To Help a Monster

Tristan woke with a start, and he sat up much too fast. He fell back onto the pillow again, bringing a hand up to his forehead and groaning. He felt a little less sore than usual, actually, but the headache was new. As he lay there trying to feel better, he slowly realized that the uncomfortable cot he was lying on, and the sheer white walls and ceiling...none of it was even remotely familiar. He had no idea where he was.

Actually—it wasn't unusual for him to not know where he was, or recall how he'd gotten there, but these surroundings were unexpected all the same. He sat up again—slowly this time, and tried to take in the room. Was this in a hospital or something? Maybe...a jail? The cot he was on, and a tiny end table with a glass of water on it, were the only furniture in the room; no monitoring devices or computers or anything like that. Yet there wasn't any sort of window here, not even one with bars. The only exit to the room was a door he could now see past the foot of the bed. He jumped slightly as a small slat built into the door, at about eye level for someone standing right in front of it, suddenly and loudly slid open.

"I see you're up," a woman's voice said from the other side. "You know—when I got an email begging me to look into rumors of a 'giant cat monster' in the woods, I was certain it'd be something utterly mundane...if not a hoax. How're you feeling in there?"

"Not...great," Tristan said slowly. "Did I uh..hurt anyone, this time?"

"Doesn't seem like it. My familiar knocked you with one punch," she said proudly.

"'Familiar'?" he repeated, suddenly sitting very upright. "Are you a witch?!"

"Indeed."

Tristan didn't have a good track record with witches. "Please," he started right away, and said quickly: "I'm already cursed! I'm really sorry, I don't have control over myself when it—"

She interrupted him in a firm but kind tone of voice: "Hey now..take a deep breath, will you? I'm not that sort of witch."

"I—okay." He took a long breath in and out, as instructed. Panicking—really panicking—would have been very bad, he realized almost too late. "Sorry."

"Allow me a proper introduction—though I hope you'll forgive me if it's still through the door. The name's Rillimia. You could say I'm a benevolent witch; lots of people call on me to solve their problems," she explained, her voice carrying a certain level of pride.

"I'm—Tristan," he said. "Uh..I was, cursed, some time ago. For offending someone who turned out to be a witch. I kinda..lost my temper, and so...now, any time I get too angry or just—like—upset..."

"You turn into that monstrous form, yes?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, I had a look at you while you were unconscious. That witch must've been very angry with you, because the curse she put on you doesn't have any conditions for breaking it."

"Uh..what's that, mean?"

"Well, your average curse is 'this will happen to you until'...such as having your pants pockets sprout holes in them that your money falls out through, until you willingly donate a certain quantity to the poor. But yours isn't like that. In plain terms, I'd have to overpower it to remove it, and it's strong enough that it isn't really feasible for me to do so."

"Oh.."

"Don't despair! I came up with a solution anyway," Rillimia said. "Here."

An object was slid through the slat in the door, landing on the floor on Tristan's side with a brief jingling noise. He got up and stepped a little closer to see what it was. "A..collar?" The jingling sound had come from a large bell attached to it.

"An enchanted collar. You see—while that curse is very powerful, it was quite carelessly constructed. Like I said, she must've been very angry. So I decided to work smart instead of working hard. The enchantment on that collar should be able to alter the curse's effects so you won't be danger to those around you anymore."

"I...see.." Tristan knelt and picked up the collar. "What uh..new effects would it have?"

"I can't say precisely—this is quite a complicated interaction of two different people's magic we're speaking of. But I guarantee you that it will not hurt you, and it will keep you from turning into a dangerous monster."

"Did it..need to have a bell?" Tristan asked, tapping it to make it jingle a couple of times.

"But of course it did. I needed to exploit the 'feline' component of your curse."

"What does that even mean?"

"Look, are you the witch in this situation? Or any sort of magic expert whatsoever?"

"No..."

"Then don't expect to understand everything. Just, please make up your mind on whether you want to try my 'cure'. If not, I'll happily seek out someone with more expertise in curses in particular to help you—but you'll have to stay in there where you can't get out and harm anyone in the meantime. Trust me, that would inconvenience both of us."

"No, look, I'll—try anything. I guess I just..put it on?" he said, bringing it up to his neck and starting to wrap it around.

"That's correct."

"Okay..." Tristan kept it loose so he wouldn't choke himself. It was a little awkward to fasten it together, but he eventually managed it. He'd never been the kind of guy who wore anything around his neck, so it was a slightly strange experience in that way—but nothing else obvious seemed to happen. "Did uh..did it work?"

"I can confirm the enchantment is on you," Rillimia said. "But your curse isn't currently active, and there's nothing for the enchantment to do until it is."

"So..we're not sure if it's really safe for me to go out yet, even with this on—right? I mean, this sounds kinda experimental," Tristan said.

"I'm confident my solution works, but it probably would be best to exercise caution in this case. So, yes, it'd be ideal if we could test it out."

After taking another deep breath, Tristan said, "So—you're absolutely sure this room would uh..keep me in here, if the curse does what it always did before..right?"

"Certainly. And my familiar is standing by."

"Heyo~," a deeper voice, also female, chimed in from across the door.

"She's quite capable of knocking you out again if need be."

"Yep!" the new voice agreed.

It was bizarre for the threat of having his lights punched out a second time to be so reassuring, but Tristan's life had been bizarre enough already for this to not warrant a comment. "Okay..."

It wasn't very hard for Tristan to get angry; it never had been, really. The worst part about his curse was that his anger and frustration at the situation it put him in was itself enough to trigger it all over again. Back around when he'd first been cursed, he'd lost something like an entire month to a repeated cycle of coming back to himself only to almost immediately go into a spiral of negative emotion that had him turn into a monster all over again. He'd trained himself in healthier mental habits since then to keep that from happening, but it was distressingly easy to go back to his old ways. All he had to do was think about the day he'd been cursed, all the awful things that had happened that day, and for him to have the rotten luck to run into such an ill-tempered woman with the power to curse him, of all things! His entire life of torment since then, and anyone he'd hurt while he wasn't himself but that monster—it was all her fault! Well, it was at least mostly her fault, and the rest was his. Just picturing her cackling face after she'd inflicted the curse on him ticked him off...!

Tristan shuddered, feeling his heart race and an all-too-familiar ache all over his body. This was how it always felt before he started changing; usually there was an eruption of intense pain afterward, and he would black out maybe halfway into turning into a giant, white-furred cat monster. However, this time was markedly different; the eruption of intense pain didn't come. "A-aagh...!" It was a relatively mild pain he felt hitting his ears as they grew up and out into big, feline-like shapes, and in his lower back as a tail forced its way out from the base of his spine. At the same time, he felt his hair falling down across his eyebrows, then cheeks and the back of his head, and then lightly landing on his shoulders and sliding its way down his back. The locks now threatening to obscure his vision were the same pure, bright white as he knew his monstrous form's fur to be, but the sudden hair growth was not something that usually happened.

He panted slightly in the wake of the pain, looking around. He was still..himself! At least, mostly; he certinaly wasn't in pain anymore, and he hadn't blacked out. "It..did it work!?"

Tristan's question hadn't really been directed at anyone, but the witch behind the door answered anyway: "My enchantment looks to be doing its job, but the magic hasn't stabilized quite yet. Could you try to activate the curse again?"

"Uh..sure, I guess?"

He tried again to work himself up—picturing the face of that witch who'd cursed him. It was..a little harder to feel angry this time, for some reason. Of course, he had been a real jerk to her, regardless of what he'd gone through himself that day. Maybe it was no excuse...but that meant it was his own stupid fault that he'd been cursed! And it was certainly his own fault he couldn't keep control of his emotions ever since then; if he could just keep a lid on it then the curse wouldn't even matter! This source of frustration was enough; his heartbeat picked up again, and a noticeably duller ache hit him.

"Mn—agh...rrrgh...!" A low, growling sound came from Tristan's throat as the ache progressed into a strange pressure. He wriggled in place like he was struggling against invisible ropes, and before his eyes the room began to rise slowly, steadily upward. "Aah—wha..rr~rrgh..!" The next involuntary growl came out in a slightly higher pitch, and its tone audibly rose upward mid-growl. He felt the shirt and pants he'd woken up in sliding and slipping across his skin, and looked down to find that—in addition to the floor rising up closer to him, his frame was visibly thinning and slimming. "Aa~ah, aa~aah..m-mrr~rroowh..?!" His non-growling, human voice came out at a higher pitch than before now too, and cracked strangely mid-utterance; then another involuntary attempt to growl came out instead as a confused, feline meow.

This change finally came to an end after he'd lost no less than a foot and a half of height, and so much size otherwise that his shirt hung awkwardly off of a shoulder, and his pants simply gave up and slid down his legs to land onto the floor. Not that this mattered much for his modesty, as the shirt's hem was now as far down as his upper thighs. "Haff, hff—I, wha~a..?" Tristan said, trying but failing to make his voice not sound like a young boy's. "Why'd I s-shrink?" A terrible thought occurred to him—between his curse's original effects, and the cat-like collar, and what Rillimia had said about "exploiting the feline" something-or-other.

"Is—is—am I turning totally into a cat!?" he said, feeling a panic rise. Maybe he didn't deserve any better, after insisting on keeping himself alive so long despite the clear danger he posed to others. Besides, such a punishment would be his own fault for accepting this strange witch's 'help' after his first experience with one!

"Please calm down; it won't—oh," Rillimia interrupted herself, seemingly because she'd noticed something. It wasn't hard for Tristan to guess what, as his panicked thoughts were more than enough to set his heart racing all over again. Only this time, it didn't cause any aching at all. He thought, as he shuddered from a strange, almost pleasant tingling all across his skin, that at least becoming a cat wouldn't be painful like turning into a monster had...!

"Aa~ah—rr~rrh..!" Tristan felt the urge to roar again, but it came out so pathetically high—almost cute—and soon shifted into another meow. "Mm-rr~rroo~oowh..!" The register of his voice shifted even higher, and the bizarre tingling seemed to settle on something...down between his legs. "Aa~ah, w-whaa..?!" It progressed into a slipping, tugging sensation that made his heart race in an altogether different way from usual; he could feel his cheeks growing hot with a blush, the slim white tail extending out from his back whipping back and forth excitedly, his ears lowering..!

But—but this was wrong, a part of him seemed to say. He was supposed to be big and strong, not small and weak. "R-rr~roorwh..!?" A strangely high, cute attempt to roar came from his lips as he felt it continuing to slip away. And then—"W-waa~aaAAA~AAaaahh...!" No sooner had Tristan's manhood vanished completely than a bizarre, fuzzy feeling emanated from down there.

"MM-Mmmn—mmrr~rrrhh..!" A helpless purring came from the new girl's lips as the realization settled into her mind that what she was feeling was, undeniably, a woman's sort of pleasure. At the same time, she could feel certain parts of her shrunken body gently bouncing their way back outward: Her hips puffed themselves out wider, pulling the tops of her legs apart; her thighs grew thicker as if in reply, shifting her legs from slender to shapely; and her bottom pushed out bigger too.

"Aah, aa~aah..!" Her voice remained at a high, cute soprano tone as she also felt her chest starting to push itself forward, a tiny pair of breasts moving across the material of her shirt as they grew. The budding bosom proved unusually sensitive, drawing more fuzzy feelings from down between her legs and causing her to purr once again. "Aah—mm—mmr~rrrrhh..!" The slightly-foreign part of her mind that thought this was all wrong seemed to grow weaker and weaker, enjoying these pleasant sensations just as much as the rest of her. But, as one final act of rebellion just as her chest bounced out into a full, womanly pair of globes, she opened her mouth and tried one last time to roar.

She lifted her hands up, trying to retract their deadly claws but only succeeding in growing some slightly longer, more feminine nails. And the roar that came out was a high, soft, adorable "R-roo~oowrrh..!"

Tristan slowly dropped her arms back to her sides, panting. "Hff..hff..I-I..uh..?" She was fully aware, now, of the animalistic part of her mind that the curse had locked away from the rest of it. She could remember every night from the perspective of the giant cat-beast, hunting and attacking people to quell her rage. To her relief, these new memories revealed that she'd never actually killed any people—just some animals. But she was also keenly aware that she had been completely and totally, irrevocably, tamed—and was a mere harmless housecat now. And yet—this realization only made her...happy? She'd never really wanted to hurt anyone in the first place, after all!

"I-is it over?" she asked simply as these realizations washed through her.

"It would appear so," Rillimia said. "The reaction between my magic and hers has stabilized. And thus...the good news is that you won't turn into that monster anymore. The bad news is that the curse's nature has shifted from one that changes you, to one that keeps you the same. So your form is now locked to...that one."

"I..see..um.." Tristan looked down at herself, brushing a hand down along her side and trying to get used to how small and soft she was, the curves that hand felt. "It's..still way better than before. Y-you can let me out now, right?" she asked, turning her head up to look at the door again. "A-and maybe, d'you have a mirror somewhere?"

"Yes, and..certainly." The catgirl's ears twitched as she heard the sound of some locks being disengaged, and then the door opened to give her a first look at her saviors.

At first, she thought both of them looked so tall! But then she realized that it was her who was really short. "Hello there." The witch herself—who'd just disengaged the lock—was an average-height redhead in almost stereotypical witch garb; with her was a tall, curvy, brown-haired woman in shorts and a t-shirt. However, the first thing Tristan picked up on about the latter was that she was clearly part wolf!

"Yo," the tall, deep-voiced woman waved.

Tristan recoiled slightly. "Eep!" She then gathered herself, trying to stand up straight but feeling her ears fold back in fear anyway. "Um—sorry. You're just, um, really big? And..I-I think I'm kinda very part cat now, soo.."

"Awwh, it's fine," she said with a sharp-toothed grin. "If anything, that was kinda cute~."

"Uhmm..." Tristan felt her face flush at the compliment; this mixed with her feeling even more fear from seeing those fangs to produce a very confused sort of emotion. She just tried to push past all that and move the conversation forward. "So! A-a mirror?"

"In a bathroom, down that hall and to the right," the witch said, gesturing which way she meant. "Perhaps we could find you some clothes as well."

The catgirl's blush refused to cool off as she worked to step over the pants still pooled around her ankles. "Y-yeah, I'd appreciate that."

---

Another story involving Rillimia! Actually, I wrote most of this before getting the idea for the previous one, but they've been published in in-universe chronlogical order.

To Trick a Troublemaker

When Axel looked over the table full of food in his well-hidden den, he felt an intense sense of pride. After he ran away from his stuffy parents as a teenager, he'd awoken as a kitsune and not taken long at all to earn a total of three whole tails for himself! He earned his every meal through increasingly novel and clever tricks as the people of the nearby town grew wise to the old ones, and despite how hard it was getting, he always sought to outdo himself. Whether it was disguising himself as a poor beggar or a starving stray cat, or creating a distraction so he could snatch a meal right off of someone's plate, it was always exhilarating to see just what he could accomplish!

Of course, it wasn't pride alone. There was also the happy anticipation of actually eating all that delicious food. He'd worked himself pretty hard recently, and he didn't come across such a big feast often. Those dumb food carriers from out of town had no idea what the people who'd used a computer to pay for it all even looked like; he just needed to be in the right place at the right time...and, for the hard part, make sure the real buyers weren't! But now he had meat, bread, vegetables, and—best of all—a big pie, all for himself!

With no further thought on the matter, Axel dug in. He saved the dessert for last, because he always found it was sweetest that way. He ate just as much as he wanted of everything else, stowing away what he knew he couldn't finish, but left enough room for at least half of that pie. And, finally, he went for it. It was just as delicious as it looked and smelled, and once he'd started—even though he was getting quite stuffed—he just couldn't stop until he'd finished the entire thing! At the end of it, he let out a loud burp (which nobody would hear, with how deep in the woods he was) and went to curl up on the pile of pilfered pillows in the corner of the room to sleep. He'd started yawning from maybe halfway into the pie, and felt close to a food coma by now. So the sly fox drifted off to sleep in no time at all, still dreaming of the flavor of that pie...

Axel woke up some time later, still feeling groggy and stiff. It took his sleepy mind a long moment to register that something was off, then even longer to figure out what it was: The surface he was curled up on top of wasn't right. It was rigid and flat rather than soft and lumpy, one object rather than a disorganized pile. And there was something on top of him too, which was also unusual. He slowly came to the conclusion that he was lying on a bed with covers over him, and that was very wrong. But even knowing that, he still had significant difficulty mustering the energy to get himself out of it; he still felt unbelievably sleepy. He fought the urge to go back to sleep anyway, instead uncurling himself and pulling the covers off to sit up and look around.

The bed was in a bedroom, of course. It was a small, fairly stark room featuring a dresser, a nightstand, two doors, and no windows. One of the doors was half-open with a bathroom obviously behind it—no exit through there—and the other one was closed. Axel slowly got himself to his feet, wobbling slightly as he was still strangely sleepy, and tried to concentrate on making a plan to get out of here. He stepped over to the non-bathroom door and tried it, finding it—predictably—locked.

He'd been practicing short-range teleportation recently; such a trick was difficult for someone with just three tails, but he could definitely make it to the other side of the door. Only, when he tried to summon up his power to do it..it wouldn't come. Confused, he tried again and again, even attempting some simpler tricks he knew as 'test cases', all the way down to things he'd been able to do with just one tail...but he came up dry every time. It was like his magic wasn't there at all! He was a lot less sleepy by the end of this, but no less confused—and a lot more frustrated.

"Oh my, it looks like you're awake already," a woman's voice said from the other side of the door. "I was certain you'd be out at least a few more hours after consuming an entire sleeping-potion pie."

"Wh—who are you!? What am I doing here?!"
"My name is Rillimia, and I put you in there."
"With some help," a deeper voice pitched in.

"Indeed. I also placed the seal on that room, which you have been trying in vain for the past several minutes to overpower."

Axel was starting to understand his situation. He masked his mounting fear with some faux-righteous anger. "Y-y-you can't keep me in here!"

"I'm pretty sure we can," the deeper voice replied. "You're wanted for like, a lot of crimes? I got bored reading the list."

"Wh—I was just doing what I hadta to survive!" the fox protested. "And I fooled those people fair and square. And I never cost anybody that much money anyhow!"

"All good points—save for the second one," Rillimia said. "With the approval of the authorites, I do have something other than a prison sentence in mind for you. I think perhaps a more..poetic punishment is in order."
"Wh-what's that supposed to mean?!"

"You'll find out soon enough. Hold still a moment."

"N-no way!" Axel backed away from the door and ran for the opposite wall. His foxlike ears could hear his captor muttering something that sounded kind of like a language, and kind of not; his sensitivity to magic could feel something in her voice, like there was a power behind the words themselves. He tried going all around the room to get away from that power, but once he felt it starting to press in on him, no amount of movement seemed to shake it loose. Within a moment, he found his run slowing to a walk, and then that to a standstill, his legs rebelling against his continued efforts to move. Rillimia's voice telling him to 'hold still' echoed in his mind again, and he now found it impossible to disobey that command!

"Wh-what're you..h-how..!?" Axel could feel the power pressing in on his body, attacking his tails. He usually kept two of the three hidden, and whatever 'sealing' was on this room hadn't messed with that. But now he felt them coming out into full view, and felt strangely exposed. That wasn't all; the magic affecting him began to push against one of the freshly-revealed tails, causing it to start to shrink. It wasn't just hiding itself again; it was really getting smaller!

Axel curled that tail up in front of him, grabbing it in his arms to try and keep it from getting smaller and shorter. "W-wait..! No no no..!" He could feel that it wasn't just the physical tail leaving him, but also the portion of power that he'd gained when he'd earned it. The smaller it got, the more his attempt to resist the power pushing in on his body weakened, until he felt it penetrating into him, seeping into his body—just as that tail finished vanishing away completely, leaving him with just the two.

What was that woman's power doing..!? Axel found himself shuddering violently as a sharp tingling sensation engulfed every inch of his skin. He found a sense of softness settling across his form, and when he looked down he could see the hair of his arms, legs, and chest all disappearing away, leaving his skin smooth. His hair was affected too, the slightly unkempt dark red mop growing out enough to frame his face and touch his shoulders, and at the same time brightening its color to a much more vibrant shade of red. Between trying to process these bizarre changes, he almost missed the same pressure that had lost him a tail before now working on another one.

"Aa~ah!" The kitsune's voice squeaked strangely as he brought the tail up in front of him, only to see it shrinking before his eyes. The color of its fur had changed just like his head-hair, and its shade brightened even more as it shrank smaller and shorter, the fraction of his power it represented waning along with it. While he gripped at it desperately, trying in vain to keep it from leaving him, Axel felt the pressure on his body growing even stronger, pushing it downward; his perspective sank downward and his clothes grew loose as his figure slimmed and his frame narrowed. "N-noo~oo...!" The pitch of his voice rose upward as he spoke, the maturity draining from it as his precious tail grew smaller and smaller, until it, too, finally left him.

"Aah~!" Axel jumped at a strange feeling on the base of his sole remaining tail, and quickly turned around in a panic. But there was no pressure against this tail; instead, his hair hadn't stopped growing since the rush of tingles, and its shade also hadn't stopped growing brighter. There were now some brilliant pink locks streaming all the way down his back, and that feeling had been the tips of some hairs touching his tail—whose fur now sported mostly the same color as that hair. Confused, he ran a hand down through the long, soft hair, muttering a soft "Wha~aat..?"

Even though he wasn't losing his last tail, Axel could feel his power waning even more. It was getting difficult to sense Rillimia's magic on him, even as he felt it continuing to press his body inward, making it even shorter and smaller. "Aah, aa~aah..." The pitch of his voice slid up out of masculine range as he felt a strange tingling between his legs and an accompanying warmth to his cheeks. His height finally quit sinking at this point, leaving his shirt to fall across some slender, narrow shoulders, awkwardly hanging off of one of them, and his pants and underwear to give up entirely, sliding down his smooth, slender legs to fall around his ankles on the floor.

"Wh-what're you..d-doing..aa~aah..!" The tingling progressed into a tugging, slipping sensation. "Mnnh—mrrr~rrh...!" In spite of himself, Axel found this feeling irresistibly pleasant, drawing a soft vulpine churring from his throat. His ears were lowering in submission, his tail starting to wag...but no, no! He wasn't supposed to enjoy something like this! Rillimia had to be some kind of witch, and she was cursing him...but...! "Mrrfh..aah, aa~aaAA~AAaah..!" As his manhood slipped away more and more, Axel found it more difficult to think such things. After all, this just felt so...nice, didn't it?

"M~mh—!" The Kitsune felt his manhood melting away. Why did it feel so good!? "Mm~mm~mMMMM~MMMMHhhhh...!" Mid-utterance, his sex changed, and she found herself wriggling around in place, enjoying a wave of impossibly pleasant fuzzy feelings down between her legs.

"M-mrr~rrrh...!" Her extremely high-pitched voice deepened again as she let out another vulpine churr in response to a gentle push from her hips, bottom, and thighs; her stance widened as the tops of her legs were pulled apart, and she found herself feeling soft all over. "Aa~ah, mm~mmnh..!" Her voice audibly matured toward a lower soprano or higher alto—either way a thoroughly feminine tone—as a sudden wave of sharp tingling across her chest gave way to a forward push, and a pair of very sensitive bumps raised themselves up around her nipples.

"W-wah! Mm-mm~mmnh..!" The feeling of those budding breasts brushing across her shirt alone was enough to erupt her new womanhood into more pleasant, fuzzy sensations all over again, addling her mind and making her cry out. At the same time, Axel could feel some changes coming to her clothes. Her shirt pulled itself close around her waist, shoulders, and growing chest, but spread out all the wider around her hips and legs. Her underwear climbed its way back up her legs, making her shiver slightly; its material was much softer than before, and it now pulled tight around her hips, close around the flatness between her legs, and failed to cover her upper thighs at all. Then her pants (what was left of them, anyway) snaked their way up her legs as a bunch of thin, tight cloth, wrapping itself around them from the bottom of her thighs down to all the way around her feet.

All the while, she struggled to do much of anything at all but enjoy the pleasant, girly feelings resulting from her breasts continuing to slowly push out bigger and bigger. But finally this, too, came to an end, and the kitsune let out a helpless, relieved-yet-pleased "Aa~aaahnn...!" as she felt the girlish pleasure resolving itself, coming to a satisfying end. Last of all, she felt a slight movement along the top of her head, something soft attaching itself just in front of the bases of her ears.

Axel realized that she'd closed her eyes at some point, and so now she opened them, blinking a couple of times before looking down to find herself in the form of a slight, fairly curvy woman. Furthermore, her outfit had shifted into no less than a full maid's uniform, complete with a huge frilly skirt, an equally-frilly white apron, and dark silken leggings running all the way up from her feet to past her knees. "I..wha..what'd you do to me!?" she demanded, wanting to go pound on the door—but her traitorous legs still wouldn't move.

The door opened itself anyway, revealing a red-haired woman in a decidedly witchy outfit whose height matched Axel's—but only because of how much she'd shrunk! "Isn't that obvious enough?" she answered in a smug tone of voice. "I've made a maid of you—for the time being. And an obedient one, at that."

As much as she wanted to protest some more, the kitsune was struggling with a brand new problem now; she knew that this was the person who'd introduced herself through the door as 'Rillimia' earlier, but looking at her now, her mind kept spitting out 'Master' as who she was.

"You—you—you cursed me, or something?! Master, this is cruel and unusual! I won't stand for it!" She'd been trying not to use a name or pronoun at all, but the word 'master' spilled itself out of her lips anyway. She still couldn't step away while the witch walked closer to get a close look at her, but did manage to make her right leg raise up and stomp that foot on the floor.

"I think you'll find you can't do anything but stand at the moment," Rillimia said with an infuriatingly amused grin. "Really though—this is quite temporary. Think of it as rehabilitation."
"Reha-what?!" she demanded, and then added involuntarily in an embarrassed tone of voice: "I-I don't know that word, Master."

"I just want to teach you how to function in society as something other than a thief," the witch explained patiently. "And perhaps you can repay those you've wronged a little bit along the way."

She turned away from the witch standing in front of her, huffing: "Hmph!"

"Look, I do understand that it's in a fox's nature to trick people, but you can be far less harmful about it," she continued. "If you obey me willingly, that curse won't have such a strong effect on you. And I won't abuse your obedience to do something bad either. The sooner you learn some useful skills and make up for your past deeds, the sooner I'll set you free. Deal?"

Axel's mind rang slightly at the word 'Deal', forcing her to look at the witch again; she found her extending out a hand as if to shake. "I—fine, I'll do whatever you say for a while! But only 'cause you were clever enough to trick me in the first place," she said insistently, not taking the hand or agreeing to the offered Deal.

"Good enough for now," Rillimia shrugged. "Now, what shall I call you?"
"My name's Axel," the kitsune said.

"That's not a very fitting name for a cute, obedient maid though—is it? Wouldn't you prefer to use a psuedonym—"
"I don't know that word, Master," the fox interrupted, anticipating an urge to point that out and taking advantage of the opportunity to say so in an annoyed tone.
If anything, the witch just found this amusing. "Heheh. A false name, is all I meant—to spare yourself the embarrassment once you're free and can go back to normal?"

Her ears lowered slightly. "I-I guess that'd be for the best..."

"Then, you'll be Lexy while you're a maid. Now, come with me," her Master gestured. "I'll show you around the house. And you can meet Hyra—you don't have to call her 'master', but you will obey her as you would me."
"Yes, Master," Lexy replied involuntarily. Finally her feet could move again—but only to obey this new command, as she followed Rillimia out of the little room.

"This is Hyra. Say hello."
"Hello," she said—the word coming out of her mouth before her mind even fully registered the command.

'Hyra' turned out to be the owner of the deeper voice that had spoken through the door earlier. She was a terrifyingly tall werewolf woman with deep brown hair and fur, and bright purple eyes. She spent a moment looking Lexy over before saying, "Well, aren't you just adorable?"
"Am not!" she protested, pouting and stomping.

"Pfft. You realize that just makes you even cuter, right? Whatever—I guess I'll be in charge of teaching you. Poor Rill can't cook to save her life."

"Wh—cook!? You expect me to cook?" she demanded in the witch's direction.

"Among other things," Rillimia answered with a slight shrug. "It is a maid's kind of work, isn't it? Besides, haven't you ever been curious just what goes into making the dishes you've been stealing?"
"Nope."

"Well, just imagine if you could make that stuff yourself," Hyra countered. "You could make what you wanna eat instead of only having what's around and stealable. And you could have it hot and fresh, instead of it always getting cold on the way to your place. Think about it."

Lexy wasn't entirely sure whether she really thought about it because she meant to, or because she was ordered to. But after she did, she said, "I-I guess that's not so bad..."

"But you will be making food for others as part of your punishment," the witch clarified. "Including those whose meals you've been taking."

"Whaaat!? No way!"

"You did say you'd obey me, didn't you?"

"I—hmph. F-fine, then..."

---

The image used for this story was found using an image generator. If you don't recognize the witch and werewolf in this story, they're from this one. I had another thing with them half-written much closer to when that came out, but have never managed to finish it.