"Why do you have on that stupid muzzle?" Ronnie asks you as you approach him. Although his hair is technically a sandy blonde, he has the bearing of a dark-haired person, and he keeps his naturally curling locks bound tightly back, with a couple of dread locks starting to form naturally like curly hair often does. He is not dressed entirely in black, instead just wearing a dichromatic t-shirt with a mottled gray front and pale red sleeves and socially acceptable brownish-tan trousers, but if someone asked you to draw him later, you would draw him clad in either black or camouflage or perhaps both, just because of how he bears himself.
"My forelegs don't work well enough to do anything complicated," you answer to his question.
"That's not the real answer," he says coolly.
As you approach the bench, your head lowers shamefully. "I don't want the guys that put it on to try doing anything worse," you admit.
"So you let them take away the one molecule of power that you have," he finishes for you, his voice dripping with contempt. "Take it off."
"I can't," you reply defiantly.
"Don't give me that tripe. Use your hind-paw."
You feel odd about the idea of putting your hind-feet near your face, since feet tend to be dirty, but then again, your forefeet are also dirty now. You are a filthy beast now, after all. A disgusting animal. With a sense of resignation, you sit down on your haunches, and you raise up your hind-foot like a dog trying to scratch himself, the tattered remnants of your humanity groaning in psychic agony as you do so. In your mind, you are still a human boy behaving like an animal, and you picture the mean faces of other children around you pointing and laughing as you go through the motions of some crazed circus-freak.
However, you find that, indeed, you can wriggle your toes with an unexpected level of dexterity. While your fore-paws seem to be designed for fighting and perhaps occasionally digging, the digits of your hind-paws seem to move independently of each other. You realize that, if you had wanted to, you could have removed the muzzle on your own anytime you had wanted to. After much awkward repositioning, you are able to close two toes around the snap that holds the muzzle in place, releasing it, and you then catch your claws around the edge of the muzzle and carefully pull the nylon sleeve off of your snout. You hold it in front of you in your dexterous hind-paw, looking at it pensively until somehow the muzzle drops on its own in front of you, leaving your splayed claws hanging loosely. "I hadn't thought of that," you say absentmindedly.
"You are lying to me," the boy growls. He slams his hands down on the table and growls. "I hate people that lie to me!"
You lower your head all the way to the ground before him, whimpering. "I am sorry!" you protest, your voice quavering. "I don't want to be an animal," you whine, "a dirty, filthy animal."
"Quisling," he says gutturally.
"What's that?" you wail.
"You," he growls. "A type of traitor that helps the enemy by defeating himself, thinking he will be spared as a consequence. Do you really think that those thugs will stop tormenting others, and do you really think they will leave you alone for very long?"
"Maybe they'll leave me alone for a little while," you say defensively.
"And maybe torment someone else in the meantime, right?" he challenges.
"Maybe," you admit.
He tilts his head to the side inquiringly. "Then how is that different from you helping to torment that other person?" he asks. He sighs and shakes his head as you are only able to hang your head in shame. "You are a good guy," he says, "but you can't let your own straightforwardness blind you to reality."
You get up onto the table, and you start to pull out your lunch, a little bit relieved to have back the full use of your jaws. "I am sorry, then," you say, but you still dare to ask him, "Can I sit with you anyway?"
He sighs and closes his eyes. "Try 'may I,' which is--" he starts, but he stops himself and waves his hand in a curt welcome. "Nevermind, yes, please, sit here, since, in spite of you seeming to be a bit pathetic, you are also the only other supernatural that is brave enough to actually keep going to a regular school. A lesser creature just hides out in some apprenticeship, so I am really substantially less embarrassed to be seen with you than with the other supernaturals out there, who can only bear being around other supernaturals." He picks up and bites loudly into an apple.
"Other supernatural?" you ask.
"I'm a practical kabbalist," he says, waving his hand. "It's the same principle as witchcraft, but some think that practical kabbalism is older, which isn't quite true. I got caught practicing black magic after a curse backfired, and I've been sentenced to spend a two hundred years as a middle-schooler, since it was my first offense." He looks across at you as he chews casually on his hunk of apple. "Have you tried learning to fly, yet?" he asks.