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Whatever trepidation or anticipation Dain might have felt about the next morning, it didn't seem to much affect his sleep. The only real difference was that it had been filled with a complex muddle of dreams, almost otherworldly sequences devoid of logic or continuity that vanished into the ether almost immediately upon waking. There were only two exceptions: the glimpse of those intense, unblinking eyes, gnawingly familiar but without a proper memory to match them to, and a lurid snapshot of a dream filled with bright color and aroused emotion, a glimpse into the depths of heat filtered through a lens of synesthesia.

It had been the final scene in the sequence, and the intense, almost climaxing flash at its conclusion had awakened Dain with a start. The flash quickly faded as Dain awoke, though, dwindling to a faint sensation of internal warmth - s accompanied, soon afterwards, by the feeling of moisture cooling on damp fabric. It wasn't entirely unexpected - Dain had had a couple of similar occurrences shortly after the shifting had started and before heat had begun in earnest - Eloa had dismissed them as normal and unimportant, and Dain had put it down to a side effect of her body getting used to its new form.

This time, though, the location was different. It wasn't towards the front, as it had been before, but spreading across the crotch of the underwear that rested snug between... her legs. Dain reached down to make sure, and it only took a quick tuck of a hand beneath the waistband of her pajamas to confirm her female configuration. It also quickly confirmed that whatever feelings the dream had managed to conjure up hadn't quite dissipated - an errant finger brushing a little too closely sent a quick, tensing thrill shivering through her, her thighs trying to clench around her hand to either mute or prolong the sensation. The shiver quickly dissipated, far short of an actual climax, but it still managed to coax out a couple of pulses between her legs, enough that the feeling of warmth seemed to stir back to life in her abdomen.

While the few remaining details of the dream were quickly fading away, the sensations shocking her pleasantly into wakefulness, the effect on her body seemed obvious enough. In fact, the more she thought about it, between the sensations and the unbidden wetness, could she... could she somehow be in heat? As far as Dain knew, that shouldn't be possible at all - heat was something the doctor said had been scientifically measured for many generations, and if a doctor could predict with certainty the precise date that her subsequent heat would commence, then it seemed unlikely that it could just crop up again, especially so soon after the last one. Then again, being a shifter was different enough - what if her heat worked differently as well?

As the minutes ticked by, though, and the moisture cooled against her skin, it quickly became clear that whatever was going on, it definitely wasn't heat. Instead of intensifying, with even more warmth and the buzzy, heady feeling that had accompanied it, the sensations continued to fade until Dain was hardly aware of them at all. In fact, the only feeling that intensified was the uncomfortable clamminess, and the wet fabric clinging to her bare skin no longer felt even the slightest bit arousing. At once relieved to have avoided any further heat-related issues on such an important day, and annoyed to have to deal with some of the messy side-effects anyway, Dain couldn't help but grumble at the odd start to the day as she climbed out of bed. The grumble turned to a slight growl as she pulled off her pajama bottoms, looking at the wet spot spreading slowly up the front from the crotch of her underwear - and, while there wasn't even a hint of the almost-sweet smell of heat, the scent wafting up was unmistakably female.

Quickly tugging off the offending undergarment, she scrunched it up in her hands, finding a dry spot and and using it to carefully mop at the pinkness between her legs - an action that felt more like maintenance than arousal, a distinction she realized she was vaguely disappointed by, despite the fact that anything otherwise would have probably led to even more of a mess. She grumbled even further as she tossed the wadded-up underwear into a hamper, feeling her own unwanted slickness squishing uncomfortably between her fingers. As much as it might have looked odd, given some of her new clothing, Dain had been halfway hoping that she would be able to experience her first day of school as a boy - at the very least, it would have given her a sense of inner familiarity in the midst of a brand new environment. After the dream, though, and her body's subsequent reaction, she was relatively sure that it would be some hours before her affected body would even allow her to shift back - certainly, she couldn't imagine it doing so until well after it was done... leaking all over her underwear. Despite the pleasure she had felt from the dream, Dain wasn't sure if the tradeoff was worth it, especially today.

At the very least, Dain sighed, the situation had taught her something new - that there were certain aspects of her female form that could behave in... unexpected ways even between heats, and she would have to figure out how to handle the consequences. It was certainly a surprise, though - while the kinds of feelings in the dream had been common, if not all-consuming, during her heat, as soon as the heat was over her female form had just felt... well, normal. Just there, like it always was, something that garnered little notice outside of using the bathroom, and certainly simply touching that most female area hadn't produced nearly that sort of sensation.

Caure had said something, though, alluded to it in a certain way when Dain had been with her - something about fun stuff that girls could do even when they weren't in heat. Dain hadn't really had cause to think about it much since, let alone try to figure out what Caure had meant using more direct means. Now, though, the message seemed to be a bit more clear. While Dain's male form could harden and come to life seemingly whenever it felt like it, in the absence of heat, Dain had assumed that those female parts simply went dormant until her body told them to come to life whenever the next heat began, and up until that point, her assumption had seemed to be accurate. Apparently, though, that wasn't quite the case - given the right circumstances, or at least the right sort of dream, those parts could indeed react even outside of heat, albeit without nearly the same sense of urgency and intensity. The female version of that sort of dream, though, seemed to have both greater benefits and drawbacks than the male version; while there was more wet stuff to clean up, and for a longer period of time, an experience that would have already been forgotten as a male was still somehow managing to leave a lingering thrill of warmth settled comfortably between her hips.

Given that lingering feeling, and the way that Caure had apparently been convinced that something more could be done with it even without the encouragement of heat, for a moment Dain considered reaching back down and trying to coax things back to the sensitive point she'd been at when she woke up. Before her hand could wander, though, her nose picked up on something that, on balance, commanded far more immediate attention. The smell of frying meat wafting up from downstairs quickly shifted her thoughts higher up, and an anticipatory growl from her stomach was all the impetus she needed to set aside the already-faded sensations and focus on something that was suddenly far more attractive.

Once the smell shook her away from the distraction between her legs, the reality of the situation quickly flashed to the front of her mind, and sunk in hard after a quick glance at the readout of the digital clock that sat atop her desk. Today was the first day of a brand new experience, at a school where she was supposed to be not all that long from now, and between now and then there were many things to do in order to prepare for it - the most pressing, of course, being finding a proper set of clothes to get through the day with.

Looking over at the desk, it was hard to miss the pile of clothes neatly folded and laid out on top of her desk chair - apparently, her mom had snuck in while she was still sleeping and laid out the new clothes she'd picked up for the occasion.

Dain grabbed the pile of clothes, hastily smoothing down the covers on her bed before laying the items out on top. Eloa, apparently, had been wishing for Dain's school debut as a female as much as Dain had been halfway-dreading it, and the clothes that she had picked out were an unquestionable reflection of that unstated desire.

Apparently, while Eloa had humored Dain while they went shopping together by getting her the somewhat androgynous clothes she had selected, her mom had also surreptitiously picked up some of the items from the very girly "current fashion" part of the store, clothes that Dain had previously ignored, but hard to do now that they were in front of her. The shirt was a color that lay somewhere on the border of red and pink, with frills on the shoulders and white stitching that occasionally flared out into a sort of plantlike pattern, with leafy curlicues and an occasional budding flower. The whole thing, in fact, was a little longer than it should have been, the bottom flaring out with a similarly ruffled hem, and it took Dain a few moments to realize that it wasn't so much a shirt, but more like a short dress, of the style that some of the girls in the workshop had been wearing before. To go along with it, there was something in black stretchy fabric that held only the vaguest shape of pants as it sat on the bed, with no visible pockets, buttons, or other fixtures. Dain thought she had heard one of the girls refer to them as leggings, but wasn't quite sure. They were definitely not something she had ever seriously considered wearing - as a guy, at least. The outfit was rounded out by a pair of slim, lavender socks, which were matched up with similarly-styled panties with a low waistband, and something that looked almost like an abbreviated vest, with a sizing tag that claimed it was a "training brassiere."

Dain looked at the clothes, feeling slightly uncomfortable. They were, after all, really, really girly. Then again, at the moment, so was she. Given that she seemed stuck with it, at least for today, there was a part of her who wondered if it would really be that bad to just wear the outfit, play the part, and see what happened. After all, her being a girl seemed to be what most everyone both expected and wanted, with the one possible exception of Caure - even Eloa's newfound push for a better relationship was largely based on Dain's ability to be female, and the clothes laid out in front of her left no doubt at all as to Eloa's preference. At the same time, though, Dain wasn't quite sure if that's what she wanted to be. Whether she actually was physically male or female at any time didn't appear to be very much of a choice, but these clothes were so... obvious about it. Giving in to it, giving in to being a girl, almost felt like a betrayal of her other side, her male side, and the one that she still identified with the most - or thought she did, at least. Come to think of it, though, while she'd more or less been male up until recently, Dain really hadn't acted any more typically like a guy than she had like a typical girl. Typical guys liked to roughhouse and fiddle with mechanical stuff, typical girls liked to... cook? Socialize? It wasn't really typical for anyone of either gender to devote themselves to sculpture or other, similar pursuits, and both the guys and girls she was most familiar with certainly weren't what would spring to mind when you asked someone to think of someone typical. Teiya certainly didn't fit the mold, and Caure on a usual day tended to dress almost as androgynously as she did. So really, it didn't matter, as Dain was sure she wouldn't be able to pull off "typical" no matter how she looked.

That being said, though, the clothes on the bed certainly weren't the kind of thing to wear if you wanted to blend into the background. Still, Eloa had spent the time to pick them out, so perhaps Dain at least owed it to her to give them a try... that, and she had to admit she was at least slightly curious, now that they were in front of her, to see what her body would look like in more obviously feminine clothes. Dain contemplated it for a moment more, then looked over at the clock - just time enough to give it a try. And if they did somehow work, it would certainly make Eloa very happy.

Dain began to pull on the clothing, which, once it was on, she had to admit had a certain allure in its comfort. The panties, low-cut with subtle, flat seams, conformed to her female... stuff better than her compromise ones, which was probably better given her current condition. The leggings hugged her form as tightly as possible, but they were actually comfortably snug and stretchy enough that they didn't really feel tight or restricting at all - then again, they also didn't feel quite as sturdy and covering as proper pants. The shirt-dress thing felt okay, not really any different than a regular shirt, but she couldn't figure out what the brassiere thing was supposed to do - she put it on over the shirt like it was a normal, if very small vest, but it hung strangely off her shoulders. There was some sort of clasp thing in the back that was apparently supposed to secure it closed from behind, but the device was fiddly to work, and uncomfortably tight in the chest once she managed to somehow get it to close. After a moment of muted growling, she gave up on the odd piece of clothing entirely, instead darting across the hall and heading over to the bathroom mirror to see how the whole ensemble looked.

The first thing Dain noticed was just how... normal it looked. The new clothes and the shape her body was developing into combined to display a cute, if flat-chested, girl staring back from the mirror. The clothes, certainly, left no room for interpretation - one glance, from any angle, clearly revealed a feminine form that the clothes only accentuated. In fact, upon taking a closer look, Dain realized that the clothes revealed a little more than that. The flared part of the shirt didn't really drop down enough to fully cover her hips, and the leggings were sufficiently tight that, even more than the new pants, they only served to make obvious the triangle of empty space between where her thighs touched, the third leg of the triangle formed by her crotch - and a layer of fabric that was tight enough that she could easily make out the basic contours of her pubic mound, even through the panties. No question about being a girl, indeed! That particular accentuation made Dain rather uncomfortable, a feeling that was only amplified by an accompanying thought: what if, despite what had happened earlier, she managed to shift while wearing this getup? While the ensemble might work in the female form, a shift would mean that considerably more would be on obvious display, and just thinking about how his male parts would look bulging out of the leggings made Dain want to both laugh and cringe in embarrassment at the same time. As much as this might be desired, or stylish, there was no way she could seriously wear it.

Dain darted back to her bedroom, noting that perhaps a little bit too much time had passed while she was looking over the new clothes. She hurriedly stripped them off, with the exception of the panties, which were comfortable and hidden enough not to be a problem. Tossing the now-rumpled clothes into the hamper, she went over to her dresser and pulled out one of the new shirts and pants at random. Tugging them hastily on, and salivating at the scent of cooked meat that now permeated the upstairs, she practically threw on her shoes before heading downstairs, fervently hoping that she had enough time to savor at least some of what was cooking before she had to head out the door to her classes.

Eloa was already bringing a frying pan over to the table when Dain walked into the dining room. She gave Dain a quick once-over, looking slightly disappointed. "You didn't like the clothes I set out for you? From what I hear, they're the designated style for girls your age."

Dain almost started to reply with the fact that she wasn't just a girl, but thought better of it. Eloa certainly knew what her condition was, and while it was true that the outfit was only appropriate for being a girl exclusively, given the trouble Eloa had gone to it probably would have been rude to point it out. "I tried it on, and it looked cute, but... it just wasn't me," she replied instead.

"I understand, dear. You're getting towards an age where you want to set your own style, and I respect that. I just... because it's a new environment, I just want you to fit in, so that adjusting to it will be easier."

"I'm sure I can manage... After all, Caure doesn't dress much differently, and she always seems to kinda find a way to fit in wherever she goes..."

"Well, that's probably due to reasons other than her clothes, but... as long as you feel that you're comfortable, I suppose that's what matters. Just be confident and treat everyone you meet with respect, and I'm sure you'll find a way to work things out in any situation. After all, given the way you've handled everything so far, I have faith that no matter the circumstance, you will manage to figure out the right way through."

She set the pan down, and gestured for Dain to take a seat. "Speaking of that, let's get some food into you! Don't want you to start your first day of school without a good meal in your belly!"

As Dain sat down, Eloa used a spatula to slide a hearty helping of food onto Dain's plate. It was one of her favorite breakfast dishes, hand-rolled balls of fried dough flavored with a mixture of exotic spices and just enough sweetness, paired with sizzling strips of salty, savory meat. As she sat down, though, she felt something spread across her crotch and start to seep into the fabric of her panties. Apparently, all the moving around, including running down the stairs, had caused whatever her body had generated before to start flowing out again. Her enthusiasm quite literally dampened, the discomfort and embarrassment distracting from the delicious food, led Dain to eat it ponderously and without her usual wolfish enthusiasm. It was annoying that she had to deal with it on today of all days - outside of heat, being a girl had usually been a lot less inconvenient.

The discordant behavior wasn't lost on Eloa, who quickly looked over at Dain with an expression of concern. "Dain, what's wrong? I know it's a very new experience today, and sometimes new experiences can be a little scary because you don't know what to expect, but-"

"Mom, it's not that, it's..."

"Yes, hon?"

"It's... well, it's sort of a... girl problem..."

"Oh..." Eloa looked even more concerned. "Does it... hurt? There's not blood or anything, is there?"

"No, no, nothing like that, it's just..." Dain looked down at her plate, feeling her face flush when she realized she had to explain something so embarrassing out loud. "It's, um... it's just that I had this weird dream last night, and when I woke up, I was, um, kinda really... wet... down there. I cleaned it up and stuff, but it's still kinda wet and squishy inside somehow and some of it's still coming out when I move around, it's kinda almost like heat, but instead of being all exciting and fun, it's just uncomfortable and weird..."

Eloa nodded her understanding, looking relieved - apparently, she was at least happy that whatever potentially serious thing she'd been worrying about hadn't come to pass. Dain almost thought to ask what it was she was worrying about, before deciding that she didn't want yet one more concern to worry about that probably had nothing to do with her, at least not now.

"Honey, I know it's probably not the most comforting thing to hear right now, but what you're feeling is something that's completely normal, something that a lot of women experience once they've had their first heat, and something that will resolve itself if you just give it a little time."

"Okay..." Dan replied, knowing the answer was to be expected, but still not quite what she wanted to hear. "There's no way to, y'know, stop it, is there?"

"Not really..." Eloa glanced over at the kitchen clock. "You've still got some time before you have to head off for class. If you don't mind getting started with your lessons a little early, I can tell you what I learned about it when I was your age."

Dain nodded, taking another bite, and Eloa pulled her chair over and began her explanation.

"You see, back in the time of our ancestors, well before the cataclysm or even real societies, people lived mainly outside, surviving off of the land and finding shelter where they could. In the grasslands and the tropics, where it was always warm, the environment itself was easy enough to survive in, but up in the more mountainous places, survival was harder. With thick enough fur it was possible to make it from the breeding season in the fall to the birthing season in the spring, but it wasn't easy, and a lot of mothers didn't make it on their own. The fathers, though, mainly provided additional warmth only when they were in heat, not when they really needed it. A few of the women in the mountains, though, became receptive to men's attentions even after their heat was over. In the warmer climates, such a thing brought only a slight advantage, but in the mountains, having the additional warmth in the winter made those women, and their offspring, much more likely to survive, and pass those traits on to their children, and so on. Once people became more sophisticated and civilized, and began to live together under real shelter, such traits became less important, but they stuck around as part of the normal biology. Once people from the different regions began to travel and intermingle, though, the traits were passed on to those in the different regions, and now it's something that women from any background can experience. It might not have the same importance as it once did, but it's still something from the past that stays with us.

Eloa paused, sighing. "Of course, that was all before the cataclysm - in a way, I guess, we're back to fighting for survival once again, but from a very different perspective. That being said..." She looked back over at Dain, who looked a bit glassy-eyed at the explanation. "I guess that was maybe a bit too detailed..."

"It was kinda cool to hear about, although..."

"Yes?"

"It didn't really answer my question... about, y'know, being wet and stuff..."

"Oh! Yes, I suppose I got a bit carried away with explaining the history around it, while only touching a little bit on what 'it' really is. What I was trying to say was that these days, at least for most girls and women, sometimes in between heat the body can go into a process that's called 'arousal.' Overall, it is a little similar to the things your body does to prepare for heat - specifically, it's something your body does to prepare yourself to be with a boy, usually in response to seeing one that you're interested in being with, although sometimes it can happen in seemingly unrelated circumstances - like your dream for example."

"The difference," she continued, "is that the preparation for girls is more involved than it is for boys in certain ways. I apologize if the next part is a little... graphic, but I'm not sure how else to explain it.

"I'm sure that, as a boy, you've seen how easy and direct that preparation is - the penis comes out of its sheath, and once it's all the way out, a boy doesn't have to do anything else to be ready. A girl, on the other hand, has to prepare to have something inside her for a while, and so her body has to prepare itself so that everything can happen comfortably. Because it takes more time and resources for a girl to be prepared, though, her body does it more rarely, and doesn't want to be required to do it again right away if the situation changes. As a result, when your body prepares itself like that, even if it's at a time when you don't really want it to, it usually stays prepared for another few hours in case the situation changes and you want to be ready again. It's not as bad as heat, where your body has to prepare for even more, but it can still be a hassle, I know. Well, unless someone catches your eye, that is, although you probably don't want to be thinking about that on your first day. Actually, in a way, it's almost better than it happened now, instead of later - while it might be annoying for a bit, once it finishes, there's no guy in the world interesting enough to get it going again for a similar amount of time."

Dain could feel herself flushing again, at the notion of just randomly being attracted to a guy and... doing it... without the impetus of heat to push her along. In a lot of ways, Dain was still thinking form the default position of being male, and the notion of just looking at a guy and having *her* pussy start spontaneously getting ready for him was very discordant; although, she had to admit, the notion of even a fraction of heat being available at a moment's notice was perversely intriguing. Caure certainly hadn't been wrong, and Dain couldn't help but wonder what she managed to get up to even outside of heat - although, given Caure, it was probably safer not to. At the same time, though, she was strangely relieved that the inconvenience meant that she could, soon, set all of that aside and only have to worry school for much of the day, although Dain still would have preferred that it hadn't happened at all. Especially since the current problem was was still ongoing, and becoming more pressing as the damp fabric clung to her in a progressively less comfortable way.

"Um, well that's good and stuff, but... isn't there anything I can do about it while it's going on?"

Eloa shook her head. "There's not a whole lot, no - it's just one of those things that a woman has to deal with sometimes, and in the right circumstances, I can guarantee that you'll be glad of it. That said, though, there are a few things you can do to be more comfortable. There are some women, those who like to wear dresses, who just take off their undies when it happens and let things 'air-dry,' although that's not a good idea if you're wearing pants," she continued, looking at Dain pointedly.

"Beyond that, though, the best thing you can do is wear underwear that stays comfortable when that happens. I know you don't like them as much, but you're probably better off wearing proper panties for something like this. Unlike those little shorts-things that you like, they stay nice and close against you so that things don't spread around on the outside as much, and they have extra fabric lining the crotch that helps to dissipate it some so it doesn't get too distracting." Eloa leaned over to glance down at Dain's pants. "There are some women who are very... prolific, even when they're not in heat, and for them such things aren't enough, but if that was the case with you, it would already have been quite obvious. So, just wear some clean panties, maybe pack an extra pair or two and change in the bathroom if you feel it's necessary, and you'll be all back to normal soon - maybe even by the time you get to class. Okay?"

"Okay," Dain replied, looking down to notice that somewhere in the interim, she'd managed to finish everything that had been on her plate. Apparently, extreme embarrassment wasn't enough to limit her appetite, even though her ears were practically burning after the conversation she'd just had. She hadn't expected Eloa to be quite so direct and nonchalant about it all. Even more than embarrassing, it was almost surreal - before all this, Dain could scarcely have imagined even overhearing such a conversation, let alone actually having it apply to her. There was a part of her, in fact, that almost wished she hadn't heard it, and could have simply ignored the temporary problem and set even the slightest thought of mating aside until the arrival of her next heat forced the issue. On the other hand, though, it was probably better to at least know what was going on this time, rather than finding out about the possibility in another public fiasco of the sort that almost happened with Teiya.

Dain looked up to notice that her mother was glancing off to the side - and then started as she suddenly jumped up. "Oh, just look at the time! I know this was an important talk to have, but I'm afraid it went a while longer than I thought. You'd better head up to your room and get your tablet and pack ready to go." Suddenly, Eloa was practically flying around the kitchen, verbally checking things off to make sure everything was in order. "Let's see... they'll serve lunch there, so you don't have to worry about packing anything for that, I already checked your pack to make sure you've got the supplies you need, and... I'm sure I'll have everything else together by the time you get back downstairs. Go, go!"

Eloa pulled Dain's chair back and all but threw her out into the hallway. Dain kept her balance, though, and despite the slight discomfort she felt between her legs as she moved, she managed to sprint back up the stairs to gather her things.

Before that, though, there was something else that took precedence. Dain quickly kicked off her shoes, then her pants, and finally the pair of panties, grimacing at the sheen of wetness coating the crotch. She performed another quick mop-job with the part of them that was still dry, heartened by the fact that they weren't completely soaked through this time, before hastily grabbing another pair at random and snugging them carefully into place before throwing everything else back on.

In addition to the clothes, Eloa had placed a shoulder-slung, pouch-like pack over near the door. It was decorated in an abstract series of geometric patterns in unmistakably girly colors, but for now it would have to do. Taking her mom's advice, Dain crammed a few additional pairs of panties into one of the side pockets, before stowing her tablet atop the other school equipment that Eloa had already secured within the main compartment. A quick check in the mirror, followed by a quick, pawing attempt to brush down a couple of errant tufts of fur that were sticking out on her head (probably yet another result of her unusually restless sleep) before clomping back downstairs.

Eloa, standing by the front door, tucked a packet with a few additional things into Dain's pack, before giving her a light kiss on the forehead. "Remember that it's just the first day, and no matter what happens, I'll have a nice dinner waiting for you when you get back. Just remember that you'll be fine, and no matter what you're studying, there's always a way to make it fun if you want it to be." She followed her sensible goodbye with a quick, firm pat in the small of Dain's back, shooing her out the door and on her way.

Dain was a few steps down the front path, hearing the door slam shut behind her, when she realized that she had completely forgotten to ask Eloa about the even stranger first part of her dream, and the half-remembered eyes that were so familiar. Coming after everything else, Dain was almost certain that they somehow had to be related to her father, but it was puzzling that she couldn't remember for sure. It was true that he had been gone very early on, and that she didn't have any really clear memories of him, but for some reason that particular feature, and the feelings that went along with it, had been locked in a corner of her mind, just waiting for the right sequence of events to bring them back to the front of her consciousness.

Joao. Dain turned the name over and over in her head, but repetition didn't make its significance any clearer. Eloa was probably the only person who had the most complete knowledge about him, but Dain knew from recent experience that even after so many years, the man was still a sore spot for her, and Dain respected her enough not to push her on it. Besides, what could she say? She could confirm that the name, and the eyes, were her father's, but did that really change things? He was still completely gone from their lives, probably for good, and recalling what his name was wouldn't change any of that. Still, Dain couldn't help being curious, although if what she'd seen on her tablet had been any indication, someone somewhere was just as curious about it - and about her. Dain quickly shook off the thought, though, as he had the night before - there was far more than enough to be concerned with today, and even just this morning, to allow that incident, or questions about "Joao," to inject any additional confusion.

Besides, Dain had to pay closer attention to the route today - get lost in thought, and she'd probably find herself in front of the workshop from sheer force of habit, which would make her beyond late by the time she actually got where she was supposed to be. That was especially true given how much the routes diverged - it was only a couple of blocks down the road for her house where the paths split in a Y, and soon after that were pointed in nearly opposite directions. The workshop was closer to the center of town, whereas the place that Dain would be attending school was closer to the periphery, alongside a park and one of the older neighborhoods.

Dain walked along the prescribed route, occasionally pulling the tablet out of her pack to glance at it when she came across an intersection she was unsure about. It wasn't too long of a walk, but once she crossed one particular street, the traffic cut down considerably; within a block of entering the old neighborhood, she was alone.

Glancing around as she walked, Dain couldn't help but think of Caure's abridged city. In a way, her model was actually accurate, in that she'd primarily modeled the parts of town that were actually fully populated. That made up the city center, plus a handful of the nicer neighborhoods, which essentially made up a town within a town. Outside those areas, though, the place wasn't so much a town as it was the memory of one. She could have taken a more circuitous route to stay only in the populated areas, but doing so seemed inefficient, and it wasn't the worst thing in the world to be able to walk in silence and have a moment to be alone with your thoughts.

That being said, the particular environment itself spurred thoughts all on its own - and they were the sort of thoughts, for most people, that had led to this route being traced by Dain alone.

At first, the neighborhood seemed normal enough. The streets were still lined with classically-styled houses, their paint still bright, and their windows sparkling. Glance inside a window, and it was much the same thing: rooms filled with well-kept furniture, shelves filled with old-style printed books, posters adorning walls featuring athletes and musicians popular in a bygone era. Trees still sprouted up green from backyards, vehicles with polished exteriors hulked like mechanical fossils in driveways and along sidewalks. Every so often, there was the near-silent scuttle of one of the maintenance drones that kept all the properties looking pristine, and kept an eye out for anyone who might think of sneaking into the area to do something unfortunate. In one yard, there was a metal tricycle, looking almost as new as the day it had been purchased; in another, there was a ragged trio of stuffed animals that the drones couldn't preserve, their frayed, dirt-caked fur just barely recognizable. All in all, it was almost like a museum, or a walk-through time capsule: a neighborhood frozen in place, faithfully maintained by ageless automatons, preserved for mothers, fathers, and children who would never again occupy its houses or play in its streets.

Dain couldn't help but shiver a little as she walked along, unnerved by the silence, and the contrasting loudness of her footfalls as she strode along the pavement. The notion that each one of these houses had once held multiple people, people who were obliterated so abruptly, couldn't help but be disturbing. There was still a lot about the cataclysm that Dain didn't know, but whatever it was, it had certainly been horrible, and had left only a small fraction of the population alive. The rest were just... gone, she guessed. Some quickly enough that every so often you could look into a house and still see a table set for dinner, or a board game laid out on a living-room carpet, pieces still somehow standing upright on their appropriate squares. In fact, aside from the rare sight of an old-style emergency vehicle resting at an odd angle in the middle of the street, there was almost no clue that anything bad had happened here, except for the silence that was impossible to ignore.

Thankfully, it was only a few more blocks before the houses were truly occupied again, and soon after that the entrance to the school came into view, with plenty of people populating the sidewalks again as the other students converged from their homes across the city.

The tall steel gates were propped open, swung out from two concrete pillars that framed the entrance, and off to the side there was a large sign on a smaller set of pillars that read "Averet National University" - another name that had surely meant something more before the cataclysm. Dain walked quickly between the gates, which were propped open more than wide enough to accommodate the trickle of entering students. Through the gates, the driveway turned into a paved road that went forward a short distance before branching out to either side, the two paths circling around several large, concrete-block buildings with corrugated-metal accents. Where the road split, a folding table had been set up, and a number of adults sat in a row behind it. All the students seemed to be converging on it before heading off, and as Dain grew closer, she could see the signs directing people into different lines by name. Dain quickly found the end of the line for "A-D," and it only took a couple of minutes to reach the front.

The person behind the desk, a young man with ochre-brown fur and a focused, alert face, quickly looked Dain over. "Tablet," he said curtly, and Dain reached in and retrieved it from her pack. The man picked up a small electronic device and waved it at the tablet, nodding as it beeped satisfactorily. "Right. Dain, Year One, Class One of One. Year one is assigned this term to... Turan Hall East." The man turned his head and pointed behind him. "Just up the road to your left there, first building on the right. Your first class is in Room 101 - you've already been assigned a seat, so when you get there, look for the chair with your name on it. Girls are in the first two rows, so it shouldn't be hard to find." He set the device down and gestured for Dain to move on. "Next!"

Dain walked up the road, slightly irked by the man's brusqueness, but relieved that there at least hadn't been any issue with her status as a shifter. Of course, due to the government's determination, she was probably listed as a girl first pretty much everywhere, which probably made things easier in some respects, although she wasn't entirely sure that it was better that way. For one, it would have meant that had she showed up looking more obviously like a boy, that there probably would have been some uncomfortable questions. Well, that and the fact that Dain was just as much a boy as a girl, even if the boy part was getting short shrift in comparison. Were girls really that much more important? Growing up, it hadn't exactly seemed that way - although, now that Dain thought about it, all of that had been from the context of being a boy, and getting chosen or not for something vague yet important; it did speak to the importance of the girls that they were the ones doing the choosing. Still, like it or not, both genders were a part of Dain, and she had to get used to the fact that it was the one she wasn't all that comfortable with yet that was getting all of the attention.

That quick train of thought was all it took to find herself looking up at the concrete facade of the building that made up Turan Hall East, proclaimed as such in stenciled block letters painted in blue to one side of the door. The building was overwhelmingly grey, with windows that seemed to be sunk almost a foot into their housings, and even the iridescent coating on the corrugated awnings that overhung the windows on the upper floors could do little to offset its monolithic uniformity. Like some of the buildings in the city center, it was obvious that it had been built for utility first, and there was little about it that seemed outwardly welcoming. Coming so quickly on the heels of the neighborhood from before, it was enough to set Dain's fur on edge, and she hesitated on the threshold for several seconds before daring to take her first step inside.

There were only a couple of people walking down the hallway at the moment, and the hard concrete walls made every step echo and reverberate through the corridor. There were some sort of foam tiles interspersed on the ceiling, doing little to absorb the noise, or to mute the harsh glare of the diode lights that sat almost bare in their spare, anachronistically utilitarian fixtures.

The walls, at least, featured photographs of various local landmarks at earlier points in history, mixed in with the occasional electronic notice board that proudly proclaimed the start of classes. After every few photographs there was usually a door with a number plaque and a small window, which mostly betrayed little else but the darkness of an unoccupied classroom within, only the barest silhouettes of desks and tables made visible by the thin shaft of light coming in from the hallway. Where the first hallway intersected with one that crossed it, though, there were some signs of life: an open set of double doors, with a larger sign next to them that read "Lecture Hall - Room 101," and a handful of boys around Dain's age milling around in front. They weren't boys that she immediately recognized, but despite that they seemed to take immediate note of her walking up and greeted her warmly, broad grins on their muzzles. Not really knowing them at all, Dain responded with a greeting that was courteous but vague, and while they seemed to look disappointed for a reason Dain couldn't quite fathom, the group quickly took their conversation off to the side and allowed her to enter the now-unobstructed doorway.

The room that Dain stepped into looked almost like the auditorium in the city center, where the town council would sometimes have community meetings that Eloa had rarely dragged her to. There were several rows of seats, each one elevated slightly above the others, arranged in a loose series of arcs in front of a stage area with a lectern and a large electronic screen taking up much of the wall behind it. The room was already filling up - well over half of the seats were already taken, and as she looked across the rows of faces, Dain realized that just about everyone her age that she had ever seen before were gathering here. Counting along, Dain could make out ten rows of seats, with at least that number of seats in each row - the first two populated only with girls, and the remaining eight with boys. Just about everyone who was a regular at the workshop was there, and Dain could make out a few others, whose grown faces she could just barely recognize as the boys she had played rough-and-tumble sports with, long before Dain had even heard of a shifter and had just assumed he was one of them. And of course, sitting in the front row was Caure, looking at Dain and waving to get her attention, grinning happily.

Dain walked over hesitantly, still taking in the situation. She couldn't think of another time, really, that she'd seen so many kids, let alone those her own age, in one place together. Not to mention, so many of them had changed since she'd last seen them, in a lot of different ways: most of the girls had breasts swelling out the front of their shirts, while the boys had sleeker fur and more defined muscles that their fuzzy outlines only partially masked, and the tails that Dain could see all looked a bit longer and more puffed-out. The clothes were different, too, certainly more so for the girls; Eloa had been correct that many of them had adopted the new style. While Dain recalled that a couple of girls at the workshop had worn something similar, over two-thirds of the girls in the auditorium were wearing what seemed to be the new style of outfit that Eloa had caught onto earlier: either a long, flared dress or a separate shirt and tighter, form-fitting skirt, accompanied by black or solid-color leggings. A few, including Caure, mirrored Dain's outfit of shirts and calf-length pants, and a handful of others whose bloodlines had lent them longer, plusher fur ignored the less compatible, tighter fashions for light, flowing dresses. For the boys, the fashion was a bit more uniform and didn't deviate as much from the previous versions, but all of them had brighter colors, bolder patterns, and a fit that was just snug enough to emphasize the muscular lines of their developing bodies. It was a world of difference, and Dain wasn't yet sure how to feel about it; stylish or not, she certainly felt more comfortable wearing what she was used to... well, with the exception of the panties, but at the moment she didn't really have any choice in the matter. That was the last thing she wanted to think about at the moment, though.

Panning her gaze over the assembled students, though, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of odd emotion when certain male faces stood out in the crowd: given that nearly everyone her age was there, it meant that every single boy who had been a part of her heat was, or would be, in attendance. It was strange, seeing some of them like that, especially when for many of them, the last time she had seen them was when they had been with her in the most intimate way. It was certainly a bizarre disconnect, to see people that were in many ways both acquaintances at best, and people who she knew in their most intimate and vulnerable moments, whose bodies and reactions she now knew almost instinctively. When a few of them noticed her looking over, and smiled back at her, she was sure they were feeling the same thing: ears dipped slightly in a sign of awkwardness, of not knowing quite how to handle the unique relationship in a completely different, and sexually devoid, social situation; at the same time, though, their smiles seemed genuine, and the emotions behind them would certainly be genuine as well. Heat, for sure, had a way of taking almost-strangers and immediately imbuing them with a bond that transcended the ordinary definitions of friendship, but it was a bond so instinctual that the more conscious aspects of personality had a hard time catching up with those feelings, and what they meant outside of heat. One thing was sure, though: whatever their wider personalities, the bond that lingered between them meant that, whether or not actual friendships developed from those feelings, they would always have an intrinsic motivation to treat each other well.

Dain walked over to where Caure was, still mulling over what such things would mean when she began interacting every day with boys, and probably eventually girls, that she'd been with intimately. As she walked closer to the bank of seats, she could see that each of them had a small placard with a name attached to the adjacent armrest. One one side of Caure, an empty seat was assigned to Shaie, who was apparently running even later than she was; the one on the other side, not entirely surprisingly, was assigned to Dain.

Dain sat down carefully in her assigned seat, wondering whether Caure was still in a mood from the previous day. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, Caure appeared to act as though nothing had happened, twisting around in her seat to give Dain a hug and a quick nuzzle. She pulled back afterwards, but didn't quite let Dain go, holding onto her shoulders and talking with her usual animated enthusiasm.

"Dain! Isn't this great? I didn't know how they were going to set it up, but we get to be in class together and everything! I mean, of course, so's basically every kid our age, but even so, how cool is this? Right next to each other, and in the front row to boot! I don't even really know what we're going to learn yet, but I just know it's going to be all kinds of fun..."

Caure trailed off, her nose wrinkling a little as she sniffed lightly at the air. Dain wasn't quite sure why, but when Caure suddenly leaned her head in towards Dain's lap, and came back with a smile that was decidedly more mischievous, she certainly had a suspicion.

"Hmm, isn't that interesting. Speaking of fun, it seems like you've been having some of a certain sort already... And on the first day of school, no less..."

"W-what? I mean, how did you-" Dain stammered, as Caure looked back at her incredulously.

"Dain, by now you have to be aware that women have a certain... scent... when they've been up to something, ah, intimate recently..."

"But, I mean... you can still smell it? I'm wearing pants and everything, it can't be that-"

"Um, Dain, it's not that..." She pointed down at where Dain's hands rested in her lap. "The rest of you smells fine, but your hands absolutely reek of it."

Dain groaned, realizing that in her haste to get out the door, she'd forgotten to wash her hands after her second mop-up and underwear change. "Oh, man, I forgot about that..."

Dain flinched back as Caure leaned in closer, looking a little too eager. "So, what did you end up trying? I bet it was-"

"Nothing! I didn't try anything! I just had this crazy dream, and when I woke up, I was just like that, that's all! There's no way I would actually want to be dealing with anything like that today!"

"Oh, really?" Caure let out a half-sigh. "Knowing you, it would have to be that way, wouldn't it? Seems like you're a lot more... fun when at least one of us is in heat. Although... you can at least tell me who it was about, right? I bet it was Lotoe, wasn't it? He's sure gotten cute now that he's grown up..."

"Huh? No, it wasn't like that, it was just... strange, and abstract, and really, really, um..."

"Sexy?"

Dain nodded, even as she felt herself flushing. "It felt kinda like the, the essence of heat or something, flowing through my head somehow, and then when I got up... anyway, it's just squishy and annoying, and I just want it to go away soon so I can just sit here comfortably and do whatever it is we're supposed to do here..."

"Learn something, I would guess," Caure replied. "As for the other stuff... I guess I'm surprised you're not used to it by now."

"Used to it? This is the first time it's happened... I mean, besides heat and stuff..."

"Oh... huh. No wonder heat caught you by surprise that much." Caure leaned back a little, seeming to contemplate Dain carefully. "I guess it's just because of how you are, that it took heat to fully awaken you as a girl or something. I started getting, you know, aroused like that a couple of months before the first trial heat came on, so I knew when to start preparing for it and stuff." She leaned in conspiratorially. "I guess it's different for each girl, but I actually kinda like it. It's sort of a secret little thrill, walking around all slick and warm like that, walking past guys knowing that unless they've got one heck of a nose, they don't even have a clue..." Caure paused for a second, and then inexplicably burst out laughing.

"Caure, why are you..."

"Oh, sorry, sorry! I couldn't help but hear my mom's voice ringing in my head. 'Caure, young lady, I know you like to talk, but those sorts of topics are just not ladylike!' I guess she thinks that girls aren't supposed to talk about stuff like that, but I don't see why not - I mean, it's stuff we all go through, why shouldn't we talk about it? I mean, you never know when you might learn something new and interesting..."

"Maybe... maybe because it's, um... kinda personal?"

Caure seemed only then to pick up on Dain's embarrassment. "Well, yeah, but..." She trailed off, looking around at the rapidly-filling auditorium - and noticing the handful of girls in the next row up, and a trio of boys in the row beyond that, all of whom seemed to be silently perking up their ears in an attempt to listen in to the somewhat lurid conversation occurring below. Dain, taking notice of that, felt herself flush even hotter, and hunched down in her seat as Caure looked slightly chagrined. "Um, so yeah, maybe we should talk about... anything else right now..."

Dain glanced up over the back of her seat, watching as the other students went back to their own conversations now that the "show" was over. Still, Dain slouched down in her seat, wanting for the moment to find a way to disappear. Her... issue was bad enough, without everyone else in class overhearing it, especially as her unthinking actions this morning had probably exacerbated it - no wonder the boys had been looking at her so intently when she'd walked past earlier! Still, as much as she wanted to just curl up into a ball, she didn't want to just let the conversation drop, especially after what happened yesterday...

"Um, Caure?" Dain asked, hoping that she wasn't about to make yet another mistake.

"Yes?"

"Uh, about yesterday, I mean... you're not still mad over what happened yesterday, are you?"

Caure, instead of looking pissed at her, returned to her usual smile. "Nope! I mean yeah, I was kinda mad at you for being so dense and stuff, but once I started thinking about it, I remembered that you're still part boy, so you really don't get how girls' minds approach things. I mean, you can't help being part boy, and after all that's one of the things I really like about you sometimes, so... I just decided not to be mad at you anymore, and that it'll just take a little while to get my message across by ramming it bit by bit through that thick skull of yours." She tapped Dain on the forehead to emphasize her point. "Don't worry, you'll get it eventually. After all, it's not like I'm going to let something minor like your perpetual state of cluelessness chase me off..."

"Yeah, I get your point..." Of course, after what she had just said, it was hard not too. Dain wasn't that clueless... was she? In any case, Dain wondered if it was worth it to try and call Caure out on her obsessive certainty again, but was saved from having to make the decision as the entire auditorium, now just about full, began to quickly quiet down as someone emerged from a door behind the stage.

The man who walked over towards the lectern looked to be roughly Eloa's age, with charcoal-grey fur and a tall, thin build. He was dressed conservatively, the way Dain guessed a teacher was supposed to be, and the only thing at all about him that seemed to stand out were the old-style glass-and-wire spectacles that perched precariously atop his muzzle. While some of the town elders had featured such a thing in the depictions that Dain had worked off of, the regional medical center contained advanced eye-fixing devices that made such an accessory largely superfluous. Beyond that, though, the only other thing that stood out about him came when he began to speak, talking in a smooth, rumbling baritone that resonated, clear and strong, throughout the entire auditorium.

"Welcome!" he boomed enthusiastically, resting both hands on the lectern and seemingly trying to look over all of them at once, even as a couple of male assistants walked behind him on the stage, their arms carrying stacks of squat paperboard boxes.

"Ah, yes, quite a good turnout today, as should be expected. Not the biggest class ever, sad to say, but, given your makeup, there is every hope of improvement on that front in the near future. In any case, the first thing that I have to do before going on to more interesting things is to make sure that everyone is here, which does not, at the moment, appear to be the case." The man glanced down at something sitting on the lectern, before looking back up to scan across the rows of seats. "Let's see, assuming that everyone has found their correct seat, those not in attendance are... Terove, Ahsa, and Shaie. Hopefully they will arrive shortly, as today's introduction is relatively important. And if not, then whoever lives within reasonable distance of them will hopefully get them up to speed for when they do grace us with their presence."

The teacher reached down again, briefly lifting up a tablet from the lectern and fiddling with it for a moment before setting it down again. "Well, that's squared away. Now that such a particularly irksome formality is taken care of, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tahga, and I am the supervising teacher who will be in charge of your class overall. In case you were wondering, this is your entire class seated here in this room, and these are the people you will be spending most of your education time with - at least until your specialization is determined and you move on to more specific courses of study. Furthermore, every day will begin here, with announcements and other information of note, and move on to... yes, young man? Is there a question? Simply extending your arm is generally sufficient..."

Dain looked up to see one of the boys, a few rows back, waving his arm back and forth frantically in an attempt to get the teacher's attention.

"Um, yeah, I just wanted to ask... is all the time in school gonna be like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like, you know... us just sitting here and you talking at us..."

The teacher seemed to chuckle at that, sounding off a few short, low barks. "Ah, tiring of my monologue already? Don't worry, though, young man - there will be at least equal parts listening and doing, if not more. Speaking of which..." Tahga gestured at his assistants, who popped open the boxes to reveal a series of sealed paper packets, and they began selecting and handing out boxes to the students sitting at the end of each row.

"Please pass those boxes along, and take only the packet that has your name printed on the front. You can open your packet when you get it, but please don't try to do anything with the contents yet, especially interfacing them with your tablets, until I've had a chance to go over how everything inside works."

The box passed along quickly, although Dain could already hear packets tearing open around her by the time the box arrived. There were a handful of packets left, and she quickly sorted them to either side until her own became visible. She grabbed it, handed the box over to Caure, and then tore open one of the seams, eager to see what was inside.

The contents slid out into her hands: a trio of laminated rectangular cards with rounded edges, and a chip of the type that slotted into computer equipment. One of the cards seemed to be an ID, with a picture of Dain she couldn't remember having taken, and rows of other identifying information on the front; under the heading Gender, it did in fact read Female, but the designation was also accompanied by a small, curlicued symbol. The other card looked like the one that she had seen Eloa use when they went shopping, and the third one had three gold stripes on the front and the shimmering, light-refracting sparkle of a holographic storage emblem on the back.

"Hey, how come you got such a cool-looking one?" Caure asked, and Dain looked over to see her glancing at the collection of cards in her hands. Caure flashed her own up for Dain to see - while the ID and payment card didn't look all that different, the third, unlabeled card had two red stripes across its thin metal surface, and when she flipped the back over, there was only a tiny storage strip running along one edge.

"I don't know," Dain answered, staring at her own card. Aside from the stripes and the emblem, there were no obvious labels on the thing, and she couldn't recall ever using a device that accepted a card like it.

Apparently, Caure wasn't the only one with questions. "Hey!" a boy in the third row called out. "How come the girls get three cards, and we only get two?"

"As I was saying," Tahga replied, "I'll be getting to that in just a moment. In fact, has everyone opened their packets now?" An affirmative chorus greeted him in response. "All right, then - we'll get to the explanation straight away."

"As you might have guessed," Tahga continued, gesturing in a wide wave towards the students, "the onset of your formal schooling means that, in both the eye of the law and of society, you have crossed the threshold into adulthood. While it is true that there are some adult duties and responsibilities that you have yet to grow into, today marks the onset of your introduction into the world of adulthood, and the formal assumption of your citizenship in the Global Allied Republics, with both the rights and responsibilities that accompany it."

Tahga first held up a card similar to Caure's, with two red stripes on the front. "Let me get this one out of the way first. The reason that only girls received one is that it is a type of information card related to the female-only process of mate selection and arrangement of trial heats. There is admittedly a bit more to it than that, but as the explanation would most likely be entirely uninteresting to the majority present here, I will let one of the other teachers give a proper explanation of them later on, when the girls will have a separate session with her. The young men should keep in mind that along with this card comes several other responsibilities, and therefore they may be thankful that they did not, in fact, receive one."

Tahga dropped the card, letting it clatter to the lectern, before revealing another that he had apparently been holding behind it. "This card, as you can probably guess, is your citizenship identification. That's all it does, and while you should make a habit of carrying it around, there's really nothing fascinating I can say about it. It tells other people who you are, officially; that's it. Moving on, then."

That card clattered away as well, leaving the last one resting by its corners in the center of his palm.

"And this, one, well... if you've been shopping with your parents before, you probably know what it is. If not, there's not much to tell about it, other than you can use it to purchase whatever you need from most of the shops along the downtown corridor. Now, it's not good for everything - food is handled under a different system, and so are a few other things that are locally produced, and those allocations stay with your parents until you've completed your formal education and training and are in line for a household of your own."

Tahga brought up his tablet for a moment, tapped on it a couple of times, and the screen behind him came to life, showing a much larger version of a tablet display, with an arrow pointing toward a new type of readout that sat in the lower right corner. "That shows the amount of credited resources that you've been allocated, and that will update with each purchase once the card has been linked to it. Those resources are assigned to you as part of your citizenship, and will renew at the end of each year. Everything you purchase will debit that amount, and I suppose back in some other era I would have been instructing you to watch your spending so you don't overdo and run out before the year is up. Theoretically, that might be possible if you filled your entire house, floor to ceiling, with stuff, but from a practical standpoint, the amount of resources you'll each be credited will allow you to buy all the clothes and durable goods you could need or want in the year, many times over, before reaching the limit. And why is that, you might ask?"

Tahga paused, waiting to see if anyone would respond, but the students waited patiently for him to continue. "Well, whether you want to know or not, the answer to that question leads into my next topic, and the first mini-lesson for the day, as the answer is deeply tied to certain important events in our recent history."

The screen flashed over again, to a moving slideshow of sorts: starting with a video clip of the large factories on the outskirts of town, they soon cut to what Dain assumed must be their interiors: long assembly lines manned by oddly-shaped automatons bolted to the floor, fabricating the basic frameworks of various items. More clips followed, of goods being set into cargo containers and sent onto a series of underground conveyors, and then images of the spindly, multi-armed bots unpacking clothes and small appliances and setting them onto shelves in a generic shop.

"Many, many years ago, in the times before the cataclysm, companies thrived - grand endeavors that led to the innovation of the many underpinnings of our modern life, organizations composed of thousands whose names even today grace many of the shops, though their pervasive, colloquial meaning has faded in the intervening years. These corporations, to produce their goods on a scale for everyone who inhabited the continent, assembled mighty automated factories, with comprehensive assembly lines that covered the entire supply chain, all the way from basic, raw materials to fully-assembled, finished products, delivering them seamlessly to store shelves. The factories were designed to be foolproof and largely self-sustaining, even rotating fashions on their own over the course of a decade, and were meant to be both a source of great profit for their creators, and also an enduring testament to our species' technological prowess. Nothing - not unrest, or wars, or disasters - would ever again halt our progress."

"In a way," Tahga continued, "they were right: even after the cataclysm, and the resulting damage to our society, most of the factories managed to restart themselves, automatically fix whatever damage had been caused, and begin working anew from their original instructions. What no one had anticipated, though, was that so many of the people behind the factories - those who designed them, repaired them, and set their programming - would be destroyed by a calamity far larger in scope than anyone had predicted possible. This meant that, for some factories that were damaged beyond easy restoration, very few had the necessary skills to repair them - and in the immediate aftermath, those skills were necessarily directed towards essential things, like energy plants, food labs, and medical supplies. This meant that others, like the unusually vulnerable vehicle factories, were unfortunately left to fall further into disarray."

Tahga waved at the screen, which was beginning its series of video loops over again for the third time. "Over the next few generations, people managed to dig up more of the original specifications, and more factories were brought online, but some sets of skills were all but lost: we know how to get the factories working again, producing the things that they had been designed to create, but it has been much harder to restore the corrupted files that described how to make them create something new, or even to alter the allocations of what they currently produce. As a result of these gaps in knowledge, the factories have simply been allowed to keep operating on their own, at a rate that the machines themselves manage, always ensuring that each and every store linked with a working factory is fully stocked.

"However, the stores, and factories, were designed to produce for a population that was many times larger than our current one - even though things have bounced back a little after the cataclysm, our population is still precariously small. Because of this, our material needs have been more than met, and the amount of rebuilding of technology and civilization that was required was heavily mitigated as a result. Make no mistake, though: as smoothly as things appear to function, we cannot survive by the whims of robotics alone, and beneath our modern trappings lie the hard facts of demographics: our population is so small that we as a species remain precariously on the brink, and even a disaster far smaller in scope than the cataclysm could spell our inevitable extinction. So, in a way, while such a surplus of material goods may be a slight bonus of your existence at this time, it also comes with very adult responsibilities: everyone in this room will be carefully evaluated, and will take up a position that is deemed to be critical to our survival, either within the practical positions needed to keep the infrastructure of our society going with the precious few hands we have available; or to a lesser extent within the arts, to preserve a culture that was nearly lost to us, and to provide our society with a healthy morale as we continue the laborious process of restoring our numbers and our civilization. Of course, you will all have a part in the specific restoration of our numbers as well; certainly for all of the young women here today, and most of the young men, such a task may well be their most important responsibility."

The screen flashed back to a tablet display, even as Dain could hear other students fidgeting around her, obviously restless, both from the dryness of the lesson itself, and from the idea of being cooped up in their chairs when they were far more used to running around doing things at their own discretion.

"Which brings us, then, both to the memory card in your packets - and to your next set of activities for the day. Students, please retrieve your tablets, and have them ready to work."

There was a collective rustling as the students dug around in their bags. Dain's tablet was near the top, though, and she retrieved it easily. The data slot was easy to find, and she managed to get the chip settled into place before recalling that the teacher hadn't actually asked them to do so yet. It didn't seem to hurt anything, though: the tablet just beeped, ran a quick progress bar along a window that popped up in the corner of the screen, and once the window was closed, several new icons and displays appeared and automatically arrayed themselves along the display's bottom edge.

"Ah - from the sound of it, several of you have already gotten started. For everyone else, you may go ahead and insert the memory chip that you were assigned - there's only one place on your tablets that it can go. Once it's in, just let it do its thing - and once it has finished, we'll move on to the next part of today's schedule."

A ragged chorus of beeps soon followed. "Is everyone ready?" Tahga asked, and received a set of affirmative nods. "Good. Remember when I was talking just now, and mentioned that you will all be evaluated to see where you can be of most critical use in our recovering society? That evaluation, in fact, starts now: as soon as you click on the icon that is labeled 'initial examination,' you will be presented with a series of questions to answer that will help us learn how much you have picked up about various fields. Don't worry if you don't know something; just give it your best guess based on what you can figure out from what the question says, and move on from there. It's not exactly the most inspiring thing, but it is important, and it's something that you'll soon get used to - while we'll only spend an hour or two on it a day, the full course of testing will take up the first several weeks. On the bright side, though, you do get a break from my lecturing." Tahga looked them over, swiveled his ears in a halfway-enthusiastic sign of mirth, and began to walk back off of the stage. "Start whenever you're ready, and I'll return when the program reports that the majority of you are finished - once that's all taken care of, we'll get in a quick tour of the areas of the facility that we'll actually be using over the course of the year. To round out the first part of your introduction today, we'll then finish up at the cafeteria and what, I think, will be a well-deserved lunch."

Tahga quickly disappeared behind the stage again, but the assistants stayed, watching Dain and the others carefully, shushing a few students when they tried to talk and instead pointing them back towards their tablets and the exam questions that awaited them within. Dain, though, was curious enough about it that she needed no prodding to activate the icon; she watched intently as the new program loaded past a splash screen with a government logo, which quickly faded to a series of questions scrolling by on the screen, anticipating her response.

The questions, for the introductory day at least, were not particularly challenging: mainly questions about adding and subtracting, and the basic, proper use of language. The program made no indication of correctness after each response, although Dain assumed that she did decently well; while Eloa may have been distant, she was unquestionably knowledgeable, and had always ensured that Dain was at least basically educated. While the questions seemed easy, they were also not at all interesting, and as a result Dain was quite relieved when her tablet made the faint ping that indicated the test session was successfully completed.

As she had finished well before some of the other students, one of the aides walked over and suggested that she wait outside so as not to disturb the students who were still working on their evaluations. Dain glanced over at Caure as she walked out, watching her flick her tongue exasperatedly as she poked at what seemed to be, at least for her, a particularly vexing question.

The hall wasn't all that interesting a place to be with no one else in it, but Dain quickly took note of the universal sign for restrooms jutting out into the hallway a few doors down. Dain made quick use of them, almost walking into the boys' side by mistake before correcting herself, while simultaneously wondering just how she was supposed to handle it when she shifted; in the workshop, there had only been a single bathroom which both genders used, but walking into different bathrooms on alternate days would probably attract some curious glances...

At the very least, a cursory inspection after her business was concluded indicated that the... arousal from before had abated, and that everything was essentially back to normal; well, back to female normal, anyway. There was no one else in the bathroom, so Dain decided to avail herself of one of the spare sets of underwear she had packed, replacing the current pair that was still suffering from the arousal's lingering aftereffects. The pairs that she had grabbed, apparently, were also part of her Eloa-revamped wardrobe, and were in fact an even more vivid shade, pink this time, than her previous ones. It was almost a little embarrassing pulling them on, and Dain was thankful that she was alone; she could just imagine what would happen if Caure saw her like this! Despite their color, though, the panties were at least comfortable; and, more importantly, they were dry, which in and of itself made them a considerable improvement.

After she finished changing, she stowed the previous pair away in a separate, zipped-up compartment, and this time made sure to wash her hands thoroughly afterwards. For now, at least, the embarrassment of the morning was over, and Dain hoped that she could at least attempt to go through the rest of her classes with some of the unobtrusive normalcy that her female form usually exhibited.

Dain returned to the hallway in front of the classroom, where she noticed that several other students, done with their exams, were now mingling. Caure wasn't among them, but there were a few Dain recognized: among the boys, she recognized Eiako, Naese and Toaka, boys who, thanks to her heat, now fell into the strange category of incredibly intimate acquaintances. Loen was also there, talking with a couple of girls that Dain had only seen in passing: a thin girl a couple inches taller than Loen, with grey-white fur, and a shorter, compact girl sporting almost-black fur with subtle brown stripes, and a chest that made Caure's pale in comparison. Both of them were wearing the new style of clothing, with pastel-colored shirts that nicely accented their fur, and dark leggings.

While the shorter girl, for some reason, seemed to be looking at Dain intently as she approached the group, it was the boys she was more nervous about. Despite the earlier emotional uncertainty, at the very least her brain wasn't immediately flashing back to heat at the sight of any of the trio she'd been with, but it was still hard to shake the feeling of awkwardness that settled in her chest as she approached. Aside from Teiya, she hadn't really had the opportunity to talk with any of the boys she'd shared her heat with... and given the awkwardness that had resulted with Teiya, she wasn't sure yet if she wanted to. Memories or not, even if the conversations ended up being completely innocent, it was hard not to see someone in a different way when you'd spent an extended amount of time as close to them as it was possible to be.

Still, it wasn't like she had anywhere else to go at the moment, so she finished walking over and joined the group. The boys, to their credit, didn't seem all that awkward about it; in fact, they didn't seem much of any way at all, briefly greeting her before returning to their own conversation. For them, at least, their experience of heat seemed to be self-contained enough that it wasn't hovering quite as readily in their minds. Unlike at the workshop, where boys and girls interacted with each other constantly, it was apparent that elsewhere things were a little different; whether the boys didn't want to talk to girls, or didn't think the girls would want to talk to them, they kept their conversation separate and made sure not to do anything to annoy the girls that were in close proximity. When Dain thought about it from the other perspective, though, it made a certain kind of sense: if a guy wasn't respectful and deferential to girls, it might hurt his prospects to even try out to be someone's mate down the line.

Happy that the awkwardness could be avoided, for the moment at least, Dain instead turned toward Loen and the other girls. From what she could hear, they were apparently comparing notes on the test - well, when the one girl wasn't staring at Dain, at least. Loen saw Dain approach, and was about to introduce the other girls, when the short one abruptly interjected.

"Hey, you're Dain, aren't you?" She held up her tablet and waved it in Dain's direction.

"Uh, yeah, that's-" Dain said, but stopped when the girl held a finger up to her muzzle, then pawed vigorously at the tablet.

"And you said you're a girl, right? Everyone says you are..."

"Um..." Dain tried to think of what to say, when the girl tilted her head back up, and then pointed her finger directly at Dain's forehead.

"Except that you're not! How come you're faking it, huh?"

"What?! I- I'm not, I-" Dain stammered, completely blindsided by the sudden accusation. Loen seemed almost as shocked as Dain was, and looked like she was about to speak up and correct her friend; before she could, though, the girl launched into a rapid-fire tirade.

"Sure you are! I have the proof, right here!" The girl pointed at the tablet this time, but she was waving it around so frenetically that Dain couldn't see what was displayed on it. Dain could see the eerie confidence on her face, though: like an animal that had its prey cornered and was moving in for the kill. "Bet you weren't expecting that, huh?" The girl looked Dain over. "I mean, now that I'm looking at you I guess you can kinda pull it off, but, but it's still not right! Trying to get in with the girls, so that you can, what? Try to get sneakily close to us and get us to like you for when we have to decide later on? I don't know what your plan was, but you're busted now! And if you think anyone's gonna choose you now, after this-"

She stopped short, and Dain watched as she turned, surprised by Toaka's hand resting on her shoulder.

"Um... Dain not being a girl? Really? I think you've got it all wrong, Eks."

"What! No way I've got it wrong! I have proof!"

Toaka glanced down vaguely at the tablet. "I don't know what proof you've got, but it can't trump what I have."

"Oh yeah? And what's that?" The girl looked back at Toaka indignantly.

"What I have is my own experience. You do know that Dain had her first trial heat recently, don't you? I'm not that familiar with the database all you girls use, but I'm pretty sure it's got to list that..."

"What? That's ridiculous, how-"

"Because I was there. I got invited to her heat. I was with her for it. Which is how I know that, whatever 'proof' you think you have, Dain is really, and I mean really, female. And an impressive one, at that. The things we did..." Toaka noticed Dain's ears dipping in embarrassment, though, and quickly trailed off. "She's definitely a girl, though, Ekka. No question."

Ekka looked flustered, especially when Eiako and Naese chimed in with confirmation. She didn't give up, though, instead holding the tablet above her head and pointing at it once more.

"Then how do you explain this? Right there, on the schedule, it says that Dain got invited to Caure's heat! A girl doesn't get invited to another girl's heat, right? How much sense would that make? The only explanation is, he's gotta somehow be a guy!"

"Ekka, seriously, maybe they just got an entry wrong or something. Dain's definitely a girl!"

"Huh? What are you guys talking about?" A familiar voice echoed off to the side, and Dain looked over to see Caure poking her head out of the classroom door.

"Caure!" Ekka exclaimed. "You invited Dain to your heat, right? It's not just a mistake or something, right? Tell me I'm right!"

"Uh, yeah, of course I invited Dain. Why wouldn't I?"

Ekka looked triumphant at that announcement, while the guys who had clustered around just looked confused. Caure, for her part, looked just as confused, until she apparently realized how what she had said worked with how Dain currently looked.

"But... I don't..." Naese stammered. "I mean, I was with you... I was in you, there's just no way..."

Dain tried to fight down a wave of panic. Everything was about to blow up, and trying to explain it all on the spot, in such a charged situation, was something she had hoped she wouldn't even have to think about, let alone do, in front of literally everyone she knew. All she had wanted was just a normal school day, a chance to get acclimated and figure out a new place and new activities, and now, just when things seemed almost back to the point of normal, everything was coming apart all over again. Maybe, if she'd just worn the damn clothing no one would have doubted, maybe if her first heat had been predicted and planned out by the system Ekka would have found it and disregarded the other entry, maybe, maybe... but the reality of it was, everything was suddenly coming together in a perfect storm of embarrassment and accusation, and Dain was seriously considering just making a break for it down the hallway when the teacher's voice boomed out behind her.

"What in the world is going on over here? It's only the first day, and you're already getting into it over something? Whatever it is, I'm sure-"

Ekka cut him off, waving the tablet in his face. "Tahga! You know what's going on, right? Dain's not really a girl, is he? So why's he faking it?"

"Ekka, truly, what are you- oh, that's right. I guess I didn't think to cover that in the introduction. But is that all this is about?"

"What do you mean, is that all? I think it's pretty serious, Dain faking and all-"

"Ekka, Dain isn't faking anything. For all legal and practical matters, Dain is, in fact, a girl."

Dain wasn't entirely sure she would agree with that assertion, but now was hardly the time to speak up.

"But, but... how did she attend Caure's heat, then? I just, I just don't..."

"That, Ekka, is because Dain is a particularly special case, and you being argumentative about it isn't going to explain or solve anything. However, there isn't time to go into the particulars of your current question now - the rest of the class will be emptying out momentarily, and from there we need to begin the tour so we can get through it before lunch is served. Just accept that Dain is a girl for now, and your queries will be thoroughly resolved at the appropriate time."

Ekka didn't seem to be entirely mollified by the teacher's response, but she kept quiet as the other students filed out, mercifully dropping the subject for at least the time being. It didn't exactly stop Dain's impulse towards finding a dark, empty classroom to hide in, though, and the quizzical looks she was getting from some of the boys certainly wasn't helping to suppress it. The teacher got things quickly in order, though, and with the help of his assistants managed to get the class into two roughly parallel lines, which were quickly following along behind him as they embarked on the promised tour of the facility.

The building they were currently in was, as it turned out, the one that would accommodate them for their entire first year of schooling - because of the limited size of the class, even with some specialized classes, the one building would be more than enough for them. Along with the lecture hall, there was a smaller room where the girls were told they would meet later on, for some "girl-specific" education, and some specially-equipped classrooms for certain areas of practical and scientific study.

There was also a door in one of the hallways that, unlike the others, didn't have a window of any sort, and whose handle was secured by a security card-reader. "If you were wondering about those cards you got earlier, girls," Tahga said, "this is one of the places where they'll be used - the boys you invite will be let in individually through the next door down, and only when they're supposed to be there. In order to ensure that not too much time is taken away from education, for both boys and girls, this is where most trial heats will take place from now on, for your class at least. For obvious reasons it's not appropriate to give you a tour of that area right now - however, to let you get familiarized with the setup, the cards will allow female access beginning one week before the start of your next heat. It might not have the familiarity of home, but it has been designed for the utmost privacy and comfort, with everything necessary to both accommodate a trial heat, and to ensure the learning of the proper techniques and procedures to prepare you for the real thing a few years down the road."

There was also a small indoor gymnasium, and a glimpse out the back door towards a grassy central area between buildings with the painted-on lines and notations of various sports. On the way back, Tahga pointed out the locations of the various facilities throughout the building's lower floor: restrooms, water dispensers, the notice boards that would apparently have useful information listed on them in subsequent days. They finally finished the tour by heading towards a set of double doors down a perpendicular hallway, through which emanated the delicious aroma of cooking meat and spices.

"And this, then, is the cafeteria, and the final stop on our tour - we're actually on time, contrary to my expectations, and the food should be coming out now. Select what you want, find a seat, and make sure to eat well - there are more classes and testing afterwards." Tahga then turned gracefully and walked back through the swinging doors and off down the hallway - apparently, the teachers had a different cafeteria to eat at.

As the students were already in line, they were simply directed to keep their formation as they filed over around a long, metal counter, where white-dressed workers had just set down several trays of food, still hot enough that steam was visibly wafting up from them. Ahead of the food, there were stacks of thin metal trays, and plates not all that dissimilar to the ones Eloa would set around their own dining-room table. It took a few minutes for Dain to get her turn, and she began to slowly make her way down the buffet, looking over the various dishes on offer. They were more... homogenous than the food that Eloa made, certainly, but the spices smelled enticing, and the stress of the day so far had built up a sufficient enough appetite that Dain had her plate piled enthusiastically high with some of each dish by the time she reached the buffet's end.

Holding the full tray of food, Dain looked over the rows of bench-style tables that took up the rest of the room. Groups of boys and girls were already settling around some of them, but at least half of the tables remained unoccupied. Dain was sure that she was supposed to sit with one of the groups of girls, but after what had already happened today, the last thing she wanted to do was sit with a group of near-strangers who might verbally poke and prod her about what she actually was or wasn't. Instead, Dain was content to take her tray over to an empty table in a corner next to one of the room's low, wide windows, and pretend that she was invisible enough to be able to eat in silence and peace.

Of course, that notion was instantly shattered a couple of minutes later, as Caure's tray slammed down on the other side of the table. She had a chagrined-looking Loen in tow, but at least she hadn't brought along anyone else, especially not Ekka. Both of them looked straight at Dain, their faces oddly serious, as Caure began to speak.

"Dain... we both owe you an apology. I know you're still kinda... uncomfortable talking about your stuff, and I said something without thinking that complicated that."

"And... and I'm sorry I didn't speak up!" Loen said. "It's just that she, she was so quick and determined about it, I just felt like, intimidated by it all of a sudden, but I mean... I know enough about you that I should have said something and not just let her accuse you like that..."

"Anyway," Caure continued, "we're both sorry, we screwed up, but we can't undo what's already been said. If Ekka's a problem, though, we're totally gonna take care of it and make sure she stops. Look, it's just... I know you've already been having a rough day, but... can you forgive us?"

That, at least, wasn't a question that required too much consideration. "Of course I do. I mean, it's Ekka's problem anyway. The other stuff, well, it just happened, and I'll deal with it... somehow."

"Thanks for forgiving us, but it didn't just happen," Caure replied. "We messed up, and we're totally gonna make it up to you. Okay?"

"Okay..."

"Good!" Caure grabbed a sizable forkful of meat and dug into her lunch, but had scarcely swallowed before she began speaking again. "Anyway... how are you feeling, though? I know it's been pretty rough today, but..."

"Actually, I think I'm feeling a lot better." Which was, Dain realized, actually true - despite the weirdness of the earlier incident, it actually felt almost... normal to just be sitting here, eating lunch with the two of them like she'd done so many times before.

"And the... problem from earlier?"

"It's, um... back to normal now, yeah." Dain could feel herself flushing slightly as she responded, but given that Caure already knew all about it from earlier, at least she didn't have to relive the specifics of it in front of someone else. Loen, for her part, looked slightly curious, but didn't pry further.

"Well, that'f gmd too." Caure had apparently decided that the food on her plate was good enough that talking and eating didn't have to be mutually exclusive. Dain understood her well enough, though, and they spent the rest of the lunch period talking about the new school, the exams, the future of their sculpting projects, and mercifully only briefly about boys or other "female" stuff, which Dain had already had quite enough of for one day.

Eventually, they all shifted to less talking and more eating, and Dain rapidly finished the food on her plate. True to their aroma, the various dishes weren't as good as home-cooked but quite acceptable, with an abundance of flavorful meat. There were a few dishes and spices that Dain hadn't tasted before, and wasn't quite sure that she liked, but overall it was pretty good; this, at least, was one part of school that she didn't need to be worried about.

What came after lunch, however, was another matter. As they were finishing eating, a loud bell rang out, and a moment later a handful of the assistants appeared. The boys were directed to go out first, following one of the assistants back to the lecture hall, and the girls then followed one of the others to a new, smaller classroom a few doors down. This one, instead of looking like a theater, featured an even floor with neat rows of individual desks and chairs facing the front of the room, which featured a smaller version of the digital display board from before. The walls were hung with posters showing what appeared to be some sort of anatomical diagrams - most of them at first looked mystifying, but upon further examination, at least a few of them seemed to display the sort of parts that were specific to women.

Dain was walking along one of the rows of desks, trying to decide where to sit, when she suddenly felt a pair of hands grab onto the waist of her pants from either side and tug down, hard. However, the combination of the solid waist of her pants and her newly developed hips meant that the maneuver only managed to reveal the top couple of inches of her panties instead of being completely pantsed. Dain whirled around, suddenly incensed, although she already had a good idea of who was responsible. Sure enough, Ekka was staring back at her triumphantly, although her expression quickly faded when she caught a glimpse of the female panties snug and flat against Dain's fur, without even the slightest hint of a bump that would signify the presence of a sheath or tip.

"But- But I- Y-you have to be-" Ekka stammered as Dain quickly hiked her pants back up, flushing beneath her fur with anger and embarrassment. Behind her, a few of the other girls were looking over, some of them seeming appalled, while one was doing very little to suppress a snicker... until Caure, walking over towards them with an even angrier expression on her face, cuffed the girl hard on the ear. The girl yelled out in surprise and pain, and Ekka glanced over as Caure stormed up to her, sounding nervous.

"Hey, what do you think-" was all she got out before Caure was on top of her. Before Ekka could protest further, Caure reached down, flicked the skirt part of Ekka's shirt-dress up so it sat inverted on top of her waist, and then tugged down hard on the fabric of Ekka's leggings in what appeared to be a well-practiced move. The leggings, however, had a much more elastic waist, and quickly ended up bunched around Ekka's knees to reveal her panties for everyone to see: red and white, with fluffy cartoon characters cavorting across her backside. Dain was still sufficiently stunned and embarrassed that she couldn't react much either way, but a good portion of the class burst into laughter at the sight. Ekka, for her part, shrieked loudly and quickly pulled her skirt back down to cover herself, and then tried to run out of the room in embarrassment - which, with the leggings still tangled around her knees, led to her stumbling into one of the desks within a couple of steps. The peals of laughter continued as she desperately tried to untangle herself and pull everything back into place, shooting daggers of hatred at Caure, who looked more than satisfied.

"I told you, didn't I? Keep messing with Dain and I will get you back. You got that now, right?"

"You, you..." Ekka was still stammering as she finally managed to pull the leggings back up. "How dare you-" She paused as Caure rested a hand on her shoulder - and then grabbed it, hard.

"I don't know what your problem is, but you mess with Dain or me again, and you're gonna be looking back on this little incident fondly after what I do to you next..."

Dain started to reach out, worrying that the situation was just about to get out of hand, when Ekka simply nodded, looking back at Caure with stunned, wide eyes, and when she spoke she sounded slightly terrified.

"I, uh, I didn't mean to-"

"I don't care what you did or didn't mean to do. Don't do it again, and we're good. Keep this up, and we're not. Got it?"

"Y-yes, I got it..."

"Good." Caure let go of Ekka's arm, leaving her trembling slightly as she leaned against one of the desks. Caure's next stop was right in front of Dain, where she grabbed her shoulders, albeit considerably more gently.

"Dain, are you all right? I can't believe she'd do that, I..." Caure trailed off as she looked around, noticing that just about all the other girls were staring at her. "Um, uh... really, I'm not usually like that!" she said to them. "Just ask Shaie and Loen! I just... I can't stand people being picked on, all right? Just 'cause Dain's a little different and didn't get any breasts doesn't mean she's not a fake, or not a girl, or whatever! I mean, most of you just saw, right? Dain's a girl enough to be here so stop bothering her!"

"Indeed she is," came a soft, high-pitched voice from the front of the room. Dain looked over to see a short, solid-looking woman with medium-length, well-brushed tawny fur, wearing a leaf-patterned dress and spectacles similar to those worn by Tahga. Apparently, she had managed to walk in while everyone was preoccupied by the altercation between Caure and Ekka, and only now had made her presence known. The other girls quickly noticed the interjection, and silence fell as everyone looked over at their new teacher, wondering what she would do - Caure, certainly, must have been wondering just how much she had heard, and what kind of trouble would follow. The teacher, though, merely gestured for them to take their seats, and after the shuffling of desks and the scraping of chairs had faded off again into silence, the teacher began to speak.

"Quite a spirited class we have already, I see... but of course, it is your first day, so I suppose that is to be expected. My name is Selaue, and as you might have already guessed by what's plastered on the walls, I'll be teaching you about the stuff that girls, and only girls, need to know - fun, and important, things such as heat, mate selection, the 'sacred rituals' for proper breeding, and so on. The subject doesn't need more introduction than that, so get out whatever you like to take notes with, and we'll begin.

"Before we do though, I should tell you that in my class, there are only a couple of rules: everyone respects everyone else-" she paused, looking slightly pointedly over at Caure and Ekka- "and there is no question too strange or weird or icky for you to ask, or for me to answer. Today, though, we're going to start out by telling you about something that you probably should have learned about earlier - and which might have made things a little bit less confusing today. Isn't that right, Dain?"

Selaue smiled over at her, and Dain could feel herself flushing again, her ears dipping as she tried to make herself invisible again. Selaue seemed to notice Dain's expression, as she quickly sought to reassure her.

"I apologize for singling you out, but it can't be helped, as you're the only one here that this applies to. However, I think that once everyone here has had a chance to hear what I have to say, the confusion that seems to be surrounding you should be cleared up once and for all. So, the first thing we're going to talk about today is a very special class of people called minor shifters, who are in a meaningful sense just as much women as any of us here; and more specifically, especially during these trying times, they have a very important part to play in the restoration and long-term survival of our civilization."

Selaue then went into a lesson that was not particularly different or more revealing than the one Araune had given Dain at the onset of her heat: their adaptability, their ability to provide additional offspring when females were rare, and their place in modern, post-cataclysm society. As she spoke, Dain looked around the room, and watched as the girls looked between her and the teacher, understanding beginning to dawn on their faces. By the end of it, their looks over at Dain seemed either interested or sympathetic, and Ekka looked especially chagrined.

As the lesson concluded, Selaue asked if there were any questions, and a couple of girls raised their hands - one of them was Loen.

"Yes, Loen? What would you like to know about?"

"Well, you said that Dain was a minor shifter, so... what's a major one?"

Selaue looked a little surprised by the question, but it didn't seem to faze her. "Why, that's quite an interesting question! I'd never actually thought about the possibility, myself, as I've only heard it discussed with the specific terminology I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, that means I don't actually know if there is such a thing off the top of my head, or how it might differ from a minor one. However, I'll make sure to look it up thoroughly in the school's educational database tonight, and have an answer for you tomorrow. Anyone else? Yes, you... Galaie, was it?"

"Yes, ma'am," the girl replied. "I was just wondering... you said that Dain can be both a boy and a girl, right? So why is he- she? - in the girl's class and not the boy's? Or is she supposed to go to both?"

"And that's quite a good question, too! I might have talked about it just a bit during the lesson, but there are actually a couple of reasons why shifters are considered female for all practical purposes. The first one has to do with the procedural aspects of it: only women can use the system for mate selection and heat scheduling, and because that is one of the most important parts of a shifter's responsibilities, just like any other woman, they are considered legally female and treated as such. The other reason is that, while a shifter may present as either male, female or both growing up, once they go into heat, they spend much of their time in the female form due to its nature. It is the only form that they can take during heat, and also during pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding - while shifters do not usually develop the physical bust of most other women, their mammary glands are fully functional. Given their responsibilities, this means that they are by default female much of the year, and most of them choose to be so over the remainder of the time for comfort and consistency, only manifesting their male form when it is specifically necessary for breeding."

Dain listened to the explanation, although it inspired feelings of both relief and dread. At least it meant that there wouldn't be any more questions about whether she was "legitimately" a girl, which, given her situation, was certainly good. At the same time, though, Dain was definitely of mixed minds about her female form: from the craziness of heat to the unwanted dampness and everything else, Dain was less sure of the benefits of it now that it was more, well... active? When it had been unobtrusive and only slightly different it hadn't really been that bad, but now that other things were happening with it, and not just during limited periods of heat, Dain was certainly happy for the times when he could simply be male and have everything be far less uncomplicated and uncontrolled. If she was going to end up being female most of the time, though... that was a prospect she wasn't so sure about.

Those were the only questions, though, and the other girls, seemingly satisfied now with Dain's place among them, were happy to move on to other questions. Beyond the hasty explanation regarding Dain, the first class apparently didn't have another specific lesson plan, and Selaue simply allowed the girls to ask whatever they wanted about boys, or heat, or whatever else for the remainder of the session. The questions about boys weren't all that interesting to Dain, though, being as she had more than enough experience actually being one. She thought about asking a question about the stuff she'd had to deal with in the morning, but was hesitant to bring it up in front of the whole class after already being the center of attention earlier. As it turned out, though, she didn't need to, as one of the other girls, Deila, brought it up towards the end of the session by asking whether it was possible to be "just a little bit in heat" between periods of actual estrus.

"Hmm... I think I know what you're talking about," Selaue replied. "That feeling that's not really like heat, but sometimes when you see someone that you find attractive, feels nice and warm and a little, well... wet?"

"Yeah, like that..."

"Okay. Well, the good news is, it doesn't mean you're going into heat all of a sudden! As most if not all of you know by now, heat is a very distinct thing, and it arrives on a very predictable schedule. The feelings that you may get in between, though... well, that's something that varies quite a lot, in fact, from woman to woman. Some of the girls here may not even know what you're talking about, as they may never, or only very rarely, have experienced the condition that you just described.

"That being said, it's not actually a medical condition, more just... well, the best word for it is arousal. It's not entirely dissimilar to heat, in that your body enters a state in which it becomes, in this case mildly, aroused; that is, it determines that there is a likelihood of, or desire for sex in the near future, whether it's really present in your mind or not, and gets ready for it. To do so, as it does in heat but to a far lesser extent, it begins by diverting pressurized blood to create a vasocongestive effect on structures such as the internal lining, readies the tensioning muscles in the pelvic floor, and begins the process of generating lubrication by..." she trailed off as she noticed the blank looks on many of the girls' faces.

"Er... sorry! I'm used to teaching the more advanced classes, for the boys and girls who are going to go on to become doctors, but I was the only one available to teach this class when it came up, so in a way I'm learning how to run it at the same time you're learning how to be a part of it. What I said before, though, stands - when that particular series of biological processes happens, it's a sort of limited way for your body to get ready for sex, if you then want to have it. It's by no means as strong or all-encompassing as the response that occurs during heat, and it's not precisely necessary for reproduction, but rather is something that developed in some areas as part of our species' evolution. As such, it's not something that is universal, and varies a lot depending on who your ancestors were, and where they lived. For some women, this sort of condition isn't experienced outside of heat at all, although that's often accompanied by especially strong and particularly productive heats. Conversely, for a few women, it's a state that they are in most of the time, and for them the only difference between heat and their normal condition is a matter of degree. Women today can fall into any of those categories, or anywhere in between. Certainly, it can seem like heat a little bit because of how it makes you feel, and in some ways it might feel more exaggerated, as the swelling involved in heat can keep certain products of arousal more comfortably inside, which can in some cases make you feel even more 'ready' in some ways that heat does, even though this sort of arousal is actually much less involved."

Deila spoke up again once it seemed Selaue's explanation was concluded. "Okay, but... what are you supposed to do with it? The way it is with heat, is that you're supposed to invite boys over and do, um, stuff with them, but this happens a lot more and sometimes when there aren't even boys around so... if it means we're getting ready for, y'know, stuff, are we supposed to go and find boys, or..."

"Ah! I see why you might be confused, given the way my explanation talks about heat, and how this is related to it. How it isn't related to heat, though, is that it merely lets allows your body to do certain things if you desire them, rather than the way estrus demands it. You don't, in fact, have to do anything with it - as you have probably already felt, once the stimulus that has caused the arousal is gone, it just takes a little time for everything to return to normal, and if there is any external lubrication, it can easily be wiped away or allowed to evaporate. That being said, there are also more... fun ways to make use of it, if you're in the mood.

"There are certain things you can do on your own, or... well, it's not exactly on the curriculum, but the process does make you ready for boys, and you can do some things similar to heat with them when you're in that condition. It's not exactly standard, per se, but back when I was in school I made use of it to, ah, test out some guys I was sort of on the fence about inviting to my trial heats. Way back when, when there were diseases that could be spread through that kind of contact, that sort of advice was definitely discouraged. One side effect of the cataclysm, though, which I'm sure you'll be learning about much more later on, was that it eradicated most diseases, among all the other things it hit, including the sexually-transmitted ones, so these days there's really no harm in experimenting outside of your normal trial heats.

"That being said, though, it's not really so much like heat in that it manages to facilitate everything easily, so you have to take some precautions: don't let a boy go inside you unless you're absolutely sure you're ready, stop immediately and have him pull out if anything hurts, and whatever you do, make sure that neither of you try to get the knot to go in - there are very specific changes that take place during heat that allow your body to accept it, and trying to do so without them could lead to a very painful and dangerous injury. The boys, I'm sure, have also been told about that, and to only do sexy stuff with a girl if she initiates it - if a guy ever tries to force anything on you, during heat or not, you should use the facility on your tablet to report it. Any guy who forces a girl is permanently banned from being invited to any heats ever again, though, along with other very serious consequences, and once they understand the stakes it makes that sort of behavior very unlikely."

The girls all nodded at the thorough explanation, which Dain had to admit was considerably more comprehensive that what Eloa had tried to tell her before. That didn't change the fact, though, that the condition didn't exactly lend itself to being comfortable during daily activities that didn't involve any sort of mating, and also seemed to be something that could just be spawned spontaneously, by whatever happened to be ephemerally "attractive." Aside from the dream, though, nothing else she'd gone through today had seemed to exacerbate it - although it was always possible that was simply because she'd already been in that state in the first place.

There were a few other questions, but nothing all that interesting - a couple of things about heat that she'd already mostly figured out just from experiencing it, and a couple of things about girls' hygiene that Dain had also mostly figured out on her own but took note of anyway. The teacher wrapped up the session by telling them that the next couple of days would feature some short assessments to gauge their overall knowledge about mating-related things, with more formal instruction on sexual health and some of the basic "rituals" later in the week. As they finished up, a high-pitched, melodic tone rang out over the speakers mounted overhead, which Selaue told them meant that they had a ten-minute break before they would meet back up with the rest of the class in the lecture hall.

Dain had just finished stowing her tablet back in her back, and had barely gotten to her feet, when Ekka all but ran into her. The girl grabbed Dain by the shoulders, but not as aggressively as before. Dain could hear Caure let out a growl from behind her, but Ekka seemed considerably changed from her earlier attitude - instead of being accusatory and kind of mean, she looked to be almost on the verge of tears, her ears flattened down and angled against her head in an unusual display that seemed to combine guilt, deference, and sheer terror.

"Dain, I- I screwed up big time, all right? I just didn't know, I assumed 'cause of what I saw. That's just how I am sometimes, I latch onto something and I just go with it thinking that I know what's right, and sometimes I'm wrong but I don't want to admit it because it feels bad, but I... I just wanted to be right, okay? I thought I was right, and that it was right of me to expose you for what I thought you were, and maybe that was a little mean, but... you were mean to me too, right? Well, Caure was, but you got me back, and now everyone's gonna laugh at me because of that and everything else, and I'm just begging you... to just be even, okay? We all did some bad stuff, and maybe I did more, but can we just be even? I was wrong, and I kinda misled myself, but... it's not like I hate you, or anything! I mean, now that I know, it's actually kind of cool, and... well, maybe I messed up so bad that we can't be friends, but can we maybe not be enemies? I really don't want you or Caure to hurt me, and I'm scared that she will..."

Dain was, if not exactly blindsided, left slightly reeling from both Ekka's trembling grip on her shoulders, and by her abrupt and emotional about-face. Dain knew from her experience with Caure that a small proportion of girls were more prone to have rapidly changing emotional reactions, and to project those emotions onto everyone they met, although in Dain's experience being acquainted with just one of those girls was more than enough.

At the same time, though, Dain understood that Ekka's emotions, while perhaps overly dramatic, were certainly logical - and she had apologized, although whether that was out of guilt or fear Dain wasn't quite sure. Whatever her motivation, though, she had a point: while her actions had been aggravating and embarrassing, they hadn't really caused Dain all that much harm, and it was Ekka who had been shamed and intimidated in front of everyone else, while Dain had had a teacher all but praising her virtues over the course of a lesson. Ekka was coming to her, now, from a position of weakness, and there was a part of Dain that knew it would be trivial to take revenge, let Caure loose, get more people on her side and set everyone against the girl for her mistake. Looking at her scared face, though, that flash of anger quickly subsided, and Dain realized she felt... if not exactly sympathy, at least some sort of understanding of Ekka's situation. After all, she'd made impulsive decisions before, and if Teiya had rejected her advances that day in the workshop, and made fun of her out-of-control heat and painted her as some kind of animal, if people had started to hate her and turned the workshop, her one place of belonging, cold... whatever Ekka's faults, that kind of thing wasn't something she'd wish on anyone. Plus, this was just the first day - if she didn't make peace now, who knows what sort of mess it could turn into after a full year together.

Dain reached over and set her hands lightly against Ekka's arms. Ekka almost seemed to jump from the sudden contact, but her eyes seemed to have a glimmer of hope as she looked back at Dain. "So...?"

"Ekka... I really don't like what you did, and I don't think we're even 'cause I didn't do anything to you, but I kinda get it... I mean, I know it's confusing, it's confusing for me too, but that doesn't give you the excuse..." She paused, trying to figure out the right way to say what she wanted to get across.

"What I'm trying to say is, what you did was mean, but you apologized, and we've gotta be together for a whole year, and I don't want that year to be us just being mean to each other over and over. I don't like being mean, I just want to be... okay with everyone, I guess. And if you're okay with me, and you're not going to do any more mean accusing stuff like that, to me or anyone else, then I can be okay with you."

"Okay," Ekka replied, actually smiling a little. "Okay is... okay. I promise I won't do anything like that ever again. It's... sometimes I just get too carried away, it's not like I try to piss people off, that's just how it turns out sometimes, and I'm glad you don't hate me forever because of it. But... can you maybe talk to Caure for me? I think she might just hate me a little bit..."

"Oh, I don't know about that..."

Ekka started at the voice that came from behind her, and Dain looked over to see Caure looming just behind the girl - somehow, while the two of them had been talking, she had managed to pad right up behind Ekka, with a stealth that anyone not familiar with Caure would certainly find surprising.

Caure grabbed on to Ekka's shoulders, her claws pushing in just enough to indent the fabric and let Ekka know they were there. Caure had certainly heard the whole exchange, though, and her anger from before seemed to have morphed into a far more familiar expression: the devious, teeth-baring grin which signified that Caure had just come up with some sort of... interesting idea.

"Ekka... I'm not mad. I'm not mad, because anger is a boring emotion that gets in your way and that you can't have fun with. Plus, I already got to see you humiliated, and I know from the way you reacted that you're not going to challenge me, or anyone that I care about, ever again. Right?" The claws dug in just a bit deeper.

"R-Right..."

"Good! Now that that's clear, we can all get along again, like one big, happy family - well, not family family, but you get the idea, right? You screwed up, you apologized, and now you know better. And like I said, you're just way to much fun to spend anger on... and as long as you keep in mind who's in charge, friendship might just still be on the table. Especially since I *just* figured out how you can get back into Dain's, and my, good graces."

Knowing that smile, Dain was almost afraid to hear what Caure had in store. Ekka looked nervous as well, especially since Caure was looming over the girl and practically breathing the words into her ear, but she only hesitated long enough for Caure to give her shoulders another squeeze before nodding for her to continue.

"What do I have to do?"

"Oh, it's beyond simple, actually. You see, after all that talk about the scheduling program, I thought to check it myself - and what do you know, it's you, in fact, who's going to have her second trial heat coming up in just a couple of weeks."

"S-so?"

"Like, I said, simple. Just log on in - I know you haven't finalized it yet - and invite Dain to your heat."

"What?" Apparently, that was not what Ekka had imagined Caure had in mind. Ekka looked over at Dain, though, and judging from her expression, Ekka somehow didn't look particularly perturbed by the thought.

"Think about it - why not? You were the one who wanted to find out so desperately about his male side, so why not experience it for yourself? And since you've gone through it before, you know there's nothing better than sharing heat to smooth things over, right? I mean, just try and tell me there's any guy you mated with that you don't still think fondly of somehow..." Ekka, after thinking about it a minute, got a sort of wistful look on her face and nodded in assent as Caure continued. "Besides, even if Dain wants to call it all even, you have to admit you still kind of owe... um, him, in this case. And there's no better way to make it up to him than letting him share your heat with you. So... why not, right?"

"I guess..."

"Great! Dain, go ahead and let go of her, so she can go get her tablet and get you signed up."

Dain released his hands, although the feeling that the situation was still getting away from her was still quite strong. Caure did have a way of stepping in and... imposing her will, without exactly giving Dain a chance to get much of a say in the matter.

"Um... Caure, shouldn't you, y'know, ask me first if I want to before-" Dain trailed off abruptly, as Caure had used the opportunity of Ekka stepping away to move in face-to-face.

"Hmm... you sure about that?" Caure said, leaning over to whisper breathily in her ear. "Now that everyone knows, seeing your name on an invitation can only bring you more prestige, and more invitations, right?" Caure leaned back just a bit, gesturing at the other girls who were still milling around - and at the way many of them were not-so-surreptitiously sneaking glances at Dain. "In a weird way, Ekka was actually kinda right - not that you meant to or anything, but the fact of the matter is, you are in with the girls now, they're all gonna get to know you. And since you're such a nice guy, and girl, at heart - I mean, you couldn't even manage to stay mad at the girl who's probably messed with you the most in your entire life - there's no way they're not going to end up liking you. That, plus your newfound prestige, means that you can have all sorts of fun. Play things right, and any girl here is gonna want to invite you just from you asking."

"Plus," Caure said, leaning in even closer, "you go to Ekka's heat, you can work out any aggression you feel towards her directly, if you want. I mean, not like hurting her or anything, but you can play a little rough, a little wild - and if she's anything like the kind of girl I think she is deep down, all she'll do is wrap her legs around you and scream for more..."

Dain could feel herself flushing again from Caure's salacious whisperings, although in her present form, what Caure suggested felt more... squeamish, than anything else. She thought back briefly to her encounter with Taore, and while that had managed to resolve itself, it hadn't exactly been comfortable. Were there girls who actually liked that kind of thing? Was it... worth liking?

Dain felt Caure pull back, though, and quickly snapped back to the present. Ekka had returned, and Caure was quickly leaning over her shoulder, making sure that Ekka was doing what she was supposed to. A moment later, Dain heard her own tablet give off a chime from inside her bag, and was quite certain of what it signified.

"All right, that's settled, then!" Caure said, rubbing Ekka's shoulders. Dain realized that she still hadn't exactly been given a chance to say anything about it, although if it came to it, she could probably reject the request - given the mess that would cause with Caure, though, it wasn't likely to happen. "Anyway, the break is gonna be over soon, and I need to freshen up before we go back to class. Ekka, you should come too..." Caure trailed off, leaning close to Ekka's ear again, and talking softly, but just loud enough so that Dain could make it out. "You see, while the other girls might have laughed at your panties, I have to say, I thought they were cute and absolutely adorable, and I just have to get a look at them again. A nice, long, lingering look..." Caure flicked her tongue across Ekka's ear, and Dain saw her visibly shiver in response as Caure looked back up. "Hey, Dain, how about you come too?"

"Um, er... I already went earlier, so I think I'll just, um..."

"Okay. See you in class!" Caure headed out of the room, leading Ekka after her by the arm. Dain retrieved her pack and headed back to the lecture hall, noticing midway through that there was a pack of girls following her by a few steps and whispering amongst themselves. When Dain looked back at them, they grinned shyly back, and just kept following. Dain wasn't quite sure what to make of it, so she kept walking and quickly made it back to the lecture hall, trying as hard as she could not to imagine what Caure was getting up to with a newly-coerced follower of her own.

When she returned to her seat, she noticed a lot eyes following her from the boys' section as well - apparently, whatever talk they had received had contained a similar explanation about her. Dain wasn't quite sure how she felt about the newfound fascination people seemed to be having with her after the explanation, but nothing beyond the glances immediately came of it. Caure and Ekka came in a couple of minutes later, with Ekka looking rather flustered and walking a little hesitantly, and Caure somehow managing to look both immensely pleased and disappointed at the same time. She looked like she was about to tell Dain about what had transpired in the bathroom, but the teacher walked back up to the lectern and quickly had them working silently on another round of tests, this time with slightly more specific questions.

After the test, the teacher thanked them for their first day of attendance and formally dismissed the class, although the chime had sounded a few minutes earlier as the testing was wrapping up. Dain, being in the front row and finishing just a bit ahead of schedule this time, was among the first out the door - but only made it a few steps into the hallway before she was virtually mobbed by what seemed to be the majority of the class, boys and girls alike, crowding around her in a jumbled cacophony of questions. Apparently, for most of them, the idea of a shifter was novel and fascinating, and they all wanted to know more.

Dain could pick up some of the questions out of the maelstrom: How did it feel? What was it like? How did it work, exactly? The boys wanted to know what it felt like for someone who was also a boy to go through heat, and the girls wanted to know what it felt like being a girl and attending someone else's. Dain though to mention that maybe they should just ask each other if they were that curious about it, but she was hard-pressed to get a word in edgewise about anything over the flurry of questions. After a few minutes of confusion, with Dain struggling to cope and hovering near panic in the center of it all, a few of the assistants came by to break it up and coax the other students into heading home. Most of them did, although a few of the more persistent ones tried to hang around and ask more detailed questions after the main crowd had left. Caure growled at them, though, baring her teeth a little, and they quickly excused themselves and headed off elsewhere.

"Wow, I'm not normally this aggressive," Caure said once they'd taken off. "I don't know what's gotten into me today, but I just feel more... excited, in charge, something like that. This was a good day, and it's going to be a very fun year, I think." She looked over at Dain, her brow furrowing. "Er, not that what happened to you today didn't suck, obviously. I'm really sorry about that, and I'm trying to make up for it. Hmm, maybe that's what it is... something about standing up for you, something about standing up and making things happen like that, it just felt right, somehow. And hearing about your little thing this morning, and that bit of... well, almost fun I got to have with Ekka, that was good too. In a different way, of course, but still good."

Caure rested a hand lightly on Dain's shoulder. "Anyway, wanna walk home with me? At least as far as where we'd have to split up, I mean, and then I can tell you all about the stuff with Ekka and other things..."

"Um... actually, I think I kinda just need to be, well... not talking with anyone right now, okay? Thanks for helping to break it up, but after that, I just kinda... I just wanna hide somewhere, really, but what I mean is I can't really take any more talking or people right now after that. Maybe later or something, but right now I just... I need some time to be by myself."

Dain looked back at Caure, who looked a little disappointed but nodded nonetheless. "Yeah, I can totally understand after seeing that. I guess if a bunch of people had mobbed me like that, I probably would've ended up biting someone or something like that, so you did better than I would have. I'm totally going to hold you to calling me or coming by later, though. You got it?"

"Yeah. It's not like I don't want to to talk to you, it's-"

"I know - like I said, I get it. Just talk to me later. And remember, not all girls are completely weird like Ekka, okay? Although you probably already know that..."

Caure walked off, humming along to a tune Dain hadn't heard before. As Dain watched Caure swinging open the front door to the building, she took a moment to lean against the wall and catch her breath, wondering at Caure's last statement. After all, weird was a word that described Caure to a tee, but at the same time... what she had done for Dain today, whether or not it was for her own strange reasons, Dain realized that it said a lot about who she was. Weird or not, crazy or not, obsessive or not, Caure certainly meant what she'd said - whatever her fantasies about their future together, or whatever the eventual reality of it would be, there was no question at all that Caure cared about her at least as much as her actual family, what little of it remained. And, while her approach wasn't always what Dain wanted, it was always, in either a straightforward or subtle way, Caure trying to act in what she thought were Dain's best interests. For a moment Dain actually felt bad about not walking home with her, and wanted to seem more grateful for how Caure had supported her today, but she also knew that what she had said to her earlier was right - after the day she'd just had, she more than needed a break to collect her thoughts and get her head around everything that had happened in the course of an already jam-packed and crazy day.

After leaning against the wall for a while in merciful silence, and feeling a little bit more under control, Dain walked down the hallway and headed outside. She took a few steps toward the gate, then paused when she noticed a few people from her class still milling around at the entrance. Dain still didn't feel up to dealing with any more questions at the moment, though, so she took the path in a different direction, around the corner of the building and toward the open area behind it. There were a few small groups of boys playing on some of the fields, although it looked more like groups of friends messing around than it did anything organized. Dain only recognized a couple of them from around town, though, and they paid her little notice as she walked around the periphery.

The campus seemed to be made up mainly of four multi-story buildings, one at each corner of the fields, with several other, smaller outbuildings roughly encircling the campus core that they formed. The other buildings, Dain assumed, were for the other years of students that were attending. Dain wandered up to one on the other side of the field and, noticing a door ajar, poked her head inside.

The building seemed to look mostly the same as the other one, with hallways that were nearly identical - the only difference was that the wallboards carried different and more detailed information about upcoming classes in different subjects. It was also, at that time of day, just as deserted - apparently, all the classes let out at the same time, and most of the students had no reason to stick around.

Dain walked along the hallways, her footsteps echoing eerily off the walls, enjoying the silence and taking in the eerie ambiance of the empty building. Unlike her walk that morning, which had been more unsettling than anything, the empty building, with its glowing lights and automated signs displaying to no one, had more of an air of mystery - the possibilities that might be lurking behind the dim light of every closed door. Occasionally, there would be a glimpse of desks, or a computer terminal, posters on the walls with half-shrouded sights that Dain had never come across before. Aside from the slight clatter and hum of an automated bot that seemed to be scrubbing a marginally cleaner path along the floor, the building was almost majestic in its silence, and to Dain it was immediately a source of calm and relaxation.

Which was why, when she turned a corner down one of the other hallways, she almost started in surprise at the sight of someone else in the building. It was two people, actually - a boy and girl from one of the other years, the brown-furred boy wearing a loose shirt and snug shorts, and the girl with mottled grey fur clad in the apparently popular style of shirtdress and dark leggings. They were leaning up against the wall, pressed together in a tight embrace - apparently, they had sought out the quiet for other purposes.

Dain almost thought to turn around and walk away, but the boy looked over his partner's head to lock eyes with her. Dain froze in place, hoping that she hadn't pissed the boy off - he looked significantly bigger than her from what she could see, and his fur did little to disguise his muscle. Instead, though, he just smiled and gave Dain another long, intense gaze, before tilting his head down to lock his partner in a lingering kiss.

As he did, he hugged her closer to him, with one hand running down her back and along the base of her tail, until he found the hem of the skirt, undid the tail-tie, and hiked the snug fabric up around her waist to reveal her legging-clad posterior. It was easy to see why the girl favored the outfit, as it hugged every curve of her ass and hips, and the small rise of the mound that lay between her legs. While the girls from her own year had shown almost as much at times, something about the way that the girl was starkly displayed before her in the boy's arms sent a little thrill of excitement through Dain's body as she watched.

The boy rested his hand agains the small of the girl's back, pulling her forward against him, and the girl's legs were apart just enough for Dain to see the front of the boy's shorts in between them, the fabric just snug enough that it did nothing at all to disguise the protruding bulge tenting out the front of them. Dain watched, strangely fascinated, as the girl wrapped her hands around the boy's neck and returned the kiss enthusiastically. The boy's hand was soon on the move again, running gently over her ass and along one of her thighs, and then back up to caress her posterior. Suddenly, though, he spread out his fingers, grabbed one of her buttocks, and surprisingly gave it a firm, quick squeeze. Dain could see the fabric stretching around his fingers as they squeezed in, and the girl made a high-pitched yelp around the kiss and shivered forward, even as the boy simultaneously used the squeeze to pull her in and move his own hips forward against her. The bulge rocked up, and Dain could see it push in between the girl's thighs, white shorts pressed taut against the stretchy black fabric. Dain was close enough that she could actually see the covered silhouette of the girl's mound squish and stretch easily against and around the bulge, and the girl squirmed in his arms and let out a short, low moan as the boy humped forward against her, letting their bodies linger together for several seconds with the tight fabric around her mound rippled outward around the bulge pressed in closely against it. Only the first few times were unilateral, though, and soon the girl was grinding her own hips back against him with at least as much enthusiasm, if not more.

After several more seconds of the two humping and writhing against each other, the boy grabbed her hips with both hands and pulled them tightly together, with one more grinding thrust that was forceful enough to set the girl's thighs and buttocks quivering. They stayed pressed together for a few seconds longer, the girl shivering against him at the close contact, as she broke the kiss to let a loud, unrestrained moan escape from her muzzle. She pulled her hands back from around his neck a moment later and tried to press one in front of her muzzle to stifle any further sound from escaping, the boy moving to support her as she slumped forward a little against him. The way she was rocked forward, she seemed almost to be resting along the length of the bulge, which was obviously nearly erect and straining against the snug fabric that struggled to contain it. The fabric around the tip was darker, soaked with a sheen of glistening moisture, which had the same appearance as what adorned the now-darker crotch of the girl's leggings.

Dain stood rooted to the spot, enthralled and oddly thrilled at the display, as the boy turned the girl around to the side, then hooked his arm under her legs and literally swept her off her feet, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and under her knees. The girl, turning in his arms, started a little as she noticed Dain for the first time. She looked up at her partner quizzically, although she looked a little less so after he used the opportunity to duck his head down for another sensuous kiss.

"I didn't know you asked anyone else to be here," the girl said, her voice slightly husky with arousal.

"I didn't, hun, she just showed up and wanted to watch, I guess. You, ah... it's not a problem, is it?"

"Mmmm..." The girl rubbed her head up against the boy's chest, a slow grin spreading across her muzzle. "I guess not..."

The girl glanced over at Dain, looking her over carefully, while Dain stood nervously in front of them, trying to figure out why they were reacting with undisguised interest, instead of being peeved at her for interrupting them. Selaue, it appeared, certainly hadn't been wrong about what people got up to outside of heat, but Dain hadn't though that it would be this public, or this brazen - or, for that matter, something with which she would suddenly be involved.

"I have to admit, she's pretty cute, in an innocent kinda way - from the new class, maybe? I wonder if we should let her learn something for us. After all, you know how much I make this kind of thing look good..."

The boy looked over at the girl in his arms again, and then back at Dain. "Sure, babe. You call the shots, after all." The boy looked at Dain, his gaze almost seeming to bore into her mind, and Dain felt like she was rooted to the spot, virtually paralyzed by the direction things seemed to be going. "So, what d'ya say, girl? You gotta be tired out from all those tests, so how about you come with us and learn something practical?"

"Knowing this guy, it should be quite a show," the girl added, grinning knowingly. "Might even be enough left if you want to go a round with him, assuming the impressive stamina he's been promising actually pans out..."

"U-um..." Dain stammered, taking an involuntary step back as her head reeled. After everything else, this was beyond too much, and the way he was looking at her, the way they both were...

Unexpectedly, though, as much as there was a part of her that wanted to run, or maybe just scream in exasperation at the way embarrassing things just seemed to find her somehow, there was another part of her that was thrilling again in unbidden, unwanted anticipation - and, as much as she hated to admit it, beneath it all were some feelings of genuine curiosity. After a moment, though, the overwhelmed part of her that wanted to get away started to win out, and she fought through a wave of panic and a tensed body to reply. "A-actually, I think I'll just be g-going now..."

"Hey, your loss," the boy replied. "I'm Yakeo, by the way. Look me up if you're still interested. Or come back in a little while. What I said about my stamina ain't a lie, so you know where we'll be for a good, long while..."

The boy walked forward, the girl settling happily into his arms, and Dain took another step back, her stance less steady than it should have been. The boy paused a few feet in front of her, though, turning towards the door she had been standing next to, and using a knee to adroitly jiggle the handle open. Yakeo flashed her one more quick smile as they walked into the dimly-lit room, and then another quick motion of his leg slammed the door shut behind him.

Dain stepped forward, trying to steady herself from the emotional confusion of the situation, but couldn't help taking one more look after them. The view through the window into the darkened room was hard to make out, but Dain could see a pair of faint shadows writhe and blend together against the darker backdrop before falling below the frame. A moment later, though, there came the sound of a muffled clattering of chairs, and the thud and grinding squeal of a desk's metal feet shifting forward against the floor. It was followed by an almost inaudible giggling, and then a shriek that seemed to freeze on the highest note, before fading back to a series of short, barked moans that quickly picked up speed and managed to evade both the girl's and the door's attempts to muffle them.

Dain stood for a moment more, trying and failing to process what had just happened, before turning on her heel and half-walking, half-sprinting back down the hall. She was under no illusions about what the two of them were engaged in, especially after the class session earlier that afternoon. If the boy was trying to coax a heat invitation out of the girl, he certainly seemed like he had been succeeding. And, from the sound of it, he he'd been willing to go for more than just one, although Dain was quite sure that she wanted nothing to do with him, or her, nothing to do with any of it at the moment.

Or did she? As she walked out of the building, intent on leaving the school and getting back home before anything else weird happened, her mind kept flashing back to what she had seen - and the undeniable moment of hesitation that she had felt at the offer. Even though it had only lasted perhaps a minute, her mind kept replaying what she had seen, almost in slow motion - going over every inch, every moment, every motion and action and reaction. It didn't play out the way Dain had thought it would, though. In the moment, just watching it happen, Dain had been thinking of it almost as a boy: admiring the girl's snug clothing, tight ass, the way she sounded and writhed and reacted. Now, though, as her mind played it back, she couldn't help imagining being in that girl's role herself, and how everything would have felt in her position: the smooth tightness of the leggings against her fur, transmitting and enhancing every touch; the strength of the boy's arms wrapped around her, and how warm it would feel in his embrace; the way his muzzle would press against her as their tongues intertwined in a passionate kiss, the thrill of his fingers digging in intimately tight against her backside, the wonderful feeling of him pressing in between her legs and the way her body would yield against him and thrill with each thrust of his hips...

Dain tried to shake it off, but it wasn't easy, as the anticipation of each sensation sent another little thrill of warmth shivering its way down her spine, causing her tail to twitch and arch up against her back as the accumulated warmth settled comfortably between her legs. The warmth seemed to tingle faintly inside her, spreading out and down, and after a few minutes she became more than aware of the crotch of her panties plastered against her skin by another wave of rapidly cooling moisture.

The uncomfortable sensation finally managed to snap Dain out of her mind's enforced reverie, and she swore at the familiar feeling. At least now she knew exactly what the other type of arousal felt like, but the annoyingly inconvenient results were still the same. This time, though, the accompanying comfortable warmth and slight thrill in her belly didn't disappear, but only faded slightly as she walked, and her mind was still trying to go over the sensations and reinforce the tension between her legs by the time she reached home. At least the tension was staying there, and not trying to take over her entire body and buzz through her mind the way that heat tended to do, but it still left her annoyed, antsy, and squirming against the wet, clammy fabric plastered against skin that was, at the moment, rather more sensitive to the discomfort.

Eloa was, unsurprisingly, waiting on the other side of the door as Dain opened it. She initially greeted Dain happily, but once she saw the aggravated expression on Dain's face, her expression quickly morphed into one of concern. "Dain, is something wrong? Did something happen while you were at school?"

"Well..." A lot had happened, in fact, but Dain wasn't quite sure what was worth talking about. "Not exactly, I just..." Dain looked down at the crotch of her pants and grimaced. "I'm not really sure how I feel about the stuff that comes with being a girl sometimes..."

Eloa glanced down as well. "You're still having some issues from what happened before? It should have cleared up on its own hours ago..."

"It did, but then... I was, um, around boys, and girls, and saw some stuff, and then it came back..."

"Oh," Eloa replied, her look of concern turning to one of understanding. "It's certainly one of those things, when you get into a new environment, with a lot of people you haven't seen before, or they've grown and changed in a way that makes them look more interesting or appealing, your body can certainly react to all that new stimulus, too. I know it can get a little... uncomfortable at times, but it's just a natural response that some women's bodies have, and once you get settled into your new situation, and get more used to some of the new faces, things will probably stabilize and it won't just happen spontaneously like that."

Of course, it hadn't exactly happened spontaneously, but Dain wasn't sure how comfortable she felt telling her mom about what she'd really seen after school - despite what Selaue had said, she didn't know if students were really supposed to do that while they were there, and she didn't want to get anyone in trouble. Dain flashed on the boy's face again, and the way he had given her that wink, and shamelessly offered his proposal... just the thought of it seemed to increase the sensitivity between her legs, making the soaked fabric pressed against her even more aggravating.

Eloa wanted to hear more about her day, but at the moment all Dain wanted to do was to get upstairs, strip off the offending undergarment, hop into the shower, and wash off the slick, wet craziness of the day from both her body and mind. To that end, she politely excused herself, promised to talk more after dinner, and padded quickly upstairs.

She paused only long enough to toss her pack on top of her bed, before heading back across the hallway and slamming the bathroom door behind her. She slumped back against it for a moment, sighing heavily, grimacing at the dampness and weird not-heat feelings churning inside her. It was so, so much easier to be a boy, she thought, but thanks to the quirks of this form and something she shouldn't have seen, she knew that transforming back was, once again, almost certainly blocked for at least the near future.

She wanted, more than anything, to just get undressed and get clean, growling under her breath as she fumbled with all the superfluous buttons running down the fly of her pants. She finally got them undone and shrugged them off, kicking them to the side before peeling off the sodden mess of her underwear and shucking it from around her ankles. The shirt came off next, followed by a quick glance in the mirror as she thought about what the girl had said. Cute? Dain wasn't so sure, unless what the word meant was no breasts, just enough hips, and errant tufts and cowlicks of fur sticking out from her hasty undressing. Most of the other girls had been far cuter, at least in Dain's opinion, but then again, she was looking at herself after a particularly trying day. Dain wondered, if he had just been a boy, whether he would have cared about being cute, or the way his fur looked, or any of it - then again, given the looks Dain had seen the girls giving some of the boys, perhaps they paid more attention to it than she thought.

At least, though, she didn't look nearly as disarrayed or aroused as she had during her heat - whatever this other arousal was supposed to be, there was still only the slightest hint of pink below the tuft of fur between her legs, and her nipples didn't look like they were about practically jump out from their surrounding fur. Both the tuft and the topmost part of her inner thighs were matted down with slick moisture, though, and the sooner she could feel clean and dry again, the better.

She went over to the shower and turned it on, waiting for the steam to begin billowing out into the room before stepping inside. The first thing she did, as the warm water played across her back, was to pick up the fur shampoo that she normally used. This time, though, it stood out above a small forest of about half a dozen other bottles, undoubtedly put there by Eloa while she was off at school: conditioner, highlighter, some sort of lotion, and a few things with unusual names that Dain hadn't the slightest idea what they were used for. Whether the additional things had to do with being a woman, or some attempt by her mother to make sure she looked her best at school, for the moment Dain couldn't care less about any of them.

She poured a good amount of the shampoo onto her palm, and then worked her hands together until they were coated with a decent, bubbly lather. As soon as it felt right, she darted her hands down to her thighs, rubbing the shampoo into her matted fur until she began to feel it coming back to normal. Just scrubbing away the dampness felt good, and not just from the relaxing way the circular scrubbing motions gently massaged the muscles underneath, which were still getting used to the longer walk and the harder chairs at the school. For a moment, at least, it felt almost like she was scrubbing the latest annoyance of her female form away, returning things to how they should be - nice, normal, and unobtrusive, with the exception of heat, which happened rarely enough that it was almost a completely separate experience.

That illusion was dashed, though, when Dain was finishing up with her thighs, and a slight inadvertent brush of the back of her hand against the patch of skin just above it sent another tingling little thrill through her. It was... not exactly worse when she went to clean that area directly, and the way it felt when her slick, sudsy fingers ran along her mound was anything but bad. As she scrubbed, the soft flesh moved with her fingers as she massaged the lather into it, each motion her fingers made causing her feel warmer and more alive. It was almost as though her body had been waiting for exactly this sort of thing, as each rub against her mound, each stroke along her lips, felt like the most wonderful massage, the sensation of her finger's touch amplified tenfold. Even though the earlier moisture was soon replaced by the smooth, cleansing lather, and she knew she should just rinse it off and move on, the feeling was good enough that she just wanted to keep rubbing. Even the occasional nudge against her button, while almost too uncomfortable being touched so directly, still managed to send a thrill of warmth and pleasurable tension thrumming inside her.

After a few minutes, though, the hot water started to fade a little, and she knew she had to move on. She removed her hand, a little disappointed as the feelings faded slightly but still unusually happy nonetheless. She reached up, tilting the showerhead over to a different angle, and then leaned back against the side of the shower stall, spreading her legs slightly and angling her hips forward to let the stream of water rinse the lather away from her thighs and crotch.

Normally, the gentle patter of water streaming from the shower head wasn't much more than briefly pleasant, the rinse taking only a few seconds before moving on, and even less in Dain's male form. The stimulation from scrubbing, though, had only seemed to make her more sensitive, and the plinking of water against her mound was wonderfully warm and fiendishly ticklish, causing her to squirm her hips and actually giggle at the sensation. One of the squirms, though, sent one of the water streams directly onto her button, and she shuddered, transfixed, as the light play of water across the sensitive nub suddenly became intensely pleasurable, causing all of the tension to surge rapidly forward inside her. She was practically frozen by the stream, the pleasure and intensity holding every part of her in its thrall, and for a moment the sensation seemed like more than her straining body could bear. Then it almost seemed to explode up into her belly, like a bolt of electricity between her legs, her mound vibrating with the intensity as her thighs trembled and gave way from the sensation. She slid down the wall she had been leaning against, the stream of water playing upwards across her belly and chest, an almost disembodied moan ringing and echoing strangely through the steam of the enclosed stall as she shuddered through the uncontrollable, mind-blanking intensity of a pulsating, shocking climax.

Somewhere in the midst of the pleasure flowing blissfully through her, she felt her butt come to rest against the tile of the shower floor, her hips bucking automatically as her inner walls settled into a familiar rhythm of warm, relaxing pulses, the clenching feeling almost sharper somehow without anything inside pressing against her. It still felt just right, though, and was somehow exactly what she needed - for the first time since she got up that day, despite the complete spontaneity of what had just occurred, it really felt like something had actually gone completely, one hundred percent right.

After about a minute, the pulses had ceased and the most intense feelings had faded, and the water's continually waning warmth convinced her to pull herself back to her feet and go through the motions of washing everything else. Surprisingly, she actually felt steady, and the feelings, while quick and intense, subsided almost as quickly to just a nice, pleasant feeling of relaxed energy thrumming through her belly and up and down her limbs. What she'd just had was a climax, certainly, but while it had had a similar effect, it had been markedly different from what she had experienced during heat. There, the exterior parts had been sensitive, sure, but the interior even more so, and it had been all about the feelings that were taking place deep inside. This had been... shallower, somehow, without the very deep pulses and intensity that overwhelmed her entire torso during a heated climax. For a moment, this one had been more intense, almost startlingly so, the whole thing taking place much more quickly and fading back even quicker still. Of course, there was one obvious component that had been different, so it was hard to compare the two things exactly, but what she had just experienced was hardly a disappointment in comparison. Apparently, that was what Caure had been talking about when she'd mentioned things girls could do outside of heat, and apparently it had been the reward for having to go through all the tension and arousal earlier - which, when she thought about it, wasn't that bad of a silver lining. Still, it seemed like a lot of trouble to go through in the first place, especially when she wasn't consciously trying to do any of it in the first place.

By the time she finished up, the water was cool enough that she rushed through a final rinse of her fur before reaching out to flick on the heat-lamp and make a desperate grab for her towel. A quick rubdown got most of the moisture, and an almost-instinctual series of shakes sent most of the rest cascading in droplets across the tiled floor to run in rivulets towards the drain set in the corner. After a few minutes standing under the heat lamp, and a couple of lazy, luxurious stretches that allowed its warmth to reach most everywhere, Dain felt clean, dry, and pretty much just right.

Wrapping the towel around her waist for modesty, she quickly darted back across the hall and into her bedroom. It was still the afternoon, though, so she wasn't sure what to wear at that point - probably too early for pajamas, but she didn't really want to wear the clothes from earlier. Plus, there were also the new items of clothing, the leggings and shirt thing, that she considered at least wearing around the house to make Eloa happy.

They all started the same way, though, and Dain pulled open a drawer to grab some underwear. She had the pair in her hands, just about to stick a foot through one of the openings, when she realized that, unthinkingly, she'd grabbed another pair of the new, somewhat girly panties instead of her normal boy-shorts. Was that what her mind, deep down, somehow thought was now normal? Then again, the entire day had been resolutely in female mode, to the point where it seemed her male side hadn't really entered the picture at all. For that matter, she had just touched herself, and even climaxed, in a very feminine way - and, she realized, that part of it hadn't felt very weird or disconcerting at all. In fact, even the arousal hadn't really felt alien for very long, just... normal enough. Definitely annoying, but quickly something that felt normal and par for the course. If Selaue was right - if she was, in fact, destined to spend much of her time as a girl (or more properly, now, as a woman), she seemed to be doing a decent job of adapting to it - and if that was the case, she might as well get used to the panties as a matter of course, too. Besides, while it was hard to predict, it didn't seem like she would be shifting back in the near future.

She tucked her other foot into the panties and pulled them up, not exactly admiring their pale, pastel-pink color, but the fabric felt soft and fine under her fingers, fabric that stretched all the way up to fold over and cover up the elastic running around the waistband. As she snugged them into place, they felt even softer against her crotch, and the way the fabric rubbed against her, as they settled against her apparently still-sensitive skin, was enough for her nether lips to come to life with a satisfying twitch and a happy little thrill that darted across her hips.

That sensation led to another thought, though, and for the moment, any other thought of clothing was abandoned. The feeling, she realized, was comparable enough to what she'd felt in the morning, albeit in a way that was considerably more wet and bothered - but before she had tried to do anything with it, she had been distracted by other concerns. Now, though, she had an inkling of what to expect, and what to do - and the snuggly, intriguing feel of the fabric against her, still sensitive and wonderfully tense after what she'd done in the shower, made her wonder what might happen if she tried to excite the same sensations from before.

Ignoring the other drawers of her wardrobe, she instead flopped down onto her bed, rolling over onto her stomach and snuggling up against her soft sheets. Eloa hadn't messed with them as she had some of Dain's other things, and there was still just the slightest lingering feminine scent from what had transpired before - which for some reason, in her current state, only served to make her feel even more excited.

She rolled from side to side, snuggling the sheets around her and enjoying the way that they gently rubbed against her fur, allowing her back to arch and hips to thrust a little on their own whenever the movements made the panties rub between her legs in just the right way. On the surface of it, the whole thing seemed a little silly and almost childish, and she broke down in fits of giggling a couple of times at how weirdly wonderful it felt to just be rolling around and enjoying herself.

After a few more snuggly rolls around the bed, though, midway through one of the rolls she serendipitously pressed her thighs together and gave them a quick rub back and forth - a motion that subtly shifted the fabric between her legs in a way that suddenly felt much, much better than before. It wasn't much of a motion, just a subtle shift slightly back and forth, but the motion stretched the fabric taut against her and slid it back and forth against the most sensitive part of her mound, the fine fabric giving her a rhythmic, silky-soft caress that was just gentle and subtle enough to be teasingly tantalizing, a close, soft, wonderful feeling that was somehow more intensely arousing than a direct touch, each motion giving her a quick, happy thrill that left her her body tensed and eager for more.

She rolled over onto her stomach and kept up the motion, practically purring into her pillow from the thrills running through her. After a while, though, the subtle feelings began to feel more and more frustratingly teasing as the tension between her legs grew, and each subtle sensation was no longer quite enough. It only took a moment, though, to roll over just enough to tuck an arm underneath her, running down beneath her belly to give her fingers a good purchase on the soft fabric covering her mound, jutting towards her touch as it arrived and tensing in anticipation.

She began to move her fingers in a similar motion to the one she used in the shower, pressing in enough to make her mound move slightly back and forth beneath the fabric in response. Her body instantly thrilled at the massaging pressure, the sensation comfortably arousing, adding just enough intensity without being overwhelming - the fabric both muted the sensation of her fingers a little, while shifting just enough to work in tandem with them and enhance their caresses. She kept rubbing, speeding up a little, enjoying the yielding softness against her fingers, although not as much as the sensations her fingers were producing.

As the tension built, her muscles tightening and her hips lifting slightly off the bed, the feeling seemed to be getting closer to climax, but hovering somehow just a tantalizingly little bit below it. She knew from before that, at least for this type of climax, the little button at the top of her nether lips was key - but there was no mysteriously alluring stream of water here to send it over the edge. Dain pulled her fingers back a little, trying to circle them in on where the button pressed out against the taut fabric, but every time she got close enough to it to begin to stimulate the right kind of feelings, it flashed over into an uncomfortable intensity that didn't do the job and left her gnashing her teeth in frustration. It was feeling so good, and she was so close, that she didn't want to just let it fade back down into discomfort and annoyance again.

The subtle softness of the fabric between her fingers, though, gave her an idea. Tilting her hips up a little more, instead of trying to move in with one or two fingers, she instead spread them out in a loose star pattern to encircle the periphery of her most sensitive area. Gently pressing her fingers against the fabric, just enough to give them traction, she began moving them in a tiny, quick circular motion, spreading them out so that the fabric between them went just taut enough to transmit the motion into the softest, gentlest rub of the fabric, keeping it in constant, rapid motion as it lightly tugged and snuggled against the sensitive button.

The gambit worked ? the sensation of the fabric rubbing against her was just the right level of rubbing, flicking intensity as the soft fabric rubbed against her with an insistence just below overwhelming, and she cried out happily as the feeling quickly went beyond wonderful. The softest overriding sensation of touch coaxed the perfect response from her most sensitive part, flashing between her legs in a wonderful shudder of pulsing erotic release, her insides throbbing and hips thrusting ecstatically back against her hand, her muzzle digging into her pillow as her body arched forward to muffle a series of wracking, orgasmic screams.

She squirmed and shuddered against her sheets for a moment more, the last of the tension transitioning into rhythmic release and relaxation, before she slumped back down to let her body pulse through the trailing edge of the climax, enjoying the snuggly feeling of her nether lips rubbing gently against the fabric of her panties with each clenching throb.

Coming down from it all, sighing happily between each panting breath, she realized that there was another big difference from before - while she could feel the slightest bit of wetness along the inner edges of her pussy lips, and a thin line of it on the fabric pushing back against them, it was a far cry from the drenching that had happened before, and that was without nearly as much stimulation. What Eloa had said before had apparently been correct - once the juices had flowed, and been cleaned up, they didn't start up again even if you decided to have some fun with the aroused sensitivity that accompanied them. This type of arousal, not too wet and oh so wonderful, she could definitely live with.

She lay on the bed a while longer, curling up into a ball and enjoying the warmth and relaxation that still flowed through her. In fact, those sensations had almost managed to lull her to sleep when she heard her tablet chime insistently nearby - in fact, she realized, it was coming from almost next to her head, where her pack had landed between the pillow and bed frame and gone unnoticed during her other preoccupation.

She opened the pack and pulled out her tablet, which sprang to life beneath her fingers before flashing up notification of an incoming video call. A moment later, a window popped up, with Caure's face smiling out from it.

"Hey, Dain! I know I was bugging you to call me, and I know it's not that late yet, but I got bored and decided to call you anyway." Caure seemed to lean into the screen, apparently trying to make out something from the display on Dain's end.

"Dain, are you... naked?"

"Um... not totally?"

"Oh, really? I didn't think you were exactly the type to lounge around in your underwear..." A look of recognition flashed across her face, though, and she was quickly flashing her devious smile again. "You're lounging around in just your panties, aren't you? And I can see your face just barely flushing beneath your fur, and your nipples are flushed too... Dain, you've been naughty, haven't you?"

"Um, maybe a little... I, um, got kinda tense after school, and was thinking of that stuff you said about what girls can do, and I kinda, um... found out..."

"Oh! Hmm, it's too bad... you could have invited me over, and we could have had even more fun together. I can just imagine the cute little look you must have had on your face when you came that way for the first time..."

If Dain hadn't been blushing before, she definitely was now. "Caure..."

"Yeah, I know, maybe that was a little bit too much, but... you're just so interesting to me, and being with you that time was so special, that I just... I really, really like you, and seeing you happy, seeing you in that one moment when you're the happiest you can actually be, it just really gets me going. I just like seeing you happy, and after today, I really wanted to see it turn out all right. I'm glad it did, though."

"So," she continued, grinning again and bobbing her ears enthusiastically, "at least you can tell me about it, right?"

Dain sighed inwardly, though it was hardly an unusual request from her... and after a moment of mumbling hesitation, she described what she had done - for the most recent attempt, anyway. She didn't want to tell her too many embarrassing details, but she left in the part about what she'd done with her hand to finish it off, as it seemed like the most important discovery.

"Huh," Caure said when she'd finished her description. "I hadn't thought of trying it that way, but I guess if the fabric was soft enough... I'm totally gonna have to go shopping after school tomorrow, then. And that thing with your fingers... how the heck did you figure that out?"

"I dunno, I guess I just... touching directly was too much, so I kind of just thought about going around it somehow, and then it just worked really well..."

"Well, however you found it, that was a really interesting way to do it. Shame I didn't know about it earlier, or else I might have tried it out on Ekka just to see what would happen... Hey, I never did get to tell you about that, did I?"

"Um, well..."

"Don't worry - there's not much to tell, especially since I didn't do anything all that different to her than the stuff you told me about just now. Plus, it turns out that she's one of those girls who doesn't really get aroused at all outside of heat, so all it did was just leave her a little flustered rather than anything actually interesting. Oh, well - it just means that she'll be really interesting when she is in heat, which should make it even more fun for you, at least. So, that's what I did... you do anything else interesting after I left? I mean, besides just now, of course..."

Dain thought back to the scene she'd witnessed in the other building, and was sure that Caure would find it to be fascinating too - at the same time, though, it had already been a little weird telling Caure as much as she had already, and Dain didn't really want to give her much of anything else to get excited about. If she did, after all, there was certainly a chance that Caure would end up getting her invited to the respective heats of everyone involved, and she had had enough of that sort of craziness for a week, or a month, let alone one single day. Instead, she did what she could to steer the conversation to some of the other things, talking about how boring the tests were and which other girls might be fun to have as friends, although that topic, through Caure's lens, threatened to veer off into the mildly perverted as well. Eventually, Caure got called down for dinner, and the conversation somewhat mercifully ended - a few minutes later, though, Dain's mom did the same.

She rolled off the bed, remembered she was still clad only in her panties, and went to hurriedly get dressed before her mom worried at the delay and came up to check on her. One of the newer ensembles was still laying on her desk chair, and she decided it was good enough, hastily pulling it on. It was just about as comfortable as before, and while it probably looked all right, how she really looked in it didn't matter at the moment - for tonight, at least, she wasn't planning on going anywhere.

Dinner was pleasant enough, ground meat in a red sauce mixed with a thick, spherical grain with a soft outside and a dense, crunchy interior. Eloa, for her part, didn't pry all that much more into Dain's day, although something about the tone and phrasing of a few of her questions led Dain to believe that Eloa had overheard some of her orgasmic exclamations, even through her closed door. For the most part, though, she asked about how school had been, and whether she was making any new friends; Dain answered affirmatively but vaguely, as that seemed to match up the closest with the facts. After all, she wasn't yet sure whether the people she had met would, in fact, be friendly in the long term, but the events of the day had certainly left her much more popular - even if it was primarily as a curiosity.

The rest of the evening went by mostly uneventfully, and as Dain drifted off to sleep, she could only hope that the next day at school would be far less crazy and filled with strange emotions than the first one had been.

As it turned out, things did calm down considerably over the next few days. The other students were still quite interested in her, and she tried to answer at least some of their questions as best as she could, despite the fact that she was still sufficiently new at shifting that she had more half-understood experiences to talk about than actual, concrete answers. She still, in fact, had no idea how it worked - just that it did, and that, it turned out, was more than fascinating enough for her audience. The questions eventually tapered off, as her condition transitioned for others from novel to routine, and soon, instead of Dain the awesome shifter thing, she was once again simply Dain. Of course, there were some effects from the period of intense interest, most notably formal requests for next-heat consideration showing up in her program from a number of boys, along with direct invitations from several other girls to go alongside Ekka's.

The classes themselves proceeded much as they had before, with much of the day still devoted to testing, although the questions were quickly branching out into more specific, and more interesting, subjects. In the afternoon class, they even took a test to gauge how much knowledge they all had about matters related to mating, and Dain had by then figured out enough to score reasonably well. They also did some exercises comparing various aspects of their heat: how long, how many boys per day, and whether anything "residual" happened in between each period of heat. Interestingly enough, besides her, Caure, and Loen, only a few of the other girls had the tendency for arousal outside of heat - "young women," rather, as Selaue often corrected them, which was the proper way to refer to a girl once she had begun her trial heats. For some of the others, though, heat was definitely more intense - a few of the girls invited up to four boys per day of heat, and one had still had trouble after inviting up to six! At the very least, though, it showed just how much variation there was in what girls went through, and while it seemed to alternate between rewarding and annoying, she was definitely not alone in what she was going through.

Selaue also began, in short, well-explained lessons, to explain some of the "sacred rituals" that they would be expected to follow once their true heat began. As it turned out, they were less rituals, and more guidelines to ensure that each mating attempt that happened once their heats truly began had the best chance to take advantage of their fertility. For the most part, it was pretty basic stuff: not to choose the position with a woman straddling a man, to make sure things didn't drip out, to use pillows or other specially-designed forms to keep their hips tilted at an angle that would ensure everything would flow down inside to where it was needed, and to make sure that the man stayed inside for a full hour regardless of whether the knot had come down, so that every drop was retained to give the absolute best shot at conception. Apparently, there were more advanced techniques that they would learn later, as "pleasure leads as surely to fertility as sunlight leads to green fields," at least according to a slightly odd, out-of-date video they were shown on the day that Selaue was absent.

Overall, everything went more smoothly as the week went on, and despite the things Dain was sure continued to happen elsewhere on campus, she didn't come across anything further to either stoke her arousal, or lead to the sort of session she'd had on the first day - while the latter was perhaps slightly disappointing, another part of her was more than glad that the female aspects of her had mostly gone back to normal. In fact, things were normal enough that one day she shifted back walking home from school, and went back to her original, more unisex underwear as the shifts began to happen more frequently. In fact, on the last day of school for the week, Dain managed to wake up as a boy and go through all of his classes without shifting back. In that form, the girls did admittedly look more attractive, and he was both thankful for the status that allowed him to spend as much time as possible in their company - and the new style of clothing that, to his mind, made them even more attractive. In that mindset, at least, the heat invitations he'd already received were looking quite appealing.

He was, in fact, thinking about the upcoming one with Ekka as he walked home from school. After the initial confrontation, she'd been nothing but nice to him - although, he admitted, that was probably due to coaxing from Caure, who seemed to be making a regular thing of dragging Ekka off to somewhere secluded at some point during each school day, although her expressions afterward seemed to indicate that she never managed to elicit the sort of arousal her wishful thinking intended. He still remembered the weirdness of the initial day, though, and knew that whatever happened with Ekka when her heat did arrive, it was certainly bound to be different.

When he walked up to his house, though, he noticed that the door was a little ajar, which was unusual - Eloa almost never left it like that. She also wasn't at the door to greet him, and when he poked his head into the kitchen, he noticed that she had company sitting around the table with her. There was a man and a woman, both with brown fur, although the woman had a few subtle, lighter stripes running through hers. They both seemed to be dressed conservatively, the man in a crisp shirt and dark pants, and the woman in a slightly frilled blouse: black with the slightest hint of violet, and a matching, form-fitting skirt in the same color. Both of them, though, had the same serious, official look on their faces, and each one had a laminated badge clipped to the front of their shirts near the neckline, their photos accompanied by some sort of official seal. Eloa was glaring back at them, sitting stock-still in her chair, her ears cocked in a complex combination of anger and fear. As she turned towards the sound of Dain entering the room, the fear won out, and when she spoke, her voice was as tremulous and terrified as Dain had ever heard it.

"I'm s-so sorry, Dain. I tried to warn you, to send you a message, but they wouldn't let me. I'm sorry I took you to the clinic that day - I know it might lead them to you, but I didn't know what else to do. I'm so sorry that I failed you. I don't know what they're going to do with you, but there's nothing more I can do-"

She stopped talking as the man raised a hand up in a universal gesture for silence. Sliding his chair back, he stood up, and looked over at Dain while apparently forcing himself to smile.

"I'm afraid, due to her experience, your mother is being overly dramatic. Perhaps I should simply introduce myself and try to take this conversation in another direction. My name is Reo, and this is Laeva, my colleague. We are, as you may have guessed by now, employed by the continental government in an... official capacity. We are not, in fact, here to kidnap you, or lead you away, or turn you into some sort of mutated monster, among the variety of, might I say, highly imaginative suggestions your mother provided for our purpose here today. Mostly, in fact, we just want to talk with you, about both your present, and, just maybe, one possible future."

As he finished speaking, though, Reo reached down to his side, picking up a large metal hard-case by its heavy-duty handle and setting it down on the center of the table - on its front, digital locks blinked in sequence next to thick, well-secured clasps, alongside a legend that read GOVERNMENT PROPERTY - EYES ONLY.

"Mostly."