A Wedding Guest

Look at that, it's a sequel to Wishing to Fall! Maybe halfway into this one I knew it'd be too long to be a caption, which is just as well. While it does follow from that one, each story is perfectly able to make sense of without the other, so I'm still calling it 'standalone'.

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Eagerness to marry quickly meant little time to prepare. Little time to prepare meant a relatively low-budget, small wedding. Close friends and family were invited, of course, and Flint was included among the former. It was, perhaps, to his misfortune that a brief dark look which crossed his face while watching the happy bride and groom at the reception was noticed by a stranger passing his table.

"Something displeases you?" a man's gentle voice came, interrupting his thoughts.

"Huh?" Turning to look, Flint found a tall stranger in a suit; he didn't look a day over thirty, yet something about his bearing and the way he spoke made him feel much older than that. Since he had no idea who this was...he guessed it was one of the bride's friends? "Oh, uh. Sorry. I guess you caught me feeling a little jealous."

"Whatever of?" The stranger took a seat at the otherwise empty table, the back to one side of him so he was completely facing Flint; it didn't seem like he intended to stick around for more than a brief conversation.

"Oh, you know. Feels like some guys just have all the luck. Like, out of the blue, one of his friends turns into a gorgeous catgirl and falls for him right away. Why can't something like that happen to me?" he said, waving vaguely toward them. "I know, that's pretty stupid. Really, I'm happy for both of 'em."

"Glad to hear it," the stranger said. "Chin up. I'm certain your turn will come sooner or later."

"Yeah, thanks," he responded absently, resolving to focus his thoughts away from petty jealousy for at least the rest of the wedding. This was supposed to be a happy day for Hugh, after all; it wouldn't do to have one of his friends looking sour the whole time. Seemingly satisfied with the conversation, the stranger stood up and wandered back out into the crowd.

When they were about to drive off in the groom's car with a 'just married' painted on the back of the window, the white-haired bride turned around and tossed the bouquet backwards toward the small crowd of well-wishers gathered. Some stepped away; others reached out their hands to try to catch it; but it sailed, as if it had been carefully aimed, straight into Flint's face. "Pffwah!" He grabbed at it just to get it out of his eyes, and wound up fumbling it out of his hands and into a brief toss sideways, where a woman who seemed far more eager to have it than he was snatched it and immediately began taking credit for the catch. "Phew," Flint shook his head, picking some stray petals off of his glasses and actually feeling grateful to not suddenly be the center of all that attention. The wedding over, he drove home and went to bed; there was work to do tomorrow, after all.

Flint's alarm seemed louder than usual when he woke up the following morning, leading him to reach his arm out from under the covers and slam it down on the snooze button with more alacrity than usual. And, as he lay there in the precious few moments he knew he could spare before having to move, he felt distinct discomfort in his right ear—the one currently underneath his head. It felt squished and bent, which—on one hand, it was under the full weight of his head, but on the other hand it had never complained about such a situation before. Groaning, he turned over to the other side and felt his ear decompress itself, stretching out to the side, as now his left ear came under the weight of his head but bore it much more admirably. The other one had been uncomfortably folded, while this one was more or less flat against the pillow.

It took his groggy mind a moment to catch up. And then he sat bolt upright, no longer in need of his alarm's second chime as he distinctly felt both of his ears standing out straight, past his hair, and gently twitching. All activities and feelings quite impossible for human ears, and unfamiliar to him personally. "What the..?!" He threw the covers off and stood up, dashing over to his bathroom to look in the mirror, and saw exactly what he'd feared he would: Two black triangles of fur with white fluff adorning the inside of each, very clearly having taken the place of his usual hearing equipment.

Staring, half-squinting, at the mirror, he experimentally tried to move them, and was able to flap them up and down, turn them around in various directions...they were picking up the subtlest movement of the air around him, and far more sound from his neighbors than usual. "Why do I..how..?" he mumbled, attempting to merely comprehend the situation. The bizarre thought came to him that cat ears were contagious and somehow that bouquet had carried the 'disease' to him when it hit him in the face..but then, if it was, then Hugh's new wife had definitely made enough physical contact to infect him well before now, and he still looked...the same. So that wasn't it.

Flint sighed. "Okay, so someone..did this to me. Why?" The ears were capable of hearing the slightest movements of anything in his apartment, but didn't detect an intruder. He took a moment to go out and look around for a moment, but found nothing out of place. Even though it seemed like this had been done to him overnight...well, the responsible party hadn't broken in to do it. His search was interrupted by the loud buzzing of his alarm, making him jump for how much louder it sounded even from this far away and dash back to the bedroom to turn it off, remembering that he had things like breakfast to eat and a job to get to lest he was fired. This would just have to wait until he was off the clock, as irritating as that was certain to be. He reflexively grabbed at his glasses case and pulled them out, reaching them most of the way up to his eyes before realizing something else.

"Uuh..?" He couldn't see through them. Putting them on his ears and making them stay seemed physically impossible; they felt very uncomfortable with the hooks trying to dig into the fur and reflexively twitched around to knock the specs right off of them again. But he couldn't see through them, and no sooner were they off his ears, the lenses no longer between his eyes and the rest of the world, that he fully put it together: He could see perfectly without them!

"Duuude. Okay, okay. Corrective eye surgery in my sleep is at least as weird as giving me cat ears, but it's a trade I'll take. Fine, whatever." He half-slammed the frame back down on his nightstand, an entire lifetime of reflexively protecting the fragile lenses preventing him from actually doing it very forcefully, and went straight to the bathroom to take a shower and start getting ready for the day.

Flint tended to ignore his body as much as possible in the mirror or in the shower. He was a fair bit overweight and knew it, and honestly the one disadvantage of having functional eyes again was not having blurry vision to help avoid looking at it. Apparently Hugh's bride was some kind of personal trainer at a local gym. Maybe, after they'd been together a few weeks, he could try to leverage some kind of discount on membership. Yeah, because he'd totally go and exercise if he was a member. Right. Well, it'd be taking advantage of a friend anyway, he decided, and brushed the idea off by the time he was fully clothed again.

There were a few strange looks from coworkers who knew what he normally looked like on the way into the office, but the wonderful thing about an IT job at a big company was that it mostly involved sitting in front of a computer in a cubicle and communicating with others only by email. His strange new ears picked up conversations from other parts of the office that he wouldn't normally be privy to, but none of them particularly interested him and it was surprisingly easy to ignore them, like the increase in auditory stimuli had come with a free upgrade to his ability to selectively ignore them. The biggest problem was that his ears weren't shaped correctly to wear headphones now, but putting them at a bit of an angle, so the parts that normally went over the ears were a bit in front of them instead, seemed to allow him to pick up the music just fine. He'd have to research later, he thought, whether they made earbuds for cat-people or something...surely there was enough demand for someone to have at least tried it.

A couple of hours into his job, Flint needed to readjust his headphones. They seemed to have somehow gotten a bunch of his hair stuck between themselves and his head, and when he pulled them off he shook his head to let everything fall down to its proper place only to find a lot more falling than he was used to. Longer bangs were just the beginning, with hair tickling his cheeks nearly down to the chin and some strands even touching the back of his neck behind him. He slowly set the headphones down on his desk, mouthing 'what the' to himself and running a hand through the suddenly-long hair. It was soft and bouncy to the touch, like it had been particularly well-groomed that morning (it hadn't), and it was indeed his hair; he could feel his hand pulling it down and could see that it was the same pitch-black as always.

Flint sighed to himself, picking the headphones up again. It would seem today was determined to be as weird as possible for him. He couldn't focus on trying to figure out why or wondering what else was going to happen; he simply had too much work to do. And—if he'd been really honest with himself—focusing on his work kept him from panicking. That was why when, about half an hour later, he thought his mouth felt kind of weird, he resolved not to check on it until lunch break.

Finally, the lunch break did come, and he stood up from his chair. His shirt seemed to unfurl itself, falling down as though it suddenly had more room to do so, and when he looked down to try to make sense of that feeling he realized that, in fact, his belly had shrunk. It looked like it might have if he'd made an effort to suck it in that morning, except that he wasn't doing that just now. Flint scratched his head (actually, the base of an ear—but he didn't want to think about that) and then hurried over to the bathroom to take a real look in the mirror before heading to lunch. What he saw was about what he now expected: Cat ears still there, hair just long enough to frame his face, less belly fat...and, when he carefully opened his mouth and pulled back his lips with a finger, fangs.

Fangs!? Indeed, some of his teeth were visibly longer and sharper than before. They weren't..vampire fangs, perhaps, but more like..well...the teeth of a cat. At least those extra long ones that stood out when the mouth was open. It didn't seem like he was going to get away with just one strange, feline trait, but at least these weren't openly visible for the world to see, he thought, heading out of the bathroom to go get food. He was still on a tight schedule if he wanted to actually eat and not be docked any pay for coming back late, so he deliberately distracted himself with that.

Lunch, at least, was as normal as it could be with his body already having its features rearranged. Soon enough he was back to work, leaning back in his chair and continuing the thankless work of helping prevent the less-competent employees from destroying the entire company's systems or, worse, exposing them to outside attack.

After another half hour or so, he found himself scooting forward in the chair a bit, but initially didn't wonder why. It was when he started to scoot back but found it extremely uncomfortable to do so that he started to worry. But—then something urgent came up, and he leaned in to deal with it. By the time his focus was back on his body, he could feel the hem of his shirt brushing against...something..which wasn't his lower back but was connected to it. That something was moving back and forth slightly, which was especially strange, so he pulled forward and turned around in his chair, picking the hem up a bit to see. There was about a foot-long, slim appendage seemingly consisting of soft black fur coming straight out of the base of his spine. He groaned softly to himself, reaching out a hand to touch it and shivering slightly at how that felt. Not satisfied with cat ears and cat teeth, his body was growing itself a cat tail!

Sighing, he again concluded that there was essentially nothing he could do about it and turned toward his work once more, trying to ignore the strange new appendage. It got harder to ignore as the next hour or so went by and it slowly, steadly became longer and longer behind him. Soon enough its tip was brushing against the back of his chair as it twitched around involuntarily, and then it was instinctively curling itself to one side so the last couple of inches or so were against it, and then it was moving so the tip wasn't on the back, but a few inches beneath it were...

The growing tail, bizarrely, didn't feel uncomfortable. It had been sensitive to his fingers, but didn't seem too bothered by the shirt or the chair. The longer it got, the more it seemed able to keep itself out of his way—apart from keeping him from sitting all the way back, which he hardly ever did anyway. A couple of times in its growth, he repositioned himself in his chair and found his shirt sliding down again as it had at lunchtime, and briefly looking down to pat at his belly a bit, he found more of its fat had vanished away. Weirdest weight loss program ever, he thought to himself, turn into a freaky cat person! Great.

Mercifully, work finally ended, and Flint logged out of his computer, packed up, and stood to leave. The hem of his shirt slid halfway down his thighs; what had once been some generous rolls of fat had been reduced to just some minor pudge, and yet he couldn't quite shake the feeling that didn't fully account for how far down the shirt fell. The new tail seemed eager to help him balance on his feet as he shifted his weight around experimentally for a second. He had thoughts of hiding it under his shirt or something, but then it would look like there was a live snake on his back, and that would probably provoke worse reactions, if anything.

It was when he sat in his car that a creeping suspicion confirmed itself. The mirror was angled just slightly too high, which meant...he was shrinking. Quickly Flint shook his head, dispelling that thought—no, it only meant he had shrunk. Very, very slightly, and no more. Surely...that was it, right?

Flint exhaled, a slow "Ffffh." He needed to go relax, clear his head. When work-stress was too much, it was normal to go out drinking with Hugh. Well—he was less into drinking and more just eating tasty food, but the general idea was the same. Hugh was probably a bit...busy...right now, but that didn't stop him from driving to a place by himself and sitting up at the bar to order food.

About halfway into his appetizer, Flint sensed someone sitting at the stool next to his. His ears heard it, sure, but what registered consciously was simply the presence of someone else. Then that person said, "Hey, you okay there?" Turning toward the source of the voice, he found himself looking at a tall, slim, blond-haired man with..cat ears of his own, in roughly the same shade as his hair, and on closer inspection a similarly-colored slim tail coming from his back. "You seem pretty agitated."

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine," Flint said sarcastically. Part of him wanted to chase this guy off, but his expression from the ears down was one of genuine concern, and he didn't really want some stranger walking off still feeling pity for him.

"Look, you see this?" he pointed at an ear. "And that?" he added with an emphatic point back roughly in the territory his tail was presently traversing. "That's new. I woke up with these this morning."

"Oh. Yeah, that sounds pretty rough," the man nodded. "Any idea why?"

"Nope. Doesn't seem like whatever's doing this to me is through, either."

"Well, hey, no use stewing in it by yourself. Want me to buy you a drink or something?"

"No," Flint folded his ears back. "I don't drink. And I'm not poor, I can pay for my own stuff."

"Okay, okay," the stranger put his hands out. "You just, look like you could use some company. Mind if I stay here?"

"Fffine. As long as you can distract me from—this," he said, waving vaguely at his own body.

"Oh, sure. Let's see—my name's Tom," he said first.

"Really? Tom?"

"Yeaah, I know," he shrugged. "Worse, that's my middle name; my first is Felix. Anyway, I work for an advertising firm. You?"

Flint introduced himself back, and then began simultaneously describing his job and complaining about it. To his surprise, he got some laughs out of the blonde-headed cat-man; most people didn't seem to appreciate his particularly dry, sour sense of humor. When the conversation moved on, they went into interests. There was more in common there than he could believe from some total stranger who'd just wandered up to him. They kept talking well past dessert, until Flint noticed the bartender subtly pushing the paper with his unpaid bill on it ever closer to his side of the table.

"Yeah, I think I'd better go," he said, after handing her his debit card. "Got an early morning tomorrow."

"Mmh, me too. Hey, can I give you my number, though? It'd be cool to hang out with you again sometime," Tom said, getting out his phone. The affirmative reply was almost automatic, and soon after that Flint gave a generous tip to make up for overstaying their welcome and they both stood up to leave.

At this point the situation he'd been distracting himself from firmly reasserted itself. "..Ah." The entire restaurant looked noticeably taller than it had when he'd come in, and his new..acquaintance..also seemed unreasonably tall now. Looking down and tugging at his shirt again, it seemed his belly had flattened out completely, and the hem was now trailing down the whole length of his thighs. "Ssstill, shrinking, I guess," he mumbled—aware Tom's cat ears could hear that.

"Oof. Sorry," he said. "Hope it uh, quits soon, and you can find out who did it. Actually, there's gotta be someone around who can undo unwanted transformations. Maybe I'll look that up for you," he suggested.

"Yeah. That'd be good..thanks," Flint nodded, wondering how much of the change would be undone by such people. Was he going to have to weigh the—admittedly enormous—benefits against the costs soon? Well, if this took the direction of turning him into an actual cat it was an absolute deal breaker, he thought. "See you later."

"Yeah, you too, man." Tom clapped him on the shoulder once before heading out.

Walking out to the car, he noticed that his jeans were threatening to trip him up, and stopped to roll them up. Driving home required an adjustment of the seat in addition to the mirror, and when he got there he just threw off the oversized clothes and went to his bathroom to finally take a really close look at what was being done to him.

"W-whaa.?" The face in the mirror...was so not his face. It looked smaller, softer...cuter? Where were the bits of rough, unshaven beard that inconvenienced him with shaving once a week? Wasn't he supposed to have a mole somewhere, or something? There wasn't a single blemish to be seen! And..moving from that shock to elsewhere, he could see that the rest of his body was not just shorter but also just smaller in general: His torso had tapered inward while his belly (and chest) fat was busy vanishing; his arms and legs were slimmer than before, the fat mostly gone from them too.

Well, at least he didn't appear to have grown any new fur since the tail, he thought, and turned around to get to bed. Usually, even after as long a night out as this, he'd stay up a bit longer, but...this had been a particularly exhausting day. He just wanted to go to sleep and hope this was some weird dream he'd wake up from the following morning. After climbing into bed, he found himself instinctively curling up, his back arching more than he thought would normally be at all comfortable. But..it felt right, like it was how he was supposed to sleep. Mentally chanting don't worry about it eventually succeeded, or else tired his mind out enough for it to drift off to sleep anyway.

Flint reacted to the sound of the alarm with a sudden jolt, popping his upper body upright so quickly it threw his covers off; this was accompanied with a "Mrreaaoow!" fit for a startled—well—cat, and a brief panicked look around the room before he got his bearings. Panting softly for a second as his heart rate returned to normal, he reached over and turned off the alarm, feeling very awake already. Then he hopped out of bed, landing neatly on his feet.

"Ffh. I guess I'm, like, really part cat, huh?" he mumbled, and thought it sounded kind of strange. "Huh? Huuuuuh." It was just—his voice didn't sound quite right. It was..higher in pitch than before, he concluded after a moment. "Aah, great, more weird stuff overnight," he said, trying to get used to the altered tone from his throat as he walked over into the bathroom to look in the mirror again.

His perspective of the bedroom, and bathroom, was a little lower still than the night before; he'd become a bit shorter. But—looking in the mirror he could see the more drastic changes were largely horizontal. His shoulders were narrow, his frame positively slender, and his arms and legs had very much followed suit. Running one hand across the opposite arm, he said, "Uuh...okaay body, you can stop getting thinner now..." However, that was far from all; the curious lack of hair that his face had displayed last night seemed to be spreading, the hair on his chest, arms, and legs all quite a bit thinner and shorter than before.

He wanted desperately to find a way to make this stop before it got any weirder, but—no time, he had work today. He had tomorrow off, though; maybe if Tom came through on finding someone who could undo this, he could go have that done then. In the meantime, the more immediate dilemma was making his clothes fit this small body. The boxers he'd worn to bed alone were threatening to slide right off, and did so with the slightest push as he made his way into the shower.

He wondered if he was supposed to shampoo his furry parts with normal, human-hair shampoo, or if—assuming he kept them—some kind of pet shampoo was needed. Maybe someone who'd been born with cat parts could answer that better, he thought, deciding to just leave them as alone as possible for the moment. And as he soaked in the warm water, he came up with a reasonable enough plan for what to wear.

One of his t-shirts did succeed in covering his upper body, at least; though it slipped halfway off of a shoulder, it was in no danger of falling off of him entirely. After that, he put on boxers and quickly added a pair of jean-shorts which used to fall just to his knees, but now came as far down as his calves, and fastened both with a carefully tightened belt. The only real problem was his tail flipping up the overlong shirt in the back, but that didn't really expose any extra skin either, and he'd been dealing with something like that since yesterday afternoon, so this would have to do.

A few people looked at him on his way into work, but no more than the day before, and with stares that lasted no longer. It helped that he kept his head down, didn't look back at any of them, and just quickly got into his cubicle, letting the back of the chair get between him and the entrance to it.

"Mm~mm." He hummed quietly to himself periodically, having certain suspicions about his voice. Those proved to be spot-on, as he tracked a slow, steady rise in pitch throughout the morning. On top of that, he found himself itching occasionally, and when he looked down at his arms, or pulled up his shirt or a legging of the pants to scratch, he saw less and less body hair every time—like it was just slowly running the process of growing out in reverse. By lunchtime, it seemed every inch of his skin was as soft and smooth as his face; his arms certainly were, from even the briefest of inspections. And his voice's pitch had shifted up into the tenor range, leaving any kind of deep, masculine mode of speech entirely out of his reach. It all added up to a creeping, worrying suspicion that he wasn't mentally prepared to put together into a full conclusion.

The afternoon seemed relatively tame by comparison. Some quiet hums over an entire hour seemed to show his voice had finally settled and quit changing, and with all the hair gone, there was nothing left to itch, it seemed. At worst he found himself wriggling in his seat more than a few times, but it wasn't like he hadn't done that before. A couple of times he fooled himself into thinking that he'd refastened his belt too tight at some point after using the restroom, and quietly took it out a bit...but, as quitting time came close, it was no longer just the belt that was tight, but also the boxers that had been threatening to fall off of him just that morning. He had, undeniably, spent the afternoon growing out his hips. Standing up and feeling around briefly with his hands (after confirming there was nobody looking into his cubicle, which there usually wasn't anyway but he couldn't be too sure), he found his thighs a bit fatter than before, the butt bigger and rounder. None of it seemed unhealthy like he'd been before, but instead like his body was just..electing to take on some very different proportions. It should have impacted his balance, he thought, but standing and walking were both just as easy as before.

He went straight home, trying to focus on driving carefully and not on what was—what had happened to him over the course of the day. Only once he was safely locked into his apartment did Flint really begin to contemplate putting the clues together into the obvious conclusion. “Someone...somewhere,” he said aloud, “decided that I needed to be a catgirl. That's what this is. Why even!? I don't want..I mean, like, this is—some of this is cool and all, but I..mmh..I..” His speech was interrupted by a particularly strange feeling deep between his legs, a kind of gentle motion from something that usually didn't move like that on its own. “Oh no..”

He'd crossed half the distance of the little living room his apartment had and stopped in his tracks. There was barely enough time to register that sensation and comprehend it before it came again, but much stronger, a tingling, inward-slipping feeling. “Aa—aah...!” It made him shudder first, pulling his arms tightly around himself, and then he slowly fell to his knees, feeling heat in his cheeks as the continued—shrinking—down there felt good in some bizarre, incomprehensible way. “Nngh, n-no~oo...” he mumbled, trying to fight the enjoyment of what was happening, and was treated to the sound of his voice changing again, much more swiftly than before. “Aa~ah..!” It flipped up out of the male register entirely and just kept going up as he started to make some involuntary feline noises, too.

“Aahm..mrr~rrh..RRrroo~ow...!” What had made him a man his whole life slipped away, getting smaller and smaller; at the same time he could feel his clothes slipping on him a bit strangely, too. His shorts peeled themselves down off his hips, their material softening and tightening against his legs as they split into two long leggings, reaching down to merge with his socks. His boxers shed their leggings and pulled almost uncomfortably tight on his diminishing groin. The shirt tightened only slightly, pulling its collar in enough to cover his shoulders, but its sleeves spread out across his slender arms. All the while, his body became less and less male, drawing higher and higher “Aa~ah” and “Mrrnh” noises from his throat, until finally—with one high, soprono “AAAH!”, Flint felt that final tug of his manhood leaving him for good.

Aftershocks came an instant or less later as new equipment burst into place with a gentle upward push and some sharp, fuzzy tingles that made her cry out in that high voice again. “Aa~ahnn~nn..!” As womanhood settled into Flint's body, she found it impossible to miss just how pleasant it was capable of being. Still trying to retain some semblance of control, she fought futilely against a purr, which came out as “Mmh—nngh, aaahhmmmrr~rRRRrrrh...!” But then, mercifully, the intensity of the sensations dropped off, and she started to have some measure of control again, slowly huffing in air and opening her eyes—wondering at which point they had closed.
“Hhf...fff...T-that, I...gah..” Looking down, she saw thigh-high leggings and a hoodie which together failed to hide most of her lower thighs. The body these clothes were on seemed quite obviously female, although the top seemed unusually empty around the chest. She was—still flat-chested, she realized, and her ears popped upright and her eyes wide open, feeling a small spike of panic.

“O-oh no...n-no way..I..a~ah!” Flint was helpless against the sudden spread of tingles all across her chest, and even moreso the sensation of two little bumps starting to push themselves forward, deeply sensitive skin touching the soft material of the inside of the hoodie. “Aah..n-not ag—mrrh! gainnnNNNnnn~nnh..!” Her body squirmed in pleasure as it continued, drawing more irresistible fuzzy feelings from down below and an even hotter blush to her face.

She gave up at this point, feeling exhausted from fighting futilely against her body's own inclination before, she felt the small bust begin to grow much faster than it had been a moment ago. “Aah, mrr~RRroowrrh...aa~ahnn..nh!” She had to admit this, at least, felt good. It also seemed like she was on her way to an attractive body, even if it wasn't the sort she'd have ever fantasized about having before. “Mnh, a~ahnnn..!” As her breasts continued to grow, already pushing past what would suffce for a mature woman of her height, she gave in to the pleasant feelings even more. Her ears were down to the horizontal, her tail whipping around behind her...even being part-cat turned out to feel pretty great, right? “Aah—o~oh..mmnh.” The idea of being a beautiful woman was...intriguing at least, and if it was going to feel like this...

One last push hit her, making it difficult to think for the moment it occurred. “MnnNNnnaaAaa~ah, RrreeaaaooOOoo~ooww!” In that instant, she felt her breasts expanding an entire cup size more, growing out into huge globes that filled the top nicely—as well as a bra which had suddenly appeared beneath it—and completed a rather generous, womanly figure.

“Hhf...ff..” As the new catgirl slowly caught her breath, her mind spun in a different direction. Mental images of guys floated through her head: Tall, strong, handsome...all of them she felt an immediate attraction to. Her heart was still racing from the excitement of the change, but it didn't stop as, last of all, she pictured the man she'd met the night before. He was..really cute, and they'd hit it off so well besides. “Rrrr~rr...” To some surprise and embarrassment immediately after, Flint caught herself purring contentedly at just the thought of getting to see him again. And, when she re-opened her eyes once more, it came alongside a giddy, slightly shy smile and the slight rekindling of a blush she had otherwise mostly recovered from.

“Ffh, wow, I uh..um.” Flint sprang to her feet—in the process inadvertently reminding herself of how agile and flexible her new shape was—and shook her head, trying to clear it. “Noo way, I've gotta, get this fixed...” she mumbled, starting in the direction of the bathroom. She hadn't exactly noticed it before, but her hips seemed to sway a bit when she walked. That felt...what?...nice? Weird...

In the mirror, she first noticed that her eye color had shifted to a bright pink, and then—out from there—appreciated for the first time just how adorable her face really was, framed in that soft, short..well, short-for-a-girl...hair. The transformed clothes, casual as they were, seemed to complement her body perfectly—the hoodie even had an extra hole for the tail so it wouldn't have to sit under the last couple inches of the hem and risk flipping it up—and she had stray thoughts flying through her head of putting together a whole 'tomboy' wardrobe. Tomcat? A soft chuckle came to her at that.

“Nngh...I hate how much I like this,” she said a second later, frowning and folding her ears back. “Am I really gonna put up with..this? For, what, just..my eyes working, and some physical fitness, an attractive body...uhh...” The ability to romance Tom? was the next thing that came to her head, but she didn't say it aloud, frowning and blushing again instead.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden noise from the direction of her belly, startling her and making her jump. “NnyyaAah!” Fumbling around for a second, she realized that the contents of her pants pockets had somehow transferred themselves into a big pocket in the stomach area of the hoodie, and furthermore that that noise had been her phone ringing. Pulling it a bit clumsily up to her face, she saw that it was..the person she'd just been thinking about who was calling her. “Nngh, not now,” she mumbled, but was already swiping to answer in spite of herself. Some swift mental gymnastics dodged around the fact that she felt excited to hear his voice by instead thinking that he might have found a way to turn her back, and that there wasn't really a good reason not to answer anyway, right?

“Hello..?” she tried pushing her voice as deep as it would go to imitate a masculine tone, but utterly failed, sounding more feminine if anything.

“Hi, is this, uh..”
“Flint, yes,” she interrupted in what was now her real voice, hearing the hesitation right away. “My uh..well, a lot more changed since last night.”

“Oh-kay. It's just that, you sound kinda like—”
“A girl, yes, I hadn't noticed. What're you calling about?”

“Oh! Yeah. So, I have this friend who knows an old warlock, and got him to ask, you know, hypothetically about a person in a situation sorrrt of like yours..uh, he—the warlock, I mean—said that changes happening that slowly probably wasn't the result of a single, temporary spell, but more like, a lot of miniature bursts of magic from somewhere that each had an individual, uh, permanent effect. Which meeans, turning someone like that back would require casting a spell to directly transform them back, more or less.”
“Okay. Annd, are spells like that common?”
“Well, yeah, sort of..that depends on who you know. It's not the specialty of that warlock, but he might have some connections...”

Flint sighed, a slight exhalation that barely registered in the phone's mic. “Look, uh..it sounds like it'll take a while, anyway, right?”
“Then I need to, do some stuff to deal with what's happened..like, get a few clothes that'll fit me..uh, sorry, just thinking out loud,” she interrupted herself, feeling another blush coming on. “The point is, there's not much more to do tonight, right? I have tomorrow off, so maybe you can get me in touch with that warlock then, but...for nooow, would you..” The motion of her tail nervously flicking around, much more rapidly than usual, distracted her from peripheral vision for a second. And when did her heart start racing again? “D'you want to hang out again? I just got off work and still haven't, uh, had anything to eat.”

“Oh? Sure. Name the place,” Tom said, and she did almost immediately—like she'd been planning to ask to go there with him since the phone rang.

The catgirl got there first, taking a small booth near the door and sitting leaning toward the table a bit—feeling like she was priming herself to pounce. She did, in fact, watch the door carefully, and raised her hand to wave the instant the tall, blond-headed cat-man came in. He looked distinctly uncertain that she was waving at him at first, but came closer and then saw some 'come on already!' gestures from her which fully convinced him. Soon she was smiling up at him, her face warm and tail flicking around behind her in spite of herself.

“Uhh..wow. You, uh, weren't kidding,” he said, also starting to blush.

“Mmh. I think whoever did this was thinking 'catgirl' the whole time,” she said. “They waited until I got home today to push me over the fence.”

“I...see.” Tom came and sat down across from her. “What's that, uh..like, anyway?”
“Weird. Really weird. I, really..I feel like I like it, even though I don't want to. You think this curse or whatever screwed with my head?”
“Uh..could be? I'm not an expert, but it's supposed to be pretty hard to actually change what someone wants. I'd say, if you just like it for no reason it's suspicious, but uh..if you can put your finger on some reasons then..”
“It might just be me, huh.” Realizing she'd been leaning forward since he sat down, she pulled herself upright again.

“Well, I mean..this body has some really obvious, uh, advantages over the old one. Hang on, look...” Taking a moment to get out her phone, Flint pulled up a photo from the wedding and pointed. “This is what I looked like two days ago. Dressed as nice as I could get. Pretty bad, right?”
“Uh..” Tom's ears folded down a bit; it looked like he wasn't sure whether agreeing with her counted as an insult.

“Come on, you can say. I was a fat slob with huge glasses.”

“Y-yeah. I, uh, definitely wouldn't call that look attractive. Wait, glasses?”
“Mm-hm,” she nodded. “I haven't needed them since yesterday morning, when the ears came in. Still on my nightstand. I admit, I even kinda, like some of this 'part cat' thing. I guess you've had that your whole life?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, slightly more comfortable with this line of questioning.

“Seems like I have some weird instincts to deal with, but I feel..light. Agile. Full of energy or something. Maybe you could give me pointers on some things, like not suddenly yowling every time something startles me, though.”
“Oh, um, maybe? That's mostly just practice,” he said, “same way you'd teach any kid not to cry every time they're upset. Um, but it's not..like...sometimes I still do that, too, if the shock is big enough.”

“But—so you, uh, if we found someone who could do it, you'd keep that part, and just turn back into a guy?” Tom asked.
“I don't know. I'm feeling more conflicted about that by the minute,” she said. “What do you think of this body? If you just, say, saw it walking by one day?”
“Well it's—um.” Tom blushed; he'd been looking at her off and on up to this point, but for the first time he really seemed to take it all in. “Very..very cute,” he said finally. “But still..mature? I'd go at least as far as beautiful. Uh—hypothetically, speaking, in that situation,” he added awkwardly.

“Yeeah, that's what I thought,” she said. “And really, what do I care if I'm a guy or not? The more I think about it, the less I think it ever really meant to me. I just liked it because it was comfortable, it's what I already was for years. If someone asked me, I probably wouldn't have said I wanted anything changed.”

“So..what, now that it's been forced on you, you like it?” Tom said, seeming mostly curious.
“I think so? Well—I've had it for less than two hours so far. I'm just, starting to really consider giving it some time to either grow on me or show its faults. No reason someone who could transform me partway back would need to do it right away, right?”
“I don't, think so, no,” Tom said.

“Good.”

She changed the subject neatly, wanting to relax with him again like she had the night before. Tom went along with it right away; that conversation seemed to have made him uneasy because—as far as she could tell—he was feeling quite attracted to her. Perhaps unfortunately for both of them, it was mutual; she occasionally lost track of what he was saying, just leaning her cheeks on her hands with her elbows on the table to look at him. He was so cute...! And she caught him re-examining her new appearance now and then, too; probably a small fraction of how much he was really doing it. This was some really bad news for the idea of turning male again: One particular advantage to this body was increasingly winning itself over.

They finished eating and paid—each for their own bill; Tom knew better than to offer to pay for hers. When the checks were signed, they sat awkwardly across from each other for a moment. “Well, uh..I guess we should gooo..?” Tom said uncertainly.

“I'll walk out with you,” the catgirl replied, hopping out onto her feet. Once they were both standing, their difference in height was much more evident, her eye level about at his chest. She could imagine burying her face in that, but restrained herself, instead just following him outside and far enough on the sidewalk to be away from the benches.

They both spoke at the same time: “I—” “So—”. Then, after a pause they did it again; “This—” “You're—”. Finally, Tom waved mutely for her to go first.

“I didn't mean for it to, but I'm coming out of this feeling like we went on a date,” she said. “You too?”
“Y-yeah. I mean, um, I know that's not..”
“What? Not appropriate?”
“You were a guy like...four hours ago?”
“It's not bothering me if it's not bothering you,” she said, grinning the same way she had right after her transformation ended. “In fact, it makes me pretty happy. I definitely want to end this like it's a date.”
“Y-you, uh..what?” he said, confused. “How?”
“With a kiss, stupid! But you're gonna have to pick me up or lean waay down.”
“O-oh. Um. Well—so, I. Sure,” he managed finally, and stepped just slightly closer.

“Rrr..yah!” Feeling impatient, Flint surprised him by jumping up at him, grabbing him in her arms.

“Oof!” he managed to catch her and not topple over from the impact, which left them in a close embrace with her face just slightly below his (and her ample bosom squished against his solid chest).

With no further warning, she pulled forward and pressed her lips into his, aggressively initiating the planned kiss. His hesitation wore off quickly, and he began to return it as passionately as she was giving it. Their tails moved toward her right side and the ends curled gently together, letting her feel a bit of his fur against hers. It made her shiver slightly, finding her tail quite sensitive to this stimulus, but the kiss was still very much the main attraction.

Eventually their lips—somewhat loudly—pulled apart, leaving them with about an inch of space between their faces, both panting for air and staring into each other's eyes. As she caught her breath, Flint felt herself purring softly, and her ears heard a soft but deep purr from the man in her arms too, which she found—much more attractive than expected. Then she pulled herself off onto the ground with quiet “Mrrah!” and landed neatly on her feet before half-stumbling back a couple of steps and looking up at him again.

“H-hey, you're pretty good,” she said, seeing the same kind of persistent blush on his face that she was feeling on hers.
“Um. Y-you, too,” Tom replied, obviously feeling that he should have come up with something more clever but much too flustered to think straight.

“Let's go on another date, huh?” she held out a hand. “Tomorrow night? I still need to buy some more stuff that fits me first.”

“I, uh. Yeah. Yes. Definitely,” he replied, and then finally noticed the hand and took it carefully, shaking it.
“It's a deal.” After their hands dropped, she leaned/stepped forward slightly, curling her tail forward to quickly slide across the side of his stomach for a second. “See you then,” she said, smiling brightly, and then turned and left, her victim still too stunned to really move.

What am I doing!? went through her head a few times on the drive home. But...she liked Tom, quite a lot in fact. He was attractive, yes—to her at least—but more importantly, the more they got to know each other, the better she liked him. If staying a girl let her play with him like that, and more, then there was no denying that it was worth it now. They were both hopelessly smitten with the other, that much was obvious. It was almost like...

Flint's ears folded down slightly as a stoplight as her head started to put it together. The way they had both suddenly fallen for each other, really reminded her of how Hugh had spoken of his new wife. The gradual change, the sudden onset of attraction and more shortly after the 'girl' part hit...very similar. What had she said to that stranger at the reception? “Why can't something like that happen to me?” Was he responsible for this, either unintentionally or—more likely—maliciously misinterpreting the implied wish to mean what had happened to the white-haired catgirl? Even if so, she had no idea who that guy was, and didn't feel like storming up to him over it would really help matters much.

...Anyway, he'd kept up the other part of the wish too. Getting to fall for someone, who actually had some real interest back, was something Flint had given up on years ago. Leaving aside all the other positives of this possibly mishandled wish, that alone was better than she could have dreamed, and decidedly worth it. She was much more sensible than those two, and not at all eager to rush into a wedding anytime soon. Maybe it wouldn't even last, but already it was a lot of fun.