(no subject)

[tachycardiac]

Chiela wakes to weak grey morning light, feeling sluggish and groggy, one arm wrapped around Terasu’s waist and the other tucked awkwardly beneath her own body - which is the problem with sleeping with another person: one of your limbs always ends up going dead. Still there are a lot worse ways to wake up, and Chiela takes advantage of her position to nose at the nape of Terasu’s neck. Terasu who probably wouldn’t appreciate being woken, unless morning sex immediately followed, and, unfortunately, Chiela just doesn’t have the time, today. She’s got an appointment at 7;


So, okay, the important thing to do here is not to panic. Terasu would come running, for one, thing, which is the exact opposite of what Chiela wants her to do. So don’t panic, and, um. Okay, don’t panic is as far as she’s gotten because, seriously, what the hell? What. The. Hell.

“Hey,” Terasu calls, through the door, “You want pancakes? I’ll cook.”

Normally, Chiela’d be thrilled by Terasu offering to cook anything - the way she goes on about it, you’d think the girl was allergic to frying pans or something - but today she really just wants Terasu out of the apartment and fast. Like yesterday.

“Uh,” she says, “No, I think I’ll just grab something on the way to work.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Chiela called back, staring at the slits of her eyes, the pale blue and purple scales sliding over her hands and up her throat, and the leathery wings unfolding behind her. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Seriously what’s she meant to do about this? Past getting Terasu out of their apartment, how’s she supposed to get to work? She could always just call in mutated, but somehow she thinks that’s probably not going to fly. She’s not about to leave the apartment though when she’s capable of flying. Possibly capable. It’s not like she’s in a hurry to test that out. She’s pretty sure they have a bunker in Nevada dedicated to these sorts of things. She just wants it to stop. She needs, like, a Shaman. Or an exorcist.

“Seriously,” Terasu calls through the door, “what are you doing in there? I’d kind of like to take a shower. I smell like you.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Chiela calls back purely out of reflex. Then she hastily turns the water in the shower on and says, “Hold on, I’m going first.”

She can hear Terasu grumbling something on the other side of the door. She doesn’t try too hard to figure out what, though she can probably guess. Instead she strips herself - which is a little more difficult when you have claws and you’re trying not to tear your clothes. She’s not happy to discover (okay, so she’s a little freaked out to discover) that the scales have slid over her chest and belly, too, and flattened her out a bit. She looks sort of sexless in addition to being a giant freaking lizard, how awesome is that? Also, her hair and eyebrows are going which just looks weird.

For lack of anything better to do and for want of not looking at hey freaky-ass lizard self in the mirror, she ducks under the shower head and, oh, wow, that feels weird. Almost like she’s bathing in oil or some other viscous liquid. The water doesn’t so much slide over her scales as it does coat them. The feeling’s extra strange being that their are still patches of skin between patches of scales.