"Yeah. And I guess I'll be over at your house a lot, at least until and unless Charlie takes the sphinxy news well enough for mine to be open."

He nods. "Do you have your phone or should I try to find something to write on? I think I have a pencil, but I don't carry paper where ever I go..."

"I have it." She pulls it out, hands it over for him to add himself to her contacts.

"I'm excited too, but I want to, you know, try taking a nap and see if this is a weird dream I tell your actual human self about next art class, or what," says Bella. "If I wake up from my nap and I can still sprout a tail on demand, I'll call you then, unless you go to bed super early Friday nights?"

"Fair enough. No, I don't go to bed super early Friday nights, but if it's after eleven I might be grumpy with you."

"Short nap," she assures him, "leftovers for dinner, phone call."

"Does Savannah not supply much outlet for magic geeking?"

"She really doesn't, no one will magic geek with me and it's terrible."

"Well, I'll fix that. If any of this is real." She turns one hand into a paw, extends and retracts her claws, then turns it back and stands up. "It looks like I didn't get too far from where I was when I blacked out, but in case I'm mistaken about recognizing the place, can you steer me back to town?"

Darren's now grinning. It may or may not just be his new permanent facial expression. "Yeah, sure." He points. "That way's to the closest road, if you take a left when you hit it you'll be back at the main town in no time. I forget the name of the road, sorry, I just saw it flying here."

"Thanks." Pause. "Do you know any other mystical creatures hereabouts?"

"Aside from my sister? Off of the top of my head there's a few griffins around, decent people but kind of dull, and I think one of the teachers is a bugbear?"

"...one of the teachers is a bugbear. Right, that makes perfect sense, of course that's a thing that happens. Is there a list of the kinds of creatures there are someplace?"

"There's a few, and they disagree with each other sometimes. Generally? What I did when I was informed was just assume that all mythical creatures were real, with some exceptions. Dragons, unicorns, vampires, some others but those were the main ones that I remember."

"...Okay, so how much racist crap am I inheriting by being a sphinx? Should I pretend to be something more popular than a sphinx? Can I realistically pretend that or is it customary to go around in fullform with one's medallion showing all the time if one interacts with other mystical creatures?"

"Some, I guess? If there's a dragon running around conspicuously not being extinct it will probably be racist against sphinxes at you. I recommend pretending to be a winged lion or something with people you don't know if you can get away with it, just so people won't - freak out and say you are a super magic fairy princess. Don't tell demons, if they already know I recommend booking it. Most people won't give you much trouble, different places have different cultures - I think lots of places find midform the norm. Others are snippy about being in fullform, and some have lots of people that like being human. Generally, no one will look at you funny if you run around in human form if you have the medallion on, though they might try to guess what you are."

"How common a problem are demons? How good are people at guessing?"

"Not extremely common, but um - they might be for you? I kind of felt a huge magic thing when you turned, I'm betting I wasn't the only one. So demons might show up and do nefarious things. They do that, they are kind of terrible. People are usually pretty good at guessing but most won't think to guess sphinx. If you say you're a winged lion or something close to sphinx, I doubt they would look twice at you."

"Okay. If I'm unable to book it versus demon or demons," she says, starting to move away from where she turned to demonstrate that (within the context of the dream, anyway) she's taking him seriously, "what's the procedure?"

"Angels and demons and sphinxes, oh my." She trips, catches herself on hands that become soft landing-friendly paws halfway down the fall, says "I'm going to have to learn not to do that in public," stands up and retrieves her opposable thumbs, and says, "But they're reasonably vulnerable to things like being clawed, if that's my only option?"