Julie was wondering why the satyrs had dragged her father off, and how he had gotten so large. He was never large, he'd always been a kind-of-ordinary guy, except for the soft belly and the bald spot that made him even more ordinary. The John that had been carried away was easily as six and a half feet tall, crouching, and he was big like a giant lion or tiger... and that made no sense, because the costume they'd put him in was clearly a plush-suit and completely lacked muscles and a tail that worked.
"Julie. Hold still, you're rocking the horse," Derrick said. "You'll fall off and hurt something and then I won't get to show you the crazy gym they have here."
"How can you even see?" Julie demanded. "It's so dark out here!"
"Look up," Derrick said. Julie looked up and realized that the sky was on fire with stars, so many and so much brighter than she had ever seen living at home in the suburbs of a big city and in an area where the climate was cloudy so often.
"Oooohhh" she said, grabbing tighter around Derrick's waist. "It's amazing!"
Derrick grasped her hands and forearms with his so she wouldn't fall off, and began trotting, coming very quickly to the path he remembered and following it. He wasn't really sure why he was able to see without light. Maybe it was because he was now part celestial chariot-horse.
The whirl of stars kept Julie distracted so she didn't realize that her brother was moving much faster than she could have handled. Then they were in front of a building, one that looked like it should have an all-glass front. There were mostly satyrs and a few minotaurs inside, except for identical twins about Derrick's age, who looked like they were all-star jocks. They waved to him as he brought her inside. It was warmer inside, and she felt a bit shy and tried to hide behind Derrick from the extremely attractive young men, but they said "HI JULIA" in loud tandem, and each of them stepped out on the other side of her brother and helped her down off his back.
"I'm Alex," one said, "and I'm Nic," the other said, and they grinned and said, "And we're gonna Pump! Yoo! Up!"
"That wasn't really funny when it first came out," she said, but she was still grinning at it. Or them. They weren't scary, they were cute and charming and she was about to start on a major crush. She could hear it in her voice.
"Well, would you like to stay here and watch your brother and us work out, or would you like to figure out what kind of spa vacation you would like to have?" Nic asked her. Just then a satyr-guy came running out of the dark and in through the door to stop, panting, in front of them.
"You can't," he panted, "go back," pant pant, "to your rooms yet."
"Why not? Derrick asked. "Cleaning staff?"
"Nah, you guys," pant pant, "left it clean. Huf. Hoo. Your parents are back in their room."
"Yeah, so?"
"They're together."
"Derrick," Julie said with mounting horror, "Mom went to a spa, and Dad was a lion. What if he eats her?"
"I'm sure he will," the satyr said. "Hera was about to re-consecrate their marriage."
"Wait what" Alex and Nic said at once. "Oh man, you guys don't want to go back to your rooms tonight at all."
"Why not?" Derrick demanded.
Julie started to say "yeah, why not" when it struck her. Oh. My. Gorgon.
"They're having sex," she said. "And Dad's a lion. It'll be NOISY."
"Too much information," Derrick said, his horse-ears laying flat. "I mean, it's not a bad thing, as long as they don't make any accidental kids, but nobody wants to listen to that stuff."
Julie and Derrick looked at each other grimly.
"Workout, and then another workout," they said in unison. The satyr looked slightly confused, and Alex and Nic broke out laughing.
"What's so funny? We won't get any sleep tonight," Derrick said.
"You won't need to, and we'll find a place for Julie," Alex said. "Or maybe... Julie. What would you like to do?"
"What do you mean?"
"Your spa treatment. Do you want something mundane? Do you want something exotic? Transformation, or just relaxation?"
Julie looked over at Derrick. He was flexing an arm for the satyr, who was trying to equal him, but even as a younger centaur, his Shire and his Celestial components made him much more muscled than the semi-goat.
"I want to be a centaur. Just like my brother."
"Wait, you're asking for..." Nic tried to say, but she interrupted.
"I want to be his twin brother. I always have wanted to be his twin brother."
"Oh," Alex said. He looked at Nic, who shrugged. "Who are we to complain about twins?"
"This is going to take a little work, and you're likely to end up being gay."
"That's fine with me," Julia said. "I already like boys, so I'll still like boys."
Nic went to a locker and pulled out a very fancy, slick looking smart phone. He waved to Alex and made a hand-sign. Alex nodded and gathered Julie and Derrick together, telling the satyr that he should try again tomorrow -- they had to work with both Derrick and Julie right now, and it was actual work-work. The satyr shrugged, and grinned and headed off to the hot tub party in the Arcadia building.
"Derrick. Your sister wants to be your identical twin," Nic said. "Normally we'd just do it, but it will rewind time a little. You made some choices that you might've made differently, so we're going to see what you think about it beforehand."
Derrick tilted his head and grinned at Julie. "You'll make a great twin bro, but we should check first. I don't want things to be messed up if we do this."
"OK," she said. "You're right. Don't want to do anything that would make Mom and Dad lose their fun, either."
"They're good," Nic whispered to Alex. He pushed a speed-dial sequence on the phone.
'You have reached the answering service for Moirae Limited. Please leave a message at the sound of the thread being cu' Nic hit the END button before it could finish.
"Well, sweet Ananke," Alex said with disgust. "We can't just leave you hanging, and we know there's only one way to do this thing."
"What thing?" a woman asked. She was dressed in gym clothes and was accompanied by another woman who had wings but was otherwise similarly dressed.
"Julie here wants to become her brother Derrick's identical twin," Nic said. "They told us that it requires a re-weave, and they can do it in the temporary weave here in the Spa -- the one we use for all the changes. So I called the number but..."
"They've gone home for the evening or something?" the woman said.
"I got the answering machine, so either they're swamped or there's nobody on duty."
"I told them to keep someone on line. But I see there was an accident and they had to deal with that ... so it's necessary. All right, I'll fix it for them."
"Thank you, sweet Ananke," Alex said, but the woman was gone, and the winged woman rolled her eyes and sighed.
"You guys always do this."
"What?" Nic said.
"You interrupt my workout."
"Not always!" they protested.
"Well, go get some armor, you get to take her place until she gets back," the winged woman said.
Ananke appeared again. "Nike, stop that. You can flirt with them when they're off duty."
Nike smiled, or smirked, and the sons of Hebe both swallowed hard.
"All right," Ananke said. "I set up a reweave. You'll be his identical twin brother by the end of the hour, retroactive."
"To coming here, right?" Alex said.
"What? No. I told you they were working on an accident. I set it up in the mainline weave."
Julie hiccuped. Alex and Nic looked startled, and a bit nervous. Derrick facepalmed, then said, "Thank you. She really has wanted this since we were very young."
Jules shook his head and hiccuped again. "Bro, did you eat the peppers in your salad?"
Derrick looked at his brother. He was beginning to show a distinct foggy echo behind him, and he was getting taller. Oh yeah, and he was a brother now.
"You both came to the spa," Alex realized. Nic hiccuped. Derrick hiccuped.
"Time hiccups?" Nic said.
"Yep," one of the Minotaurs said from a nearby weight machine. "Hic."
Jules stretched. He looked down. "OK, why am I wearing a lovely dress around my waist. Centaurs don't wear dresses."
He looked over at his twin. "Oh man. Bro, I can't get over this whole centaur thing, it is so awesome."
Derrick grinned back. "Yeah, imagine if you were my baby sister and didn't get to turn into a centaur with me?"
"That would suck so bad."
They both reached up to the overhead bars and began trying to reproduce the 'centaur climbing muscle-ups' that Derrick had (HIC) that they had done earlier at their larger sizes.
Back in the bedroom Julie's clothes changed, and the two rooms behind the kitchen suddenly had a completely different distribution of gear, as the two boys still slept in the same bed. Something that their parents hadn't been able to break them of doing. They just didn't sleep well apart, as if they were somehow tied together.