"Oh, right, I thought you meant you were a shapeshifting nerd who was also a nerd about shapeshifting." He shrugs. Then he smiles.

She giggles—telling people that and then having them not believe it is kinda fun—then looks at Theo. "Well, I haven't been able to figure it out over the years, so by now I only have the token effort left in me."

"Still sounds like it'd be cool to have, but if it's limited to changing sex when you feel a different gender, I don't think it'd apply to me."

"Oh, no, it's just really hard and fiddly so I mostly use it for gender. It has something to do with proprioception in a way I haven't been able to hack yet."

"… Proprioception? I thought that was just for the positioning of your body parts in relation to you, but, like, I'm guessing you mean something like phantom limb? It seems like it'd be difficult to get that detailed enough to make it care about… other changes?"

"Yeah, something like phantom limb. At least when it comes to gender it seems to be the case that dysphoria very easily triggers it, so it's sort of a matter of... feeling like I should be shaped some way or another before I actually get to do it. It's hard to force body dysphoria."

"Have you thought about whether it does healing? Like, presumably your body doesn't expect to be damaged, so if it were, it'd maybe change back from that?"

Nom.

"Doesn't do healing as far as I've been able to determine, it's pretty hard for me to convince myself I'm not hurt when I am in fact feeling pain."

"… Okay, that makes sense. I was sort of imagining – not that I expect this is a good idea or anything – how it would react if you, um, lost a piece. Since, you know it should be there because it's a part of you, like, phantom limb syndrome or whatever, but you also know that you've been hurt and it therefore isn't."

"But phantom limb syndrome is in fact a thing, and some scientists theorize that it's related to body dysphoria, so I wouldn't be surprised if it fixed that... But I really don't care to test it."

"No, I wouldn't expect you to." Nom. "So what's this for? A story you're writing?"

(Sadde has been intermittently eating in spite of the narration's lack of mention of same.)

"Oh, it's just true. You'll see when I'm actually a boy."

He shrugs. "Okay then."

After a few moments, "Got any favorite subjects?"

"Math, mostly! Science in general, I am terrible at languages and good at English but actual English class bores me."

He nods. "I'm pretty good at languages, but yeah, I like math and science too."

"Anything you don't particularly like?"

"Uh. History can get a bit tedious with, remembering dates and stuff? Geography can be a bit… um, 'colorful'? Meaning 'color in this picture, honestly, this is good classwork', which is kinda, not great." He thinks a bit more. "Um, I'm not great at art?" He shrugs. "I like lots of things, and the things I don't like so much I try to do well anyway, and then like, art I dropped so I don't have to do that anymore."

"Yeah I am absolutely terrible at art. I think I'd like being a historian, but studying history I don't. It's made too neat."

He nods, eats a bit more of his food, and then he's done. "Hobbies? Oh, reading you said – any books in particular? Specific genres?"

"Behavioral psychology, economics, math, physics, biology, sci-fi, fantasy, mysteries, sometimes your random bad romance with vampires and attractive shirtless people on the cover. How about you?"

"Mainly sci-fi and fantasy, in terms of fiction – for nonfiction it's usually like Wikipedia and various online sources and articles instead of, like, actual physical books about the stuff."

"Pretty, friendly, and smart, my, aren't you interesting."

Yes, that is a rather pretty smile he has there, isn't it? "Thanks," he says. "You seem rather interesting too."

It seems like he's being friendly more than actually flirting.

Yeah, and she has an inkling she knows why. Well. She'll try it at a more appropriate time. For now, she can maybe flirt with Cody who was more obviously interested.

Cody in fact was more obviously interested, yes. He's very willing to continue to be obviously interested, possibly for the rest of lunch.