The Academy, Part 7

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The Academy

Part 7: A Partner

"Well. I've still got work to do," Cassie announced outside the library's front door. Pointing to the fox-girl, she said: "You go do..something else, so you won't distract me!"

"Ooh, do I have your permission to pull some pranks?"

The catgirl sighed. "Like you ever ask for that. Just, don't you go making any messes!"

"Ah, I do love a challenge," she said, grinning. Cassie just let out a "hmph" and stormed off at a brisk walk. So the Kitsune shrugged at the other two girls. "I'll see you two later~," she said teasingly before wandering off too, at a much more casual pace.

"Those two are...a little strange," Emily commented.
"Well, as long as they're having fun."

"So, um..you told me before that you didn't feel trapped here..?"
"Well, sure," Halley said, "but it's still slightly inconvenient, right? Anyhow, I've been 'this' for long enough, and liked it well enough, that I figure it's 'bout time to make it official."

"There are other ways of being healthy and young again, these days," she pointed out.

"Sure, but—I already abandoned my 'old self' completely. So, 's far as I'm concerned, this method don't cost me a thing."

"I see..."

"Hey, you wanta get dinner?" Halley asked. It was arguably a little early for that, but the two of them had done a lot of walking around since lunch. Anyway, it seemed like Emily's present body had perhaps a higher metabolism than the one she was more used to.
"Sure," she nodded.

In the cafeteria, the wolf-girl came and sat on the opposite side of the booth with her food, then immediately started another conversation. "So—what can you tell me about your research, huh?"
"Um..."

Emily was somewhat used to people having at least some curiosity about her work. However, since around midway through grad school, she'd found that just giving a vague explanation of the basics behind the topic that her research was generally in was enough for most people's eyes to glaze over, after which she or someone else would quickly change the subject. The exception to this, of course, was other mathematicians, who could usually follow along at least partway into the particulars of her research.

When she started to do the former, Halley nodded like she understood perfectly well—like a student currently taking a class on the topic might. She asked a couple of the kind of clarifying questions that someone just pretending to understand wouldn't have been able to come up with. Before long, the redhead felt like she was talking not just to one of her colleagues, but to someone whose work was in the same area; the wolf-girl knew enough, and had enough interest, that she found herself wishing a whiteboard was around to properly write out the details.

Indeed, while Halley was eventually confused on a few important points, it was the kind of confusion that someone who mostly understood, and genuinely wanted to understand the rest, might have. "This is, really hard to explain without drawing some diagrams," she said eventually. "I feel like I'm telling someone the individual steps to build a house without showing them the blueprints."

"Well, then—if you're done eating, maybe we should pay a visit to the study building?" Halley suggested. "I'm sure there's a room or two free."
"Alright..."

The study building had an entire floor full of rooms specifically for people to get together and talk about whatever academic subject pleased them. The particular room the two of them found had a giant whiteboard, and a couple of the markers even worked. So she worked Halley through the part she'd been stuck on before, and continued on to explaining the open questions in her field—and the specific point her own research was currently at. All the while, Halley happily followed along, the motion of her ears and tail proving a continual distraction. Then she especially surprised Emily when, as they arrived at the end of an hour-plus-long explanation, she went to the board herself and started suggesting solutions to the unsolved problems. They weren't all good solutions, and many were things Emily and her collaborators had already tried, but they were the kinds of things only someone with a fairly deep understanding of the material could ever hope come up with.

They wound up talking about math for at least another two hours. No miraculous new solutions to Emily's mathematical problems appeared, but just being able to talk to someone else at such depth was unbelievable. It was especially surreal that, every once in a while, she would get caught up in the conversation enough to forget their situation entirely, and then the motion of Halley's tail or of one of her ears would suddenly bring her back to the reality of both of them being girls in school uniforms—one of which had fur! This invariably caused her to trail off mid-sentence, and she had to catch herself and think back through the past few seconds of conversation to remember what she was saying.

Eventually, the wolf-girl yawned. "Hwaa~aah..." It was an adorable sound she made, not to mention the expression—including bringing her hand up in front of her mouth and briefly closing her eyes. "Aah, sorry," she said afterward, "I was up pretty early this morning for a class, heehee~. Aaannd, it's getting a little late, huh?"
"It is..?" There weren't any clocks in the room, but Emily got out her phone and discovered that it was, indeed, quite late at this point. "You're right...and, there's a talk I wanted to attend fairly early into tomorrow morning."
"Guess we should-oughta' get going, then~," Halley suggested, gesturing toward the door. "We were kinda starting to talk in circles there anyway."
"Um, r-right.."

Still not fully acclimated to navigating The Academy's campus grounds, especially now that it was dark out, Emily followed the wolf-girl back to the dorm. Her eyes were again drawn to the constant motion of the short, dark-haired girl's huge fluffy tail in front of her, and in the slightly tired mental state brought on by thinking deeply about mathematics for so long, it had an almost hypnotic effect on her mind, making it hard to focus on much else until they got inside.

In the dorm, the wolf-girl grabbed some clothes and went into the bathroom to change. Emily sifted through her suitcase once again, trying to find something suitable for sleeping in. "Uh, Halley.."

"Uh-huh?"
"I guess I've been staring at your uh..ears, or tail, a lot today. Especially tonight." She discovered a light-red, almost-pink nightgown, and decided that this was probably good enough.
"Oh, have you? I hadn't noticed~," Halley said in a teasing tone of voice that communicated rather the opposite. "C'mon, you know how I feel!" she said. "I'm proud of my fuzzy bits, so staring at 'em is a compliment 's far as I'm concerned!"

Tossing the bathroom door open, Halley emerged in a tank top, some boyshorts, and evidently nothing else. "Your turn~!" she said, moving out of the way and gesturing at the open doorway with a bright grin.

"Uh, thanks..."

While she got out of the school uniform (and felt mildly disturbed once again to find her hands seemingly knew what to do as though she'd done it hundreds of times before), she continued. "It's just..hard for me to think of staring at whatever makes someone else...unusual as anything other than offensive, I guess."

"Well, there's an awful lot more 'unusual' folk around these days than there used to be," Halley said. "Or at least, than most folks used to know about! I say if we all waste our time worrying about what's 'offensive', we won't get any real communication done!"

It was also a little strange to feel so...unimpressed by the sight of a mostly-naked redheaded girl in the mirror. It was only herself, of course, and even if it wasn't she felt so much like a girl at the moment that it would otherwise just be 'some other girl'...but, at the same time, she had felt a blush rise to her cheeks on seeing Halley in her present state of near-undress. Emily just shrugged it off and put on the nightgown.

"Aaah, that looks great on you!" the wolf-girl gushed as she came out of the bathroom. She'd seemingly been sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for the redhead to come out.

"Thanks, I think..?" She tugged at some of the cloth, unsure if this was going to work. Sleeping in something so loose wasn't something she was accustomed to.

"Say—if you think my ears look good, you should see how they feel," the wolf-girl suggested, hopping down onto her feet and approaching.
"You..w-wouldn't mind?" Emily had what felt like a realization that some deep, instinctive part of her had been wanting to touch those ears the entire time, ever since she'd first started staring at them. That couldn't really be the case—she hadn't even considered the idea of touching them before, after all—but the false realization came at least with an urge to do it regardless.

"Not a bit. Here~!" Coming just inside the taller girl's personal space, she leaned in slightly as if to present them to her.

Given such an invitation, Emily felt obliged by politeness (if not everything else) to at least try. She carefully reached a hand across and brushed her fingers through the thick black, fluffy fur. It really was as soft as it looked, not to mention unexpectedly warm. Rationally, there was no reason to expect it to be anything but warm, but her prior experience with things of such texture was mostly stuffed animals, so...

While her mind went on that track, Emily's other hand reached across and rubbed the other ear, too. The train of thought was interrupted by a soft, high "Aah~" sound from the owner of those ears, followed by an extremely canine-sounding "Rrrfh~!" that had her reflexively pick her hands up away from the other (mostly) human being's head.

Halley's eyes had closed at some point during this; she now folded her ears back slightly as she opened them and stood up straight again. "Awwh, why'd you stop? I was just starting to enjoy it!" she complained.

"Uh, y-you were? I wasn't sure..what that sound meant," Emily said.
"Well—for future reference, those were happy sounds. I'll push you off if I want you to stop!" the wolf-girl said. "You've got a really soft touch, though~. Would you mind petting them some more?"
Looking down into Halley's beautiful bright red eyes, open wide in such an expectant expression, she found it impossible to say no. "I...suppose not..."

Within another half-minute or so of gently rubbing the wolf-girl's fluffy ears, she'd drawn steadily closer to Emily, and followed this up by bringing her arms around the taller girl's waist in a hug. Furthermore, she buried her face in the redhead's chest, which her mind had no idea how to deal with! It was an adorable girl hugging her close, but also someone else's face in her boobs. On the balance, though..it felt rather nice.

She did stop after a while, however, once the sense that this was inappropriate finally overcame how cute Halley's behavior and voice were just now. The wolf-girl let go and hopped a tiny step backwards, enough to tilt her head up and show Emily a deeply-blushing face. "Heheh, I guess I've pretty well tipped my hand at this point," she said.

"Um..."
"Well, I just couldn't help myself! I've kinda wanted to do that ever since I first saw you! I hope I didn't make you too uncomfortable, though," the wolf-girl continued half-babbling.

"N-no, that's alright...it was very weird, but felt kind of, good, I guess? I could do that again, if you want."
"R-really!?" she said eagerly, her voice high and breathy. "I-I mean, don't feel like you have to."
"N-no, it's fine.." Besides this verbal reply, Emily's hands had moved halfway to Halley's ears the instant she saw the expression the wolf-girl made in response to her offer.

Some more petting and hugging ensued. This time, she concluded by gently returning the hug, stroking a hand down through Halley's long dark hair before finally letting go. "H-heehee...!" the wolf-girl giggled excitedly, and it proved infectious. Emily broke into a giggling fit not as extreme, but somewhat longer-lasting, than the one brought on by a barrage of cat puns earlier that day.

"We, uh, really do need to get to sleep, though," Emily said once she'd finally recovered.
"Yeah, we do," the wolf-girl agreed somewhat sadly. "Maybe we can do a little more tomorrow night, though~?"
"Um..sure," Emily agreed without really thinking about whether 'more' meant additional ear-petting or some different act that was itself 'more' than mere ear-petting.

"I'm happy to take things slow," the wolf-girl said. "I'm mostly just really happy you're not mad or anything!"

"I..just don't know how I could be," the redhead said slowly. "You're, far too adorable to be angry at."
"Aa~awww~hhh...!"

Halley wound up attending much of the conference alongside Emily—only occasionally breaking off to see certain other simultaneous talks. They went to nearly every meal together, including some dinners with larger groups of conference attendees. It was much more fun than any such event had been before—even to someone like Emily, who found learning new math, of all things, to be exciting. The days flew by until the last day of the conference.

By this point, the two of them had stopped using separate beds. Halley was lying on top of her in a close hug, gently nuzzling her cheek. "Um..."
"Yes?" The wolf-girl picked herself up enough for their noses to almost touch, sensing a serious topic from Emily's verbal stall alone. Since this also brought Halley's beautiful red eyes to where they took up most of her vision, it took her even longer to fully form her sentences.

"Y-you know..I need to go back tomorrow. To the uh..'real' world. There are...people there who know me, as my 'original self', who I care a lot about."
"Oh, I guessed that," Halley said. "You mind if I tag along?"

For a moment, the mathematician was too surprised by the casual reply and counter-offer to come up with a good response. "Uh..I don't...it's just..you know."
"'I know'?" she repeated, meaning that she didn't.
"My 'real world' self looks pretty different? I mean, not to point out the obvious, but I'm usually male..."
"Oh, that's no problem." Evidently tired of holding herself up, the wolf-girl dropped back down to where their cheeks were touching, and talked into Emily's right ear. "Sure, I was struck by your beauty as a girl the first time I saw you, but there's plenty of other things I like about you now~. Besides, I bet you're a pretty handsome young man!"

"Pfft..." Emily giggled briefly at the little wolf-girl talking like an old person again.

"Anyhow, why do you think I rushed through that request for a 'last name'?"

"Well...I guess that settles that, then..." Emily lifted an arm wrapped around the wolf-girl's waist and reached that hand down a bit to the base of her tail, gently stroking it.

"Y-yip!"

The mathematician's next paper was a joint work, as most of them were, but among the collaborators was an unusual name. "Halley Wolfe" was a complete unknown in the field, with no prior publications and certainly no official record of education to speak of, and yet several people who'd been to a certain conference recognized the name anyway. This was the first of many papers published with the wolf-girl as an author—several of which didn't list him as a collaborator at all—forming a body of work that eventually earned her an honorary PhD...although the last name "Wolfe" only appeared on the first few of those papers.

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And now we have come to the end of this little tale, with a logical if not inevitable conclusion for the two main-est characters. I hope you enjoyed it! Please leave a comment or two to let me know what you think.