Mr. McCann kept them a while longer, explaining the school rules and some of the nuances that weren't so obvious to people who'd never lived in a magical town before. By the time he'd covered everything he could think of, it was lunchtime (he had a tendency to ramble.) With his instructions, the new students made their way through the torch-lit halls of the school to the cafeteria.
It was a marked improvement from the public-school lunchrooms they were used to. Kat and Danielle were overjoyed to find fresh vegetables and greens - they were only ordinary salad stuff, but it was so much better than the sad little salads they'd had at school yesterday. The two bunny-girls loaded up their plates and rushed to a table to dig in.
Colin and Brianna joined them shortly afterwards; the mouse-girl's fare was similarly specialized, but her brother's lunch was perfectly ordinary, which made Danielle a bit moody as she wondered again whether she'd even like some of her favorite meat foods anymore. Tanya had made her way outside to hunt something fresh for her lunch.
They'd just settled in to eat when another student, a haughty-looking elf girl, moved over towards their table. "Well, well," she mused aloud. "New students, hmm?" She moved in on Danielle. She was tall, even considering that she was a girl at that age when girls shoot up past the boys in their class, and combined with the fact that Danielle was maybe three quarters the size of a normal kid her age, it meant that she absolutely towered over the bunny-girl. Danielle found she was already getting tired of this...
"You," she said. "What's your name?"
Danielle hesitated, but decided that not answering would probably be taken as a sign of weakness. "I'm...Danielle," she said. It still stuck in her mouth, still felt strange to actually say it.
The elf-girl nodded. "Hmm. Well, I'm sure the boys will love having you around, Danielle...you know what they say about rabbits..."
Danielle had to think for a moment before she understood what the girl was getting at, then flushed hotly underneath her white fur. She was just about to make some kind of angry retort when she suddenly wondered, horrified, if there was some kind of basis for this? Mr. McCann had mentioned things about instincts...what if she and Kat were going to be...?
"Oh, piss off, pointy-ears," said another voice. Danielle turned to see another girl, a harpy, with dark brown hair and nut-brown plumage. She was kind of surprised to see that she wasn't wearing anything, but since the harpy seemed to have nothing in the way of hands, and the base of her wings extended almost halfway down her torso, Danielle supposed that the school's "drastic alterations" policy applied to the entire dress code for her.
The elf girl huffed. "Aren't you needed back in the kitchen, Lisa?" she snapped. "They're running out of egg salad!" But she turned and left, and that was enough for Danielle. The harpy snorted. "Don't mind her," she said. "She's always trying to figure out which kids would be good to pick on. She started that business with me when I started laying this spring; she thinks if she just repeats it enough I'll start being embarassed about it. Jeez!"
Kat gaped at the newcomer, and Danielle's jaw dropped too when she realized what her sister was astonished about. "You mean you...?" Lisa nodded. "Doesn't that hurt?" Kat asked.
Lisa gave a very human shrug. "Well, yeah," she said. "Of course it hurts. But my mom used to be a human, and she says if she had her pick she'd go for the hour or two of pain over multiple days of discomfort and mess, so I guess it could be worse."
Up until now, Danielle hadn't actually thought about what lay in store for her as a female mammal. Now she couldn't get the image out of her head...oh God, why couldn't they just figure out how to change her back already? She noticed out of the corner of her eye that Brianna was similarly taken aback.
"Wait, your mom's...like you?" Colin asked, eager to divert the conversation from the course it was taking. Lisa nodded. "You're new to this whole thing, aren't you?" she asked. The four of them nodded. Lisa smiled. "Ah. Yeah, the way it works is that when parents of two different species have children together, the babies are always the species of the mother, since they have to gestate in her. Or out of her, as the case may be. So I was born a harpy even though my dad's a human, but I did get stuff like my hair color from him. But my mom was a human at first, until they had this big magical disaster or something in this town."
Danielle's interest was piqued. "How does she feel about that?" she asked. "Her change, I mean."
Lisa laughed. "Oh, she likes it just fine. She says she doesn't even really remember what it felt like to be human; you couldn't tell she wasn't born a harpy if you didn't know better."
Danielle frowned - wasn't there anybody who didn't adapt to their change so that you couldn't even tell the difference? Granted, she only really knew of her mom and, anecdotally, Lisa's mom, but it still worried her.