Lina scratched the fur on her cheek in thought. "Well, we definitely can't leave without getting something like your collar so our parents don't freak out when we get home. Maybe we should ask the old guy up front about that now."
Amy nodded, then turned to Sam. The newly-crafted snake boy was stroking the scales of his tailtip, lost in the unfamiliar sensation. Amy cleared her throat and Sam looked up. He dropped his tail, which dully slapped the floor. "Sssorry," he hissed. "What were you sssaying?"
"I hope you can get that lisp under control eventually," Lina said. "Between Amy's mewling and your hissing, I'm having trouble taking you both seriously."
"Lina...," Amy whined in a sharp tone that was deliberately laced with a scolding mrowl.
"No offense or anything!" Lina said, defensively raising her hands.
"Of coursssssssse," the snake said flatly. As he drew out his lisp for effect, his forked tongue rippled in the air. The sight caught his attention and he went cross-eyed to focus on it.
Lina clapped her hand over her mouth as she let out a few monkeylike giggles. Hearing and seeing Sam and Lina's reactions to themselves, Amy couldn't help but laugh too. Sam quickly joined in, and the three students enjoyed a chuckle that expressed their surprise, embarrassment and delight all at once.
The brief spat forgotten, they wandered through the aisles toward the exit. Lina and Amy compared notes on what it felt like to walk on bare paws, noting the difference between Amy's cushioned pads and Lina's tough foot-hand hide. Sam repeatedly asked them to slow down, as he had no paws of his own and was still learning how to slither in just the right way to glide in a straight path on the floor.
"You're getting better at it already," Amy said, turning back to watch him work his tail. Her eyes passed over an endcap display and she did a double-take. "Hey! Journals!"
She skipped over to the display, holding decorative journals of all sizes. "We should totally write down how all this feels, so we can really get our thoughts out and share the full experience with each other!" She began picking out a cover pattern that looked interesting. Without being able to discern colors, patterns had become her main style interest by default. The ones with the highest contrast of tones stood out among the rest, and she examined various plaid and paisley designs. "Mrr... Where's one with a cat motif?" she said to herself.
Lina joined her and picked up a journal themed after a composition notebook. The cover said SECRETS FOR SAFEKEEPING. "I'm not sure I'd want to share my experience with anyone," she murmured.
"We can share with each other," Amy proposed. "We could swap journals once a week so we can read about all the quirky situations we're gonna run into. Like how long it takes to dry fur in the morning," she smirked to herself.
Lina froze in the middle of leafing through the pages and then turned to Amy. "How long does it take?"
Amy shrugged. "Tomorrow I'm setting my alarm for waaaay before dawn. Oh! That re-meow-minds me, we should look for some... shampoo..."
Lina furrowed her thick monkey brow. "Yeah? Shampoo...?"
"The book!" Amy pointed a claw at the open notebook in Lina's hands.