Home was almost a disappointment. With only one or two minor exceptions, nothing was different at all.
Slithering in the front door, Dawn was greeted by her mother in the kitchen, working on dinner. She was exactly as Dawn remembered. A normal person, not part snake at all. "Welcome home, dear!" she said. "how was school? Come here and give your mother a hug!" She wrinkled her nose a little. "That shirt stinks. Where did you get it, anyway? I don't remember that as one of yours..." Mumbling something about finding it in the lost and found Dawn excused herself.
A quick check of the portraits in the living room confirmed that no one else in the family was a snake either. The family portraits were almost comical in their surreality - a normal family, dressed in semi-formal attire, posing for the camera. Except instead of Daryn the teenager, there was Dawn, wearing a nice blouse, with red and black banded snake tail from the waist down.
It seemed that her room had changed the most of anything in the house. The layout was fairly different, since she no longer had a bed. Instead there was just a massive pile of pillows and blankets in a corner. The closet was full of shirts, and Dawn took advantage of the opportunity to change out of the one from school, and into something that actually fit. She found another T-shirt, but this one seemed to have been made for girls, since it actually felt like it fit on her, rather than just draping over her like a tent.
It was a little tighter though, and it made her even more aware of a few of the changes to her anatomy. Her... <she winced> ... breasts were rubbing the shirt now when she moved. They seemed to be a lot more sensitive than she remembered when she was a boy.
Sighing, she closed the door, and took off her shirt, and looked at herself in the mirror over her dresser. Yup. She was definitely a girl from the waste up. Heck, if she squinted, (and ignored the monstrous tail draped over the furniture reflected in the background behind her) she could almost pretend she was still a normal human being. She squeezed her breasts, and was rewarded by a flush of unfamiliar sensations. They weren't overly large, (thankfully, in fact, they seemed to be on the small side) but they were undeniably breasts.
She looked at herself in the mirror again. Yesterday, Daryn the normal teenage boy would have loved to have a pair of breasts this close to play with. Well, she amended, maybe not THIS close, but still. She gave one an experimental prod, and looked at herself in the mirror again. Now... Well, she wasn't sure. She wasn't feeling particularly aroused at the cute naked girl in the mirror, but it was hard to tell if that was because she no longer preferred girls, or if it was just the whole shock of the day's events. "I'm still me inside my head, right? I'm still Daryn?" Dawn tried to imagine naked girls in her mind, (surprisingly easy, with one sitting right there in the mirror) but didn't really feel anything. With a shudder, she tried the same thing with naked boys (also surprisingly easy, since she had been one all of her life except for one day) but still nothing, so she chalked the whole thing up to the strangeness of the situation.
"Well, I can't keep having these rub like this" she said to herself. Dawn slithered over to the drawer, and quickly located what he had been dreading. A bra.
"I can't believe I have to do this" she said to herself. "This is totally ridiculous. Why does a snake even have boobs, anyway? Don't snakes hatch from eggs?" Eventually she talked herself into putting it on. It took some effort to figure out how to wear it, but eventually she settled for clasping it in advance, and putting it on over her shoulders already fastened.
"This absurd.", she told herself. Still, she had to admit, after she put the shirt on now, it was a definite improvement. She sighed. "At least I don't have to wear panties. I wonder if I'll ever have to wear a dress?"
Suddenly the door burst open, and Daryn's 6-year-old brother Joey charged into the room. "Wormy's home! Wormy's home!" Before she had much time to react, he had jumped on the back of her tail, and started shouting "Wormy ride! Wormy ride!"
Huh. This was different. For a moment, Dawn was too shocked to do much of anything. Finally, some semblance of thought made its way through her head. Several possible responses fought in her head, before she finally settled on being mostly civil. "Hey, squirt. What have I told you about staying out of my room!" She figured this was probably safe, since even before when she was Daryn, he had always told Joey to stay out of his room.
Joey had at least the grace to look guilty for a moment, before he resumed his jumping up and down and shouting for a ride. With an exasperated and long-suffering sigh, Dawn went back out to the living room, with her 6-year-old brother whooping wildly from his place on her back. Their mother smiled as they came into view. "Ahh, thank you honey. I love how you still play with Joey. Your dad called from the office, and he'll be a little late, so we're eating dinner without him. Also, your friend Tony called, and wanted to let you know that he's not free until 7:30, but that you should feel free to head on over any time after that. Are you two studying again?"
With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Dawn realized she still had to face Tony. Who, she told herself, *probably* didn't think she was his girlfriend or anything. But it still promised to be an awkward evening.
Her mother hadn't noticed the change in expression, and was still chattering on. "I like him. He's been a good friend to you." She nodded enthusiastically. "Does this mean you'll need a ride over at 7:30? I can drop you off, but you'll need to get a ride back yourself."
"No thanks Mom", Dawn replied. "I'll just drive myself if that's ok. I'd rather have the car so I can come home whenever, without worrying about finding a ride."
Dawn's Mom burst out laughing, and it took Dawn a moment to realize why. "Ha ha. Of course, you just drive yourself on over then. As soon as you figure out how to work the peddles with that tail of yours!"
She turned serious for a moment. "And no, you are NOT supposed to take that as a challenge. I know it's a pain always having to beg for rides. When I was your age, I didn't have a car, so I know what you're going through. But honey, you know it's not safe, you driving yourself. I'll give you a ride at 7:30, how does that sound?"
Hmm. Dawn mulled this over in her mind. This was a challenge. She could no longer drive? She hadn't thought about it before, but it made some sense. It was still going to be a pain, though. And it meant that she would be dependent on Tony, or his parents, when she wanted to head home...
Her chain of thoughts were broken by Joey, who chose that moment to start bouncing up and down on her back again and shouting "Wormy ride to the kitchen! Wormy ride to the kitchen! Dinner time, wormy!" With a sigh, Dawn wound her way back to the dinner table. (Where she saw, there was a small raised platform with a foam mat on it at one end, which was where she assumed she would be sitting.) This had been one weird day so far.
She wondered what she was going to tell Tony. She could use some help in coming up with ideas for how to get out of this. This was not, she told herself, how she wanted to spend the rest of her life, and so she could use any help she could get, in figuring out what to do next. The problem was convincing him that anything was out of the ordinary. Could she make Tony believe that she wasn't supposed to be a snake? Or a "she"?