A Summoning, Part XXIII

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Part XXIII
~Emperor, Part 2~

The old werewolf had five or six more rounds of customers, and each time he went to the front to deal with them and left Prama with a list of tasks to complete, or something to continue stirring or pouring at the least. She began to quickly get a feel for the sort of processes needed for some of the more complex potions he was working on. For as huge and intimidating as he was, Boreas had an extremely delicate touch; his fine motor control was astounding for his age, really.

One disadvantage she seemed to have here was a weaker sense of smell; the werewolf frequently sniffed at ingredients or mixtures and seemed to instantly know whatever it was he needed to know from a single whiff. Of course no chemist would rely on sniffing everything in sight, Prama thought, and surely there were ways to use her other senses to achieve the same result, given enough practice and teaching. That would come later, though; for now she was happy to have won the contest and eager to further prove herself worthy of his trust. Sure, they'd made an agreement that he would take her on as an apprentice, but it would be best for him to want her there. The more indispensable she became, and the more competent he saw her as, the easier it might be to get him to teach her more interesting and difficult potions sooner.

It was somewhere between six and seven when Boreas decided to close down for the night, heading back out to the front to change the sign in the window before returning to the alchemy lab proper. “Alright, we're done for today,” he said. “You mind coming this way for a chat?” he asked, waving toward a door on the wall perpendicular to the one that led to the front counter.

“Not at all,” Prama said. The werewolf took off his leather coat and gloves and stuck them on the coat rack; under his coat he had on a thick, long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans, both of which were mildly stained and distressed but free of holes. Prama supposed this was a second layer of protection, and resolved to imitate this kind of wear herself for alchemy work in the future. For now, she followed suit before following him into a small, living-room-ish area with a few moderately comfortable chairs. By then he was already sitting in one of them, and waved at another which partway faced it.

“Take a seat?” Nodding, she did this as well, leaning forward a bit in curiosity. What did he want to talk about?

“Miss Olivet, you show a lot more promise than I would've expected,” he said. “I admit I underestimated you at first. Don't think the job of an apprentice will be easy, or that you'll learn everything in a week, though. Even fast learners have limits.”
“Oh, of course,” she said, nodding. “I'm willing to stick with this until you say I'm ready. Magic in general is fairly new to me, to be honest, but I learned a long time ago to trust the expert in this kind of practical work.”

“That's what I wonder about,” said the old wolf. “You've got the kind of competence that can get a lot of good-paying jobs. You learn quick, and you know how to be careful. You're even pretty shrewd about dealing with other people, the artificial shyness or whatever it is aside. Money's an easy enough way to power if that's what you want. So knowing it's much harder than other paths, why do you want alchemy?”

“Huh. Well, you're right about one thing: I am interested in becoming wealthy,” Prama said. “But not quick. I want the kind of wealth that keeps on growing, the kind of influence where everyone looks at me and says 'there's someone who earned it'. Specifically, I want to be someone important in the magic world, rather than just among 'normal' humans. But I've also found myself hungry for challenges lately. An easy path just doesn't hold my interest. On top of that...”

“Uhh, first, how well do you think you can keep a secret?” she asked. “I'm not sure exactly how long this one needs to keep, and there are already quite a few in on it, but..”

“Prama,” he said, using her first name for the first time. “You probably heard wolves value honesty, right?”
“Yes?”
“An honest person can still keep secrets. There are several of my customers' secrets I'm keeping right now,” he stated. “The main trick is just to let someone know when they've asked a question you can't answer. I can keep your secret just fine.”

“Okay then,” she nodded.

“So: The 'powerful being' I mentioned before, isn't a djinn. I understand if it's difficult to believe this, but I had a key part in the—partially accidental—creation of a new god. Her name is Zotha, a goddess of—among other things—gratitude and change, and I was granted my trade for intelligence by her as a way of saying 'thank you'.” The werewolf's expression was inscrutable, but during this brief pause in her speech he waved for her to continue. “I've decided that I want not only to be self-sufficient, but to repay and support her as much as possible. That's why I need inroads with the world beyond the veil myself, and why I want my wealth and influence to come from my own efforts. Really, I could ask her to make a bunch of valuables for me to sell if I just wanted to be rich, but anything I gave her that came from her in the first place feels rather pointless.”

“Hmm. Is this Zotha's power associated with the color purple, by any chance?” Boreas asked after not much of a pause.
“Uh..yes, actually,” she nodded, remembering the glow of Jess's eyes. “Where'd that come from?”
“La Lune—my goddess of choice, and gen'rally that of werewolves the world over, prefers to talk to mortals through dreams involving a clear view of the moon. I was graced with such a message last night, but unable to fully interpret its meaning before now.”

The old werewolf spread his hand forward, as if drawing the scene out of his mind and into the air in front of him. “The moon showed me a great, bright purple flame in the midst of a forest. Whatever it caught, it changed. A viper became a dove, a sheep became a fox, and a lion became an owl. The rest went by too quickly to see, except for the flame approaching a great, spreading tree whose branches were dried and cracked. Before I woke, its blaze made the tree flower and bloom again before carrying on. I suppose, you must be the owl,” he stated, shrugging.
“Yeah..I can see that,” Prama said. She could think of decent interpretations for the other two, too. “So you think the tree was you?”

“Catch on quick,” Boreas said. “A great deal of focus was on this last part, and the dream felt like a request rather than a warning. I suppose a goddess of 'change' would have the power to make an old wolf young again?”

The bespectacled girl nodded. “I don't see why not. In fact, she's already made at least one person young again. If you want me to try, I could call on her power to do it here and now. However, in your position I'd want to be ready for her to say yes first.”

He nodded, then sat in silence for a moment, appearing pensive.

“I will admit I'd gotten used to the idea that I'd start to be useless soon. La Lune's blessing alone keeps me sharp enough not to kill myself making some potions these days, but it'd only be a matter of time before my hand became unsteady or my mind not as sharp. Wolves normally live, maybe twenty years longer than humans, when we work hard to keep ourselves fit for much of that time. But I have a hard time seeing what I would do if I couldn't work anymore. No, more likely I'd be too stubborn to quit and end up blowing up the whole shop at some point. A regular would come by a few hours later and find a smoking crater in its place.” He shrugged. “I'm not actually sure whether I asked La Lune for guidance on this. I know how humans think of deity, but she really isn't that kind of god, most of the time. Still, it seems she gave me an answer—or at least an option, anyhow.”

“You don't think she'd mind you getting help from some other goddess?” Prama said, curious.

“Don't look like it. If anything, that dream was encouragement. So I say, go ahead,” he said, lifting a hand toward her. “I'm not gettin' any younger otherwise.”
“Heheh. Okay...”

Prama spoke in the same familiar ritual-language again, reaching out mentally to Zotha and asking her to land the person sitting in front of her around 'young adult' if at all possible. What she felt through the connection as a purple glow suffused her hands from the wrists up was noticeably more than what had come for most of the wishes people had had on Sunday; it seemed that doing something like this took a bit more energy than usual. That was probably also the reason there wasn't a youth potion—or rather, if there was, it was likely beyond Boreas to make for one reason or another. But, especially with a goddess's help, the cost wasn't insurmountable. As far as being self-sufficient went, she had already reasoned that this was something he'd requested for his benefit, with any boon she felt from it a mere side effect. Anyway, she'd anticipated either needing or wanting to reveal the goddess's existence early enough to get permission through a series of texts with Jess that morning, which had naturally included an invitation from Zotha to 'bless' him if he wanted it.

There was a feeling that her hands were 'full'--that enough had come through to accomplish the request—and she spread them carefully forward in the werewolf's direction. He watched impassively as the light streamed out and coiled around his form for a moment like a big spring surrounding him, then finally pulled itself inward, seeming to squeeze up against his body even as it was absorbed. When it hit him this way, he took a sharp, long intake of breath, then let it out in a calm, slow “Fffffhh” as his features began to rapidly change.

Boreas's wrinkled, largely unshaven face rapidly smoothed over, losing hair and blemish alike, until it looked as soft and clean as a newborn's. Above that, his hair straightened out and softened a bit, beginning to grow longer, and the fur of his ears turned a bit thicker and fluffier, ending up looking like it had been freshly, carefully groomed. A slight shudder came to him after that, suggesting similar changes to the rest of his skin beneath his clothes, but given that his hair was already falling nearly to the shoulders in the sides and back, Prama guessed that the change was far from over.

Indeed, as the goddess's power largely finished entering his body, retaining itself as a visible, firelike glow across its surface, the old werewolf began to shrink—not in height, but certainly otherwise, with his shirt and the leggings of his jeans both bagging out around him a bit. He was looking down and watching as his shoulders narrowed, his arms and legs growing slimmer, and let out a low, confused-sounding “Rrr?” at the unusual sensations. Then his clothes began to shift too, the shirt pulling itself close against his shrinking body and splitting itself down the middle, buttons appearing to keep it fastened together, and the jeans turning to soft cloth and beginning to pull much tighter than before. Prama caught sight of fairly muscular arms and legs steadily slimming down, the sides of his belly caving inward, and his hips and thighs starting to push themselves out a bit.

Boreas's hair spilled out now to the height of his stomach, but was still growing; his legs squirmed back and forth slightly, his cheeks growing red, ears slowly lowering to the sides and his tail moving for the first time since she'd met him, just slowly back and forth. By now his pants had turned into a pair of dark blue tights, clearly outlining a small, still-shrinking bulge between his legs. “Rrf..rff..aa~aah..” After a couple of low barks, his voice changed, floating instantly into a deep, but feminine, low alto register. A black, pleated skirt seemed to grow itself out from under the bottom of his shirt while his hair began to fall across the chair and the base of his tail, seemingly triggering a change in the latter's fur not unlike that of his ears which included turning its tip white.

“Mnngh..” The werewolf gave a high gasp as the change of sex completed itself, then let out a couple of higher yips, her blush intensifying while her hips and thighs filled out much more than before, ending up as the lower third of a quite generous figure. Soft gray hair was pooling on either side of her now, and her shirt gained fluffy black ends to its sleeves, gloves the same dark blue as the tights pulling up to wrap themselves around her small, delicate-looking hands. A big black bowtie fixed itself around her neck as the shirt visibly pulled close against a slim, flat belly and grew conspicuously loose about the chest. Then...

“Rr~rRf..!” This bark seemed lower and calmer than the earlier yips, but her blush got worse again. “Hhhh...Ffffh...” Boreas made a clear effort to breath in and out slowly as her chest filled forward, the shirt hanging off of little bumps at first, then larger and larger breasts, until they finally began to stretch the material of the shirt and whatever was underneath it, seeming to force them to grow larger to accommodate. Her hair was so long now that bits of it trailed past the front of the chair to her calves, the tips of the silvery-gray locks threatening to hit the floor entirely, but it seemed to have finally quit growing now. Her new breasts seemed to give one final push, drawing a lower gasp from her lips as they did, which she let out all at once in a quick “Hahh,” and then the purplish glow faded out. The change was done—leaving Prama looking at an exceptionally tall, curvy woman who nonetheless seemed no older than she was.

Boreas looked down, examining her new appearance and running a gloved hand through her absurdly long hair for a bit before slowly standing up, rotating her shoulders and patting her sides a couple of times. “I feel..pretty good,” she said finally, her voice as dry and low as before, but quite distinctly female. “Young, full of energy, not aching anywhere. Not to undercut my gratitude for that, but, I don't suppose you could've warned me about this part?”

“Err..to be honest, it didn't occur to me?” Prama said. “Sometimes Zotha's power leans toward making the target of a transformation female, but not always—many times, in fact, it doesn't. I'm uncertain whether it's random or not. And, it is fixable.”

“Well, of course. I've made a few sex changing potions in my day,” the wolf-woman said, crossing her arms. “Never really saw the appeal of it, personally.”

“I meant Zotha can fix it. Willingly, through me, right now if you want,” the bespectacled girl clarified, putting a hand to her own chest.

“I don't see much reason to bother a goddess with somethin' I could do myself,” Boreas shrugged. “In't that what you were just saying?”
“I would consider this a distinct situation from that, where you'd just be asking her to fix a problem with her boon.”

“Hmm.”

Shrugging, the werewolf gently tugged at her hair, getting it out of the way to sit down again. “Tell me somethin'. You think you'd find it any easier to work with another woman?”

“Uh..I can't say that I've given the matter much thought,” Prama said. “I admit you look less, uh, scary that way, but I think the same would be true of a male form too, now?”

“What about if you wanted a potion, walked into my shop for the first time and saw me lookin' this way? Versus the 'old' look?”

“Well...I admit I'd be a lot less inclined to run back out in fear, myself. But—you don't think suddenly looking so, uh, different will scare off your usual customers?”

“Prama, The main things that appeal to my usual customers are my skills and my winning personality,” she said flatly. “Maybe I could give the 'image change' thing a trial run for a bit, is all, see if that attracts anyone new.” A hand went for her hair again, running through it. “Gonna have to do something about all this hair, though.”

Headtilting a bit, the short genius said, “I could show you how to tie it back, but I'm not sure that'd be enough with that much. Maybe you should just go for a haircut?”

“Mmn. I was thinkin' more in the realm of something that'd let me control its length at will. Shouldn't be too hard to attach it to the fur control I already have,” she said, taking off a glove and demonstrating: Black fur appeared and disappeared in a quick rippling motion.

“So a potion like that wouldn't work for a human, then, would it?”
The werewolf shrugged. “A little trickier, but possible, I think. Maybe I'll tinker with that tonight and show you what I come up with tomorrow. If you're planning to come in then.”

“Wh—yes, of course,” she said. “I have one afternoon class, but I can be here as soon as I'm done with that.

“Good.” Boreas nodded. “Meantime, you tell your goddess thanks for me.”
“I'm sure she already knows, but I will.”

---

Onida walked into her house after work to find Damon sitting upright on the couch, her tail wagging furiously. “Sis! Welcome home!”

“Uh, hi. I'm a little surprised you're awake already.”
“Um..I heard the car pulling in, so I ran downstairs,” she confessed. “It just kinda, like, happened before I really thought about it.”
“Well, at least you seem to be in a good mood,” she shrugged, continuing on to put the rest of her things down.

“Yes! I feel like, I've started remembering some stuff,” she said, eagerly getting up to follow. “It's um, mostly stuff from video games, but, some bits and pieces came back about my friends...about you. Our parents...”

“That's really good,” she said, pausing to give the wolf-girl next to her a genuine smile. “I guess something we're doing is working.”

“Yeah! Um..is Sam coming back tonight?”
Onida nodded. “I was thinking of asking her..or, him....whatever, in for dinner. In the end it's up to Sam, but I suspect the answer will be yes.”

An hour or so later, Sam did show up—back in the tall, lanky male form. “Welcome. You're back to normal,” Onida observed, waving him into the front door.
“Yeah, aaah...I had some video calls off and on today with people who're familiar with me. I'm not totally sure what the right time is to, aah, tell people in general I can do that, but not..right now, is all. I can change back if you want, though?”
“It really doesn't make a difference to me at this point,” she shrugged, leading him into the kitchen.

“Sam, Sam! I remembered stuff!” Damon said as soon as he came in, still sitting obediently in her chair at the table but clearly bursting to get up and tackle him or something.
“Yeah? That's good, isn't it?”
“Uh huh!”

For the first part of the meal, the conversation was mostly Damon going over some of what she'd managed to remember in more detail. Wanting her to be happy, and honestly sharing in the happiness herself, Onida let this go on that long before clearing her throat meaningfully to interrupt.

“Hmn?” The wolf-girl headtilted in her sister's direction.

“Sam, I have a question.”
“Yyeah?”

“A few, actually. How long are you planning to stick around and help Damon?”
“I, aah...I thought, as long as it took to get her back to normal. Or at least—like—mostly normal?”
“Uh huh. And how much does your hotel cost a night?” He winced before answering, which was as much of an answer as she really needed, so she went on: “I have a pretty good idea of the kind of money streamers make, you know. Particularly how much less it is when you're not actually doing your 'job'.”
“Yyyeah..but, I got some in savings still. And it's worth it, right?”

“Do you have the equipment to do it with you, if you had to?”

“Well..I mean, not my full setup, but I have a pretty good laptop, I've used it for that stuff before. It's just...”
“Hotel wi-fi isn't much use for streaming?”
“Yyyeeaah,” he nodded slowly. “What're you getting at?”

Onida took in a breath and audibly let it out. “Well, we have a guest bedroom here, and better Internet than the hotel, for sure.”

“Aah...sure, but..”
“As long as you're helping my brother—sister—whatever out, would you like to stay here?” she said.

“I mean—sure. I, I would. It'd be, it'd definitely help me out, but, I feel like I can't ask that of you,” Sam replied, clearly flustered by the offer. “Like, we just met yesterday, right? How do you know you can trust me?”

“First of all, you're the one asking that question. Do you trust yourself?”
“Aah, I—maybe?”
“Damon knows you and trusts you. And I left you alone with her all last night, at presumably her most vulnerable mental state, and you didn't do anything bad or weird. Right?” she directed toward Damon, who nod-nodded enthusiastically.

“Yep!”

“I have to work, and I can't be up all night and work all day. When I get a day off—next one this Saturday—maybe I can get away with staying up a night or two, but that alone isn't enough. Damon needs someone with her who knows her to help her recover faster, right?”

“Well, I think so?” Sam half-agreed.

“Then you're it. I can put something together for you to eat as a midnight 'lunch', just microwave it or something. And do breakfast and supper with you until she can stop being totally nocturnal.”

“..You aah, you didn't just bring this up on a whim, huh?” Sam said finally.
“I've been thinking about it all day. My mind is made up, so it's just up to you if you want to take the offer or not.”

Sam's ears folded down as he thought about it for a long moment, Damon distractingly leaning up toward him. Eventually he nodded. “I, in that case I'd very gratefully accept your offer. I-in fact it's probably not too late to grab my stuff and cancel the hotel for tonight, after supper. I really..hope I prove worthy of your trust, though.”

“Well, if you don't, you'll contend with something much worse than a werewolf.”
“Angry big sister,” Damon chimed in helpfully, seeming to vaguely recall an incident or two from their past. “Scary.”
“I-I'll be sure to keep that in mind.”

---

Anything big happen today, Master? They'd been in on-and-off communication throughout the day, but Jess still liked to check in on her favorite goddess as the sun began to set.

Nope. Thomas and Dai reached out to some more of our mutual friends, and I gave them some gifts they wanted, nothing too major.
Prama let me know she passed the test and worked with that alchemist all day, and then told him about you.

..And then gave him a blessing straight from me, Zotha finished for her. Riana was overjoyed to get Fox's message through Anika, and they went back to the hospital this morning. The majority of our original group of worshipers are pretty happy with their gifts by now, too.

Mhm. Now it's just people they spread the news to asking for stuff, and getting it..I suppose this is how we grow, huh?

Hopefully. Smooth sailing would be nice, but I anticipate that my 'nature' will produce some bumps in the road sooner or later. It doesn't help that I have a nagging feeling that I forgot about something specific.

Oh no! That didn't sound good. I'll go through everything I know about and brief you on it tonight if you want.

Thank you, but I don't think it's anything life-threatening. No need to panic even if I still don't remember it, I think.

That's..good, at least.

A Summoning: Part XXII

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Part XXII
~Emperor, Part 1~

On the way from her bedroom to the kitchen, Onida encountered a small, dark-haired wolf-girl sleeping curled up on the couch with a quilt draped over her. Peacefully asleep like that, it was impossible to distinguish Sam from a harmless, cute girl who'd looked that way her entire life. It felt almost wrong to disrupt such a sight. Weird, she thought; Damon was—objectively speaking—cute too, but didn't make her feel quite the way this friend of hers was at the moment.

“Uh..morning?” she said quietly, not actually sure how a startled werewolf waking in unfamiliar surroundings would react. Sam barked once, a quiet, high “Rrf!” that enhanced her adorableness tenfold for a second, and then fidgeted and twisted around before sitting up with her legs still across the couch as she opened her eyes and looked around.

“Aah, hey again,” she said, spotting Onida. “Damon got sleepy, so I led her to bed for a nap and came down here to take one myself.” She yawned, stretching her arms out and dropping the quilt off in the process; it was unfair for sharp teeth to be so adorable, Onida thought, listening to the high “Huuawah” sound from her throat. “Thought, you know, it'd be way more obvious I'm not doing anything, weird, if we slept totally separately.”

Despite herself, Onida briefly pictured the two of them curled up close to each other in Damon's bed, and felt...what?...jealous? No way. Outwardly she just shrugged. “That's fine, I guess. Could you go get her up? I'm gonna make breakfast.”
“Sure!” Sam hopped onto her feet and scurried toward the stairs, pausing just before the first step. “Oh aah..am I invited? My hotel does have a breakfast...”
“Please. I'd be ashamed to leave you to endure what the 'hospitality' business passes for a meal,” Onida said.

“Heheh, if you say so. Thank you,” Sam nodded once, then continued upstairs.

At breakfast, Damon paused eating for a moment to speak. “Hey Sam.”
“Yeah?”
“Um, this is kinda a weird question buut...do werewolves, like, worship the moon? I mean—you say stuff like 'oh, moon', sometimes, and I think I always thought it was just a weird quirk, buut..”
“Well, yes and no,” Sam said. “We don't worship the moon itself, but rather the moon goddess La Lune. And—not all werewolves, strictly speaking, really just the more traditional types. But, aah, you know, when you grow up hearing your parents use certain expressions you tend to pick them up for yourself.”

Damon blinked a couple of times, taking another bite of bacon while she thought about something. “What's La Lune like?”

“Oh, aah, let's see. She's supposed to change with the phases of the moon. But she's always a woman and a wolf, or dog, that are both, like, the same being. Except she can also take on the appearance of a werewolf? Usually when she communicates with mortals, though, it's in a dream where she just shows up as 'the moon'.”

“Oh. Hm.”

“Something on your mind?” Onida asked, although she was now practically bursting with questions about the literal, provable existence of a deity herself.

“Well—I had a dream about the moon, not long after I was, uh, made like this,” she said, and proceeded to recount that dream for them, quite a bit more calmly and less emotionally than she had to the ones who'd first found her.

“Yeah, that—sounds like La Lune to me,” Sam said. “Not that I've ever had the privilege of a 'visit', but that's pretty similar to other accounts I've seen or read from people. I guess she wanted equal parts to apologize to and comfort you.”

“Apologize?” Onida asked. “For what?”
“Well, aah. La Lune is supposed to have made werewolves in the first place, out of some willing humans. But, they say, we inherited her wild nature, which makes it easy for freshly-bitten wolves to lose themselves without the right kind of help.”

“Why would a moon goddess have a 'wild nature'?” she pressed.

“Well—she's not just the moon goddess. She's also the goddess of like, untamed nature, mystery, the night, and all beastfolk, to some extent. But since other kinds of beastfolk have their own gods, it's more like she's the 'chief' of the fuzzy people gods, and also especially the goddess of werewolves.”

Onida said, “So you're telling me that not only is there a real moon goddess, but others too? How many are there?”

“Well, aah..I don't, know, exactly? Which should maybe tell you 'a lot'. The thing is, most people only really know about the big ones, and there's supposed to be a whole lot of smaller ones that only people who are specifically loyal to them tend to know about. Aand, even the big ones I don't really know that much about myself.”
“So what are the ones you do know?”
“Let's see..” She began counting off on her fingers. “There's La Lune's brother Sol, god of the sun. Both of them are supposed to be the oldest gods, who were around in some form before humans even existed. Then there are other beastfolk gods like Bastet, the Fox King or whatever it's called..the god of love, who has like six different names I can never remember...”

“Do we have any war gods?”
“Not—specifically, that I'm aware of?” she shrugged.

“I just can't get over that they're real. What kind of—like, how do you worship La Lune, for example?”

“Aaah..byyy, being, a, werewolf?” Sam answered very slowly, word-by-word, clearly uncertain that this was the right way to put the answer. “Our gods are kinda weird this way: It's like, not so much that they need specific worshipers but more like, they get 'power' or 'praise' or whatever from just anyone doing or feeling certain things. It's supposed to 'please' La Lune when wolves run wild and free on the full moon and stuff, or just when people respect or appreciate nature in general, orrr, like, writing poems about the moon might even be enough? So, there are people who say they specifically worship this or that god, but it's not something any of them demand.”

---

Graham rose early, as she usually did, and after breakfast went for a walk. This had been her habit before the doctors found the cancer, and it was nice to get back to it. However, the brief sort of walk that would have sufficed to tire her out was far too little now; for as slim as her new body appeared, it had quite a lot of stamina. She far outpaced her old self, much more than making up for her smaller paces, effortlessly, and so rode the sidewalk to parts of the neighborhood she'd never been up close to before. In little more time than the usual hour or so, she had covered all that distance and returned, not even short of breath, to her house's front door. Perhaps a jog or something else more energetic was needed to really challenge her new physique, she thought, but that was work for another day. For now, she headed back inside to go relax and read.

Reaching the end of the latest book, the catgirl stood up and stretched, feeling a vague kind of impatience. There was another book to read, but she felt a bit restless and wanted to do something else for a while. It wasn't unreasonable to guess that the youthful body came with some more youthful impulses, and anyway she now seemed to very much have the time to develop a new hobby. It was rare, she thought, for a person to have this dilemma—thinking they were at the end of the road, only to find themselves young again and in search of something to do. But maybe someone, at some point, had experienced something like this; if not a magical rejuvenation, perhaps someone had simply decided to take up something new anyway, without regard to how long they did or didn't have left to live. And...the best way to find information, any young person would say, would be the Internet.

She had an old desktop, rarely used since a certain old friend who corresponded by email had passed away. But it had a browser and could handle basic functions, if at least it would boot. Thankfully, it did, and so began the youthened Neko's search for some new way to occupy her time.

Going back to work, now there was an idea. Bringing in more money was always attractive, and Graham had been a librarian for many years, but the city library probably wasn't looking for more help, having long since replaced her—him, rather, at the time—on retirement. She would have to poke around a bit for something like that. For now, she put that aside and sought more leisurely activities to take up.

The next thing that caught her eye was video games. Neither Graham nor his granddaughter had ever had much use of those, apart from the odd phone game. What people 'in the know' seemed to consider real video games, however, were an entirely different beast. She'd read articles, now and then, about the interactive medium; the idea was interesting, but seemed like a lot of trouble, and very expensive besides. Well, if she got a job to make more money, a little could go toward something like that, perhaps. What was it really like, though?

Continuing down this rabbit hole, it was astoundingly easy to find footage of people playing those games. Watching wasn't quite the same as experiencing it firsthand, she felt sure, but listening to someone else's experiences would at least give some sense of what it was like. For now, watching a bit of that to evaluate this potential new interest was good enough. Anyway, some of these players made a performance out of it, with quite a lot of personality or even humor at times. Without even fully understanding what they were doing or talking about, it was still captivating to watch, she thought. This was how she lost no less than two hours sitting at the computer with her tail flicking back and forth behind her, occasionally chuckling or giggling in appreciation of the humor of strangers she'd never met, and possibly never would. When her eyes drifted off to the clock and she realized this, the catgirl wondered if the inexpensive act of just watching might not suffice for the use of time she'd sought. At least, it had proven itself quite enjoyable.

---

Prama's classes were over by lunchtime, and she wisely decided to eat and carefully tie her hair back before heading out to the alchemist's for her test. Because of that, it was the early afternoon when she pulled up to the lonesome building and saw that he apparently had some customers, judging by the presence of a few cars nearby. She elected to wait for them to leave, which they thankfully did before long; she caught sight of a couple of very demonic-looking people, not unlike Zotha's appearance except these were probably the real thing, and what seemed to be an ordinary human in a very unusual getup. After they drove off, she got out of the car and came inside.

Boreas was facing the door to the back room when she opened the door, and turned to face her as she walked inside. “Oh, there y'are. Wondered if you'd ever come out of your car,” he remarked.

“Well, among the things I traded for brains was the ability to be comfortable around strangers,” she said. “I'm still working on that.”

“Hmn,” he grunted neutrally. “Well, come on back then.”

With a slight wave, he opened the door and behind the counter and continued the way he'd been going before, and she followed. What was inside was very much what one would expect of an alchemy lab: Tubes, vials, bottles, shelf upon shelf of various ingredients ranging from unidentifiable to commonplace. The center was taken up by a few cauldrons of varying sizes, only the smallest of which wasn't currently filled with a liquid of some unusual color or property (such as constantly fizzing or smoking). It reeked with a mixture of scents: Something fruity, burnt meat, something rotten, just plain smoke...the combination was exquisitely terrible, and made her wonder how someone with an even more sensitive nose worked under such conditions. Maybe that was why he thought someone needed to start young to be an alchemist: To get used to the smells.

“I got things together to make a simple potion, like I said,” the werewolf stated, indicating a table with bowls of various indistinct, differently-colored powders lined up on it. “Same sort of thing Steph usually buys, just helps the body's natural magic regeneration catch up to a more expensive spell or such. Before we start, you need some safety equipment...here.” He went over to a coat rack she hadn't even managed to notice before in all the sensory overload and pulled off a stained leather coat that appeared to have been roughly cut at the lower hem and a pair of very new-looking leather gloves; Prama slid the coat on, the uneven hem trailing to her ankles and the sleeves covering half her hands, then the gloves, which fit perfectly. It smelled too, but there would be plenty of time to shower and launder what she had on under it later.

Boreas examined her wearing the getup for a second, his eyes clearly drawn to the sleeves. “Hmm. Hold still a sec.”
“Okay?”

He came closer, reaching down and grabbing a sleeve in both of his hands, each on one side of where her wrist was, and then yanked it hard enough to tear the leather. Tossing the discarded piece aside, he did the same to the other sleeve, the end result being some rough edges that covered only a bit past where the gloves started, and stood no risk of getting in the way. Then he stepped back to examine the fit again, and nodded once. “...There.”

Was that how he'd gotten a coat short enough for her, she wondered, trying not to think too hard about how this level of strength was likely enough to pick her up, crumple her up like a sheet of paper and throw her through a wall. It seemed he'd gone to the effort of buying new gloves, though, which struck her as unusually nice for someone he hoped to be rid of by the end of the day.

Next, Boreas went over to the empty cauldron. “Now, I'll explain the basics of alchemy. Listen close and ask any questions you got.”

“Alright.” She followed him over there, feeling a little better already as her drive to learn something new began taking over her mood.

---

Being an earth dragon came with a certain 'sense' for what was on, and in, the ground. That sense was largely passive, but all morning today Thomas had felt small patches of freshly-disturbed dirt with..something small she couldn't quite identify buried underneath. Once her last class, after a meat-heavy lunch, was over, she decided to try and find the source of it. Maybe it was just some landscaping or sprinkler repair or something...but knowing what it was would make her feel better.

Instinct seemed to tell her what to do. Standing near the middle of the quad, which was reasonably close to the center of campus, she 'reached out' and felt for anyone presently disturbing the earth. Fortunately, this turned up a result, a single place with some notable motion going on, and it wasn't too far from her current position. She moved swiftly in the direction of the disturbance, some relatively weak new predatory instincts driving her to catch the person doing this in the act, and soon arrived—not long after the earth was placed back on top of another object freshly lowered into the ground.

Well—the only person here was a black-haired guy in casual clothes, who looked to be another student. Thomas was fortunate enough to come in behind him, and had a clear view of him looking around for potential witnesses before waving a hand upward, pulling at some loose ground in much the same way her own powers could work, but on a far smaller scale. Then he set the pile to one side, reached into a shoulder bag and pulled out something small and tube-shaped.

He certainly didn't look like anyone who should be burying things on campus to her. So: “Hey.”

“Gyeeaii!” The guy jumped, clearly expecting to have heard anyone approaching, and turned toward her. It occurred to her that she'd been having the ground beneath her feet damp the sound of them hitting it from the moment she'd begun trying to sneak up behind him. Apart from the surprise at her voice, no sooner did he catch sight of her than his eyes went wide and he stumbled back a couple of steps. “Wh-hiiii,” he said. “M-ma'am?”
This was a new one. Thomas was hardly the kind of person people would call 'sir' before, and didn't feel much like a 'ma'am' now either. She crossed her arms, deciding to take it in stride for now. “What're you up to?”
“N-nu-nuh...nothing,” he mumbled, still completely flat-footed.

“Really? So you're not burying whatever you've got in your hand there all over campus?” she said, pointing.
“I-I don't have anything in my hand,” he said, spreading his arms and opening both his hands to show them empty. Neat trick—she hadn't seen him put that thing back in the shoulder bag. Maybe he'd slipped it up his sleeve, or employed some kind of magic to hide it?

“Okay.” Well, she had some tricks of her own, and waved a hand upward, pulling the ground up from under the last thing he'd buried and using the surrounding dirt to float the whole mass up next to her. “What about this one?”

“Uh—um..” He shuddered for a second, and then drew himself up. “Okay, fine. I should know better than to try to put anything over on a dragon, right?” Then he put his hands in his pockets, and something happened to his appearance: His ears flipped up past his hair, growing into tall, black-furred spikes, and a black tail spread out from his back. “I'm terribly, uh, sorry for my impertinence. Milady?”

Thomas sighed. “Cut that out, I'm just another student here. Toma, if you like,” she made up on the spot—deciding, somewhat arbitrarily, that one deception attempt brooked another. “So, what's this thing?” she held out her hand and neatly caught the tube out of the air as the floating earth dropped it before returning to obeying gravity itself.

“It uuhh, it's for a harmless trick,” he said. “You know what tomorrow is?”
“Thursday?”
“No no, I mean—April first,” he said, waving. “It's like a holy day for my people. I'd really appreciate it if you'd, uh, allow me to celebrate it properly.”

“You didn't answer the question I actually asked,” the dragon-girl pointed out, waving the tube in her hand a bit.
“Hey, hey, careful!” he said, somewhat involuntarily holding out his hands as if to catch something.

“Okay look, that's a simple machine. If you soak it in enough water, it pops out a little flag. But if you keep shaking it like that, it might also pop out then.”

“I see.” She looked at it carefully for a second, confirming that at least one end looked like it was supposed to pop open. “Surely you can spare one just to show me,” she said.
“Eehh, fine.” The guy with the fuzzy tail pulled another of the tubes out of the bag and waved his hand over it, sprinkling some water out of his palm somehow (more magic, she supposed). With an audible pop similar to a bottle of wine being uncorked, a little blue triangular flag with a cute red cartoon fox-face on it shot out, its pole parallel to the tube. “See?”

“Hm.” Thomas nodded, and set the tube in her hand on the ground in front of her carefully. “And they all do the same thing?”
“Well—there's a few different flag designs, but yeah,” he said, nodding. “Look, I know my kind isn't exactly known for honesty, but I swear, what we have planned for tomorrow is totally harmless. I'll, uh, I'll even fix the ground after if you want!”

The dragon tilted her head slightly. “'Your kind'?” It finally occurred to her that his fuzzy parts matched those of a fox, perhaps, and that was why the flag had a fox-head cartoon on it too—and Zotha had mentioned Kitsune among the types of magic people who were actually real. Which meant this was probably one of those. “How many of you are involved with this 'trick'?”
“Uh—how many? J-just me,” he said nervously.

“You said 'we' a second ago,” she replied, pointing.
“Oh...yeeah...whoops. Look, if something does happen you don't like, I'd appreciate if you just treat it as my mistake and turn your wrath my way alone. O-okay? I did uh, most of the planning, anyway. Deal?”

“Fine with me,” Thomas shrugged. “Guess I'll look forward to seeing whatever the rest of your prank is tomorrow.” She wandered off after that, satisfied that whoever this was probably had no intention of hurting anyone in the first place anyway.

Gods, Steph thought as he watched Toma leave. A dragon on campus? As a student? Since when!? Last I checked there were no dragons awake in a hundred-mile radius from here! Wait... It came to him rather quickly, now that he wasn't flustered by the presence of a being with terrifying, immense magical power, and his ears lowered in something like annoyance. Zotha. That girl was probably human last week. Yeesh. Shaking his head, he went over to retrieve the flag dispenser Toma had pulled out of the ground and start the work of putting it back in and hiding the evidence—or at least hiding it from people who weren't dragons, anyway.

---

“Well.” Boreas sniffed the cauldron, and used a teaspoon to carefully draw out some of the liquid inside, bringing it up to smell more closely and then taste. “Looks like you weren't bluffing.”

“Indeed,” the bespectacled girl said, wearing a victorious grin. “Not only have I made it successfully, but I've also memorized the steps, so I could make it again without any help at all if you'd like.”

“That won't be needed,” he shook his head once. “This is enough to last a while, and I'd consider our bet settled for now. Welcome aboard, I guess,” he said, offering her a gloved hand to shake—which she did.

“Excellent. I'm eager to learn more, of course, but I'll defer to your judgment on how and when.”
“Hm. I'd say you should get a hairnet first,” he said. “Didn't think of that. For today, I have some projects in the works I could use some grunt work for. But don't worry—I'm sure you'll learn just from watching me and doing some of the basics.”
“I'm sure I will,” she agreed, nodding.

“Then I'll keep you back here for now, and handle customers myself. We can work on your stranger issues later.”

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'.

---

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.