A Friend When Cursed

"H..hey Eric, it's me. Uh..I-I think I might be in trouble. Like, serious trouble. I-I uh..well, you know. You keep telling me that I shouldn't be testing out this magic stuff alone, on myself, and..I guess you were right after all. H-hahah...uh. I think I just got cursed by uh, m-my latest purchase, so...yyyeeeah. Uh, so. I, I could really use some help f-figuring this out. A-and I really, uh, I don't think I can trust anyone else but you. Please—uh—please come to my place, alone, when you get this message. I'm—I'm not gonna answer the front door, okay. So just, use the back. You...know what I mean?"

After a rough morning of work, Eric had noticed a missed call with a fairly long voicemail from Victor waiting. It had been recorded mid-morning, not long after Victor usually got out of bed; meanwhile, Eric had been stuck in a two-hour meeting, so no wonder he hadn't noticed the call. He'd probably been half-asleep from boredom around that time. His response when he glanced at his phone on his way to lunch had been to groan and put off listening to the message until he was off work. In fact, he ultimately waited until he had gotten home and changed clothes to even think about listening to it.

The two of them had been friends since college, but he occasionally felt some pangs of envy, or maybe even resented Victor a little bit from time to time. While Eric had gone to do IT work for a corporation, which required him to come to work early in the morning, wear stuffy clothes, work from 9 (or often 7 or 8) to 5...Victor had managed to get himself a much more unusual living. He bought supposedly-magic items online, vetted them for whether they were really magical at all, tested their effects and properties, and then resold them alongside a complete description and instructions for their use—usually at a signifcant markup.

After all, since the lifting of the veil, a great many antiques and other unusual objects had been discovered to be magical in one way or another. Often people didn't even have the slightest clue what they had on their hands. Occasionally, Victor would even go and "appraise" an item for someone in person, for a fairly hefty fee. He'd become an expert more or less by trial-and-error and experience, rather than being one of those few lucky people with any magical powers of his own. All of that meant that he was self-employed, in the best possible way. He could decide his own hours, got to play with magic stuff for a living, and was generally making more money every month than Eric's salary got him.

Eric usually didn't let these emotions show around his friend, knowing full-well that feeling that way wasn't really right. It wasn't something he obsessed over; his own living was actually pretty good, paid well, and had plenty of benefits and vacation days and so on. But in his worst moments, when his job's least-pleasant aspects were really grinding on his nerves, those thoughts would bubble up to the surface. Maybe that was why he didn't feel like listening to Victor's voice, and put off playing that message for so long.

It really should've occurred to him in the first place, how strange it was for Victor to call him and not send a text message. And, listening to him nervously talk, occasionally punctuated by some panicky huffs of breath, he could tell his friend wasn't playing around. He was actually scared. Something had genuinely gone wrong, and Eric was the first...or maybe the only person he was willing to call for help.

So, feeling more than a little guilty, he hurried out the front door to his car and drove to Victor's apartment. The "use the back" part of the message was strange; there was no back door. It was like he was worried even about someone else hearing the message and getting to him first. Well, he'd told Eric some time ago about where he hid an extra key to his door in case of extreme emergencies: It had been painted the same color as his wall and fit into a particular hole two or three feet off to the right of the door it opened. Even knowing it was there, it took Eric a couple of minutes to find the right spot and fish it out; maybe someone with a metal detector could've found it, but this was at least much more secure than just putting it under the welcome mat. At any rate, the fact the key was still there, and the front door was still locked, meant that nobody else had gotten inside ahead of him.

"I-is that you, Eric?" Victor's voice called from the direction of the living room the instant the door was open.

"Yeah, it's me," he said, closing the door behind him. The lights were all out, like he wanted whoever might be passing by to think there was nobody home. Eric took a couple of steps forward, then backed up and locked the door, his friend's sudden paranoia proving somewhat contagious. "What happened, man?"
"I uh..like I said, I think I got cursed. This weird figurine thing..uh, just—come in here, please, I'll show you."

"Alright." He'd already started off in that direction anyway.

As Eric came through the doorway to the living room, Victor got up off of the couch and turned to face him. "Oh, man—it's such a relief to see you!" he said, and certainly looked the part. Understanding how panicked he'd been, Eric felt extra guilty about letting his jealousy get the better of him, and putting off coming to help for this long. "I—uh.. I.." He started to say something else, but paused, hesitating. "A-aah..?" Then he shuddered slightly, and Eric could see a faint blue glow starting to appear around his friend's body. "W-wait...see..? I..oooh no..."

"What? What's wrong?" The glow was slowly brightening, and Victor had the look of someone who'd just realized he'd completely screwed something up.

"I..uh..t-the curse...aah!" He jumped slightly in response to some physical sensation; Eric could see his friend's hair suddenly paling and shifting to a bright, sky-blue color, and at the same time growing two or three inches longer all over. "I-it's...aah..!" He shuddered again as his beard suddenly, visibly thinned and shortened. "I-I totally messed up...!"

"Uh, okay, calm down for a sec. What's going on exactly?" Eric asked, although he was a little distracted by the sight of both of these changes continuing. By the time he'd finished speaking, Victor looked completely clean-shaven—or perhaps like someone who'd never had facial hair in the first place—and the now bright-blue locks from the top of his head were starting to fall across his shoulders.

"Th-that curse sa~aid..uh.." His voice cracked slightly mid-word. "T-the first person I, I s-se~ee..!" It came back a little higher in pitch, and squeaked again on this last word. By now, the initially faint glow around Victor's body had advanced to a bright blue sort of halo outlining his entire form. He shuddered again as whatever magic was responsible for that began making some much more drastic changes than just a rearrangement of his hair.

"A-aa~aah, aa~aah...!" Victor pulled his arms around himself, hands on his shoulders, as he started very rapidly shrinking. "Aa~aa~aaah..!" His voice audibly lifted higher and higher in pitch as his height sank lower and lower. His arms and legs visibly slimmed down, his shirt falling loosely out around him as his frame collapsed inward and his shoulders narrowed. Even his face became softer and rounder—cuter-looking—and his hands clutching those shoulder shrank too, the fingers turning slender and delicate. "Aah, n-no I...I, aa~aah..!" His hair didn't stop growing when the shrinking started; in fact, the locks coming out from his back seemed to cascade out faster the smaller he got.

"I-I...aah..." Victor's face reddened with a blush as the shrinking and hair growth slowed to a halt, leaving him a slender, cute-faced, long-haired boy whose eye level was barely up to Eric's chest. He slowly turned his eyes upward, the blush growing brighter, and in a high, barely-male tenor voice he said, "E-eric..I-I'm...mmh..!" His attempt to speak was cut off by another jolt, his body spasming slightly as, suddenly, something poked out past his hair on the upper-left side of his head: A triangular, animal-like ear, pink on the inside with pure white fluff, covered on the outside with fur the same bright blue as his hair now was. "M-mrowh!" An almost cat-like noise came from his mouth as another identical ear joined the first, this one coming up on the right side. "A-aah...mmmh...mmmrr-rrrr~rrrh...!" Finally, Victor seemed to involuntarily close his mouth, his cheeks becoming even more red, and after a second or two of what was definitely purring coming out of his throat, Eric could see a slim line of bright-blue fur waving back and forth behind his friend's back, visibly growing even longer with each swish.

"Mmh..aah.." Victor seemed to briefly gain control of himself, then slowly turned around and put a hand near the tip of the tail just as it finished growing. "Th-this curse...I-I...aa~aah.." He shivered, slowly lowering his hand. "Aa~aah.." Just when it seemed his voice couldn't go any higher, it lilted up out of masculine range entirely. The glow began to envelop Victor's clothes now—the extremely oversized shirt, and a pair of shorts that all of that shrinking had simply dumped onto the floor around his feet.

"Ah, n-no I..I'm..mmh..!" The shirt was reshaped, its hem billowing out into a frilly skirt while the rest began to pull increasingly tight around his slender frame. The shorts wrapped themselves around his feet and then crawled up his legs, their material thinning out as they pulled tight. "Mmrroo~oowh...!" Victor squirmed, his ears twitching excitedly and the new tail waving around rapidly behind him. "A-a~aah...!" The high, cute soprano voice coming from his lips now, alongside all of the other changes to his appearance, made it hard to believe one was looking at a man by this point...and, in fact, this was about when the blush on Victor's cheeks went to its brightest—and would prove to be the point at which his sex fully changed.

"Aaah, aa~aaah...!" A white sash pulled the fomer-shirt tight around her slim waist. The black skirt now making up its botttom fluttered around as if in some invisible wind, giving Eric a brief, involuntary view of a pair of panties now pulled completely flat between her legs as her hips and thighs pressed out wider and thicker. Above that was an equally-frilly white apron, puffy sleeves, and a bright-blue ribbon quickly tying itself around a collar. "M-mewh..!" Her chest pushed out into the top, forcing it to show a pair of small bumps; Eric finally recognized this outfit as a maid uniform as the glow began to fade off of it.

But, even though the glow was starting to fade out from around Victor's body, it wasn't quite through changing her yet. "Aah, aa~aah...m-mrrr~rrrh...!" Those two small bumps began to grow larger and larger, making the small, cute catgirl cry out helplessly and squirm around in place. "M-mrr~rrnn~nnh...ah, aah, aaa~aa~aAAA~Aaaah..!" They kept getting bigger and bigger, again and again seeming to threaten to force her top's buttons to pop off until it grew larger to accommodate them. "M-mm~rrrh...!" Finally, Victor's new breasts slowed their growth, settling out into an enormous, unmissable pair of jugs which the tight maid outfit did basically nothing to hide.

"Aah...aa~aah...hfffh..." She slowly turned her eyes up toward Eric again, her hands going down to make a futile attempt to push the short skirt lower. "I-I....mm...mm-mah.." Victor trembled slightly, seeming to have a brief struggle with her own mouth. "M-maaaahhss..nngh..!" She shut her eyes tight, shook her head violently, then slowly opened them up again, looking up at him. "M-m-master.."

"I-I'm..mmng...r-ready to s-serve you..." she said slowly, still clearly struggling not to. "..Master."

"Uh—what? What is going on right now?"

"I-I..the curse! I'm.." The catgirl jerked slightly, then straightened up, her arms going to the sides of her body, and said in an uncannily calm tone of voice: "I am yours to command, master. I will obey your commands, and answer your questions, and do all I can to please you."
"Uh. In that case—turn back to normal," Eric said. He didn't know all of the details, but this unnatural behavior from his friend had to be a result of the curse; he was hoping this command would simply free her.
"I..nngh!" She winced, her ears twitching downward briefly. "I-I'm sorry, master, I-I can't."

"Uh, okay—can you, explain what just happened to you?"
"Y-yes!" she nodded, looking slightly eager to do so. "I'm under the effects of the curse of the Servant's Statue. I bought it a couple of weeks ago, it arrived last night; it has an activation phrase, and when I said it, there was this...I heard a voice telling me...I-I can't remember all of the words exactly, but someting about me becoming a servant to 'the next person I see', a-and 'taking on a fitting form', or...or something like that." She folded her ears back slightly, looking a little upset again. "I'm sorry, I can't remember—I only heard the curse once, and then threw it into the corner of the room and was too scared to go anywhere near it again!"
"Uh, that's okay, that tells me enough," Eric said. "Um.."

He crossed his arms, trying to think of the right strategy. The gorgeous catgirl in a maid outfit looking up at him expectantly, her ears twitching, tail swishing back and forth, and her face still lit up with a blush, proved somewhat distracting. He thought it might be best to test what she could or couldn't do, given the fact that she'd specifically said she couldn't turn back to normal. First something simple: "Uh..tell me your name."
"I-it's Victoria. I mean Victoria! I mean—uh. V-victormm-nngh." She'd clapped her hand over her mouth on the third attempt, but obviously pronouced the extra couple of letters anyway. And no sooner did she take her hand off her mouth than she mumbled: "...ia."

"If I told you to call yourself something else, would you do it?"
"Yes."
"Call yourself Sandra."
"Yes, master," she nodded.

"Uh.. tell me your name?"
"V..vuh...viiiic—Sandra!" she said after a brief struggle. "Sandra. Sandra..ugh..."

"Okay, now call yourself Victor."

She winced again. "I-I can't."

"Why not?"
"It..it isn't a fitting name for a woman."
"But...ugh. Okay, just go back to Victoria for now I guess." Eric sighed. "This is gonna be harder to untangle than I thought. Let's see—tell me the fifty-seventh letter of the English alphabet."

'Victoria' winced again. "I-I can't."

"Um...tell me whether or not the sentence, 'this sentence is a lie', is true."

She winced again, a little harder. "I-I can't!" She sniffed then, and he noticed some tears welling up in her eyes. "P-please, master, I get this awful feeling every time I can't obey you or answer you!"

"Oh, sorry. That's gonna make this even harder..."

"Wait, do you feel good when you can obey me?"
"Yes. A-at least a little bit."
"Um. Run a hand through your hair." She did just that. "Poke your nose with your index finger." The catgirl obeyed this command too. "Do you feel a little better now?"
"Y-yes..." she nodded.

"Are you annoyed by those weird commands?"
"Not really.."
"Uh. Let's go sit down, over there, okay?" Eric said, pointing toward the couch and chairs.

"Yes, master."

With that, Victoria followed him over, and sat on the opposite side of the couch from him. "Let's try this," he said, "Say exactly what you would say right now if the curse wasn't affecting you."
"...AAAAAAAAAAAGHH!" After a couple of seconds of silence, the catgirl suddenly let out a very loud, panicked scream, at the same time flailing her arms around and pulling herself as far away from him as possible while still remaining seated on the couch. "This is terrifying! I can't control myself! I can't say my own name! I can feel my emotions being hijacked but I still really feel happy or upset every time!" After letting this out, she suddenly calmed down again, began catching her breath, and slowly slid back to her previous position.

"Sorry..I'm trying to figure out a way to fix this," Eric said.
"Mmh."

"Uh—keep saying what you would say?" he tried.

"R-right. Yes." She pulled back away from him again. "I-I know. And thank you, seriously. I'm glad I really could trust you. It's just I uh. I-I, turning into a girl, o-or maybe the curse has me feeling..I can't stop looking at you and wanting you to..um..." Her blush brightened again. "B-but that's even scarier!"

"Yeah, okay, I'm going to keep trying," Eric said. "Usually curses have some way of being lifted, and if I'm supposed to have 'control' over you, then there should be some way I can do it. Oh, I know—why can't you turn back to normal, even when I tell you to?"

"I-I...th-this form is..made to please you," she said slowly. "I know that you find it more appealing than...when I look 'normal'."

"Interesting...you know that's why, even though there's no way you could've learned that information. So the curse must come with some amount of 'implanted knowledge' about itself. Actually, wait—if I found some other form more appealing tomorrow, could you look that way?"
"Yes," she nodded.

"How?"
"I...live to serve you, master, so I must do all I can to please you."

"Okay, then what if it best pleased me for you to be rid of the curse?"
"I...cannot do that, master." She folded her ears down, looking ashamed and slightly upset. "...I'm sorry."

"Would the curse go away if I smashed the statue that cursed you?"
"...No, the power of the curse is no longer in it."
"What? Where is it, then?"

"In me," she said with a slight gesture toward her own chest.

"You said there was an activation phrase for this curse...is there a deactivation phrase to make the power go back?"

"...If there is, I don't know it," she said after a moment.
"Could I order you to put the curse back into the statue?"
"I could refill the Servant's Statue so that it would be ready for another's use, if you wish. And I could change its activation phrase," she said.

"Wait, but—if you did that, would you be rid of the curse?"
"No," she said, slightly shaking her head.

"Aaugh, this curse is a headache," Eric said, gripping his forehead in one hand. "We're gonna have to hire a wizard or something. Sorry—I know this has to be way worse for you."

"It feels good to serve you, master."
He dropped his hand sat upright, facing her. "There is no way that's how you really feel," he said.

"It's true."

"But it's not the whole truth. The curse is suppressing your—so if I could. Okay." Eric exhaled audibly.

"Listen carefully. From now on—unless I tell you otherwise—I want, I mean I order you to do and say exactly what you would if you weren't under the effects of the curse. It would greatly displease me if the curse were masking your actual emotions or opinions."

"Y-yes..." The eerily calm expression on the catgirl's face faded back to a familiar panicked, scared, uncertain expression. "Ooh...oh man..thank you but—but I.." She sniffed, tears starting to roll down her face. "This is still terrifying!!!"

"Sorry, man. I'm having trouble thinking of anything else I can do to break the curse."

Victoria sniffed, wiping her face with a tissue. Eric paused briefly, trying to figure out where it had come from, but then saw a box of them on the end table on her side. "I-I know...thank you. S-seriously."
"Hey, under that order I just gave—do you still have to answer every question I ask you?"
"Yes," she said immediately.
"Dang it. I'm gonna have to be really careful how I talk around you, then. I guess I can try to look up someone who can fix this, some kind of expert in ancient curse breaking or something. In the meantime, you would probably still be able to do your work from here as long as you don't have to make any calls or personal appearances...maybe you could just tell people you're sick or something."
"R-right..." she nodded slowly.

"In that case—you want me to leave you alone?"
"N-no!" she blurted out, then put her hand over her mouth. Slowly lowering the hand away again, she said, "I mean I...ugh..t-this curse. I s-still really want to please you because of it, a-and, you going away would make it so I couldn't. B-but, except, if you had to go away, like to work or something, that would be okay. I could...I would...wait for you."
"So this curse makes you clingy, too?"
"It, uuh, I guess it does," she said. "I...even though, at the same time, the idea of constantly being around you like that is scary too...!"

"Why is it scary, exactly? You know I won't try to do anything, right?"
"B-but I..! Um." Her blush, which had mostly faded up to this point, came back at nearly full-force. "L-like I was saying earlier, I like you..! P-part of me, actually wants you to...t-try to do something..t-this body, this curse...!"
"Wait, which...is it? Your body or the curse?"
"It's...not...the curse..?" she said slowly, confused. "Th-then it must be just my body...except..." The catgirl winced just slightly. "I-I, I'm not sure enough of the answer myself, to tell you for sure. B-but! The idea of you...I-I don't want..."

"Okay, you're obviously conflicted," Eric said. He got off of the couch, standing up. "I definitely do not want to take advantage of you in this situation, you understand."
"Y-yes.." But she looked a little disappointed by this news, rather than relieved.

"So that means, you don't want me to leave, but me staying here will make you uncomfortable too..."

"R-right...when you put it like that, I'm obviously being super unreasonable..."

"Is there anything that would make you more comfortable with the curse making you want to stay near me?"
"...Yes."

"Okay, then let's do that. You can tell me..what're you doing?" he said, interrupting himself. Victoria had suddenly stood up, and was holding her arms out toward him with her hands positioned like she was offering him a large invisible vase.
"I...I'm sorry, you told me to do 'that'," she said, "so I'm doing it..." A ball of light-blue light, just like the glow that had transformed Victor into this forcibly-obedient, catgirl-maid form, appeared in the space between her hands. "I-is this wrong..?" she asked, hesitantly, even as the glowing orb zipped over to Eric. He tried to dodge it half by reflex, but it swerved to follow his movement and buried itself into his chest, making the skin it had seemingly gone straight through to enter him feel warm.

"I don't know—what did, how..?" The warmth spread out from the spot, and was quickly followed by a tingling sensation, which made Eric pause. He shuddered as it made its way out along his limbs and up his neck to his face and then scalp.

"Um..my power can only be used in obedience to your commands," she said quietly, seeming to realize or remember something as she spoke.

The strange tingling flowed right past most parts of Eric's body—there and then gone again, just like the warmth before it. But on his scalp, ears, and an area on his lower back right around the base of his spine, it seemed to linger, growing steadily stronger. He reached a hand up as started to simultaneously feel the tickling of soft hairs along his lower forehead and cheeks, and a slight stretching sensation from his ears to accompany the tingling; by the time it got there, some red locks were already appearing before his eyes—their color visibly brightening from auburn to a bright, fiery shade—and his hand discovered an ear that was no smaller than Victoria's now were, covered in thin, short hairs that he could feel growing longer and thicker under his fingers.
"Wha..I'm...?" His hair began touching his shoulders, and now he could feel the weight of it slowly crawling down his back. Then the tingling in his lower back seemed to resolve into a sudden pushing, stretching sensation, and something like an additional limb covered entirely in thick hairs pushed its way out past the hem of his shirt. He could feel the air moving across it as it involuntarily waved back and forth, making it very obvious that it was growing steadily longer and fluffier. His ears, too, were getting bigger and bigger, his right one pushing past his hand as it grew; that hand could feel the hairs thickening into soft, fluffy fur, and that ear became increasingly sensitive to the slightest bit of air across it, let alone the touch of his hand on it. "A-ack..!" This sudden sensitivity made him shiver and draw his hand back off of the ear.

Now the strange new appendage from his lower back seemed to finish growing, and the motion of hair down his back finished too. "Wha..?" Eric started again to ask, but was interrupted by the return of the strange warmth that had begun his transformation, now returning on every inch of his body at once—including the new tail and the entire length of his much-larger ears. It seemed to envelop him, making him feel strangely fuzzy and nice. "M-mngh..?" His face felt red, and his heart began to pick up. He felt...excited? The warmth started to squeeze in on him then, and suddenly...!

"A-aa~ah..aa~ah..!?" Eric's perspective began to rapidly sink downward. He felt his clothes growing loose around him as the squeezing pushed his frame inward, made his arms and legs slim and shorten. "M-mrr~rrffh..!" He was..shrinking! And his voice was audibly changing, the masculinity audibly draining out of it. On top of that, there was a weird feeling down between his legs. His manhood was tingling...and it was shrinking too..!

"Aa~aah, oh—oo~ooh..!" The concerned expression on the face of the catgirl maid standing in front of him swiftly rose up into view. Eric felt his shirt's collar slipping out past one of his slender shoulders, his pants sliding down his legs and landing on the floor around his feet; his shorts pulled suddenly tighter around his hips just before they could follow. "M-m~nngh..!" A soft, womanly voice was coming from his throat now, as the squeezing stopped but the warmth continued. "Aah...aa~aa~AAH...!" The tingling between his legs gave way to a slipping, tugging sensation, and the excitement he'd been feeling ramped up even more. "O-o~oooohh..!" His eyes fluttered shut, his ears pointing nearly down toward the floor and his tail wagging excitedly behind him. He was...becoming a girl!

No sooner did this realization fully hit Eric than one last tug between the legs followed. A soft, high "Aaah!" came from her lips, followed by a low, alto "Mm~mmMMnnnh...!" as an intensely pleasant fuzzy sensation settled in down there, accompanying a strange feeling from the pit of her stomach as every little internal change needed to be a woman took place at once. Then she could feel a gentle push from her hips and thighs, and another from just behind each of her nipples. "M-mrr~rrrh.." A soft churring rumbled past her closed lips as the new girl felt curves steadily growing into place: Wide hips and a soft bottom, slightly thicker thighs, and the steady growth of a pair of breasts. "O-oo~ooh..." The feeling of the sensitive new bosom sliding against the soft cloth of her shirt as it grew steadily larger was sending signals back to her new womanhood that gave her more of those pleasant tingles down there, making her shiver with delight. She felt deeply pleased as the loose, male-fit shirt hung around her slim form like a cloak, her curves fully settling into place, and then finally her new bust bounced out into place, completing her transformation into a small, cute fox-girl.

"Aah...fffh...hff..." She slowly blinked her eyes open, to find Victoria's blue eyes staring right back; they were now the exact same height. "Whuh...whaa..?" The catgirl was blushing brightly—adorably—but she also looked worried, like she thought she was about to be slapped or punched. Eric looked down, and suddenly felt very exposed—the shirt was doing little to hide her figure; the tiny boyshorts her boxers had turned into were pulling awfully tight and flat between her legs; and that very pair of slim, soft, smooth limbs were completely exposed from the thighs downward thanks to the loss of her pants. Trying to tug the hem of her shirt down a little more, she looked back up at Victoria in shock. "W-what'd you do this for?!"

"I-I...you said—"
"Wait, no, how can you do this!? You said something before, about 'your power'?"

"R-right!" the catgirl said. "I um—when you asked me, I remembered, the curse said something about me receiving power but not being able to use it for myself! S-so..!"
"So you can just turn people into fox girls?! Or anything else?"
"Y-yes? I mean, mostly?"

Without really thinking about it, Eric suddenly closed the distance between them, putting her hands on the catgirl's shoulders. "That takes a ton of magic power! You must be able to do all kinds of things!"

"Uhm..m-maybe?" Victoria's face flushed from the sudden proximity.

"Victor, that's amazing! You've been cursed with awesome!"

"E-er, m-master, you're.."
"Huh?" Eric finally realized how close they were standing, and let go of the catgirl's shoulders, dropping her arms back to the side.

"Oh, uh, s-sorry. Heheh, I guess I got kinda close there."
"Y-you still are, master."

"Oh. R-right!" She took a few steps back, taking a brief look around her. It was actually very disorienting to suddenly be this short, looking around at the same room from so much lower down. Victor must've experienced the same thing...not to mention both of them trying to make their too-short clothes better hide their legs.

"Er—you asked me what I did that for," she said. "Y-you ordered me to do 'that'...that is, to do what would make me more comfortable with the curse making me want to stay with you..."
"Oooh. Which means uh..."

The fox-girl tilted her head slightly. "So, turning me into a short fox-girl..makes you feel better about all of that?"
"I-it's just um." Victoria spoke on accelerando, her words coming faster and faster with each sentence: "It felt really weird, realizing that I liked you, even though you're a guy. I partially thought it'd feel more normal if...b-but also! Suddenly turning into a catgirl is really weird, and I felt a little bit like it might be easier to stay with you if you sort of understood what I'm going through. E-even though, ofcourseyou're still my master, and itcan'tbetheotherway around..."

Eric looked back to herself for a moment: Her small body, her curves and breasts. She curled her huge, fluffy tail up where she could rest a hand on it for a second, observing the bright red fur occupying most of its length, and the snowy white near the tip; then she ran a hand through her long, bright-red hair, which was looking fairly unkempt in the wake of all that growth. "Yeah...I guess I know what you mean about this being weird. Actually turning into this felt weirdly nice, though.."

"I...'do all I can to please you'," the catgirl pointed out. "But—it um..didn't feel so bad for me either. Other than...my free will being suppressed at the same time."

"R-right! That's, no good. But...back up a second..."

Eric crossed her arms, feeling her cheeks heat up slightly at the odd feeling of this gesture pushing up her new breasts. Her right ear hung low, pointing out to that side, and her left ear twitched constantly up and down; her tail moved back and forth behind her unless she specifically forced it to do otherwise. But she was thinking back to something the girl standing in front of her had said, not just once but twice. "Y-you said...you 'liked' me?"
"I did..." Victoria slowly nodded.

"A-and, it was weird because I was a guy...but now, I'm..uh...not." All of a sudden, Eric was feeling slightly nervous. Maybe a little bit giddy. Apart from everything else...the catgirl standing before her was beautiful, after all. "Do you...still...like me?" she asked finally.

"I. Um. Y-yes..!" The catgirl's blush grew brighter and brighter as she spoke. "Maybe even more...y-you're really, really cute and pretty like that, master..." With her huge fox-ears, Eric could hear her friend's heart racing...and then she realized that her own was, too. "A-and your voice is all deep and sexy..."

"S-sexy, huh..?" Eric slowly dropped her arms back to the sides of her body. "I-I guess me having a body you really like, would make you a lot more comfortable with being around me. A-are you sure this is okay, though? I mean, I can still command you, and I guess you can't call me anything but 'master' still..."

"I-I uh..."

Victoria the catgirl maid took a couple of small steps closer to her 'master'. "It's okay...for now, at least. Obeying you and answering you and...pleasing you, does make me feel nice. I-I know you won't take advantage of it...I'm really glad it's you I called, and saw first." She was starting to genuinely smile, for the first time since the curse had taken its full effect on her. With those kitty ears, she could probably hear Eric's heart racing..and anyway, the way her cheeks felt now had to translate to them looking almost as red as her hair. "Wh-what I really want right now is...j-just a hug? A-and, maybe to get to feel those big fluffy ears of yours..?" She closed the rest of the distance...they were almost touching already!
Eric experienced perhaps a hint of what the other girl had: An inability to say no to a request. So she said, "U-um...s-sure, I guess..."

"Mrowh~!" With that, she was pulled into a close hug, the other girl's enormous breasts enveloping her own. It didn't help that Eric wasn't wearing a bra, so there was only the material of her own shirt, and then the maid outfit, between them.

"O-oh..! M-mngh..!" The fuzzy feelings from before were coming back...as Eric began to return the hug. She felt some slender fingers starting to gently stroke the extremely sensitive fur of her ears, and jolted just slightly at first, then let out a soft, low "Mrr~rrrrh" as she leaned in, pressing her nose into the catgirl's cheeks, rubbing it slowly back and forth.
"Aa~aah...o-oh, m-master...!" The fox-girl found her hand slowly moving up, then touching the other girl's ears. A soft, high "M-mewh!" was Victoria's response to this, followed by some adorable purring, and then she started nuzzling Eric back. They did this for a very long moment...

Eventually Victoria let go, and they slowly slid apart into a loose hug, both slowly panting hot air in and out as they tried to catch their breath. Eric finally ended the silence by saying, "Soo~oo.."

"Y-yes?"

"That curse...forces you to have a girl's name." The fox-girl put her hand on top of the other girl's head, then slowly stroked it down through her hair, close enough to feel the curve of her back as she went.
"Mm-hm..mrr~rrrh..."
"In the interest of fairness...call me Erica. Got that?"
"Mrowh...y-yes, master.."
"Yes whaat?" she said, as her hand made it to the end of the hair and discovered the base of the catgirl's tail.

"M-mewh! I-I mean yes, Erica..!"

"Thaaat's it. No more of this 'master' stuff from now on."
"Mrr~rrh..y-you've got it, Erica..."

Finally done playing with her for now, Erica took her hand off the tail and gently released herself from the hug, standing far enough apart to look the beautiful catgirl up and down. "We're still gonna look for a way to fix this 'obedience' stuff..but hopefully we can just disentangle it from that new power. Wouldn't it really helpful to your job, to be able to do magic yourself?"

"Y-yes! I could probably avoid getting cursed again, at least."

Erica sighed. "You know..I've always felt a little jealous of you getting that job before. I guess I just never calculated how much of a risk you were really taking."

"Uh, I didn't either, to be honest. There's probably some kinda PPE or proper procedure to avoid getting cursed in the first place," the catgirl said, shrugging. "I um...I guess this didn't turn out too bad though...th-thanks to you, Erica."

"Yeah, I guess you're lucky to know me~.

"Say—your power changed my clothes, at least a little bit. So I'm sure you can transform your own clothes too, right?"
"R-right."
"So theeen..why don't you change them into something a little more comfortable?"
"I..can only do that if you command me to," she said, the curse making her answer a rhetorical question.

"Oh. Sorry." Erica sighed slightly. "I've really got to be careful how I say things. Change your outfit into something you find more comfortable."

"Y-yes!" With a brief wave of her hand, the catgirl's maid outfit glowed blue...and then the thigh-highs peeled off and merged with the rest, the whole thing turning into a shirt almost identical to what Victor had been wearing to begin with...and, probably, she only had on some kind of lower-underwear besides that.

"Um.." Victoria's face flushed red. "I-I just thought what you're wearing looked comfy enough, is all."
"That's fine with me if it's okay with you," Erica said, shrugging, and gently ruffled the catgirl's hair. "Now, let's—no, I mean. Keep doing what you want with me, Victor."
"Y-yes, mas—uh, Erica!" she said, then pounced at the fox-girl for another hug.

Now neither of them was wearing anything on top but a shirt, which was very little cloth between Victoria's enormous breasts and Erica's somewhat smaller, but still very sensitive pair. "Mrr~rrh.." She welcomed the close hug, then reciprocated the petting, enjoying the return of the nice, fuzzy feelings between her legs that had been sort of lurking in the background since their first time doing this. The only problem was that this feeling was making her legs feel increasingly weak, and the catgirl was wobbling around a bit too. So they sort of danced around briefly before falling together onto the couch, the catgirl underneath her. Now there was nothing preventing them from keeping it up as long as they could both stand it!

Victoria couldn't resist making them breakfast the next day. She turned Erica back to male so he could go to work—but left his eyes and hair just the same, and didn't remove the foxlike bits. His coworkers had some comments about the new looks, but got used to them pretty quickly. After work, he picked Victoria up and drove them both to his house, then had her turn him back into a fox-girl. They spent a little time altering clothes to fit those smaller forms, including Erica's first experience with wearing a skirt.

By the time Eric had managed to find a magic expert—a local mage—they were starting to get used to this routine. He came and thoroughly examined the Servant Statue and Victoria herself. The bad news was that the curse was genuinely near-impossible to remove, but the good news was that he could reduce its harmful effects. With some work and effort, he was able to 'tune' the curse. Ultimately, it allowed the catgirl to obey orders to take on a male form, and to use any name Eric wanted her (or him) to. She no longer needed a standing order to speak her mind, and the compulsion to stay close to her 'master' was weakened considerably. The emotional effects of obeying or failing to were also greatly dulled, but she was still compelled to obey and answer her 'master', and still could only exercise her new powers when obeying. This was...good enough, both of them decided.

The mage didn't even want any money as payment, just to take the statue that had cursed Victor in the first place back home with him. He claimed there was still some 'residual magic' left in it, and he found the whole thing 'intriguing', so they let him have it. It had caused the both of them enough trouble anyway!

As soon as he was gone, Eric said, "So uh...do you want me to be a girl again?"
Victoria's face flushed red. "Y-yes, please!"

"Okay. Turn me into Erica," he said, and let out a soft "Mrr~rr~rrrh...!" in a rapidly-changing voice as the catgirl's power did so. Then, she let her 'servant' pull her into a close hug and start petting her again. Both of them were already starting to get used to this; life before the curse seemed really dull in comparison!

There was really no purpose for them to continue going back and forth between two places, Erica thought. That is—Victoria no longer needed to be with her 'master', but both of them certainly wanted to stick close. Considering that the fox-girl owned her own house, and Victoria lived in an apartment, they'd probably move into the former. But...Erica let those thoughts drift away for now, as she gently pulled the catgirl down onto the bed with her. The fuzzy feelings between her legs were starting to make it difficult to concentrate on anything but the feeling of the other girl holding her close and petting her anyway...

---

Yes, these images were generated. I guess this is another one of my semi-criticisms of others' stories. You know, where one guy's "friend" is under a similar sort of curse and he just immediately takes advantage of it? What kind of friendship is that? I guess it's equally unrealistic to claim that everyone would be this nice and helpful in that situation too, to be fair.