over. Everyone dropped what they were doing and gathered around, looking interested, which made her feel nervous.

As she approached, the wizard took a pinch of something out of his magic-stuff pouch, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. Then he tried to touch her forehead. The stuff on his thumb looked sooty and black.

She shied away, looking around at the others for some clue what was happening. Naithuanna gave her an encouraging nod, so she braced herself and let the guy smear his stuff on her face. Then he raised his arms and made some complicated-looking gestures with his hands, while intoning something harsh and sibilant.
Nothing seemed to happen when he was done. "Is that supposed to be some kind of magic spell?" she asked.

To her surprise, he nodded. Melanie's eyes bugged out. "You can understand me?" Another nod. She felt like a huge burden was lifted from her shoulders. They could communicate! "God, where should I start?"

He shrugged.

Wait a minute.... "What's with the mime routine? Say something!"

The wizard shook his head, and spoke...in Panharam's language.

She felt her hopes fall. "Crap. Can you cast it again, to go the other way?"

He shook his head again.

"Oh for fuck's sake," she snapped. "A translation spell that only goes one way? What kind of balls-up stupid is that?"

He stared at her in amazement at that, then burst out laughing.

Everyone else was looking confused—apparently the spell only worked for him. But he spoke to them, obviously translating or describing what she said, because they all started grinning. Except Naithuanna, who wore a disapproving frown. ''I guess proper elven ladies don't swear''.

She sighed. "I guess I should just talk, then. Um, well, my name is Melanie—Melanie Foster—and I'm really, ''really'' not from around here. I don't know how I got here either. For that matter, I have no idea where 'here' even is. All I know is that I picked up a book that must've been magical, and bam, I was zapped here. Into that...awful place—" She jerked her thumb north, back the way they'd come. "I guess, as the old joke goes, 'a wizard did it'."

"Zelligar," Crosus said.

"Is that the name of that place?"

He shook his head, and pointed to his staff.

"Oh, lemme guess, that's the name of the wizard who ''built'' the place."

Another nod.

"Well FUCK YOU, ZELLIGAR!" That part she turned and shouted back north. Crosus snickered behind her.

Melanie turned back to face them and sighed. Should she tell them the other part? The really big part? ''Yeah, maybe it'll help them understand why I'm so weird''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''Please don't hate me for this....'' She took a deep breath and said it. "When I was transported here...I was also...changed. I wasn't an elf before. I was human."

Crosus looked shocked. She waited while he translated that for the others. Naithuanna looked...hurt. Betrayed. Shit. She plunged ahead. "There aren't any elves where I come from. Or magic. They only exist in stories. Myths and legends. I...this is all very strange to me. I don't know what to do. I don't even know who I am, anymore." She felt her throat tighten up, and squeezed her eyes shut, struggling not to cry.

Something touched her hand. She looked down, and saw that Leske had taken it into her own. She looked up at her with compassion in her eyes, and gave it a gentle squeeze. It seemed the hobbit, at least, was willing to accept her.

Naithuanna was another story.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[Category:Mythical]]

Talk:Ratted Out

2013-02-19T21:20:27Z

MarianLH: Added story notes

== Story Notes ==

Name: Skylar Eilertsen

Species: Fancy rat (domesticated brown rat), Berkshire Pearl coloring

High school in Minnesota

Act 1:
*1st day of school
*Meets other Changed
*Tells Brandi
Act 2:
*Brandi doesn't believe her, gossips to everyone
*2nd day of school, laughingstock
Act 3:
*Reconcile with Brandi
*Gets medicalert bracelet for sleeping sickness

"The long tail helped him keep his balance; as a bear he could walk and stand like a human, but the rodent body shape was more beastly and he always leaned slightly forward with bent knees and ankles"

"His fingers and toes were long and thin,"

:::--MatthiasRat, "[[User:MatthiasRat/Change Building|Change Building]]"

"the first few hours for new deer tended to be anxious ones. Rodents and lapines were even worse."

:::--JonBuck, "[[User:JonBuck/Open Secrets|Open Secrets]]"

"A forty year old man, a rodent fur in Amsterdam, died a month ago because he was given penicillin. Old trivia about it: it would never be approved today. It's got a unique toxicity for rodents."

:::--Eirik, "[[User:Eirik/Treatment|Treatment]]"

References:
*http://www.ratbehavior.org
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomington_Jefferson_High_School
*http://jhs.bloomington.k12.mn.us

Skylar's class Schedule:
*1st Period: Intermediate Algebra
*2nd Period: Physical Sciences
*3rd Period: Civics
*Lunch
*4th Period: English*
*5th Period: Music*
*6th Period: Gym
(*)Shares with Brandi

[[User:MarianLH|MarianLH]] ([[User talk:MarianLH|talk]]) 21:20, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Ratted Out

2013-02-18T15:23:06Z

MarianLH: Moved a sentence

{{WIP}}
{{Universe|Paradise}}
{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Ratted Out
|user= MarianLH}}

'''Tuesday, September 5, 2006'''

Skylar hesitated when she saw the two older kids already waiting at the bus stop, then took a deep breath and forced herself to keep going. ''They can't see it'', she told herself. ''Just act normal''. Sure enough, they only glanced at her—or rather, at the empty air above her head—and then ignored her.

Skylar wouldn't have believed it three weeks ago, but now starting high school wasn't the biggest thing in her life.

"Hey Skylar!"

Skylar turned to see her best friend, Brandi, hurrying up the street. She fought off an urge to run and hide, fixing a smile on her face. ''Just act normal''. Behind her, the school bus was just coming around the corner. "Good timing," she called out.

"I haven't seen you since you got sick in August," Brandi said as she caught up. "How are you? How was the rest of your summer?"

"Sucked," Skylar said. The understatement of the year. No, the century. That was when it had happened, three weeks ago—she'd been sick for days, with like the worst flu ever, and then just when she was feeling better, ''bam!'' She'd woken up to find herself halfway through being transformed into a giant rat-person.

A giant rat-person no one else could see. Her parents, her bratty little brother, hundreds of people at the mall during back-to-school shopping—they all saw the girl she used to be. That had scared her at first, made her think she was going crazy. But she didn't think a delusion would be this vivid, this lucid. She could ''feel'' her fur. And besides, there were things about rats she hadn't even known about until she became one. How could she hallucinate bruxing, for instance, or the need to gnaw, when she hadn't known rats did that?

So she didn't think she was going crazy. Most of the time. But she couldn't talk about it either, not without ''other'' people thinking she was crazy.

Not even with her best friend. Before Brandi could ask any awkward questions, Skylar turned the conversation around. "What about you?" The gambit worked; Brandi chattered on about her own summer while they boarded the bus and found seats.

Which brought her to her first rat-form challenge of the day. She'd taken to wearing skirts exclusively since her transformation, since there was no way she could hide big holes in her jeans from her mom. But that meant she had to sit on her tail all the way to school.

She'd tried on some low-rise jeans during back-to-school shopping, but they hadn't been quite low enough. For her tail, that is—they ''had'' been low enough for Mom to take one look and say, "Forget it."

Nope...no matter how she sat, her tail felt pinched. At home she could slouch forward a bit and make it work, but there wasn't enough room here.

Brandi was looking at her oddly. "You got ants in your pants?"

Skylar froze inside, and forced herself to sit still, no matter how uncomfortable it was. "I'm fine," she said. ''Gotta say something quick'', she thought, ''change the subject''. "So, um...are you gonna do band again this year?"

"No," Brandi said sarcastically, patting the black plastic case by her hip. "This is just for show."

"I didn't notice it," Skylar said lamely. She managed to keep the conversation going for the rest of the trip, but it bothered her the way Brandi looked at and spoke to her forehead. Before her transformation, they'd been about the same height, but now Brandi was nearly half a head taller. She'd gotten accustomed to her new height at home, but seeing her friend looming over her brought it back.

Then there was her enhanced sense of smell. Like her height, she'd mostly gotten used to it around the house, but now she was surrounded by new scents. Everyone on the school bus had their own unique odor, accented by different soaps, shampoos, and other additives. Several of the girls were wearing cheap perfume, one of the seniors used the same bodywash Brandi did, and a boy up near the front was a smoker. Two of the girls had their periods. Then there was the diesel fumes from the bus, the food scents of various lunches, and the cork grease from Brandi's clarinet. And the bus driver needed a shower.

Skylar was glad her mother had forced her into that back-to-school shopping trip the week before. She'd turned into a hermit after ''it'' happened, and Mom had to twist her arm to get her to go, but the experience stood her in good stead now. She'd spent the first half hour or so at the mall completely disoriented by all the scents assaulting her nose, but somewhere along the way, she'd somehow gotten used to it. Now she just registered different scents the same way she saw different colors. It was kinda cool, actually.

The bus finally pulled up at Jefferson High School, and Skylar catapulted up out of her seat before it stopped moving, earning her a glare from the unwashed driver. The base of her tail ached. ''I'm gonna walk to school from now on'', she thought. ''It isn't THAT far''.

Everyone else was getting up too; she stood in the aisle and shouldered her backpack, waiting for the crowd to start moving. Then Brandi moved out behind her, and stepped on her tail. Stars of pain shot up her spine. It hurt so much it was like fireworks exploding in her head. "Brandi!"

"What?"

"Move your foot to the left!" she hissed.

"What? Why?"

"Just do it!"

"Okay, okay, jeez." And then the pressure was mercifully gone.

As soon as her muscles unlocked, Skylar crouched down, awkwardly in the tight confines of the aisle, and picked up the end of her tail. The tip looked red and swollen, and pain radiated out from it in pulsating waves. It felt ''exactly'' like getting a finger caught in a slamming door.

The bus was finally emptying, and she started moving up the aisle toward the door, still holding her tail up.

"Hey, are you crying?" Brandi said. "What the hell?"

She wanted to snarl. ''Tears of pain, bitch'', she thought angrily, and then immediately felt contrite. It wasn't Brandi's fault she couldn't see her tail.

The bus driver hadn't forgotten her, either. "Stay seated until the bus comes to a complete stop," he snapped when she reached the door. Feeling dogpiled from all sides, Skylar just nodded submissively and hurried out, blinking tears from her eyes.

"Asshole," Brandi said. "Are you okay, Sky? What's wrong?"

"Never mind. It's nothing." They were passing through the front doors of the school now, and Skylar just wanted to get away, before Brandi asked her something she couldn't answer. "I—I want to find my locker before first period."

"Me too," Brandi said. "Catch you later." And then, thank god, she was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

Skylar moved carefully down the packed hallway, checking locker numbers and doing her best to shield her tail with her body. She had to let go of it for a minute when she found her assigned locker, to fish out the slip of paper with the combination from her backpack, but she kept a close watch around her and managed to keep it out from underfoot.

She made it to her first class just before the bell rang, sliding into the first empty desk she found. The backs of the seats all had a hole at a convenient height for her tail, but she was still worried about getting stepped on. Besides, it would tent out the back of her skirt, and the last thing she needed was ''more'' attention.

The knee-length skirt was loose enough that she was able to slip her tail around her hip, laying it along the outside of her thigh. ''Wish I'd thought of this on the bus. Maybe I won't have to walk home after all''.

The tip still throbbed, and she began to get seriously worried. ''What if it's broken?'' she thought. ''How's a doctor going to treat it if he can't even see it? Crap, what if I get hit by a car or something?''

{{Separator|k}}

In another classroom, senior Erik Metzger sat at his desk, doodling in his notebook. He smelled his friend Jeremy coming up behind him, but didn't look up...until the ziploc bag of oregano landed on his desk. "Ha ha," he said. "You could at least use real catnip."

"Don't want to be an enabler," Jeremy said, deadpan. "Besides, your mom loves Italian cooking so much, she could actually use this." He sat down in the next desk over, slinging his backpack over the seat back. "Listen, I think there's one of your people among the new frosh."

"Seeing through the Veil now, are we?"

"If only. No, she was holding something invisible in her hands. Saw her getting off the bus, and she looked like you do when you're supposedly playing with your tail. She also looked pretty freaked out, but that's probably just cus she's a freshman." He gestured toward the bag of oregano. "Better hide that. Teacher'll think it's pot."

"From what I hear, the new teacher's more likely to ask me to share than confiscate it. Point me at this freshmen when you get a chance, will you?"

The teacher in question walked in at that point, and despite his breezy assurance, Erik did scoop up the bag of oregano and stuff it in his backpack.

"Hello, class. My name is Ms. Rodriguez. I just transferred here from Boston, so you're all going to go easy on me, right?" Various hoots and catcalls greeted that, and she grinned. "That's what I thought you were gonna say. Let's do roll first, and then we'll start handing out textbooks." She picked up a clipboard. "A lot of Scandinavian names," she mused. "Is that a Minnesota thing?"

"You think the Vikings picked their name out of a hat?" one of the guys said. Everybody laughed.

{{Separator|k}}

By the end of third period Skylar was starting to feel really frazzled. Sitting with her tail to the side was a partial solution, but it wasn't perfect. She still had to sit forward a little, without the support of the seat back, or else slouch down. And the Phys Sci teacher had gigged her for it, too, telling her to "sit up straight." At least he hadn't thrown chalk at her, like that asshole Mr. Lang in eighth grade.

Her tail wasn't hurting as much, but it was still sore, and her teeth were beginning to ache too. She had a bag of popsicle sticks in her lunchbox, but finding the privacy to gnaw was a problem she hadn't solved yet. ''It's only my first day'', she thought as she trudged out of Civics into the hall, ''and it's only half over. How am I ever going to manage four YEARS of this?''

"Hey frosh, want some cheese?"

Skylar whirled around with a squeak. Right behind her was another animal-person. He towered over her, almost as big as a grownup, with a feline face and a grin full of fang.

Frightened out of her wits, Skylar backpedaled into someone, who shoved her, and then she was running, hurtling down the hall in a blind panic.

"Hey, wait," the cat-man called after her. "I was only kidding!" But she didn't hear him.

{{Separator|k}}

She ended up in an empty girls' bathroom at the long end of the L-shaped main hallway, hiding in the last stall and shaking like a leaf. Her heart was going a mile a minute. She heard a chattering noise and realized she was bruxing.

The door creaked open, and a male voice said, "Hello?" She recognized the cat-man's scent, and froze.

"Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. C'mon out; we've got a lot to talk about." Skylar stayed silent, sitting as still as possible. "My sense of smell is just as good as yours, you know," the voice continued, sounding a little impatient now. "I know you're in there. Look, you're not in any danger. Despite appearances we're still mostly human. No predator/prey shit, I promise."

After a beat, he added, "Besides, you'd probably give me heartburn." Skylar still couldn't bring herself to move, but she smiled a little at that.

When another minute had passed without her saying anything, he sighed. "Okay, I'll leave you alone. You can find me later if you wanna talk. There's a lot more of us, you know." She heard the click of his claws on the tile floor as he walked off, and then the sound of the door swinging shut.

Skylar realized she was being silly. She hurried out the bathroom and saw him walking back up the hall. "Hey!" she called out.

He turned and smiled. "Glad you changed your mind." He came back over, offering his hand, "I'm Erik."

"Skylar."

"Nice to meet you, Skylar."

Despite the needle-sharp teeth, his smile seemed just friendly now, not predatory. He was a calico, mostly white fur with orange and black patches that clashed rather badly with his blue and silver letterman jacket.

The bell rang, then. Erik jerked his thumb toward the gym. "You got lunch this period?"

{{Separator|k}}

"'Changed', huh?" Skylar mused. "That sounds better than 'rat-person', I guess."

They were eating lunch in a corner of the empty gym, instead of the cafeteria, which gave Skylar some privacy. Erik had been filling her in on what had happened to her while she gnawed. Her and over 500,000 other people, apparently.

She fished another popsicle stick out of her lunchbox and went to work on it. The bruxing she'd done in the bathroom had taken the edge off, but it was still a relief. "We won't get in trouble for eating in here?"

"I never have," he replied. "Nobody cares as long as we don't leave a mess."

With her free hand Skylar caught hold of the end of her tail and looked at it. The redness had faded to a purple bruise, and it was still tender to the touch.

"That'll give you hairy palms, you know," a new voice said. She looked up to see another senior walking over, lunchbag in hand. Unlike Erik, he was still an ordinary human.

"Jeremy," Erik said, "palms are the one place we ''don't'' have hair. Well, palms and tail, in her case—she's a rat. Jeremy, Skylar, Skylar, Jeremy."

"Nice to meet you," Jeremy said, sitting down across from them. "A rat, huh?"

"Yeah," Skylar said shyly. She looked at Erik. "He...."

"He's Known," Erik said.

"Known for what?"

"Lots of different things," Jeremy quipped, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. Skylar giggled.

"I guess I walked into that," Erik said. "No, the Known are what we call people who know about us, but aren't Changed themselves. Bass-ackwards grammatically, I know, but it rolls off the tongue better than 'Knowing' or 'Knowers' or whatever."

"I voted for 'Know-It-Alls', myself," Jeremy put in.

"You would."

By the end of lunch hour Skylar felt a lot better. Jeremy was obviously one of the senior class clowns, and he kept her in giggles, with Erik as the occasional straight man. And just knowing there were other people out there, that she wasn't alone, made her feel so good she was almost floating.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[Category:Anthropomorphic]]
[[Category:Rat]]
[[Category:Paradise]]

User:MarianLH/Where Tree Fails Chapter One

2013-02-18T03:09:55Z

MarianLH:

{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Chapter One: A Wizard Did It
|user= MarianLH}}

In the years to come, Melanie would look back on the girls fondly, if only out of gratitude, but on that blustery February day they were driving her up the wall. The two teenagers were chatting away, oblivious to how inconsiderate they were being to the rest of the library patrons. Mel had tried shushing them once—she wasn't actually a librarian, just a minimum-wage book-shelver—but they didn't know that.

Not that it made a difference. They were back up to full volume in less than ten minutes.

Finally they left, giving her a baleful look and muttering just loud enough about "the fat old bitch". It stung, not the least because it wasn't entirely untrue. She was overweight, and if 39 wasn't yet "old", it certainly wasn't young either. ''I was their age once'', she thought bitterly. ''I used to have a future to look forward to''.

More to distract herself from brooding than because there was any real rush, she stood up and went to reshelve the books they'd left lying on the table. One of them was a romance novel, with a hunky guy dressed up as a too-clean pirate, distressed damsel lying passively in his arms. ''Oh, to have some romantic adventure'', she thought. The pirate was gazing out of the cover with his cheeky grin, seeming to look right at her, and she imagined him pulling her into the story, his hand coming up out of the book like in that 80s music video. ''I wouldn't be some silly delicate maiden, though''. She looked scornfully at the woman on the cover—probably what passed for the book's heroine. ''I'd be right there beside him in the big battle, cutlass flashing, like Geena Davis in that pirate movie. Like Xena. Or Tauriel''. She'd just heard about Evangeline Lilly's upcoming appearance the second Hobbit movie, and couldn't wait to see it. She spent a few happy minutes imagining herself as some kind of badassed warrior-elf like Lilly's character.

''Okay, that's enough self-indulgence for one day''. She gathered up the books on a cart and started putting them away.

When she got to the end of the cart there was a book she didn't recognize, a large hardcover with plain brown binding. It looked old. She picked it up, and there was a flash of light, then nothing.

{{Separator|k}}

When Melanie came to, the first thing she felt was cold. She was lying on something smooth and hard and chilly, which proved to be a marble table top of some kind when she opened her eyes. It was covered with dust, except where her movements had brushed it away.

She sat up with a moan, and the next thing she noticed was that she was completely nude. For a moment she was so shocked her brain simply locked up, refusing to process what was happening. Her first thought, when she could think again, was that she'd been abducted by some horrible creepy stalker. ''The cops'll find my body buried in his backyard in an oil drum, like that guy in Kansas''. But how could he have gotten her body out of the library without anyone seeing? There was no way anyone have possibly—then, in her mind's eye, she again saw the strange brown book, her hand picking it up, and the flash of light....

''The book. Holy shit. It had to be''. Part of her brain was still trying to argue, to insist there had to be a rational explanation, but it was arguing with the part of her that was freezing-ass cold, naked, in a dusty dark room. Hard to argue with reality. Especially when reality meant "horrible creepy stalker." Please let it have been the book....

She pushed herself off the table and stood up, looking around. She felt lightheaded and off-balance, and her first few steps were tentative, with one hand on the table for support.

The room was dim, with no obvious source of light, but she could see about as well as on a moonlit night. There was dust everywhere, like on the table, and the air smelled musty. It was about as big as the library's front lobby, and there were several other tables scattered about, seemingly at random. Unlike the first one, they were made of wood. One of them had been smashed to pieces, and she stepped carefully around it. The last thing she needed was a splinter in her foot.

Going around the table brought her face to face with a gruesome skeleton hanging in a corner of the room. She shrieked, jumping back and bumping into a table, which gave way beneath her as one of the legs snapped. The loud crash echoed through the empty room.

For a moment she stood still, heart pounding, until the adrenaline wore off. Then, feeling a little silly at her overreaction, she stepped back up and took a closer look. The skeleton looked real, yellowed and old, with a long crack in the skull. Whoever it had belonged to must have been a really big guy in life.
Next to it, against the wall, was a tall wooden thing that looked like a rack of some kind. It was empty, and discolored by a long vertical stain, and she went cold all over as she realized it was dried blood. Then she found the rotted remains of leather straps, just in the right places to be wrist and ankle restraints....

''Shit shit shit, this is not good'', she thought. ''Just because some stupid magic book transported you to Narnia or Deverry or wherever, it doesn't mean you can't still be axe-murdered by a crazy person''. She whirled around, half-expecting to find a guy in a hockey mask sneaking up behind her right that moment. But there was no one. The room was just as empty and silent as before.

She was genre-savvy enough to turn around again and make sure the skeleton hadn't started coming to life behind her as soon as her back was turned. But no, it still just hung there, like some grisly taxidermy experiment.

Something was still off, a feeling that something wasn't quite right, but she couldn't put her finger on what. Still creeped out, she resumed exploring the room, but with purpose now, rather than curiosity. She wanted to find some clothes, and maybe something she could use as a weapon.

The broken table leg did for the latter. It was thick enough to make a sturdy club. She swung it a few times, thinking ''Just try it, Leatherface. I'm on to you''. But although she went over the whole room, there was nothing that would pass for clothing. Not even drapes or a towel.

There was only one door, and it opened onto another identical dusty room full of tables. It didn't have any other doors either; there seemed to be no way out. It did have shelves full of glass jars and clay pots full of various unknown substances, but she left them alone after finding a whole black cat in one of them, preserved in some kind of clear liquid.

She found some footprints in the dust—large ones—which gave her a bit of a fright at first. But upon consideration they didn't look recent. They were just somewhat less dusty than the rest of the floor.

It was only after she'd given up the search, and was sitting on another table looking forlornly down at herself, that she realized what had been feeling off this whole time. Her body had been...altered.

The absence of flab about her middle was the first thing she noticed. She touched her stomach, and it was firm and hard under her fingertips. ''Holy crap, the magical diet. If I could bottle this I'd make a killing in LA''. After awhile, though, she realized the changes went beyond just losing weight. Her breasts were different too—not just smaller, but differently shaped. They'd been round and a little saggy—okay, a lot saggy—and big enough that she hovered between a B and C cup, depending on the bra. Now they were tiny little things, barely an A, and instead of being round they were pointed and curved up. The kind of shape a friend of hers had once sneeringly referred to as "ski-jump tits" back in college.

Everything else was smaller too. Her arms and legs were, well, not skinny—they felt toned and muscular, just like her belly—but they looked narrower, more slender. So did her torso and hips. And her skin was smooth and unblemished, no varicose veins, no wrinkled knuckles. She felt good, too, limber and energetic. Young.

She was thrilled. Sure the place was gloomy and creepy, and there was no apparent way out, but there definitely seemed to be some perks as well. She was starting to feel good about the whole situation.

That, of course, was precisely when things went to shit.

{{Separator|k}}

The first sign of trouble was a scraping sound, stone on stone. Off to her right, a section of wall pushed inward, and then swung open like a door. Stepping through the threshold was—

''Oh fuck''

—a big, green, mean-looking creature the size of Andre the Giant. He was carrying a long pole tipped with something sharp and ugly. ''Shit, that's, like, a spear or something''. He turned his head and spotted her instantly, despite the dimness. And he had three more friends who followed him into the room.

Melanie scooted off the table, and the creature followed her with the spear-tip. She dropped her makeshift club, knowing it wasn't going to do her any good, and raised her empty hands. "Um, I surrender?"

The brute gave her a toothy grin, that turned into a leer as his eyes traveled down her body. She was reminded of her nakedness, and felt hideously vulnerable. Was she about to get gang-raped by a bunch of big green ogres? Fear clamped her tight—a loathsome, clammy fear, curling in her belly.

But no, thank god, he just gestured with the spear, while his buddies spread out around her. He was pointing toward the doorway, and she started to move toward it—slowly, in case she was misinterpreting him. He just gestured again, more impatiently, and she quickened her step.

In moments she found herself moving down a hallway, being guided by shoves and the occasional jab with a spear—the butt end, thankfully. The creatures towered over her and made her feel tiny—the top of her head barely came up to their chins. And they were ''ripped''. Her body—her new body—was toned and athletic, but these guys had biceps and pecs that rivaled Sylvester Stallone in his glory days. They had broad faces, with heavy brows, and heavy jaws with a prominent underbite, but they could have passed for humans—really big humans, anyway—if it weren't for the olive-green skin. Well, and the yellow tusks that jutted up from their lower jaw.

Just to add insult to injury, they stank.

After several twists and turns, they came to a medieval-looking wooden door, closed with a crude iron padlock. One of them produced a key and unlocked it, then pulled it open and shoved her inside. Immediately the door slammed shut again behind her, and she heard the sound of the lock.

The room inside was filled with warm yellow candlelight, the first real light she'd seen since her arrival. It lifted her spirits, even as she realized she wasn't alone.

Sitting on a decrepit bed was a large, heavyset man, looking at her in astonishment. She felt another moment of naked vulnerability, but at least he wasn't leering at her. He just looked deer-in-the-headlights stunned, and the absurdity of the situation began to overcome her embarrassment. Remembering a line from a movie, she mustered as much dignity as she could, stood up straight, haughtily crossed her arms and said "I want a meal and a bath" in her best Sean Connery.

That broke the spell, at least. The man looked away, and stood up, walking over to where a long coat hung on the wall and taking it down. Still averting his eyes, he thrust it at her, saying something in a language she didn't recognize. She took it, noticing as she did that he towered over her just as much as the green guys outside did. Big guy. His coat—no, it turned out to be a cloak, of all things—was big on her too, puddling around her feet. And it was scratchy wool and smelled a little, too, but it was better than nothing. For the first time in what seemed like hours, she felt warm.

He said something else in his own language, and she shrugged. "Sorry, buddy, I can't understand you. Hablo ingles? Sprecken-zy...uh...dutch? Dootch?" He just shook his head, and spoke again. It sounded like he was trying a couple different languages too, but not only did she not understand them, she didn't recognize them at all.

He was very dark-skinned, with curly black hair, but he didn't look African-American. Or African, for that matter, not that she was an expert. He didn't look Indian either. Pakistani, maybe? Iranian? She was pretty sure she'd recognize Arabic if she heard it, but didn't Iranians have another language?

Then again, with everything else that had happened, she was probably on another planet. Maybe another universe. ''Transported here by a magical whatsis'', she thought, ''and of course I woke up starkers''. It was almost funny. ''Just call me Joan Carter. The question is, of where?''

They did have one breakthrough, eventually. Remembering how it was sometimes done in movies, she pointed to herself and said, "Melanie," then pointed at him. After a couple times back and forth he figured it out, or seemed to, and introduced himself as "Panharam."

{{Separator|k}}

Some time later, the door opened again, and one of the green brutes pushed in a bowl and pitcher, then shut and locked the door again. The bowl had some kind of nasty greasy stew in it, and the stuff in the pitcher tasted like flat beer. They ate and drank anyway, using their hands since there were no utensils, and wiped off afterward with a moth-eaten blanket. Later still, nature took its course, and the man introduced her to the back corner of the room he'd been using as a privy. From the evidence, he'd been imprisoned for at least a few days already. She gagged at the smell. There wasn't any privacy, but he pointedly turned his back while she did her business, and she did the same for him when his turn came.

{{Separator|k}}

That set the pattern for the next several days—at least she assumed they were days. It was hard to tell, but it certainly didn't feel like they were fed very often. She was hungry all the time, and Panharam seemed to be suffering even more. As big as he was, he was probably used to eating well.

On the plus side, infrequent meals meant infrequent bathroom breaks.

There wasn't any toilet paper, of course. Panharam had already torn the bed linens into strips, and they did well enough while they lasted, but it didn't take them long to run out. Remembering something she'd once read about Middle Eastern customs, Melanie started eating only with her right hand and cleaning only with her left. She tried not to think about cholera.

{{Separator|k}}

They did their best to breach the language barrier, but without a language in common they were reduced to pointing at things and learning each others' words for them. And there were only so many things to point at.

''Some adventure'', she thought glumly, sometime after the fourth meal. She was pretty woozy from hunger at that point. ''Sure, those guys didn't impale me on a spear, or...or worse, but I'm not exactly saving the day''. She glanced sideways at Panharam, who was sleeping. ''And he's not exactly Fabio''. That thought made her feel guilty. Sure he was plump, heavyset and old enough to be her father—about as far as you could possibly get from a romance novel hero—but he'd been nothing but kind. Despite the fact that they were both starving, he never tried to hog what little food they were given. He respected her privacy when she had to relieve herself, and never tried to take advantage of her—or even peek—even though he was so big he could easily overpower her. She was still wrapped in his cloak, for want of any other clothes.

{{Separator|k}}

She drifted in and out a lot, falling into a trance she assumed was some kind of hunger-induced fugue state. Then, sometime after meal eleven, Panharam shook her awake. He nodded at the door, and she heard shouting and banging beyond it. There was a heavy thump that shook the door, something that sounded like gasping, and then silence.

After a lingering moment, she heard the key in the lock, and the door opened. The first thing that came through was one of the green brutes, making her start. But he was obviously dead, liberally splashed with blood, and the way he fell in implied he'd been laying against the door. Hands grasped the body and pulled it back out of view, then a man stepped in.

He was deeply tanned and rugged-looking, with a thick bushy red beard, and like everyone else so far he towered over her. He was wearing some sort of medieval-looking metal ring armor, which after everything else she'd seen shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it was still kind of mind-bending to see it for real. And to cap it off, he had a bloody sword in his hand.

He spoke to her cellmate first. "Panharam bala Tenh?"

Panharam nodded, looking ecstatic. "''Ardat ji''," he replied. "''Ardat ji, Ardat ji!''" He'd said the same phrase to her a few times during their captivity; from the way he used it she'd guessed it meant "thank you." The newcomer helped him to his feet, then turned to her. She struggled to stand as well, before they could help, although the effort left her lightheaded and trembling. He asked her something, and Panharam replied for her—telling him she didn't speak the language, probably. They talked back and forth a bit, obviously about her, then the man called over his shoulder. "Naithuanna."

Another person appeared in the doorway, and Melanie's eyes bugged out in disbelief. It was an elf, a female elf. She couldn't be anything else—it wasn't just the pointed ears, her whole face was inhumanly exotic, and there was just something, well, alien about her.

Melanie felt well and truly beyond the looking glass now. Her head swam. ''Is this Middle Earth after all? Am I in Moria or Dol Goldur or someplace?''

''No, Tolkien's elves were as tall or taller than humans. Galadriel was, like, over six feet or something. This elf is my height. She barely comes up to the bearded guy's shoulder.

She's...she...my height....''

Slowly, as if in a dream, Melanie raised her hands to her own ears, feeling along the upper edges...and found pointed tips.

"Of course," she said, "I should've known." And then she fainted.

{{Separator|k}}

When she came to, she was lying on the bed, with her cloak—well, Panharam's cloak—draped over her like a blanket. He and the bearded man were gone, and the door was closed, but the elf sat on the floor, eating something. When she saw Melanie was awake, she stood up, picking up a bundle of what looked like clothing and bringing it over. She set it on the bed, and then added what looked like a square of shortbread she took out of a cloth wrapping. "''Tenya ent clatha''," she said, "''nes nehel''."

"Uh, thanks," Melanie replied, sitting up. She held the cloak to her chest, and reached for the food. It proved to be some kind of hard, flavorless biscuit. It certainly wasn't ''lembas''. She didn't care; after who knew how many days of near-starvation, she'd eat anything. It was gone in three bites.

"Thank you," she said again. "Um, ''hannon le''." It was one of the few elven phrases she remembered from the Tolkien movies, but this elf showed no sign of recognizing it.

"Naithuanna ''ynili''," she said, "''ent'' 'Meloni' ''ynehel, cyëf?''"

Well, that was easy enough to puzzle out. She must have gotten the name from Panharam. "Close, Melanie." She pointed to herself and repeated, "Melanie."

"Melehni?"

"Close enough," Mel replied. She pointed to the elf. "And you're...Nigh..thwanna?"

"Naithuanna," the elf corrected. "''Esti nehel doës hinual?''"

Melanie sighed. "I'm guessing that's 'Don't you speak elvish, you dork?' I'm sorry, but I don't." She gestured to the clothes. "Do you mind if I get dressed?" The elf looked at her uncomprehendingly. ''I really need to stop thinking of her as 'the elf''', Melanie mused. ''I'M an elf. Holy fuckballs, I'm an elf!''

It took some emphatic gesturing, but Mel was finally able to get across that she wanted Naithuanna to turn around. She looked puzzled, but finally turned her back.

The clothes turned out to be a pair of pants that laced up the outside of each leg, and a long shirt with sleeves that were closely fitted to mid-forearm and then belled out over the hands. The material felt like silk. ''Probably her spare clothes'', Melanie thought. Naithuanna was wearing some elaborate leather costume studded with metal bits—presumably some kind of armor—but from what Mel could see of it, the clothing underneath was similar.

It felt almost sinfully luxurious, to be wearing clothes again. And it was nice to feel warm again. On the down side, she felt the cold stone floor more keenly now under her bare feet, despite having endured it for almost two weeks. Too bad Naithuanna didn't have a spare set of boots.

Seeing Mel was ready, Naithuanna opened the door and led her out. There was a small crowd of people in the hallway outside, Panharam and the bearded man among them. The others included—didn't it just figure?—a tall man with a wizard's staff, and a hobbit. The wizard didn't have a pointy hat or a beard, at least. He looked like a guy in his twenties. And the hobbit was a girl-hobbit. That was different.

But far more salient, at the moment, was the little campfire the hobbit was tending, with a bubbling stewpot perched over it. Seeing the way Mel's eyes lit up at the sight of it, the hobbit laughed and dished up a bowl. She said something incomprehensible but cheery-sounding as she handed it over, adding a spoon and a hunk of brown bread.

Everyone else was already eating, so Mel didn't stand on ceremony. She sat down next to the hobbit and dug in, doing her best to eat like a civilized person and not scarf it down like a starving animal. She almost succeeded. When Panharam, who had a head start on her, showed no compunctions about asking for a refill, she followed his example.

He'd deteriorated a lot, she realized, even in the two weeks or so she'd known him. He'd been a fat man, and he still was, somewhat, but not nearly as much. His skin hung loosely on him, and his face was gaunt. There was a chalky undertone to his dark skin. She wondered if she looked similarly starved.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was having a confab with the red-bearded man, the alleged wizard, and another armored man who kept casting suspicious glances her way. He was bearded too, and she mentally dubbed them "Redbeard" and "Brownbeard" to keep them straight in her head. They were obviously talking about her. As she watched, Naithuanna asked the wizard something and got a headshake in response.

When everyone was done eating, Brownbeard got up and made some kind of announcement, gesturing at her, then walked purposefully over to her, fiddling with something around his neck. Mel began to feel nervous, but everybody else seemed calm, and the hobbit-girl said something reassuring to her.

The "something" around Brownbeard's neck turned out to be a gold pendant in the shape of a stylized sun, with squiggly rays all around it. He thrust it at her like it was a cross and she was Dracula, intoning something. Mel couldn't help but wonder if he was saying, "Back! Back, creature of the night!" She tensed up, wondering if he was about to stake her—or conjure a lightning bolt out of the sky to smite her, for all she knew—but nothing happened. After a moment everyone seemed to relax minutely, including the priest, if that's what he was. His expression softened, and he gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and turned away. Everyone else started packing up.

"What the hell was that all about?" she asked plaintively, but no one answered.

Naithuanna picked up a long bundle that Mel realized was a quiver, containing an intricately-carved bow and several arrows. To her surprise, the other elf offered it to her, saying something in elvish.

"I don't know how to use that," she protested, holding up her hands and shaking her head. Naithuanna's eyebrows rose in astonishment, and Mel could practically read her mind—''What kind of elf doesn't know how to use a bow?'' Everybody else looked surprised too.

Naithuanna then offered Mel her sword instead—she had a long, slender one buckled to her waist—but Mel shook her head again. The other elf shrugged, as if to say "suit yourself", and slung the quiver over her shoulder. This was followed by a leather pack, and then she picked up an odd-looking contraption that could have passed for modern art at the Met. Only once she'd buckled it to her left forearm did Mel realize it was a small shield of some kind. One that strapped to the arm and left her hand free for the bow. Redbeard and Brownbeard had shields too, but theirs were more historical-looking round ones that didn't leave their hands free. Brownbeard's shield had a sun painted on it that matched his pendant.

Redbeard and Hobbit-girl used the campfire to light torches, then the fire was put out. Mel realized she was still carrying Panharam's cloak, and went over to offer it to him. He demurred, though, gesturing that she should keep it, so she wrapped it around herself again, rolling it up at her shoulders to keep it from tripping her. Away from the fire she was still a little cold, even in Naithuanna's spare clothing. ''One of the perils of being thin'', she mused. ''I guess it's a fair trade''.

They set off down the corridor, with Redbeard in the lead. It was the same one the green guys had brought her through—she remembered the way it zig-zagged. After maybe half an hour, they came to an intersection she recognized, and around the corner the hallway straightened out.

It was then that Mel noticed she didn't see Naithuanna anywhere. Redbeard was in the front, with the wizard behind him, then Panharam, then herself and the hobbit girl, and Brownbeard was bringing up the rear. Naithuanna was nowhere in sight.

Had she left? Was she so disgusted by an elf who couldn't use a bow—or even talk—that she'd taken off on her own? A niggling little voice of doubt in her mind insisted it was so. Yeah, zapped into a fantasy universe and given a full-body Mary Sue makeover, and you're still a worthless loser.

Hobbit-girl noticed her looking around, and guessed the reason. "''Kandad beh'' Naithuanna?" She pointed ahead and said something more, and Melanie recognized the word haskat—corridor—from Panharam's vocabulary lessons.

"Scouting ahead?" Mel guessed, making a show of peering about with her hand shading her eyes. The hobbit grinned and nodded. Then she pointed to herself and said, "Leske." In case there was any doubt about her meaning she then pointed at Mel and said, "Meleni," then back at herself and repeated "Leske."
"Leske, huh?" Melanie said. "Nice to meet you, Leske."

The hobbit nodded. "Leske Thindelgabben."

''Don't laugh, don't laugh, it might be a mortal insult to laugh, and her sword may only be a foot long but that's still enough to gut you like a fish''. It was hard—''Thindelgabben?''—but Melanie managed to keep a straight face.

And besides, for all that Leske was about eye level with Mel's belly button, she didn't look like someone you'd want to laugh at. Like Naithuanna, she was wearing leather armor, although hers had a different cut, more utilitarian and not so, well, elvish. The effect was pretty intimidating—less Frodo, more Emma Peel. Well, Emma Peel's mini-me, anyway.

In addition to the sword, she was armed with at least three hatchets tucked into her belt. They reminded Mel of the tomahawks Daniel Day Lewis had been throwing around in ''Last of the Mohicans''. Contrary to the Tolkien stereotype she wasn't barefoot either, and her feet didn't look especially big.

{{Separator|k}}

They walked for another couple of hours, occasionally turning corners and passing side-corridors and doors. At one point, Melanie was pretty sure she spotted the hidden stone door to the rooms she'd first arrived in.

Around the next turn after that, there were some...corpses. More of the green brutes, shoved out of the way to one side of the corridor. Mel stared at them in horrified fascination—it was one thing to read about dead bodies in a novel, or even see them on TV. Encountering them in the literal flesh made her skin crawl.

And the stench was horrible.

The bloodstains on the floor were still relatively fresh, and nobody else seemed surprised to see them, so Mel figured her new companions were responsible for their current unbreathing state. Despite trying to step carefully, she managed to put her foot down in a sticky puddle of blood, and cursed under her breath.

Naithuanna was waiting at the next intersection, with her bow drawn and an arrow ready. As the rest of the group came up she put a finger to her lips and nodded her head to the next corridor. Redbeard and Leske immediately doused their torches, plunging the hallway back into moonlit darkness. Behind Redbeard's back, the wizard opened a complicated-looking pouch on his belt and took out something that glowed faintly. While they had a quick whispered conversation, Leske and Brownbeard moved up to the intersection. Leske shrugged off her pack and plucked a tomahawk from her belt, while Brownbeard took out a nasty-looking metal club.

Melanie felt her pulse racing, and not in a good way. ''Holy shit, there's going to be a fight'', she thought. ''This is really happening''. So much for being a heroic adventurer. ''I think I'm going to hurl''.

At Redbeard's nod, Naithuanna and Leske darted out into the intersection and opened fire. Shouts and bellows of pain came around the corner. They each got a second arrow or hatchet off, then hurried back. A spear clanged off the stone wall, just missing Naithuanna.

The wizard was next, tossing whatever he'd taken out of his pouch into the intersection and shouting something arcane-sounding. The little bit of whatever-it-was exploded into a bright golden light, filling the hallway and prompting cries of pain from around the corner.

The sudden light hurt Melanie's eyes too, and she covered them with the heels of her hands, turning away. As a result, she didn't see what happened next, but she could hear the clanging and banging, the shouts, and some awful meaty thunks.

By the time her eyes stopped hurting it was mostly over. Naithuanna joined her, holding a bloody sword, and checked her eyes. She said something in an amused voice, and Melanie could guess what it was. ''Don't look directly at the light spell, dummy''.

The two Beards came back around the corner then. Both of them also had bloodstained weapons, and Brownbeard was limping a little. Naithuanna wrinkled her nose, and Mel couldn't blame her—the guys smelled like a gym locker. ''I guess swordfighting is quite a workout''.

Leske came rushing up then, sounding excited. She had a little pile of gold coins in her hands, which prompted a lot of interest and babble from everyone. Redbeard called Panharam over, and he picked one up and looked closely at the design stamped on it. Melanie saw his eyes narrow in speculation. There was some back-and-forth conversation between him and Redbeard and the wizard, and his expression grew angry.

''It must have something to do with why he was being kept prisoner here'', she thought. She wondered what the story was, but unfortunately there was no way they could tell her. She made up her mind then to start learning the local language.

Everyone went around the corner again, and when Melanie followed she saw them all wiping their weapons on the dead guys' clothes. Ew. The bodies were still more of those big ugly green guys.

Remembering their earlier vocabulary exchanges, Melanie nudged Panharam and pointed at them, saying, "Orcs?" They didn't really look like Tolkien's orcs—or Warcraft orcs for that matter, although that was closer. But she didn't know what else to call them.

As before, he responded with the word in his language: "''Genka''." Naithuanna, noticing the exchange, added what Mel assumed was the elvish word: "''Cehakar''." She was trying to carefully work one of her arrows out of an orc's ribcage, but despite her best efforts it snapped off, right behind the arrowhead, and she sighed.

{{Separator|k}}

The new corridor was very long, but at the far end she could see a tiny dot of daylight. It took the better part of an hour to reach the exit, and Melanie was tired and footsore by the end, but finally they emerged into a bright, sunny day.

They were standing on a hillside, above a grassy meadow. It was a cloudy overcast afternoon, but Melanie didn't care. The cool grass felt so nice under her bare feet. It was so lovely to be out of that dank, smelly...what the hell was that place, anyway? She turned around to look at the opening. It looked like a natural cave from this side, partially obscured by vines and other vegetation. There was no hint of the huge, obviously artificial underground complex from the outside.

"'Dungeons deep and caverns old'," she quoted, shaking her head in wonder.
They didn't stop, once they were outside. Redbeard led them on across the meadow, and Melanie bit back a complaint. Even through the clouds she could tell the afternoon was getting on. They weren't going to walk all night, were they? Despite the psychological lift she'd gotten from seeing daylight for the first time in a couple weeks, she was pretty sure she couldn't go much further. Panharam looked as bad as she felt. And Brownbeard's limp was getting worse.
Finally they stopped, where a small river meandered through the meadow, with copses of trees along its banks. Leske immediately got to work kindling a fire. Melanie sat down with a groan, and for a moment she just sat there in an exausted stupor. Until she noticed everyone else was busy working, setting up camp. Guilt warred with fatigue and eventually won, but when she tried to get up and help, Leske quite firmly gestured for her to stay put. Panharam got the same treatment, and what sounded like a stern lecture as well. The hobbit even shook a ladle at him. Apparently there were some perks to being the rescuee instead of the hero.

So she sat, for some unknown amount of time, lost in a kind of exhausted trance, while the sun went down and the daylight dimmed. Eventually Naithuanna came over to join her, carrying two bowls of food.

She wrinked her nose again as she sat down, and this time Mel couldn't blame it on the guys. ''Yeah'', she thought, ''I probably stink. Who knows how many days without toilet paper, with that nasty gunk they fed us running through my system, not to mention no bath or shower. It's a wonder they didn't just throw me in the river''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''And then she just lets me put on her clothes, without a complaint''. "Thank you," she said, trying to put as much sincerity into the words as possible, hoping it would get her meaning across.

It seemed to work, because Naithuanna smiled and nodded. "''Coësen ynehel''," she replied.

Melanie looked speculatively at the river. Maybe they could bathe after dinner? Naithuanna followed her gaze, and shook her head with another smile. "''En clatha, fuamelèd''," she said in a teasing tone. Mel guessed that meant something like, "Eat first."

Whatever Leske had put in the stew, it was savory, and she found herself mopping up the last of it with a piece of bread. As before, Panharam and she both went for seconds. She felt full and warm inside for first time in who knew how many days.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was rummaging through her own pack, setting out various items. Among them were a cake of hard soap, an ivory comb, and an earthenware bottle. Then she pulled out what looked like a flannel blanket, and Melanie had to suppress a smile. ''There's a frood who really knows where her towel is. Hoopy''.

Leske joined them when they trooped down to the river, after speaking very firmly to the guys—probably saying something like, "Don't you dare peek."

Naithuanna found a spot with a good thick line of trees between them and the camp, set down the blanket and supplies, and then pulled her tunic over her head without a trace of self-consciousness. Her pants followed as quickly as they could be unlaced, and then she was striding out into the river.

Melanie's eyes bugged out. ''No wonder I had such a hard time getting her to turn around so I could dress. I guess elves aren't big on modesty. I suppose it fits, though—elves are usually a bunch of nature-loving free-spirited tree-hugging hippies. It stands to reason they'd be shameless nudists too''.

Leske apprently didn't share the elven disdain for modesty, though. The little hobbit had disappeared behind a bush to disrobe. Melanie was sorely tempted to emulate her, but Naithuanna was giving her a Look. ''You're one of us, girl'', it seemed to say. ''Don't puss out on me this time''.

With a sigh, she started unlacing her pants. Behind her she heard running and then a splash, as Leske dashed from the safety of her bush to the concealing water.

She finished undressing, remembering how she had stood on her dignity with Panharam, those first few moments before he'd given her his cloak. She did it again, managing to walk calmly into the water instead of dashing like Leske. Naithuanna seemed to approve.

The water was cold, but Melanie was so eager to get clean she didn't care. She took the soap and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was raw. And the earthenware bottle proved to hold some kind of shampoo. Leske declined—apparently special hair soap was a prissy elven thing—but Melanie luxuriated shamelessly in it, much to Naithuanna's amusement.

Night had completely fallen by the time she was done washing. She relaxed for a bit, floating serenely in the cool water. It was a bright, moonlit night, with the kind of ethereal, glowy light that only happened on clear nights with a full moon.

Except when she looked up, there wasn't any full moon.

She did find a moon—two moons, as it happened—but they were both slender cresents, and partially obscured by clouds. Naithuanna followed her gaze, and pointed upward. "''Tel'cenodel''," she said, "Lafael ''ent'' Celên."

But Melanie didn't care about moons at the moment. She was looking around at the brightly-lit night, and remembering. Remembering how the dungeon rooms and corridors had seemed dimly lit, even though there was no light source at all before Panharam's candle. Remembering how it had seemed like a bright sunny day when she first emerged from the dungeon, even though the sky was overcast and cloudy. Remembering how much the light spell had hurt her eyes.

''I can see in the dark'', she marveled. ''Right, because I'm an elf now, and of course elves can see in the dark''. Somehow that was the last straw, the final bit of weirdness that really brought home to her what had happened. ''I'm an elf. I'm not human anymore''. She stood up, waiting for the water to calm, and then looked at her reflection.

For the first time, she saw her new face.

Her coloration was different, and she was still gaunt from her ordeal, but otherwise she looked a lot like Naithuanna. She was paler, and her hair was silvery-blond instead of black, but she had the same kind of narrow, finely-boned face, the same high cheekbones and delicately swept ears. The same eyes, almond-shaped and slanted inward, and just a bit too large for her face. And unlike Naithuanna's green, hers were an utterly unhuman shade of violet.

She felt a wrenching, disorienting sense of loss. She had a vision of herself—her original, middle-aged, overweight, ''human'' self—reaching out to her from across a chasm, and she reached back, but the chasm grew wider, and she couldn't reach....

She realized she was crying when the tears dropped on her reflection, rippling it. Naithuanna came over and put an arm around her shoulders, saying something that sounded soothing, but her alien-ness, her inhuman features and incomprehensible language, just reinforced Melanie's sense of isolation. She pushed away, walking deeper into the river.

''I'm not me anymore'', she thought. ''And if I'm not ME, then who the hell am I?'' She suddenly felt like her own body was something ''other'', something separate, not a part of her, a prison of flesh that enveloped her. She was smothered by it. She wanted to shout and rage at the heavens—but even the sky was alien, here.

She looked up at the moons again. ''Moons'', plural. It was more than just herself that was wrong, it was the whole world.

Melanie didn't have anyone who would miss her. No husband, no boyfriend, no real friends. Her parents were gone. She wouldn't particularly miss her job. And she certainly didn't ''like'' pushing forty, or struggling with her weight. And yet she mourned the loss of her world, of everything familiar. She'd never see a movie again. Never eat a cheeseburger. No more chocolate, no TV, no ice cream. Never hear English, except when she talked to herself. Never drive a car. Never take that vacation trip to Japan. Ever.

It was too much. She felt overwhelmed, consumed. The sense of loss was too great, too all-encompassing. It rose up and swallowed the world.

{{Separator|k}}

Eventually the emotional storm passed. Melanie wasn't sure how long it lasted, but when she looked around, Naithuanna and Leske were on the riverbank, and Leske was dressed and looked dry except for her hair. Naithuanna was kneeling in the grass and drying her hair with the towel.

She felt spent. Empty. Unbidden, a line from an old story wafted into her mind: "You lost a whole world. That's a lot to grieve for." Somehow, that thought made her feel a little better—it put things in perspective, at least.

She swam to the riverbank and joined the others. Both of them gave her a concerned look, and she mustered a wan smile. When she pointed at the towel, Naithuanna didn't hesitate to hand it over. "Sorry for the waterworks," she said as she began drying off. "I'm better now."

Leske gave her a sort of one-armed snug, and then headed back to camp. Naithuanna waved goodbye to her and then sat back and started plaiting her hair into some elaborate braids. When Melanie had finished towel-drying hers, Naithuanna did the same for her. It was nice and relaxing. ''I've missed having girlfriends'', she mused.

By the time Naithuanna was done it was starting to get chilly. Mel cringed at the thought of getting back into soiled clothing after she'd gotten so nice and clean, but to her surprise their clothes were clean and dry when she picked them up. Her expression must have betrayed her, because Naithuanna smiled a smug little smile, and said, "''Cinreth nili deynal hlei''."

"I hope that means 'I used a magic laundry spell' and not 'you were out of it so long I had time to hand-wash silk and hang it up to dry'."

Naithuanna didn't understand, of course, but Melanie's wry, bantering tone seemed to reassure her. "''Fuatenyal, fonkin''," she replied in a teasing tone, and picked up her tunic.

{{Separator|k}}

She shared a tent with Leske and Naithuanna that night, but found she couldn't sleep. Naithuanna didn't seem to want to sleep either; instead, she sat cross-legged in some kind of meditative pose, and went into a sort of trance. Melanie left her to it, lying on her back and staring at the canvas roof of the tent.

''Why an elf?'' she wondered. ''Why didn't I come over as myself? Or at least still human? Or if not human, why not, say, a hobbit? Or an orc, for that matter? Would anyone who picked up that book have become an elf? Or been transported at all?''

She thought back to that moment when she'd touched the book. ''I was dreaming of an adventure. Maybe that's why—the book somehow picked up my wish, and gave me an adventure?'' She snorted in wry amusement. ''It could have given me a nicer one. Not so much with the starving''. Oh well, she HAD thought the pirate on the romance novel cover looked too clean to be real. That wasn't a problem she'd had, after her ordeal.

Still, why an elf? She thought back, trying to reconstruct what she had been thinking about, and then it came to her. ''Tauriel. I was thinking about Tauriel. Miss 'I can do everything Legolas did, only backwards and in high heels'.''

With the conundrum resolved, Melanie felt herself slipping away. Her last thought was, ''Maybe those muscles on my arms aren't just for show''.

{{Separator|k}}

She got a chance to find out the next morning. Naithuanna shook her awake shortly before dawn, and after they'd dressed, took her out to a copse of trees for archery lessons. And sure enough, she was able to draw the bow. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't as hard as it should be, either.

There was some muscle-memory working in her favor, too. Her body sort of knew what it was doing when she drew an arrow and nocked it. But she wasn't magically imbued with new skills. Her shooting was probably better than it should be for someone who'd never used a bow in her life, but she still didn't come anywhere close to matching Naithuanna's speed or accuracy.

When her arms started to get tired, they put aside the bow and Naithuanna drew her sword. This started a whole new round of lessons, with Melanie holding the sword and Naithuanna standing behind her like a golf pro, guiding her hand and arm through a series of different swings. Despite its length—the blade alone was almost three feet long—the sword flowed easily through the moves Naithuanna was putting her through. The heavy pommel at the bottom of the grip seemed to be acting as a counterweight, and whenever she hit that balance "sweet spot", the sword seemed to almost flow into place.

That didn't happen often, though.

Melanie's arms felt like lead when Naithuanna finally called a halt. She'd also begun to feel the call of nature—to put it delicately—during the exercise, and was wracking her brain trying to figure out how to tell Naithuanna without humiliating herself in the process.

Fortunately, it turned out to be unnecessary; Naithuanna had to go too. Or at least that's what Mel thought it meant when she led her into the privacy of the trees and started plucking some particularly large, broad leaves. She gave Melanie an inquisitive look, as if to say, "You need some of these too?" When Mel nodded she plucked more and shared them out.

Two weeks ago Melanie would have been disgusted to settle for using leaves as toilet paper. She'd never been an outdoorsy person, and had regarded the few camping trips she'd been on as something to be endured, not enjoyed.

But after her ordeal in the dungeon, leaves were a step up. All she felt was grateful.

{{Separator|k}}

When they got back to camp everyone else was up too. Brownbeard was kneeling, facing east toward the rising sun. He seemed to be praying to it. Redbeard was standing outside his tent, holding a leather sack that he was shaking vigorously, and from the ''shnk-shnk-shnk'' metal sound coming from it, his armor was in there. The wizard was reading a book, and Leske was cooking breakfast.
"I really should learn the rest of their names," she mused. Naithuanna looked curiously at her. She shrugged and did the pointing thing again, starting with herself, then Naithuanna, Leske, and Panharam. Then she pointed at Redbeard.
Understanding dawned in Naithuanna's eyes. "Denys," she said, also pointing at Redbeard. Brownbeard was "Galthesar," and the wizard was "Crosus."

{{Separator|k}}

After breakfast, Crosus stood up and beckoned Melanie over. Everyone dropped what they were doing and gathered around, looking interested, which made her feel nervous.

As she approached, the wizard took a pinch of something out of his magic-stuff pouch, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. Then he tried to touch her forehead. The stuff on his thumb looked sooty and black.

She shied away, looking around at the others for some clue what was happening. Naithuanna gave her an encouraging nod, so she braced herself and let the guy smear his stuff on her face. Then he raised his arms and made some complicated-looking gestures with his hands, while intoning something harsh and sibilant.
Nothing seemed to happen when he was done. "Is that supposed to be some kind of magic spell?" she asked.

To her surprise, he nodded. Melanie's eyes bugged out. "You can understand me?" Another nod. She felt like a huge burden was lifted from her shoulders. They could communicate! "God, where should I start?"

He shrugged.

Wait a minute.... "What's with the mime routine? Say something!"

The wizard shook his head, and spoke...in Panharam's language.

She felt her hopes fall. "Crap. Can you cast it again, to go the other way?"

He shook his head again.

"Oh for fuck's sake," she snapped. "A translation spell that only goes one way? What kind of balls-up stupid is that?"

He stared at her in amazement at that, then burst out laughing.

Everyone else was looking confused—apparently the spell only worked for him. But he spoke to them, obviously translating or describing what she said, because they all started grinning. Except Naithuanna, who wore a disapproving frown. ''I guess proper elven ladies don't swear''.

She sighed. "I guess I should just talk, then. Um, well, my name is Melanie—Melanie Foster—and I'm really, ''really'' not from around here. I don't know how I got here either. For that matter, I have no idea where 'here' even is. All I know is that I picked up a book that must've been magical, and bam, I was zapped here. Into that...awful place—" She jerked her thumb north, back the way they'd come. "I guess, as the old joke goes, 'a wizard did it'."

"Zelligar," Crosus said.

"Is that the name of that place?"

He shook his head, and pointed to his staff.

"Oh, lemme guess, that's the name of the wizard who ''built'' the place."

Another nod.

"Well FUCK YOU, ZELLIGAR!" That part she turned and shouted back north. Crosus snickered behind her.

Melanie turned back to face them and sighed. Should she tell them the other part? The really big part? ''Yeah, maybe it'll help them understand why I'm so weird''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''Please don't hate me for this....'' She took a deep breath and said it. "When I was transported here...I was also...changed. I wasn't an elf before. I was human."

Crosus looked shocked. She waited while he translated that for the others. Naithuanna looked...hurt. Betrayed. Shit. She plunged ahead. "There aren't any elves where I come from. Or magic. They only exist in stories. Myths and legends. I...this is all very strange to me. I don't know what to do. I don't even know who I am, anymore." She felt her throat tighten up, and squeezed her eyes shut, struggling not to cry.

Something touched her hand. She looked down, and saw that Leske had taken it into her own. She looked up at her with compassion in her eyes, and gave it a gentle squeeze. It seemed the hobbit, at least, was willing to accept her.

Naithuanna was another story.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[Category:Mythical]]

Ratted Out

2013-02-18T03:09:08Z

MarianLH:

{{WIP}}
{{Universe|Paradise}}
{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Ratted Out
|user= MarianLH}}

'''Tuesday, September 5, 2006'''

Skylar hesitated when she saw the two older kids already waiting at the bus stop, then took a deep breath and forced herself to keep going. ''They can't see it'', she told herself. ''Just act normal''. Sure enough, they only glanced at her—or rather, at the empty air above her head—and then ignored her.

Skylar wouldn't have believed it three weeks ago, but now starting high school wasn't the biggest thing in her life.

"Hey Skylar!"

Skylar turned to see her best friend, Brandi, hurrying up the street. She fought off an urge to run and hide, fixing a smile on her face. ''Just act normal''. Behind her, the school bus was just coming around the corner. "Good timing," she called out.

"I haven't seen you since you got sick in August," Brandi said as she caught up. "How are you? How was the rest of your summer?"

"Sucked," Skylar said. The understatement of the year. No, the century. That was when it had happened, three weeks ago—she'd been sick for days, with like the worst flu ever, and then just when she was feeling better, ''bam!'' She'd woken up to find herself halfway through being transformed into a giant rat-person.

A giant rat-person no one else could see. Her parents, her bratty little brother, hundreds of people at the mall during back-to-school shopping—they all saw the girl she used to be. That had scared her at first, made her think she was going crazy. But she didn't think a delusion would be this vivid, this lucid. She could ''feel'' her fur. And besides, there were things about rats she hadn't even known about until she became one. How could she hallucinate bruxing, for instance, or the need to gnaw, when she hadn't known rats did that?

So she didn't think she was going crazy. Most of the time. But she couldn't talk about it either, not without ''other'' people thinking she was crazy. Not even with her best friend.

Before Brandi could ask any awkward questions, Skylar turned the conversation around. "What about you?" The gambit worked; Brandi chattered on about her own summer while they boarded the bus and found seats.

Which brought her to her first rat-form challenge of the day. She'd taken to wearing skirts exclusively since her transformation, since there was no way she could hide big holes in her jeans from her mom. But that meant she had to sit on her tail all the way to school.

She'd tried on some low-rise jeans during back-to-school shopping, but they hadn't been quite low enough. For her tail, that is—they ''had'' been low enough for Mom to take one look and say, "Forget it."

Nope...no matter how she sat, her tail felt pinched. At home she could slouch forward a bit and make it work, but there wasn't enough room here.

Brandi was looking at her oddly. "You got ants in your pants?"

Skylar froze inside, and forced herself to sit still, no matter how uncomfortable it was. "I'm fine," she said. ''Gotta say something quick'', she thought, ''change the subject''. "So, um...are you gonna do band again this year?"

"No," Brandi said sarcastically, patting the black plastic case by her hip. "This is just for show."

"I didn't notice it," Skylar said lamely. She managed to keep the conversation going for the rest of the trip, but it bothered her the way Brandi looked at and spoke to her forehead. Before her transformation, they'd been about the same height, but now Brandi was nearly half a head taller. She'd gotten accustomed to her new height at home, but seeing her friend looming over her brought it back.

Then there was her enhanced sense of smell. Like her height, she'd mostly gotten used to it around the house, but now she was surrounded by new scents. Everyone on the school bus had their own unique odor, accented by different soaps, shampoos, and other additives. Several of the girls were wearing cheap perfume, one of the seniors used the same bodywash Brandi did, and a boy up near the front was a smoker. Two of the girls had their periods. Then there was the diesel fumes from the bus, the food scents of various lunches, and the cork grease from Brandi's clarinet. And the bus driver needed a shower.

Skylar was glad her mother had forced her into that back-to-school shopping trip the week before. She'd turned into a hermit after ''it'' happened, and Mom had to twist her arm to get her to go, but the experience stood her in good stead now. She'd spent the first half hour or so at the mall completely disoriented by all the scents assaulting her nose, but somewhere along the way, she'd somehow gotten used to it. Now she just registered different scents the same way she saw different colors. It was kinda cool, actually.

The bus finally pulled up at Jefferson High School, and Skylar catapulted up out of her seat before it stopped moving, earning her a glare from the unwashed driver. The base of her tail ached. ''I'm gonna walk to school from now on'', she thought. ''It isn't THAT far''.

Everyone else was getting up too; she stood in the aisle and shouldered her backpack, waiting for the crowd to start moving. Then Brandi moved out behind her, and stepped on her tail. Stars of pain shot up her spine. It hurt so much it was like fireworks exploding in her head. "Brandi!"

"What?"

"Move your foot to the left!" she hissed.

"What? Why?"

"Just do it!"

"Okay, okay, jeez." And then the pressure was mercifully gone.

As soon as her muscles unlocked, Skylar crouched down, awkwardly in the tight confines of the aisle, and picked up the end of her tail. The tip looked red and swollen, and pain radiated out from it in pulsating waves. It felt ''exactly'' like getting a finger caught in a slamming door.

The bus was finally emptying, and she started moving up the aisle toward the door, still holding her tail up.

"Hey, are you crying?" Brandi said. "What the hell?"

She wanted to snarl. ''Tears of pain, bitch'', she thought angrily, and then immediately felt contrite. It wasn't Brandi's fault she couldn't see her tail.

The bus driver hadn't forgotten her, either. "Stay seated until the bus comes to a complete stop," he snapped when she reached the door. Feeling dogpiled from all sides, Skylar just nodded submissively and hurried out, blinking tears from her eyes.

"Asshole," Brandi said. "Are you okay, Sky? What's wrong?"

"Never mind. It's nothing." They were passing through the front doors of the school now, and Skylar just wanted to get away, before Brandi asked her something she couldn't answer. "I—I want to find my locker before first period."

"Me too," Brandi said. "Catch you later." And then, thank god, she was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

Skylar moved carefully down the packed hallway, checking locker numbers and doing her best to shield her tail with her body. She had to let go of it for a minute when she found her assigned locker, to fish out the slip of paper with the combination from her backpack, but she kept a close watch around her and managed to keep it out from underfoot.

She made it to her first class just before the bell rang, sliding into the first empty desk she found. The backs of the seats all had a hole at a convenient height for her tail, but she was still worried about getting stepped on. Besides, it would tent out the back of her skirt, and the last thing she needed was ''more'' attention.

The knee-length skirt was loose enough that she was able to slip her tail around her hip, laying it along the outside of her thigh. ''Wish I'd thought of this on the bus. Maybe I won't have to walk home after all''.

The tip still throbbed, and she began to get seriously worried. ''What if it's broken?'' she thought. ''How's a doctor going to treat it if he can't even see it? Crap, what if I get hit by a car or something?''

{{Separator|k}}

In another classroom, senior Erik Metzger sat at his desk, doodling in his notebook. He smelled his friend Jeremy coming up behind him, but didn't look up...until the ziploc bag of oregano landed on his desk. "Ha ha," he said. "You could at least use real catnip."

"Don't want to be an enabler," Jeremy said, deadpan. "Besides, your mom loves Italian cooking so much, she could actually use this." He sat down in the next desk over, slinging his backpack over the seat back. "Listen, I think there's one of your people among the new frosh."

"Seeing through the Veil now, are we?"

"If only. No, she was holding something invisible in her hands. Saw her getting off the bus, and she looked like you do when you're supposedly playing with your tail. She also looked pretty freaked out, but that's probably just cus she's a freshman." He gestured toward the bag of oregano. "Better hide that. Teacher'll think it's pot."

"From what I hear, the new teacher's more likely to ask me to share than confiscate it. Point me at this freshmen when you get a chance, will you?"

The teacher in question walked in at that point, and despite his breezy assurance, Erik did scoop up the bag of oregano and stuff it in his backpack.

"Hello, class. My name is Ms. Rodriguez. I just transferred here from Boston, so you're all going to go easy on me, right?" Various hoots and catcalls greeted that, and she grinned. "That's what I thought you were gonna say. Let's do roll first, and then we'll start handing out textbooks." She picked up a clipboard. "A lot of Scandinavian names," she mused. "Is that a Minnesota thing?"

"You think the Vikings picked their name out of a hat?" one of the guys said. Everybody laughed.

{{Separator|k}}

By the end of third period Skylar was starting to feel really frazzled. Sitting with her tail to the side was a partial solution, but it wasn't perfect. She still had to sit forward a little, without the support of the seat back, or else slouch down. And the Phys Sci teacher had gigged her for it, too, telling her to "sit up straight." At least he hadn't thrown chalk at her, like that asshole Mr. Lang in eighth grade.

Her tail wasn't hurting as much, but it was still sore, and her teeth were beginning to ache too. She had a bag of popsicle sticks in her lunchbox, but finding the privacy to gnaw was a problem she hadn't solved yet. ''It's only my first day'', she thought as she trudged out of Civics into the hall, ''and it's only half over. How am I ever going to manage four YEARS of this?''

"Hey frosh, want some cheese?"

Skylar whirled around with a squeak. Right behind her was another animal-person. He towered over her, almost as big as a grownup, with a feline face and a grin full of fang.

Frightened out of her wits, Skylar backpedaled into someone, who shoved her, and then she was running, hurtling down the hall in a blind panic.

"Hey, wait," the cat-man called after her. "I was only kidding!" But she didn't hear him.

{{Separator|k}}

She ended up in an empty girls' bathroom at the long end of the L-shaped main hallway, hiding in the last stall and shaking like a leaf. Her heart was going a mile a minute. She heard a chattering noise and realized she was bruxing.

The door creaked open, and a male voice said, "Hello?" She recognized the cat-man's scent, and froze.

"Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. C'mon out; we've got a lot to talk about." Skylar stayed silent, sitting as still as possible. "My sense of smell is just as good as yours, you know," the voice continued, sounding a little impatient now. "I know you're in there. Look, you're not in any danger. Despite appearances we're still mostly human. No predator/prey shit, I promise."

After a beat, he added, "Besides, you'd probably give me heartburn." Skylar still couldn't bring herself to move, but she smiled a little at that.

When another minute had passed without her saying anything, he sighed. "Okay, I'll leave you alone. You can find me later if you wanna talk. There's a lot more of us, you know." She heard the click of his claws on the tile floor as he walked off, and then the sound of the door swinging shut.

Skylar realized she was being silly. She hurried out the bathroom and saw him walking back up the hall. "Hey!" she called out.

He turned and smiled. "Glad you changed your mind." He came back over, offering his hand, "I'm Erik."

"Skylar."

"Nice to meet you, Skylar."

Despite the needle-sharp teeth, his smile seemed just friendly now, not predatory. He was a calico, mostly white fur with orange and black patches that clashed rather badly with his blue and silver letterman jacket.

The bell rang, then. Erik jerked his thumb toward the gym. "You got lunch this period?"

{{Separator|k}}

"'Changed', huh?" Skylar mused. "That sounds better than 'rat-person', I guess."

They were eating lunch in a corner of the empty gym, instead of the cafeteria, which gave Skylar some privacy. Erik had been filling her in on what had happened to her while she gnawed. Her and over 500,000 other people, apparently.

She fished another popsicle stick out of her lunchbox and went to work on it. The bruxing she'd done in the bathroom had taken the edge off, but it was still a relief. "We won't get in trouble for eating in here?"

"I never have," he replied. "Nobody cares as long as we don't leave a mess."

With her free hand Skylar caught hold of the end of her tail and looked at it. The redness had faded to a purple bruise, and it was still tender to the touch.

"That'll give you hairy palms, you know," a new voice said. She looked up to see another senior walking over, lunchbag in hand. Unlike Erik, he was still an ordinary human.

"Jeremy," Erik said, "palms are the one place we ''don't'' have hair. Well, palms and tail, in her case—she's a rat. Jeremy, Skylar, Skylar, Jeremy."

"Nice to meet you," Jeremy said, sitting down across from them. "A rat, huh?"

"Yeah," Skylar said shyly. She looked at Erik. "He...."

"He's Known," Erik said.

"Known for what?"

"Lots of different things," Jeremy quipped, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. Skylar giggled.

"I guess I walked into that," Erik said. "No, the Known are what we call people who know about us, but aren't Changed themselves. Bass-ackwards grammatically, I know, but it rolls off the tongue better than 'Knowing' or 'Knowers' or whatever."

"I voted for 'Know-It-Alls', myself," Jeremy put in.

"You would."

By the end of lunch hour Skylar felt a lot better. Jeremy was obviously one of the senior class clowns, and he kept her in giggles, with Erik as the occasional straight man. And just knowing there were other people out there, that she wasn't alone, made her feel so good she was almost floating.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[Category:Anthropomorphic]]
[[Category:Rat]]
[[Category:Paradise]]

User:MarianLH/Where Tree Fails Chapter One

2013-02-18T03:08:13Z

MarianLH: Added 'Critique requested' template

{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Chapter One: A Wizard Did It
|user= MarianLH}}

In the years to come, Melanie would look back on the girls fondly, if only out of gratitude, but on that blustery February day they were driving her up the wall. The two teenagers were chatting away, oblivious to how inconsiderate they were being to the rest of the library patrons. Mel had tried shushing them once—she wasn't actually a librarian, just a minimum-wage book-shelver—but they didn't know that.

Not that it made a difference. They were back up to full volume in less than ten minutes.

Finally they left, giving her a baleful look and muttering just loud enough about "the fat old bitch". It stung, not the least because it wasn't entirely untrue. She was overweight, and if 39 wasn't yet "old", it certainly wasn't young either. ''I was their age once'', she thought bitterly. ''I used to have a future to look forward to''.

More to distract herself from brooding than because there was any real rush, she stood up and went to reshelve the books they'd left lying on the table. One of them was a romance novel, with a hunky guy dressed up as a too-clean pirate, distressed damsel lying passively in his arms. ''Oh, to have some romantic adventure'', she thought. The pirate was gazing out of the cover with his cheeky grin, seeming to look right at her, and she imagined him pulling her into the story, his hand coming up out of the book like in that 80s music video. ''I wouldn't be some silly delicate maiden, though''. She looked scornfully at the woman on the cover—probably what passed for the book's heroine. ''I'd be right there beside him in the big battle, cutlass flashing, like Geena Davis in that pirate movie. Like Xena. Or Tauriel''. She'd just heard about Evangeline Lilly's upcoming appearance the second Hobbit movie, and couldn't wait to see it. She spent a few happy minutes imagining herself as some kind of badassed warrior-elf like Lilly's character.

''Okay, that's enough self-indulgence for one day''. She gathered up the books on a cart and started putting them away.

When she got to the end of the cart there was a book she didn't recognize, a large hardcover with plain brown binding. It looked old. She picked it up, and there was a flash of light, then nothing.

{{Separator|k}}

When Melanie came to, the first thing she felt was cold. She was lying on something smooth and hard and chilly, which proved to be a marble table top of some kind when she opened her eyes. It was covered with dust, except where her movements had brushed it away.

She sat up with a moan, and the next thing she noticed was that she was completely nude. For a moment she was so shocked her brain simply locked up, refusing to process what was happening. Her first thought, when she could think again, was that she'd been abducted by some horrible creepy stalker. ''The cops'll find my body buried in his backyard in an oil drum, like that guy in Kansas''. But how could he have gotten her body out of the library without anyone seeing? There was no way anyone have possibly—then, in her mind's eye, she again saw the strange brown book, her hand picking it up, and the flash of light....

''The book. Holy shit. It had to be''. Part of her brain was still trying to argue, to insist there had to be a rational explanation, but it was arguing with the part of her that was freezing-ass cold, naked, in a dusty dark room. Hard to argue with reality. Especially when reality meant "horrible creepy stalker." Please let it have been the book....

She pushed herself off the table and stood up, looking around. She felt lightheaded and off-balance, and her first few steps were tentative, with one hand on the table for support.

The room was dim, with no obvious source of light, but she could see about as well as on a moonlit night. There was dust everywhere, like on the table, and the air smelled musty. It was about as big as the library's front lobby, and there were several other tables scattered about, seemingly at random. Unlike the first one, they were made of wood. One of them had been smashed to pieces, and she stepped carefully around it. The last thing she needed was a splinter in her foot.

Going around the table brought her face to face with a gruesome skeleton hanging in a corner of the room. She shrieked, jumping back and bumping into a table, which gave way beneath her as one of the legs snapped. The loud crash echoed through the empty room.

For a moment she stood still, heart pounding, until the adrenaline wore off. Then, feeling a little silly at her overreaction, she stepped back up and took a closer look. The skeleton looked real, yellowed and old, with a long crack in the skull. Whoever it had belonged to must have been a really big guy in life.
Next to it, against the wall, was a tall wooden thing that looked like a rack of some kind. It was empty, and discolored by a long vertical stain, and she went cold all over as she realized it was dried blood. Then she found the rotted remains of leather straps, just in the right places to be wrist and ankle restraints....

''Shit shit shit, this is not good'', she thought. ''Just because some stupid magic book transported you to Narnia or Deverry or wherever, it doesn't mean you can't still be axe-murdered by a crazy person''. She whirled around, half-expecting to find a guy in a hockey mask sneaking up behind her right that moment. But there was no one. The room was just as empty and silent as before.

She was genre-savvy enough to turn around again and make sure the skeleton hadn't started coming to life behind her as soon as her back was turned. But no, it still just hung there, like some grisly taxidermy experiment.

Something was still off, a feeling that something wasn't quite right, but she couldn't put her finger on what. Still creeped out, she resumed exploring the room, but with purpose now, rather than curiosity. She wanted to find some clothes, and maybe something she could use as a weapon.

The broken table leg did for the latter. It was thick enough to make a sturdy club. She swung it a few times, thinking ''Just try it, Leatherface. I'm on to you''. But although she went over the whole room, there was nothing that would pass for clothing. Not even drapes or a towel.

There was only one door, and it opened onto another identical dusty room full of tables. It didn't have any other doors either; there seemed to be no way out. It did have shelves full of glass jars and clay pots full of various unknown substances, but she left them alone after finding a whole black cat in one of them, preserved in some kind of clear liquid.

She found some footprints in the dust—large ones—which gave her a bit of a fright at first. But upon consideration they didn't look recent. They were just somewhat less dusty than the rest of the floor.

It was only after she'd given up the search, and was sitting on another table looking forlornly down at herself, that she realized what had been feeling off this whole time. Her body had been...altered.

The absence of flab about her middle was the first thing she noticed. She touched her stomach, and it was firm and hard under her fingertips. ''Holy crap, the magical diet. If I could bottle this I'd make a killing in LA''. After awhile, though, she realized the changes went beyond just losing weight. Her breasts were different too—not just smaller, but differently shaped. They'd been round and a little saggy—okay, a lot saggy—and big enough that she hovered between a B and C cup, depending on the bra. Now they were tiny little things, barely an A, and instead of being round they were pointed and curved up. The kind of shape a friend of hers had once sneeringly referred to as "ski-jump tits" back in college.

Everything else was smaller too. Her arms and legs were, well, not skinny—they felt toned and muscular, just like her belly—but they looked narrower, more slender. So did her torso and hips. And her skin was smooth and unblemished, no varicose veins, no wrinkled knuckles. She felt good, too, limber and energetic. Young.

She was thrilled. Sure the place was gloomy and creepy, and there was no apparent way out, but there definitely seemed to be some perks as well. She was starting to feel good about the whole situation.

That, of course, was precisely when things went to shit.

{{Separator|k}}

The first sign of trouble was a scraping sound, stone on stone. Off to her right, a section of wall pushed inward, and then swung open like a door. Stepping through the threshold was—

''Oh fuck''

—a big, green, mean-looking creature the size of Andre the Giant. He was carrying a long pole tipped with something sharp and ugly. ''Shit, that's, like, a spear or something''. He turned his head and spotted her instantly, despite the dimness. And he had three more friends who followed him into the room.

Melanie scooted off the table, and the creature followed her with the spear-tip. She dropped her makeshift club, knowing it wasn't going to do her any good, and raised her empty hands. "Um, I surrender?"

The brute gave her a toothy grin, that turned into a leer as his eyes traveled down her body. She was reminded of her nakedness, and felt hideously vulnerable. Was she about to get gang-raped by a bunch of big green ogres? Fear clamped her tight—a loathsome, clammy fear, curling in her belly.

But no, thank god, he just gestured with the spear, while his buddies spread out around her. He was pointing toward the doorway, and she started to move toward it—slowly, in case she was misinterpreting him. He just gestured again, more impatiently, and she quickened her step.

In moments she found herself moving down a hallway, being guided by shoves and the occasional jab with a spear—the butt end, thankfully. The creatures towered over her and made her feel tiny—the top of her head barely came up to their chins. And they were ''ripped''. Her body—her new body—was toned and athletic, but these guys had biceps and pecs that rivaled Sylvester Stallone in his glory days. They had broad faces, with heavy brows, and heavy jaws with a prominent underbite, but they could have passed for humans—really big humans, anyway—if it weren't for the olive-green skin. Well, and the yellow tusks that jutted up from their lower jaw.

Just to add insult to injury, they stank.

After several twists and turns, they came to a medieval-looking wooden door, closed with a crude iron padlock. One of them produced a key and unlocked it, then pulled it open and shoved her inside. Immediately the door slammed shut again behind her, and she heard the sound of the lock.

The room inside was filled with warm yellow candlelight, the first real light she'd seen since her arrival. It lifted her spirits, even as she realized she wasn't alone.

Sitting on a decrepit bed was a large, heavyset man, looking at her in astonishment. She felt another moment of naked vulnerability, but at least he wasn't leering at her. He just looked deer-in-the-headlights stunned, and the absurdity of the situation began to overcome her embarrassment. Remembering a line from a movie, she mustered as much dignity as she could, stood up straight, haughtily crossed her arms and said "I want a meal and a bath" in her best Sean Connery.

That broke the spell, at least. The man looked away, and stood up, walking over to where a long coat hung on the wall and taking it down. Still averting his eyes, he thrust it at her, saying something in a language she didn't recognize. She took it, noticing as she did that he towered over her just as much as the green guys outside did. Big guy. His coat—no, it turned out to be a cloak, of all things—was big on her too, puddling around her feet. And it was scratchy wool and smelled a little, too, but it was better than nothing. For the first time in what seemed like hours, she felt warm.

He said something else in his own language, and she shrugged. "Sorry, buddy, I can't understand you. Hablo ingles? Sprecken-zy...uh...dutch? Dootch?" He just shook his head, and spoke again. It sounded like he was trying a couple different languages too, but not only did she not understand them, she didn't recognize them at all.

He was very dark-skinned, with curly black hair, but he didn't look African-American. Or African, for that matter, not that she was an expert. He didn't look Indian either. Pakistani, maybe? Iranian? She was pretty sure she'd recognize Arabic if she heard it, but didn't Iranians have another language?

Then again, with everything else that had happened, she was probably on another planet. Maybe another universe. ''Transported here by a magical whatsis'', she thought, ''and of course I woke up starkers''. It was almost funny. ''Just call me Joan Carter. The question is, of where?''

They did have one breakthrough, eventually. Remembering how it was sometimes done in movies, she pointed to herself and said, "Melanie," then pointed at him. After a couple times back and forth he figured it out, or seemed to, and introduced himself as "Panharam."

{{Separator|k}}

Some time later, the door opened again, and one of the green brutes pushed in a bowl and pitcher, then shut and locked the door again. The bowl had some kind of nasty greasy stew in it, and the stuff in the pitcher tasted like flat beer. They ate and drank anyway, using their hands since there were no utensils, and wiped off afterward with a moth-eaten blanket. Later still, nature took its course, and the man introduced her to the back corner of the room he'd been using as a privy. From the evidence, he'd been imprisoned for at least a few days already. She gagged at the smell. There wasn't any privacy, but he pointedly turned his back while she did her business, and she did the same for him when his turn came.

{{Separator|k}}

That set the pattern for the next several days—at least she assumed they were days. It was hard to tell, but it certainly didn't feel like they were fed very often. She was hungry all the time, and Panharam seemed to be suffering even more. As big as he was, he was probably used to eating well.

On the plus side, infrequent meals meant infrequent bathroom breaks.

There wasn't any toilet paper, of course. Panharam had already torn the bed linens into strips, and they did well enough while they lasted, but it didn't take them long to run out. Remembering something she'd once read about Middle Eastern customs, Melanie started eating only with her right hand and cleaning only with her left. She tried not to think about cholera.

{{Separator|k}}

They did their best to breach the language barrier, but without a language in common they were reduced to pointing at things and learning each others' words for them. And there were only so many things to point at.

''Some adventure'', she thought glumly, sometime after the fourth meal. She was pretty woozy from hunger at that point. ''Sure, those guys didn't impale me on a spear, or...or worse, but I'm not exactly saving the day''. She glanced sideways at Panharam, who was sleeping. ''And he's not exactly Fabio''. That thought made her feel guilty. Sure he was plump, heavyset and old enough to be her father—about as far as you could possibly get from a romance novel hero—but he'd been nothing but kind. Despite the fact that they were both starving, he never tried to hog what little food they were given. He respected her privacy when she had to relieve herself, and never tried to take advantage of her—or even peek—even though he was so big he could easily overpower her. She was still wrapped in his cloak, for want of any other clothes.

{{Separator|k}}

She drifted in and out a lot, falling into a trance she assumed was some kind of hunger-induced fugue state. Then, sometime after meal eleven, Panharam shook her awake. He nodded at the door, and she heard shouting and banging beyond it. There was a heavy thump that shook the door, something that sounded like gasping, and then silence.

After a lingering moment, she heard the key in the lock, and the door opened. The first thing that came through was one of the green brutes, making her start. But he was obviously dead, liberally splashed with blood, and the way he fell in implied he'd been laying against the door. Hands grasped the body and pulled it back out of view, then a man stepped in.

He was deeply tanned and rugged-looking, with a thick bushy red beard, and like everyone else so far he towered over her. He was wearing some sort of medieval-looking metal ring armor, which after everything else she'd seen shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it was still kind of mind-bending to see it for real. And to cap it off, he had a bloody sword in his hand.

He spoke to her cellmate first. "Panharam bala Tenh?"

Panharam nodded, looking ecstatic. "''Ardat ji''," he replied. "''Ardat ji, Ardat ji!''" He'd said the same phrase to her a few times during their captivity; from the way he used it she'd guessed it meant "thank you." The newcomer helped him to his feet, then turned to her. She struggled to stand as well, before they could help, although the effort left her lightheaded and trembling. He asked her something, and Panharam replied for her—telling him she didn't speak the language, probably. They talked back and forth a bit, obviously about her, then the man called over his shoulder. "Naithuanna."

Another person appeared in the doorway, and Melanie's eyes bugged out in disbelief. It was an elf, a female elf. She couldn't be anything else—it wasn't just the pointed ears, her whole face was inhumanly exotic, and there was just something, well, alien about her.

Melanie felt well and truly beyond the looking glass now. Her head swam. ''Is this Middle Earth after all? Am I in Moria or Dol Goldur or someplace?''

''No, Tolkien's elves were as tall or taller than humans. Galadriel was, like, over six feet or something. This elf is my height. She barely comes up to the bearded guy's shoulder.

She's...she...my height....''

Slowly, as if in a dream, Melanie raised her hands to her own ears, feeling along the upper edges...and found pointed tips.

"Of course," she said, "I should've known." And then she fainted.

{{Separator|k}}

When she came to, she was lying on the bed, with her cloak—well, Panharam's cloak—draped over her like a blanket. He and the bearded man were gone, and the door was closed, but the elf sat on the floor, eating something. When she saw Melanie was awake, she stood up, picking up a bundle of what looked like clothing and bringing it over. She set it on the bed, and then added what looked like a square of shortbread she took out of a cloth wrapping. "''Tenya ent clatha''," she said, "''nes nehel''."

"Uh, thanks," Melanie replied, sitting up. She held the cloak to her chest, and reached for the food. It proved to be some kind of hard, flavorless biscuit. It certainly wasn't ''lembas''. She didn't care; after who knew how many days of near-starvation, she'd eat anything. It was gone in three bites.

"Thank you," she said again. "Um, ''hannon le''." It was one of the few elven phrases she remembered from the Tolkien movies, but this elf showed no sign of recognizing it.

"Naithuanna ''ynili''," she said, "''ent'' 'Meloni' ''ynehel, cyëf?''"

Well, that was easy enough to puzzle out. She must have gotten the name from Panharam. "Close, Melanie." She pointed to herself and repeated, "Melanie."

"Melehni?"

"Close enough," Mel replied. She pointed to the elf. "And you're...Nigh..thwanna?"

"Naithuanna," the elf corrected. "''Esti nehel doës hinual?''"

Melanie sighed. "I'm guessing that's 'Don't you speak elvish, you dork?' I'm sorry, but I don't." She gestured to the clothes. "Do you mind if I get dressed?" The elf looked at her uncomprehendingly. ''I really need to stop thinking of her as 'the elf''', Melanie mused. ''I'M an elf. Holy fuckballs, I'm an elf!''

It took some emphatic gesturing, but Mel was finally able to get across that she wanted Naithuanna to turn around. She looked puzzled, but finally turned her back.

The clothes turned out to be a pair of pants that laced up the outside of each leg, and a long shirt with sleeves that were closely fitted to mid-forearm and then belled out over the hands. The material felt like silk. ''Probably her spare clothes'', Melanie thought. Naithuanna was wearing some elaborate leather costume studded with metal bits—presumably some kind of armor—but from what Mel could see of it, the clothing underneath was similar.

It felt almost sinfully luxurious, to be wearing clothes again. And it was nice to feel warm again. On the down side, she felt the cold stone floor more keenly now under her bare feet, despite having endured it for almost two weeks. Too bad Naithuanna didn't have a spare set of boots.

Seeing Mel was ready, Naithuanna opened the door and led her out. There was a small crowd of people in the hallway outside, Panharam and the bearded man among them. The others included—didn't it just figure?—a tall man with a wizard's staff, and a hobbit. The wizard didn't have a pointy hat or a beard, at least. He looked like a guy in his twenties. And the hobbit was a girl-hobbit. That was different.

But far more salient, at the moment, was the little campfire the hobbit was tending, with a bubbling stewpot perched over it. Seeing the way Mel's eyes lit up at the sight of it, the hobbit laughed and dished up a bowl. She said something incomprehensible but cheery-sounding as she handed it over, adding a spoon and a hunk of brown bread.

Everyone else was already eating, so Mel didn't stand on ceremony. She sat down next to the hobbit and dug in, doing her best to eat like a civilized person and not scarf it down like a starving animal. She almost succeeded. When Panharam, who had a head start on her, showed no compunctions about asking for a refill, she followed his example.

He'd deteriorated a lot, she realized, even in the two weeks or so she'd known him. He'd been a fat man, and he still was, somewhat, but not nearly as much. His skin hung loosely on him, and his face was gaunt. There was a chalky undertone to his dark skin. She wondered if she looked similarly starved.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was having a confab with the red-bearded man, the alleged wizard, and another armored man who kept casting suspicious glances her way. He was bearded too, and she mentally dubbed them "Redbeard" and "Brownbeard" to keep them straight in her head. They were obviously talking about her. As she watched, Naithuanna asked the wizard something and got a headshake in response.

When everyone was done eating, Brownbeard got up and made some kind of announcement, gesturing at her, then walked purposefully over to her, fiddling with something around his neck. Mel began to feel nervous, but everybody else seemed calm, and the hobbit-girl said something reassuring to her.

The "something" around Brownbeard's neck turned out to be a gold pendant in the shape of a stylized sun, with squiggly rays all around it. He thrust it at her like it was a cross and she was Dracula, intoning something. Mel couldn't help but wonder if he was saying, "Back! Back, creature of the night!" She tensed up, wondering if he was about to stake her—or conjure a lightning bolt out of the sky to smite her, for all she knew—but nothing happened. After a moment everyone seemed to relax minutely, including the priest, if that's what he was. His expression softened, and he gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and turned away. Everyone else started packing up.

"What the hell was that all about?" she asked plaintively, but no one answered.

Naithuanna picked up a long bundle that Mel realized was a quiver, containing an intricately-carved bow and several arrows. To her surprise, the other elf offered it to her, saying something in elvish.

"I don't know how to use that," she protested, holding up her hands and shaking her head. Naithuanna's eyebrows rose in astonishment, and Mel could practically read her mind—''What kind of elf doesn't know how to use a bow?'' Everybody else looked surprised too.

Naithuanna then offered Mel her sword instead—she had a long, slender one buckled to her waist—but Mel shook her head again. The other elf shrugged, as if to say "suit yourself", and slung the quiver over her shoulder. This was followed by a leather pack, and then she picked up an odd-looking contraption that could have passed for modern art at the Met. Only once she'd buckled it to her left forearm did Mel realize it was a small shield of some kind. One that strapped to the arm and left her hand free for the bow. Redbeard and Brownbeard had shields too, but theirs were more historical-looking round ones that didn't leave their hands free. Brownbeard's shield had a sun painted on it that matched his pendant.

Redbeard and Hobbit-girl used the campfire to light torches, then the fire was put out. Mel realized she was still carrying Panharam's cloak, and went over to offer it to him. He demurred, though, gesturing that she should keep it, so she wrapped it around herself again, rolling it up at her shoulders to keep it from tripping her. Away from the fire she was still a little cold, even in Naithuanna's spare clothing. ''One of the perils of being thin'', she mused. ''I guess it's a fair trade''.

They set off down the corridor, with Redbeard in the lead. It was the same one the green guys had brought her through—she remembered the way it zig-zagged. After maybe half an hour, they came to an intersection she recognized, and around the corner the hallway straightened out.

It was then that Mel noticed she didn't see Naithuanna anywhere. Redbeard was in the front, with the wizard behind him, then Panharam, then herself and the hobbit girl, and Brownbeard was bringing up the rear. Naithuanna was nowhere in sight.

Had she left? Was she so disgusted by an elf who couldn't use a bow—or even talk—that she'd taken off on her own? A niggling little voice of doubt in her mind insisted it was so. Yeah, zapped into a fantasy universe and given a full-body Mary Sue makeover, and you're still a worthless loser.

Hobbit-girl noticed her looking around, and guessed the reason. "''Kandad beh'' Naithuanna?" She pointed ahead and said something more, and Melanie recognized the word haskat—corridor—from Panharam's vocabulary lessons.

"Scouting ahead?" Mel guessed, making a show of peering about with her hand shading her eyes. The hobbit grinned and nodded. Then she pointed to herself and said, "Leske." In case there was any doubt about her meaning she then pointed at Mel and said, "Meleni," then back at herself and repeated "Leske."
"Leske, huh?" Melanie said. "Nice to meet you, Leske."

The hobbit nodded. "Leske Thindelgabben."

''Don't laugh, don't laugh, it might be a mortal insult to laugh, and her sword may only be a foot long but that's still enough to gut you like a fish''. It was hard—''Thindelgabben?''—but Melanie managed to keep a straight face.

And besides, for all that Leske was about eye level with Mel's belly button, she didn't look like someone you'd want to laugh at. Like Naithuanna, she was wearing leather armor, although hers had a different cut, more utilitarian and not so, well, elvish. The effect was pretty intimidating—less Frodo, more Emma Peel. Well, Emma Peel's mini-me, anyway.

In addition to the sword, she was armed with at least three hatchets tucked into her belt. They reminded Mel of the tomahawks Daniel Day Lewis had been throwing around in ''Last of the Mohicans''. Contrary to the Tolkien stereotype she wasn't barefoot either, and her feet didn't look especially big.

{{Separator|k}}

They walked for another couple of hours, occasionally turning corners and passing side-corridors and doors. At one point, Melanie was pretty sure she spotted the hidden stone door to the rooms she'd first arrived in.

Around the next turn after that, there were some...corpses. More of the green brutes, shoved out of the way to one side of the corridor. Mel stared at them in horrified fascination—it was one thing to read about dead bodies in a novel, or even see them on TV. Encountering them in the literal flesh made her skin crawl.

And the stench was horrible.

The bloodstains on the floor were still relatively fresh, and nobody else seemed surprised to see them, so Mel figured her new companions were responsible for their current unbreathing state. Despite trying to step carefully, she managed to put her foot down in a sticky puddle of blood, and cursed under her breath.

Naithuanna was waiting at the next intersection, with her bow drawn and an arrow ready. As the rest of the group came up she put a finger to her lips and nodded her head to the next corridor. Redbeard and Leske immediately doused their torches, plunging the hallway back into moonlit darkness. Behind Redbeard's back, the wizard opened a complicated-looking pouch on his belt and took out something that glowed faintly. While they had a quick whispered conversation, Leske and Brownbeard moved up to the intersection. Leske shrugged off her pack and plucked a tomahawk from her belt, while Brownbeard took out a nasty-looking metal club.

Melanie felt her pulse racing, and not in a good way. ''Holy shit, there's going to be a fight'', she thought. ''This is really happening''. So much for being a heroic adventurer. ''I think I'm going to hurl''.

At Redbeard's nod, Naithuanna and Leske darted out into the intersection and opened fire. Shouts and bellows of pain came around the corner. They each got a second arrow or hatchet off, then hurried back. A spear clanged off the stone wall, just missing Naithuanna.

The wizard was next, tossing whatever he'd taken out of his pouch into the intersection and shouting something arcane-sounding. The little bit of whatever-it-was exploded into a bright golden light, filling the hallway and prompting cries of pain from around the corner.

The sudden light hurt Melanie's eyes too, and she covered them with the heels of her hands, turning away. As a result, she didn't see what happened next, but she could hear the clanging and banging, the shouts, and some awful meaty thunks.

By the time her eyes stopped hurting it was mostly over. Naithuanna joined her, holding a bloody sword, and checked her eyes. She said something in an amused voice, and Melanie could guess what it was. ''Don't look directly at the light spell, dummy''.

The two Beards came back around the corner then. Both of them also had bloodstained weapons, and Brownbeard was limping a little. Naithuanna wrinkled her nose, and Mel couldn't blame her—the guys smelled like a gym locker. ''I guess swordfighting is quite a workout''.

Leske came rushing up then, sounding excited. She had a little pile of gold coins in her hands, which prompted a lot of interest and babble from everyone. Redbeard called Panharam over, and he picked one up and looked closely at the design stamped on it. Melanie saw his eyes narrow in speculation. There was some back-and-forth conversation between him and Redbeard and the wizard, and his expression grew angry.

''It must have something to do with why he was being kept prisoner here'', she thought. She wondered what the story was, but unfortunately there was no way they could tell her. She made up her mind then to start learning the local language.

Everyone went around the corner again, and when Melanie followed she saw them all wiping their weapons on the dead guys' clothes. Ew. The bodies were still more of those big ugly green guys.

Remembering their earlier vocabulary exchanges, Melanie nudged Panharam and pointed at them, saying, "Orcs?" They didn't really look like Tolkien's orcs—or Warcraft orcs for that matter, although that was closer. But she didn't know what else to call them.

As before, he responded with the word in his language: "''Genka''." Naithuanna, noticing the exchange, added what Mel assumed was the elvish word: "''Cehakar''." She was trying to carefully work one of her arrows out of an orc's ribcage, but despite her best efforts it snapped off, right behind the arrowhead, and she sighed.

{{Separator|k}}

The new corridor was very long, but at the far end she could see a tiny dot of daylight. It took the better part of an hour to reach the exit, and Melanie was tired and footsore by the end, but finally they emerged into a bright, sunny day.

They were standing on a hillside, above a grassy meadow. It was a cloudy overcast afternoon, but Melanie didn't care. The cool grass felt so nice under her bare feet. It was so lovely to be out of that dank, smelly...what the hell was that place, anyway? She turned around to look at the opening. It looked like a natural cave from this side, partially obscured by vines and other vegetation. There was no hint of the huge, obviously artificial underground complex from the outside.

"'Dungeons deep and caverns old'," she quoted, shaking her head in wonder.
They didn't stop, once they were outside. Redbeard led them on across the meadow, and Melanie bit back a complaint. Even through the clouds she could tell the afternoon was getting on. They weren't going to walk all night, were they? Despite the psychological lift she'd gotten from seeing daylight for the first time in a couple weeks, she was pretty sure she couldn't go much further. Panharam looked as bad as she felt. And Brownbeard's limp was getting worse.
Finally they stopped, where a small river meandered through the meadow, with copses of trees along its banks. Leske immediately got to work kindling a fire. Melanie sat down with a groan, and for a moment she just sat there in an exausted stupor. Until she noticed everyone else was busy working, setting up camp. Guilt warred with fatigue and eventually won, but when she tried to get up and help, Leske quite firmly gestured for her to stay put. Panharam got the same treatment, and what sounded like a stern lecture as well. The hobbit even shook a ladle at him. Apparently there were some perks to being the rescuee instead of the hero.

So she sat, for some unknown amount of time, lost in a kind of exhausted trance, while the sun went down and the daylight dimmed. Eventually Naithuanna came over to join her, carrying two bowls of food.

She wrinked her nose again as she sat down, and this time Mel couldn't blame it on the guys. ''Yeah'', she thought, ''I probably stink. Who knows how many days without toilet paper, with that nasty gunk they fed us running through my system, not to mention no bath or shower. It's a wonder they didn't just throw me in the river''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''And then she just lets me put on her clothes, without a complaint''. "Thank you," she said, trying to put as much sincerity into the words as possible, hoping it would get her meaning across.

It seemed to work, because Naithuanna smiled and nodded. "''Coësen ynehel''," she replied.

Melanie looked speculatively at the river. Maybe they could bathe after dinner? Naithuanna followed her gaze, and shook her head with another smile. "''En clatha, fuamelèd''," she said in a teasing tone. Mel guessed that meant something like, "Eat first."

Whatever Leske had put in the stew, it was savory, and she found herself mopping up the last of it with a piece of bread. As before, Panharam and she both went for seconds. She felt full and warm inside for first time in who knew how many days.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was rummaging through her own pack, setting out various items. Among them were a cake of hard soap, an ivory comb, and an earthenware bottle. Then she pulled out what looked like a flannel blanket, and Melanie had to suppress a smile. ''There's a frood who really knows where her towel is. Hoopy''.

Leske joined them when they trooped down to the river, after speaking very firmly to the guys—probably saying something like, "Don't you dare peek."

Naithuanna found a spot with a good thick line of trees between them and the camp, set down the blanket and supplies, and then pulled her tunic over her head without a trace of self-consciousness. Her pants followed as quickly as they could be unlaced, and then she was striding out into the river.

Melanie's eyes bugged out. ''No wonder I had such a hard time getting her to turn around so I could dress. I guess elves aren't big on modesty. I suppose it fits, though—elves are usually a bunch of nature-loving free-spirited tree-hugging hippies. It stands to reason they'd be shameless nudists too''.

Leske apprently didn't share the elven disdain for modesty, though. The little hobbit had disappeared behind a bush to disrobe. Melanie was sorely tempted to emulate her, but Naithuanna was giving her a Look. ''You're one of us, girl'', it seemed to say. ''Don't puss out on me this time''.

With a sigh, she started unlacing her pants. Behind her she heard running and then a splash, as Leske dashed from the safety of her bush to the concealing water.

She finished undressing, remembering how she had stood on her dignity with Panharam, those first few moments before he'd given her his cloak. She did it again, managing to walk calmly into the water instead of dashing like Leske. Naithuanna seemed to approve.

The water was cold, but Melanie was so eager to get clean she didn't care. She took the soap and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was raw. And the earthenware bottle proved to hold some kind of shampoo. Leske declined—apparently special hair soap was a prissy elven thing—but Melanie luxuriated shamelessly in it, much to Naithuanna's amusement.

Night had completely fallen by the time she was done washing. She relaxed for a bit, floating serenely in the cool water. It was a bright, moonlit night, with the kind of ethereal, glowy light that only happened on clear nights with a full moon.

Except when she looked up, there wasn't any full moon.

She did find a moon—two moons, as it happened—but they were both slender cresents, and partially obscured by clouds. Naithuanna followed her gaze, and pointed upward. "''Tel'cenodel''," she said, "Lafael ''ent'' Celên."

But Melanie didn't care about moons at the moment. She was looking around at the brightly-lit night, and remembering. Remembering how the dungeon rooms and corridors had seemed dimly lit, even though there was no light source at all before Panharam's candle. Remembering how it had seemed like a bright sunny day when she first emerged from the dungeon, even though the sky was overcast and cloudy. Remembering how much the light spell had hurt her eyes.

''I can see in the dark'', she marveled. ''Right, because I'm an elf now, and of course elves can see in the dark''. Somehow that was the last straw, the final bit of weirdness that really brought home to her what had happened. ''I'm an elf. I'm not human anymore''. She stood up, waiting for the water to calm, and then looked at her reflection.

For the first time, she saw her new face.

Her coloration was different, and she was still gaunt from her ordeal, but otherwise she looked a lot like Naithuanna. She was paler, and her hair was silvery-blond instead of black, but she had the same kind of narrow, finely-boned face, the same high cheekbones and delicately swept ears. The same eyes, almond-shaped and slanted inward, and just a bit too large for her face. And unlike Naithuanna's green, hers were an utterly unhuman shade of violet.

She felt a wrenching, disorienting sense of loss. She had a vision of herself—her original, middle-aged, overweight, ''human'' self—reaching out to her from across a chasm, and she reached back, but the chasm grew wider, and she couldn't reach....

She realized she was crying when the tears dropped on her reflection, rippling it. Naithuanna came over and put an arm around her shoulders, saying something that sounded soothing, but her alien-ness, her inhuman features and incomprehensible language, just reinforced Melanie's sense of isolation. She pushed away, walking deeper into the river.

''I'm not me anymore'', she thought. ''And if I'm not ME, then who the hell am I?'' She suddenly felt like her own body was something ''other'', something separate, not a part of her, a prison of flesh that enveloped her. She was smothered by it. She wanted to shout and rage at the heavens—but even the sky was alien, here.

She looked up at the moons again. ''Moons'', plural. It was more than just herself that was wrong, it was the whole world.

Melanie didn't have anyone who would miss her. No husband, no boyfriend, no real friends. Her parents were gone. She wouldn't particularly miss her job. And she certainly didn't ''like'' pushing forty, or struggling with her weight. And yet she mourned the loss of her world, of everything familiar. She'd never see a movie again. Never eat a cheeseburger. No more chocolate, no TV, no ice cream. Never hear English, except when she talked to herself. Never drive a car. Never take that vacation trip to Japan. Ever.

It was too much. She felt overwhelmed, consumed. The sense of loss was too great, too all-encompassing. It rose up and swallowed the world.

{{Separator|k}}

Eventually the emotional storm passed. Melanie wasn't sure how long it lasted, but when she looked around, Naithuanna and Leske were on the riverbank, and Leske was dressed and looked dry except for her hair. Naithuanna was kneeling in the grass and drying her hair with the towel.

She felt spent. Empty. Unbidden, a line from an old story wafted into her mind: "You lost a whole world. That's a lot to grieve for." Somehow, that thought made her feel a little better—it put things in perspective, at least.

She swam to the riverbank and joined the others. Both of them gave her a concerned look, and she mustered a wan smile. When she pointed at the towel, Naithuanna didn't hesitate to hand it over. "Sorry for the waterworks," she said as she began drying off. "I'm better now."

Leske gave her a sort of one-armed snug, and then headed back to camp. Naithuanna waved goodbye to her and then sat back and started plaiting her hair into some elaborate braids. When Melanie had finished towel-drying hers, Naithuanna did the same for her. It was nice and relaxing. ''I've missed having girlfriends'', she mused.

By the time Naithuanna was done it was starting to get chilly. Mel cringed at the thought of getting back into soiled clothing after she'd gotten so nice and clean, but to her surprise their clothes were clean and dry when she picked them up. Her expression must have betrayed her, because Naithuanna smiled a smug little smile, and said, "''Cinreth nili deynal hlei''."

"I hope that means 'I used a magic laundry spell' and not 'you were out of it so long I had time to hand-wash silk and hang it up to dry'."

Naithuanna didn't understand, of course, but Melanie's wry, bantering tone seemed to reassure her. "''Fuatenyal, fonkin''," she replied in a teasing tone, and picked up her tunic.

{{Separator|k}}

She shared a tent with Leske and Naithuanna that night, but found she couldn't sleep. Naithuanna didn't seem to want to sleep either; instead, she sat cross-legged in some kind of meditative pose, and went into a sort of trance. Melanie left her to it, lying on her back and staring at the canvas roof of the tent.

''Why an elf?'' she wondered. ''Why didn't I come over as myself? Or at least still human? Or if not human, why not, say, a hobbit? Or an orc, for that matter? Would anyone who picked up that book have become an elf? Or been transported at all?''

She thought back to that moment when she'd touched the book. ''I was dreaming of an adventure. Maybe that's why—the book somehow picked up my wish, and gave me an adventure?'' She snorted in wry amusement. ''It could have given me a nicer one. Not so much with the starving''. Oh well, she HAD thought the pirate on the romance novel cover looked too clean to be real. That wasn't a problem she'd had, after her ordeal.

Still, why an elf? She thought back, trying to reconstruct what she had been thinking about, and then it came to her. ''Tauriel. I was thinking about Tauriel. Miss 'I can do everything Legolas did, only backwards and in high heels'.''

With the conundrum resolved, Melanie felt herself slipping away. Her last thought was, ''Maybe those muscles on my arms aren't just for show''.

{{Separator|k}}

She got a chance to find out the next morning. Naithuanna shook her awake shortly before dawn, and after they'd dressed, took her out to a copse of trees for archery lessons. And sure enough, she was able to draw the bow. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't as hard as it should be, either.

There was some muscle-memory working in her favor, too. Her body sort of knew what it was doing when she drew an arrow and nocked it. But she wasn't magically imbued with new skills. Her shooting was probably better than it should be for someone who'd never used a bow in her life, but she still didn't come anywhere close to matching Naithuanna's speed or accuracy.

When her arms started to get tired, they put aside the bow and Naithuanna drew her sword. This started a whole new round of lessons, with Melanie holding the sword and Naithuanna standing behind her like a golf pro, guiding her hand and arm through a series of different swings. Despite its length—the blade alone was almost three feet long—the sword flowed easily through the moves Naithuanna was putting her through. The heavy pommel at the bottom of the grip seemed to be acting as a counterweight, and whenever she hit that balance "sweet spot", the sword seemed to almost flow into place.

That didn't happen often, though.

Melanie's arms felt like lead when Naithuanna finally called a halt. She'd also begun to feel the call of nature—to put it delicately—during the exercise, and was wracking her brain trying to figure out how to tell Naithuanna without humiliating herself in the process.

Fortunately, it turned out to be unnecessary; Naithuanna had to go too. Or at least that's what Mel thought it meant when she led her into the privacy of the trees and started plucking some particularly large, broad leaves. She gave Melanie an inquisitive look, as if to say, "You need some of these too?" When Mel nodded she plucked more and shared them out.

Two weeks ago Melanie would have been disgusted to settle for using leaves as toilet paper. She'd never been an outdoorsy person, and had regarded the few camping trips she'd been on as something to be endured, not enjoyed.

But after her ordeal in the dungeon, leaves were a step up. All she felt was grateful.

{{Separator|k}}

When they got back to camp everyone else was up too. Brownbeard was kneeling, facing east toward the rising sun. He seemed to be praying to it. Redbeard was standing outside his tent, holding a leather sack that he was shaking vigorously, and from the ''shnk-shnk-shnk'' metal sound coming from it, his armor was in there. The wizard was reading a book, and Leske was cooking breakfast.
"I really should learn the rest of their names," she mused. Naithuanna looked curiously at her. She shrugged and did the pointing thing again, starting with herself, then Naithuanna, Leske, and Panharam. Then she pointed at Redbeard.
Understanding dawned in Naithuanna's eyes. "Denys," she said, also pointing at Redbeard. Brownbeard was "Galthesar," and the wizard was "Crosus."

{{Separator|k}}

After breakfast, Crosus stood up and beckoned Melanie over. Everyone dropped what they were doing and gathered around, looking interested, which made her feel nervous.

As she approached, the wizard took a pinch of something out of his magic-stuff pouch, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. Then he tried to touch her forehead. The stuff on his thumb looked sooty and black.

She shied away, looking around at the others for some clue what was happening. Naithuanna gave her an encouraging nod, so she braced herself and let the guy smear his stuff on her face. Then he raised his arms and made some complicated-looking gestures with his hands, while intoning something harsh and sibilant.
Nothing seemed to happen when he was done. "Is that supposed to be some kind of magic spell?" she asked.

To her surprise, he nodded. Melanie's eyes bugged out. "You can understand me?" Another nod. She felt like a huge burden was lifted from her shoulders. They could communicate! "God, where should I start?"

He shrugged.

Wait a minute.... "What's with the mime routine? Say something!"

The wizard shook his head, and spoke...in Panharam's language.

She felt her hopes fall. "Crap. Can you cast it again, to go the other way?"

He shook his head again.

"Oh for fuck's sake," she snapped. "A translation spell that only goes one way? What kind of balls-up stupid is that?"

He stared at her in amazement at that, then burst out laughing.

Everyone else was looking confused—apparently the spell only worked for him. But he spoke to them, obviously translating or describing what she said, because they all started grinning. Except Naithuanna, who wore a disapproving frown. ''I guess proper elven ladies don't swear''.

She sighed. "I guess I should just talk, then. Um, well, my name is Melanie—Melanie Foster—and I'm really, ''really'' not from around here. I don't know how I got here either. For that matter, I have no idea where 'here' even is. All I know is that I picked up a book that must've been magical, and bam, I was zapped here. Into that...awful place—" She jerked her thumb north, back the way they'd come. "I guess, as the old joke goes, 'a wizard did it'."

"Zelligar," Crosus said.

"Is that the name of that place?"

He shook his head, and pointed to his staff.

"Oh, lemme guess, that's the name of the wizard who ''built'' the place."

Another nod.

"Well FUCK YOU, ZELLIGAR!" That part she turned and shouted back north. Crosus snickered behind her.

Melanie turned back to face them and sighed. Should she tell them the other part? The really big part? ''Yeah, maybe it'll help them understand why I'm so weird''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''Please don't hate me for this....'' She took a deep breath and said it. "When I was transported here...I was also...changed. I wasn't an elf before. I was human."

Crosus looked shocked. She waited while he translated that for the others. Naithuanna looked...hurt. Betrayed. Shit. She plunged ahead. "There aren't any elves where I come from. Or magic. They only exist in stories. Myths and legends. I...this is all very strange to me. I don't know what to do. I don't even know who I am, anymore." She felt her throat tighten up, and squeezed her eyes shut, struggling not to cry.

Something touched her hand. She looked down, and saw that Leske had taken it into her own. She looked up at her with compassion in her eyes, and gave it a gentle squeeze. It seemed the hobbit, at least, was willing to accept her.

Naithuanna was another story.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[Category:Mythical]]

Ratted Out

2013-02-18T03:07:18Z

MarianLH: Added header template

{{WIP}}
{{Universe|Paradise}}
{{Critique requested}}

{{Title
|name=Ratted Out
|author= Marian
|user= MarianLH}}

'''Tuesday, September 5, 2006'''

Skylar hesitated when she saw the two older kids already waiting at the bus stop, then took a deep breath and forced herself to keep going. ''They can't see it'', she told herself. ''Just act normal''. Sure enough, they only glanced at her—or rather, at the empty air above her head—and then ignored her.

Skylar wouldn't have believed it three weeks ago, but now starting high school wasn't the biggest thing in her life.

"Hey Skylar!"

Skylar turned to see her best friend, Brandi, hurrying up the street. She fought off an urge to run and hide, fixing a smile on her face. ''Just act normal''. Behind her, the school bus was just coming around the corner. "Good timing," she called out.

"I haven't seen you since you got sick in August," Brandi said as she caught up. "How are you? How was the rest of your summer?"

"Sucked," Skylar said. The understatement of the year. No, the century. That was when it had happened, three weeks ago—she'd been sick for days, with like the worst flu ever, and then just when she was feeling better, ''bam!'' She'd woken up to find herself halfway through being transformed into a giant rat-person.

A giant rat-person no one else could see. Her parents, her bratty little brother, hundreds of people at the mall during back-to-school shopping—they all saw the girl she used to be. That had scared her at first, made her think she was going crazy. But she didn't think a delusion would be this vivid, this lucid. She could ''feel'' her fur. And besides, there were things about rats she hadn't even known about until she became one. How could she hallucinate bruxing, for instance, or the need to gnaw, when she hadn't known rats did that?

So she didn't think she was going crazy. Most of the time. But she couldn't talk about it either, not without ''other'' people thinking she was crazy. Not even with her best friend.

Before Brandi could ask any awkward questions, Skylar turned the conversation around. "What about you?" The gambit worked; Brandi chattered on about her own summer while they boarded the bus and found seats.

Which brought her to her first rat-form challenge of the day. She'd taken to wearing skirts exclusively since her transformation, since there was no way she could hide big holes in her jeans from her mom. But that meant she had to sit on her tail all the way to school.

She'd tried on some low-rise jeans during back-to-school shopping, but they hadn't been quite low enough. For her tail, that is—they ''had'' been low enough for Mom to take one look and say, "Forget it."

Nope...no matter how she sat, her tail felt pinched. At home she could slouch forward a bit and make it work, but there wasn't enough room here.

Brandi was looking at her oddly. "You got ants in your pants?"

Skylar froze inside, and forced herself to sit still, no matter how uncomfortable it was. "I'm fine," she said. ''Gotta say something quick'', she thought, ''change the subject''. "So, um...are you gonna do band again this year?"

"No," Brandi said sarcastically, patting the black plastic case by her hip. "This is just for show."

"I didn't notice it," Skylar said lamely. She managed to keep the conversation going for the rest of the trip, but it bothered her the way Brandi looked at and spoke to her forehead. Before her transformation, they'd been about the same height, but now Brandi was nearly half a head taller. She'd gotten accustomed to her new height at home, but seeing her friend looming over her brought it back.

Then there was her enhanced sense of smell. Like her height, she'd mostly gotten used to it around the house, but now she was surrounded by new scents. Everyone on the school bus had their own unique odor, accented by different soaps, shampoos, and other additives. Several of the girls were wearing cheap perfume, one of the seniors used the same bodywash Brandi did, and a boy up near the front was a smoker. Two of the girls had their periods. Then there was the diesel fumes from the bus, the food scents of various lunches, and the cork grease from Brandi's clarinet. And the bus driver needed a shower.

Skylar was glad her mother had forced her into that back-to-school shopping trip the week before. She'd turned into a hermit after ''it'' happened, and Mom had to twist her arm to get her to go, but the experience stood her in good stead now. She'd spent the first half hour or so at the mall completely disoriented by all the scents assaulting her nose, but somewhere along the way, she'd somehow gotten used to it. Now she just registered different scents the same way she saw different colors. It was kinda cool, actually.

The bus finally pulled up at Jefferson High School, and Skylar catapulted up out of her seat before it stopped moving, earning her a glare from the unwashed driver. The base of her tail ached. ''I'm gonna walk to school from now on'', she thought. ''It isn't THAT far''.

Everyone else was getting up too; she stood in the aisle and shouldered her backpack, waiting for the crowd to start moving. Then Brandi moved out behind her, and stepped on her tail. Stars of pain shot up her spine. It hurt so much it was like fireworks exploding in her head. "Brandi!"

"What?"

"Move your foot to the left!" she hissed.

"What? Why?"

"Just do it!"

"Okay, okay, jeez." And then the pressure was mercifully gone.

As soon as her muscles unlocked, Skylar crouched down, awkwardly in the tight confines of the aisle, and picked up the end of her tail. The tip looked red and swollen, and pain radiated out from it in pulsating waves. It felt ''exactly'' like getting a finger caught in a slamming door.

The bus was finally emptying, and she started moving up the aisle toward the door, still holding her tail up.

"Hey, are you crying?" Brandi said. "What the hell?"

She wanted to snarl. ''Tears of pain, bitch'', she thought angrily, and then immediately felt contrite. It wasn't Brandi's fault she couldn't see her tail.

The bus driver hadn't forgotten her, either. "Stay seated until the bus comes to a complete stop," he snapped when she reached the door. Feeling dogpiled from all sides, Skylar just nodded submissively and hurried out, blinking tears from her eyes.

"Asshole," Brandi said. "Are you okay, Sky? What's wrong?"

"Never mind. It's nothing." They were passing through the front doors of the school now, and Skylar just wanted to get away, before Brandi asked her something she couldn't answer. "I—I want to find my locker before first period."

"Me too," Brandi said. "Catch you later." And then, thank god, she was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

Skylar moved carefully down the packed hallway, checking locker numbers and doing her best to shield her tail with her body. She had to let go of it for a minute when she found her assigned locker, to fish out the slip of paper with the combination from her backpack, but she kept a close watch around her and managed to keep it out from underfoot.

She made it to her first class just before the bell rang, sliding into the first empty desk she found. The backs of the seats all had a hole at a convenient height for her tail, but she was still worried about getting stepped on. Besides, it would tent out the back of her skirt, and the last thing she needed was ''more'' attention.

The knee-length skirt was loose enough that she was able to slip her tail around her hip, laying it along the outside of her thigh. ''Wish I'd thought of this on the bus. Maybe I won't have to walk home after all''.

The tip still throbbed, and she began to get seriously worried. ''What if it's broken?'' she thought. ''How's a doctor going to treat it if he can't even see it? Crap, what if I get hit by a car or something?''

{{Separator|k}}

In another classroom, senior Erik Metzger sat at his desk, doodling in his notebook. He smelled his friend Jeremy coming up behind him, but didn't look up...until the ziploc bag of oregano landed on his desk. "Ha ha," he said. "You could at least use real catnip."

"Don't want to be an enabler," Jeremy said, deadpan. "Besides, your mom loves Italian cooking so much, she could actually use this." He sat down in the next desk over, slinging his backpack over the seat back. "Listen, I think there's one of your people among the new frosh."

"Seeing through the Veil now, are we?"

"If only. No, she was holding something invisible in her hands. Saw her getting off the bus, and she looked like you do when you're supposedly playing with your tail. She also looked pretty freaked out, but that's probably just cus she's a freshman." He gestured toward the bag of oregano. "Better hide that. Teacher'll think it's pot."

"From what I hear, the new teacher's more likely to ask me to share than confiscate it. Point me at this freshmen when you get a chance, will you?"

The teacher in question walked in at that point, and despite his breezy assurance, Erik did scoop up the bag of oregano and stuff it in his backpack.

"Hello, class. My name is Ms. Rodriguez. I just transferred here from Boston, so you're all going to go easy on me, right?" Various hoots and catcalls greeted that, and she grinned. "That's what I thought you were gonna say. Let's do roll first, and then we'll start handing out textbooks." She picked up a clipboard. "A lot of Scandinavian names," she mused. "Is that a Minnesota thing?"

"You think the Vikings picked their name out of a hat?" one of the guys said. Everybody laughed.

{{Separator|k}}

By the end of third period Skylar was starting to feel really frazzled. Sitting with her tail to the side was a partial solution, but it wasn't perfect. She still had to sit forward a little, without the support of the seat back, or else slouch down. And the Phys Sci teacher had gigged her for it, too, telling her to "sit up straight." At least he hadn't thrown chalk at her, like that asshole Mr. Lang in eighth grade.

Her tail wasn't hurting as much, but it was still sore, and her teeth were beginning to ache too. She had a bag of popsicle sticks in her lunchbox, but finding the privacy to gnaw was a problem she hadn't solved yet. ''It's only my first day'', she thought as she trudged out of Civics into the hall, ''and it's only half over. How am I ever going to manage four YEARS of this?''

"Hey frosh, want some cheese?"

Skylar whirled around with a squeak. Right behind her was another animal-person. He towered over her, almost as big as a grownup, with a feline face and a grin full of fang.

Frightened out of her wits, Skylar backpedaled into someone, who shoved her, and then she was running, hurtling down the hall in a blind panic.

"Hey, wait," the cat-man called after her. "I was only kidding!" But she didn't hear him.

{{Separator|k}}

She ended up in an empty girls' bathroom at the long end of the L-shaped main hallway, hiding in the last stall and shaking like a leaf. Her heart was going a mile a minute. She heard a chattering noise and realized she was bruxing.

The door creaked open, and a male voice said, "Hello?" She recognized the cat-man's scent, and froze.

"Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. C'mon out; we've got a lot to talk about." Skylar stayed silent, sitting as still as possible. "My sense of smell is just as good as yours, you know," the voice continued, sounding a little impatient now. "I know you're in there. Look, you're not in any danger. Despite appearances we're still mostly human. No predator/prey shit, I promise."

After a beat, he added, "Besides, you'd probably give me heartburn." Skylar still couldn't bring herself to move, but she smiled a little at that.

When another minute had passed without her saying anything, he sighed. "Okay, I'll leave you alone. You can find me later if you wanna talk. There's a lot more of us, you know." She heard the click of his claws on the tile floor as he walked off, and then the sound of the door swinging shut.

Skylar realized she was being silly. She hurried out the bathroom and saw him walking back up the hall. "Hey!" she called out.

He turned and smiled. "Glad you changed your mind." He came back over, offering his hand, "I'm Erik."

"Skylar."

"Nice to meet you, Skylar."

Despite the needle-sharp teeth, his smile seemed just friendly now, not predatory. He was a calico, mostly white fur with orange and black patches that clashed rather badly with his blue and silver letterman jacket.

The bell rang, then. Erik jerked his thumb toward the gym. "You got lunch this period?"

{{Separator|k}}

"'Changed', huh?" Skylar mused. "That sounds better than 'rat-person', I guess."

They were eating lunch in a corner of the empty gym, instead of the cafeteria, which gave Skylar some privacy. Erik had been filling her in on what had happened to her while she gnawed. Her and over 500,000 other people, apparently.

She fished another popsicle stick out of her lunchbox and went to work on it. The bruxing she'd done in the bathroom had taken the edge off, but it was still a relief. "We won't get in trouble for eating in here?"

"I never have," he replied. "Nobody cares as long as we don't leave a mess."

With her free hand Skylar caught hold of the end of her tail and looked at it. The redness had faded to a purple bruise, and it was still tender to the touch.

"That'll give you hairy palms, you know," a new voice said. She looked up to see another senior walking over, lunchbag in hand. Unlike Erik, he was still an ordinary human.

"Jeremy," Erik said, "palms are the one place we ''don't'' have hair. Well, palms and tail, in her case—she's a rat. Jeremy, Skylar, Skylar, Jeremy."

"Nice to meet you," Jeremy said, sitting down across from them. "A rat, huh?"

"Yeah," Skylar said shyly. She looked at Erik. "He...."

"He's Known," Erik said.

"Known for what?"

"Lots of different things," Jeremy quipped, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. Skylar giggled.

"I guess I walked into that," Erik said. "No, the Known are what we call people who know about us, but aren't Changed themselves. Bass-ackwards grammatically, I know, but it rolls off the tongue better than 'Knowing' or 'Knowers' or whatever."

"I voted for 'Know-It-Alls', myself," Jeremy put in.

"You would."

By the end of lunch hour Skylar felt a lot better. Jeremy was obviously one of the senior class clowns, and he kept her in giggles, with Erik as the occasional straight man. And just knowing there were other people out there, that she wasn't alone, made her feel so good she was almost floating.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[Category:Anthropomorphic]]
[[Category:Rat]]
[[Category:Paradise]]

User:MarianLH

2013-02-18T03:03:31Z

MarianLH: Added links to favorites

==About Myself==
Marian is my real name. I am a transsexual woman, went "full-time", as we say, in 1998, although I couldn't afford the surgery until 2010. I discovered Shifti via the TV Tropes page for Jon Buck's [[Paradise (Setting)|Paradise setting]].

Growing up with gender dysphoria, I was attracted to transformation stories from a very young age. Especially TG ones. Some early favorites were Piers Anthony's ''Crewel Lye'' and John Varley's ''Steel Beach''. I discovered the furry culture in the early 90s, and spent most of that decade hanging out on FurryMUCK and SPR as a snow leopard named Shaia.

==My Stories==

Where the Tree Fails: this is a self-indulgent portal fantasy set in the world of the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game. (Species)
*[[Chapter One|Chapter One: A Wizard Did It]]
*[[User:MarianLH/Chapter Two|Chapter Two]]

[[User:MarianLH/Kissin' the Day|Kissin' the Day]]: This was the first Paradise story I began writing, although it will probably be the last one finished, as it's the most personal. It's the only one to include a gender change. (Gender & Species)

[[Ratted Out]]: My second Paradise story. Skylar gets hit by the Change right before starting her freshman year of high school, and soon finds out who her real friends are. (Species)

[[User:MarianLH/Down the Rabbit Hole|Down the Rabbit Hole]]: My third Paradise story. This one looks at the Change from the outside, as Emily slowly discovers that the man she's dating isn't quite what he seems.... (Species)

[[User:MarianLH/Masks|Masks]]: After a magical artifact very publicly transforms him into a girl, Tyler has to adapt to the changes in her life--and so does everyone else. (Gender)

==Favorites==

Disclaimer: I have yet to read more than a fraction of the stories on Shifti, so if your story isn't here, it's not necessarily a comment on its quality.

[[User:Robotech_Master/Romancing_the_Changed|Romancing the Changed]]: I like the [[Paradise (Setting)|Paradise]] shared universe, I like romance, and I love the movie ''Romancing the Stone'', so this story was a perfect storm of squee for me.

Most the rest of the Paradise stories could also go on this list, but that would take too long, so I'll just call out a couple more that I especially like: Jetfire's [[User:Jetfire/Special Care|Special Care]] and the sadly unfinished [[User:Nikon/Coming Home|Coming Home]] by Nikon. I live in Ohio too and I've driven by Coon's Candy many times. Oh, and JonBuck's [[User:JonBuck/Family Tree|Family Tree]]. I absolutely died laughing at the LOLcat references.

Alveric's merfolk arc in the [[Xanadu (setting)|Xanadu]] shared universe: [[Hannah's Tale]], [[Alex and Hannah]], [[Wynd, Skye and One White Mouse]], [[Mermaids of Xanadu]], and [[Girl With the Sea-Green Eyes]]. After elves, mers are my second-favorite species.

User:MarianLH/Where Tree Fails Chapter One

2013-02-18T02:46:37Z

MarianLH: Added categories

{{Title
|name=Chapter One: A Wizard Did It
|user= MarianLH}}

In the years to come, Melanie would look back on the girls fondly, if only out of gratitude, but on that blustery February day they were driving her up the wall. The two teenagers were chatting away, oblivious to how inconsiderate they were being to the rest of the library patrons. Mel had tried shushing them once—she wasn't actually a librarian, just a minimum-wage book-shelver—but they didn't know that.

Not that it made a difference. They were back up to full volume in less than ten minutes.

Finally they left, giving her a baleful look and muttering just loud enough about "the fat old bitch". It stung, not the least because it wasn't entirely untrue. She was overweight, and if 39 wasn't yet "old", it certainly wasn't young either. ''I was their age once'', she thought bitterly. ''I used to have a future to look forward to''.

More to distract herself from brooding than because there was any real rush, she stood up and went to reshelve the books they'd left lying on the table. One of them was a romance novel, with a hunky guy dressed up as a too-clean pirate, distressed damsel lying passively in his arms. ''Oh, to have some romantic adventure'', she thought. The pirate was gazing out of the cover with his cheeky grin, seeming to look right at her, and she imagined him pulling her into the story, his hand coming up out of the book like in that 80s music video. ''I wouldn't be some silly delicate maiden, though''. She looked scornfully at the woman on the cover—probably what passed for the book's heroine. ''I'd be right there beside him in the big battle, cutlass flashing, like Geena Davis in that pirate movie. Like Xena. Or Tauriel''. She'd just heard about Evangeline Lilly's upcoming appearance the second Hobbit movie, and couldn't wait to see it. She spent a few happy minutes imagining herself as some kind of badassed warrior-elf like Lilly's character.

''Okay, that's enough self-indulgence for one day''. She gathered up the books on a cart and started putting them away.

When she got to the end of the cart there was a book she didn't recognize, a large hardcover with plain brown binding. It looked old. She picked it up, and there was a flash of light, then nothing.

{{Separator|k}}

When Melanie came to, the first thing she felt was cold. She was lying on something smooth and hard and chilly, which proved to be a marble table top of some kind when she opened her eyes. It was covered with dust, except where her movements had brushed it away.

She sat up with a moan, and the next thing she noticed was that she was completely nude. For a moment she was so shocked her brain simply locked up, refusing to process what was happening. Her first thought, when she could think again, was that she'd been abducted by some horrible creepy stalker. ''The cops'll find my body buried in his backyard in an oil drum, like that guy in Kansas''. But how could he have gotten her body out of the library without anyone seeing? There was no way anyone have possibly—then, in her mind's eye, she again saw the strange brown book, her hand picking it up, and the flash of light....

''The book. Holy shit. It had to be''. Part of her brain was still trying to argue, to insist there had to be a rational explanation, but it was arguing with the part of her that was freezing-ass cold, naked, in a dusty dark room. Hard to argue with reality. Especially when reality meant "horrible creepy stalker." Please let it have been the book....

She pushed herself off the table and stood up, looking around. She felt lightheaded and off-balance, and her first few steps were tentative, with one hand on the table for support.

The room was dim, with no obvious source of light, but she could see about as well as on a moonlit night. There was dust everywhere, like on the table, and the air smelled musty. It was about as big as the library's front lobby, and there were several other tables scattered about, seemingly at random. Unlike the first one, they were made of wood. One of them had been smashed to pieces, and she stepped carefully around it. The last thing she needed was a splinter in her foot.

Going around the table brought her face to face with a gruesome skeleton hanging in a corner of the room. She shrieked, jumping back and bumping into a table, which gave way beneath her as one of the legs snapped. The loud crash echoed through the empty room.

For a moment she stood still, heart pounding, until the adrenaline wore off. Then, feeling a little silly at her overreaction, she stepped back up and took a closer look. The skeleton looked real, yellowed and old, with a long crack in the skull. Whoever it had belonged to must have been a really big guy in life.
Next to it, against the wall, was a tall wooden thing that looked like a rack of some kind. It was empty, and discolored by a long vertical stain, and she went cold all over as she realized it was dried blood. Then she found the rotted remains of leather straps, just in the right places to be wrist and ankle restraints....

''Shit shit shit, this is not good'', she thought. ''Just because some stupid magic book transported you to Narnia or Deverry or wherever, it doesn't mean you can't still be axe-murdered by a crazy person''. She whirled around, half-expecting to find a guy in a hockey mask sneaking up behind her right that moment. But there was no one. The room was just as empty and silent as before.

She was genre-savvy enough to turn around again and make sure the skeleton hadn't started coming to life behind her as soon as her back was turned. But no, it still just hung there, like some grisly taxidermy experiment.

Something was still off, a feeling that something wasn't quite right, but she couldn't put her finger on what. Still creeped out, she resumed exploring the room, but with purpose now, rather than curiosity. She wanted to find some clothes, and maybe something she could use as a weapon.

The broken table leg did for the latter. It was thick enough to make a sturdy club. She swung it a few times, thinking ''Just try it, Leatherface. I'm on to you''. But although she went over the whole room, there was nothing that would pass for clothing. Not even drapes or a towel.

There was only one door, and it opened onto another identical dusty room full of tables. It didn't have any other doors either; there seemed to be no way out. It did have shelves full of glass jars and clay pots full of various unknown substances, but she left them alone after finding a whole black cat in one of them, preserved in some kind of clear liquid.

She found some footprints in the dust—large ones—which gave her a bit of a fright at first. But upon consideration they didn't look recent. They were just somewhat less dusty than the rest of the floor.

It was only after she'd given up the search, and was sitting on another table looking forlornly down at herself, that she realized what had been feeling off this whole time. Her body had been...altered.

The absence of flab about her middle was the first thing she noticed. She touched her stomach, and it was firm and hard under her fingertips. ''Holy crap, the magical diet. If I could bottle this I'd make a killing in LA''. After awhile, though, she realized the changes went beyond just losing weight. Her breasts were different too—not just smaller, but differently shaped. They'd been round and a little saggy—okay, a lot saggy—and big enough that she hovered between a B and C cup, depending on the bra. Now they were tiny little things, barely an A, and instead of being round they were pointed and curved up. The kind of shape a friend of hers had once sneeringly referred to as "ski-jump tits" back in college.

Everything else was smaller too. Her arms and legs were, well, not skinny—they felt toned and muscular, just like her belly—but they looked narrower, more slender. So did her torso and hips. And her skin was smooth and unblemished, no varicose veins, no wrinkled knuckles. She felt good, too, limber and energetic. Young.

She was thrilled. Sure the place was gloomy and creepy, and there was no apparent way out, but there definitely seemed to be some perks as well. She was starting to feel good about the whole situation.

That, of course, was precisely when things went to shit.

{{Separator|k}}

The first sign of trouble was a scraping sound, stone on stone. Off to her right, a section of wall pushed inward, and then swung open like a door. Stepping through the threshold was—

''Oh fuck''

—a big, green, mean-looking creature the size of Andre the Giant. He was carrying a long pole tipped with something sharp and ugly. ''Shit, that's, like, a spear or something''. He turned his head and spotted her instantly, despite the dimness. And he had three more friends who followed him into the room.

Melanie scooted off the table, and the creature followed her with the spear-tip. She dropped her makeshift club, knowing it wasn't going to do her any good, and raised her empty hands. "Um, I surrender?"

The brute gave her a toothy grin, that turned into a leer as his eyes traveled down her body. She was reminded of her nakedness, and felt hideously vulnerable. Was she about to get gang-raped by a bunch of big green ogres? Fear clamped her tight—a loathsome, clammy fear, curling in her belly.

But no, thank god, he just gestured with the spear, while his buddies spread out around her. He was pointing toward the doorway, and she started to move toward it—slowly, in case she was misinterpreting him. He just gestured again, more impatiently, and she quickened her step.

In moments she found herself moving down a hallway, being guided by shoves and the occasional jab with a spear—the butt end, thankfully. The creatures towered over her and made her feel tiny—the top of her head barely came up to their chins. And they were ''ripped''. Her body—her new body—was toned and athletic, but these guys had biceps and pecs that rivaled Sylvester Stallone in his glory days. They had broad faces, with heavy brows, and heavy jaws with a prominent underbite, but they could have passed for humans—really big humans, anyway—if it weren't for the olive-green skin. Well, and the yellow tusks that jutted up from their lower jaw.

Just to add insult to injury, they stank.

After several twists and turns, they came to a medieval-looking wooden door, closed with a crude iron padlock. One of them produced a key and unlocked it, then pulled it open and shoved her inside. Immediately the door slammed shut again behind her, and she heard the sound of the lock.

The room inside was filled with warm yellow candlelight, the first real light she'd seen since her arrival. It lifted her spirits, even as she realized she wasn't alone.

Sitting on a decrepit bed was a large, heavyset man, looking at her in astonishment. She felt another moment of naked vulnerability, but at least he wasn't leering at her. He just looked deer-in-the-headlights stunned, and the absurdity of the situation began to overcome her embarrassment. Remembering a line from a movie, she mustered as much dignity as she could, stood up straight, haughtily crossed her arms and said "I want a meal and a bath" in her best Sean Connery.

That broke the spell, at least. The man looked away, and stood up, walking over to where a long coat hung on the wall and taking it down. Still averting his eyes, he thrust it at her, saying something in a language she didn't recognize. She took it, noticing as she did that he towered over her just as much as the green guys outside did. Big guy. His coat—no, it turned out to be a cloak, of all things—was big on her too, puddling around her feet. And it was scratchy wool and smelled a little, too, but it was better than nothing. For the first time in what seemed like hours, she felt warm.

He said something else in his own language, and she shrugged. "Sorry, buddy, I can't understand you. Hablo ingles? Sprecken-zy...uh...dutch? Dootch?" He just shook his head, and spoke again. It sounded like he was trying a couple different languages too, but not only did she not understand them, she didn't recognize them at all.

He was very dark-skinned, with curly black hair, but he didn't look African-American. Or African, for that matter, not that she was an expert. He didn't look Indian either. Pakistani, maybe? Iranian? She was pretty sure she'd recognize Arabic if she heard it, but didn't Iranians have another language?

Then again, with everything else that had happened, she was probably on another planet. Maybe another universe. ''Transported here by a magical whatsis'', she thought, ''and of course I woke up starkers''. It was almost funny. ''Just call me Joan Carter. The question is, of where?''

They did have one breakthrough, eventually. Remembering how it was sometimes done in movies, she pointed to herself and said, "Melanie," then pointed at him. After a couple times back and forth he figured it out, or seemed to, and introduced himself as "Panharam."

{{Separator|k}}

Some time later, the door opened again, and one of the green brutes pushed in a bowl and pitcher, then shut and locked the door again. The bowl had some kind of nasty greasy stew in it, and the stuff in the pitcher tasted like flat beer. They ate and drank anyway, using their hands since there were no utensils, and wiped off afterward with a moth-eaten blanket. Later still, nature took its course, and the man introduced her to the back corner of the room he'd been using as a privy. From the evidence, he'd been imprisoned for at least a few days already. She gagged at the smell. There wasn't any privacy, but he pointedly turned his back while she did her business, and she did the same for him when his turn came.

{{Separator|k}}

That set the pattern for the next several days—at least she assumed they were days. It was hard to tell, but it certainly didn't feel like they were fed very often. She was hungry all the time, and Panharam seemed to be suffering even more. As big as he was, he was probably used to eating well.

On the plus side, infrequent meals meant infrequent bathroom breaks.

There wasn't any toilet paper, of course. Panharam had already torn the bed linens into strips, and they did well enough while they lasted, but it didn't take them long to run out. Remembering something she'd once read about Middle Eastern customs, Melanie started eating only with her right hand and cleaning only with her left. She tried not to think about cholera.

{{Separator|k}}

They did their best to breach the language barrier, but without a language in common they were reduced to pointing at things and learning each others' words for them. And there were only so many things to point at.

''Some adventure'', she thought glumly, sometime after the fourth meal. She was pretty woozy from hunger at that point. ''Sure, those guys didn't impale me on a spear, or...or worse, but I'm not exactly saving the day''. She glanced sideways at Panharam, who was sleeping. ''And he's not exactly Fabio''. That thought made her feel guilty. Sure he was plump, heavyset and old enough to be her father—about as far as you could possibly get from a romance novel hero—but he'd been nothing but kind. Despite the fact that they were both starving, he never tried to hog what little food they were given. He respected her privacy when she had to relieve herself, and never tried to take advantage of her—or even peek—even though he was so big he could easily overpower her. She was still wrapped in his cloak, for want of any other clothes.

{{Separator|k}}

She drifted in and out a lot, falling into a trance she assumed was some kind of hunger-induced fugue state. Then, sometime after meal eleven, Panharam shook her awake. He nodded at the door, and she heard shouting and banging beyond it. There was a heavy thump that shook the door, something that sounded like gasping, and then silence.

After a lingering moment, she heard the key in the lock, and the door opened. The first thing that came through was one of the green brutes, making her start. But he was obviously dead, liberally splashed with blood, and the way he fell in implied he'd been laying against the door. Hands grasped the body and pulled it back out of view, then a man stepped in.

He was deeply tanned and rugged-looking, with a thick bushy red beard, and like everyone else so far he towered over her. He was wearing some sort of medieval-looking metal ring armor, which after everything else she'd seen shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it was still kind of mind-bending to see it for real. And to cap it off, he had a bloody sword in his hand.

He spoke to her cellmate first. "Panharam bala Tenh?"

Panharam nodded, looking ecstatic. "''Ardat ji''," he replied. "''Ardat ji, Ardat ji!''" He'd said the same phrase to her a few times during their captivity; from the way he used it she'd guessed it meant "thank you." The newcomer helped him to his feet, then turned to her. She struggled to stand as well, before they could help, although the effort left her lightheaded and trembling. He asked her something, and Panharam replied for her—telling him she didn't speak the language, probably. They talked back and forth a bit, obviously about her, then the man called over his shoulder. "Naithuanna."

Another person appeared in the doorway, and Melanie's eyes bugged out in disbelief. It was an elf, a female elf. She couldn't be anything else—it wasn't just the pointed ears, her whole face was inhumanly exotic, and there was just something, well, alien about her.

Melanie felt well and truly beyond the looking glass now. Her head swam. ''Is this Middle Earth after all? Am I in Moria or Dol Goldur or someplace?''

''No, Tolkien's elves were as tall or taller than humans. Galadriel was, like, over six feet or something. This elf is my height. She barely comes up to the bearded guy's shoulder.

She's...she...my height....''

Slowly, as if in a dream, Melanie raised her hands to her own ears, feeling along the upper edges...and found pointed tips.

"Of course," she said, "I should've known." And then she fainted.

{{Separator|k}}

When she came to, she was lying on the bed, with her cloak—well, Panharam's cloak—draped over her like a blanket. He and the bearded man were gone, and the door was closed, but the elf sat on the floor, eating something. When she saw Melanie was awake, she stood up, picking up a bundle of what looked like clothing and bringing it over. She set it on the bed, and then added what looked like a square of shortbread she took out of a cloth wrapping. "''Tenya ent clatha''," she said, "''nes nehel''."

"Uh, thanks," Melanie replied, sitting up. She held the cloak to her chest, and reached for the food. It proved to be some kind of hard, flavorless biscuit. It certainly wasn't ''lembas''. She didn't care; after who knew how many days of near-starvation, she'd eat anything. It was gone in three bites.

"Thank you," she said again. "Um, ''hannon le''." It was one of the few elven phrases she remembered from the Tolkien movies, but this elf showed no sign of recognizing it.

"Naithuanna ''ynili''," she said, "''ent'' 'Meloni' ''ynehel, cyëf?''"

Well, that was easy enough to puzzle out. She must have gotten the name from Panharam. "Close, Melanie." She pointed to herself and repeated, "Melanie."

"Melehni?"

"Close enough," Mel replied. She pointed to the elf. "And you're...Nigh..thwanna?"

"Naithuanna," the elf corrected. "''Esti nehel doës hinual?''"

Melanie sighed. "I'm guessing that's 'Don't you speak elvish, you dork?' I'm sorry, but I don't." She gestured to the clothes. "Do you mind if I get dressed?" The elf looked at her uncomprehendingly. ''I really need to stop thinking of her as 'the elf''', Melanie mused. ''I'M an elf. Holy fuckballs, I'm an elf!''

It took some emphatic gesturing, but Mel was finally able to get across that she wanted Naithuanna to turn around. She looked puzzled, but finally turned her back.

The clothes turned out to be a pair of pants that laced up the outside of each leg, and a long shirt with sleeves that were closely fitted to mid-forearm and then belled out over the hands. The material felt like silk. ''Probably her spare clothes'', Melanie thought. Naithuanna was wearing some elaborate leather costume studded with metal bits—presumably some kind of armor—but from what Mel could see of it, the clothing underneath was similar.

It felt almost sinfully luxurious, to be wearing clothes again. And it was nice to feel warm again. On the down side, she felt the cold stone floor more keenly now under her bare feet, despite having endured it for almost two weeks. Too bad Naithuanna didn't have a spare set of boots.

Seeing Mel was ready, Naithuanna opened the door and led her out. There was a small crowd of people in the hallway outside, Panharam and the bearded man among them. The others included—didn't it just figure?—a tall man with a wizard's staff, and a hobbit. The wizard didn't have a pointy hat or a beard, at least. He looked like a guy in his twenties. And the hobbit was a girl-hobbit. That was different.

But far more salient, at the moment, was the little campfire the hobbit was tending, with a bubbling stewpot perched over it. Seeing the way Mel's eyes lit up at the sight of it, the hobbit laughed and dished up a bowl. She said something incomprehensible but cheery-sounding as she handed it over, adding a spoon and a hunk of brown bread.

Everyone else was already eating, so Mel didn't stand on ceremony. She sat down next to the hobbit and dug in, doing her best to eat like a civilized person and not scarf it down like a starving animal. She almost succeeded. When Panharam, who had a head start on her, showed no compunctions about asking for a refill, she followed his example.

He'd deteriorated a lot, she realized, even in the two weeks or so she'd known him. He'd been a fat man, and he still was, somewhat, but not nearly as much. His skin hung loosely on him, and his face was gaunt. There was a chalky undertone to his dark skin. She wondered if she looked similarly starved.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was having a confab with the red-bearded man, the alleged wizard, and another armored man who kept casting suspicious glances her way. He was bearded too, and she mentally dubbed them "Redbeard" and "Brownbeard" to keep them straight in her head. They were obviously talking about her. As she watched, Naithuanna asked the wizard something and got a headshake in response.

When everyone was done eating, Brownbeard got up and made some kind of announcement, gesturing at her, then walked purposefully over to her, fiddling with something around his neck. Mel began to feel nervous, but everybody else seemed calm, and the hobbit-girl said something reassuring to her.

The "something" around Brownbeard's neck turned out to be a gold pendant in the shape of a stylized sun, with squiggly rays all around it. He thrust it at her like it was a cross and she was Dracula, intoning something. Mel couldn't help but wonder if he was saying, "Back! Back, creature of the night!" She tensed up, wondering if he was about to stake her—or conjure a lightning bolt out of the sky to smite her, for all she knew—but nothing happened. After a moment everyone seemed to relax minutely, including the priest, if that's what he was. His expression softened, and he gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and turned away. Everyone else started packing up.

"What the hell was that all about?" she asked plaintively, but no one answered.

Naithuanna picked up a long bundle that Mel realized was a quiver, containing an intricately-carved bow and several arrows. To her surprise, the other elf offered it to her, saying something in elvish.

"I don't know how to use that," she protested, holding up her hands and shaking her head. Naithuanna's eyebrows rose in astonishment, and Mel could practically read her mind—''What kind of elf doesn't know how to use a bow?'' Everybody else looked surprised too.

Naithuanna then offered Mel her sword instead—she had a long, slender one buckled to her waist—but Mel shook her head again. The other elf shrugged, as if to say "suit yourself", and slung the quiver over her shoulder. This was followed by a leather pack, and then she picked up an odd-looking contraption that could have passed for modern art at the Met. Only once she'd buckled it to her left forearm did Mel realize it was a small shield of some kind. One that strapped to the arm and left her hand free for the bow. Redbeard and Brownbeard had shields too, but theirs were more historical-looking round ones that didn't leave their hands free. Brownbeard's shield had a sun painted on it that matched his pendant.

Redbeard and Hobbit-girl used the campfire to light torches, then the fire was put out. Mel realized she was still carrying Panharam's cloak, and went over to offer it to him. He demurred, though, gesturing that she should keep it, so she wrapped it around herself again, rolling it up at her shoulders to keep it from tripping her. Away from the fire she was still a little cold, even in Naithuanna's spare clothing. ''One of the perils of being thin'', she mused. ''I guess it's a fair trade''.

They set off down the corridor, with Redbeard in the lead. It was the same one the green guys had brought her through—she remembered the way it zig-zagged. After maybe half an hour, they came to an intersection she recognized, and around the corner the hallway straightened out.

It was then that Mel noticed she didn't see Naithuanna anywhere. Redbeard was in the front, with the wizard behind him, then Panharam, then herself and the hobbit girl, and Brownbeard was bringing up the rear. Naithuanna was nowhere in sight.

Had she left? Was she so disgusted by an elf who couldn't use a bow—or even talk—that she'd taken off on her own? A niggling little voice of doubt in her mind insisted it was so. Yeah, zapped into a fantasy universe and given a full-body Mary Sue makeover, and you're still a worthless loser.

Hobbit-girl noticed her looking around, and guessed the reason. "''Kandad beh'' Naithuanna?" She pointed ahead and said something more, and Melanie recognized the word haskat—corridor—from Panharam's vocabulary lessons.

"Scouting ahead?" Mel guessed, making a show of peering about with her hand shading her eyes. The hobbit grinned and nodded. Then she pointed to herself and said, "Leske." In case there was any doubt about her meaning she then pointed at Mel and said, "Meleni," then back at herself and repeated "Leske."
"Leske, huh?" Melanie said. "Nice to meet you, Leske."

The hobbit nodded. "Leske Thindelgabben."

''Don't laugh, don't laugh, it might be a mortal insult to laugh, and her sword may only be a foot long but that's still enough to gut you like a fish''. It was hard—''Thindelgabben?''—but Melanie managed to keep a straight face.

And besides, for all that Leske was about eye level with Mel's belly button, she didn't look like someone you'd want to laugh at. Like Naithuanna, she was wearing leather armor, although hers had a different cut, more utilitarian and not so, well, elvish. The effect was pretty intimidating—less Frodo, more Emma Peel. Well, Emma Peel's mini-me, anyway.

In addition to the sword, she was armed with at least three hatchets tucked into her belt. They reminded Mel of the tomahawks Daniel Day Lewis had been throwing around in ''Last of the Mohicans''. Contrary to the Tolkien stereotype she wasn't barefoot either, and her feet didn't look especially big.

{{Separator|k}}

They walked for another couple of hours, occasionally turning corners and passing side-corridors and doors. At one point, Melanie was pretty sure she spotted the hidden stone door to the rooms she'd first arrived in.

Around the next turn after that, there were some...corpses. More of the green brutes, shoved out of the way to one side of the corridor. Mel stared at them in horrified fascination—it was one thing to read about dead bodies in a novel, or even see them on TV. Encountering them in the literal flesh made her skin crawl.

And the stench was horrible.

The bloodstains on the floor were still relatively fresh, and nobody else seemed surprised to see them, so Mel figured her new companions were responsible for their current unbreathing state. Despite trying to step carefully, she managed to put her foot down in a sticky puddle of blood, and cursed under her breath.

Naithuanna was waiting at the next intersection, with her bow drawn and an arrow ready. As the rest of the group came up she put a finger to her lips and nodded her head to the next corridor. Redbeard and Leske immediately doused their torches, plunging the hallway back into moonlit darkness. Behind Redbeard's back, the wizard opened a complicated-looking pouch on his belt and took out something that glowed faintly. While they had a quick whispered conversation, Leske and Brownbeard moved up to the intersection. Leske shrugged off her pack and plucked a tomahawk from her belt, while Brownbeard took out a nasty-looking metal club.

Melanie felt her pulse racing, and not in a good way. ''Holy shit, there's going to be a fight'', she thought. ''This is really happening''. So much for being a heroic adventurer. ''I think I'm going to hurl''.

At Redbeard's nod, Naithuanna and Leske darted out into the intersection and opened fire. Shouts and bellows of pain came around the corner. They each got a second arrow or hatchet off, then hurried back. A spear clanged off the stone wall, just missing Naithuanna.

The wizard was next, tossing whatever he'd taken out of his pouch into the intersection and shouting something arcane-sounding. The little bit of whatever-it-was exploded into a bright golden light, filling the hallway and prompting cries of pain from around the corner.

The sudden light hurt Melanie's eyes too, and she covered them with the heels of her hands, turning away. As a result, she didn't see what happened next, but she could hear the clanging and banging, the shouts, and some awful meaty thunks.

By the time her eyes stopped hurting it was mostly over. Naithuanna joined her, holding a bloody sword, and checked her eyes. She said something in an amused voice, and Melanie could guess what it was. ''Don't look directly at the light spell, dummy''.

The two Beards came back around the corner then. Both of them also had bloodstained weapons, and Brownbeard was limping a little. Naithuanna wrinkled her nose, and Mel couldn't blame her—the guys smelled like a gym locker. ''I guess swordfighting is quite a workout''.

Leske came rushing up then, sounding excited. She had a little pile of gold coins in her hands, which prompted a lot of interest and babble from everyone. Redbeard called Panharam over, and he picked one up and looked closely at the design stamped on it. Melanie saw his eyes narrow in speculation. There was some back-and-forth conversation between him and Redbeard and the wizard, and his expression grew angry.

''It must have something to do with why he was being kept prisoner here'', she thought. She wondered what the story was, but unfortunately there was no way they could tell her. She made up her mind then to start learning the local language.

Everyone went around the corner again, and when Melanie followed she saw them all wiping their weapons on the dead guys' clothes. Ew. The bodies were still more of those big ugly green guys.

Remembering their earlier vocabulary exchanges, Melanie nudged Panharam and pointed at them, saying, "Orcs?" They didn't really look like Tolkien's orcs—or Warcraft orcs for that matter, although that was closer. But she didn't know what else to call them.

As before, he responded with the word in his language: "''Genka''." Naithuanna, noticing the exchange, added what Mel assumed was the elvish word: "''Cehakar''." She was trying to carefully work one of her arrows out of an orc's ribcage, but despite her best efforts it snapped off, right behind the arrowhead, and she sighed.

{{Separator|k}}

The new corridor was very long, but at the far end she could see a tiny dot of daylight. It took the better part of an hour to reach the exit, and Melanie was tired and footsore by the end, but finally they emerged into a bright, sunny day.

They were standing on a hillside, above a grassy meadow. It was a cloudy overcast afternoon, but Melanie didn't care. The cool grass felt so nice under her bare feet. It was so lovely to be out of that dank, smelly...what the hell was that place, anyway? She turned around to look at the opening. It looked like a natural cave from this side, partially obscured by vines and other vegetation. There was no hint of the huge, obviously artificial underground complex from the outside.

"'Dungeons deep and caverns old'," she quoted, shaking her head in wonder.
They didn't stop, once they were outside. Redbeard led them on across the meadow, and Melanie bit back a complaint. Even through the clouds she could tell the afternoon was getting on. They weren't going to walk all night, were they? Despite the psychological lift she'd gotten from seeing daylight for the first time in a couple weeks, she was pretty sure she couldn't go much further. Panharam looked as bad as she felt. And Brownbeard's limp was getting worse.
Finally they stopped, where a small river meandered through the meadow, with copses of trees along its banks. Leske immediately got to work kindling a fire. Melanie sat down with a groan, and for a moment she just sat there in an exausted stupor. Until she noticed everyone else was busy working, setting up camp. Guilt warred with fatigue and eventually won, but when she tried to get up and help, Leske quite firmly gestured for her to stay put. Panharam got the same treatment, and what sounded like a stern lecture as well. The hobbit even shook a ladle at him. Apparently there were some perks to being the rescuee instead of the hero.

So she sat, for some unknown amount of time, lost in a kind of exhausted trance, while the sun went down and the daylight dimmed. Eventually Naithuanna came over to join her, carrying two bowls of food.

She wrinked her nose again as she sat down, and this time Mel couldn't blame it on the guys. ''Yeah'', she thought, ''I probably stink. Who knows how many days without toilet paper, with that nasty gunk they fed us running through my system, not to mention no bath or shower. It's a wonder they didn't just throw me in the river''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''And then she just lets me put on her clothes, without a complaint''. "Thank you," she said, trying to put as much sincerity into the words as possible, hoping it would get her meaning across.

It seemed to work, because Naithuanna smiled and nodded. "''Coësen ynehel''," she replied.

Melanie looked speculatively at the river. Maybe they could bathe after dinner? Naithuanna followed her gaze, and shook her head with another smile. "''En clatha, fuamelèd''," she said in a teasing tone. Mel guessed that meant something like, "Eat first."

Whatever Leske had put in the stew, it was savory, and she found herself mopping up the last of it with a piece of bread. As before, Panharam and she both went for seconds. She felt full and warm inside for first time in who knew how many days.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was rummaging through her own pack, setting out various items. Among them were a cake of hard soap, an ivory comb, and an earthenware bottle. Then she pulled out what looked like a flannel blanket, and Melanie had to suppress a smile. ''There's a frood who really knows where her towel is. Hoopy''.

Leske joined them when they trooped down to the river, after speaking very firmly to the guys—probably saying something like, "Don't you dare peek."

Naithuanna found a spot with a good thick line of trees between them and the camp, set down the blanket and supplies, and then pulled her tunic over her head without a trace of self-consciousness. Her pants followed as quickly as they could be unlaced, and then she was striding out into the river.

Melanie's eyes bugged out. ''No wonder I had such a hard time getting her to turn around so I could dress. I guess elves aren't big on modesty. I suppose it fits, though—elves are usually a bunch of nature-loving free-spirited tree-hugging hippies. It stands to reason they'd be shameless nudists too''.

Leske apprently didn't share the elven disdain for modesty, though. The little hobbit had disappeared behind a bush to disrobe. Melanie was sorely tempted to emulate her, but Naithuanna was giving her a Look. ''You're one of us, girl'', it seemed to say. ''Don't puss out on me this time''.

With a sigh, she started unlacing her pants. Behind her she heard running and then a splash, as Leske dashed from the safety of her bush to the concealing water.

She finished undressing, remembering how she had stood on her dignity with Panharam, those first few moments before he'd given her his cloak. She did it again, managing to walk calmly into the water instead of dashing like Leske. Naithuanna seemed to approve.

The water was cold, but Melanie was so eager to get clean she didn't care. She took the soap and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was raw. And the earthenware bottle proved to hold some kind of shampoo. Leske declined—apparently special hair soap was a prissy elven thing—but Melanie luxuriated shamelessly in it, much to Naithuanna's amusement.

Night had completely fallen by the time she was done washing. She relaxed for a bit, floating serenely in the cool water. It was a bright, moonlit night, with the kind of ethereal, glowy light that only happened on clear nights with a full moon.

Except when she looked up, there wasn't any full moon.

She did find a moon—two moons, as it happened—but they were both slender cresents, and partially obscured by clouds. Naithuanna followed her gaze, and pointed upward. "''Tel'cenodel''," she said, "Lafael ''ent'' Celên."

But Melanie didn't care about moons at the moment. She was looking around at the brightly-lit night, and remembering. Remembering how the dungeon rooms and corridors had seemed dimly lit, even though there was no light source at all before Panharam's candle. Remembering how it had seemed like a bright sunny day when she first emerged from the dungeon, even though the sky was overcast and cloudy. Remembering how much the light spell had hurt her eyes.

''I can see in the dark'', she marveled. ''Right, because I'm an elf now, and of course elves can see in the dark''. Somehow that was the last straw, the final bit of weirdness that really brought home to her what had happened. ''I'm an elf. I'm not human anymore''. She stood up, waiting for the water to calm, and then looked at her reflection.

For the first time, she saw her new face.

Her coloration was different, and she was still gaunt from her ordeal, but otherwise she looked a lot like Naithuanna. She was paler, and her hair was silvery-blond instead of black, but she had the same kind of narrow, finely-boned face, the same high cheekbones and delicately swept ears. The same eyes, almond-shaped and slanted inward, and just a bit too large for her face. And unlike Naithuanna's green, hers were an utterly unhuman shade of violet.

She felt a wrenching, disorienting sense of loss. She had a vision of herself—her original, middle-aged, overweight, ''human'' self—reaching out to her from across a chasm, and she reached back, but the chasm grew wider, and she couldn't reach....

She realized she was crying when the tears dropped on her reflection, rippling it. Naithuanna came over and put an arm around her shoulders, saying something that sounded soothing, but her alien-ness, her inhuman features and incomprehensible language, just reinforced Melanie's sense of isolation. She pushed away, walking deeper into the river.

''I'm not me anymore'', she thought. ''And if I'm not ME, then who the hell am I?'' She suddenly felt like her own body was something ''other'', something separate, not a part of her, a prison of flesh that enveloped her. She was smothered by it. She wanted to shout and rage at the heavens—but even the sky was alien, here.

She looked up at the moons again. ''Moons'', plural. It was more than just herself that was wrong, it was the whole world.

Melanie didn't have anyone who would miss her. No husband, no boyfriend, no real friends. Her parents were gone. She wouldn't particularly miss her job. And she certainly didn't ''like'' pushing forty, or struggling with her weight. And yet she mourned the loss of her world, of everything familiar. She'd never see a movie again. Never eat a cheeseburger. No more chocolate, no TV, no ice cream. Never hear English, except when she talked to herself. Never drive a car. Never take that vacation trip to Japan. Ever.

It was too much. She felt overwhelmed, consumed. The sense of loss was too great, too all-encompassing. It rose up and swallowed the world.

{{Separator|k}}

Eventually the emotional storm passed. Melanie wasn't sure how long it lasted, but when she looked around, Naithuanna and Leske were on the riverbank, and Leske was dressed and looked dry except for her hair. Naithuanna was kneeling in the grass and drying her hair with the towel.

She felt spent. Empty. Unbidden, a line from an old story wafted into her mind: "You lost a whole world. That's a lot to grieve for." Somehow, that thought made her feel a little better—it put things in perspective, at least.

She swam to the riverbank and joined the others. Both of them gave her a concerned look, and she mustered a wan smile. When she pointed at the towel, Naithuanna didn't hesitate to hand it over. "Sorry for the waterworks," she said as she began drying off. "I'm better now."

Leske gave her a sort of one-armed snug, and then headed back to camp. Naithuanna waved goodbye to her and then sat back and started plaiting her hair into some elaborate braids. When Melanie had finished towel-drying hers, Naithuanna did the same for her. It was nice and relaxing. ''I've missed having girlfriends'', she mused.

By the time Naithuanna was done it was starting to get chilly. Mel cringed at the thought of getting back into soiled clothing after she'd gotten so nice and clean, but to her surprise their clothes were clean and dry when she picked them up. Her expression must have betrayed her, because Naithuanna smiled a smug little smile, and said, "''Cinreth nili deynal hlei''."

"I hope that means 'I used a magic laundry spell' and not 'you were out of it so long I had time to hand-wash silk and hang it up to dry'."

Naithuanna didn't understand, of course, but Melanie's wry, bantering tone seemed to reassure her. "''Fuatenyal, fonkin''," she replied in a teasing tone, and picked up her tunic.

{{Separator|k}}

She shared a tent with Leske and Naithuanna that night, but found she couldn't sleep. Naithuanna didn't seem to want to sleep either; instead, she sat cross-legged in some kind of meditative pose, and went into a sort of trance. Melanie left her to it, lying on her back and staring at the canvas roof of the tent.

''Why an elf?'' she wondered. ''Why didn't I come over as myself? Or at least still human? Or if not human, why not, say, a hobbit? Or an orc, for that matter? Would anyone who picked up that book have become an elf? Or been transported at all?''

She thought back to that moment when she'd touched the book. ''I was dreaming of an adventure. Maybe that's why—the book somehow picked up my wish, and gave me an adventure?'' She snorted in wry amusement. ''It could have given me a nicer one. Not so much with the starving''. Oh well, she HAD thought the pirate on the romance novel cover looked too clean to be real. That wasn't a problem she'd had, after her ordeal.

Still, why an elf? She thought back, trying to reconstruct what she had been thinking about, and then it came to her. ''Tauriel. I was thinking about Tauriel. Miss 'I can do everything Legolas did, only backwards and in high heels'.''

With the conundrum resolved, Melanie felt herself slipping away. Her last thought was, ''Maybe those muscles on my arms aren't just for show''.

{{Separator|k}}

She got a chance to find out the next morning. Naithuanna shook her awake shortly before dawn, and after they'd dressed, took her out to a copse of trees for archery lessons. And sure enough, she was able to draw the bow. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't as hard as it should be, either.

There was some muscle-memory working in her favor, too. Her body sort of knew what it was doing when she drew an arrow and nocked it. But she wasn't magically imbued with new skills. Her shooting was probably better than it should be for someone who'd never used a bow in her life, but she still didn't come anywhere close to matching Naithuanna's speed or accuracy.

When her arms started to get tired, they put aside the bow and Naithuanna drew her sword. This started a whole new round of lessons, with Melanie holding the sword and Naithuanna standing behind her like a golf pro, guiding her hand and arm through a series of different swings. Despite its length—the blade alone was almost three feet long—the sword flowed easily through the moves Naithuanna was putting her through. The heavy pommel at the bottom of the grip seemed to be acting as a counterweight, and whenever she hit that balance "sweet spot", the sword seemed to almost flow into place.

That didn't happen often, though.

Melanie's arms felt like lead when Naithuanna finally called a halt. She'd also begun to feel the call of nature—to put it delicately—during the exercise, and was wracking her brain trying to figure out how to tell Naithuanna without humiliating herself in the process.

Fortunately, it turned out to be unnecessary; Naithuanna had to go too. Or at least that's what Mel thought it meant when she led her into the privacy of the trees and started plucking some particularly large, broad leaves. She gave Melanie an inquisitive look, as if to say, "You need some of these too?" When Mel nodded she plucked more and shared them out.

Two weeks ago Melanie would have been disgusted to settle for using leaves as toilet paper. She'd never been an outdoorsy person, and had regarded the few camping trips she'd been on as something to be endured, not enjoyed.

But after her ordeal in the dungeon, leaves were a step up. All she felt was grateful.

{{Separator|k}}

When they got back to camp everyone else was up too. Brownbeard was kneeling, facing east toward the rising sun. He seemed to be praying to it. Redbeard was standing outside his tent, holding a leather sack that he was shaking vigorously, and from the ''shnk-shnk-shnk'' metal sound coming from it, his armor was in there. The wizard was reading a book, and Leske was cooking breakfast.
"I really should learn the rest of their names," she mused. Naithuanna looked curiously at her. She shrugged and did the pointing thing again, starting with herself, then Naithuanna, Leske, and Panharam. Then she pointed at Redbeard.
Understanding dawned in Naithuanna's eyes. "Denys," she said, also pointing at Redbeard. Brownbeard was "Galthesar," and the wizard was "Crosus."

{{Separator|k}}

After breakfast, Crosus stood up and beckoned Melanie over. Everyone dropped what they were doing and gathered around, looking interested, which made her feel nervous.

As she approached, the wizard took a pinch of something out of his magic-stuff pouch, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. Then he tried to touch her forehead. The stuff on his thumb looked sooty and black.

She shied away, looking around at the others for some clue what was happening. Naithuanna gave her an encouraging nod, so she braced herself and let the guy smear his stuff on her face. Then he raised his arms and made some complicated-looking gestures with his hands, while intoning something harsh and sibilant.
Nothing seemed to happen when he was done. "Is that supposed to be some kind of magic spell?" she asked.

To her surprise, he nodded. Melanie's eyes bugged out. "You can understand me?" Another nod. She felt like a huge burden was lifted from her shoulders. They could communicate! "God, where should I start?"

He shrugged.

Wait a minute.... "What's with the mime routine? Say something!"

The wizard shook his head, and spoke...in Panharam's language.

She felt her hopes fall. "Crap. Can you cast it again, to go the other way?"

He shook his head again.

"Oh for fuck's sake," she snapped. "A translation spell that only goes one way? What kind of balls-up stupid is that?"

He stared at her in amazement at that, then burst out laughing.

Everyone else was looking confused—apparently the spell only worked for him. But he spoke to them, obviously translating or describing what she said, because they all started grinning. Except Naithuanna, who wore a disapproving frown. ''I guess proper elven ladies don't swear''.

She sighed. "I guess I should just talk, then. Um, well, my name is Melanie—Melanie Foster—and I'm really, ''really'' not from around here. I don't know how I got here either. For that matter, I have no idea where 'here' even is. All I know is that I picked up a book that must've been magical, and bam, I was zapped here. Into that...awful place—" She jerked her thumb north, back the way they'd come. "I guess, as the old joke goes, 'a wizard did it'."

"Zelligar," Crosus said.

"Is that the name of that place?"

He shook his head, and pointed to his staff.

"Oh, lemme guess, that's the name of the wizard who ''built'' the place."

Another nod.

"Well FUCK YOU, ZELLIGAR!" That part she turned and shouted back north. Crosus snickered behind her.

Melanie turned back to face them and sighed. Should she tell them the other part? The really big part? ''Yeah, maybe it'll help them understand why I'm so weird''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''Please don't hate me for this....'' She took a deep breath and said it. "When I was transported here...I was also...changed. I wasn't an elf before. I was human."

Crosus looked shocked. She waited while he translated that for the others. Naithuanna looked...hurt. Betrayed. Shit. She plunged ahead. "There aren't any elves where I come from. Or magic. They only exist in stories. Myths and legends. I...this is all very strange to me. I don't know what to do. I don't even know who I am, anymore." She felt her throat tighten up, and squeezed her eyes shut, struggling not to cry.

Something touched her hand. She looked down, and saw that Leske had taken it into her own. She looked up at her with compassion in her eyes, and gave it a gentle squeeze. It seemed the hobbit, at least, was willing to accept her.

Naithuanna was another story.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[Category:Mythical]]

Category:MarianLH

2013-02-18T02:45:17Z

MarianLH: Created page with "Category:Stories by author"

[[Category:Stories by author]]

Ratted Out

2013-02-18T02:44:41Z

MarianLH: Added categories

{{WIP}}
{{Universe|Paradise}}

== Ratted Out ==

Marian

'''Tuesday, September 5, 2006'''

Skylar hesitated when she saw the two older kids already waiting at the bus stop, then took a deep breath and forced herself to keep going. ''They can't see it'', she told herself. ''Just act normal''. Sure enough, they only glanced at her—or rather, at the empty air above her head—and then ignored her.

Skylar wouldn't have believed it three weeks ago, but now starting high school wasn't the biggest thing in her life.

"Hey Skylar!"

Skylar turned to see her best friend, Brandi, hurrying up the street. She fought off an urge to run and hide, fixing a smile on her face. ''Just act normal''. Behind her, the school bus was just coming around the corner. "Good timing," she called out.

"I haven't seen you since you got sick in August," Brandi said as she caught up. "How are you? How was the rest of your summer?"

"Sucked," Skylar said. The understatement of the year. No, the century. That was when it had happened, three weeks ago—she'd been sick for days, with like the worst flu ever, and then just when she was feeling better, ''bam!'' She'd woken up to find herself halfway through being transformed into a giant rat-person.

A giant rat-person no one else could see. Her parents, her bratty little brother, hundreds of people at the mall during back-to-school shopping—they all saw the girl she used to be. That had scared her at first, made her think she was going crazy. But she didn't think a delusion would be this vivid, this lucid. She could ''feel'' her fur. And besides, there were things about rats she hadn't even known about until she became one. How could she hallucinate bruxing, for instance, or the need to gnaw, when she hadn't known rats did that?

So she didn't think she was going crazy. Most of the time. But she couldn't talk about it either, not without ''other'' people thinking she was crazy. Not even with her best friend.

Before Brandi could ask any awkward questions, Skylar turned the conversation around. "What about you?" The gambit worked; Brandi chattered on about her own summer while they boarded the bus and found seats.

Which brought her to her first rat-form challenge of the day. She'd taken to wearing skirts exclusively since her transformation, since there was no way she could hide big holes in her jeans from her mom. But that meant she had to sit on her tail all the way to school.

She'd tried on some low-rise jeans during back-to-school shopping, but they hadn't been quite low enough. For her tail, that is—they ''had'' been low enough for Mom to take one look and say, "Forget it."

Nope...no matter how she sat, her tail felt pinched. At home she could slouch forward a bit and make it work, but there wasn't enough room here.

Brandi was looking at her oddly. "You got ants in your pants?"

Skylar froze inside, and forced herself to sit still, no matter how uncomfortable it was. "I'm fine," she said. ''Gotta say something quick'', she thought, ''change the subject''. "So, um...are you gonna do band again this year?"

"No," Brandi said sarcastically, patting the black plastic case by her hip. "This is just for show."

"I didn't notice it," Skylar said lamely. She managed to keep the conversation going for the rest of the trip, but it bothered her the way Brandi looked at and spoke to her forehead. Before her transformation, they'd been about the same height, but now Brandi was nearly half a head taller. She'd gotten accustomed to her new height at home, but seeing her friend looming over her brought it back.

Then there was her enhanced sense of smell. Like her height, she'd mostly gotten used to it around the house, but now she was surrounded by new scents. Everyone on the school bus had their own unique odor, accented by different soaps, shampoos, and other additives. Several of the girls were wearing cheap perfume, one of the seniors used the same bodywash Brandi did, and a boy up near the front was a smoker. Two of the girls had their periods. Then there was the diesel fumes from the bus, the food scents of various lunches, and the cork grease from Brandi's clarinet. And the bus driver needed a shower.

Skylar was glad her mother had forced her into that back-to-school shopping trip the week before. She'd turned into a hermit after ''it'' happened, and Mom had to twist her arm to get her to go, but the experience stood her in good stead now. She'd spent the first half hour or so at the mall completely disoriented by all the scents assaulting her nose, but somewhere along the way, she'd somehow gotten used to it. Now she just registered different scents the same way she saw different colors. It was kinda cool, actually.

The bus finally pulled up at Jefferson High School, and Skylar catapulted up out of her seat before it stopped moving, earning her a glare from the unwashed driver. The base of her tail ached. ''I'm gonna walk to school from now on'', she thought. ''It isn't THAT far''.

Everyone else was getting up too; she stood in the aisle and shouldered her backpack, waiting for the crowd to start moving. Then Brandi moved out behind her, and stepped on her tail. Stars of pain shot up her spine. It hurt so much it was like fireworks exploding in her head. "Brandi!"

"What?"

"Move your foot to the left!" she hissed.

"What? Why?"

"Just do it!"

"Okay, okay, jeez." And then the pressure was mercifully gone.

As soon as her muscles unlocked, Skylar crouched down, awkwardly in the tight confines of the aisle, and picked up the end of her tail. The tip looked red and swollen, and pain radiated out from it in pulsating waves. It felt ''exactly'' like getting a finger caught in a slamming door.

The bus was finally emptying, and she started moving up the aisle toward the door, still holding her tail up.

"Hey, are you crying?" Brandi said. "What the hell?"

She wanted to snarl. ''Tears of pain, bitch'', she thought angrily, and then immediately felt contrite. It wasn't Brandi's fault she couldn't see her tail.

The bus driver hadn't forgotten her, either. "Stay seated until the bus comes to a complete stop," he snapped when she reached the door. Feeling dogpiled from all sides, Skylar just nodded submissively and hurried out, blinking tears from her eyes.

"Asshole," Brandi said. "Are you okay, Sky? What's wrong?"

"Never mind. It's nothing." They were passing through the front doors of the school now, and Skylar just wanted to get away, before Brandi asked her something she couldn't answer. "I—I want to find my locker before first period."

"Me too," Brandi said. "Catch you later." And then, thank god, she was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

Skylar moved carefully down the packed hallway, checking locker numbers and doing her best to shield her tail with her body. She had to let go of it for a minute when she found her assigned locker, to fish out the slip of paper with the combination from her backpack, but she kept a close watch around her and managed to keep it out from underfoot.

She made it to her first class just before the bell rang, sliding into the first empty desk she found. The backs of the seats all had a hole at a convenient height for her tail, but she was still worried about getting stepped on. Besides, it would tent out the back of her skirt, and the last thing she needed was ''more'' attention.

The knee-length skirt was loose enough that she was able to slip her tail around her hip, laying it along the outside of her thigh. ''Wish I'd thought of this on the bus. Maybe I won't have to walk home after all''.

The tip still throbbed, and she began to get seriously worried. ''What if it's broken?'' she thought. ''How's a doctor going to treat it if he can't even see it? Crap, what if I get hit by a car or something?''

{{Separator|k}}

In another classroom, senior Erik Metzger sat at his desk, doodling in his notebook. He smelled his friend Jeremy coming up behind him, but didn't look up...until the ziploc bag of oregano landed on his desk. "Ha ha," he said. "You could at least use real catnip."

"Don't want to be an enabler," Jeremy said, deadpan. "Besides, your mom loves Italian cooking so much, she could actually use this." He sat down in the next desk over, slinging his backpack over the seat back. "Listen, I think there's one of your people among the new frosh."

"Seeing through the Veil now, are we?"

"If only. No, she was holding something invisible in her hands. Saw her getting off the bus, and she looked like you do when you're supposedly playing with your tail. She also looked pretty freaked out, but that's probably just cus she's a freshman." He gestured toward the bag of oregano. "Better hide that. Teacher'll think it's pot."

"From what I hear, the new teacher's more likely to ask me to share than confiscate it. Point me at this freshmen when you get a chance, will you?"

The teacher in question walked in at that point, and despite his breezy assurance, Erik did scoop up the bag of oregano and stuff it in his backpack.

"Hello, class. My name is Ms. Rodriguez. I just transferred here from Boston, so you're all going to go easy on me, right?" Various hoots and catcalls greeted that, and she grinned. "That's what I thought you were gonna say. Let's do roll first, and then we'll start handing out textbooks." She picked up a clipboard. "A lot of Scandinavian names," she mused. "Is that a Minnesota thing?"

"You think the Vikings picked their name out of a hat?" one of the guys said. Everybody laughed.

{{Separator|k}}

By the end of third period Skylar was starting to feel really frazzled. Sitting with her tail to the side was a partial solution, but it wasn't perfect. She still had to sit forward a little, without the support of the seat back, or else slouch down. And the Phys Sci teacher had gigged her for it, too, telling her to "sit up straight." At least he hadn't thrown chalk at her, like that asshole Mr. Lang in eighth grade.

Her tail wasn't hurting as much, but it was still sore, and her teeth were beginning to ache too. She had a bag of popsicle sticks in her lunchbox, but finding the privacy to gnaw was a problem she hadn't solved yet. ''It's only my first day'', she thought as she trudged out of Civics into the hall, ''and it's only half over. How am I ever going to manage four YEARS of this?''

"Hey frosh, want some cheese?"

Skylar whirled around with a squeak. Right behind her was another animal-person. He towered over her, almost as big as a grownup, with a feline face and a grin full of fang.

Frightened out of her wits, Skylar backpedaled into someone, who shoved her, and then she was running, hurtling down the hall in a blind panic.

"Hey, wait," the cat-man called after her. "I was only kidding!" But she didn't hear him.

{{Separator|k}}

She ended up in an empty girls' bathroom at the long end of the L-shaped main hallway, hiding in the last stall and shaking like a leaf. Her heart was going a mile a minute. She heard a chattering noise and realized she was bruxing.

The door creaked open, and a male voice said, "Hello?" She recognized the cat-man's scent, and froze.

"Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. C'mon out; we've got a lot to talk about." Skylar stayed silent, sitting as still as possible. "My sense of smell is just as good as yours, you know," the voice continued, sounding a little impatient now. "I know you're in there. Look, you're not in any danger. Despite appearances we're still mostly human. No predator/prey shit, I promise."

After a beat, he added, "Besides, you'd probably give me heartburn." Skylar still couldn't bring herself to move, but she smiled a little at that.

When another minute had passed without her saying anything, he sighed. "Okay, I'll leave you alone. You can find me later if you wanna talk. There's a lot more of us, you know." She heard the click of his claws on the tile floor as he walked off, and then the sound of the door swinging shut.

Skylar realized she was being silly. She hurried out the bathroom and saw him walking back up the hall. "Hey!" she called out.

He turned and smiled. "Glad you changed your mind." He came back over, offering his hand, "I'm Erik."

"Skylar."

"Nice to meet you, Skylar."

Despite the needle-sharp teeth, his smile seemed just friendly now, not predatory. He was a calico, mostly white fur with orange and black patches that clashed rather badly with his blue and silver letterman jacket.

The bell rang, then. Erik jerked his thumb toward the gym. "You got lunch this period?"

{{Separator|k}}

"'Changed', huh?" Skylar mused. "That sounds better than 'rat-person', I guess."

They were eating lunch in a corner of the empty gym, instead of the cafeteria, which gave Skylar some privacy. Erik had been filling her in on what had happened to her while she gnawed. Her and over 500,000 other people, apparently.

She fished another popsicle stick out of her lunchbox and went to work on it. The bruxing she'd done in the bathroom had taken the edge off, but it was still a relief. "We won't get in trouble for eating in here?"

"I never have," he replied. "Nobody cares as long as we don't leave a mess."

With her free hand Skylar caught hold of the end of her tail and looked at it. The redness had faded to a purple bruise, and it was still tender to the touch.

"That'll give you hairy palms, you know," a new voice said. She looked up to see another senior walking over, lunchbag in hand. Unlike Erik, he was still an ordinary human.

"Jeremy," Erik said, "palms are the one place we ''don't'' have hair. Well, palms and tail, in her case—she's a rat. Jeremy, Skylar, Skylar, Jeremy."

"Nice to meet you," Jeremy said, sitting down across from them. "A rat, huh?"

"Yeah," Skylar said shyly. She looked at Erik. "He...."

"He's Known," Erik said.

"Known for what?"

"Lots of different things," Jeremy quipped, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. Skylar giggled.

"I guess I walked into that," Erik said. "No, the Known are what we call people who know about us, but aren't Changed themselves. Bass-ackwards grammatically, I know, but it rolls off the tongue better than 'Knowing' or 'Knowers' or whatever."

"I voted for 'Know-It-Alls', myself," Jeremy put in.

"You would."

By the end of lunch hour Skylar felt a lot better. Jeremy was obviously one of the senior class clowns, and he kept her in giggles, with Erik as the occasional straight man. And just knowing there were other people out there, that she wasn't alone, made her feel so good she was almost floating.

[[Category:Story]]
[[Category:MarianLH]]
[[Category:Anthropomorphic]]
[[Category:Rat]]
[[Category:Paradise]]

User:MarianLH/Where Tree Fails Chapter One

2013-02-17T23:45:48Z

MarianLH:

Ratted Out

2013-02-17T23:31:20Z

MarianLH:

Ratted Out

2013-02-17T23:07:32Z

MarianLH:

{{WIP}}

== Ratted Out ==

Marian

'''Tuesday, September 5, 2006'''

Skylar hesitated when she saw the two older kids already waiting at the bus stop, then took a deep breath and forced herself to keep going. ''They can't see it'', she told herself. ''Just act normal''. Sure enough, they only glanced at her—or rather, at the empty air above her head—and then ignored her.

Skylar wouldn't have believed it three weeks ago, but now starting high school wasn't the biggest thing in her life.

"Hey Skylar!"

Skylar turned to see her best friend, Brandi, hurrying up the street. She fought off an urge to run and hide, fixing a smile on her face. ''Just act normal''. Behind her, the school bus was just coming around the corner. "Good timing," she called out.

"I haven't seen you since you got sick in August," Brandi said as she caught up. "How are you? How was the rest of your summer?"

"Sucked," Skylar said. The understatement of the year. No, the century. That was when it had happened, three weeks ago—she'd been sick for days, with like the worst flu ever, and then just when she was feeling better, ''bam!'' She'd woken up to find herself halfway through being transformed into a giant rat-person.

A giant rat-person no one else could see. Her parents, her bratty little brother, hundreds of people at the mall during back-to-school shopping—they all saw the girl she used to be. That had scared her at first, made her think she was going crazy. But she didn't think a delusion would be this vivid, this lucid. She could ''feel'' her fur. And besides, there were things about rats she hadn't even known about until she became one. How could she hallucinate bruxing, for instance, or the need to gnaw, when she hadn't known rats did that?

So she didn't think she was going crazy. Most of the time. But she couldn't talk about it either, not without ''other'' people thinking she was crazy. Not even with her best friend.

Before Brandi could ask any awkward questions, Skylar turned the conversation around. "What about you?" The gambit worked; Brandi chattered on about her own summer while they boarded the bus and found seats.

Which brought her to her first rat-form challenge of the day. She'd taken to wearing skirts exclusively since her transformation, since there was no way she could hide big holes in her jeans from her mom. But that meant she had to sit on her tail all the way to school.

She'd tried on some low-rise jeans during back-to-school shopping, but they hadn't been quite low enough. For her tail, that is—they ''had'' been low enough for Mom to take one look and say, "Forget it."

Nope...no matter how she sat, her tail felt pinched. At home she could slouch forward a bit and make it work, but there wasn't enough room here.

Brandi was looking at her oddly. "You got ants in your pants?"

Skylar froze inside, and forced herself to sit still, no matter how uncomfortable it was. "I'm fine," she said. ''Gotta say something quick'', she thought, ''change the subject''. "So, um...are you gonna do band again this year?"

"No," Brandi said sarcastically, patting the black plastic case by her hip. "This is just for show."

"I didn't notice it," Skylar said lamely. She managed to keep the conversation going for the rest of the trip, but it bothered her the way Brandi looked at and spoke to her forehead. Before her transformation, they'd been about the same height, but now Brandi was nearly half a head taller. She'd gotten accustomed to her new height at home, but seeing her friend looming over her brought it back.

Then there was her enhanced sense of smell. Like her height, she'd mostly gotten used to it around the house, but now she was surrounded by new scents. Everyone on the school bus had their own unique odor, accented by different soaps, shampoos, and other additives. Several of the girls were wearing cheap perfume, one of the seniors used the same bodywash Brandi did, and a boy up near the front was a smoker. Two of the girls had their periods. Then there was the diesel fumes from the bus, the food scents of various lunches, and the cork grease from Brandi's clarinet. And the bus driver needed a shower.

Skylar was glad her mother had forced her into that back-to-school shopping trip the week before. She'd turned into a hermit after ''it'' happened, and Mom had to twist her arm to get her to go, but the experience stood her in good stead now. She'd spent the first half hour or so at the mall completely disoriented by all the scents assaulting her nose, but somewhere along the way, she'd somehow gotten used to it. Now she just registered different scents the same way she saw different colors. It was kinda cool, actually.

The bus finally pulled up at Jefferson High School, and Skylar catapulted up out of her seat before it stopped moving, earning her a glare from the unwashed driver. The base of her tail ached. ''I'm gonna walk to school from now on'', she thought. ''It isn't THAT far''.

Everyone else was getting up too; she stood in the aisle and shouldered her backpack, waiting for the crowd to start moving. Then Brandi moved out behind her, and stepped on her tail. Stars of pain shot up her spine. It hurt so much it was like fireworks exploding in her head. "Brandi!"

"What?"

"Move your foot to the left!" she hissed.

"What? Why?"

"Just do it!"

"Okay, okay, jeez." And then the pressure was mercifully gone.

As soon as her muscles unlocked, Skylar crouched down, awkwardly in the tight confines of the aisle, and picked up the end of her tail. The tip looked red and swollen, and pain radiated out from it in pulsating waves. It felt ''exactly'' like getting a finger caught in a slamming door.

The bus was finally emptying, and she started moving up the aisle toward the door, still holding her tail up.

"Hey, are you crying?" Brandi said. "What the hell?"

She wanted to snarl. ''Tears of pain, bitch'', she thought angrily, and then immediately felt contrite. It wasn't Brandi's fault she couldn't see her tail.

The bus driver hadn't forgotten her, either. "Stay seated until the bus comes to a complete stop," he snapped when she reached the door. Feeling dogpiled from all sides, Skylar just nodded submissively and hurried out, blinking tears from her eyes.

"Asshole," Brandi said. "Are you okay, Sky? What's wrong?"

"Never mind. It's nothing." They were passing through the front doors of the school now, and Skylar just wanted to get away, before Brandi asked her something she couldn't answer. "I—I want to find my locker before first period."

"Me too," Brandi said. "Catch you later." And then, thank god, she was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

Skylar moved carefully down the packed hallway, checking locker numbers and doing her best to shield her tail with her body. She had to let go of it for a minute when she found her assigned locker, to fish out the slip of paper with the combination from her backpack, but she kept a close watch around her and managed to keep it out from underfoot.

She made it to her first class just before the bell rang, sliding into the first empty desk she found. The backs of the seats all had a hole at a convenient height for her tail, but she was still worried about getting stepped on. Besides, it would tent out the back of her skirt, and the last thing she needed was ''more'' attention.

The knee-length skirt was loose enough that she was able to slip her tail around her hip, laying it along the outside of her thigh. ''Wish I'd thought of this on the bus. Maybe I won't have to walk home after all''.

The tip still throbbed, and she began to get seriously worried. ''What if it's broken?'' she thought. ''How's a doctor going to treat it if he can't even see it? Crap, what if I get hit by a car or something?''

{{Separator|k}}

In another classroom, senior Erik Metzger sat at his desk, doodling in his notebook. He smelled his friend Jeremy coming up behind him, but didn't look up...until the ziploc bag of oregano landed on his desk. "Ha ha," he said. "You could at least use real catnip."

"Don't want to be an enabler," Jeremy said, deadpan. "Besides, your mom loves Italian cooking so much, she could actually use this." He sat down in the next desk over, slinging his backpack over the seat back. "Listen, I think there's one of your people among the new frosh."

"Seeing through the Veil now, are we?"

"If only. No, she was holding something invisible in her hands. Saw her getting off the bus, and she looked like you do when you're supposedly playing with your tail. She also looked pretty freaked out, but that's probably just cus she's a freshman." He gestured toward the bag of oregano. "Better hide that. Teacher'll think it's pot."

"From what I hear, the new teacher's more likely to ask me to share than confiscate it. Point me at this freshmen when you get a chance, will you?"

The teacher in question walked in at that point, and despite his breezy assurance, Erik did scoop up the bag of oregano and stuff it in his backpack.

"Hello, class. My name is Ms. Rodriguez. I just transferred here from Boston, so you're all going to go easy on me, right?" Various hoots and catcalls greeted that, and she grinned. "That's what I thought you were gonna say. Let's do roll first, and then we'll start handing out textbooks." She picked up a clipboard. "A lot of Scandinavian names," she mused. "Is that a Minnesota thing?"

"You think the Vikings picked their name out of a hat?" one of the guys said. Everybody laughed.

{{Separator|k}}

By the end of third period Skylar was starting to feel really frazzled. Sitting with her tail to the side was a partial solution, but it wasn't perfect. She still had to sit forward a little, without the support of the seat back, or else slouch down. And the Phys Sci teacher had gigged her for it, too, telling her to "sit up straight." At least he hadn't thrown chalk at her, like that asshole Mr. Lang in eighth grade.

Her tail wasn't hurting as much, but it was still sore, and her teeth were beginning to ache too. She had a bag of popsicle sticks in her lunchbox, but finding the privacy to gnaw was a problem she hadn't solved yet. ''It's only my first day'', she thought as she trudged out of Civics into the hall, ''and it's only half over. How am I ever going to manage four YEARS of this?''

"Hey frosh, want some cheese?"

Skylar whirled around with a squeak. Right behind her was another animal-person. He towered over her, almost as big as a grownup, with a feline face and a grin full of fang.

Frightened out of her wits, Skylar backpedaled into someone, who shoved her, and then she was running, hurtling down the hall in a blind panic.

"Hey, wait," the cat-man called after her. "I was only kidding!" But she didn't hear him.

{{Separator|k}}

She ended up in an empty girls' bathroom at the long end of the L-shaped main hallway, hiding in the last stall and shaking like a leaf. Her heart was going a mile a minute. She heard a chattering noise and realized she was bruxing.

The door creaked open, and a male voice said, "Hello?" She recognized the cat-man's scent, and froze.

"Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. C'mon out; we've got a lot to talk about." Skylar stayed silent, sitting as still as possible. "My sense of smell is just as good as yours, you know," the voice continued, sounding a little impatient now. "I know you're in there. Look, you're not in any danger. Despite appearances we're still mostly human. No predator/prey shit, I promise."

After a beat, he added, "Besides, you'd probably give me heartburn." Skylar still couldn't bring herself to move, but she smiled a little at that.

When another minute had passed without her saying anything, he sighed. "Okay, I'll leave you alone. You can find me later if you wanna talk. There's a lot more of us, you know." She heard the click of his claws on the tile floor as he walked off, and then the sound of the door swinging shut.

Skylar realized she was being silly. She hurried out the bathroom and saw him walking back up the hall. "Hey!" she called out.

He turned and smiled. "Glad you changed your mind." He came back over, offering his hand, "I'm Erik."

"Skylar."

"Nice to meet you, Skylar."

Despite the needle-sharp teeth, his smile seemed just friendly now, not predatory. He was a calico, mostly white fur with orange and black patches that clashed rather badly with his blue and silver letterman jacket.

The bell rang, then. Erik jerked his thumb toward the gym. "You got lunch this period?"

{{Separator|k}}

"'Changed', huh?" Skylar mused. "That sounds better than 'rat-person', I guess."

They were eating lunch in a corner of the empty gym, instead of the cafeteria, which gave Skylar some privacy. Erik had been filling her in on what had happened to her while she gnawed. Her and over 500,000 other people, apparently.

She fished another popsicle stick out of her lunchbox and went to work on it. The bruxing she'd done in the bathroom had taken the edge off, but it was still a relief. "We won't get in trouble for eating in here?"

"I never have," he replied. "Nobody cares as long as we don't leave a mess."

With her free hand Skylar caught hold of the end of her tail and looked at it. The redness had faded to a purple bruise, and it was still tender to the touch.

"That'll give you hairy palms, you know," a new voice said. She looked up to see another senior walking over, lunchbag in hand. Unlike Erik, he was still an ordinary human.

"Jeremy," Erik said, "palms are the one place we ''don't'' have hair. Well, palms and tail, in her case—she's a rat. Jeremy, Skylar, Skylar, Jeremy."

"Nice to meet you," Jeremy said, sitting down across from them. "A rat, huh?"

"Yeah," Skylar said shyly. She looked at Erik. "He...."

"He's Known," Erik said.

"Known for what?"

"Lots of different things," Jeremy quipped, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. Skylar giggled.

"I guess I walked into that," Erik said. "No, the Known are what we call people who know about us, but aren't Changed themselves. Bass-ackwards grammatically, I know, but it rolls off the tongue better than 'Knowing' or 'Knowers' or whatever."

"I voted for 'Know-It-Alls', myself," Jeremy put in.

"You would."

By the end of lunch hour Skylar felt a lot better. Jeremy was obviously one of the senior class clowns, and he kept her in giggles, with Erik as the occasional straight man. And just knowing there were other people out there, that she wasn't alone, made her feel so good she was almost floating.

Ratted Out

2013-02-17T23:04:14Z

MarianLH: Created page with " == Ratted Out == Marian '''Tuesday, September 5, 2006''' Skylar hesitated when she saw the two older kids already waiting at the bus stop, then took a deep breath and for..."

== Ratted Out ==

Marian

'''Tuesday, September 5, 2006'''

Skylar hesitated when she saw the two older kids already waiting at the bus stop, then took a deep breath and forced herself to keep going. ''They can't see it'', she told herself. ''Just act normal''. Sure enough, they only glanced at her—or rather, at the empty air above her head—and then ignored her.

Skylar wouldn't have believed it three weeks ago, but now starting high school wasn't the biggest thing in her life.

"Hey Skylar!"

Skylar turned to see her best friend, Brandi, hurrying up the street. She fought off an urge to run and hide, fixing a smile on her face. ''Just act normal''. Behind her, the school bus was just coming around the corner. "Good timing," she called out.

"I haven't seen you since you got sick in August," Brandi said as she caught up. "How are you? How was the rest of your summer?"

"Sucked," Skylar said. The understatement of the year. No, the century. That was when it had happened, three weeks ago—she'd been sick for days, with like the worst flu ever, and then just when she was feeling better, ''bam!'' She'd woken up to find herself halfway through being transformed into a giant rat-person.

A giant rat-person no one else could see. Her parents, her bratty little brother, hundreds of people at the mall during back-to-school shopping—they all saw the girl she used to be. That had scared her at first, made her think she was going crazy. But she didn't think a delusion would be this vivid, this lucid. She could ''feel'' her fur. And besides, there were things about rats she hadn't even known about until she became one. How could she hallucinate bruxing, for instance, or the need to gnaw, when she hadn't known rats did that?

So she didn't think she was going crazy. Most of the time. But she couldn't talk about it either, not without ''other'' people thinking she was crazy. Not even with her best friend.

Before Brandi could ask any awkward questions, Skylar turned the conversation around. "What about you?" The gambit worked; Brandi chattered on about her own summer while they boarded the bus and found seats.

Which brought her to her first rat-form challenge of the day. She'd taken to wearing skirts exclusively since her transformation, since there was no way she could hide big holes in her jeans from her mom. But that meant she had to sit on her tail all the way to school.

She'd tried on some low-rise jeans during back-to-school shopping, but they hadn't been quite low enough. For her tail, that is—they ''had'' been low enough for Mom to take one look and say, "Forget it."

Nope...no matter how she sat, her tail felt pinched. At home she could slouch forward a bit and make it work, but there wasn't enough room here.

Brandi was looking at her oddly. "You got ants in your pants?"

Skylar froze inside, and forced herself to sit still, no matter how uncomfortable it was. "I'm fine," she said. ''Gotta say something quick'', she thought, ''change the subject''. "So, um...are you gonna do band again this year?"

"No," Brandi said sarcastically, patting the black plastic case by her hip. "This is just for show."

"I didn't notice it," Skylar said lamely. She managed to keep the conversation going for the rest of the trip, but it bothered her the way Brandi looked at and spoke to her forehead. Before her transformation, they'd been about the same height, but now Brandi was nearly half a head taller. She'd gotten accustomed to her new height at home, but seeing her friend looming over her brought it back.

Then there was her enhanced sense of smell. Like her height, she'd mostly gotten used to it around the house, but now she was surrounded by new scents. Everyone on the school bus had their own unique odor, accented by different soaps, shampoos, and other additives. Several of the girls were wearing cheap perfume, one of the seniors used the same bodywash Brandi did, and a boy up near the front was a smoker. Two of the girls had their periods. Then there was the diesel fumes from the bus, the food scents of various lunches, and the cork grease from Brandi's clarinet. And the bus driver needed a shower.

Skylar was glad her mother had forced her into that back-to-school shopping trip the week before. She'd turned into a hermit after ''it'' happened, and Mom had to twist her arm to get her to go, but the experience stood her in good stead now. She'd spent the first half hour or so at the mall completely disoriented by all the scents assaulting her nose, but somewhere along the way, she'd somehow gotten used to it. Now she just registered different scents the same way she saw different colors. It was kinda cool, actually.

The bus finally pulled up at Jefferson High School, and Skylar catapulted up out of her seat before it stopped moving, earning her a glare from the unwashed driver. The base of her tail ached. ''I'm gonna walk to school from now on'', she thought. ''It isn't THAT far''.

Everyone else was getting up too; she stood in the aisle and shouldered her backpack, waiting for the crowd to start moving. Then Brandi moved out behind her, and stepped on her tail. Stars of pain shot up her spine. It hurt so much it was like fireworks exploding in her head. "Brandi!"

"What?"

"Move your foot to the left!" she hissed.

"What? Why?"

"Just do it!"

"Okay, okay, jeez." And then the pressure was mercifully gone.

As soon as her muscles unlocked, Skylar crouched down, awkwardly in the tight confines of the aisle, and picked up the end of her tail. The tip looked red and swollen, and pain radiated out from it in pulsating waves. It felt ''exactly'' like getting a finger caught in a slamming door.

The bus was finally emptying, and she started moving up the aisle toward the door, still holding her tail up.

"Hey, are you crying?" Brandi said. "What the hell?"

She wanted to snarl. ''Tears of pain, bitch'', she thought angrily, and then immediately felt contrite. It wasn't Brandi's fault she couldn't see her tail.

The bus driver hadn't forgotten her, either. "Stay seated until the bus comes to a complete stop," he snapped when she reached the door. Feeling dogpiled from all sides, Skylar just nodded submissively and hurried out, blinking tears from her eyes.

"Asshole," Brandi said. "Are you okay, Sky? What's wrong?"

"Never mind. It's nothing." They were passing through the front doors of the school now, and Skylar just wanted to get away, before Brandi asked her something she couldn't answer. "I—I want to find my locker before first period."

"Me too," Brandi said. "Catch you later." And then, thank god, she was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

Skylar moved carefully down the packed hallway, checking locker numbers and doing her best to shield her tail with her body. She had to let go of it for a minute when she found her assigned locker, to fish out the slip of paper with the combination from her backpack, but she kept a close watch around her and managed to keep it out from underfoot.

She made it to her first class just before the bell rang, sliding into the first empty desk she found. The backs of the seats all had a hole at a convenient height for her tail, but she was still worried about getting stepped on. Besides, it would tent out the back of her skirt, and the last thing she needed was ''more'' attention.

The knee-length skirt was loose enough that she was able to slip her tail around her hip, laying it along the outside of her thigh. ''Wish I'd thought of this on the bus. Maybe I won't have to walk home after all''.

The tip still throbbed, and she began to get seriously worried. ''What if it's broken?'' she thought. ''How's a doctor going to treat it if he can't even see it? Crap, what if I get hit by a car or something?''

{{Separator|k}}

In another classroom, senior Erik Metzger sat at his desk, doodling in his notebook. He smelled his friend Jeremy coming up behind him, but didn't look up...until the ziploc bag of oregano landed on his desk. "Ha ha," he said. "You could at least use real catnip."

"Don't want to be an enabler," Jeremy said, deadpan. "Besides, your mom loves Italian cooking so much, she could actually use this." He sat down in the next desk over, slinging his backpack over the seat back. "Listen, I think there's one of your people among the new frosh."

"Seeing through the Veil now, are we?"

"If only. No, she was holding something invisible in her hands. Saw her getting off the bus, and she looked like you do when you're supposedly playing with your tail. She also looked pretty freaked out, but that's probably just cus she's a freshman." He gestured toward the bag of oregano. "Better hide that. Teacher'll think it's pot."

"From what I hear, the new teacher's more likely to ask me to share than confiscate it. Point me at this freshmen when you get a chance, will you?"

The teacher in question walked in at that point, and despite his breezy assurance, Erik did scoop up the bag of oregano and stuff it in his backpack.

"Hello, class. My name is Ms. Rodriguez. I just transferred here from Boston, so you're all going to go easy on me, right?" Various hoots and catcalls greeted that, and she grinned. "That's what I thought you were gonna say. Let's do roll first, and then we'll start handing out textbooks." She picked up a clipboard. "A lot of Scandinavian names," she mused. "Is that a Minnesota thing?"

"You think the Vikings picked their name out of a hat?" one of the guys said. Everybody laughed.

{{Separator|k}}

By the end of third period Skylar was starting to feel really frazzled. Sitting with her tail to the side was a partial solution, but it wasn't perfect. She still had to sit forward a little, without the support of the seat back, or else slouch down. And the Phys Sci teacher had gigged her for it, too, telling her to "sit up straight." At least he hadn't thrown chalk at her, like that asshole Mr. Lang in eighth grade.

Her tail wasn't hurting as much, but it was still sore, and her teeth were beginning to ache too. She had a bag of popsicle sticks in her lunchbox, but finding the privacy to gnaw was a problem she hadn't solved yet. ''It's only my first day'', she thought as she trudged out of Civics into the hall, ''and it's only half over. How am I ever going to manage four YEARS of this?''

"Hey frosh, want some cheese?"

Skylar whirled around with a squeak. Right behind her was another animal-person. He towered over her, almost as big as a grownup, with a feline face and a grin full of fang.

Frightened out of her wits, Skylar backpedaled into someone, who shoved her, and then she was running, hurtling down the hall in a blind panic.

"Hey, wait," the cat-man called after her. "I was only kidding!" But she didn't hear him.

{{Separator|k}}

She ended up in an empty girls' bathroom at the long end of the L-shaped main hallway, hiding in the last stall and shaking like a leaf. Her heart was going a mile a minute. She heard a chattering noise and realized she was bruxing.

The door creaked open, and a male voice said, "Hello?" She recognized the cat-man's scent, and froze.

"Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. C'mon out; we've got a lot to talk about." Skylar stayed silent, sitting as still as possible. "My sense of smell is just as good as yours, you know," the voice continued, sounding a little impatient now. "I know you're in there. Look, you're not in any danger. Despite appearances we're still mostly human. No predator/prey shit, I promise."

After a beat, he added, "Besides, you'd probably give me heartburn." Skylar still couldn't bring herself to move, but she smiled a little at that.

When another minute had passed without her saying anything, he sighed. "Okay, I'll leave you alone. You can find me later if you wanna talk. There's a lot more of us, you know." She heard the click of his claws on the tile floor as he walked off, and then the sound of the door swinging shut.

Skylar realized she was being silly. She hurried out the bathroom and saw him walking back up the hall. "Hey!" she called out.

He turned and smiled. "Glad you changed your mind." He came back over, offering his hand, "I'm Erik."

"Skylar."

"Nice to meet you, Skylar."

Despite the needle-sharp teeth, his smile seemed just friendly now, not predatory. He was a calico, mostly white fur with orange and black patches that clashed rather badly with his blue and silver letterman jacket.

The bell rang, then. Erik jerked his thumb toward the gym. "You got lunch this period?"

{{Separator|k}}

"'Changed', huh?" Skylar mused. "That sounds better than 'rat-person', I guess."

They were eating lunch in a corner of the empty gym, instead of the cafeteria, which gave Skylar some privacy. Erik had been filling her in on what had happened to her while she gnawed. Her and over 500,000 other people, apparently.

She fished another popsicle stick out of her lunchbox and went to work on it. The bruxing she'd done in the bathroom had taken the edge off, but it was still a relief. "We won't get in trouble for eating in here?"

"I never have," he replied. "Nobody cares as long as we don't leave a mess."

With her free hand Skylar caught hold of the end of her tail and looked at it. The redness had faded to a purple bruise, and it was still tender to the touch.

"That'll give you hairy palms, you know," a new voice said. She looked up to see another senior walking over, lunchbag in hand. Unlike Erik, he was still an ordinary human.

"Jeremy," Erik said, "palms are the one place we ''don't'' have hair. Well, palms and tail, in her case—she's a rat. Jeremy, Skylar, Skylar, Jeremy."

"Nice to meet you," Jeremy said, sitting down across from them. "A rat, huh?"

"Yeah," Skylar said shyly. She looked at Erik. "He...."

"He's Known," Erik said.

"Known for what?"

"Lots of different things," Jeremy quipped, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. Skylar giggled.

"I guess I walked into that," Erik said. "No, the Known are what we call people who know about us, but aren't Changed themselves. Bass-ackwards grammatically, I know, but it rolls off the tongue better than 'Knowing' or 'Knowers' or whatever."

"I voted for 'Know-It-Alls', myself," Jeremy put in.

"You would."

By the end of lunch hour Skylar felt a lot better. Jeremy was obviously one of the senior class clowns, and he kept her in giggles, with Erik as the occasional straight man. And just knowing there were other people out there, that she wasn't alone, made her feel so good she was almost floating.

User:MarianLH/Where Tree Fails Chapter One

2013-02-17T22:53:33Z

MarianLH: Created page with "CHAPTER ONE: "A Wizard Did It" In the years to come, Melanie would look back on the girls fondly, if only out of gratitude, but on that blustery February day they were drivin..."

CHAPTER ONE: "A Wizard Did It"

In the years to come, Melanie would look back on the girls fondly, if only out of gratitude, but on that blustery February day they were driving her up the wall. The two teenagers were chatting away, oblivious to how inconsiderate they were being to the rest of the library patrons. Mel had tried shushing them once—she wasn't actually a librarian, just a minimum-wage book-shelver—but they didn't know that.

Not that it made a difference. They were back up to full volume in less than ten minutes.

Finally they left, giving her a baleful look and muttering just loud enough about "the fat old bitch". It stung, not the least because it wasn't entirely untrue. She was overweight, and if 39 wasn't yet "old", it certainly wasn't young either. ''I was their age once'', she thought bitterly. ''I used to have a future to look forward to''.

More to distract herself from brooding than because there was any real rush, she stood up and went to reshelve the books they'd left lying on the table. One of them was a romance novel, with a hunky guy dressed up as a too-clean pirate, distressed damsel lying passively in his arms. ''Oh, to have some romantic adventure'', she thought. The pirate was gazing out of the cover with his cheeky grin, seeming to look right at her, and she imagined him pulling her into the story, his hand coming up out of the book like in that 80s music video. ''I wouldn't be some silly delicate maiden, though''. She looked scornfully at the woman on the cover—probably what passed for the book's heroine. ''I'd be right there beside him in the big battle, cutlass flashing, like Geena Davis in that pirate movie. Like Xena. Or Tauriel''. She'd just heard about Evangeline Lilly's upcoming appearance the second Hobbit movie, and couldn't wait to see it. She spent a few happy minutes imagining herself as some kind of badassed warrior-elf like Lilly's character.

''Okay, that's enough self-indulgence for one day''. She gathered up the books on a cart and started putting them away.

When she got to the end of the cart there was a book she didn't recognize, a large hardcover with plain brown binding. It looked old. She picked it up, and there was a flash of light, then nothing.

{{Separator|k}}

When Melanie came to, the first thing she felt was cold. She was lying on something smooth and hard and chilly, which proved to be a marble table top of some kind when she opened her eyes. It was covered with dust, except where her movements had brushed it away.

She sat up with a moan, and the next thing she noticed was that she was completely nude. For a moment she was so shocked her brain simply locked up, refusing to process what was happening. Her first thought, when she could think again, was that she'd been abducted by some horrible creepy stalker. ''The cops'll find my body buried in his backyard in an oil drum, like that guy in Kansas''. But how could he have gotten her body out of the library without anyone seeing? There was no way anyone have possibly—then, in her mind's eye, she again saw the strange brown book, her hand picking it up, and the flash of light....

''The book. Holy shit. It had to be''. Part of her brain was still trying to argue, to insist there had to be a rational explanation, but it was arguing with the part of her that was freezing-ass cold, naked, in a dusty dark room. Hard to argue with reality. Especially when reality meant "horrible creepy stalker." Please let it have been the book....

She pushed herself off the table and stood up, looking around. She felt lightheaded and off-balance, and her first few steps were tentative, with one hand on the table for support.

The room was dim, with no obvious source of light, but she could see about as well as on a moonlit night. There was dust everywhere, like on the table, and the air smelled musty. It was about as big as the library's front lobby, and there were several other tables scattered about, seemingly at random. Unlike the first one, they were made of wood. One of them had been smashed to pieces, and she stepped carefully around it. The last thing she needed was a splinter in her foot.

Going around the table brought her face to face with a gruesome skeleton hanging in a corner of the room. She shrieked, jumping back and bumping into a table, which gave way beneath her as one of the legs snapped. The loud crash echoed through the empty room.

For a moment she stood still, heart pounding, until the adrenaline wore off. Then, feeling a little silly at her overreaction, she stepped back up and took a closer look. The skeleton looked real, yellowed and old, with a long crack in the skull. Whoever it had belonged to must have been a really big guy in life.
Next to it, against the wall, was a tall wooden thing that looked like a rack of some kind. It was empty, and discolored by a long vertical stain, and she went cold all over as she realized it was dried blood. Then she found the rotted remains of leather straps, just in the right places to be wrist and ankle restraints....

''Shit shit shit, this is not good'', she thought. ''Just because some stupid magic book transported you to Narnia or Deverry or wherever, it doesn't mean you can't still be axe-murdered by a crazy person''. She whirled around, half-expecting to find a guy in a hockey mask sneaking up behind her right that moment. But there was no one. The room was just as empty and silent as before.

She was genre-savvy enough to turn around again and make sure the skeleton hadn't started coming to life behind her as soon as her back was turned. But no, it still just hung there, like some grisly taxidermy experiment.

Something was still off, a feeling that something wasn't quite right, but she couldn't put her finger on what. Still creeped out, she resumed exploring the room, but with purpose now, rather than curiosity. She wanted to find some clothes, and maybe something she could use as a weapon.

The broken table leg did for the latter. It was thick enough to make a sturdy club. She swung it a few times, thinking ''Just try it, Leatherface. I'm on to you''. But although she went over the whole room, there was nothing that would pass for clothing. Not even drapes or a towel.

There was only one door, and it opened onto another identical dusty room full of tables. It didn't have any other doors either; there seemed to be no way out. It did have shelves full of glass jars and clay pots full of various unknown substances, but she left them alone after finding a whole black cat in one of them, preserved in some kind of clear liquid.

She found some footprints in the dust—large ones—which gave her a bit of a fright at first. But upon consideration they didn't look recent. They were just somewhat less dusty than the rest of the floor.

It was only after she'd given up the search, and was sitting on another table looking forlornly down at herself, that she realized what had been feeling off this whole time. Her body had been...altered.

The absence of flab about her middle was the first thing she noticed. She touched her stomach, and it was firm and hard under her fingertips. ''Holy crap, the magical diet. If I could bottle this I'd make a killing in LA''. After awhile, though, she realized the changes went beyond just losing weight. Her breasts were different too—not just smaller, but differently shaped. They'd been round and a little saggy—okay, a lot saggy—and big enough that she hovered between a B and C cup, depending on the bra. Now they were tiny little things, barely an A, and instead of being round they were pointed and curved up. The kind of shape a friend of hers had once sneeringly referred to as "ski-jump tits" back in college.

Everything else was smaller too. Her arms and legs were, well, not skinny—they felt toned and muscular, just like her belly—but they looked narrower, more slender. So did her torso and hips. And her skin was smooth and unblemished, no varicose veins, no wrinkled knuckles. She felt good, too, limber and energetic. Young.

She was thrilled. Sure the place was gloomy and creepy, and there was no apparent way out, but there definitely seemed to be some perks as well. She was starting to feel good about the whole situation.

That, of course, was precisely when things went to shit.

{{Separator|k}}

The first sign of trouble was a scraping sound, stone on stone. Off to her right, a section of wall pushed inward, and then swung open like a door. Stepping through the threshold was—

''Oh fuck''

—a big, green, mean-looking creature the size of Andre the Giant. He was carrying a long pole tipped with something sharp and ugly. ''Shit, that's, like, a spear or something''. He turned his head and spotted her instantly, despite the dimness. And he had three more friends who followed him into the room.

Melanie scooted off the table, and the creature followed her with the spear-tip. She dropped her makeshift club, knowing it wasn't going to do her any good, and raised her empty hands. "Um, I surrender?"

The brute gave her a toothy grin, that turned into a leer as his eyes traveled down her body. She was reminded of her nakedness, and felt hideously vulnerable. Was she about to get gang-raped by a bunch of big green ogres? Fear clamped her tight—a loathsome, clammy fear, curling in her belly.

But no, thank god, he just gestured with the spear, while his buddies spread out around her. He was pointing toward the doorway, and she started to move toward it—slowly, in case she was misinterpreting him. He just gestured again, more impatiently, and she quickened her step.

In moments she found herself moving down a hallway, being guided by shoves and the occasional jab with a spear—the butt end, thankfully. The creatures towered over her and made her feel tiny—the top of her head barely came up to their chins. And they were ''ripped''. Her body—her new body—was toned and athletic, but these guys had biceps and pecs that rivaled Sylvester Stallone in his glory days. They had broad faces, with heavy brows, and heavy jaws with a prominent underbite, but they could have passed for humans—really big humans, anyway—if it weren't for the olive-green skin. Well, and the yellow tusks that jutted up from their lower jaw.

Just to add insult to injury, they stank.

After several twists and turns, they came to a medieval-looking wooden door, closed with a crude iron padlock. One of them produced a key and unlocked it, then pulled it open and shoved her inside. Immediately the door slammed shut again behind her, and she heard the sound of the lock.

The room inside was filled with warm yellow candlelight, the first real light she'd seen since her arrival. It lifted her spirits, even as she realized she wasn't alone.

Sitting on a decrepit bed was a large, heavyset man, looking at her in astonishment. She felt another moment of naked vulnerability, but at least he wasn't leering at her. He just looked deer-in-the-headlights stunned, and the absurdity of the situation began to overcome her embarrassment. Remembering a line from a movie, she mustered as much dignity as she could, stood up straight, haughtily crossed her arms and said "I want a meal and a bath" in her best Sean Connery.

That broke the spell, at least. The man looked away, and stood up, walking over to where a long coat hung on the wall and taking it down. Still averting his eyes, he thrust it at her, saying something in a language she didn't recognize. She took it, noticing as she did that he towered over her just as much as the green guys outside did. Big guy. His coat—no, it turned out to be a cloak, of all things—was big on her too, puddling around her feet. And it was scratchy wool and smelled a little, too, but it was better than nothing. For the first time in what seemed like hours, she felt warm.

He said something else in his own language, and she shrugged. "Sorry, buddy, I can't understand you. Hablo ingles? Sprecken-zy...uh...dutch? Dootch?" He just shook his head, and spoke again. It sounded like he was trying a couple different languages too, but not only did she not understand them, she didn't recognize them at all.

He was very dark-skinned, with curly black hair, but he didn't look African-American. Or African, for that matter, not that she was an expert. He didn't look Indian either. Pakistani, maybe? Iranian? She was pretty sure she'd recognize Arabic if she heard it, but didn't Iranians have another language?

Then again, with everything else that had happened, she was probably on another planet. Maybe another universe. ''Transported here by a magical whatsis'', she thought, ''and of course I woke up starkers''. It was almost funny. ''Just call me Joan Carter. The question is, of where?''

They did have one breakthrough, eventually. Remembering how it was sometimes done in movies, she pointed to herself and said, "Melanie," then pointed at him. After a couple times back and forth he figured it out, or seemed to, and introduced himself as "Panharam."

{{Separator|k}}

Some time later, the door opened again, and one of the green brutes pushed in a bowl and pitcher, then shut and locked the door again. The bowl had some kind of nasty greasy stew in it, and the stuff in the pitcher tasted like flat beer. They ate and drank anyway, using their hands since there were no utensils, and wiped off afterward with a moth-eaten blanket. Later still, nature took its course, and the man introduced her to the back corner of the room he'd been using as a privy. From the evidence, he'd been imprisoned for at least a few days already. She gagged at the smell. There wasn't any privacy, but he pointedly turned his back while she did her business, and she did the same for him when his turn came.

{{Separator|k}}

That set the pattern for the next several days—at least she assumed they were days. It was hard to tell, but it certainly didn't feel like they were fed very often. She was hungry all the time, and Panharam seemed to be suffering even more. As big as he was, he was probably used to eating well.

On the plus side, infrequent meals meant infrequent bathroom breaks.

There wasn't any toilet paper, of course. Panharam had already torn the bed linens into strips, and they did well enough while they lasted, but it didn't take them long to run out. Remembering something she'd once read about Middle Eastern customs, Melanie started eating only with her right hand and cleaning only with her left. She tried not to think about cholera.

{{Separator|k}}

They did their best to breach the language barrier, but without a language in common they were reduced to pointing at things and learning each others' words for them. And there were only so many things to point at.

''Some adventure'', she thought glumly, sometime after the fourth meal. She was pretty woozy from hunger at that point. ''Sure, those guys didn't impale me on a spear, or...or worse, but I'm not exactly saving the day''. She glanced sideways at Panharam, who was sleeping. ''And he's not exactly Fabio''. That thought made her feel guilty. Sure he was plump, heavyset and old enough to be her father—about as far as you could possibly get from a romance novel hero—but he'd been nothing but kind. Despite the fact that they were both starving, he never tried to hog what little food they were given. He respected her privacy when she had to relieve herself, and never tried to take advantage of her—or even peek—even though he was so big he could easily overpower her. She was still wrapped in his cloak, for want of any other clothes.

{{Separator|k}}

She drifted in and out a lot, falling into a trance she assumed was some kind of hunger-induced fugue state. Then, sometime after meal eleven, Panharam shook her awake. He nodded at the door, and she heard shouting and banging beyond it. There was a heavy thump that shook the door, something that sounded like gasping, and then silence.

After a lingering moment, she heard the key in the lock, and the door opened. The first thing that came through was one of the green brutes, making her start. But he was obviously dead, liberally splashed with blood, and the way he fell in implied he'd been laying against the door. Hands grasped the body and pulled it back out of view, then a man stepped in.

He was deeply tanned and rugged-looking, with a thick bushy red beard, and like everyone else so far he towered over her. He was wearing some sort of medieval-looking metal ring armor, which after everything else she'd seen shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it was still kind of mind-bending to see it for real. And to cap it off, he had a bloody sword in his hand.

He spoke to her cellmate first. "Panharam bala Tenh?"

Panharam nodded, looking ecstatic. "''Ardat ji''," he replied. "''Ardat ji, Ardat ji!''" He'd said the same phrase to her a few times during their captivity; from the way he used it she'd guessed it meant "thank you." The newcomer helped him to his feet, then turned to her. She struggled to stand as well, before they could help, although the effort left her lightheaded and trembling. He asked her something, and Panharam replied for her—telling him she didn't speak the language, probably. They talked back and forth a bit, obviously about her, then the man called over his shoulder. "Naithuanna."

Another person appeared in the doorway, and Melanie's eyes bugged out in disbelief. It was an elf, a female elf. She couldn't be anything else—it wasn't just the pointed ears, her whole face was inhumanly exotic, and there was just something, well, alien about her.

Melanie felt well and truly beyond the looking glass now. Her head swam. ''Is this Middle Earth after all? Am I in Moria or Dol Goldur or someplace?''

''No, Tolkien's elves were as tall or taller than humans. Galadriel was, like, over six feet or something. This elf is my height. She barely comes up to the bearded guy's shoulder.

She's...she...my height....''

Slowly, as if in a dream, Melanie raised her hands to her own ears, feeling along the upper edges...and found pointed tips.

"Of course," she said, "I should've known." And then she fainted.

{{Separator|k}}

When she came to, she was lying on the bed, with her cloak—well, Panharam's cloak—draped over her like a blanket. He and the bearded man were gone, and the door was closed, but the elf sat on the floor, eating something. When she saw Melanie was awake, she stood up, picking up a bundle of what looked like clothing and bringing it over. She set it on the bed, and then added what looked like a square of shortbread she took out of a cloth wrapping. "''Tenya ent clatha''," she said, "''nes nehel''."

"Uh, thanks," Melanie replied, sitting up. She held the cloak to her chest, and reached for the food. It proved to be some kind of hard, flavorless biscuit. It certainly wasn't ''lembas''. She didn't care; after who knew how many days of near-starvation, she'd eat anything. It was gone in three bites.

"Thank you," she said again. "Um, ''hannon le''." It was one of the few elven phrases she remembered from the Tolkien movies, but this elf showed no sign of recognizing it.

"Naithuanna ''ynili''," she said, "''ent'' 'Meloni' ''ynehel, cyëf?''"

Well, that was easy enough to puzzle out. She must have gotten the name from Panharam. "Close, Melanie." She pointed to herself and repeated, "Melanie."

"Melehni?"

"Close enough," Mel replied. She pointed to the elf. "And you're...Nigh..thwanna?"

"Naithuanna," the elf corrected. "''Esti nehel doës hinual?''"

Melanie sighed. "I'm guessing that's 'Don't you speak elvish, you dork?' I'm sorry, but I don't." She gestured to the clothes. "Do you mind if I get dressed?" The elf looked at her uncomprehendingly. ''I really need to stop thinking of her as 'the elf''', Melanie mused. ''I'M an elf. Holy fuckballs, I'm an elf!''

It took some emphatic gesturing, but Mel was finally able to get across that she wanted Naithuanna to turn around. She looked puzzled, but finally turned her back.

The clothes turned out to be a pair of pants that laced up the outside of each leg, and a long shirt with sleeves that were closely fitted to mid-forearm and then belled out over the hands. The material felt like silk. ''Probably her spare clothes'', Melanie thought. Naithuanna was wearing some elaborate leather costume studded with metal bits—presumably some kind of armor—but from what Mel could see of it, the clothing underneath was similar.

It felt almost sinfully luxurious, to be wearing clothes again. And it was nice to feel warm again. On the down side, she felt the cold stone floor more keenly now under her bare feet, despite having endured it for almost two weeks. Too bad Naithuanna didn't have a spare set of boots.

Seeing Mel was ready, Naithuanna opened the door and led her out. There was a small crowd of people in the hallway outside, Panharam and the bearded man among them. The others included—didn't it just figure?—a tall man with a wizard's staff, and a hobbit. The wizard didn't have a pointy hat or a beard, at least. He looked like a guy in his twenties. And the hobbit was a girl-hobbit. That was different.

But far more salient, at the moment, was the little campfire the hobbit was tending, with a bubbling stewpot perched over it. Seeing the way Mel's eyes lit up at the sight of it, the hobbit laughed and dished up a bowl. She said something incomprehensible but cheery-sounding as she handed it over, adding a spoon and a hunk of brown bread.

Everyone else was already eating, so Mel didn't stand on ceremony. She sat down next to the hobbit and dug in, doing her best to eat like a civilized person and not scarf it down like a starving animal. She almost succeeded. When Panharam, who had a head start on her, showed no compunctions about asking for a refill, she followed his example.

He'd deteriorated a lot, she realized, even in the two weeks or so she'd known him. He'd been a fat man, and he still was, somewhat, but not nearly as much. His skin hung loosely on him, and his face was gaunt. There was a chalky undertone to his dark skin. She wondered if she looked similarly starved.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was having a confab with the red-bearded man, the alleged wizard, and another armored man who kept casting suspicious glances her way. He was bearded too, and she mentally dubbed them "Redbeard" and "Brownbeard" to keep them straight in her head. They were obviously talking about her. As she watched, Naithuanna asked the wizard something and got a headshake in response.

When everyone was done eating, Brownbeard got up and made some kind of announcement, gesturing at her, then walked purposefully over to her, fiddling with something around his neck. Mel began to feel nervous, but everybody else seemed calm, and the hobbit-girl said something reassuring to her.

The "something" around Brownbeard's neck turned out to be a gold pendant in the shape of a stylized sun, with squiggly rays all around it. He thrust it at her like it was a cross and she was Dracula, intoning something. Mel couldn't help but wonder if he was saying, "Back! Back, creature of the night!" She tensed up, wondering if he was about to stake her—or conjure a lightning bolt out of the sky to smite her, for all she knew—but nothing happened. After a moment everyone seemed to relax minutely, including the priest, if that's what he was. His expression softened, and he gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and turned away. Everyone else started packing up.

"What the hell was that all about?" she asked plaintively, but no one answered.

Naithuanna picked up a long bundle that Mel realized was a quiver, containing an intricately-carved bow and several arrows. To her surprise, the other elf offered it to her, saying something in elvish.

"I don't know how to use that," she protested, holding up her hands and shaking her head. Naithuanna's eyebrows rose in astonishment, and Mel could practically read her mind—''What kind of elf doesn't know how to use a bow?'' Everybody else looked surprised too.

Naithuanna then offered Mel her sword instead—she had a long, slender one buckled to her waist—but Mel shook her head again. The other elf shrugged, as if to say "suit yourself", and slung the quiver over her shoulder. This was followed by a leather pack, and then she picked up an odd-looking contraption that could have passed for modern art at the Met. Only once she'd buckled it to her left forearm did Mel realize it was a small shield of some kind. One that strapped to the arm and left her hand free for the bow. Redbeard and Brownbeard had shields too, but theirs were more historical-looking round ones that didn't leave their hands free. Brownbeard's shield had a sun painted on it that matched his pendant.

Redbeard and Hobbit-girl used the campfire to light torches, then the fire was put out. Mel realized she was still carrying Panharam's cloak, and went over to offer it to him. He demurred, though, gesturing that she should keep it, so she wrapped it around herself again, rolling it up at her shoulders to keep it from tripping her. Away from the fire she was still a little cold, even in Naithuanna's spare clothing. ''One of the perils of being thin'', she mused. ''I guess it's a fair trade''.

They set off down the corridor, with Redbeard in the lead. It was the same one the green guys had brought her through—she remembered the way it zig-zagged. After maybe half an hour, they came to an intersection she recognized, and around the corner the hallway straightened out.

It was then that Mel noticed she didn't see Naithuanna anywhere. Redbeard was in the front, with the wizard behind him, then Panharam, then herself and the hobbit girl, and Brownbeard was bringing up the rear. Naithuanna was nowhere in sight.

Had she left? Was she so disgusted by an elf who couldn't use a bow—or even talk—that she'd taken off on her own? A niggling little voice of doubt in her mind insisted it was so. Yeah, zapped into a fantasy universe and given a full-body Mary Sue makeover, and you're still a worthless loser.

Hobbit-girl noticed her looking around, and guessed the reason. "''Kandad beh'' Naithuanna?" She pointed ahead and said something more, and Melanie recognized the word haskat—corridor—from Panharam's vocabulary lessons.

"Scouting ahead?" Mel guessed, making a show of peering about with her hand shading her eyes. The hobbit grinned and nodded. Then she pointed to herself and said, "Leske." In case there was any doubt about her meaning she then pointed at Mel and said, "Meleni," then back at herself and repeated "Leske."
"Leske, huh?" Melanie said. "Nice to meet you, Leske."

The hobbit nodded. "Leske Thindelgabben."

''Don't laugh, don't laugh, it might be a mortal insult to laugh, and her sword may only be a foot long but that's still enough to gut you like a fish''. It was hard—''Thindelgabben?''—but Melanie managed to keep a straight face.

And besides, for all that Leske was about eye level with Mel's belly button, she didn't look like someone you'd want to laugh at. Like Naithuanna, she was wearing leather armor, although hers had a different cut, more utilitarian and not so, well, elvish. The effect was pretty intimidating—less Frodo, more Emma Peel. Well, Emma Peel's mini-me, anyway.

In addition to the sword, she was armed with at least three hatchets tucked into her belt. They reminded Mel of the tomahawks Daniel Day Lewis had been throwing around in ''Last of the Mohicans''. Contrary to the Tolkien stereotype she wasn't barefoot either, and her feet didn't look especially big.

{{Separator|k}}

They walked for another couple of hours, occasionally turning corners and passing side-corridors and doors. At one point, Melanie was pretty sure she spotted the hidden stone door to the rooms she'd first arrived in.

Around the next turn after that, there were some...corpses. More of the green brutes, shoved out of the way to one side of the corridor. Mel stared at them in horrified fascination—it was one thing to read about dead bodies in a novel, or even see them on TV. Encountering them in the literal flesh made her skin crawl.

And the stench was horrible.

The bloodstains on the floor were still relatively fresh, and nobody else seemed surprised to see them, so Mel figured her new companions were responsible for their current unbreathing state. Despite trying to step carefully, she managed to put her foot down in a sticky puddle of blood, and cursed under her breath.

Naithuanna was waiting at the next intersection, with her bow drawn and an arrow ready. As the rest of the group came up she put a finger to her lips and nodded her head to the next corridor. Redbeard and Leske immediately doused their torches, plunging the hallway back into moonlit darkness. Behind Redbeard's back, the wizard opened a complicated-looking pouch on his belt and took out something that glowed faintly. While they had a quick whispered conversation, Leske and Brownbeard moved up to the intersection. Leske shrugged off her pack and plucked a tomahawk from her belt, while Brownbeard took out a nasty-looking metal club.

Melanie felt her pulse racing, and not in a good way. ''Holy shit, there's going to be a fight'', she thought. ''This is really happening''. So much for being a heroic adventurer. ''I think I'm going to hurl''.

At Redbeard's nod, Naithuanna and Leske darted out into the intersection and opened fire. Shouts and bellows of pain came around the corner. They each got a second arrow or hatchet off, then hurried back. A spear clanged off the stone wall, just missing Naithuanna.

The wizard was next, tossing whatever he'd taken out of his pouch into the intersection and shouting something arcane-sounding. The little bit of whatever-it-was exploded into a bright golden light, filling the hallway and prompting cries of pain from around the corner.

The sudden light hurt Melanie's eyes too, and she covered them with the heels of her hands, turning away. As a result, she didn't see what happened next, but she could hear the clanging and banging, the shouts, and some awful meaty thunks.

By the time her eyes stopped hurting it was mostly over. Naithuanna joined her, holding a bloody sword, and checked her eyes. She said something in an amused voice, and Melanie could guess what it was. ''Don't look directly at the light spell, dummy''.

The two Beards came back around the corner then. Both of them also had bloodstained weapons, and Brownbeard was limping a little. Naithuanna wrinkled her nose, and Mel couldn't blame her—the guys smelled like a gym locker. ''I guess swordfighting is quite a workout''.

Leske came rushing up then, sounding excited. She had a little pile of gold coins in her hands, which prompted a lot of interest and babble from everyone. Redbeard called Panharam over, and he picked one up and looked closely at the design stamped on it. Melanie saw his eyes narrow in speculation. There was some back-and-forth conversation between him and Redbeard and the wizard, and his expression grew angry.

''It must have something to do with why he was being kept prisoner here'', she thought. She wondered what the story was, but unfortunately there was no way they could tell her. She made up her mind then to start learning the local language.

Everyone went around the corner again, and when Melanie followed she saw them all wiping their weapons on the dead guys' clothes. Ew. The bodies were still more of those big ugly green guys.

Remembering their earlier vocabulary exchanges, Melanie nudged Panharam and pointed at them, saying, "Orcs?" They didn't really look like Tolkien's orcs—or Warcraft orcs for that matter, although that was closer. But she didn't know what else to call them.

As before, he responded with the word in his language: "''Genka''." Naithuanna, noticing the exchange, added what Mel assumed was the elvish word: "''Cehakar''." She was trying to carefully work one of her arrows out of an orc's ribcage, but despite her best efforts it snapped off, right behind the arrowhead, and she sighed.

{{Separator|k}}

The new corridor was very long, but at the far end she could see a tiny dot of daylight. It took the better part of an hour to reach the exit, and Melanie was tired and footsore by the end, but finally they emerged into a bright, sunny day.

They were standing on a hillside, above a grassy meadow. It was a cloudy overcast afternoon, but Melanie didn't care. The cool grass felt so nice under her bare feet. It was so lovely to be out of that dank, smelly...what the hell was that place, anyway? She turned around to look at the opening. It looked like a natural cave from this side, partially obscured by vines and other vegetation. There was no hint of the huge, obviously artificial underground complex from the outside.

"'Dungeons deep and caverns old'," she quoted, shaking her head in wonder.
They didn't stop, once they were outside. Redbeard led them on across the meadow, and Melanie bit back a complaint. Even through the clouds she could tell the afternoon was getting on. They weren't going to walk all night, were they? Despite the psychological lift she'd gotten from seeing daylight for the first time in a couple weeks, she was pretty sure she couldn't go much further. Panharam looked as bad as she felt. And Brownbeard's limp was getting worse.
Finally they stopped, where a small river meandered through the meadow, with copses of trees along its banks. Leske immediately got to work kindling a fire. Melanie sat down with a groan, and for a moment she just sat there in an exausted stupor. Until she noticed everyone else was busy working, setting up camp. Guilt warred with fatigue and eventually won, but when she tried to get up and help, Leske quite firmly gestured for her to stay put. Panharam got the same treatment, and what sounded like a stern lecture as well. The hobbit even shook a ladle at him. Apparently there were some perks to being the rescuee instead of the hero.

So she sat, for some unknown amount of time, lost in a kind of exhausted trance, while the sun went down and the daylight dimmed. Eventually Naithuanna came over to join her, carrying two bowls of food.

She wrinked her nose again as she sat down, and this time Mel couldn't blame it on the guys. ''Yeah'', she thought, ''I probably stink. Who knows how many days without toilet paper, with that nasty gunk they fed us running through my system, not to mention no bath or shower. It's a wonder they didn't just throw me in the river''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''And then she just lets me put on her clothes, without a complaint''. "Thank you," she said, trying to put as much sincerity into the words as possible, hoping it would get her meaning across.

It seemed to work, because Naithuanna smiled and nodded. "''Coësen ynehel''," she replied.

Melanie looked speculatively at the river. Maybe they could bathe after dinner? Naithuanna followed her gaze, and shook her head with another smile. "''En clatha, fuamelèd''," she said in a teasing tone. Mel guessed that meant something like, "Eat first."

Whatever Leske had put in the stew, it was savory, and she found herself mopping up the last of it with a piece of bread. As before, Panharam and she both went for seconds. She felt full and warm inside for first time in who knew how many days.

Naithuanna, meanwhile, was rummaging through her own pack, setting out various items. Among them were a cake of hard soap, an ivory comb, and an earthenware bottle. Then she pulled out what looked like a flannel blanket, and Melanie had to suppress a smile. ''There's a frood who really knows where her towel is. Hoopy''.

Leske joined them when they trooped down to the river, after speaking very firmly to the guys—probably saying something like, "Don't you dare peek."

Naithuanna found a spot with a good thick line of trees between them and the camp, set down the blanket and supplies, and then pulled her tunic over her head without a trace of self-consciousness. Her pants followed as quickly as they could be unlaced, and then she was striding out into the river.

Melanie's eyes bugged out. ''No wonder I had such a hard time getting her to turn around so I could dress. I guess elves aren't big on modesty. I suppose it fits, though—elves are usually a bunch of nature-loving free-spirited tree-hugging hippies. It stands to reason they'd be shameless nudists too''.

Leske apprently didn't share the elven disdain for modesty, though. The little hobbit had disappeared behind a bush to disrobe. Melanie was sorely tempted to emulate her, but Naithuanna was giving her a Look. ''You're one of us, girl'', it seemed to say. ''Don't puss out on me this time''.

With a sigh, she started unlacing her pants. Behind her she heard running and then a splash, as Leske dashed from the safety of her bush to the concealing water.

She finished undressing, remembering how she had stood on her dignity with Panharam, those first few moments before he'd given her his cloak. She did it again, managing to walk calmly into the water instead of dashing like Leske. Naithuanna seemed to approve.

The water was cold, but Melanie was so eager to get clean she didn't care. She took the soap and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was raw. And the earthenware bottle proved to hold some kind of shampoo. Leske declined—apparently special hair soap was a prissy elven thing—but Melanie luxuriated shamelessly in it, much to Naithuanna's amusement.

Night had completely fallen by the time she was done washing. She relaxed for a bit, floating serenely in the cool water. It was a bright, moonlit night, with the kind of ethereal, glowy light that only happened on clear nights with a full moon.

Except when she looked up, there wasn't any full moon.

She did find a moon—two moons, as it happened—but they were both slender cresents, and partially obscured by clouds. Naithuanna followed her gaze, and pointed upward. "''Tel'cenodel''," she said, "Lafael ''ent'' Celên."

But Melanie didn't care about moons at the moment. She was looking around at the brightly-lit night, and remembering. Remembering how the dungeon rooms and corridors had seemed dimly lit, even though there was no light source at all before Panharam's candle. Remembering how it had seemed like a bright sunny day when she first emerged from the dungeon, even though the sky was overcast and cloudy. Remembering how much the light spell had hurt her eyes.

''I can see in the dark'', she marveled. ''Right, because I'm an elf now, and of course elves can see in the dark''. Somehow that was the last straw, the final bit of weirdness that really brought home to her what had happened. ''I'm an elf. I'm not human anymore''. She stood up, waiting for the water to calm, and then looked at her reflection.

For the first time, she saw her new face.

Her coloration was different, and she was still gaunt from her ordeal, but otherwise she looked a lot like Naithuanna. She was paler, and her hair was silvery-blond instead of black, but she had the same kind of narrow, finely-boned face, the same high cheekbones and delicately swept ears. The same eyes, almond-shaped and slanted inward, and just a bit too large for her face. And unlike Naithuanna's green, hers were an utterly unhuman shade of violet.

She felt a wrenching, disorienting sense of loss. She had a vision of herself—her original, middle-aged, overweight, ''human'' self—reaching out to her from across a chasm, and she reached back, but the chasm grew wider, and she couldn't reach....

She realized she was crying when the tears dropped on her reflection, rippling it. Naithuanna came over and put an arm around her shoulders, saying something that sounded soothing, but her alien-ness, her inhuman features and incomprehensible language, just reinforced Melanie's sense of isolation. She pushed away, walking deeper into the river.

''I'm not me anymore'', she thought. ''And if I'm not ME, then who the hell am I?'' She suddenly felt like her own body was something ''other'', something separate, not a part of her, a prison of flesh that enveloped her. She was smothered by it. She wanted to shout and rage at the heavens—but even the sky was alien, here.

She looked up at the moons again. ''Moons'', plural. It was more than just herself that was wrong, it was the whole world.

Melanie didn't have anyone who would miss her. No husband, no boyfriend, no real friends. Her parents were gone. She wouldn't particularly miss her job. And she certainly didn't ''like'' pushing forty, or struggling with her weight. And yet she mourned the loss of her world, of everything familiar. She'd never see a movie again. Never eat a cheeseburger. No more chocolate, no TV, no ice cream. Never hear English, except when she talked to herself. Never drive a car. Never take that vacation trip to Japan. Ever.

It was too much. She felt overwhelmed, consumed. The sense of loss was too great, too all-encompassing. It rose up and swallowed the world.

{{Separator|k}}

Eventually the emotional storm passed. Melanie wasn't sure how long it lasted, but when she looked around, Naithuanna and Leske were on the riverbank, and Leske was dressed and looked dry except for her hair. Naithuanna was kneeling in the grass and drying her hair with the towel.

She felt spent. Empty. Unbidden, a line from an old story wafted into her mind: "You lost a whole world. That's a lot to grieve for." Somehow, that thought made her feel a little better—it put things in perspective, at least.

She swam to the riverbank and joined the others. Both of them gave her a concerned look, and she mustered a wan smile. When she pointed at the towel, Naithuanna didn't hesitate to hand it over. "Sorry for the waterworks," she said as she began drying off. "I'm better now."

Leske gave her a sort of one-armed snug, and then headed back to camp. Naithuanna waved goodbye to her and then sat back and started plaiting her hair into some elaborate braids. When Melanie had finished towel-drying hers, Naithuanna did the same for her. It was nice and relaxing. ''I've missed having girlfriends'', she mused.

By the time Naithuanna was done it was starting to get chilly. Mel cringed at the thought of getting back into soiled clothing after she'd gotten so nice and clean, but to her surprise their clothes were clean and dry when she picked them up. Her expression must have betrayed her, because Naithuanna smiled a smug little smile, and said, "''Cinreth nili deynal hlei''."

"I hope that means 'I used a magic laundry spell' and not 'you were out of it so long I had time to hand-wash silk and hang it up to dry'."

Naithuanna didn't understand, of course, but Melanie's wry, bantering tone seemed to reassure her. "''Fuatenyal, fonkin''," she replied in a teasing tone, and picked up her tunic.

{{Separator|k}}

She shared a tent with Leske and Naithuanna that night, but found she couldn't sleep. Naithuanna didn't seem to want to sleep either; instead, she sat cross-legged in some kind of meditative pose, and went into a sort of trance. Melanie left her to it, lying on her back and staring at the canvas roof of the tent.

''Why an elf?'' she wondered. ''Why didn't I come over as myself? Or at least still human? Or if not human, why not, say, a hobbit? Or an orc, for that matter? Would anyone who picked up that book have become an elf? Or been transported at all?''

She thought back to that moment when she'd touched the book. ''I was dreaming of an adventure. Maybe that's why—the book somehow picked up my wish, and gave me an adventure?'' She snorted in wry amusement. ''It could have given me a nicer one. Not so much with the starving''. Oh well, she HAD thought the pirate on the romance novel cover looked too clean to be real. That wasn't a problem she'd had, after her ordeal.

Still, why an elf? She thought back, trying to reconstruct what she had been thinking about, and then it came to her. ''Tauriel. I was thinking about Tauriel. Miss 'I can do everything Legolas did, only backwards and in high heels'.''

With the conundrum resolved, Melanie felt herself slipping away. Her last thought was, ''Maybe those muscles on my arms aren't just for show''.

{{Separator|k}}

She got a chance to find out the next morning. Naithuanna shook her awake shortly before dawn, and after they'd dressed, took her out to a copse of trees for archery lessons. And sure enough, she was able to draw the bow. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't as hard as it should be, either.

There was some muscle-memory working in her favor, too. Her body sort of knew what it was doing when she drew an arrow and nocked it. But she wasn't magically imbued with new skills. Her shooting was probably better than it should be for someone who'd never used a bow in her life, but she still didn't come anywhere close to matching Naithuanna's speed or accuracy.

When her arms started to get tired, they put aside the bow and Naithuanna drew her sword. This started a whole new round of lessons, with Melanie holding the sword and Naithuanna standing behind her like a golf pro, guiding her hand and arm through a series of different swings. Despite its length—the blade alone was almost three feet long—the sword flowed easily through the moves Naithuanna was putting her through. The heavy pommel at the bottom of the grip seemed to be acting as a counterweight, and whenever she hit that balance "sweet spot", the sword seemed to almost flow into place.

That didn't happen often, though.

Melanie's arms felt like lead when Naithuanna finally called a halt. She'd also begun to feel the call of nature—to put it delicately—during the exercise, and was wracking her brain trying to figure out how to tell Naithuanna without humiliating herself in the process.

Fortunately, it turned out to be unnecessary; Naithuanna had to go too. Or at least that's what Mel thought it meant when she led her into the privacy of the trees and started plucking some particularly large, broad leaves. She gave Melanie an inquisitive look, as if to say, "You need some of these too?" When Mel nodded she plucked more and shared them out.

Two weeks ago Melanie would have been disgusted to settle for using leaves as toilet paper. She'd never been an outdoorsy person, and had regarded the few camping trips she'd been on as something to be endured, not enjoyed.

But after her ordeal in the dungeon, leaves were a step up. All she felt was grateful.

{{Separator|k}}

When they got back to camp everyone else was up too. Brownbeard was kneeling, facing east toward the rising sun. He seemed to be praying to it. Redbeard was standing outside his tent, holding a leather sack that he was shaking vigorously, and from the ''shnk-shnk-shnk'' metal sound coming from it, his armor was in there. The wizard was reading a book, and Leske was cooking breakfast.
"I really should learn the rest of their names," she mused. Naithuanna looked curiously at her. She shrugged and did the pointing thing again, starting with herself, then Naithuanna, Leske, and Panharam. Then she pointed at Redbeard.
Understanding dawned in Naithuanna's eyes. "Denys," she said, also pointing at Redbeard. Brownbeard was "Galthesar," and the wizard was "Crosus."

{{Separator|k}}

After breakfast, Crosus stood up and beckoned Melanie over. Everyone dropped what they were doing and gathered around, looking interested, which made her feel nervous.

As she approached, the wizard took a pinch of something out of his magic-stuff pouch, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. Then he tried to touch her forehead. The stuff on his thumb looked sooty and black.

She shied away, looking around at the others for some clue what was happening. Naithuanna gave her an encouraging nod, so she braced herself and let the guy smear his stuff on her face. Then he raised his arms and made some complicated-looking gestures with his hands, while intoning something harsh and sibilant.
Nothing seemed to happen when he was done. "Is that supposed to be some kind of magic spell?" she asked.

To her surprise, he nodded. Melanie's eyes bugged out. "You can understand me?" Another nod. She felt like a huge burden was lifted from her shoulders. They could communicate! "God, where should I start?"

He shrugged.

Wait a minute.... "What's with the mime routine? Say something!"

The wizard shook his head, and spoke...in Panharam's language.

She felt her hopes fall. "Crap. Can you cast it again, to go the other way?"

He shook his head again.

"Oh for fuck's sake," she snapped. "A translation spell that only goes one way? What kind of balls-up stupid is that?"

He stared at her in amazement at that, then burst out laughing.

Everyone else was looking confused—apparently the spell only worked for him. But he spoke to them, obviously translating or describing what she said, because they all started grinning. Except Naithuanna, who wore a disapproving frown. ''I guess proper elven ladies don't swear''.

She sighed. "I guess I should just talk, then. Um, well, my name is Melanie—Melanie Foster—and I'm really, ''really'' not from around here. I don't know how I got here either. For that matter, I have no idea where 'here' even is. All I know is that I picked up a book that must've been magical, and bam, I was zapped here. Into that...awful place—" She jerked her thumb north, back the way they'd come. "I guess, as the old joke goes, 'a wizard did it'."

"Zelligar," Crosus said.

"Is that the name of that place?"

He shook his head, and pointed to his staff.

"Oh, lemme guess, that's the name of the wizard who ''built'' the place."

Another nod.

"Well FUCK YOU, ZELLIGAR!" That part she turned and shouted back north. Crosus snickered behind her.

Melanie turned back to face them and sighed. Should she tell them the other part? The really big part? ''Yeah, maybe it'll help them understand why I'm so weird''. She looked at Naithuanna. ''Please don't hate me for this....'' She took a deep breath and said it. "When I was transported here...I was also...changed. I wasn't an elf before. I was human."

Crosus looked shocked. She waited while he translated that for the others. Naithuanna looked...hurt. Betrayed. Shit. She plunged ahead. "There aren't any elves where I come from. Or magic. They only exist in stories. Myths and legends. I...this is all very strange to me. I don't know what to do. I don't even know who I am, anymore." She felt her throat tighten up, and squeezed her eyes shut, struggling not to cry.

Something touched her hand. She looked down, and saw that Leske had taken it into her own. She looked up at her with compassion in her eyes, and gave it a gentle squeeze. It seemed the hobbit, at least, was willing to accept her.

Naithuanna was another story.

User:MarianLH

2013-02-17T22:16:57Z

MarianLH:

==About Myself==
Marian is my real name. I am a transsexual woman, went "full-time", as we say, in 1998, although I couldn't afford the surgery until 2010. I discovered Shifti via the TV Tropes page for Jon Buck's [[Paradise (Setting)|Paradise setting]].

Growing up with gender dysphoria, I was attracted to transformation stories from a very young age. Especially TG ones. Some early favorites were Piers Anthony's ''Crewel Lye'' and John Varley's ''Steel Beach''. I discovered the furry culture in the early 90s, and spent most of that decade hanging out on FurryMUCK and SPR as a snow leopard named Shaia.

==My Stories==

Where the Tree Fails: this is a self-indulgent portal fantasy set in the world of the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game. (Species)

[[Chapter One|Chapter One: A Wizard Did It]]

[[Chapter Two|Chapter Two]]

[[Kissin' the Day]]: This was the first Paradise story I began writing, although it will probably be the last one finished, as it's the most personal. It's the only one to include a gender change. (Gender & Species)

[[Ratted Out]]: My second Paradise story. Skylar gets hit by the Change right before starting her freshman year of high school, and soon finds out who her real friends are. (Species)

[[Down the Rabbit Hole]]: My third Paradise story. This one looks at the Change from the outside, as Emily slowly discovers that the man she's dating isn't quite what he seems.... (Species)

[[Masks]]: After a magical artifact very publicly transforms him into a girl, Tyler has to adapt to the changes in her life--and so does everyone else. (Gender)

==Favorites==

Disclaimer: I have yet to read more than a fraction of the stories on Shifti, so if your story isn't here, it's not necessarily a comment on its quality.

Romancing the Changed: I like the Paradise shared universe, I like romance, and I love the movie ''Romancing the Stone'', so this story was a perfect storm of squee for me.

Most the rest of the Paradise stories could also go on this list, but that would take too long, so I'll just call out a couple more that I especially like: Jetfire's Special Care and the sadly unfinished Coming Home by Nikon. I live in Ohio too and I've driven by Coon's Candy many times. Oh, and JonBuck's Family Tree. I absolutely died laughing at the LOLcat references.

Alveric's merfolk arc in the Xanadu shared universe: Hannah's Tale, Alex and Hannah, Wynd, Skye and One White Mouse, Mermaids of Xanadu, and Girl With the Sea-Green Eyes. After elves, mers are my second-favorite species.

User:MarianLH

2013-02-17T22:15:57Z

MarianLH: Created page with "==About Myself== Marian is my real name. I am a transsexual woman, went "full-time", as we say, in 1998, although I couldn't afford the surgery until 2010. I discovered Shifti..."

==About Myself==
Marian is my real name. I am a transsexual woman, went "full-time", as we say, in 1998, although I couldn't afford the surgery until 2010. I discovered Shifti via the TV Tropes page for Jon Buck's [[Paradise (Setting)|Paradise setting]].

Growing up with gender dysphoria, I was attracted to transformation stories from a very young age. Especially TG ones. Some early favorites were Piers Anthony's ''Crewel Lye'' and John Varley's ''Steel Beach''. I discovered the furry culture in the early 90s, and spent most of that decade hanging out on FurryMUCK and SPR as a snow leopard named Shaia.

==My Stories==

Where the Tree Fails: this is a self-indulgent portal fantasy set in the world of the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game. (Species)
[[Chapter One|Chapter One: A Wizard Did It]]
[[Chapter Two|Chapter Two]]

[[Kissin' the Day]]: This was the first Paradise story I began writing, although it will probably be the last one finished, as it's the most personal. It's the only one to include a gender change. (Gender & Species)

[[Ratted Out]]: My second Paradise story. Skylar gets hit by the Change right before starting her freshman year of high school, and soon finds out who her real friends are. (Species)

[[Down the Rabbit Hole]]: My third Paradise story. This one looks at the Change from the outside, as Emily slowly discovers that the man she's dating isn't quite what he seems.... (Species)

[[Masks]]: After a magical artifact very publicly transforms him into a girl, Tyler has to adapt to the changes in her life--and so does everyone else. (Gender)

==Favorites==

Disclaimer: I have yet to read more than a fraction of the stories on Shifti, so if your story isn't here, it's not necessarily a comment on its quality.

Romancing the Changed: I like the Paradise shared universe, I like romance, and I love the movie ''Romancing the Stone'', so this story was a perfect storm of squee for me.

Most the rest of the Paradise stories could also go on this list, but that would take too long, so I'll just call out a couple more that I especially like: Jetfire's Special Care and the sadly unfinished Coming Home by Nikon. I live in Ohio too and I've driven by Coon's Candy many times. Oh, and JonBuck's Family Tree. I absolutely died laughing at the LOLcat references.

Alveric's merfolk arc in the Xanadu shared universe: Hannah's Tale, Alex and Hannah, Wynd, Skye and One White Mouse, Mermaids of Xanadu, and Girl With the Sea-Green Eyes. After elves, mers are my second-favorite species.

User talk:JonBuck/Tall Tales

2012-04-10T19:29:54Z

MarianLH:

Nice to see more work being done in this universe, it's an interesting setting. Looking forward to seeing one of those dolphins; I'm currently on a mermaid kick so I'm curious what their structure is like. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:56, 23 December 2007 (EST)

A couple things on this latest update. First, thanks for the cameo! I wonder what Frasier saw of me though. Going amongst the Changed, I would be dressing my gender. As a rat, I'm also only four and a half feet tall. Also, when it comes to this new aspect of TG, that new acquaintances see the new gender, is that something that is only now starting to happen in 07, or has that always been the case? --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 17:34, 2 February 2008 (EST)
:I'll make those changes. As for the "New Acquaintances", that ''is'' new for 07, and it's a direct result of having so many furs in a small location. But it's an attempt to make the "processing power" less of an issue for our little simulated world. It could spread to other TGed furs, I'm not sure.--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:17, 2 February 2008 (EST)

::Frankly, I think the "New Acquaintances" schtick is a mistake. The RDF makes people see furries as whatever they used to be ''before'' they Changed; if getting Changed a ''second'' time alters the 'default image' that mundanes see, how come it's ''only'' the '''gender''' that might be involved? I mean, why doesn't Chris (he/she of many forms) appear as any of a number of species/gender combinations, depending on exactly who's looking at him/her, and exactly when they first met Chris?
::As to processing power in the simulated world, I just can't see that as being a valid concern. First off: Given that we're talking about a post-Singularity cloud of computronium, the available processing power is (or might as well be...) ''infinite,'' to all intents and purposes. Second off: If processing power really is a concern, the 'New Acquaintances' schtick makes matters ''worse.'' The whole point of the RDF is that it supplies a 'fake image' for mundanes to see, right? Well, what burns more CPU cycles -- ''one'' fake image that's seen by ''all'' mundanes, or ''two'' fake images ''plus'' the necessity to keep track of which mundanes ought to see which fake image?
::Like I said, I think the 'new acquaintances' schtick is a mistake -- at absolute best, it's an answer in search of a problem, and at worst, it's an unnecessary quirk that makes the Paradise setting more complexificationated without providing any benefits on the side. But if you're going to run with it anyway, I suggest that it be the result of some kind of unforeseen interaction(s) between the 'furry virus' and the 'antivirus shield' that's providing the RDF. Maybe the 'furry virus' has actually mutated into different strains (see also: "polymorphic viruses"); maybe things are going wonky because the 'virus' acquired some code from the 'shield' -- or ''vice versa;'' maybe something else entirely. [shrug] [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] 07:40, 5 February 2008 (EST)

:::You're probably right about the conservation-of-cpu idea. I'll go ahead and use some interaction between furry virus/RDF antiviral instead. There's no reason why the furry virus has to stay the same. Since it's a sentient thing itself, it'd be looking for ways around the RDF and antivirals. Somehow it managed to change the RDF-presented gender of the furry TGers, intending to both mess their lives up and give the medical community something to puzzle over. So ROB responds with ID card changes. As the "polymorph virus" continues to wreak havoc, ROB will be forced to act more and more openly.
:::The main reason for this addition ''is'' to make things more interesting for the writers and characters.
:::Still, all this is building towards that normal people are going to figure out there's Something Wrong.--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 16:03, 5 February 2008 (EST)

:::'''Later''': Suppose the virus is screwing with the RDF by changing the human gender the TGed furs appear as. One of two things can happen here. Like PD, they could just dump their old lives entirely and start anew. This would put less strain on the RDF because it no longer has to maintain two phantom images, just one. Also, computer records can be changed. Eirik suggested that if they completely adopt their new lifestyles that even their friends would see them as newly male/female. On the other hand, victims with very established careers (like BD) would have problems.
:::As for any combinations of species/gender that would happen to folks like CM and JF, perhaps when that does happen it's a sign that the RDF is under imminent failure.--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 16:53, 5 February 2008 (EST)

:::'''Even Later''': I wanted to do something like this from the beginning. My alternative was for a just TG image flip and have the victims deal with it like in most TG fiction. This group is currently isolated, though it'll spread to all the others the next year. ROB would not go as far as to change memories (It has a moral issue against doing that). The middle ground is Family/Friends/Coworkers still see the male image and new people see the female one. I suppose that's a little over the top. But I like that last scene too much to make any changes. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 18:31, 5 February 2008 (EST)

:::'''Final Decision''': After discussing it on IRC, this is going to stay as I've written it. But it's also a temporary measure. It will spread to all the TGed furs in 2008. And in 2009, their human ghost will flip according to the new real gender of the victim. There will be well over four million furs that year. There will be other developments during that time as well that will start to compromise the integrity of the RDF (perhaps we start getting some furs in high levels of government). But that's the plan right now. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:21, 5 February 2008 (EST)

::::Quick question related to this. I'm planning on having CM transfered to another plant in the area after the Philly con. Now all of her coworkers see her as female. August 08 she changes to male Rottweiler. What gender will they see Chris as then? --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 17:58, 6 February 2008 (EST)

:::::I'm not sure, since your character's situation is unique. I think there's some flexibility. What works best for the story you're trying to tell? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:21, 6 February 2008 (EST)

::::::Well, I had the idea that CM has accepted being female, and then goes back to male, but everyone still sees her as female. Now CM gets the opposite TG effect, being male while everyone sees her as female! CM has to get used to being male again in the process of being treated female. --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 21:34, 8 February 2008 (EST)

Nice update, I like how you did the scene you said was inspired by kaceys pic.

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 01:18, 4 February 2008 (EST)

=RDF TG ghost alternative=

Okay, Cubist. How's this for an alternative?

Instead of the "new acquaintances" Field, what happens is that the human "ghost" TGs. It now reflects physical gender to ''everyone'', family, friends, regardless. This is a direct effect of the "polymorph virus", which is slightly more advanced than the Cloud we live in. So ROB can't directly counter it. Instead, it quickly edits in the female versions' lives, but without altering memories. What it ''does'' end up altering are the spouses of married folks. If they have kids, ''one'' of them has to be female. And they might even go furry in the process. And regular humans end up "forgetting" what gender that person actually was.

Call it a "reality shift", because in a way it is. And it's a very imperfect kludge because the ROB running the place isn't quite as smart as the virus. The question is if this would spread to all the other TGed, or it's just limited to the baker's dozen who were at this Con.

Is this version better or worse than what I have? Or should I just alter what I have to this version so it can be judged in story context? I need to discuss this with Matthias, also. It's a big change and he's already made some plans. But it also means that things are consistent across the board. ''Everyone'' sees BD as Brittany Derringer. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 01:29, 12 February 2008 (EST)

:Having it be something that just happened to the ones who were at the Con could be good, making it a harbinger of things to come without necessarily throwing a curve ball at the entire setting yet. Eventually there'll be enough furries that these sorts of RDF failures will become inevitable all over the place, but right now there are still few enough that it only happens when the concentration becomes extreme. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:58, 12 February 2008 (EST)

:My plans are changeable, Jon. However, I would like to discuss this with you on IRC sometime this week so I can decide whether I think this would be good story-wise or not. I also will need details clarified. For instance, when MP said his husband changed last night, what exactly happened to his husband. And what would or could happen to CM's wife? I'm sure I'll have more questions after I've had some time to ponder this. --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 05:04, 12 February 2008 (EST)

:What do I think of this new proposal? Three things:
:One: Having the 'ghosts' shift around ''at all'' is a mistake. (yes, I ''still'' think so)
:Two: If 'ghost'-shifting is a gratuitous layer of extra complexity spot-welded onto the setting, this proposal is an additional, ''thicker'' layer of gratuitous complexity spackled on top of the first layer.
:Three: It's your mistake to make, if you're bound and determined to make it (which all evidence to date suggests you are).
:Sorry to be a buzz-kill. Not being into TG myself, I don't really have a dog in this fight (if you'll pardon the expression). But, you know, since you ''asked'' me... [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] 07:49, 12 February 2008 (EST)

::Well, I do respect your opinion. I didn't expect you'd really give me a full thumbs up, but I was hoping to at least be more consistent in your eyes. Oh well. You seem to think that this different version is "thicker" than the first, so I'm going to leave the original version unchanged. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 12:02, 12 February 2008 (EST)

Temporary page deleted. Original stands. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 12:03, 12 February 2008 (EST)

== Some thoughts on the 2005-2010 period ==

I mentioned this on IRC once, but it might be good to get it down on Talk too so to speak.

IMO, from what we've been writing and discussing, I think this '05+ period is where we're starting to see a change in the focus of ROB and the underlying framework of the story.

Before then, most of the efforts of the controlling force have been in containing, isolating, and trying to stop the Change (the Corruption of our simulation) with minimal damage to the rest of the simulation.

Now though, as we approach 2010 and beyond, the number of Changed and the number of Known are ballooning, making containment and isolation more and more difficult, and the damage is more and more irreversable.

So I suspect ROB's efforts are beginning to change. He/She/It is still trying to stop it, but at the same time they are also starting to look into what they can to make the transition easier, experimenting in semi-isolated groups to see what may work and what won't (And yes, TallTalesCon would probably count as a somewhat isolated group in ROB's Point of View)

In the years to come, I suspect/anticipate we'll begin to see more and more 'experiments' happening in the world as ROB tries to figure out how best to ease the transition to the new norm. (Automatically adjusting records for TG's, letting parents see changed underage children, restoring food and fuel sources, etc....)

Just remember that ROB's main goals are to reverse the changes, and to make the transition as smooth as possible without damaging the scenario. So he seems very adverse to changing the past, unless it is absolutely necessary. ie He may update biometric records and current passports and ID cards to reflect a Change'd person's new form, but he won't change school records or birth certificates or similar 'old' records unless absolutely needed.

With regards to the TG discussion on going, I'm thinking that the 'new acquaintance' rule might be the better route. It is less disruptive overall, since 99% of the time (remember the rule on Stats Creation. :P ), any two people talking about/to a third probably won't really notice too much if one thinks the person is male, and the other thinks the person is female. (Unless they are talking about the person's appearance). TG's trying to stay 'normal' may want to try to start going by more unisex names though. ( Chris, Jo/Joe and Alex could probably pull it off. Brandon, Mindy and Derek, less well). Of course when appearance does come up and/or the two people realize they're seeing the same person differently, all bets are off.

Just my own thoughts on the matter.

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 09:05, 12 February 2008 (EST)

== Oil Discoveries and other considerations ==

I know the purpose of the big oil discoveries (since we've talked about it before), but you may want to bump the new Canadian fields to be under the existing tar sands. (ie Northern Alberta/Southern Yukon/Northwest Territories, maybe put a new field in Baffin island too). Putting the fields in "Southern Canada" (assuming you mean Southern Alberta/Saskatchewan/Manitoba) puts them right smack dab in the middle of Canada's Bread Basket, which would mean you'd be shifting one problem for another.

The other problem being the food supply. I read once (I think it was mentioned in passing in one of Stirling's "Dies the Fire" books) that Humanity is 2 square meals away from barbarianism. As long as the food is on the table, people can handle most anything. Interrupt that chain though, and chaos follows.

By bumping oil production in stable areas (North America, and I assume similar areas like the North Sea, and Australia), you can insure that the food can still get to us, but you haven't really done much to insure it continues to be produced. If you start looking at the food you eat nowadays, especially off-season food, you'll find a lot of it comes from the seas off South East Asia, or farms in South America and South Africa and similar areas.

ROB might want to start tweaking the North American and European food chain a bit; increasing soil depths and restoring worn out fields to increase their yields, as well as slowly ramping up aquatic stocks off old fishing/harvesting grounds like the Bay of Fundy, the Alaskan coasts, and especially the Grand Banks.

Also, instead of having a 1-2 punch of major field discoveries + a genegineered solution, you may want to have the genetic breakthrough be a bacteria/coral method of locking in the Carbon and similar environmental clean up methods which may also have the potential be tweekable to take CO2 and water and start building oil/petroleum products from it. As is, the 1-2 punch you described would most likely put already battered markets (Oct 2007 is the heart of the mortgage meltdown period) into freefall.

Anyways, those are just some thoughts I had on it.

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 14:56, 17 February 2008 (EST)

:Putting the new oil in southern Alberta also gives Calgary a major boost, which as an Edmontonian I am legally required to object to. :) If ROB's able to simply boost the amount of oil that there is underground, I don't think that a genetically engineered supplement is actually all that necessary. And worrying about CO2 is probably even less necessary - we're going to be going through such a societal disruption soon that minor environmental issues are unlikely to be a big problem, and ROB can probably just zap away the excess if it's concerned about such things.

:As for food, perhaps that can be eased a bit by the transformations themselves. Leave the people who become carnivore morphs capable of a human-style diet, since meat's harder to come by, but make the herbivore-morphs able to digest plant matter that they wouldn't normally have been able to. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:44, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::Good point about the environmental impact. Probably boosting existing/creating a few new reserves will be sufficient to get through the sociatal upheaval until things get back to normality and development can pick up again.

::As for the food, I've always been treating the changed as still having a mostly human diet, maybe with a wider range of what would be palatable. (eg Joey cruching the sunflower seeds, shells and all). Even the more carnivorous types would probably have a bigger range of acceptable foods than what we usually have (eg bones/bone marrow may increasingly become a part of a carnivorous Change's diet)

::The problem isn't really about the type of food though, it is the amount of food the First World consumes. As a Marketplace ep last year discovered, even the food that's labeled "Made in Canada" may not be made from food that comes from Canadian sources. Even stuff you think should be fully produced up here may not be. (eg some PC ice creams, the main ingrediants were shipped in from places like the States or South Africa or India. Highlander Frozen Fish products may be packaged in Louisburg, NS, but the fish itself was often caught off Japan or China or India and shipped to Halifax and trucked to Cape Breton for the processing, etc...)

::So if ROB is looking to maximize stability in First World nations, he/she/it would probably need to do things to make sure the First World nations that can, are able to produce as much as possible locally. ie Restoring depleted fish stocks, boosting North American, European, Australian, New Zealand, Japanese and similar country's food productions, and doing it early enough that they can start taking advantage of the new material before it becomes needed. (Restored Grand Banks are no good if all your fishermen are still working the oil fields in Alberta. :P )

::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 16:30, 17 February 2008 (EST)

:I imagine that ROB can more easily do these things where people won't directly observe them. Hence the new oil finds, and perhaps I can put the fish stock replenishing as early as the mid-90s so it doesn't look too suspicious. I'll ponder the oil discoveries, though. More overt would be old fields being "reset" to the filled state. Someone noticing oil oozing out of a well that was capped ten years ago because the field was dry.

:Soil regeneration is another "act of ROB" that would look rather overt. But as the changes accelerate, maintaining the lives within becomes more important than any "Prime Directive". I imagine our simulated world as an incubator for intelligent life rather than the frozen archive depicted in ''Darwinia''.

:--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 16:44, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::Restoring old fields that have been 'resting' and keeping fields from fully draining would likely be the easiest ways to keep them active on the sly. Geologists may notice that the fields are going longer than they should, and be puzzled by it, but it would probably cause fewer ripples than creating new fields out of nothing (as you pointed out).

::As for restoring the food supply, it depends on when ROB starts. If he does it early enough, he can do it gradually and it'd be classified as the conservation methods "finally working". If the Grand Bank Cod supplies were suddenly restored to pre-Columbus levels in a year it'd be noticeable. But a resurgeance over the 2000's likely wouldn't be flagged as suspicious.

::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:47, 17 February 2008 (EST)

:::Im not sure about putting them in southern alberta either...

:::I've seen them using what we call 'Thumpers' at least a few times just around my home town that use sound waves to map out the size and extent of oil deposits before any drilling is done. I wasn't sure on the exact tech but I know just 'exploring' for oil is a high cost and risk industry. For existing mapped oil wells to start producing more oil(the derricks or pump jacks would more than likely notice changes in the pressure of oil coming out of the wells.) especially on the levels where the oil companys would have to make any heavy readjustments to their expected revenues.

:::But thats just my problem with the idea of adding onto the volume of 'Existing' drilled wells. New wells are being mapped out in southern alberta almost constantly. Hell just last year they set up a derrick and drilled a new well right on the pasture of my dads farm that they had just explored seven years ago.

:::I wish I'd read this earlier today, I could have asked my dad while I was visiting if he's ever had a well start producing more oil than expected. He's been working rigs since he was sixteen. >.<--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 19:52, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::::Heh! I just remembered something that might work even better. Just recently the premier for alberta increased the oil royaltys that the province will be recieving from the industry. Now this wont affect big oil all that much but there has been worry about the smaller companys who are having trouble making ends meet with how expensive it already is to operate.

::::The Bakken oil fields(North Dakota and montana) have recently had new surveying done that estimates the oil reserves to be even larger than those in Alaska and the reserves also stretch up into southern saskatchewan. What some people are thinking is that the smaller companys will pack up for southern saskatchewan to hit these reserves.

::::http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/bakken-oil-production/613

::::I nominate the Montana, Dakota, Saskatchewan area as being the place for ROB to put 'new' oil. :) --[[User:Devin|Devin]] 20:17, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::::: Just one last thought, I've never seen oil drilling to cause any problems for farmers. Just the opposite in fact, to drill for oil a company needs to pay a farmer for the right to drill, ussually that pay off is in the seventy thousand dollar and up range and the actual derrick site and access road only takes up about 1/20th the land area of an average cattle pasture so often you'll see cows grazing just a stones throw away from where a rig crew is getting drilling done. After the drilling is done the only thing left is the pump jack itself and these are barely noticeable on a field. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pump_jack_animation.gif --[[User:Devin|Devin]] 20:34, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::::::I doubt that the Bakken oil deposits are anywhere near as large as those sites claim, else we would've heard about them long ago. But in the worldsim they ''would'' fit the bill. At any rate, I'll keep this in mind and I may edit a few things. There's an element of redundancy between the two Big Discoveries, but call it ROB covering its figurative tail. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 02:37, 18 February 2008 (EST)

== Editing comments ==

Just some comments on it as I reread it again

*For some reason this section keeps jumping out at me as awkward. I think I'm having a hard time visualizing the actions:

:''BD reflexively folded her arms across her breasts. Unlike Jerome and Tara, her sex had changed as well. But due to the Reality Distortion Field the woman still saw a short, goateed man dressed in the same outfit BD was wearing. The woman shared her Canadian accent. "Edmonton," BD said.''

:''The lynx swallowed awkwardly. Thankfully, the line started moving before she needed to reply, interrupting them as the Canadian girl started rummaging in her purse for a pair of cat ears.''

*With DL's introduction, you may want to flesh out her clothing description a bit. In one part it sounds like she's in full woman's wear, in another it almost sounds like she might just have normal clothing but a bra, and the bra was causing the issues.

*The flow seems a bit off in this section:

:''"This is so surreal," Tara said, repressing a giggle at someone walking around in a rather elaborate fox suit. His so-called "furless lackey" - the person who walks with a fursuiter and fends off trouble and troublemakers - was anything but, and a vulpine herself. The red vixen had to work even harder to repress her giggles, but couldn't resist a very human smile. "What goes on in people's heads?"''

* "No Humans Allowed" feels out of place here with the flow

:"Time for the meeting," Tara said, tugging on her lover's elbow. Other furs were starting to drift in the Main Ballroom's direction for the invitation-only event, laughably called "Orientation". As if the last two months hadn't been.

:No humans allowed.

:Jerome and Tara were two of the first to arrive, with one of the cougars checking their invitations. He politely didn't smile, and gestured at a number three on his nametag. Three years since his change! There were only a tenth as many furs the day he changed compared to Jerome.

* Are the quotes needed around Red Shetland here?
:"Red Shetland" perked her ears. "Oh, really? Do you have a better explanation?"

*Somewhat rough flow here:
''People immediately started to leave the room, even as more leapt up on stage to restrain the angry desperate man--or former woman, now that Jerome saw his clothing. Because as the cussing continued, he broke down into sobs. "Oh shit... oh shit... oh shit..."''

*"So What?" is a question, not a statement ( I think)
:''The cat-man gave him a nasty look, grinning smugly like only a feline can. "'''So what.''' I was worse than he was before I ended up this way. Mind your own business, venison."''

Similarly, it should be "There are" or maybe "There're" (which isn't a real word I don't think, but I know I've used it in speech myself. :) ) not "There's"
:''"There's'' assholes everywhere

Gotta head home now, will probably post more later when I get to the rest, if you want. :)

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 16:03, 20 February 2008 (EST)

== About The Poor Schmuck In Sheboygan... ==

I'm a bit confused about Red Shetland's comments regarding the earliest Changed. I initially though Red's "I was the third" line meant she was the third Changed ever, but there would only have been three total that year, so why does she think there was a fourth? I then thought maybe she meant she was from '''Year''' 3, and the "two foxes, me, and probably some poor schmuck in Sheboygan" were the four from Year 3. But then MatthiasRat's "Model Building" implies that Red is Number Three, and now I'm confused again.

I'm a mathemathical moron, so maybe I'm missing something? [[User:MarianLH|MarianLH]] 14:32, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

:She was a Year 2 Changed, since two changed that year (making three furs total). She calls herself the third because she's also the first non-fox. Keep in mind that she's probably just trying to be witty here and probably misspoke on purpose. :) --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:14, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

::I ''did'' make a math goof. I just now realized that all this time I've been conflating the total population with the number of people who changed each year. I.e., I was counting one person in 1987, two more in 1988, four more Changed in 1989, etc. But the chart on the main page lists those numbers as being the total population for each year, not the number who changed that year. Otherwise, milestones would come a year earlier--one million in 2006 instead of 2007, and everybody furry in 2019, etc.

::For the total population numbers to be right, it would have to be one in 1987, one more in 1988 for a ''total'' of two, and two in 1989 for a total of four.

::So the first three years would be:
::*1987: Cass/Teri
::*1988: Reynaldo/Ray
::*1989: Red and the schmuck in Sheboygan

::And now Red's comment makes sense, and everything adds up. Except it contradicts what you wrote in your reply, so either you made the same mistake I did, or I'm still missing something. Gah! Math makes my head hurt! [[User:MarianLH|MarianLH]] 19:29, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

User talk:JonBuck/Family Tree

2012-04-10T16:31:22Z

MarianLH: Created page with 'This story seems to have been removed from the main Paradise setting page. Is it going to be updated or something? ~~~~'

This story seems to have been removed from the main Paradise setting page. Is it going to be updated or something?
[[User:MarianLH|MarianLH]] 16:31, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

User talk:JonBuck/Outsider

2012-04-10T12:59:06Z

MarianLH:

Yay! A new Paradise story!
[[User:MarianLH|MarianLH]] 12:59, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

User talk:JonBuck/Outsider

2012-04-08T15:05:52Z

MarianLH: Created page with 'Yay! A new Paradise story!'

Yay! A new Paradise story!

User talk:Eirik/Reverberations

2011-04-03T15:25:15Z

MarianLH:

If Dusty is a moose, and his brother is an otter, then I guess there's no mystery what their parents will be. Talk about a mixed marriage. ^_^ The only question is which one is which?

Nice story. Are you working on any more? [[User:MarianLH|MarianLH]] 15:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

User talk:Eirik/Reverberations

2011-04-03T15:22:29Z

MarianLH: Created page with 'If Dusty is a moose, and his brother is an otter, then I guess there's no mystery what their parents will be. Talk about a mixed marriage. ^_^ The only question is which one is w…'

User talk:JonBuck/Tall Tales

2011-03-11T14:32:14Z

MarianLH: /* About The Poor Schmuck In Sheboygan... */

User talk:JonBuck/Tall Tales

2011-03-11T14:22:59Z

MarianLH: A question

Nice to see more work being done in this universe, it's an interesting setting. Looking forward to seeing one of those dolphins; I'm currently on a mermaid kick so I'm curious what their structure is like. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:56, 23 December 2007 (EST)

A couple things on this latest update. First, thanks for the cameo! I wonder what Frasier saw of me though. Going amongst the Changed, I would be dressing my gender. As a rat, I'm also only four and a half feet tall. Also, when it comes to this new aspect of TG, that new acquaintances see the new gender, is that something that is only now starting to happen in 07, or has that always been the case? --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 17:34, 2 February 2008 (EST)
:I'll make those changes. As for the "New Acquaintances", that ''is'' new for 07, and it's a direct result of having so many furs in a small location. But it's an attempt to make the "processing power" less of an issue for our little simulated world. It could spread to other TGed furs, I'm not sure.--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:17, 2 February 2008 (EST)

::Frankly, I think the "New Acquaintances" schtick is a mistake. The RDF makes people see furries as whatever they used to be ''before'' they Changed; if getting Changed a ''second'' time alters the 'default image' that mundanes see, how come it's ''only'' the '''gender''' that might be involved? I mean, why doesn't Chris (he/she of many forms) appear as any of a number of species/gender combinations, depending on exactly who's looking at him/her, and exactly when they first met Chris?
::As to processing power in the simulated world, I just can't see that as being a valid concern. First off: Given that we're talking about a post-Singularity cloud of computronium, the available processing power is (or might as well be...) ''infinite,'' to all intents and purposes. Second off: If processing power really is a concern, the 'New Acquaintances' schtick makes matters ''worse.'' The whole point of the RDF is that it supplies a 'fake image' for mundanes to see, right? Well, what burns more CPU cycles -- ''one'' fake image that's seen by ''all'' mundanes, or ''two'' fake images ''plus'' the necessity to keep track of which mundanes ought to see which fake image?
::Like I said, I think the 'new acquaintances' schtick is a mistake -- at absolute best, it's an answer in search of a problem, and at worst, it's an unnecessary quirk that makes the Paradise setting more complexificationated without providing any benefits on the side. But if you're going to run with it anyway, I suggest that it be the result of some kind of unforeseen interaction(s) between the 'furry virus' and the 'antivirus shield' that's providing the RDF. Maybe the 'furry virus' has actually mutated into different strains (see also: "polymorphic viruses"); maybe things are going wonky because the 'virus' acquired some code from the 'shield' -- or ''vice versa;'' maybe something else entirely. [shrug] [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] 07:40, 5 February 2008 (EST)

:::You're probably right about the conservation-of-cpu idea. I'll go ahead and use some interaction between furry virus/RDF antiviral instead. There's no reason why the furry virus has to stay the same. Since it's a sentient thing itself, it'd be looking for ways around the RDF and antivirals. Somehow it managed to change the RDF-presented gender of the furry TGers, intending to both mess their lives up and give the medical community something to puzzle over. So ROB responds with ID card changes. As the "polymorph virus" continues to wreak havoc, ROB will be forced to act more and more openly.
:::The main reason for this addition ''is'' to make things more interesting for the writers and characters.
:::Still, all this is building towards that normal people are going to figure out there's Something Wrong.--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 16:03, 5 February 2008 (EST)

:::'''Later''': Suppose the virus is screwing with the RDF by changing the human gender the TGed furs appear as. One of two things can happen here. Like PD, they could just dump their old lives entirely and start anew. This would put less strain on the RDF because it no longer has to maintain two phantom images, just one. Also, computer records can be changed. Eirik suggested that if they completely adopt their new lifestyles that even their friends would see them as newly male/female. On the other hand, victims with very established careers (like BD) would have problems.
:::As for any combinations of species/gender that would happen to folks like CM and JF, perhaps when that does happen it's a sign that the RDF is under imminent failure.--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 16:53, 5 February 2008 (EST)

:::'''Even Later''': I wanted to do something like this from the beginning. My alternative was for a just TG image flip and have the victims deal with it like in most TG fiction. This group is currently isolated, though it'll spread to all the others the next year. ROB would not go as far as to change memories (It has a moral issue against doing that). The middle ground is Family/Friends/Coworkers still see the male image and new people see the female one. I suppose that's a little over the top. But I like that last scene too much to make any changes. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 18:31, 5 February 2008 (EST)

:::'''Final Decision''': After discussing it on IRC, this is going to stay as I've written it. But it's also a temporary measure. It will spread to all the TGed furs in 2008. And in 2009, their human ghost will flip according to the new real gender of the victim. There will be well over four million furs that year. There will be other developments during that time as well that will start to compromise the integrity of the RDF (perhaps we start getting some furs in high levels of government). But that's the plan right now. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:21, 5 February 2008 (EST)

::::Quick question related to this. I'm planning on having CM transfered to another plant in the area after the Philly con. Now all of her coworkers see her as female. August 08 she changes to male Rottweiler. What gender will they see Chris as then? --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 17:58, 6 February 2008 (EST)

:::::I'm not sure, since your character's situation is unique. I think there's some flexibility. What works best for the story you're trying to tell? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:21, 6 February 2008 (EST)

::::::Well, I had the idea that CM has accepted being female, and then goes back to male, but everyone still sees her as female. Now CM gets the opposite TG effect, being male while everyone sees her as female! CM has to get used to being male again in the process of being treated female. --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 21:34, 8 February 2008 (EST)

Nice update, I like how you did the scene you said was inspired by kaceys pic.

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 01:18, 4 February 2008 (EST)

=RDF TG ghost alternative=

Okay, Cubist. How's this for an alternative?

Instead of the "new acquaintances" Field, what happens is that the human "ghost" TGs. It now reflects physical gender to ''everyone'', family, friends, regardless. This is a direct effect of the "polymorph virus", which is slightly more advanced than the Cloud we live in. So ROB can't directly counter it. Instead, it quickly edits in the female versions' lives, but without altering memories. What it ''does'' end up altering are the spouses of married folks. If they have kids, ''one'' of them has to be female. And they might even go furry in the process. And regular humans end up "forgetting" what gender that person actually was.

Call it a "reality shift", because in a way it is. And it's a very imperfect kludge because the ROB running the place isn't quite as smart as the virus. The question is if this would spread to all the other TGed, or it's just limited to the baker's dozen who were at this Con.

Is this version better or worse than what I have? Or should I just alter what I have to this version so it can be judged in story context? I need to discuss this with Matthias, also. It's a big change and he's already made some plans. But it also means that things are consistent across the board. ''Everyone'' sees BD as Brittany Derringer. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 01:29, 12 February 2008 (EST)

:Having it be something that just happened to the ones who were at the Con could be good, making it a harbinger of things to come without necessarily throwing a curve ball at the entire setting yet. Eventually there'll be enough furries that these sorts of RDF failures will become inevitable all over the place, but right now there are still few enough that it only happens when the concentration becomes extreme. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:58, 12 February 2008 (EST)

:My plans are changeable, Jon. However, I would like to discuss this with you on IRC sometime this week so I can decide whether I think this would be good story-wise or not. I also will need details clarified. For instance, when MP said his husband changed last night, what exactly happened to his husband. And what would or could happen to CM's wife? I'm sure I'll have more questions after I've had some time to ponder this. --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 05:04, 12 February 2008 (EST)

:What do I think of this new proposal? Three things:
:One: Having the 'ghosts' shift around ''at all'' is a mistake. (yes, I ''still'' think so)
:Two: If 'ghost'-shifting is a gratuitous layer of extra complexity spot-welded onto the setting, this proposal is an additional, ''thicker'' layer of gratuitous complexity spackled on top of the first layer.
:Three: It's your mistake to make, if you're bound and determined to make it (which all evidence to date suggests you are).
:Sorry to be a buzz-kill. Not being into TG myself, I don't really have a dog in this fight (if you'll pardon the expression). But, you know, since you ''asked'' me... [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] 07:49, 12 February 2008 (EST)

::Well, I do respect your opinion. I didn't expect you'd really give me a full thumbs up, but I was hoping to at least be more consistent in your eyes. Oh well. You seem to think that this different version is "thicker" than the first, so I'm going to leave the original version unchanged. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 12:02, 12 February 2008 (EST)

Temporary page deleted. Original stands. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 12:03, 12 February 2008 (EST)

== Some thoughts on the 2005-2010 period ==

I mentioned this on IRC once, but it might be good to get it down on Talk too so to speak.

IMO, from what we've been writing and discussing, I think this '05+ period is where we're starting to see a change in the focus of ROB and the underlying framework of the story.

Before then, most of the efforts of the controlling force have been in containing, isolating, and trying to stop the Change (the Corruption of our simulation) with minimal damage to the rest of the simulation.

Now though, as we approach 2010 and beyond, the number of Changed and the number of Known are ballooning, making containment and isolation more and more difficult, and the damage is more and more irreversable.

So I suspect ROB's efforts are beginning to change. He/She/It is still trying to stop it, but at the same time they are also starting to look into what they can to make the transition easier, experimenting in semi-isolated groups to see what may work and what won't (And yes, TallTalesCon would probably count as a somewhat isolated group in ROB's Point of View)

In the years to come, I suspect/anticipate we'll begin to see more and more 'experiments' happening in the world as ROB tries to figure out how best to ease the transition to the new norm. (Automatically adjusting records for TG's, letting parents see changed underage children, restoring food and fuel sources, etc....)

Just remember that ROB's main goals are to reverse the changes, and to make the transition as smooth as possible without damaging the scenario. So he seems very adverse to changing the past, unless it is absolutely necessary. ie He may update biometric records and current passports and ID cards to reflect a Change'd person's new form, but he won't change school records or birth certificates or similar 'old' records unless absolutely needed.

With regards to the TG discussion on going, I'm thinking that the 'new acquaintance' rule might be the better route. It is less disruptive overall, since 99% of the time (remember the rule on Stats Creation. :P ), any two people talking about/to a third probably won't really notice too much if one thinks the person is male, and the other thinks the person is female. (Unless they are talking about the person's appearance). TG's trying to stay 'normal' may want to try to start going by more unisex names though. ( Chris, Jo/Joe and Alex could probably pull it off. Brandon, Mindy and Derek, less well). Of course when appearance does come up and/or the two people realize they're seeing the same person differently, all bets are off.

Just my own thoughts on the matter.

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 09:05, 12 February 2008 (EST)

== Oil Discoveries and other considerations ==

I know the purpose of the big oil discoveries (since we've talked about it before), but you may want to bump the new Canadian fields to be under the existing tar sands. (ie Northern Alberta/Southern Yukon/Northwest Territories, maybe put a new field in Baffin island too). Putting the fields in "Southern Canada" (assuming you mean Southern Alberta/Saskatchewan/Manitoba) puts them right smack dab in the middle of Canada's Bread Basket, which would mean you'd be shifting one problem for another.

The other problem being the food supply. I read once (I think it was mentioned in passing in one of Stirling's "Dies the Fire" books) that Humanity is 2 square meals away from barbarianism. As long as the food is on the table, people can handle most anything. Interrupt that chain though, and chaos follows.

By bumping oil production in stable areas (North America, and I assume similar areas like the North Sea, and Australia), you can insure that the food can still get to us, but you haven't really done much to insure it continues to be produced. If you start looking at the food you eat nowadays, especially off-season food, you'll find a lot of it comes from the seas off South East Asia, or farms in South America and South Africa and similar areas.

ROB might want to start tweaking the North American and European food chain a bit; increasing soil depths and restoring worn out fields to increase their yields, as well as slowly ramping up aquatic stocks off old fishing/harvesting grounds like the Bay of Fundy, the Alaskan coasts, and especially the Grand Banks.

Also, instead of having a 1-2 punch of major field discoveries + a genegineered solution, you may want to have the genetic breakthrough be a bacteria/coral method of locking in the Carbon and similar environmental clean up methods which may also have the potential be tweekable to take CO2 and water and start building oil/petroleum products from it. As is, the 1-2 punch you described would most likely put already battered markets (Oct 2007 is the heart of the mortgage meltdown period) into freefall.

Anyways, those are just some thoughts I had on it.

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 14:56, 17 February 2008 (EST)

:Putting the new oil in southern Alberta also gives Calgary a major boost, which as an Edmontonian I am legally required to object to. :) If ROB's able to simply boost the amount of oil that there is underground, I don't think that a genetically engineered supplement is actually all that necessary. And worrying about CO2 is probably even less necessary - we're going to be going through such a societal disruption soon that minor environmental issues are unlikely to be a big problem, and ROB can probably just zap away the excess if it's concerned about such things.

:As for food, perhaps that can be eased a bit by the transformations themselves. Leave the people who become carnivore morphs capable of a human-style diet, since meat's harder to come by, but make the herbivore-morphs able to digest plant matter that they wouldn't normally have been able to. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:44, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::Good point about the environmental impact. Probably boosting existing/creating a few new reserves will be sufficient to get through the sociatal upheaval until things get back to normality and development can pick up again.

::As for the food, I've always been treating the changed as still having a mostly human diet, maybe with a wider range of what would be palatable. (eg Joey cruching the sunflower seeds, shells and all). Even the more carnivorous types would probably have a bigger range of acceptable foods than what we usually have (eg bones/bone marrow may increasingly become a part of a carnivorous Change's diet)

::The problem isn't really about the type of food though, it is the amount of food the First World consumes. As a Marketplace ep last year discovered, even the food that's labeled "Made in Canada" may not be made from food that comes from Canadian sources. Even stuff you think should be fully produced up here may not be. (eg some PC ice creams, the main ingrediants were shipped in from places like the States or South Africa or India. Highlander Frozen Fish products may be packaged in Louisburg, NS, but the fish itself was often caught off Japan or China or India and shipped to Halifax and trucked to Cape Breton for the processing, etc...)

::So if ROB is looking to maximize stability in First World nations, he/she/it would probably need to do things to make sure the First World nations that can, are able to produce as much as possible locally. ie Restoring depleted fish stocks, boosting North American, European, Australian, New Zealand, Japanese and similar country's food productions, and doing it early enough that they can start taking advantage of the new material before it becomes needed. (Restored Grand Banks are no good if all your fishermen are still working the oil fields in Alberta. :P )

::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 16:30, 17 February 2008 (EST)

:I imagine that ROB can more easily do these things where people won't directly observe them. Hence the new oil finds, and perhaps I can put the fish stock replenishing as early as the mid-90s so it doesn't look too suspicious. I'll ponder the oil discoveries, though. More overt would be old fields being "reset" to the filled state. Someone noticing oil oozing out of a well that was capped ten years ago because the field was dry.

:Soil regeneration is another "act of ROB" that would look rather overt. But as the changes accelerate, maintaining the lives within becomes more important than any "Prime Directive". I imagine our simulated world as an incubator for intelligent life rather than the frozen archive depicted in ''Darwinia''.

:--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 16:44, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::Restoring old fields that have been 'resting' and keeping fields from fully draining would likely be the easiest ways to keep them active on the sly. Geologists may notice that the fields are going longer than they should, and be puzzled by it, but it would probably cause fewer ripples than creating new fields out of nothing (as you pointed out).

::As for restoring the food supply, it depends on when ROB starts. If he does it early enough, he can do it gradually and it'd be classified as the conservation methods "finally working". If the Grand Bank Cod supplies were suddenly restored to pre-Columbus levels in a year it'd be noticeable. But a resurgeance over the 2000's likely wouldn't be flagged as suspicious.

::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:47, 17 February 2008 (EST)

:::Im not sure about putting them in southern alberta either...

:::I've seen them using what we call 'Thumpers' at least a few times just around my home town that use sound waves to map out the size and extent of oil deposits before any drilling is done. I wasn't sure on the exact tech but I know just 'exploring' for oil is a high cost and risk industry. For existing mapped oil wells to start producing more oil(the derricks or pump jacks would more than likely notice changes in the pressure of oil coming out of the wells.) especially on the levels where the oil companys would have to make any heavy readjustments to their expected revenues.

:::But thats just my problem with the idea of adding onto the volume of 'Existing' drilled wells. New wells are being mapped out in southern alberta almost constantly. Hell just last year they set up a derrick and drilled a new well right on the pasture of my dads farm that they had just explored seven years ago.

:::I wish I'd read this earlier today, I could have asked my dad while I was visiting if he's ever had a well start producing more oil than expected. He's been working rigs since he was sixteen. >.<--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 19:52, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::::Heh! I just remembered something that might work even better. Just recently the premier for alberta increased the oil royaltys that the province will be recieving from the industry. Now this wont affect big oil all that much but there has been worry about the smaller companys who are having trouble making ends meet with how expensive it already is to operate.

::::The Bakken oil fields(North Dakota and montana) have recently had new surveying done that estimates the oil reserves to be even larger than those in Alaska and the reserves also stretch up into southern saskatchewan. What some people are thinking is that the smaller companys will pack up for southern saskatchewan to hit these reserves.

::::http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/bakken-oil-production/613

::::I nominate the Montana, Dakota, Saskatchewan area as being the place for ROB to put 'new' oil. :) --[[User:Devin|Devin]] 20:17, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::::: Just one last thought, I've never seen oil drilling to cause any problems for farmers. Just the opposite in fact, to drill for oil a company needs to pay a farmer for the right to drill, ussually that pay off is in the seventy thousand dollar and up range and the actual derrick site and access road only takes up about 1/20th the land area of an average cattle pasture so often you'll see cows grazing just a stones throw away from where a rig crew is getting drilling done. After the drilling is done the only thing left is the pump jack itself and these are barely noticeable on a field. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pump_jack_animation.gif --[[User:Devin|Devin]] 20:34, 17 February 2008 (EST)

::::::I doubt that the Bakken oil deposits are anywhere near as large as those sites claim, else we would've heard about them long ago. But in the worldsim they ''would'' fit the bill. At any rate, I'll keep this in mind and I may edit a few things. There's an element of redundancy between the two Big Discoveries, but call it ROB covering its figurative tail. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 02:37, 18 February 2008 (EST)

== Editing comments ==

Just some comments on it as I reread it again

*For some reason this section keeps jumping out at me as awkward. I think I'm having a hard time visualizing the actions:

:''BD reflexively folded her arms across her breasts. Unlike Jerome and Tara, her sex had changed as well. But due to the Reality Distortion Field the woman still saw a short, goateed man dressed in the same outfit BD was wearing. The woman shared her Canadian accent. "Edmonton," BD said.''

:''The lynx swallowed awkwardly. Thankfully, the line started moving before she needed to reply, interrupting them as the Canadian girl started rummaging in her purse for a pair of cat ears.''

*With DL's introduction, you may want to flesh out her clothing description a bit. In one part it sounds like she's in full woman's wear, in another it almost sounds like she might just have normal clothing but a bra, and the bra was causing the issues.

*The flow seems a bit off in this section:

:''"This is so surreal," Tara said, repressing a giggle at someone walking around in a rather elaborate fox suit. His so-called "furless lackey" - the person who walks with a fursuiter and fends off trouble and troublemakers - was anything but, and a vulpine herself. The red vixen had to work even harder to repress her giggles, but couldn't resist a very human smile. "What goes on in people's heads?"''

* "No Humans Allowed" feels out of place here with the flow

:"Time for the meeting," Tara said, tugging on her lover's elbow. Other furs were starting to drift in the Main Ballroom's direction for the invitation-only event, laughably called "Orientation". As if the last two months hadn't been.

:No humans allowed.

:Jerome and Tara were two of the first to arrive, with one of the cougars checking their invitations. He politely didn't smile, and gestured at a number three on his nametag. Three years since his change! There were only a tenth as many furs the day he changed compared to Jerome.

* Are the quotes needed around Red Shetland here?
:"Red Shetland" perked her ears. "Oh, really? Do you have a better explanation?"

*Somewhat rough flow here:
''People immediately started to leave the room, even as more leapt up on stage to restrain the angry desperate man--or former woman, now that Jerome saw his clothing. Because as the cussing continued, he broke down into sobs. "Oh shit... oh shit... oh shit..."''

*"So What?" is a question, not a statement ( I think)
:''The cat-man gave him a nasty look, grinning smugly like only a feline can. "'''So what.''' I was worse than he was before I ended up this way. Mind your own business, venison."''

Similarly, it should be "There are" or maybe "There're" (which isn't a real word I don't think, but I know I've used it in speech myself. :) ) not "There's"
:''"There's'' assholes everywhere

Gotta head home now, will probably post more later when I get to the rest, if you want. :)

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 16:03, 20 February 2008 (EST)

== About The Poor Schmuck In Sheboygan... ==

I'm a bit confused about Red Shetland's comments regarding the earliest Changed. I initially though Red's "I was the third" line meant she was the third Changed ever, but there would only have been three total that year, so why does she think there was a fourth? I then thought maybe she meant she was from *Year* 3, and the "two foxes, me, and probably some poor schmuck in Sheboygan" were the four from Year 3. But then MatthiasRat's "Model Building" implies that Red is Number Three, and now I'm confused again.

I'm a mathemathical moron, so maybe I'm missing something?