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Emelyn felt the bubble of laughter burst in her own throat, too, and despite herself, she let it go. It was a rather absurd thing to say- but in the face of Greer's drastic change, somehow the issue of the poor snake had presented the only viable topic.

Em shook her head, smiling now as she looked down at the two-pieced critter. "Not really," she said, referencing the 'congratulations'. "I didn't mean to do it- I'm just out gathering food. I just saw the snake and was like 'ooh... gotta kill'. So I did." She looked up at the feathered girl, intent not to stare... but finding it hard not to peruse the feathers, the legs... everything that was now so different. "I didn't even know hedgehogs ate snakes."

She took the spear out from beneath her arm and dropped it behind her- near the basket she'd left several paces behind. Only then did she turn back to her friend and let a smile that said 'I'm glad to see you' cross her face, and say, "So... how recent is... this development?"

"Be my guest," Em said, stepping back from the little green rope of a snake. "It's not worth it for me to make a fire to cook it, anyway. And my tastes aren't quite so... progressed that I can stand it raw."

At the mention of dreams, Emelyn's mind was suddenly filled with the memory of the most terrifying dream she'd ever had- a flash of black hair along a blued, dead skin.... which Greer had hanging off the back of her arm, offering it Emelyn to write with.

Em shook the vision from her mind, took a deep breath, and nodded. "Only once. This last change, when it happened out in the wild. Every time before that, I've been awake when I got the serum. I was at the lab for every other one. ...Maybe you only get nightmares when it's a 'while you sleep' infusion."

That was one part Emelyn hadn't focused on. "Oh my god- your hands? How are you doing anything at all without them?" She said incredulously- her mouth open in sad awe.

"Are you... done, yet? Is this your 100%?"

"Mm..." Em sucked in her upper lip in thought, seizing it with her bottom teeth like a bulldog before letting it free. "I honestly don't know. But I'm sure I've heard the labtechs talking about being brought to 'one hundred percent.' ..I just hope this is it for you." Em's eyes lingered over the large, feathery wings. "Can you.. well... fly?"

The statement, though steeped in morbid truth, made Emelyn laugh. Perhaps it was Greer's delivery- or her no-nonsense approach to this change- but something about her demeanor spoke quite obviously to the fact that... beneath all the feathers- the talons and the hawk eyes... was the soul of her friend.

"Perhaps you should ask one of the staff members. They're probably giddy about the 'new data'," Emelyn said dryly.

"Hm," Em laughed- a thin amusement that didn't warrant even the parting of her lips. She took a deep breath and spoke with a small, ironic smile.

"Well... I've been doing pretty well- was a good little amazon hedgie, wove some basket, collected food- even made a drying rack to sit on the beach. Got my spear, my digging stick, my knife... oh... and about a week ago, Jamal attacked me in the middle of the jungle and almost killed me. I have two long lines of disintegratable stitches in my back." She added, a part of the stream-of-thought speech. "Which would be why I carry this around now," she said, kicking the spear where it lay behind her with her heel. "It's not just for snake-killing, y'know."

"Oh yes," Em said, resisting a strange urge to rub at her eyes- perhaps to relieve all the pressure that was forming at her temples. "I was just walking through the jungle, minding my own beeswax when Jamal dropped out of a tree and started running after me. He got me square in the back- two long tracks..." Em turned around and pulled away some of the loose spine-mass to show a track of stitches in between, "the only way I survived was that I rolled into a hedgehog ball. ...After a while, I passed out- and woke up in the labs."