Dawn… Such a lovely time… No moment during the day was quite as beautiful as the brilliant golden orb rising over the horizon, it’s light consuming the darkness as if they were flames… This beauty was what made Ellie always search for the highest surface she could find at night before going to sleep. She doesn’t even bother rising from her perch, staring through the eastern most branch of the tree she had spent the night in as the early morning flames consume the world, deflected off of the leaves surrounding her. For a few moments, she just laid there relaxing before finally standing up on all fours, claws digging into the tree bark as she stretches with a long yawn before slashing out at the leaves, destroying the barriers and allowing herself to be consumed by the flames of the world.

A soft purr escapes her as the early morning warmth seeps into her fur and she lays back down. She didn’t have anywhere to be, so why rush? Sure the early bird catches the worm but the second mouse is the one that gets the cheese… So she just sprawls back out on the branch, purring softly as her long tabby-pattern tail swishes back and forth behind her… and before long she drifts back off to sleep.

“FUN!!!”

Ellie sits up with a start, ears flicking this way and that as she tries to locate the sound, finally looking down below her and seeing the boy… She cocks her head to the side as she stares at him, wondering what he had been talking about…

“Does another being here make you feel better?” Another voice seems to reply to the one who had woken her. What were these people doing here? Were they here for the bus too? Ellie’s brow furrows as she looks up at the sky. Oh… Was it that late already? The golden glow had already faded to a less impressive, yet just as warm and pleasant, yellow.

The two below her continue to converse as she climbs her way deeper into the tree. Was she late? She hadn’t been woken by a motor so she assumed not… She comes to a stop by a rather tattered backpack that was hanging off of a notch on the tree trunk by It’s straps. She took the zipper in her teeth and tugged it open, pulling out the green dressy looking clothes and her ears pin against her head in what could be assumed displeasure… Why the hell did she have to wear these? This place was for monsters and creatures like herself… she should be able to be whatever form she felt like... but she had been told she HAD to wear clothes and look human so she didn’t have much choice….

“Well this seems to be a real party so far” A new voice adds down below. So many people showing up… it must be getting close to time for the bus to get there… With a look of disgust she starts tugging the clothes along the branch with her mouth, getting the top relatively even, although very wrinkled and with a bit of dirt on it, across the branch before pulling the skirt out of her bag as well.

“Kage. It is good to meet some of those who will be my classmates.”

She pauses from trying to get her clothes laid out. Classmates? Well… That settles it, they MUST be there for the school… So she at least knew she had slept in the right tree then… But with this many people showing up she apparently was woken up just in time by the loud male… Carefully, she crawls into the clothes and begins to grow, her fur starting to thin as her limbs lengthen, forelimbs reaching into the top’s arm-holes before her now-only-half-feline head pokes it’s way up through the neck opening. She looks behind herself at the thickening mass that was her waist as her clumsy nubby fingers reach down to grab the skirt and pull it up her legs and hold it as her hips continue to expand, fur turning to the fabric of her undergarments, and before long she manages to fill out the skirt, which now just ever so loosely hung on her gently curving hips. Her tail had completely vanished causing her to wobble a little on the tree branch as she gets used to her changed center of gravity but she quickly recovers, this wasn’t the first time she had done this after all…

“I can’t wait to start school with all of you!” a new, rather enthusiastic voice adds to the conversations below the tree… A thoughtful expression crosses her now human face as she looks down at them all... 
-How exactly will they react to the random girl swining down from the tree branches?- she thinks to herself as her arms finish forming and the uniform’s top rests on her slender frame… The uniform they had sent her was rather small… After all, from what she had seen of this country most of their women were rather petite, so she wasn’t all that surprised… But still… after getting herself at least to the point where the clothes wouldn’t fall off of the branch if she moved, she repositions, sitting upright with a slight shuffling of leaves…. But with the conversations down below she doubted anybody would notice… She looks down at herself and frowns thoughtfully, she didn’t look half bad in this outfit even though she wasn’t fond of the shade of green… a few little alterations to her body and she could make herself look GOOD even though as she shakes out, her waist thinning a little as her hips widen to give herself a slight hourglass figure before she focuses on her chest, pinching the fabric in her fingers and pullign it out to it’s extent.. Wow… the japanese were rather flat… Her chest was flat as a board at that exact moment and the fabric still didn’t go very far… But she could use that to her advantage… If she looked like she was bursting out of her top half the time maybe she could get away with bending the rules about looking human the other half…

*CRACK*

There was no mistaking that sound… Ellie, still barely escaping the cat instincts, snaps her arm out at the trunk of the tree, trying to sink her claws into it to stop herself from falling… And of course seeing as she didn’t HAVE claws, all she managed to do was bloody the tips of her fingers before plummeting… She hadn’t been TOO far up… but it still hurt like hell when she slammed into the branch below her before escaping the canopy… Thankfully her attempts to grab the trunk had kept her upright and moments after the decent sized branch slammed into the ground, she landed on her feet. The impact caused her knees to buckle, but instead of just falling in a heap she leans forward and transfers the downward velocity into forward movement, rolling away and then up to her feet… And it took her a moment more to fall on her ass as she grabs her feet, hissing in pain as she rocks back and forth “aaaah…. Aaaahhhh…” she grunts as she rubs her shins… Forgetting all about the people that had been under her tree for a moment as she is consumed by the pain… Bu after the moment passed, she looks up, noticing the people again, and instantly her cheeks turn bright red and she reflexively licks the back of her hand and wipes her face with it before freezing again, her face turning even redder.

“D-d-did… my… bag fall y-“ she begins to ask, but is cut off by a dull *WHUMP* as her bag drops to the ground, spilling it’s contents at the base of the tree. Scavenged pencils and half used tablets littering the ground along with half a dozen jerky sticks and a few granola bars. “-et… u-uhm… never mind…” she squeaks before lowering her head, long brown hair falling off of her shoulders to hide her face from sight.