Fast Change kept the injured leg up off the ground. It was clearly injured, but she didn't make much noise about it. "I'm almost jealous. Most of my wives and husband aren't so quick to defend me. Well, except Night Watch, she'd bend somepony in half if she thought it'd save me. You're lucky she wasn't around when that happened. I wouldn't want you two duking it out over me, even if that is kind of a sexy idea."

Wave became a bit confused. She leaned against the petting, but her eyes were solidly on the enigma that was Fast Change. "Do you know her? I don't understand her…"

“I don’t know her, Wave, but she’s definitely an interesting pony, it looks like. You are a pony, yes? I mean, changelings can shift, too, but I don’t know much about that.” Tom sighed, shaking his head. “I’d rather not see anyone get into a fight, especially over a, misunderstanding.”

Fast Change reared up a bit so she could wave a hoof unimpeded. "Oh I tried the changeling queen thing once. It was kind of nice for a while, but I missed my mates way too much. I'm happier as a pony. I'm 'just' a unicorn, or whatever else I get the urge to be." With a sudden glow of magic, she showed off a practiced spell and became a human, like a slightly distorted version of Jake. "'Sup?"

Wave shuddered violently as her form played havoc with the innate sense she had for things not of the world. She suddenly leaped from Tom's arms, but she didn't bite Fast, she… began petting her/him, rubbing away the humanity in wide swathes as she hyperventilated.

“That’s… pretty damn fun looking, actually,” Tom remarked moments before Wave performed her leap. Tom followed with a leap of his own a few moments afterwards, arms wrapping around her as he pulled back, trying to get her back up onto the bed. “Wave, come on already,” he complained as he pulled back, groaning. “You okay, Fast Change?” Tom asked, his view obstructed by Wave as he held her tightly to him.

Fast flopped to the ground with a stunned look on their half-formed face. They were caught between pony and human in an awkward blend between the two. "I… Wow…" She became her old self as she regained some sense of her space. "I never ran into anypony that could mess with my magic that well before."

Wave had the decency to look ashamed. "I… I wasn't trying. You did that thing, and it felt like I was on fire, and I had to put myself out, by putting you out. I'm sorry."

Tom squeezed Wave, kissing her briefly again before moving on to simply petting her comfortingly. “Fast? Wave gets an itch of sorts around humans, apparently, and has the desire to, well, ‘make them fit in’ I guess would be the best way to look at it? It’s partly why I’ve got hooves and furry legs, although the fins and gills were from her goddess. I guess that what you did was even worse than when we bumped into Jake, Wave could control herself with him.”

Fast grinned at Wave. "Can you do that whenever you want? I want to try that out later!" She hopped to her three working legs. "I should get going. If you want to chat, let me know." With no hard feelings apparent, she departed.

Wave watched her go before nuzzling into Tom. "I don't understand her, but I'm glad she's not angry with me. I… I suppose she wasn't trying to steal you. I don't think she's capable of that."

“Yeah, she seems really cool, if a bit weird,” Tom agreed, wrapping Wave up in a hug as he fell back to the bed again, sighing. “And she wants to try your thing out, whatever you’d like to call it. Definitely an odd one.” He confirmed, chuckling to himself. “But, how are you doing, Wave? You looked really freaked out there for a bit.”

Wave brushed over her fur and scales with her hooves. "Now that she isn't doing that thing she did, I don't feel like I'm about to explode. Other than that, I'm fine." She pointed to the bed. "Put me down."

“That’s good to hear. I know me and Eric make you itch a bit, just wanted to make sure it wasn’t heightened or anything after that.” Tom gently set her down onto the bed next to him, turning to look at her. “Eric and I don’t bug you too much or anything?” he asked once more.

She stretched out the moment she was down, then held out her hooves to him. "Let me see your hands." She didn't answer his question, however.

Shifting around on the bed a bit, Tom got on his knees and held out both of his hands within easy reach of Wave’s hooves.

Wave placed her hooves gently over the hands. She nuzzled over the two gently before she nodded. "You're not the only thing in this world with fingers," she said as much to herself as anyone else. She kissed over the digits and licked up over each finger, starting to groom and love over them.

Nodding, Tom smiled somewhat thoughtfully as he suppressed the urge to giggle at her licks. He had a vague idea of what could be coming, but letting her do what she wanted for now. “Very true, I imagine that there’s a lot of different folk out there. We’ve already seen quite a few ourself, haven’t we? This wacky adventure we’re on that Eric seems to enjoy the most,” he mused aloud with a chuckle. “Who knows, maybe I could even come to look forward to adventuring!”

Wave suddenly shuddered, swallowing back a reaction, but it was too powerful. She leaned in and licked over those hands with her eyes closing of their own volition. "Do you trust her? The goddess we share? I can… She's inside me again. She won't let me stop. Do you trust her?"

“I,” he started, pulling his hands apart a little bit as he wiggled his fingers against her tongue. “I honestly don’t know, Wave, but I’m a bit of a sap. She kept you around, and I’m rather attached to you now, despite such a short time. A hopeless romantic? I think that’s what folks call it. Gods are just so detached, they’re kinda dicks.” His conclusion came to, he brought his hands back to her tongue, presenting them both. “I’ve already decided to follow this road, wherever it might lead.”

Wave smiled just before she pressed forward, nudging her husband to the soft fabric of the bed and clambering in over him. "Good, then we can be happy together." Her hooves pawed over his sides and up over his chest as warm tingles spread from everywhere she touched. "You can be a human." She opened her eyes, suddenly growing more confident. "You can still be human."

“Oh?” Tom curiously questioned, squirming a bit from those warm tingles. “How so?” he curiously asked, hugging her tightly. “I’m,” he paused, looking into her clear eyes. “I’m me either way, Wave, so it hasn’t been bothering as much as one might think. I want to be closer to you, though."

The door suddenly opened. "I found it!" came Twilight's voice as she casually interrupted the intimate moment.

Wave squeaked and scowled at her. She covered Tom's hands in her hooves as they tingled between them. "Twilight! You are… You are rude, very rude."

Groaning, Tom turned to look at Twilight, annoyance clearly written on his face. “Twilight? Knocking. It’s something people do. It’s polite. I’m fairly certain I asked you to tone things down, yeah?” he grumbled, wriggling his fingers against Wave’s hooves as his eyes rolled.

Twilight looked between the two, where hands and hooves were in contact. "Um, what are you doing?"

Wave whickered in annoyance, but then tuned Twilight out and began rubbing her hooves together more determinedly. The warm pulse ran through the hands, but… did anything change? It looked the same even when she brought her hooves back.

“Attempting to spend some time together!” Tom shot out, Twilight obviously not getting the hint. At the pulse, he glanced down to his hands, curiously looking at them and wriggling his fingers again before shrugging and running his fingers through the fur on Wave’s legs right above the hoof. “Please, for the love of god, give us some time alone? We’ll be here for awhile, so there’ll be plenty of time for other stuff. Okay?” he tried bargaining with her.

Wave gently nuzzled into one of his hands when it approached her legs. She looked toward Twilight. "I'm done for now. What did you want to share that was that important?"

Twilight clopped her hooves together. "Oh great! Look here." She hurried forward as a book lifted out of a bag she wore and plopped on the bed beside the two. "I found a book that has several compelling clues to sirens and I wanted to verify its authenticity with you."

Lightly scratching at Wave’s neck, Tom groaned again and sat up with Wave in his lap. “Twilight? We don’t really know anything about sirens. Not much, anyways,” he amended, shaking his head. “Does everyone here just barge into someone else’s room without knocking or showing any hint of common courtesy?” Tom asked with a frown.

Twilight opened the book with her magic. Wave leaned in, a bit curious about the book, and calmed with Tom's presence. "Look here," said Twilight, tapping the page. "It said that, in ancient times, sirens that visited the land were seen to hover and float with a seemingly innate magic of their own. While they couldn't fly, like a pegasus, they could easily move with about a foot or two of distance from the ground at most without effort."

Beating down his growing anger at her complete inability to focus beyond her current spasm attack of knowledge, which Tom knew he should have seen coming in the first place, he turned to Wave. “This ringing any bells to you, Wave? I know it’s been such a long time for you.”

Wave frowned a little at the idealistic picture of a siren hovering in the air in front of a pony. The siren in the picture had musical notes coming out of her snout, and the pony had dizzy-looking eyes. "I'm not sure how I'd do that, any of that…"

Twilight sat on her haunches and applied her magic, trying to lift Wave right up and away. "Let's try reminding you how it feels to float, and then maybe it'll come on its own!"

Tom took insult with this idea, rather enjoying having Wave on his lap, plus her attitude was making him rather angry. From the show, he had figured her to be the act first think later type, but it was so much worse when in person. One arm wrapped around Wave, the other reached for her horn, closing his hand around it in the hopes of keeping her from being able to use magic. “Twilight! Stop, now,” Tom firmly stated.

Twilight squawked as her wings went wide. Her magic was disrupted with the unexpected contact with her horn. With the lapse, Wave was dropped into Tom's waiting grip. Wave perked an ear back at Tom before nuzzling him in quiet thanks.

As for Twilight, she huffed in annoyance. "I'm not hurting anypony. How is she going to learn if we don't allow her to learn?"

Eric popped into the doorway, frowning a bit from his growing headache. All the exclamations from next door weren’t making it any easier for a total noob to grasp adept level shadow magic from a book written for a species with magic-organs he didn’t have. “Twilight, where we come from we have an important phrase for situations like this. I want you to repeat it until it sticks in your mind. ‘No means no.’”

Next Chapter: 30 - Denying a Scholar her Treats Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 18 Minutes