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She wasn't sure where she'd made the wrong turn or how she'd lost her way, but Lily had been walking home from the gym and suddenly her world was a little quieter, a little more grey, and it was raining.

With a startled look she glanced down at her hands, grasping nervously at her bag, but other than her black nail polish it didn't look like she was sprouting claws. It wasn't anywhere close to the full moon, that much she knew, but it was hard not to be paranoid when the last time she'd seen the otherworld it had made her something else.

Lily tried to backtrack and found nothing for her efforts but empty roadways, eerie and covered in fog. With a frown, she set off in what vaguely looked like the direction home, hoping maybe she'd be able to find one of those exits without enlisting Barbeque Breath.

Lily almost didn't notice the shadow, walking with purpose towards anything that might have resembled an exit. Eventually, however, a flicker of something on her periphery had her staring blankly at the ground where the creature was. It could have been startlingly familiar to her, if only it had been the right phase of the moon.

"Um." She paused in her stride, unsure of how to proceed. "Chitter...chitter squeak?" For all of the cool powers that could have gone along with forcibly being furry, speaking or understanding her fellows was unfortunately not one of them.

Oh. Of course it would talk. "That's cheating, I don't get to talk when I'm one of you," she responded, but any dejection in her voice was mostly for show.

Lily knelt down, trying to get a better idea of where the shadows ended and the creature began. "Well, I'm wearing Old Spice right now. Not really sure if you're the deodorant type, though." A part of her, a small part, was freaking out about the presence of the tiny thing, but she covered it with a veneer of a blank expression and plenty of eyeliner.

"But I don't think you're a...um, s**t, what were we called..." she muttered to herself, holding out a hand for inspection the way she would introduce herself to a cat. "...Moonwalkers. That's what we're called."

"Kinda like perfume," Lily shrugged. She smiled softly when he pressed his nose into her hand--magical or not, it was always a blessing to receive affection from furry friends.

"Well, I'm about...one quarter fisher now?" she responded, nodding once as she thought. "Or I'm all-fisher, but for a quarter of my time. It's complicated. They didn't give us manuals." She didn't project it with her voice, but there was a disappointed tilt to her eyes--it would have been too easy to assume that whatever denizen of the Otherworld she would meet would have connections to her condition.

She sighed, letting her feelings on the matter go as she slid into a seated position, taking little mind of the rain. "I'm Lily. Give it a few weeks, we'll be looking like twins."

Oh my God. This was cute on a 'moms posting puppy videos on facebook' level. Cute on a wobbly toddlers who walked like they were drunk level. Cute like Jamie and Eve and Lucas and how they'd learned their new bodies enough to tumble and play in the library before everything went wrong.

"Well, it's kind of a requirement, so I'll be around," she nodded warmly, scratching softly behind what she presumed were his ears. "No promises on the quality of the stuff-strutting, though, I'm kind of an amateur at the whole four leg thing." He'd seemed like a ghost at first, but she felt the fur and the warmth of his body in her lap, the buzz of his chittering. She tried to mimic the sound, but it didn't fit in her throat the same way that speaking wouldn't work with her fisher's teeth, and it devolved to a senseless giggle, a small moment of permission to laugh at herself and the series of events that had led her here, to talking with shadow-creatures in a place where it always rained.

It wasn't raining anymore, at least not for them. She blinked, looking up where the rain sort of just...slid around them. "That you showing your stuff?"

"Oh?" Lily's voice was bemused, and for the time being the soft scratches continued. "Maybe you can teach me some catch-phrases sometime. The Prideful One never bothered to give us a manual when all of this went down."

"That's pretty badass," she remarked, nodding as she looked out to where the rain slid away from them in pretty little droplets. "I didn't know shadows could be warm. You're like...the fuzziest shadow. Fluff shadow extraordinaire. It's awesome."

"So you can travel to our side?" she asked with a head-tilt, letting her bags loll over to one side. "Is it something you can, like...choose?" Lily herself had yet to travel of her own volition, only in accidental snippets of dealings far greater than her own. To travel freely between the worlds was not a luxury she'd been afforded or even sought out--why would she, when there was always someone offering to give her a ride? Still, there was a certain utility in knowing how it worked, and it made for good chittering.

"The most supreme shadow," Lily hummed in agreement, laughing when he shoved at her arm. With a sagely nod, she dispensed more soft scritches for the answer Gloom gave, even if it was of little help. It wasn't Gloom's job to teach her everything she needed to know, after all--she appreciated the attempt nevertheless.

"Well, being firmly in the 'no idea which' camp of how to get home...think you can help a girl out?" As cozy as their rain-free bubble was, she didn't want to overextend her stay in spooksville. "I can trade in back scratches."

"Yeah, I mean, as safe as my shitty apartment can be," Lily shrugged, making no efforts to move from the soft nips. "It's not the Ritz, but at least there's no crazy golden deer or barbeque guys around."