I'd lost all track of actual time in the strangeness of waking up, but it was still early for a Saturday; and with the cold and damp of last night's storm, the campus was pretty quiet. We made it out of the dorm and down to the bus stop without seeing anyone besides a couple pledges, sitting on a bench in the quad and trying to chase off a hangover with enough hair-of-the-dog to make a whole new dog out of; they probably wouldn't have noticed if God himself came walking by.

Which was fine by me; I wasn't eager to be noticed, even if nobody would recognize me. Whether they knew or not, I knew, and exposing this thing-that-was-me to the world felt like accepting this twist of fate, or at least submitting while it had the upper hand. The rational part of my brain knew this was nonsense, but part of me still wanted to just hide in a cupboard and never let anyone see me like this, so that it wouldn't "count." (Never mind that Tammy and Emma had already seen me plenty.)

It surprised me that this wasn't more deeply uncomfortable than it was, being out like this - or the situation in general. But the shock from last night had mostly worn off, and the strangeness of this morning was fading. And there was that thing again where my emotions in this form were more abstract and controlled, not blocking my discomfort, but preventing a total freakout; my classmates' presence helped, too. And at least it was quiet out...

Even the bus was fairly quiet, though we did attract a few stares. Metamorphic science as a field of study had been around long enough that demi-humans were a much less uncommon sight these days, as successive generations of transformees had children who inherited some or all of their non-human traits, who then grew up and had kids themselves, and so on and so forth. For having initial populations as small as a single individual, the number of fifth- or even sixth-generation demi-humans in the world was surprisingly high.

Of course, some were better-represented than others,^* but it was an oddly consistent trend, especially with human birthrates trending downward in many first-world countries. Various theories had been put forward to explain this, but many were founded in or hijacked by groups with pretty obviously speciesist and/or sexist views, so that it was something everyone else felt awkward talking about.

^* (The large initial population of mermaids, at the start of the Baby Boom, had enough of an impact down the line that many major coastal cities had full-fledged marine developments, and underwater construction had skyrocketed in the last three decades.)

I hadn't thought too much about it myself, but it seemed like the desire for companionship after a traumatic event, our natural tendency to find comfort around others like ourselves, and natural human(oid) "urges" were plenty sufficient to explain it. But I hadn't considered it relevant enough to my life to really bother studying up. But now...I didn't know how my classmates felt about it, but a part of me couldn't help considering it, in the abstract.

Tammy was now part of a significant majority-minority group among demi-humans, but she was also plainly upset about it, for whatever reason. But then, I'd gathered that she had a stable and supportive home environment, and that probably meant a more positive outlook on family (or so I assumed.) I knew nothing about Emma's background before she mentioned cows yesterday, but she seemed well-adjusted, if reckless; she was also probably the only demi-human like her in the world, and might subconsciously want more of her kind around. But then, I was also unique, and as for me-

I stopped short, practically wrenching my thoughts off that track. It was irrelevant anyway, I told myself; I knew what I'd seen in the mirror last night. Still, it kept nagging at the back of my brain, and I had to focus on refusing it any headspace for the rest of the trip, as the bus picked its way down the damp hillside streets towards the lakeshore. Finally, we reached our stop.