Lisa went up to Erin's front door and knocked. Erin's mother answered. "Oh, hello, Lisa," she said. "Can I help you?"
Lisa marshalled her thoughts. How to put this... "Um, well, Ma'am," she said, "Aaron and I were at the mall today, and we found this curio shop. Aaron...um, Aaron bought a little pendant there, and...well, it did something to him that you're really not going to believe until we show you."
Erin's mom looked at her skeptically. "Um...I see. Where is he?"
Lisa sighed. "Erin," she called, "come on out."
Erin peeked her head out the van window, then opened the door after a bit of fumbling; having her pinkie fingers replaced with wingtips a good few feet in length was going to take some getting used to. She'd shed the trenchcoat and boots on the way - there was no sense in prolonging the inevitable. Slowly, tentatively, she stepped out of the van.
Erin's mother froze when the first clawed foot hit the ground. She stared as something absolutely outside of her expectations emerged from the vehicle. The legs, the feet, they were clearly not human. Neither were the wings - or were they arms? They had hands on them, but they were pretty clearly wings otherwise. It was something out of mythology, she knew, but she couldn't remember what; everything else was human, but the creature was not her son...or was it? The hair was black, and Aaron's was dirty blond, but the face, the build, the eyes...they were as clearly female as the rest of the barely-clothed human part of the creature, but they also bore an unmistakeable resemblance to the child she'd raised for seventeen years. "Aaron?" she asked. "Aaron, is that you?" Erin had psyched herself up. She was all prepared for this moment; she knew exactly what to say, exactly how to tell her mother that she'd gone from a human male to a freakish bird-woman. She could do this; she'd gotten over the emotion rush in the car.
No she hadn't. The tears came rushing back, and she rushed towards her shocked mother and collapsed, crying, in her arms. "Aaron..." her mother said, "Aaron...it is you, isn't it? It's alright, dear. It's alright, you'll be all right. You'll be okay. We'll get you through this." She embraced the sobbing harpy girl tightly.
Lisa managed to get them both inside before anyone saw what had happened. Mother and son-turned-daughter sat together on the couch for a long time, holding each other tightly. Erin's gasping sobs became soft whimpers, then sniffles, and finally subsided, though she remained on the couch, gently quaking, for some time.
"Aaron, dear," her mother said at last, "what happened? Lisa told me about a shop and a pendant...is that what did this?" She lifted the pendant from Erin's chest, examining it. "Could this little thing really...?"
Erin nodded. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it did. I don't know how. Magic, I guess. 'Magic Shop,' that's what the sign said it was. I just didn't listen."
"You can't blame yourself for that, dear," her mother said. "Anybody else in your position would have thought the same thing. We'll help you look for a way back. And...if we can't find one...I'd be as happy to have you as my daughter as I have been to have you as my son."
Erin smiled, ever so slightly. "Thank you, Mom," she said. "But...what about Dad? What will he think?"
Her mother smiled back. "Your father loves you just as much as I do. This will take some getting used to for all of us, but he's not going to abandon you over something as small as this."
Erin very nearly laughed. "Something as small as this," indeed! But...all the same, it was so comforting to know that her parents still knew and loved her.