isn't it good, norwegian wood

[hedgie]

Phyllis-the-hedgehog trotted around the forest, sniffing around the forest floor, enjoying fresh air. She had a wheel in her dorm, but sometimes she liked to run around and actually go somewhere instead of just spin a wheel. And she had decided on being a hedgehog at all instead of just going down to the track for the privacy of it. When she shifted, she felt like she were alone in the world. Most of the other students didn't shift into anything like her, so she couldn't communicate well with most other students when she was shifted. And Phyllis loved being alone. That was a way hedgehogs were, from the few wild ones she'd met. Just for the fun of it, the spiny little rodent scurried up a tree and surveyed the campus from the great height. It was still an unfamiliar environment, even after going so long. She was used to grassy fields and her hayloft in Vermont, the entire barn to herself and her bunnies, not the tropical Hawaiian island she now found herself where she had to share a dorm with two others. She had never fully gotten used to the school. As Phyllis climbed down, a musical sound filled the air.
"I am the eggman,
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g'joob," sang her phone.
Crap... thought Phyllis. She couldn't exactly answer it in her current state, and she didn't really want to shift back quite yet. At that moment, Phyllis contemplated how much she really liked her ringtone. The nonsensical bit of genius was one of Lennon's best songs, in her opinion. She especially like the the bit about cornflakes and getting a tan by standing in the rain. If only that worked in Vermont... Being bundled in layer after layer for most of the year did nothing to help the chronically pale.
After a minuet of letting her phone ring, Phyllis decided to shift back and see who was calling. But first to find where she'd left her clothes... The most awkward part of shifting was when you came back and your clothes hadn't followed you, undoubtably. If she knew she would be shifting, Phyllis took some kind of blanket to shift under in case anyone were to walk by, which didn't usually happen anyway. Phyllis located the clump of clothing and was about to shift when she thought she heard a noise. A fellow student? Some woodland creature that would like to make a meal out of her? Phyllis was finding out before she went any further.

tag ;; anja ((i hope i spelled that right...))

[Anja Boujinsky]

Getting away from people was her main goal for the day. After class, and the questions and the probing from everyone that she had been meeting she could only feel the anxiety rounding up in the back of her head. If someone said the wrong thing she might end up losing it on someone and that just wouldn't do. She knew what she needed, but she had yet to really find an outlet for her discussions and had taken to an online forum as suggested by her mother. That had been an odd experience and had been short lived as soon as she got off the school computer. Useless things if you asked her. She hated the whole typing thing when it could be so much easier written down. Or even just spoken.

Her fingers brushed against a fuzzy looking leaf. She couldn't tell exactly what the tree was, but it was quite elegant. Something she would have never seen back in the states at home. Home was just a tad different. There was less sun, a little more cool air, and different foliage. There were hibiscus everywhere you looked, and you didn't have to watch your step for shifted creatures all over. After having stepped on a cobra that was the end of her “not looking.” Stepping on a Cobra was like asking for death, and she certainly didn't want to get any closer with her fly form. That was for sure. She moved forward, her fingers brushing over the small shrubbery until it came to an end, her fingers falling over another bush. This one had a rather smooth leaf, as if it was covered in plastic. She had to bend down just to see if it was real or not, as if it might have been some kind of joke. A plastic plant within the forest.

She smiled a bit at her own distrust, and moved forward. The trees were lavish and full of life. There were animals and insects on all ends. Mostly heard, or even felt rather than seen. She could feel the presence of other flies, and the part of her wished to join them, but she knew she couldn't. Only in dire moments would she let herself relive those moments. She didn't need the heartache. So, instead she let her inner voice fall to the back of her mind, but the beautiful silence in the forest was short lived. She paused when she heard the familiar Beatles music. Her eyes went wide with surprise and she moved forward until she was sure she had found the source of the noise. She saw a small creature with a rough top and a very small but oddly cute face. She smiled down at the creature, her eyes over the clothes it was standing over.

“Oh, I apologize. Let me turn around.” And she did. Shifters needed privacy too.

[hedgie]

Phyllis looked up at the new arrival (thankfully not some kind of large snake or bird of prey) and gave her a look that said, as clearly as possible, to please not watch her. It wasn't very clear at all, having features that didn't look human at all, but apparently she got the message.
“Oh, I apologize. Let me turn around,” sad the girl before turning, as she said she would. Phyllis nodded gratefully, but of course the girl couldn't see her. Phyllis shifted back, ignoring the traces of pain that came with every shift as bones and muscles grew and bended in ways that humans bones weren't meant to. She was used to it. When she was human again Phyllis grabbed her underwear and pulled it on as quick as she could, then her black Metallica t-shirt, and finally her jeans. "Alright, I'm decent," she said as she stood up and stretched out her legs. It didn't matter how many times she shifted, her "new" body always felt a bit strange for the first few moments after the shift. She looked down at her phone, still looping the chorus of I Am The Walrus and picked it up. The caller ID was an unknown name with a weird area code, so she ignored it. Probably a telemarketer. She hit the red 'decline' button and shoved it in her pocket. "I love that song, don't you?" she asked the girl. Then, without waiting for an answer, "All my friends say John was high when he wrote it, but I disagree. All the lyric analysis websites I ever read say that the whole point of the song is that John wanted to just say 'take this song and shove it up your ass!' to all those people that look for meaning in everything. Like that South Park episode where they write a book and try to get it banned but no one will because they say all the dirty stuff is a metaphor... God, I once had an English teacher that was obsessed with symbolism! Once an author was coming to our school for a book talk and we had to find a bunch of symbols in her books, then we asked her about the symbols and she had no clue what were we talking about! Oh man, you should've seen the look on my teacher's face..." She stopped suddenly. "Sorry... I ramble about things some times. I'm Phyllis." She held out her hand. "You?"

[Anja Boujinsky]

Anja waited until the girl had spoken and turned to see quite a different form that she had come upon at first. She smiled at the girl pleasantly, saying nothing of the phone that was ringing. It was one of her favorites by The Beatles, though she preferred Girl, or even Oh! Darling, but then again, maybe she was a romantic at heart. She didn't expect so much chatter to follow, and even paused her own breath in order to try and answer the girls seemingly rhetorical question. Instead she smiled pleasantly, listening to all that was said. She many valid facts. There was of course the obsession with symbolism, but there was also the fact of lack of proof. Unless they could simply go knock on Heaven's door and ask John what he was meaning, they could never know for sure. Even asking Yoko would not be perfect tangible proof. That was what she loved about life so much, there could be so many ideas that could never be proven, but there would always be faith in character. It was in John's behavior and character to tell others to stick it up their ass, and well, maybe that's one reason she enjoyed The Beatles so much.

It seemed she had a comrade in the midst of the woods. She nodded silently, offering the girl a hand, as if that might seal their deal as Beatles fans united.

“Well, you can't go and say that symbolism isn't important. Yes, John probably meant very little, and though I'm sure that The Beatles did drugs, who is to say that drugs was what pushed them to make such a beauty of a song? I think it did indeed have more meaning that 'sticking it to the man.' It was symbolism of the 'hippie movement.'” She paused a moment, trying to remember where exactly she had put this into thought, her cheeks turned a light red, “I apologize, I seem to have lost my train of thought.”

Where had she been going with that again? She shrugged it off and instead turned her attention more towards an introduction,

“I do apologize, I never introduced myself. Anja Boujinsky.”

She offered the girl a smile. She wasn't exactly sure where the topic had really come from, but she felt a little rustiness behind the mind in the topic at hand. She didn't know if she'd ever met a Beatles fan before, and in that she felt contentness in the situation at hand.

[hedgie]

When the girl stuck out her hand, Phyllis gladly took it. A lot of people got really annoyed when she started babbling on about things, making random connection that only made sense in her head. (Going from Beatles to South Park to English class? Really?) But judging from the other girl's body language, she didn't mind. But her answer, a speech on symbolism, hippies, and- most importantly- The Beatles, put Phyllis over the moon. When it came to Beatles fans, there were casual listeners, constant listeners, encyclopedias, and the ones that could stand Revolution 9, plus some random stages in between. Phyllis was up in 'encyclopedia' range, and it seemed this girl was too. “I apologize, I seem to have lost my train of thought.” Phyllis smiled and shook her head in an 'it's all good' fashion. "Don't you hate that?"

“I do apologize, I never introduced myself. Anja Boujinsky.” Phyllis nodded and made a note to remember her name. Beatles fans didn't come along as much as they should. "That's an interesting name," she commented. Then, right back into the ramble...

"Anyway, I totally agree with you. Symbolism is important, and there was obviously some there. But I did read somewhere that part of the song was supposed to be a different song, but John decided it wasn't good enough on its own. It was about how much he liked cornflakes. I guess only John Lennon could make a song out of that, even if he didn't end up using it. Whatever. And it was the 60s. Of course they did drugs. There probably were some songs they wrote on drugs. But it kind of pisses me off when they do something a little weird and everyone's like 'must've been a great acid trip.' Creativity and being high don't need to be the same thing. I think I read about the song being a metaphor for the hippie movement once..." She scrunched up her brow. "I never really got that though." Phyllis returned Anja's smile. "I don't know if John Lennon was a genius or completely insane." She grinned. "Probably both."

((My friends are annoying when it comes to Beatles songs... Every time I play them one they're like "o.o Was he HIGH?"))

[Anja Boujinsky]

Anja found it hard keeping attention. She couldn't quite explain why. It was as if something unknown was diverting her attention. She heard bits and pieces and she even managed to keep her eyes on the girl. She could tell she was pretty into what she was talking about, and generally the idea of a discussion would have put her on the hot seat. She would have gladly joined but there was just something that was bugging her. There was something out there. Was it watching them? She couldn't exactly tell. It—She heard the crack. And her instincts ran nuts. Without much as a coherent thought she fell into the girl and brought them straight into a torny bush.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, until she actually felt her body make contact with the thorns. It tore into her clothes and into her skin. She let out a loud yell but it was quickly covered by the sound of something much bigger. A crack filled the forest, and though they were only meters from the exit, it seemed that a tree only feet from them had decided that it's time was over. If she would have been able to see the fashion the tree had been left in she might have made more sense in it. By the looks, on the other side, from their view there were many bite marks as if someone had come and gnaws the bark from the very tree and had made it's way into the meat. The crack soon became the sound of something hard going down.

It wasn't per se, a sound, but a feeling as the wind suddenly went from a light breeze to a hard force that pushed against the bush. This happened all within seconds and the largest of the sounds were to follow. The sound of a crashing tree only inches from them. Another yell escaped her lips and her body went rigid as she waited for something else to happen. Nothing did happen and she slowly opened her eyes at which she had soon found out had been closed in the fear of those few seconds. Pants left her chest and she moved from the bush slowly only to be greeted with the tree at her side, knocking into her as she made attempts to go out the way she had come in. They'd have to go out the other way or they'd have to push the tree to the side and that didn't seem very likely.