He didn't want to. Everything felt so different out there. Talking about anything that happened while he was out as a Chosen of Dionysus felt wrong, and yet he had to process it somehow. He'd been a giraffe for days, and then when he was finally turned back he'd been rushed through some stinking woods and had fought hordes of animals...and then he'd been the tiny little - the uh, the chevrotain. He'd asked Erica afterwards and she'd told him, laughter in her eyes because for once, she'd been bigger than him. It felt weird to be clean again, and to talk again, and to know how to work his limbs again. And wasn't that weird? Being human seemed strange and unnatural, and yet it was home. How could it be anything else?
The problem was that he couldn't really sit around philosophizing. He had art to make, true - and there was something he wanted to say about what he'd been through, even though he couldn't enumerate it yet - but they'd set Circe free, which meant...which meant they'd have to go about turning other humans back soon, right?
That meant he really did need to learn how to use his damn weapon. So he'd been practicing. And, more than that, he'd started up jogging again. He'd had to do so much of it, after all - might as well build up the muscle tone in his thin noodle legs, huh? He didn't want to be caught off-guard again.
The locker rooms were surprisingly quiet today, he thought, toweling his hair off. He'd have to head back to Dionysus to shower again, of course - Ernst didn't think communal showers were very sanitary, professional as the Prytaneum campus seemed to otherwise be - but he wasn't going to wander around in his sweaty track gear either. A few lockers down from him was a beefier blond man who he recognized from outside Circe's lawn - or dangling above him, from a vine, after being a giant bear. Ernst...hadn't caught the guy's name back then, though. Wait, no, he'd heard - uh - someone had said - "Lex? Is that right?" he called, waving a hand at Edward. "How've you been holding up?"
They were the only two in the room.
Beejoux
