Wishing to Fall

I  was in the mood to write a gradual sort of change, and the end result was waaaay too long to fit in an ordinary caption. In the end the only thing I'm not really happy with is the title, but I couldn't come up with anything better. Hope you like it.

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Reed looked in the mirror one night, before he went to bed. The person looking back wasn't unattractive—tall, buff, with sharp, handsome features and short, dark brown hair. But the face—sad, tired, lonely. Tonight, like many nights before, had been a failure. He had no trouble getting dates, but never felt much of a connection. Somehow, every girl he found himself sitting across the table from him was incompatible—completely different interests, beliefs, ideals. Often—more often than not—they were attractive, and found him attractive, and sometimes seemed to think that was enough; Reed wasn't inclined to agree.

For this much bad luck, he had to think: Maybe the problem was him. Yet he was always trying his best to be a good date, treat her nicely and have as much, and as meaningful, a conversation as possible. Not pushy, not overly passive or disinterested...

Tonight, after the date, he'd gone out drinking with a friend. Hugh was physically his opposite: A bit on the short side, a little overweight, perhaps, but..they had quite a bit in common. They'd met in college, hit it off, and been friends ever since. "Dude, you're just trying too hard," he'd said. "It's a first date. Just have a good time yourself, show her a good time, and worry about getting to know her if she asks for a second one. Works great for me!" He punctuated this with a chug and a burp.

"Yeah, sure. When's the last time you even had a date?"

"Cold, dude. But—seriously—last month. We had fun, even if we weren't interested in each other in the end. I still got her digits."

"What, her ears not pointy enough for you?" If there was any interest the two of them didn't have in common, it was Hugh's specific attraction to certain...non-human features. Or, to put it much more bluntly, his catgirl fetish. Reed was pretty sure he had a body pillow hidden in that closet he wouldn't let him open up when they were in his apartment together.

"Hey, hey, it's not a must!" Ever since the revelation that cat-people, and by extension catgirls, were real, his interest seemed to have shifted out of fantasy and into his actual wishlist for a potential partner. Just—supposedly—not too high on that list. "Anyway, look, some of my old dates still hang out with me 'cause I don't go into it with that kinda pressure on my mind."

Shaking his head, Reed sighed at the mirror again. I just want to fall in love with someone, he thought—and quickly added, ..who loves me back. Was it too much to believe that that sort of thing was real? He had to admit that Hugh was right, too; his way of dating probably wasn't going to forge romantic relationships when it didn't even seem able to build friendships. Maybe dating just wasn't the right way to go for him. But then..what was?

He turned away from the mirror without an answer. But, unseen to him, his reflection turned back around to watch him walk back to his bed, holding a hand up to his chin and rubbing it, thinking. By the time he'd turned around where he could see it again, the mirror was back to normal, his reflected self in the expected position once more.

The following morning, Reed got out of bed as he always did and groggily stumbled over to the shower, nursing a reasonably mild hangover headache. It washed away in the hot water, thankfully, but as his head cleared he noticed something a little bit odd. He was washing his hair, and as he ran his hands through the shampooed locks they seemed to find more to comb through than he was quite used to. After rinsing, he brushed at the freshly-cleaned mane and found it reaching very nearly down to his shoulders in the back, bangs hanging nearly long enough to get in his eyes in the front and the sides falling low enough to brush across his cheeks. Somehow, in the course of a single night, he'd gained several inches of length in hair.

A look in the mirror while he toweled off brought further strangeness into view; his hair color was off a shade or two. Its usual dark brown had faded to a lighter tint, still pretty dark but noticeably different to eyes expecting the usual one. And yet...his first thought, looking at the altered hair, was that it looked...nice. Even though he had no idea how it had happened, it was hard not to just shrug it off and move on with his day; if it bothered him, haircuts and even dyes were readily available. It was more or less out of his mind by the time he went to work.

Reed worked at a gym, a mixture of physical trainer and nutrition coach with a number of regular customers. If his job didn't involve his constant presence at a place full of fitness machines, he probably never would've maintained his physique. Around lunchtime, he found himself pulling at his tank top a bit, as it felt a little loose around the shoulders and waist. Thinking back to the morning, he was almost sure it had been pretty tight on him then, but there was always a bit of doubt, and it slipped his mind again when it was time to get back to work. Separately from that, one of his regulars a little while after lunch seemed to have..grown a few inches in height, he thought? It seemed to him that way because they had always been right at the same height, but Reed's eye level was around the man's chin now. People usually didn't grow so much this late into life, and neither of the commented on it—it seemed like an odd thing to bring up, and unimportant to his work, as the man was no less fit than before.

His phone rang as he got to his car after work. "Yoo!" It was Hugh. "You got a hot date tonight?"

"No. I'm thinking about giving up on that for a while," he admitted, sitting in the car. Locks of hair a paler brown than that morning just barely brushed across his shoulders as he leaned his head to one side to keep talking on the one while using his hands to throw his stuff in the passenger seat.

"Cool. Let's get chicken wings. I'm buyin'!"

"Hahh, okay," Reed said. "I gotta go change first."

"A'right. See you there!"

Between setting the phone down and starting to drive, Reed took a moment to readjust the seat, pulling it forward, and then move the mirrors a bit, angling the rearview one down some. Satisfied that he could drive comfortably now, he took off for home, throwing off his clothes and taking a quick shower to wash the sweat off once he got there.

This shower proved at least as strange as the one in the morning. As he ran the rag across his body, it kept picking up hair. It was as if he was shedding, the hair from his face down steadily thinning out more and more through the course of the shower until it was quite nearly gone. He ran a hand along an arm from the shoulder down, then both hands down his sides; it wasn't just hairless but soft, smooth, wonderfully pleasant to the touch. This was...again, bizarre, but he rather liked it.

After toweling off he absently ran a comb through his hair, neatly brushing some light brown tresses down to a few inches past his shoulders on the sides and back, and stared at his face. He'd gotten so used to having at least eternal stubble; it looked rather good this way, fully smooth with soft hair framing it at the sides and top. It looked...cute? And, he liked it that way. While he wondered why he liked his face looking cute, he didn't feel particularly worried about it, either; much like the other things he'd noticed throughout the day, he liked the end result too much to really complain.

The hem of the shirt he pulled on fell several inches farther than usual, and like his tank top it was kind of loose on his shoulders and waist. His boxers and pants, on the other hand, seemed slightly tight on the hips and upper legs, but not quite enough to be uncomfortable. With that, he was ready to go out for dinner.

Hugh stared at him as he walked in and sat down. "Whoa, what happened to you?" he said finally after a pause almost long enough to be awkward.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Reed said.

"You uh..like...and," his friend said incoherently, gesturing back at him in a vain effort to make this more clear. "I mean, look at your hair," he settled on finally.

"Oh? Yeah," he said, unconsciously reaching up a hand to run through it. "It was long like this when I woke up this morning. You like it?"

"I..?" Hugh looked confused and flustered for a second, before responding, "I guess so? I mean, it doesn't look bad on you, but..back up a minute. Your hair grew that much overnight? And, is it just me or is the color different too?"

"Yeah, it is," Reed nodded. "I don't really know why, but I like it. I'm thinking of letting it grow out even longer, honestly."

"Oh? Well, uh..cool. I guess." By this point it had become clear to Hugh just how little his friend was bothered by the hair, and he wasn't quite perceptive enough to pick out the other, stranger changes right away. Anyway, he was committed to helping his friend feel better, and pestering him about the bizarre changes wasn't going to accomplish that.

Indeed, Reed drove home from that encounter feeling a lot better. At least he had a friend who understood him, he thought. At a traffic light he had to pause to adjust the mirror again; he could've sworn he'd gotten it right that afternoon, too. He walked into his apartment building, enjoying the feeling of a gentle wind caressing his hair, blowing it out behind him and then letting it fall back down onto his upper back. Later that night, he threw off his pants and climbed into bed feeling optimistic about tomorrow, paying little mind to the hem of his shirt trailing halfway down his thighs.

The next morning, when Reed sat up, he felt the weight of hair as far down as his upper waist, nearly long enough to touch the bed beneath him. Running a hand through it to examine it, he found its color even more faded than before, the brown starting to wash out entirely, and..smiled. It was weird, but he kind of thought a pure, pale white would be ideal. He stood up and stretched, arching his spine back quite a bit farther than usual but finding it quite easy to do so. His body overall felt oddly loose and limber, he thought, and wandered over to the room's mirror out of a sort of idle curiosity, pulling his loose t-shirt up and off of him with ease before tossing it away behind him.

"Huh.." The body that greeted him that morning was very different from the one he'd seen two nights before. His skin was smooth, soft and hairless, sure, but also gone now were his well-defined biceps and abs. His limbs looked no less athletic, sure, but they were far slimmer than before, and there was only a faint, barely-visible six-pack left to his belly. And...looking carefully, he thought his body overall seemed trimmer than before, like his frame had been taken in a couple inches or so. No wonder his tops were getting so loose, he thought, and then—thinking back to how long they were getting—turned and looked for a measuring tape to confirm something else.

Putting his foot on the tab and drawing it up until the top was about at the top of his head, he locked it and turned it where he could see the result. Indeed, over the past day or so he'd lost more than a foot of height. And yet..looking around, he felt quite comfortable with his newly diminished stature. Perhaps, the bizarre thought came to him, he'd simply been far too big before; wasn't this a lot better? And..much like everything else..it was. He sauntered off to the shower, aware he'd spent enough time on self-examination and it was high time to get started with his day.

In the shower, Reed ran his hands through his long, luxurious hair, enjoying the feel of it, until his fingers finally happened to brush across his ears, making him jerk and shudder just slightly at a weird feeling. He paused, carefully poking his hands through the hair to try to identify the source of that, and quickly determined that his ears were covered in fuzz—short, soft hairs that were pleasant to the touch. They also seemed to enhance the physical sensitivity of his ears themselves by quite a bit, which explained why that first unexpected touch had caused such a reaction. Further probing found his ears were bigger than usual, and their upper tips tapered a bit oddly. Did he..like, this, too? Well, it wasn't too bad, he decided after a bit.

A few people questioned his change of appearance at work, but at the same time those questions were unusually easy to deflect, he thought. The changes were, admittedly, quite drastic by now, but everyone still seemed to recognize him right away and also seemed more interested in letting him work than trying to figure out any of the how or why. At lunch his hair was longer than it had been when he woke up, he observed, finding it necessary to brush it back to avoid sitting on the very ends of it. And his ears, covertly examined in the middle of the lunch break when nobody was looking, were bigger than before, the fuzz a little longer, too.

The last traces of masculine muscle had disappeared by the time he came home for another shower and threw off his clothes to look. His body looked so soft, and smooth, and..lovely, he thought. His hair's color was almost entirely gone, clearly approaching that snowy white he'd found himself wanting that morning. Tugging at an ear, Reed was able to pull it out past his hair to look at it; it was getting pretty big, the fuzz now looking almost like white fur on it, and was taking on an increasingly triangular shape. With a slow grin creeping across his face as he realized the end result of this strange transformation, Reed went over to the phone to send his friend a couple of texts.

After the shower, the reply came; Hugh was happy to meet him at another restaurant to let him repay the favor of the night before. So, once he was fully clothed again, Reed headed out to meet his friend, taking care to adjust the mirror and seat for possibly the final time.

They wound up meeting in the parking lot, Hugh coming out of his car around the same time as his friend. "Duude, what even..?" he said, both of them readily noticing how very much he'd shrunk. Hugh was now the taller of the two, by three or four inches—enough that Reed had to look up just a bit to be looking him in the eyes and not the chin.

"Yeah, I know. Something really weird's happened to me over the last couple of days," Reed admitted. "Honestly, I uh, wanted to talk to you about it?" He waved toward the restaurant.

"Y-yeah, okay."

On their way in, Reed found his tongue idly sliding around his teeth for a moment, and noticed something different about them, too.

"Alright, so..look," he said once they were seated. "I think I know—not exactly why and definitely not how, but...okay, so check this out." Reed pulled back his hair a bit to show the odd-looking ears, then opened his mouth and pointed out some fangs in his teeth. "See that? And..with the long hair, and shrinking..."

"You, y-y-you're..?" Hugh leaned back, eyes wide in astonishment.

"Uh-huh. It seems like I'm turning into a catgirl. Orr, at least a very catgirl-ish guy."

"No way. Noo way," he shook his head. "I mean—I know, you know I've always, but I'd never..."

"Hey, don't think it's your fault. Not that it could be either of our fault, anyway, but...look. Night before last I wished, pretty hard, that I could fall in love with someone. I wonder if this is..something's idea of how to grant that wish?" Reed said, leaning toward his friend slightly.

"Yeah? Well, i-if so it's kinda, screwed up isn't it? I-I mean, someone totally transforming you just to suit what I like?"

"No, no," Reed shook his head. "I like this too. Like I said yesterday, it's—somehow I enjoy this? Every new thing I noticed that's happened to me, I like the way I look more. I'm, even, starting to envision what the 'end product' might look like. In the sense of, eagerly anticipating it."

"R-really?" He nodded again. "That's uh..good? I mean, it doesn't seem like whoever's doing this is giving you a choice in the matter?"

"Maybe they are," Reed shrugged. "So the more I keep approving of it, the more it continues.

"Did you notice my uh, voice is different since we came in?" Indeed, the deep, male tones of his voice had steadily been melting away throughout this conversation, and by now the pitch of his speech was a high tenor at the lowest.

"Wh—no way! Already?"

"Hmm, I wouldn't say that," Reed said. "I mean, it's been two whole days before it changed at all. But it is going pretty fast, huh? Aa~aah," he sang quietly, listening to the tone change ever so slightly even mid-note.

They ordered their food; Reed found himself craving seafood, so he went for that. Maybe being a catgirl was going to be more than skin deep, he thought, and then remembered just how flexible and limber he felt. Maybe a test would be in order, but..later.

"How're you gonna, deal with this, though? I-I mean, is your job gonna accept you suddenly looking totally different, and like, being a girl?"

"I don't know. But I already looked pretty different today, and didn't have too many problems. I think there's supposed to be stuff in place for this kind of thing anyway. Guess I'll have to research it pretty soon, huh." His voice grew more feminine-sounding almost by the word, sliding toward a low, mature alto. He could feel his ears moving ever so slightly now, their fur reporting movement through the soft hair as they slowly stretched themselves up and outward.

Halfway through the meal, Reed leaned in, a sly grin on his face. "Hey.."

"W-what?" Hugh blushed in spite of himself; the combination of that voice with the cute face, pretty hair, and those ears...!

"I think it's probably gonna finish tonight. Can I, come to your place? It's hard to explain but, I really don't wanna be alone for the...big change."

"Um..sure...but..are you sure? I mean, isn't this kinda playing into the hands of...whatever's, doing this to you?"

"That's okay with me," he said, leaning back again but not losing the grin. "I like their plan so far."

"Um..okay, then. Sure."

By the end of dinner, Reed had fully grow a tall, triangular pair of white-furred feline ears. They stood up and turned flexibly at the slightest command, twitched around involuntarily when he wasn't paying attention, and seemed to pick up on sounds and movements of air far better than they ever had as human ears. Again—he quite enjoyed this. His hair was only faintly tinted in color, and fell all the way down to his hips now, he found as he walked out to the car; his boxers and pants felt especially tight against his hips and thighs, which seemed to have rounded out even more over the course of supper. His height seemed to be the same as it had been when he'd gotten up that morning, as no more adjustments were necessary in the car. Before long, he found himself following his friend up some stairs to his apartment.

"So, uh.." They stood awkwardly in the living room, Hugh rubbing the back of his head nervously. "..Now what?"

"I guess I just need to wait," Reed said. "Can we sit down?"

"S-sure."

After the cat-eared man took a seat on the couch, his friend went out of his way to take a separate chair across from him. No sooner were they settled, and one or both of them about to say something, when Reed detected a faint tugging sensation between his legs. "Oh. Um.." It made his cheeks feel...warm. He hadn't physically felt any of the changes before now, but now he was keenly aware of something shrinking away down there. "T-there it goes," he mumbled, squirming in his seat slightly.

Then: "Aah..mmngh.." He gasped, a high, girlish gasp, at a slightly sharper tug, and then a quite feline "Mrr~roow~wrr..!" came from his lips as he felt his manhood actually melting away, pleasant tingles accompanying the vanishing of things he'd had down between his legs his entire life. This was followed by a girlish "Aa—aa~aAAaahh..!" as new equipment formed into place all at once, even more pleasant tingles coming from her womanhood as all the necessary parts gently pushed themselves up into place to cement her body's complete change of sex.

"HFff, fff...oo~oh, that felt...nice," she admitted, still quite enjoying the way all that had made her feel. Looking over at her friend, she saw him blushing furiously, and found it...very cute. He looked pretty good overall, she thought; part of her wondered how she hadn't noticed it before, but then she also hadn't been a girl before.

These thoughts were interrupted by a pushing sensation from the new girl's lower back, something making its way out from the base of her spine. "Aah!" she cried, startled, scooting herself up in her seat a bit to turn and look at the source of the sensation. Right away she saw it: A line of soft white fur making its way out past the hem of her shirt, a cute feline tail to match her ears. "Mmh, mrr~rrow?" She found herself making more feline noises as the new appendage twitched back and forth, feeling the air play across it as it continued to grow longer and longer. She put a small, delicate hand around it and felt the fur brush through her fingers as it steadily grew out, until finally it was done, a luxurious white tail which was at least no shorter than one of her arms. But it was a little hard to measure with the way it kept twitching around excitedly back and forth.

"Ooh, uh..r-really cat," she said, turning around to her friend again. The expression on his face now was priceless; he'd been flustered before but what was there now was clearly the face of a man whose deepest fantasies were coming to life right in front of him. So..he liked the tail too, she concluded, a sly grin playing across her face once again right along with a blush at the realization that her new form was being admired in that way.

But then, once again, she was interrupted by another rapid change. This one came in the form of a tingling at first, all across her chest but especially right around the nipples. It drew a shudder from her first, then a small "Mrrnh?" at the strange feeling of her nipples slowly spreading out wider and longer. Then, as she felt them pushing forward, drawing little bumps of skin out behind them which revealed quite how sensitive they now were as they brushed against the cloth of her oversized t-shirt, she let out a much more human "AaaAAaa~ah!" and began to squirm in her seat all over again. "Mn, mmMmnh..!" Her newfound womanhood was starting to enjoy this too, she found, as a second wave of pleasure hit her from down there and drove ever more heat into her cheeks. The little bumps, meanwhile, steadily expanded out, gaining both more height and width by the second. The bumps were starting to visibly tent out the front of her shirt, displaying to all her new sex if everything else didn't make it clear enough.

"Mmh, mrrRroo~ow..!" She felt her ears lowering to the sides, her tail flicking around even more furiously than before. Her new breasts, already big enough for some adults, just wouldn't stop filling out! "Mrrnh, aah, a~aah..!" They continued to push their way forward, deeply sensitive skin pushing against her shirt, and she gave in more and more to the deeply pleasant feelings this gave her. "Aa~aahnn..!" The growth, in fact, seemed to accelerate now, as her entire being seemed to want, need, the sensations to continue, her body to end up with not merely a nice but an amazing figure that would drive any of the girls she'd dated before to envy. And, indeed, her body seemed to acquiesce this desire in other ways too, her male-sized bottoms squeezing tighter against the hips spreading out, butt puffing back behind her, and thighs steadily thickening, giving her the lower third of a generous hourglass figure she was clearly destined for as the globes on her chest continued to grow..!

"MrRREEaAaAooOOo~oow!" Just when she thought she couldn't take it anymore, Reed finally felt her breasts give one final, violent push, this also drawing the loudest, most excited noise from her throat yet, as they expanded an entire cup size further, ending as a large, generous pair of globes fit to drive any man wild. But, as she slowly opened her eyes and took in the world again—for the first time as a fully-fledged catgirl—she couldn't help but feel there was only one person she really wanted to drive wild. The pleased, mischievous smile appeared on her lips to stay this time as she looked across the way at her friend, having some very different thoughts about their relationship from those she ever would've considered having just a couple of nights before.

"Hh, heheh," she giggled softly, pushing herself up onto her feet. There was some difficulty balancing there, but her new tail seemed keen to help her along as she took a couple of steps forward, toward the chair. "Hey, how do I look to you, huh?"

"Uh, um.." The slowly increasing proximity of the gorgeous catgirl left Hugh too flustered for words. Seeing this, she paused, drawing herself fully upright—and pushing at her pants with a hand, letting them slip off her hips and expose her slender, soft legs from the lower thighs down. "Well?"

"Y-you're..I-I mean, if I'd just, if I didn't know you and just, like, we'd just met, I'd say...um.."

"Yes?"

"Y-you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen," he said quietly, seriously. "Real or not. Or...like, imagined even. You're just..perfect."

"Good." She nodded, and strode closer, letting her hips sway ever so slightly.

It was impossible to really play coy with her tail whipping around behind her excitedly and her face burning with a deeper blush the closer she got to him, but...it didn't really matter anyway. Her friend was sufficiently stunned that he neither fled nor resisted when she got right in front of him and leaned down and forward before falling directly onto him, pulling her arms around him and one knee on either side of one of his legs, and immediately pressed her lips onto his, initiating a long, passionate kiss that he took very little time to return, followed quickly by reciprocating the embrace as well.

Eventually they broke it off, but she took care to stay barely an inch away from his face, enjoying everything from his expression to the sound of his beating heart to his scent, which she seemed to have a better sense for as well, at least a little bit. "Ah, um.." he stammered after a second. "A-are you sure?"

"Sure what?"

"I-I mean, uh. W-with a body like that, you could, you could probably have anyone, y-you wanted..like.."

"Well, I don't want anyone," she said, and then leaned half of the scant inch between them forward to whisper: "I want you," and deliver another lengthy, paralyzing kiss.

---

A month or so later, Hugh came home to his apartment to find the white-haired catgirl standing there in what could generously be called about a tenth of a maid-uniform-costume, tugging at the edges of it a bit nervously. "Hey."

"Uuh...y-you're home early."

"Mm-hm." He was already showing some marked improvements, the part of her brain she used for her job noted; a month or two more and he might even be showing some muscle. Not that his body was what the rest of her really cared about, as she blushed up at him, feeling her ears lower steadily to the side again. "My last appointment canceled, sooo I..you like it?"

"It's uh..it makes a statement, all right," he said, coming closer. "I think, like, maybe it relies too much on the body wearing it to really look good. On you, though..yeah. Totally."

"Heheh." She strode up to him, letting her tail whip around freely, and pulled him down into a hug. "You're getting better at playing it cool, dear~, but you still need some practice."

The kiss which followed was no less exciting for either of them than the first one; if anything, it was even better, especially if one included in consideration what it led to.

A Summoning: Part XXI

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Part XXI
~The World~

A while after sunset, Zotha and her high priestess returned to their dorm room for a late meal. At a time like this, being able to make something fully-cooked instantly was tremendous boon. The goddess didn't feel hungry, of course, having more or less “fed” all day long, but Jess tore right into her food.

“Busy day, huh? At least it seems like everything went off without a hitch,” she said.

“Mmnghf.” Swallowing her food, Jess replied: “It's not too bad. If anything, keeping people happy is a little easier than keeping them scared. I don't have to intimidate followers into watching each other and have our 'bosses' watch the watchers who're watching them...”

Zotha nodded. “Speaking of the 'bosses', seems like they were all pretty successful, too. Between the two of them, Riana and Kamari healed between ten and twenty people who might not have survived the night, and yet there's nothing on the news sites about it, and no gods swooping down to yell at me so far. Anika not only fooled Damon's friend completely, but also blessed him on our behalf—which he is most grateful for.”
After swallowing some more food, Jess added: “And Prama convinced that alchemist to test her, which she said was the best that could be hoped for. Anyway, she seems really..happy about the opportunity to take a test itself.”

“Well, she wants to feel a sense of accomplishment, and for others to see how great she is. A challenge like this provides both.”

---

Around seven thirty, Damon's ears twitched around toward the front door and she sat up, looking that way. Onida heard a car door shut, and stood up, waving for her wolfish sister to stay put for the moment while she went to go open the door. No sooner had Sam knocked a couple of times than she reached it and pulled it open. He was wearing a Triforce shirt and jeans now, no hoodie, and waved awkwardly once fully in view.

“Hey.”
“Good evening,” she replied, more or less out of habitual politeness, and waved him inside. “We, already had supper.”
“Oh, yeah, me too,” the tall werewolf nodded, following her direction so she could shut the door behind him. They went back to the living room.

“Hi, Sam!” Damon waved, sitting up.
“Hey. You, feeling any better?”
“Yeah!” she said, leaning up slightly with her tail wagging. “I slept aaalll day. I feel um, a little more in control of myself right now.”

“That's good. Yeah, I contacted some folks in between some power naps,” he said, half-turning toward Onida. “Friends of friends of my family, and such, who'd know a little more about this kinda situation. New werewolves turn suddenly nocturnal, it can take some work to get back to a normal sleep schedule. This situation's aah, still far from normal of course, since she doesn't seem to have the usual aggressive instincts.”

“Um..they're still kinda there,” Damon said while her sister indicated for him to sit down, and did the same herself. “I feel like I could go totally berserk if someone seemed like they were threatening me, or someone I like.”

“Huh. Some kind of...redirecting of pack instincts, then? Well, at least you don't have to worry about biting your sis, right?”
“Uh-huh,” she nodded.

“Anyway, memory loss is..rare, but happens sometimes. It means the wolf side has, kinda, too much control over the mind? Or had it for a little too long. The best way to get memories back is to relive experiences from the person's human life, as much as possible. Soo, thankfully, that should be pretty easy. Being at home with family is a great start.”
“I don't suppose playing video games would help too?” Onida said.
“I did that last night aand the night before!” Damon interjected helpfully.

“Yeah, maybe. I bet watching some of Damon's old streams would help too. You know, see your own play, hear your own voice. I'd love to help as much as I can, too.”

“Ooh! Could we play together?” Damon asked, leaning toward him slightly.

The elder sister sighed. “For a couple of hours, I guess. Eventually we diurnal people have to sleep.”

“Eeh,” Sam started. “I've slept a lot through today. I could stay up probably most of the night, I bet. But uh, I guess it's understandable if you don't trust me to stick around after you go to bed.”
“Hmmh.”

Onida stared at the visitor for a moment, then looked over at her werewolf sibling again. “Damon, how much do you remember about Sam?”
“Um...not a whole lot specifically,” she said. “But I...um, like, it feels..familiar, being with him. I feel like I'm looking at an old friend...”

“You feel like we can trust him?”
“Sure!” she answered instantly, with no hesitation.

“Well. I sure hope I can trust you, then,” she said, looking back at the tall, thin werewolf. “For my sake and yours. Maybe werewolves aren't all monsters, but if you did hurt her you'd have a real one on your hands.”
“Eeh, um..understood?” Sam said, folding his ears back in a display of fear.

“Until she gets better, I have a job to do, to keep our bills paid and food on the table,” she continued. “I can't be up all night helping her. So I'll give you a shot.”
“Okay. I'll, try to make sure your trust in me isn't misplaced. Aah, actually—hmm.” He paused, seeming uncertain whether he should continue whatever line of thought he'd just begun.

“What?”

“Well, I made contact with one of those witches today, and made kind of aaaa, strange request? Maybe, at least one that probably would sound strange to most people. Which was granted. It'd be easier to show you than explain it, maybe.”
After staring at him for a moment more, Onida waved his way. “Go ahead, then, I guess?”

“Okay.” He took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. As he exhaled, his body shrank rapidly downward and inward, his shirt tenting out around him. His feet pulled up through the leggings of his jeans as they bagged out a bit too, and his hair grew even longer than usual. Within a matter of seconds, the tall werewolf had diminished to an even smaller size than Damon, and looked...quite girly at that.

Sam inhaled through the nose, and said “There” in a high, squeaky voice, tugging at the shirt a bit and letting its collar hang down off a shoulder. Now that it had finished falling across the werewolf's form, a telltale pair of—fairly large—bumps were visible there, confirming that he had, in fact, suddenly turned into a small girl.

“Soo, yeah,” she said, looking back (up) at Onida. “I was magically given the power to look like this whenever I want. Maybe I look..a little less like a threat this way?” she said, tilting her head just slightly.
“Um..that's for sure,” Onida said, uncertain what to make of this situation. “But you can, just change back whenever, right?”

“Yes, but. I don't just look smaller, I really am a bit more helpless like this, so if I stay this way it's kind of a token of mutual trust. Plus it's, y'know, psychological? I know my aah, usual appearance, is kinda threatening to people the first time. It's part of why I wanted, a new look. Biig new look.”

“You're cute!” Damon, who had been staring this entire time, blurted out. “Isn't she cute, sis?”
“Umm, yes. I suppose so?” Onida said. Encountered in any other situation, this girl would be, and—to be honest—she also wore oversized male clothes bizarrely well. “Well, either way, I already agreed to let you try and help her get her mind back tonight. For now though, we can all talk in here a little longer. How did you two first meet, anyway?”

---

“Well..you seem really happy with yourself,” Cameron said. He was taking his girlfriend out to eat; then it would be goodbye for the night, since they'd both agreed he should go back to his dorm and focus on catching up on some homework that was piling up.

“I'm happy with both of us. I'm happy with Zotha, too. We saved lives today, Cam,” she said, pointing at him with a fork. “Unique individuals who would have been gone, lost to the world forever, brought back.”
“Well, yeah. But, uh..not to put a damper on that, but it's more complicated than that, isn't it? I mean, some of those people prolly owe the hospital a lot of money. And then there's like, mental problems that we can't fix, and..”
“Sure, but. When a person is dead, it's over. Until then, there's always a chance,” she said. “We gave those people, and whoever cares about them, another chance. That's as much as I'd ask for, in their shoes.”

After taking another few bites, she sighed. “I just don't get it. If there have been people with this kind of power around for so long..why are people even dying of old age at all, in the first place?”

“Uh, maybe it doesn't scale too well?” he guessed. “Orr, like, the other gods' domains would make it too costly to heal people? Maybe, there's some reason they feel like they can't. Or like..maybe each of them felt like they'd get in trouble with all the others, or one really important one, for doing something like this.”
“Ugh, politics. I'm fine, with negotiation and deliberate cooperation, instead of starting holy wars or whatever,” she said, waving a utensil around in the air. “But when it comes at the cost of people's lives, I have to draw the line. Or—I want to, anyway. Zotha's right, too, I can't let idealism get in the way of thinking about things realistically. If what we did today is deemed too much, though, I don't care who I have to talk to, someone is gonna have words with me.”

The wolf-man tilted his head a bit. “You're gonna yell angrily at one of the gods?”
“All of them, if I have to. What're they gonna do, break the stalemate by directly attacking one of Zotha's followers? Politics are two-edged sword, you know.”

“I think they prolly just have the option of, like, leaving and ignoring you, though,” he said.
“Maybe. But I can't be the only—I'm not the only one who feels this way. You agree with me, right?”

“Well, yeah, saving lives is great,” he said, nodding.
“And Zotha does too, at least in principle. I bet there are lots of people who, if I told them magic could be used to save lives and isn't, would be all kinds of furious. If they believed me, at least.”

“You're, uh, not planning a wide-scale coup tonight, though, are ya?”

“Mmnah.” Riana shook her head. “It's way too soon. We don't even know what their reaction to today is, yet.”

---

Dai and Thomas agreed to meet for supper in a restaurant within walking distance of campus. The dragon-girl still drove there, so she wound up having to wait; her Oni friend showed up in female form, striding over to sit across from her. She was grinning from ear to ear, clearly happy to have power-walked the whole way there.

“So, how'd your first day of bein' a girl go?”

“...Fine. I got a few people staring at worst. Feels like, even people who can't see that I'm a dragon can still sort of,” she waved a hand, “'feel' that it'd be a bad idea to mess with me. Anyway, I'm far from the first person this week. Anyone comment on your change of appearance?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” she nodded. “It was a little weird, actually. Lots of people just acted like I got ripped when they weren't payin' any attention to how I looked? Like, the same as if I'd done it normally, over the past few months or somethin'. I even had some girls flirt with me!” she said, flashing her teeth in a further grin. “Oh, and I went to the campus gym to see how much I could lift. It was a lot~.”

Thomas yawned. “I had some trouble sleeping last night,” she said, deciding not to share the news that she could apparently lift entire buildings now.

“Oh, yeah? Did you use the gooold?” Dai said teasingly, leaning in.

“Uh-huh. Zotha was right. I guess that'll teach me to ignore a goddess's advice,” the dragon-girl said quietly.

“So, what if someone steals it? I mean, those apartments are sorta secure, but they're exactly fort-knox rated.”
“I guess I'll have to ask for some more,” she shrugged.
“Yeah, but, wouldn't you also track down whoever took it and use your acid breath on 'em?”

“..I would be, tempted, if it had actually cost me anything to get in the first place. But I think I'd still be happy getting enough of it back to get a good night's sleep. Actual face-melting seems kinda extreme to me. Why, do you want some?”

“Uh, me?” Not expecting this, the blonde Oni-girl fell back against the chair for a moment. “Nnnah. I got enough money to live on, and I dunno who to sell gold stuff to anyway. I was just wondering, y'know, how close real dragons are to stuff from D&D or Lord of the Rings.”

“Maybe it's more like that pony show,” Thomas suggested, “and I'll get greedier when I'm older. Or was that the other way around?”

“I dunno, I never watched that stuff.”

“Suuure you didn't.”

“Well, not past the first season, anyway!”

Their conversation continued throughout dinner, the rest going much the same as any other conversation between the two of them. However upside-down the world had turned, and whatever they had become, they were still—more or less—themselves. There was hope that the same was true of Zotha, even if her new position in the world made her too busy to hang out quite as often as before.

---

Anika was sitting at her computer chair, working on some almost-too-long-neglected homework, when Steph came in, shutting and locking the door before starting to almost immediately shift back to his native form. “Well, you look pleased with yourself,” he commented in a changing voice, coming over toward her as he shrank and shifted.

“Hmn? Well, uh, I pulled off a small trick on Zotha's behalf,” she said. “Just—filling in for Jess. But it was a convincing performance, even if it was for someone who'd never met either of us. At the very least, he never realized I wasn't human.”

“Not bad,” her roommate said, arriving just behind her chair and already finished shifting back to the female form. She reached over and rubbed the base of each of Anika's ears with a hand for a second or two before letting go, drawing some pleased churring and making her squirm in her seat a bit.

“H-hey, easy..I've still got some stuff to catch up on,” she said, turning the chair around and feeling a blush on her cheeks.

“Yeah, me too,” Steph nodded, wearing a wide, sort of goofy grin. “Need to free up tomorrow for our final preparations. But those ears are pretty hard to resist.”

“..Hey though, I was wondering,” she said, backing up a couple of steps with her ears lowered slightly. “Do you wanna, combine our beds in the middle of the room?” Her index fingers tapped together a couple of times as if to illustrate this. “It'd give us both a little more floor space, y'know, aand..neither of us. Would be against a wall.” It was her turn to blush, and she hesitated for a second before backpedaling: “I-I mean, unless you don't wanna—”

“Done,” Anika interrupted her, snapping a finger for dramatic effect. Three simultaneous poofs of white smoke accompanied the effect of both of their beds disappearing, and a bed with their combined width, and with covers and sheets made out of the material of both, each girl's pillow on the side matching her side of the room, appearing in the center. “And I can always split it up again if one or both of us need space.”
“Heheh, yeah,” Steph said, still a little uncharacteristically nervous. Then she retreated back to her own desk to get to work.

A few hours later, they wound up in the bed again, Anika wearing only one of her boy-sized t-shirts and a pair of panties, while Steph had on a tank top and gym shorts. It was just as pleasant as the night before, but a little more abbreviated in time, a sort of silent mutual agreement being reached between them to calm down and just quietly snuggle the rest of the way to sleep so they'd get a full night's rest in.

After this, she found herself back in the dream room again, and the Ruler of Foxes appeared before her in much the same way as before, with an equally smug grin. “Uh..hi,” Anika said, feeling a blush on her cheeks from the knowledge that this deity knew full well what position her actual body was in right now.

“Welcome,” Fox said. “I couldn't help but notice you transformed someone else today, and enjoyed it. Didn't you?”

“Uh..yeah,” she nodded. “Was that..wrong?”
“Couldn't be farther from it,” the fox god chuckled. “It's always fun to look in on someone's first time doing something like that, and you've got quite a creative touch besides. I'm glad to see you're also coping with your curse situation.”

“If..you wanna call it that, I won't complain,” Anika said, feeling her ears lower slightly.

“Listen,” Fox said, leaning in toward her slightly, “The way one feels about one's body is a very individual matter. Some, when offered any form they'd like, just want to stay the same; others will try anything and everything, and never settle. You shouldn't be upset that you find a curse upsetting; I couldn't call it a curse if I wasn't reasonably sure you'd find it an inconvenience for more than a couple of days. Finding some islands of happiness in that inconvenience is better than moping your whole life, now isn't it?”

“It is,” Anika nodded. It was strange to see the trickster goddess taking on such a...what?...motherly tone with her. Equal parts comforting and worrying, she thought, that the being basically 'in charge' of what she was had such a side to her.

“Anyway, enough pleasantries. I just wanted to drop a small message to Zotha through you, neither urgent nor lengthy enough to necessitate a big, dramatic visit like last time. If you wouldn't mind relaying it for me?”
“That falls under our Deal, doesn't it?” Anika asked.

“Not its letter, but certainly its spirit,” she said. “You've no obligation, which is why I'm asking rather than telling. Anyway: If you like, let her know that she has the right idea with the hospital, for now. Sol complained a little bit, but mostly just to keep up appearances; his people are perfectly capable of keeping up with the present volume.”

“I..guess I will pass that on, then,” the four-tailed Kitsune said, thinking: It sounded like information Zotha wanted, even though she didn't actually know the full context of it.

“Good girl,” the fox goddess grinned, and returned her immediately to an ordinary dream.

---

When it was time to get up off of the couch again, Sam excused herself to run out to the car and grab some more fitting bottoms she'd picked up after supper, and then to the bathroom to put them on. She returned wearing boyshorts with gym shorts over that—though the male-sized t-shirt totally hid them unless it was pulled up far enough—and then went upstairs with Damon after they said good night to the new werewolf's sister.

“Alright, let's see if we can get into your computer, first of all.” Sam tapped at the space bar a couple of times until the login screen showed up.

“I just can't figure out the hint,” Damon said sadly.

“Well, what is it?”
“It said 'my main', but..my main what?”
“Well, a person's 'main' is whatever they primarily use in, like, a fighting game or the sort. I bet I can answer this if we can figure out which game it means.”

“But it doesn't say! Just 'my main'.”
“Welp,” the smaller wolf-girl shrugged. “Guess and check it is.”

It only took her a few tries to pick the right game, and thankfully Damon's password just to unlock the desktop wasn't terribly secure—merely the name itself with no extra numbers, symbols or capitalization involved. Once past that, it became a bit clearer how the stream of two nights ago had gone out.

“Ahh, see?” She pointed. “This is the recording software. You must've been planning to stream the night of the full moon. And, I mean, why wouldn't you? So when you, aah, left unexpectedly, it put itself to sleep from being inactive, but it was still set to broadcast when you pushed 'space.' And it took that input through the lock screen.”

Damon gave her friend a blank stare and a couple of blinks. “Soo, like, it recorded because I told it to earlier?”
Sam shrugged. “Close enough. Anyway, let's see...” She tapped at the controls a little longer. “..Yeah, you've got a local archive. How d'you feel about watching a few of your old streams, huh?”

“Um..okay, I guess?”

“Cool. I'll go find me another chair, you can take this one.”

---

After dinner, Jess went to her computer and finished up the last of the notes before calling her goddess over to look through them. Zotha pored through them, leaning in toward the screen with intense interest, for over an hour. Eventually, however, she leaned back, nodding to herself.

“What do you think, Master?” Jess asked, looking over.

“In a way, it's kind of what I expected? That probably sounds, a little strange. But anyway—my 'innate knowledge' of magic tells me that none of these methods would have worked before my 'ascension', and...now, it's essentially become a new form of magic fueled by me. The ritual language acting as 'prayers' is sort of just the beginning; it seems like a lot of the rituals and symbology you stitched together from this stuff can channel my powers in distinctive ways, sometimes much more efficiently or precisely than the 'praying', or else send stuff the other way—toward me. Suffice to say, though, you can't make another new deity with any of this, because I've sort of 'claimed' it.”

“Politically speaking, that's kinda a relief, right? The other gods don't have to worry about this method being repeated, I mean.”
“Right,” she nodded. “The nature of the ascension itself, however, still feels mysterious and ineffable to me. It involved using a consistent, focused set of things that were not real magic, in conjunction with enough people believing strongly enough in those things, all focused toward a single person. I wonder what would've happened if you'd focused your 'faith' on two people at once, or an animal or a statue or something.

“Yet..I also feel that the actions of a bunch of people in that forest over a number of months are still not actually enough to account for what happened. I feel like..there was a 'confluence'.” She brought her index fingers up and pressed them together as if to illustrate this word, before dropping her hands again.

“Confluence?” Jess asked, her head and ears tilting a bit.

“Yes,” Zotha nodded slowly. “Like a much greater multitude of people, or something else more singular but still much bigger than us, wanted or—needed, I'm inclined to say, for a being representing 'change' to come into existence, and it either cooperated with or outright used your efforts to make that being a reality.”

“You think there's something bigger than the gods?” Jess asked.
“I don't know,” she said with a shrug. “What I 'feel' in this case is impossible to put into words accurately, and I'm not even sure if I can communicate the thought into your mind in a way that would make complete sense. But I believe the salient point is that even if someone—say—followed just the same path as you did, but with different non-magic rituals and such, and even if they gathered two or three or four times the followers with five times the faith, that alone wouldn't be enough to 'make' a new god. There's a...secret ingredient there, that no one person or group of people, not even the gods, have complete control over whether it's present or not. Maybe—it's not even possible to tell if it's there until after the fact.”

“So, again, less worry for the gods. At worst they might feel inclined to quash any more weird cults like mine that show up,” Jess said. “And, I can't help but think of that as a good thing.”

A Summoning: Part XX

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---

Part XX
~Wheel of Fortune, Part 2~

Anika objected to the idea at first, but it was a mere token gesture. Before the high priestess had even replied to insist or convince her further, she was already making plans: Her nose knew Jess's scent well enough to copy an illusion of it; she had a good enough idea of how Jess acted over the past few days to imitate it. A part of her was a little apprehensive at just how eager she felt to fool someone—even in this relatively innocent, helpful sort of way.

It couldn't be the curse. Wanting to trick people, or pull off magical pranks, clearly had nothing to do with being a girl. But surely becoming a Kitsune didn't magically alter a person's personality—at least not to such a degree that what they wanted to do was completely changed. It was possible, certainly, that there was some kind of base instinct leading fox-people that way, but that couldn't possibly override a person's preexisting beliefs and desires, right?

Really thinking about it, she felt so much like instead she'd always wanted to be a bit of a trickster or prankster like Steph always had been. Or—if not always, then at least since not too long after they'd met. He had always made it seem like so much fun, and did it in a way that never even hurt anyone! But, locked in the person “Andrew” who'd been built up over the years before college, he'd always felt unable to be anything else, to make such a radical change. So somehow...being forced to be something else entirely was freeing, in its own bizarre, unfathomable way.

Not long after her last class, the Kitsune drove off campus. The meeting was to be in the parking lot of a hotel he was apparently staying at; before setting out Anika made sure to not just disguise herself as Jess, but to give her car the same appearance as the priestess's, just in case it came up. She was reasonably sure the real version of that car wasn't being driven right now, and anyway it probably wouldn't come up unless one of them was pulled over or something. Careful driving prevented that, and in almost no time she was there.

The idea here was fairly simple: Find out how much this guy knew, or thought he knew, and tell him as much of the truth as was required to fit with that. If he had a reasonable enough request, then it should be granted—using Zotha's power if necessary. So she got out of the car and waited while the lobby door opened and a tall guy in a hoodie with fuzzy ears walked up. Once she could smell him, her senses immediately declared this to be a wolf—a werewolf, rather.

“...Hey. You're Jess?”
“The glowing eyes don't give it away?” she asked, pointing to them. “Sam, right?” she added, offering him a hand.
“Yeah. You, uh...do that on purpose?”

She shook her head. “They've been this way since I got magic. I could hide it, but I don't really see the point. What did you want to talk about?”

“Ahh, well, a couple things,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck for a second. “I'm aah, friend of Damon's. Fellow streamer and all. Drove down here to see what happened, and..well, that leads me to you. I thought you might be able to tell me more about her, ahh, situation, than her sister can?”

“It's not terribly complicated,” 'Jess' said. “Last full moon, we encountered a werewolf who'd gone wild but was still trying hard not to hurt people, so we tried to help him. She's still got widespread amnesia because the wolf 'ate' her mind or something.”

“I see. And, what can you tell me about the spell you used to 'help' him? Sorry, but, dumb it down a little for me if you can; I don't really know much magic myself.”

“Well, it's supposed to have been a 'taming' spell,” she said, starting to invent a bit on the spot. “Something that would turn a 'normal' wolf into a tame, friendly dog, including physically changing it. Never tried it on a person before, and Zotha pumped a lot more power into it than normal to push back against the wolf's will. We're still not exactly sure why it turned him female, maybe something about girls being weaker and less aggressive generally? But we're waiting to offer to turn her back until she's mentally stable.”

“Yeah, that's..probably for the best,” Sam agreed. “I plan to try to help her out, too.

“So you..know a spell that'd turn her into a guy?”

“Mhm,” Anika nodded. “It's a big change, but it's still a relatively basic transformation spell.”

“Sure. Excuse me if this is a dumb question, but...would a similar spell go the other way?”

“Naturally.”

“I..don't suppose you could do something like that for me, then?”

She stared up at him with a raised eyebrow, a confused expression all the way out to her ears (which he couldn't see, thankfully). “Well..I could, but..why would you want something like that?”
“Ah, well. Y'know. Like I said, I'm a streamer. Girls get a lot more people watching than guys, even doing the exact same stuff.”
“You're not worried that people would be weirded out by you suddenly being the opposite sex?”

“Ehh, a few would be. But it's not unheard of, even with non-magic people. Drastic changes in looks happen juust often enough that the folks in charge of the veil got it registered as a 'real' medical condition. I guess it hasn't come up for you two, huh?”

“Not really,” she said, while thinking: That certainly explained how the real Jess and Zotha and several others had 'gotten away with it'.

'Jess' crossed her arms. “So—you'd be willing to be completely the opposite sex, and look totally different, just to get more viewers?”
“Well, yeah,” Sam shrugged. “I don't base who I am on my body anyway. And it's my job we're talking about—to put it, you know, real callously: Viewers are money. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know there's some disadvantages to the fairer sex, but I can put up with 'em. Aah, I don't mean to do it right now, anyway. I mean—Damon recognizes me looking like this, and his sister would be pretty weirded out if I suddenly showed up looking different too.”

“Hmm.” Anika couldn't quite understand this guy's way of thinking, but that was no reason not to grant his wish. “Well, I can do better than leave you permanently changed. It should be possible to make it as easy for you to go back and forth as going werewolf is.”
“Wha—really?” For once he looked a little surprised. “That'd be awesome.” And his tail—which she hadn't exactly noticed before—was wagging, flipping a bit of the back of the hoodie up in the process.

“There's no reason I can't do that now, either, although—perhaps in a somewhat more private location than a parking lot,” she said. “If you don't object to using your hotel room...?”
“Yeah. Uh, yeah, that's fine,” he said, nodding. “I'll, ah, show you inside.”

---

Steph parked the car. “Well...here were are,” he stated. “When I called this morning, I just told him I knew someone who was interested in learning alchemy, and that I'd introduce you. You good?”
“Yes,” she nodded, but trembled slightly. “I-I'll manage, anyway.”

“A'right.”

The store itself had a front like a local antiques shop, with a big sign over the door that said “Boreas Potions, Tinctures, and Remedies”. It was also situated out in the middle of nowhere, more or less, with no neighboring buildings in sight. There was also a chimney with smoke rising up out of it. Prama wondered, walking up, whether it was even possible for people under the veil to get to this place. There wasn't anything in the directions Steph had taken to get them here that seemed particularly supernatural, but between this and Jess's forest, could there really be this many deserted, mystical-feeling places in such easy reach of a college campus and town?

The Kitsune pushed the door open, making a bell attached to it ring. “Bore, it's me,” he said toward the front counter—currently unmanned—while he held it for her and let it shut behind them. “Brought that person we talked about on the phone.”
“With you in a minute,” a low voice growled from a door behind said counter. Thankfully, Prama noted, the shop was actually deserted besides the two of them and their busy host. And indeed, after a minute or so, he arrived.

Boreas (presumably) was a very tall, broad-shouldered man; most of his body's features were difficult to make out past a sort of long-sleeved leather coat he had on with various scratches, stains, and burn marks all over it, but that only made him more intimidating to look at for the first time. His head was completely visible, however; his face was wrinkled but not unhealthy, and he had a full head of hair, thoroughly gray though it was. He had bright, golden-yellow eyes and fangs protruding visibly from his mouth, and his hair was the kind of scraggly mess one gets from ignoring it aside from the occasional cut, with a pair of large, pitch black wolfish ears poking out that didn't look much better groomed, either. Overall, messiness aside, he looked rather healthy, even youthful, for someone in their eighties...or at least, for a human. Perhaps werewolves lived longer on average, she thought.

While she was taking in his appearance, he was looking at her with a kind of half-glare that didn't appear to be intentional but, when combined with his overall appearance, was a bit terrifying anyway. “This her?” he asked after a moment, in Steph's direction.

“Yeah.”
Then he looked back at Prama—who had yet to introduce herself at all—and said, “You're too old, miss.”

This statement was enough to snap through her usual nerves, and even her natural response to the old wolf's intimidating appearance, to reply with incredulity: “T-t-too old? You don't even know how old I am!”

“Well, you're human, and clearly not a child,” he said, crossing his arms. His hands had thick leather gloves on them, completing the look of the coat; if anything they'd seen even more abuse. “Some say to make a decent archer, you start with their grandchild. An alchemist at least needs to start young, especially on a human lifespan. I thought Steph had a fellow fox in mind, moon bless.”

“You think I'd try to saddle my best supplier with a trickster apprentice?” he said, half-feigning an insulted tone.
“If the price is right for you,” he said, turning toward some shelves against the wall behind the counter. “I got your usual ready, kid.”

“You're making a lot of assumptions about me just from looking at me,” the small bespectacled girl said. She felt a little more confident, having already spoken out against him once, and—again—being in a gathering of so few people. “How do you even know I really am human?”

“Well, you smell human, and you wouldn't be looking at alchemy as an option if you were powerful enough to make yourself smell like somethin' you're not,” the werewolf said. “You oughta look somewhere else anyway, girl. Alchemy's dangerous, and kills the careless. I'm lucky to have all my fingers.”

“I can be immaculately careful,” Prama said. “And I learn much faster than most people. I recently made a trade with a powerful being, exchanging some other advantages I used to have for a greater intellect.”

“Hmph. Thought the gods still had all the djinn sealed off,” Boreas said. “The answer's still no.” He punctuated this statement with placing some water bottles (of all things!) on the counter in front of Steph, each one half-full of a greenish, glowing liquid which she assumed to be magic-replenishing potions.

“Okay. If you won't teach me, do you at least have any books I could borrow? Or purchase? Or know any fellow alchemists reckless enough to let me try anyway?”

The old werewolf took a moment to turn and look at her, another searching half-glare. It took quite a bit of effort, but Prama propped herself up, standing straight and keeping still rather than trembling as quite a large part of her wanted to do. He needed to see that this request was completely serious, and she wouldn't simply be scared off.

After a moment he exhaled, like the latter half of a sigh. “Listen, girl. I won't have you hurting yourself on my conscience. I guess if I chase you outta here, you'll be rifling through that human net thing for any half-baked crackpot ideas to make alchemy work on your own.”

“To be accurate, I already did, but I haven't found anything that seemed plausible so far,” she said.
“I'll bet. You say you can learn fast, I wanna see it. Let's make a wager, then: I'll get things together to teach you to make a simple potion. Come back tomorrow sometime and I'll do my best to teach you how to make it, and to keep you from hurting yourself if you do it wrong. Either you make the potion right and prove my seventy-eight years' experience wrong, or you screw it up and learn a valuable lesson in a way that won't get you killed, and give up on this particular path of life.”

“And if I make it right, you'll continue to teach me?” she said.
“..Sure. I'm getting on in years, I suppose,” he replied with a shrug. “A half-competent apprentice couldn't hurt.”

“You want to make an official deal of it?” Steph said, looking quite pleased with the way this was going.
“Hmph. You foxes...” Boreas shook his head, and turned back toward Prama, carefully pulling off his right glove. “Listen, I don't need a special name for a simple agreement because my word actually means something all on its own. Shaking on it's good enough.”

“Okay.” Prama came up to the counter, he stretched his hand over it, and she shook it, managing the whole thing but still having a bit of a weak grip throughout. His hand was wrinkled with a couple of old-looking scratch scars on it, but whole—probably thanks in no small part to the gloves. His grip, of course, was like a vise, but he mercifully let go before long.

“Done. Come by whenever you're ready, and don't have nothing else to do for the rest of the day,” he instructed her. “Oh, yeah. I guess you can read the sign, but I'm Boreas Messick.”

“Prama Olivet,” she replied. “I look forward to tomorrow.”

“Hmph. Well, at least you're optimistic.”

---

There was a temptation, however small, to make Sam's new female form an ugly or at least unattractive one; the idea that he'd get more views that way was surely predicated on the assumption that he'd at least be a bit cute as a girl. But Anika remembered what role she was playing just now, and knew that in general Zotha would prefer blessing people to cursing them, so...instead she settled, while waiting on the elevator with him, to give Sam a form which was appealing, but also as much an opposite to his current appearance as possible: Very small, very cute, very unthreatening, with a high voice and everything. In a way, she felt like testing just how little he truly did care about his original appearance.

Soon enough they reached his room, Anika shutting the door behind them. He paused on the way in to look around the room in a semi-nervous way, obviously having not really expected company, but there wasn't much to see. His suitcase was open on one of the beds, and a laptop was set up on the little desk in the corner. After that he turned back around toward her. “So, uh..?”

“Just stand in the middle of the room, should be fine,” the disguised Kitsune advised him. “And let me know when you're ready. The spell will transform you into the new appearance, and also give you the ability to change back.” She had already settled on a method to achieve this: Calling on a touch of Zotha's power first to 'save' his original form and give him the power to shift between that and the new one, then transform him with her own power, which would give her the most control possible ovet the results.

“Okay...cool.” Sam nodded, heading over that way, drawing himself up, taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out. 'Jess' walked up to a few feet in front of him, waiting patiently.

“...Alright. Ready when you are,” he said finally.

She nodded, and softly chanted in the 'ritual' language to her goddess. This was masked for his ears with something more closely resembling a 'normal' spellcasting chant, just in case he knew a little more about magic than he'd let on. She also gave him a faint purple spell circle around his feet for good measure, which he did take a second to look down at and appreciate. Then, with his original form 'locked in', she started her work.

The first thing to do was to shrink him. He was far, far too tall, and it'd be nice to not have to crane her head up while working on facial features. At the same time she diminished his manhood ever so slightly, which made him blush faintly as his body steadily slid downward, his perspective sinking toward hers. While she was at it, she went ahead and changed his hair. Shoulder length was a start, but he needed longer bangs, softer locks, and...it could stand to go all the way down to his belly or so on his final height. The growing tresses swept down his forehead and down his back a bit, and he brought a hand up to run through it—no doubt the growth tickled his scalp some, too.

By now he was down to Anika's height—still quite tall for a girl, so far from done yet—and she decided it was time to start work on other features. That beard had to go, she thought, making the hairs recede, steadily thinning and shortening them and at the same time softening the skin of his face, making it a little smaller, rounder and cuter. His shoulders she narrowed a bit, pushing his already slim frame in that bit more that turned it from just skinny to outright effeminate. By now his face was done, and he ran a hand across his smooth chin with an almost mesmerized expression, so she spread that skin care on down his neck and across the rest of his body, drawing a bit of a shudder from all the resulting tingling.

The continued shrinking as his eye level slid down to about the height of her neck was making his clothes quite loose on him: The hoodie tenting out and slipping a bit off his shoulders as its hem trailed down as far as his thighs, the shirt under that faring little better, his pants and underwear both getting baggy around his slimming legs and starting to get loose on the hips. Anika decided the she liked the coat hanging across the thighs, but the legs could stand to be a lot more exposed otherwise, and surely he didn't need two layers of tops in this weather, right? So his hoodie simply resized itself to his slimmer frame, retaining its height relative to his as he continued getting even shorter, and lost its hood; his shirt began withdrawing its hem upward, its sleeves inward, and its collar downward; and both his underwear and pants pulled close enough to stay on, their leggings rapidly pulling their way up along his legs. He looked down at the shrinking clothes, tugging at them a bit with a hand that was already looking much smaller and more delicate than before.

He was nearly down to Jess's height now, and Anika decided it was time for him to start feeling a little more of the major change. She shrank his manhood further, reducing it to less than half of its original size in one fell swoop—and at the same time changed his voice, pushing its pitch steadily upward. The result, as expected, was that he let out a surprised “Aa~aa~aah..!” at the feeling of shrinking downstairs, his cheeks reddening with a much deeper blush than before, and the sound of his voice audibly changing all throughout the noise. Oh, that was fun—she gave him a much lighter tug down there and continued changing his voice, listening to the next “aa~aah..aaa~aa~aah..!” steadily pull up through tenor and out of male range entirely, settling at a girlish alto tone—not that she was quite done with it yet.

Sam's underwear was now a soft, frilly pair of panties pulled tight against the hips and the tiny bulge remaining between his legs; his pants had shrunk to a similarly close-fitting pair of shorts so short that the long parka hid them completely. His shirt was a weird sort of mini tank top so short it would expose the belly entirely, with an increasingly low cut down toward the chest. And he was now very, very short, barely four and a half feet in height. Anika decided it was time to deal the final blow to his manhood, pushing her power into him to change his sex entirely and rise his voice to the high, squeaky tone she'd had in mind. Naturally, this drew another startled, excited “AaaAAaa~aah..!” from his lips, the pitch changing more and more by the second, followed by a somewhat more surprising “Rrr~rrf! Mrrf! Aa~ahrrf!” as his sex actually changed and canine instincts started to take over.

Sam's eyes were shut as she became a girl from the outside inward, her face aglow with a bright blush, her ears lowered nearly to the sides of her head, and her tail whipping back and forth vigorously in an excited wag. Anika took the opportunity to make her fur a little softer, thicker, and fluffier, and change her eyes from a very dark red to a bright, girly pink. Then she piled on the new feminine feelings by plumping out the new wolf-girl's hips and bottom a bit, shrinking what was left of her shirt down into a bikini top which only held onto her shoulders and back by thin strings, and then blessing her with a brand new pair of breasts.

“A~aah..rrf, yip!” This drew more excited, high yips and barks from the girl's mouth, her voice fully changed now, followed by an outright howl as Anika made her little breasts bloom out into a pair of globes that might be mid-size on someone a little bit taller, but stood out as quite large for someone of her new, petite stature. The loud yet adorable “Awroo~ooo!” with her head tilted back slightly made the Kitsune especially glad that she'd fully soundproofed the room more or less by habit on the way in. For some finishing touches, she grew the new girl's nails out, painting them bright pink like they'd been freshly manicured, and changed the look of her top a little more with some pink stripes and a cute paw-shape for the zipper (and pulling it down around halfway to expose her chest just a bit).

“Fffh, haahhh...” The little werewolf took a second to catch her breath and get her bearings, slowly opening her eyes and looking around the room with the blush still fresh on her cheeks, then down at her own appearance, patting the sides of the top a bit to feel some of her new proportions from the sides. Then she looked up at Anika with the widest, cutest grin on her face. “Aww yeah!” she said, “This is perfect!”

“And here I was, scared it'd hurt or something. That felt great! Does everyone have a reaction like that?” she asked, leaning in slightly.

“Well, uh..” Remembering her own 'experience', Anika nodded, “it seems..fairly common. We don't have a lot of data to check. But—I did anticipate it enough to make a few silent soundproofing charms before all that, um, started.”

“Oh, ah, good. I didn't even think of that,” she said, blushing again while putting her hands behind her back, locked together, and rocking back and forth on her feet. “Did the uh, I guess the spell changed my clothes too?”

“Rrright. It's more of a side effect,” Anika explained, “of the first-time transformation. Your original clothes have been enchanted into those new shapes, which should wear off in a day or two. The spell can only really give you the power to change your own body, so you'll need to get new clothes or..put up with wearing the ill-fitting old ones, I suppose.”
“That's cool. I should've expected I'd need to do that much,” Sam said. “And I'm glad my favorite T-shirt isn't gone for good,” she added, tugging at the middle of the bikini top a bit.

“As a result of that, I'd also suggest not turning back while you're wearing the enchanted clothes. They..wouldn't exactly fit you too well.”
“Also an excellent point,” the wolf-girl nodded.

“Aah, do I...owe you anything for this? Seriously, it'll be a huge help, like, you don't even know.”

“Your..gratitude is enough,” Anika said, “but I would also appreciate it if you could continue to try to help Damon as much as you can.”

“Like I needed more motivation,” she said. “No worries, I'm gonna do some research of my own on how to help a formerly wild wolf, and then visit her again tonight.”

“Glad to hear it. I suppose I'll leave you to it, then?”

“Absolutely,” she nodded. “But let me know if you, aah, actually need something that I can do and wasn't already planning on.”
“You've got my number,” 'Jess' nodded, turning to leave.

After reaching the elevator, she breathed a (hidden) sigh of relief. Keeping up the charade had been relatively easy, but that was exactly why it might have been possible to ruin it at the last moment. Now she just needed to get to the parking lot and drive back to campus, and anyway Sam was almost certainly focused on something other than the window at the moment. But...

Beyond the exhilaration of pulling off this—admittedly somewhat minor—trick, Anika wondered to herself about the werewolf's enthusiastic reception of the tiny, fluffy, weak form. It had several disadvantages the Kitsune didn't have to deal with, physically speaking, and yet she was utterly happy with it. It even seemed like she'd have been equally happy stuck that way, from the way Sam had first made the request in the parking lot. Some people, it seemed, really didn't care.

Why couldn't she be one of those people?