How much time passed before Jenny opened her eyes she didn’t know, and she wouldn’t have cared if she did, given everything else she was taking in.
She knew her house was massive. Six bedrooms (two en-suite) of which four were used. Massive gardens front and rear, and sited in one of the most affluent points in Glendale. Her parents both worked managerial positions in the banking industry, their pay checks and bonus payments ensuring they were never at want for finance. She herself had substantial Trust and College Funds which would see her through the next few years with her brother and sister to enjoy the same later on.
None of which was true anymore. She remembered all of that, only because Kyle wanted her too. To rub it in.
Slowly rising to sitting again, the first thing she noticed was how different her new accommodations were. Smaller, much smaller, and a distinct smell from the walls. Damp. Two small armchairs and a sofa, with little room for anything else. A tiny Black & White TV in the corner with a twelve-inch screen and a table.
The new memories she carried of her current life came to her now, yes, this was the home she resided in. Now her father worked Refuse Collection while her mother was a night-shift janitor in an office in the town, living almost from one wage packet to the next. As for herself, thanks to the need for income, she’d been forced to drop out of school at the first opportunity three years back when she was fifteen, to get herself a job and make enough income to help out where she could.
And her face, her body. She didn’t want to look but her need to take care of business had taken her to the only bathroom in their apartment, and the face that stared back at her once she was done she knew to be her own. So familiar, and yet so alien.
As Kyle had stated, the face that stared back at her through the dirty mirror was covered in sapphire-blue scales, broken by the yellow-gold of her irises over thankfully still-round pupils. That same blue covering her from the tip of her snout down to the clawed ends of her hands and exposed feet. Broken only by the milky-blue on her neck (though actually starting from her lower jaw inside the bone-line) that ran down and in to her collarbone, starting again below the ribs, along the abs, inner thighs and half the underside of a tail that she moved with the ease of one who’d done so all her life.
“Kyle…you…” Jenny stopped speaking when she heard her own voice. Harsh, rasping, but still quite feminine.
She wanted to believe that this was a nightmare, that she could wake from it if she just tried hard enough. But the face that stared back at her, the frayed skirt, and lack of anything else on was just too real for her. Too, comfortable(?), too much something she was used to for Jenny to dismiss.
The Curse was not only real, but Kyle had gone out of his way to make sure that not only was this her new reality, but that from now on, she was stuck in it. For Good.
And now she had to deal with it. Her mother would be home soon, and the rest of the family would be waking up before long as well, so once she was in the kitchen she had to prepare the family breakfast herself. The cooker at least worked but that was small consolation to Jenny as she mixed the porridge mixture together and brought it up to temperature, she was used to good cereals, ready-made mixes that didn’t leave her fretting about lumps and hard bits if she didn’t mix it right. They didn’t even have an electric kettle anymore! Forcing a stove-warmed model onto the other working ring if she wanted a hot drink.
Some minutes later and as the sounds of waking came to her earholes, Jenny did wonder how she was managing to do it without burning it all.
‘Maybe to do with how Kyle changed things?’ Was the only answer Jenny had that made sense.
And a musing that had to stop once she heard the apartment door open, and the slightly chipped bowls were filled. Five filled with the day’s breakfast and three mugs of cheap coffee almost ready.
Her mother (Age: 44) was the first to enter, and like her own reflection familiarity stuck Jenny even given that this was, in a manner of speaking, the first time she’d seen her like that.
Her mother’s skirt and blouse (that held breasts about a third the size of Jenny's) in an only slightly better condition than her own, and her single-tone blue scales seemed to have lost a lot of their shine, their lustre. No doubt a result of years of hard work, constant worry, and stress. A disapproving stare at Jenny’s state giving way to a soft look of caring, mixed in with concern as she took a seat at the small table.
Her brown-and-tan scaled father (Age: 43) was next to arrive, red shorts missing most of the left leg and holding his back stiffly as he settled down next to his wife.
Her brother (12) and sister (10) were only slightly better off. Blue/blue-white and solid brown scaled respectively, shorts, t-shirt, and a dress that while ragged, still worked well enough for them.
“A long day then?” Her mother asked, the raspy voice unable to completely eliminate the caring tone of her question to Jenny.
“Yeah.” She was dimly aware of arriving home late yesterday, after her siblings had already been tucked in for the night so she had to use the sofa for the bed again. “It was.” She took her own seat at the table, the five of them just about able to fit together like this.
“Just remember, I have a long shift today so I need you ready to pick the kids up after school.” Her father said to her.
“I haven’t forgotten.” Jenny replied before she knew what she’d said. Perhaps an effect of Kyle’s Curse?
“Another one?” Her mother spoke up now. “With your back?”
“Since they dropped a few of us last month, the rest have to pick up the slack. You know what they’re like.” He responded with dry humour, referring to his Bosses.
“I always do.” Her mother didn’t share the same humour as they went back to their breakfast.
[+]
The morning meal eaten and the pots cleaned and away, Jenny was almost ready to head out. Her skirt replaced by what once must have been a pair of dark purple shorts or pants, but now barely able to cover her crotch, and held up by her tail with no zip or front button. A strip of same-colour fabric pulling her hefty breasts in and holding them up.
What she was waiting for were her siblings to be ready with the few materials they had for school in their bags.
“Come along now, you can’t be late.” She quietly scolded them, her mother already in bed and her father having left a few minutes before. “Are you ready yet?”
“Yes Jenny.” They replied in unison.
Once she led them out, the door locked and the key in her handbag, Jenny could see just what they were living in. A Small-Rise Apartment Complex built to a price, the sign reading:
GLENDALE LIZARD APARTMENT COMPLEX #4
Kyle hadn’t been joking about the Segregation being in effect as she took her sister and brother in each clawed hand and began the twenty-minute walk to their school. The faint whir of engines overhead drew Jenny’s eyes up to see several hundred feet above, the unmistakable Cigar-like shape of an Airship. Pan Am?
Not that she could spend more than a few seconds dwelling on it, as she went into what was essentially a thin line towards the school, other parents with kids in tow, others with older siblings, a few by themselves.