Continued from Part 1

Scratching his head, Cobalt left the restroom. He tried to think of an explanation for why his hair was growing this way. He was so deep in thought that he almost bumped into the beaver who walked up right in front of him.

The fellow was clad in a plain button-down shirt with a name tag. Cobalt actually recognized him from a few previous visits. He staggered on his hooves and backed up a pace. "S-sorry," he said, bamboozled.

The beaver had his arms crossed. "Are you gonna buy something?"

Cobalt's eyes shifted side to side. "Uh...what?"

Looking at him more intensely now, the store worker repeated himself in a more stern tone. "Are you going to buy something? The restroom's for customers only."

Cobalt finally caught on to the guy's behavior and rolled his eyes. "Yes. I'm gonna buy something," he said indignantly. He marched over to the candy bars and grabbed something, then took it to the register. The beaver quietly rang up his purchase, which Cobalt paid for.

As he picked up the candy bar, he looked the store worker in the eye. "You know, I've been here forty or fifty times. You usually smile." The beaver simply cocked an eyebrow. Cobalt wondered if he was trying to recognize his bearded face, but he didn't give the guy a chance to make a guess. He was out the door in three seconds.

He walked across the street onto the block with his apartment building. He looked at the candy bar he grabbed and frowned. "Butterfinger? Of all the ones I could have reached for..." He dropped it in the next garbage can he passed.

The final leg of his walk was the most problematic. His growing mane wasn't only causing him problems by blowing in his face every few seconds, it was also making everyone he passed on the street stare at him. Some stares were innocent: just people distracted by the billowing white hair growing from the goat-lion. The rest were less so...almost contemptuous, or even fearful. Cobalt didn't like it.

At last, he was ascending the stairs to his apartment. Once inside, he shut and locked the door, and then fell backward against it. He ran a hand through what had become a very lush beard.

He clopped into the bathroom and took another look at himself. He gasped. His mane had exploded into a waist-length mass of hair that proved extremely unruly. He grabbed a hairbrush and went to work.

The pure white locks were quite clean and soft to the touch, but they simply insisted on refusing to follow a straight, parallel arrangement no matter how much he brushed them. As a last resort, he pulled a pair of scissors from the drawer. He made a test snip on one lock of the beard, anticipating the worst. His fears were realized as the lock grew back in the span of seconds, twisting and blending into the rest of his hair like nothing had happened.

It was impossible to even tell which hairs belonged to his head and which belonged to his beard. The frustrated kimera flopped onto the couch in a worried daze. How long would he be stuck like this? Would it start growing even longer? He started to think he'd never be able to leave the apartment again.

He managed to calm down over a time. The simple act of stroking his beard while his mind fussed about was a rather soothing ritual. He furrowed his brow and tried to convince himself things would be okay.

After all, his best friends were magical. They'd be able to help him.

Right?