Wings

Before my next date with Jada, I watched Sophia’s video series about venning people into animate dolls and statues again and got her to coach me on it.

“It’s maddeningly subjective,” she lamented. “Somebody else can give a Venn machine the exact same verbal instructions I used to turn you into a doll and they’d get different results. But those are the basics: you need lenses for the eyes and something hard but not too rigid for hearing. And a soft body will have a more sensitive sense of touch, but probably be less strong.”

“We’ll try it several times, I guess,” I said. “See what works.”

I also knuckled down on filing applications for colleges, scholarships, and grants the week after graduation, though I’d started just a week after my eighteenth birthday. Though I was leaning toward East Carolina, where Jada was going, or UNC Chapel Hill, where Meredith was going, I applied to just about every state university in North Carolina and a few private schools, just in case I hit the jackpot with scholarships.

On Friday, I got my first paycheck. After I deposited it, I gave Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey my first rent payment. (We’d decided on an amount after I’d gotten the job and knew about what I was going to be paid.) It was generously low rent, way lower than the smallest apartment in the area from what I could tell, but then I didn’t have the privacy of a studio apartment, or even a mother-in-law suite.

I finally had my first therapy appointment the Wednesday after graduation. I debated over whether to venn into my human girl body for the appointment — I’d been wearing my dragon-girl body ever since graduation — but decided it would be more honest to meet my therapist in my most preferred body. If she couldn’t handle my being a scaly, it would be good to know that up front so I could start looking for another therapist.

The therapist I’d picked was a woman named Kelly Ferreira, who worked at a practice in Catesville. Mr. Ramsey gave me a ride, and said he’d visit the thrift stores in Catesville while he was waiting for me.

I didn’t have all that long to wait before Ms. Ferreira called me back to her office. It was a cozy space with several comfortable chairs and some nice paintings — a couple of landscapes and a still life, plus the usual diplomas and accreditations.

“So, Lauren, what brings you here today?”

I told her briefly about my long-standing anxiety issues, and my estrangement from my family, and how I’d reconciled with Mom and Nathan but was still on the outs with Dad. She asked some questions and I gave her more detail, telling her about how I’d figured out I was trans, my clandestine venning, and running away. I didn’t tell her who I’d stayed with until I was eighteen, even though I was pretty sure she was legally obligated not to share anything I said. (Later I found out that legal obligation only applies to doctors and lawyers, and Ms. Ferreira wasn’t a doctor. But I don’t think she would have reported Carmen, Meredith and Sophia anyway.)

She went through some exercises to help with my anxiety, some of which I’d already found on my own through Internet research, but others of which were new to me and turned out to be pretty helpful. Then we talked for a few minutes near the end of the hour about my relationship with Dad, and how badly I actually wanted to rebuild it.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I got along with him pretty well before I started suspecting I was trans, and worrying how he would react if he found out. When he found out. But it turns out that relationship was built on a shakier foundation than I thought. I would like to build a new relationship with him if I can, but I don’t know if it’s possible — he won’t speak to me unless I give up being a girl, and I can’t give up being a girl to please him. And I don’t think he even knows I’m a dragon-girl; who knows how he’ll react to that.”

We set another appointment for about a month later, and I texted Mr. Ramsey to let him know I was done.

Jada, Britt and I met up in the early afternoon the following Saturday to implement Operation Plushies. I was still in a dragon-girl form. First, I tried venning Jada into a triceratops plushie (to go with the stegosaurus plushie Britt had volunteered to be). It worked, in the sense that she was a recognizable triceratops, and very cuddly, but she seemed to be fully inanimate, and when I changed her back, she said she hadn’t been able to hear very well, though she could see and feel. Three tries later, I finally had her able to move, see, and hear, but not talk.

“Sophia makes this look so easy!” I groaned, leaning on Britt as she cuddled a squirming tricera-Jada in her arms.

“You’ll figure it out,” she consoled me. When the people using the Venn machine came out, Jada and I went in again and I tweaked her form some more until she could talk.

“Yay, this works!” she exclaimed in a high, squeaky voice.

“You can still move, hear, and see fine?” I asked.

“Yep!” she chirped, trotting around the booth and kicking up her heels — probably not a thing that any actual triceratops ever did.

The timer for further changes had nearly phased out when I said, “Two of her — one twice as big.” I hastily picked the best-looking of the options offered, and the image changed to show a second, larger triceratops plushie shadowing her movements. The smaller plushie was a slightly darker blue than before and the larger one was lighter blue, but they were about the right sizes, so I pushed the green button with a couple of seconds to spare.

I walked out of the machine and looked over to see the two plushies trotting out side by side. The bigger one was rapidly gaining on the little one, as her legs were longer (though still adorably stumpy), and Britt scooped up the little one and cuddled her before she quite cleared the threshold.

“You can still talk and all?” I asked. “Giving you two bodies didn’t mess that up?”

“La la la la,” she sang with both plushies. The big one, still on the sidewalk, nuzzled up against my leg and I knelt down to pet her.

“Okay, let’s get out of the way and let these fine people use the machine... Oh, hi, Anna and Genevieve.” Two of the people who’d just walked up were my co-workers, apparently just getting off of a shift. Anna was a seal-girl, as usual, with flipper-like arms that ended in something more like human hands, and pretty much normal legs — anything more flipper-like wouldn’t be practical for waiting tables. Genevieve was a preying mantis of sorts, less spindly than an actual insect (insect-proportioned legs wouldn’t support the weight of an adult-sized body) and with a more humanoid face.

“Hey, Lauren. Who’s this?” asked.

“This is my girlfriend Britt, and this little cuddle-saur is my girlfriend Jada.” Jada gave a cute little growl.

“Awwww!” Genevieve squeed. “Can I pet her?”

“That’s up to her,” I said. “Britt, can she pet you?”

Britt snorted and said, “Go ahead,” and Genevieve’s antennae quivered in embarrassment.

“I didn’t mean —”

“You can pet me,” Jada said with the larger dog-sized plushie body. Genevieve petted her.

“So are y’all fixing to change her back?” Anna asked.

“No, we’re in the middle of a multi-stage process. Y’all can go ahead.”

So Anna and Genevieve changed into their off-duty bodies. Anna’s everyday body was human, with smaller breasts than she had in her seal-girl body, but just as cute a face, and Genevieve’s was a lot like the mantis-girl she was at work, but more overtly insectoid, with fewer human features. (Mr. Paget had asked her to tone it down after some customers got creeped out.) Then I went in the machine again with Jada’s larger body, and venned her into the body she’d been wearing since shortly after graduation, which had the big anime eyes she’d had back in the spring semester combined with aquamarine hair, elfin ears, and three breasts.

Then it was time to venn Britt. Britt handed off Jada’s little plushiesaur self to Jada’s big human self, and Britt and I went in the machine. With the practice from venning Jada multiple times, I managed to make Britt an orangey-pink stegosaurus plushie that could move, see, hear and talk on the second try.

So I picked up Britt and snuggled her to my face for a moment before following Jada to her car. Jada handed the little Jada to me and I put her in my lap with Britt as we drove to the movie theater at the mall in Catesville.

“So how do y’all like being plushies?” I asked them.

“It’s comfy,” little Jada said. “Snuggling like this feels nice. Though not as, um... not as sexy?”

“I’ve heard that it can feel sexy too if the person who’s venning you knows what they’re doing,” I said. “I’ve been hard plastic or porcelain dolls, and a ceramic statue, but never a plushie yet. I should try it sometime.”

“Sometime or other you and Jada can be my plushies,” Britt said. “I gave all my plushies to my little cousins when I turned thirteen and decided I was too old for them. I don’t miss them that much, but once in a while...”

“Let’s do that!” little Jada exclaimed. “Next time you and Britt both have enough time off work.”

We arrived just barely in time for the last showing of Batwoman at matinee prices. Britt and little Jada pretended to be normal inanimate plushies while we were in line to pay for tickets, and then sat on our shoulders so they could see the movie.

Afterward, we ate at the Italian restaurant nearby (with the plushies sitting on the table next to our plates, chatting with us and drawing the stares of the other diners.

“Hmm,” I said near the end of the meal. “We’d look less childish playing with these plushies if we were actual children.”

“You want to go over to the Venn machine and turn into little kids?” big Jada asked.

“Yay!” little Jada exclaimed.

“Do you mind? It’s been a long time since I venned into a little girl.”

“Maybe you should take turns,” Britt said. “Two little kids with no adult around could get hassled by the mall cops, maybe get CPS called on you.”

“Or we could give each other some weird feature that normal kids don’t have,” I said, remembering Serena’s strategy for not getting hassled in child form. “Like green skin or cat ears something.”

“Let’s do it,” big Jada said.

We found out that the mall playground had, sometime after Meredith and I had played there as little girls a couple of years earlier, instituted a rule against venned adults playing there during most of the day, and set aside the last hour and a half before the mall closed for venned adults and teens to play. All four of us romped through the maze of gerbil tunnels and slid down the slides, and us two human girls clambered across the monkey bars while our plushie girlfriends called out encouragement to us from their perch on the nearby tower. There were several other little boys and girls of various ages playing there, some with adult “supervision” who were fully getting into the role (or might have been actual kids whose parents didn’t read the sign saying it was the time of day for venned adults, or didn’t care) and some who were just enjoying being small and super-energetic and didn’t bother pretending to be their apparent age.

There was an adorable tiny tot, apparently about two or three, who was being pushed on the swing by a woman in her twenties. When Jada and I, carrying Britt and little Jada, approached the swings, the little girl reached out her hands and said, “Teddy!”

“Her name’s Britt,” Jada announced, walking up next to where the girl was swinging. “She’s a stegosaurus.”

“Say hi to Britt, Melanie,” the woman said.

“Hi, Bwitt,” the little tot said.

I wasn’t sure if it was polite to ask if Melanie was venned or really as young as she looked.

“Hi, Melanie,” Britt said. The little tot looked astonished. Little Jada and I giggled.

“This is Jada,” I said. “That’s Jada too,” I added, pointing at my bigger girlfriend. “They’re sort of the same person.”

“Oh, you’ve gotten into splitting?” the woman asked. “Melanie is a younger version of me. Kind of a way of placating my maternal instinct without doing something as insanely reckless as popping out a sprog.”

“Spwog!” Melanie said, and giggled.

“How long did you split for?” big Jada asked.

“We split for the weekend about once every month or two,” the woman said. “And every time I make Melanie a month or two older. I started a few months ago with her just old enough to be toilet trained.”

“Keep pushing, Mommy!” Melanie demanded. Her swing’s oscillations had slowed while we were talking till she was barely moving.

“She’s adorable,” Jada said. “You want us to help push for a while?”

“Sure.”

We chatted with older-Melanie, who introduced herself as Melinda, while we took turns pushing Melanie and letting her cuddle Britt and little Jada. By the time we said goodbye to the strange mother and child and returned to the Venn machine, we were pretty tired. Big Jada and I changed back into our everyday bodies, which meant a dragon-girl for me, and she drove me home.

“That was a fun date,” Jada said. “Let’s do the playground again sometime.”

“Yeah, I’ll have to tell Meredith and Sophia they have grown-up hours now.”

“I want to climb the monkey bars in a little version of my four-armed body,” Britt said.

“Good night, Jada,” I said. We kissed and I got out, carrying little Jada and Britt. They snuggled against me as I walked up to the door and fumbled my key out of my purse. Sophia opened the door before I could get the key in the lock.

“How was your — Oh, those are so cute! Where did you get them?”

“The Venn machine,” I said.

“You weren’t supposed to tell her right off,” little Jada pouted.

“We agreed we weren’t going to pretend you were inanimate,” I said.

“Who are they?”

“Britt,” Britt said.

“I’m Jada,” Jada said.

“But if Jada’s here, who drove you home?”

“The other Jada,” Jada said. “I’m the cute one.”

“Oh, of course,” Sophia said. “I can’t wait to try that out. Just two more months and my one-year experiment will be over...”

“I’ve gotten some experience from splitting Jada,” I said. “You want me to split you when you’re ready?”

“Sure.”

Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey had already gone to bed that night, so they didn’t remark on the plushies I was snuggling with, but Mrs. Ramsey noticed them the next morning as I was folding up the sofa bed. She’d gotten up a little earlier than usual, and I’d slept a little later than usual; she was sipping her coffee while I cleaned up my sleeping area. I’d temporarily piled up my blanket and pillows in one of the easy chairs while I worked on the sofa bed, as usual, and had set Britt and little Jada on top of the stack until I was ready to put the pillows in the cabinet.

“Oh,” she said, “those are some cute dinosaurs. Are they yours or Sophia’s?”

“They belong to themselves,” I said. “You met Jada and Britt at the graduation ceremony.”

“Hi, Jada and Britt,” Mrs. Ramsey said. Then a moment later: “I guess they’re inanimate, not like Sophia’s doll form?”

“Speak up, silly girls,” I said, pausing to rub their snouts. Then: “I guess they’re fugued out at the moment.”

“I met a lot of yours and Meredith’s friends at graduation, but only for a few moments in most cases. I know we took some pictures of you with Jada, but I can’t place Britt.”

“She’s the tall mixed-race girl with four arms. Usually. Now she’s the stegosaurus.”

“How long are they venned for?”

“Jada’s venned for a month — don’t worry! She’s not gonna lose her job. We split her in two, and her other half is human, back home with her grandma and sister. Britt’s venned for a day, and I need to take her back to the library to change back before work.”

“I still can’t get used to you girls splitting yourselves in two,” she said. “It seems like an odd place to draw the line after all the other strange things we’ve gotten used to in the last few years, but... I suppose us old people who were already set in our ways before the Venn machines came along are always going to have trouble with some of their stranger uses.”

“You’re not that old,” I said. “You’re younger than my mom and dad. And a lot younger in terms of your mental flexibility.”

“Thanks.” She gave me a bemused smile, took another sip of her coffee, and went off to start fixing breakfast. I took a shower and got dressed for work, then went back to the living room to pick up Britt and take her with me.

Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey had finally acquiesced in my walking to and from work in daylight if I was in dragon form. Stubbornness counts for something. They still wanted to give me rides home, or get Meredith or Sophia to do so, if I was working after dark. I ate a protein bar during my walk to the library, having slept a little too late to eat a regular breakfast. Britt woke up pretty soon after I walked out the door.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Good morning, sleepyhead. We’re on Walcott Street, going north toward the library.”

“Okay, cool. What time is it?”

“Eight-oh-five,” I said, pulling my phone out and checking the clock display. It was tricky with Britt under one arm and a protein bar in my other hand.

“Thanks.”

“So how did you enjoy being an animate plushie?”

“It was nice snuggling with y’all like that. I wouldn’t want to stay like that for too long, though. I like working on cars too much. And driving.”

“Have you talked to Poppy and Lisette about their motorcycle plans any more?”

“I’m waiting to hear from them about their work schedules.”

I finished off my protein bar about a block south of the library, and stuck the wrapper in my purse until I got to the library, where there was a trash can near the Venn machine. There were a few of my co-workers there venning for work, as well as some other people I didn’t know. Britt and I got in line, and when it was our turn, I venned her into her everyday four-armed body and asked her to tweak my dragon-girl body a little for variety. I came out with fuchsia scales and different spines on my head, shorter and more numerous.

“You want a ride to work?” Britt asked as we stepped out. She’d left her car at the library the previous evening.

“Sure,” I said. When we got to Metamorphoses, we hugged for a long moment before I got out of her car and went inside.