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(Continued from here)

Nita waited for Cody to change, realizing she had forgotten a towel. Ah, well. She needed to do laundry anyway, so a little more sand in her jeans wouldn't hurt.

When he was ready, she walked with him down the path from the village and towards the beach. It was a lovely evening, as many of the island's evenings were, and finally cool enough for Nita to be comfortably out and about.

"So," she said after a few minutes only filled with the soft sounds of feet on sand, "How was it?"

Nita looked, not having previously noticed the minor changes to his ears, and the slightly more drastic changes to his feet. Would that mean Cody was going to lose his legs, like Cass?

"It did hurt," she replied honestly, picking her way over the still-warm sand, heading closer to the damp, packed stuff at the water's edge. "Especially the tail, and when my ears stretched. Fur is really itchy. But tylenol helps, and it's fine after a couple days."

A few feet from the water, Nita shucked her jeans and padded into the surf. The coolness was really nice on her fuzzy feet. She dug her toes into the watery sand and peered out over the horizon.

Oh yes, Cody's MS. The reason for him being here. Had the doctors actually fixed it? Or at least made progress? Nita peered at Cody's arm, turning it over and carefully looking for the mark. "That's amazing," she whispered. Maybe they really could do good here, and not just in really exceptional cases like Colche's, which seemed to be more a matter of kindness and education than the physical changes themselves.

"Does that mean you haven't needed the catheter since you changed, then?" she asked, hoping her question wouldn't embarrass the boy too much. Nita stepped further away from the shore, rocking gently back and forth to the rhythm of the waves.

"That's really great, Cody." Nita watched him as he joined her in the water. Did he actually know how to swim already? It seemed he was having problems with his tail.

"Try not to think about your tail too much," she suggested. "Thinking like a human only gets in the way at times like this. Like when I zoomed up that tree!" Nita dunked herself all over and came back up, shaking salt water out of her braids. The red panda wasn't terribly happy in the ocean, but it just seemed so right to Nita herself. All those years in the Midwest, and this was what it took to finally get to an ocean.

"Hmm..." Nita wiped a drop of water away from her eye and placed one hand on her hip. "Can you try floating on your stomach and holding your legs still? Just to see what your tail can do if you're deliberately not trying to control it?" She held her arms out towards the boy. "I can grab you if you start to sink."

"Good," she said, her legs spread firmly under her and her fluffy tail (looking rather sad and bedraggled in the water) waving behind her for balance. "Now, can you kick gently with your legs and keep your tail still like that? Try getting a sense for how the muscles feel right now."

Privately, Nita thought it would be more useful to learn to swim with his tail, since that was what real dolphins did, but it was also important for Cody to learn to control his tail independently.

Nita watched as his tail continued to swish about. Maybe they really were going about this the wrong way. "I don't really control mine," she admitted, "but it doesn't really move a whole lot. It helps me keep my balance in the trees and stuff, but it's not all muscular like yours is." Nita paused for a moment, hrm'ing softly.

"If you watch a dolphin swim," she said thoughtfully, "they use their tails a lot. Maybe what you need to do, in the water at least, is let your tail take over. Forget about your legs for a while."

"There you go!" Nita cheered, letting go of Cody's arms. "How was that?" She shifted again, ready to support Cody if the dolphin's insticts weren't quite enough to keep him above the water. "You wanna try actually swimming like that?"