A Statue in the Woods 6: Decoration

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It was like Ronan had been studying her entire life for this particular shopping trip. She had a store (which catered exclusively to women) picked out before Ty even had time to start her car, and apparently the place had special considerations for people with tails—something the wolf-girl hadn't even realized might be an issue. She offered to measure their chests, but Elise rebuffed this by noting 'they might not remain the same' and that she could just 'make the bras fit' anyway. The catgirl shrugged and went to have a professional measure her.

With undergarments out of the way, Elise didn't seem to have much trouble picking things out (both for herself and Ty), and Ronan threw in some of her own suggestions while excitedly dashing around seemingly the entire store to find outfits for all three of them. Ty had to have help figuring out how to put some things on, which Ronan seemed to be already an expert on.

With each outfit, Ronan just had her (or Elise) come out and do a turn-around in it, asked for an opinion, and gave feedback on what she thought and, especially, how well it fit. It took disturbingly little time for her to seemingly catch on to Ty's desire to dress more, say, 'tomboyishly', and Elise wanting much frillier, girlier things for both of them. As a result, it wasn't long before Ronan was picking out exclusively things that either Ty found she liked herself, or that she couldn't say no to on seeing Elise's reaction to her wearing them. She was basically just stuck in the changing-room area trying one thing on after another, always getting a few more added to the pile just as she came to the last of its previous contents.

Honestly, it was kind of convenient this way. Ty didn't know what she was looking for in the first place, much less where to look or how to be sure things would fit. Ronan seemed to intuit everyone's exact sizes before very long, and..she really was good at picking things out the two of them liked, by all appearances. How in the world the blond catgirl found time to try on her picks for her own outfits in between everything else was a complete mystery, but by the time Ty was getting exhausted of trying things on, and even Elise seemed just about done with this errand, Ronan had a bundle of clothes about as big as both of theirs combined.

This was going to be...somewhat of an expense, but Ty could still afford it without too many worries. However, depending on how generous her pay was, Elise seemed likely to need two or three months' worth to pay it back...if she didn't 'conveniently forget' she was supposed to be doing that or something. But then, it wasn't like Ty was going to charge her any interest.

Ty changed back into her original outfit to leave—being the kind of person who really wanted all the labels removed and the clothes fully washed before wearing them around. The other two had no such compunctions, and the fox-girl came to the checkout counter wearing a white-and-red sundress, while Ronan went with a short-skirt-camisole combo. There weren't very many people in the store to begin with, so the line to check out was conveniently near-empty. A fairly old-looking man, maybe in his sixties given his balding, grayed-out hair, checked them out—taking care of Ronan first, then the rest.

While he was scanning that second batch of items, Ronan was squinting at her receipt for some reason. "What, something more expensive than you thought?" Ty asked.
"Uh, nah. Actually, it's less..Hey, what's this 'percent-sign-EMP' thing?"

"Oh, pardon me for not explaining," the cashier said. "Since you young ladies have brought us so much business, I went on and applied my employee discount to your purchases. Ten percent off."
"Oh, sweet!" Ronan grinned big.
"That is terribly kind of you," Elise said. "You ought to be rewarded for such ample generosity."
"Awh, it's no big deal," he said. "Old feller like me doesn't get much of a chance to use it here anyhow."

Ty already had a fairly good read on the Kitsune's sense of humor. So, when she saw Elise grinning at this remark, she had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen next. Ronan was hardly paying attention to the conversation beyond 'ten percent off', and was at this point running off a short distance toward the entrance to take some selfies in her new outfit. Looking at the old man as he kept scanning outfits and sort of hummed to himself, Ty caught sight of a faint red glow outlining his body. Then she looked at the fox-girl. "Elise.."
"Ssshh." She gently placed her index finger on the wolf-girl's lips, which—besides making her hear skip a beat and her cheeks heat up a bit—made it feel like she was somehow complicit in this whole thing, and so had to stay quiet and not spoil the surprise. So Ty just turned to watch.

The first sign of something happening—other than that faint glow, which had already disappeared by now—was the old cashier's hair. Its color darkened as it spread up into the bald area, the gray shifting back into a deep brown as he soon regained a full head of hair. He seemingly failed to notice this happening, beyond reaching a hand up to scratch at the top of his head while he continued working with the other one. His hair continued to grow, fairly slowly but still visibly, while another shift started. The wrinkles and knots of his face started to tighten up and fade off bit by bit, and his beard and mustache started to shorten and thin. When he hummed to himself a little more, the age seemed to be disappearing from his voice too, leaving it sounding a bit higher and brighter.

His complexion softened, his face growing fully smooth, at about the same time as his hair trailed out to halfway down his cheeks. He now looked not a day over thirty, maybe less, as he paused to scratch his head once again—still seeming to not notice anything strange. This began the next phase of the change, as he started shrinking. "Hmm~ hmm hmm~m.." The pitch of his humming lilted even higher as his shirt steadily fell looser across his narrowing shoulders, and his pants began threatening to slip right off of his waist and hips. Soon his face's shape had rounded off a bit, completing its very feminine new look alongside the soft locks framing it on either side. "Hmm~ hmm~ hmm~mm..." His shrinking accelerated, and so too did the growth of his hair, and all the while he kept humming in an ever higher, softer, cuter voice. Before long, he was nearly as short as Elise, and just as slender, with hair down to his waist in the back.

At this point, the formerly-old man's shirt began to shrink tighter around his slim frame, its hem fluttering out and gaining some frills as it converted into a thigh-length dress. His pants gave up entirely, slipping off of his hips, but then suddenly split apart at the thighs and pulled close against them as a pair of stockings. He shuffled the last item over into its bag before looking up, seeming to jump slightly in surprise and confusion at what must have seemed a very sudden shift in perspective for him. "Uh, s-say..?" he started, and then seemed to notice the high pitch of his voice for the first time. "Erm.." His cheeks were starting to redden, and Ty had a guess that he was rapidly approaching a change of sex. "Do I, er..that is, is somethin' kinda odd..? Mmm~n.." His legs fidgeted back and forth against each other, his blush deepening.
"What ever do you mean?" Elise asked. "You seem like a normal enough young woman to me."
"Y-young woman? But I...I..." He trailed off. "Mm~nnngh..!" His hair went through a sudden spurt of growth at this point, becoming long enough for the tips of the locks to reach past the dress's skirt and touch the backs of his legs. "Aah, aa~aah...?! O-oo~oh.." This last, fairly quiet utterance came with a slight jerking of the cashier's body, an immediate further brightening of the cheeks...and was almost certainly the point at which he turned fully into a girl.

"A-ah..mm~nngh..!" She squirmed her legs back and forth a little more as curves began to come to her. The dress's skirt fluttered out, visibly widening a little in response to the growth of her hips, and at the top it was quite tight enough to show a pair of bumps steadily raising themselves up from her chest. "O-oo~h..m-my goodness...mngh...!" Her blush didn't get any better as the tiny bumps began blooming outward, forcing the top of the dress to grow a bit of space for them. "Aa~aah...hff, ffh.." It didn't take very long for them to grow to a moderate size—a perfect fit for her petite height. "A-ah..um..."

"Are you quite all right?" Elise asked at this point. "You seem somewhat distracted, but..our items have been..'scanned', yes?" she continued, the word 'scanned' sounding like it was still a little foreign to her.

"Uh—um. Yes. Tha~at's, uh," she stammered a little nervously, clearly trying with no success to make her voice sound at all 'normal'. "That's everything, ma'am. The total's right there on the screen," she said, pointing at the screen—and seeming to use a very familiar habit of her job to recover a little bit of composure.

"Uh, thanks," Ty said, going and taking care of the payment.

"Are you...are you quite sure nothin' unusual just happened?" she asked. Ty felt like the word 'unusual' was going to lose a lot of its meaning for her pretty soon.

"How do you mean?" the Kitsune asked, almost audibly grinning from ear to ear.
"W-well, I coulda sworn just a minute ago, I was..a little older?" she tried cautiously. "M-maybe not quite so..short?"
"I'd say you've been just as young and cute as you are now ever since we first got here," Elise said. Considering that she was over a century-and-a-half old, even not counting her time as a statue, Ty could see how one might interpret that as a true statement. "Thank you again for the discount~."
"Err, certainly. Anytime," the cashier girl nodded, her face wearing a slight blush still alongside an expression of near-total confusion.

"My, in that case, we may have to come here again," the fox-girl said.
"Uh, c'mon—we're done paying," Ty said, feeling like she couldn't keep this up much longer without saying something. Seeming to sense this—or maybe just deferring to her so-called 'master'—Elise nodded and followed her out.

Ronan finally looked in their general direction as they came up to her, Ty gesturing to follow. "Heeyy, where'd that cutie come from? The nice old dude have some trouble or somethin'?"
Ty just sighed. "I'll, tell you in the car, okay?"
"Okaaay..?"

After Ty told her what happened, Ronan's response was..fairly predictable. "Duuude! That's a heck of a way to thank someone for a discount!"

"I just thought it'd be entertaining," Elise said. "I used some illusions to hide it from him as long as possible so he wouldn't panic until it was too late~. After a certain point, there is no not noticing such a drastic change."
"Are you sure it's okay to just, like, leave her like that?" Ty asked.

"I'm certain she'll work it out. After all, she's quite mature and experienced for her age...which should be around nineteen or twenty now, I believe," Elise said with her usual bright, teasing grin. "Our world now has people whose job it is to make the old young again, so I'm hardly disrupting society by getting a little bit ahead of them, now am I?"

"I mean—we might get in trouble or something," the wolf-girl said. "I'm not sure if it's a crime to transform someone against their will, but it...sounds like something that probably should be?"
"A crime is only a crime if one is caught," Elise said.
"Uh. Okay, do me a huge favor, and don't test that theory," Ty said.

"As you wish, master~.

"By the way—would you like to use a new name?" Elise asked the catgirl, suddenly changing the subject. "While female, I mean. Since you were kind enough to grant my master one~."
"Uh, I dunno. I guess it wouldn't hurt, huh? Something liiiike...'Rona'?"

"I think that fits you quite well," Elise said.

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Sometimes I think that the reason a lot of transformation stories feature the "whole reality changes, nobody remembers how it was before" angle is due to the author being inexperienced and/or lazy, and so not wanting to deal with the fallout--nor even to let the reader imagine it. But I think dealing with the consequences is part of the fun. This story has us tethered to the main character's perspective, so we get shuffled away from this person quite quickly. But her life has kind of been turned upside-down all the same! And whether or not this will have further repurcussions for the "main characters" remains to be seen.