Release - Part 2

To Part 1

---

Vezin felt a little nervous. While he accepted that the person he was going to meet was only 'partially' his wife, and was elated to have her alive and no longer suffering in any way that it could be done, it had also been made clear that her memory may be imperfect, or even broken entirely. It would break the selfish part of his heart if she were alive again, but didn't recognize him at all. Or if this 'new person' built of the two of them hated him, or...

His worries were interrupted by the little orb of pink light in front of him brightening its glow, dimming, brightening again, three times in a row: A prearranged signal from the witch. Immediately he stepped forward, reappearing in the room his wife, trapped in crystal, had been kept in for all those years. Lyra was standing there, and also a girl who was largely the spitting image of her, with a only a few slight details' difference. "Hello—?"

"Vezin!" His worries and nerves evaporated when the first thing the blond-haired fox-girl did on sight was call out his name and practically pounce a third of the way across the room to tackle him into a close hug. He hurried to gently return the embrace, letting a feeling of relief wash across him as she gently nuzzled his cheek for a moment.

"M-my dear...you're alright," he said quietly, a couple of tears coming down his cheeks.
She pulled her head back off of his cheek to face him, smiling. "Indeed I am! I've lost..some memories, but I think not the most important ones. May I..?" He quietly nodded, and she planted a brief but loving kiss on his lips before letting go and hopping back slightly.

"Listen..I'd like you to call me Joanna," she announced. "One thing I am missing is my 'old' name, and 'Johann' hardly fits...but overall, I feel it's better this way. You can remind me what it was once we're used to the new one, perhaps. Any objection?"
"Not at all. That's a lovely name," he said, nodding.

"And—it's gratifying to know how much you've done to try and help me..but do you know I only have one tail now to your nine?"

"I..thought as much might happen," he admitted. "I can certainly help you along in that regard, if you'll allow me."

"We'll see. First—what sort of Deal did you make with this witch in the first place?"

"There are some..historical artifacts she's most interested in. I agreed to help seek them out. And.."
"Wait, allow me to guess—you already found one, to prove your sincerity," she said, a hint of sarcasm in her tone
"Well..."

"You do love doing things that way," she said, "even did it with me, now I think of it. Well, now I'm curious what's got such a powerful person so interested?"

Vezin turned Lyra's way, quietly summoning the item he planned to give her from his private collection into his hands. He had some idea of her interest, but wasn't certain how much she really wished to share—and, even though he'd happily give away all secrets he knew to his wife anyway, it'd still be rude to do it in front of their owner.

"Let's see.." Fortunately, Lyra appeared willing to share; she was just trying to think of the best place to start. "You're both aware there are multiple Earths, right? And universes in general?"

"Indeed," Vezin nodded. Joanna jumped slightly.

"That's...huh, I feel half-surprised? I don't remember specifically being told that, but it feels familiar anyhow," she said. "That is—Johann certainly didn't know that, but then, Kitsune were a surprise to me 'till today!"

"Well, I'm..let's say, not from around here," Lyra said, "I've been to lots of places, and observed many more, and the ancient civilization I'm interested in is unique to this particular Earth—yours. They don't seem to have been around for very long, and took up a pretty limited geographic area, but the fact that they existed at all is a little odd all on its own."

"It sounds as if there is another reason for your interest?" Vezin said, walking closer and offering her his piece. It was a broken-off chunk of a wall with some pictographs on it; the person he'd acquired it from thought they were Egyption heiroglyphs, but they were clearly nothing of the sort.

"I guess I can let you in on it, since you're helping me out," Lyra said, carefully taking the piece of wall from him and staring into it for a couple of seconds before continuing. "They appear to have had some level of, let's say, premonitional knowledge of certain major events in your world." A translucent pink bubble appeared around the piece in her hands, and then the whole thing vanished—likely to her own abode. Then she waved her hand to one side, making the image of another chunk of wall shimmer into view next to her for the two foxes to see. "For example: This one I found earlier says something about, 'Descendants of the sun...conflict, or 'attack' as a verb...demons and monsters. That sound familiar?"

Vezin nodded, his ears folding down slightly. "The war.."

Joanna tilted her head. "Wait, which one?"
"The very same one I lost you to," he explained to her. "A group of humans—descendants of celestials, who were made by 'the sun', took up a 'righetous war' against us 'monsters'. The demons' help was indispensible in resolving the crisis. Although.."
"Yes, that wording makes it sound like the 'descendants of the sun' were on the side of right," she nodded.

"That's the way it is with a lot of prophecy," Lyra said. "Even knowing that the grammar clearly places them as the aggressors, your first instinct is to assume they're meant to be the heroes, compared to some 'demons and monsters'. This isn't the only major event they seem to have predicted either, although in most cases it's nearly impossible to tell what they're talking about until it actually happens.

"The piece you just handed me says something about the touch of—hmmh, a few words I haven't seen before, I think the last one is something like 'rejection' or 'defense'? Then, the sun...and then it says 'the moon bears a new...'" The witch paused, tilting her head slightly. "The last word's usually used for something like 'powerful', but here it's in the place of a noun."

"So, overall: Something—we aren't certain what—involving touch, rejects the sun, and the moon bears a new power, or 'powerful one'," Vezin said.

"Something like that. Obviously it must be talking about Sol and La Lune, but the rest of it doesn't make much sense to me," Lyra said with a shrug. "Maybe some more fragments will help, or maybe it'll only make sense in retrospect, like the rest of them. Either way, I'm very interested to see what else they had to say."

Joanna said, "So, I take it you're intending on traveling around the world looking for more of their stuff to handle your end of the bargain?"
"Indeed," Vezin nodded.
"Then—let's go together! I've got a pretty limited view of the modern world from Johann, and the other part of me hasn't been anywhere in over half a century. Adventuring around the world sounds like an awful lot of fun~," she said, smiling beautifully and wagging her tail a bit.
"Well—certainly. If you'd like to so much," he nodded. Then, to Lyra he said: "I will contact you the moment I find anything of interest."
"Heheh, very well. I'll leave you two alone, then," Lyra said, starting toward the door. "Don't mind me—I know the way out."
"I'd have guessed as much."

Vezin turned to the girl who was, at least partially, his wife, and gestured at the door out of the room she'd been trapped in for so long. "Shall we?"

"Certainly!"

So he led the way across the hall toward a much more pleasant room, a sort of lounge with plenty of comfortable seating. While they walked, Joanna said: "I wonder, if you'd let me borrow some of your power? While there's such a gap between us, at least."
"Anytime you like," he said, nodding, as they came into the room.
"Well, what about...right now? There's just one thing I'd like to try out with you, if you don't mind."

Turning toward her, Vezin found the blond vixen standing with her arms behind her back and a small grin on. It didn't take a genius to figure out she had some trick in mind, but—to see her as happy as that, he'd be tricked by her a thousand times. "Very well," he shrugged, granting her unrestricted access to his power.

She smiled a little wider, and came up close to him. "Alright~! Hold still a moment, would you dear?"

Vezin's heart raced as she pulled her arms around him again in a close hug, her fingers touching his ears for the first time in so many years. He shuddered slightly as she began exercising his power through her hands, sending a tingling down through his ears to the top of his head. It ran down his scalp to his face, and from there flowed down through the rest of him. His arms wrapped around Joanna as this happened, and he gave in to an urge to start nuzzling her cheek as she continued petting his ears, a soft, low vulpine churring coming from his throat.

The old fox could feel the tingling progressing into a gentle pressure all across his body. One of Joanna's hands moved from his ears to his hair, brushing through it as it started growing longer and longer. In the front it brushed across the fox-girl's hair with the motion of his nuzzling, and in the back he could soon feel its weight on his shoulders. At the same time, he could feel that pressure starting to shrink his form. His frame softened, his shoulders narrowing and his waist, arms and legs all slimming down; his clothes fell steadily looser around him as it happened. Joanna's weight had been entirely in his arms at first, but he felt it leave him as his height diminished. First her toes, then the balls of her feet, and finally her heels landed on the ground—leaving him just as short as her.

"Mmh—mrr~rrh...!" Vezin's cheek rubbing against Joanna's felt softer and smoother than before. His churring voice rose in pitch, starting to sound decidedly less masculine. He could feel through his clothes the slight weight of hair as far down as the small of his back. "Mnnh—aa~aah..!" And now..a tingling, slipping sensation began to hit him between the legs. It wasn't hard to guess what she was doing to him by now, but he was also..enjoying it to a rather unexpected degree. Joanna nuzzled him back, her tail curling itself around his, and kept on petting his ears, as he felt the thing between his legs steadily shrink smaller and smaller, his form slimming the rest of the way down to a slender, effeminate shape. The resulting looseness of his clothes didn't last, however, as the suit he had on began to pull closer and tighter around his small frame, reshaping itself to fit what he was turning into...

"Mrrh, nn~nngh..!" A dark, sultry alto tone emerged from Vezin's throat as he felt the change down below progressing into one final, sharp tug down there. "Mrr~rffh..! Oo~OOO~OOh...!" Finally, the gray-haired Kitsune's sex changed, and immediately she was hit with a burst of wonderful, fuzzy feelings down there, at the same time as her pants and undergarments pulled snug and flat right between her legs. "Mmr~rrfh..!" Her hips pressed themselves outward, her thighs and bottom growing plump—all of which pushed against the suit bottom, making it grow just enough to fit them while staying tight. Then her chest erupted in a burst of tingles, just as something tickled the base of her tail and made her let out a high "Y-yip!" That something turned out to be her hair, the bright gray locks now falling far enough down for their tips to touch her there.

But she was, of course, much more occupied by what immediately followed that tingling, as her chest immediately sprang to life. "M-mrr~rnnh..!" A bump rose up from under each nipple, pressing her shirt, vest and jacket all out at once as they quickly grew larger and larger. "O-oo~ooh..!" The way Joanna was holding onto her made the growing breasts press directly into hers, a very strange yet pleasant sensation all its own. "Aah, aa~aah...m-mmr~rrrnnh..!" The feeling of her breasts blossoming out larger and larger treated the newly-female fox to still more fuzzy, pleasant feelings down between her legs, and she helplessly squirmed in the other girl's arms, alternating between human and vulpine noises to express these intense feelings. But before she knew it, her breasts were giving one final, hard push, drawing a helpless high, breathy "Aa~aah...!" from her lips as her girlish pleasure finally, satisfyingly resolved...and then, at last, the change was finished.

"Mm-mrr~rrnnnh...!" Vezin helplessly nuzzled the blond vixen for a moment longer.

"H-heheh..!" Joanna giggled, rubbing the other girl's ears in return, before finally letting go and pulling herself back enough to get a good look at her. "My goodness, you look good in that!" she announced—not clarifying whether she meant Vezin's curvy new female form, or how it looked wearing a tight, female-tailored suit.

"I-I'm glad you think so...this was, quite a surprise," Vezin said slowly, trying to get used to hearing a deep alto tone ring out from her own lips.

Joanna had done a little more than just shift her form; while the tail she'd had out before was just as present as ever, the other eight were now partially sealed, able to reapppear only with the other fox's permission. The power from them was still present, of course, but it still made her feel a little more vulnerable. Joanna..probably had in mind for them to 'match' available tails, a next-best thing to them having close to the same actual number.

"N-not that I'm..complaining, but...what ever gave you the idea to do this?"

"Well, I just changed from male to female, and somewhat enjoyed it," Joanna said. "And—I'm a 'new person' after all, and you must have changed some in the years since we last knew each other. I thought it might be nice to get to know each other anew on this adventure...and perhaps it'd be nice to give you something unfamiliar to enjoy it with?"

"Unfamiliar..yes, I've certainly never tried this before," she admitted. "Did you have in mind..being the 'husband'?"
"Mmh, perhaps later. For now, I rather like it like this," Joanna said, coming near again and pulling her into another tight hug. "Don't you~?" she asked teasingly, a teasing, blushing grin on her face—which was not two inches away from the other girl's.

"Er...yes..."
"Heheh..you're exceedingly cute, looking so nervous," she said, rubbing one of Vezin's ears again.

"M-mrr~rrh.." This time, she couldn't help returning the favor, even as her head slid forward to start nuzzling Joanna's cheek again.

"Aa~ah..oh, that's nice too! Mrr~rh..."

They stayed like that for a minute or two, wordlessly enjoying each other's affection, before Joanna finally let go of her ears, using that hand to stroke down through her long hair instead. Vezin slid her hand down to hold the other girl in her arms, feeling her chin lean against a shoulder. "I'm thinking..maybe a new name would fit you, too. How about Ziva?"

"I could..get used to it," she said.

"That settles that, then! Maybe we can set out tomorrow. For now..would you like to lie down for a bit?"
"Y-yes...my legs are, feeling a little weak..."
"Heheh~! I don't know if I could stand without leaning on you right now, either! Come along, then...!"

Joanna gently guided Ziva over to one of the couches and down onto it, landing on top of the gray-haired vixen. Immediately they were back to petting and nuzzling, their tails winding around each other. This was...very different from how things had been before. But Joanna clearly liked it this way, and Ziva was quite happy too...if anything, happier than ever before!

---

Ziva's image was generated, of course. I just couldn't find anything drawn that quite matched what I wanted for her, which contributed a lot to my writer's block for even part 1 of this story.

Lyra's a pretty important character in my "multiversal setting", but tends to be off in the background of most stories; she kind of prefers it that way. She's been mentioned before here and there as "the pink witch", and just about anytime in a caption/story that someone shows up with bright pink hair and is never named, it's probably her. I thought it'd be fun to have a small story that properly semi-introduced her.

Release - Part 1

What appeared to be a young woman wearing a long, dark-blue dress and a somewhat wide-brimmed, conical hat in the same shade, with distinctive bright, bubble-gum-pink hair trailing down to where her knees probably were under that dress's skirt, walked what most would think to be a meandering, lost path through the midst of some particular woods. Eventually she arrived at something which didn't really belong—and, indeed, which most people who entered those woods would never encounter: A grand mansion, with architecture dating from at least a century prior to the present day. She came to the front doors and used their ornate, fox-themed knocker, waiting patiently for the mansion's owner.

Before long, one of the gigantic front doors opened, swinging inward to reveal a tall, light-gray-haired man, sharply dressed, with the telltale ears and tail of a fox. This was a Kitsune, and while he only had one tail visible at the moment, this was one of the older and most powerful of their kind, possessing nine tails and a great deal of experience and wisdom. He smiled to his visitor. "You came after all!"
"Mmhm, I found a little bit of spare time," she said. "You know, I don't usually take requests, but the Deal you offered is still attractive. Just be forewarned that I don't take too kindly to being tricked." She kept a pleasant smile on the entire time.
"Oh no, my intentions with you are entirely honest, miss Lyra," he said. "Please, come in, and allow me to explain what has made this old fox so desperate as to make offers." He gestured politely inside.
"Sure." She followed him into an antechamber, and from there through several hallways and rooms; the mansion was a maze full of furniture, appliances, and decorations characteristic of many different eras placed not quite where they would entirely clash, but enough to give it all a distinctly surreal, timeless feel.

"I wanted your help in particular, first and most obviously because I know that you are exceedingly powerful, far more than your better-known actions would suggest," the old fox said as he guided her. "Obviously, if I or someone with equal power to me could resolve this, it would already be done. And secondly, I know that you dabble sometimes in souls, and in unsealing things."

Eventually, they arrived in a mid-sized room, empty apart from just one thing prominently on display in its center: Seemingly a statue made of bright blue crystal depicting, in detail, a badly injured Kitsune woman in a state of obvious distress. Without even looking at the statue, one had the strange, unsettling impression that someone was screaming in pain nearby.

"This is the woman I love," he said as an initial explanation for this sight.

"Uh...huh." Lyra took a few steps toward the statue. "Yep, there's...definitely a soul in there," she nodded. "And this is, awfully complicated-looking—no run-of-the-mill petrification, that's for sure."

"Those fools a few decades back—you know, in the war—used very poorly understood celestial magic to do this to her. I believe that they were unsure whether they wanted to try to seal or kill her, and this confused, tangled state is the result."

The witch nodded. "I could brute-force this crystal back into flesh, but it looks like she'd just die then. I assume you don't want that."

"Not, except as a last resort," he said. "But if nothing else will work, I am willing to accept that. Better she be at peace than...this."

Lyra came close enough to reach out a hand and gently touch the statue at chest-level, closing her eyes as though listening in. After a long moment she said, "Hmmh, this is no good. It's not too difficult for me to pull a soul into a different body, so in theory we could just make a simulacrum, but—that's..not gonna do it here. There's...damage, to the soul itself." She opened her eyes again, looking at him and seeing an expression close to despair. "Believe me, I've seen worse—far worse. This is less like a bunch of torn-up rags and more like some frayed edges here and there. I'd guess, from being in this state some sixty years? But on a soul, that's still really bad; it leaves openings for things to really break over time, even after it's in a healthy body."

"Can anything be done?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah, sorry! I didn't mean to worry you quite so much," she said, stepping back away from the statue and turning fully toward the nine-tailed one. "It's just—what I'd need in order to fix this is more complicated than just 'power' or 'stuff'." She sighed. "It requires...a person. And I have conditions if we are going to use a person."

"Name them," he said without hesitation.

---

A dark-haired, middle-aged man in a disheveled suit followed the fox through a door, passing from a hospital hallway into one of the mansion's many lounges, pausing a moment to look around the suddenly opulent surroundings in wonder. "Goodness..."

"This way, please. Across the hall." There was a little bit of eagerness and impatience in his voice; the visitor picked up on this enough to hurry and catch up to him. Lyra was waiting in the room with the statue, standing next to a complicated magic circle freshly chalked onto the floor.

"So.." The visitor shuddered, looking across at the statue and feeling it 'scream'. "That's, your wife? The one I'll be sharing a body with?"
"Ahem.." He turned toward the pink-haired woman when she cleared her throat, and paused again; there was something about her hair, he thought, that made it seem...alive? Like the way it was moving around couldn't quite be accounted for by the movement of the air across it. "So, my name is Lyra. And you?"
"Er..Johann, miss."
"And are you aware of what's going on?"

"Sure." Johann gestured to the fox standing opposite her. "This fellow introduced himself as Vezin, said he could cure my brother and make him rich. Set for life. Sure I didn't believe him at first, but he proved his wealth pretty convincingly already, and then did that first part for free. And..in exchange for him taking care of Harry, I'm supposed to help him revive his wife trapped in crystal by letting her share my body. Is that about the size of it?"

"Hmm, pretty close," Lyra nodded. "To be absolutely clear about this, though—it's not that you're 'sharing a body' with another, separate identity. If we go through with this, you would merge your entire being with hers. You'd still be you, but you'd also be her—one person with all of the memories of both..or at least, yours plus those of hers which have survived the damage. You might find your personality entirely different as a result. And, this is pretty much irreversible."

"Huh, well—that's better than I thought," Johann said. "I thought we might be on some sort of time-share where it'd be hers most of the time, but I could still visit Harry now and again. But from what you're saying....I'd still, care about him, wouldn't I?"
"If you feel that way now, then almost certainly," Lyra said with a nod. "You'd also care just as much as she does about other things. Like him," she said, pointing at Vezin.
"I suppose that's alright."
"This would also make you a Kitsune, since that's what she is."
"That being...a fox-person like Vezin there?" Johann said, gesturing. "Is that why he can do miracles?"
"Sort of. But that level of power takes a long time to build up, and isn't guaranteed anyway."

"Well, that'd only be a bonus in the first place."

Vezin stepped slightly closer to his visitor. "What do you think, then? There is no rush to make a decision now that your brother is no longer on the verge of death. But if you are prepared to make a Deal..."

Johann nodded. "I'll do it." He glanced Lyra's way. "Vezin told me that a 'Deal' is something special to him. He can't go back on his word with that?"
"Kitsune have a very hard time not abiding by a Deal that was willingly made," she said nodding. "But it is important to be clear and explicit on the terms."

He looked back at the old fox. "So..."

"In exchange for your help in reviving my wife, I will take care of your brother Harry, keeping him wealthy and successful throughout my life. And, since you will 'be' her, I will also take as good a care of you as you wish," he said. "Are those terms acceptable?" He was looking Lyra's way with this question, and when she didn't object, extended a hand Johann's way.
Johann shrugged, taking the hand and shaking it. "Agreed."

"Then the Deal is struck. I'll step out of the way," the Kitsune said, taking a small step backwards and then fading entirely from view.

After briefly looking around the room and finding only Lyra and the statue present, he said, "Alright...what do I need to do, then?"
"Just stand in the center of the circle," she said, pointing, "and take deep breaths. I'll handle the rest."

Once he did as instructed, the witch began softly chanting, taking slow steps up to the statue to place her hand on its left arm. Some sort of bright, golden-yellow light slowly trailed out of the statue, winding istelf around her arm; this process terminated with the statue suddenly, loudly shattering and crumbling into a bunch of bluish dust on the ground. Then Lyra raised her hand up toward the ceiling, the light coiled around it arcing up into the air between her and him before darting down into the outer edge of the circle drawn on the floor, filling the chalk making it with the same golden glow, which ran all the way around its perimeter before progressing steadily inward along the lines of the diagram.

When the glow reached the middle, it became almost blinding, and he found his body becoming seemingly weightless and lifting slightly into the air, followed by a feeling like wind blowing upward against his body and clothes. It caught his hair and made it grow longer, the glow settling into it to brighten its shade rapidly into a brilliant blonde. Meanwhile, the glow pushed into his body, presenting as a distinct sensation of warmth spreading inward toward his core.

His ears tingled sharply before stretching out, pulling themselves up taller and wider as fur quickly spread across them, finally settling into the shape of some very large, vulpine ears. The warmth likewise spread out from the base of his spine into a slim tail, growing a foot or so out before tingling sharply as its fur spread out thicker and fluffier, growing steadily longer at the same time until it become a huge puff of bright yellow fur with a white tip.

Alongside these first few changes, Johann felt like he was starting to remember something. It was fuzzy and distant at first, like he'd been caught in a dream for a long time and was only just beginning to wake up, but they began to grow slightly more distinct at this point. In these memories, he had the same blond hair and bright yellow fur—and was, besides being a Kitsune, a woman as well.

Tingling raced across Johann's skin, making him shudder slightly, and was followed immediately by the warmth gently pushing his body inward. "Mmnnh..aa~aah...!" His voice lilted a little higher as he squirmed in place there in midair, feeling his body collapse shorter and smaller around him: His shoulders narrowed, his waist trimmed and flattened, his arms and legs grew shorter and slimmer, and even his face grew smaller, softer, and rounder. "Aah, aa~aah..." Yet, even as strange as this shrinking felt, there was also something familiar, and even right about it.

A bunch of scattered individual memories were starting to put themselves together into his head in the proper order: Growing up a girl in Japan in the late 19^th century, falling for a man and eventually eloping with him, traveling the world, settling down, and growing old with him before learning he was a fox, and regaining her youth by accepting his help in becoming one herself. Not all of it was completely clear, with gaps and fuzzy blurs in several places, but the overall story was clear enough.

Johann's clothes fluttered around him in the 'wind' of the magic changing him, the suit's coat and vest combining into a single garment, tightening around his slimming torso even as its sleeves billowed out wider, the tie undoing itself from his neck to wrap around his waist as a sash instead, the pants slipping off of his hips and splitting apart to reform into some tight, soft leggings. His underwear lost its leggings and pulled increasingly tight around what they did still cover, especially between the legs...

The cloth pulling closer and closer down there made it quite clear that something between his legs was smaller than before, and now it was tingling quite sharply, tugging and slipping itself inward. "Oh~...mn~nngh..!" A high, soft, cute voice came from Johann's lips now, as he felt—perhaps even welcomed—the steady loss of masculinity from his form, all of the shrinking resulting in such a slender, slight appearance that only the bulge between his legs marked him as male. But even that was rapidly getting smaller and smaller, until—with a soft cry of "Aa~aah..!"—it, too, melted away, and he'd turned entirely into a fox-girl.

"Mnngh..aah~nn...!" She squirmed in place a little more as an increasingly familiar fuzzy, pleasant feeling erupted between her legs, joined by the sensation of her hips and bottom puffing themselves out into some proper curves, her upper thighs following suit soon after. "Mr~rrfh..!" She barked happily, feeling the heat of a blush on her cheeks and a grin across her lips as her chest tingled before beginning to push itself out. This felt..almost as nice as being with him, soon after he'd helped her awaken as a fellow fox. Their life together after that moment flashed through her mind, a bit blurrier than what had come before it...but definitely, wonderfully blissful throughout. And..she knew from Johann's memories that something..terrible must have happened to her at the end of all that, but couldn't remember it at all—nor anything else past the night of their wedding anniversary in 1939.

"A~ah..ahh~nnnnNNNNhh...!" Oh, now this felt good! Her chest continued to push itself out, stretching and brushing across the cloth to become a proper bosom, fit for a beauty like herself—and the sensation of all of that brought on some very strong girlish pleasure! "Mnn~nh..rrfh, RRFH~!" She simply enjoyed the ride as her transformation completed, treating her to a perfectly wonderful resolution to all of that excitement just as her breasts pushed out one last time to their full new size, and then let out a high, soft sigh of relief as it ended, slowly opening her eyes as she felt herself starting to float back down toward the floor.

"H-hahah~! That was amazing!" Her top was a sort of kimono-dress, but its skirt-like hem didn't actually reach far enough down to hide her new panties, and the only thing on her legs were a pair of stockings that barely reached past her knees. But—that was fine! It showed off her looks pretty well.

"You're feeling okay?" Lyra said, moving slightly closer to the fox-girl as she landed, gently and gracefully setting her stockinged feet onto the floor.

"I'm not sure I can rightly describe what I'm feeling right now, but it's awfully nice! I guess—'good to be back'? But also—'this is a nice surprise'!"

"I needed to allow the 'new' soul to reshape your body however it saw fit to regain as much of that 'self' as possible," she explained. "Vezin or myself could now reshape you again, if you're uncomfortable with that look."
"No, no—not at all! I mean I hadn't imagined myself as a young woman before, but it certainly beats being an older man. I'd say 'I think I could get used to this', but I feel rather like I already am. So, no trouble with that, then. Could..is there a mirror around near here?" she asked, looking quickly this way and that.

"Here," Lyra said, waving and summoning a full-length mirror next to herself in a brief, blurry shimmer of motion. The fox-girl hurried up to right in front of it to get a good look, leaning in slightly. Johann had been blue-eyed, and..she was pretty sure 'she' had had green eyes...so it sort of made sense for her to have one of each. Getting to see herself full-on like this made her even more certain she approved of this form; it was, after all, even cuter than she'd hoped!

"How are your memories? As 'her', I mean, although you should tell me if you're having difficulty remembering Johann's life as well."
Johann stood up straight again to face the pink-haired woman. "Hmmn...pretty good? There's some holes, and it cuts off I think earlier than it's supposed to. I can't remember at all how I got in that statue, like? Aaaannnnd..." She leaned forward again just slightly, tapping the side of her head a couple of times. "Don't know my old name. It just comes back 'Johann', although I don't feel that fits me too well, either."

Lyra nodded. "That's overall pretty good news. Having one's soul damaged is about as bad as it sounds like it should be. And, while you certainly are both of those people, there's a sense in which you're a new person as well. You should not feel overly bound to whatever obligations either of them had, or at least—don't allow yourself to be weighed down by them. Coming up with a new name may help you feel freer."
She put a finger on her lips. "Joanna, perhaps?" Then, looking around the room: "By the way, where'd Vezin disappear to, exactly? From what I can remember...and how he was acting a couple minutes ago, I'd think he'd be jumping into my arms by now."

"I had conditions for doing this for you," Lyra explained. "Such as making sure you—'Johann'—knew exactly what you were getting into. And allowing the 'new' you as much time as you want, alone, to sort things out. It would be wrong to allow Vezin to impose who he thinks you should be before you're ready to meet him."

Joanna nodded. "That's awfully nice of you, but really...I've got one set of memories that never knew any romance, and a ready-made partner sounds pretty nice to that end—and another that was his wife for over half a century. I don't think there's all that much 'sorting out' to do. Only thing is.." She paused, twisting around slightly to run a hand down along her tail. "I recall having four of these?"

"The Ruler sees you as a 'new Kitsune', so no free tails—you must earn them from scratch," Lyra said.

"Makes sense. But Vezin was up to six back then. Where's he got to now?"
"He is a nine-tailed fox," Lyra said. "He might have fast-tracked the power gain in his desperation to get you out of that state."
"That's sweet, but also...hmmn, a bit disappointing. We were having a fun competition back then, and now the gap's so big?"

The Kitsune paused a moment, getting an idea—perhaps even more than one of them! And her frown turned into a slightly mischievious smile. "Pardon me about all that, miss Lyra. Those are complaints for him, not for you. I've got nothing but gratitude when it comes to you getting me out of that crystal cage, and alive again besides!"
"All I ask is that you make sure he holds up his end of the Deal he made with me," Lyra said.

"Certainly, but anything else—you just ask! Now, I'd really like to see him again, honestly," she said, rubbing her hands together. "Feels like it's been a near century."

"Very well," Lyra nodded.

---

To Part 2

---

This is a little standalone story with ties to lots of the long-runners, but it should make plenty of sense without having read any of them.

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.

Of Fae and Foxes

I think this requires a little bit of context and/or explanation. I started this short story a few months ago, and have been working on it off and on for a while now. It's a complete story, all in one post, but it is long. To give some context, it takes up slightly over 20 pages in my document editor, which is more than the entire "Miranda" series (around 16 pages). It's about as many pages as "Wishing to Fall" and "A Wedding Guest" put together. Still, I don't think it makes any sense to try to split up this one-off into multiple pages. I just wanted to give a warning that it's long. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

---

Three people sat at a restaurant bar, each one very different from the other two. A mismatched pair who'd known each other for years had been joined by a third member for the past few months, and this was one of their usual after-work haunts.

"So then the floor manager's like, 'nobody's leaving until every last box is packed up and ready to go!' And this is forty-five minutes till closing." The tallest of the three, sitting on the right, was a dark-haired, tall, somewhat broad-shouldered man with an impressive physique and somewhat handsome face. He had short, slightly spiked dark hair and a couple of rings in his left ear, but he otherwise dressed casually—a lot less like a punk than he used to.

"So: two boxes a minute, per person," the other guy, in the center, said. He was a little on the short side, and a bit overweight, with unkempt, short but thick blond hair, in a slightly disheveled white button-down shirt and black slacks.

"Yeah, so, wayyy too much. I'm thinking 'dude, you're not paying us overtime. You can't pay us overtime! Screw this.'"

"'D'you walk out?" the third member of the trio—on the far left—asked. She was a woman of about average height and slightly above-average figure, with a pretty face and bright green hair and eyes, who was seemingly always overdressed for every occasion. In this case she was wearing a flowing, dark green ankle-length dress, mid-high heels, and long, dark, silken gloves just to go casually drinking with friends.

"Nah, I snuck out. Pretended I had to go to the bathroom, didn't come back, didn't scan out. I'll say I forgot, you know, in the 'biig ruuush'," he said sarcastically, making air quotes with his hands.
"Well then, what're you doing here? I thought you had a date," she said.
"Pssh." He picked up the bottle in front of him and took a long gulp of it. "Stood up again. Dumb online dating, prolly found someone she liked better and didn't bother letting me know."

"Yeah man, that's ridiculous," the other guy said. "'Least the last two times, they had the courtesy to show up and eat on your dime before bailing. Hey, is that what it's all about, Agatha?" he asked the woman, elbowing her gently.

"I wouldn't know," she shrugged. "You know I've never been interested in dating in the first place." Of course both of the guys had made passes at her early on, but they also hadn't taken long to accept her complete disinterest in romance, and now treated her little differently from how they did each other.
"Got your corporate ladder to climb, eh?" the first guy said. "Speaking of, how's the IT biz today, Sal?"

"Ehh, you know," the shorter guy shrugged. "Sometimes nothing happens all day and I can play flash games and go home early—"
"Didn't they cancel flash a few years back?" Agatha interrupted.
"Not if you know what you're doing. Anyway, sometimes that, and sometimes your boss decides to check his spam box, open the email with like sixteen different warnings that it's not legit appended at the start of the subject line by our system, and then download malware that takes out the whole, network. Hahah...yee-eah."

"To be clear: Your boss as in the manager of your department?" she asked.
"Nah, she's actually pretty cool. I mean the guy over the guy over her. And naturally it's all our fault this happened, 'cause we didn't do enough to patch out human stupidity."

"So no overtime for you either, huh?" the other guy asked, and his friend shook his head.

"Salary, remember, so..nope.

"Anyway, we did get it fixed, and I put in a little thing that empties that guy's spam every hour or so without letting him know, so maybe I can get back to tasering that gnome tomorrow."

"...Is, that a euphemism for something?" Agatha asked, eyebrow raised.
"Pffheheh, nah, it's just a dumb reference. Rogan got it, right?"
"...No."
"Dang." But it wasn't unusual for her to misunderstand relatively well-known references, either; the two of them occasionally joked with each other that Agatha had to be some kind of space alien. She was working as some sort of legal consultant for a big corporation, and every time she tried to explain what exactly her job entailed, it gave both of them a headache. It was more likely, especially if that hair color was natural, that she was some kind of magic folk who'd only relatively recently joined the 'modern world', and so lacked some of the context that mundane humans like the two guys had. Since she'd never brought it up herself, and seemed to brush off the topic of where she was originally from, they figured it wasn't their business and left it alone. Anyway, at least she was fun to hang out with.

"Well, I certainly hope I'm not causing such problems for our IT department," Agatha said. "A few days ago, I did have something of a disagreement with my computer."

"Just to be clear," Sal said, pointing to himself, "not on the job, don't work for free."
"Ahahah, I wouldn't dream of making you work for nothing," she said. "No, this is only venting."
"Oh, well, in that case vent away," he waved theatrically. "This is vent central over here. We're gonna make the bar's AC system jealous, 'cause of all the vents."
At this point Rogan gave him a look that said 'I can't believe you're the one not drinking,' and then gestured for Agatha to go on.

"Well, it told me that I did not have the authority to do what I needed done. I insisted that it was part of my job, and so should fall under my purview. But—we eventually came to an arrangement, after a while."
"Uhh, is that the kind of 'arrangement' where the PC's in the bin with its screen cracked?" Sal asked.

"Oh no, it never got violent or anything. I just convinced it that my position was the correct one."
"Uhh yeah, okay. Look, if you do run into something like that, you probably should just call IT instead of negotiating with a piece of tech," he said. "Still—not my problem, and I guess it worked out?"
"Yes, wonderfully," she nodded. "I doubt I'll have such a problem again for some time, anyway."

This conversation was interrupted by the arrival of food, which the shorter of the two guys eyed eagerly. While both of his friends drank—typically beer for Rogan and some kind of wine or whatever for Agatha—Sal's main addiction was food, so he played designated driver. So far, she'd always insisted she had her own way home and wasn't driving, as much as he offered.

The subject abruptly changed after this interruption, and the three of them carried on talking for around another hour or so. Then, after they'd paid their bills, Agatha stood up first. "If you two will excuse me—I'd best be off," she said.

"Sure. Be safe, you had more than usual tonight," Rogan said.
"I'll be alright," she nodded. "As always, I won't be driving."

After watching her head off, he turned to Sal. "She really looked like she was wobbling a little there."
"New, taller heels," the other guy guessed, and got an annoyed look in response. "Okay, okay, what?"

"I dunno, maybe she is driving and just don't want us to worry? We should make sure she's alright."

"That's why the ladies keep running off on you, man. You're too nice," his friend said, but got up to follow her out anyway.

The two of them hurried out to the parking lot at a brisk enough pace to catch sight of her from the door, watching her walk through the lot toward a neighboring building. "See?" Sal said quietly, "I don't even think she's got a car in the lot."
"Or, she parked somewhere else just in case we're watching. C'mon." Rogan gestured to follow, and they moved to keep her in sight as she came to that building—a store that had closed a few hours ago—and began to turn a corner to go behind the wall of that building. As she came close to going out of sight, he suddenly took off at a sprint to get where he could see her again, and Sal had to jog pretty hard to get not even close to keeping up with him. When he got there, panting heavily, he found his friend staring in Agatha's direction, mouth agape, and slowly followed his gaze.

The green-haired woman was in the middle of doing...something. She was holding up some kind of flower in front of and just slightly above her head, and its petals were detaching and blowing forward in a wind neither of them could feel, spreading out and growing into large blocks of stone which formed the shape of a wide archway twice her height. As soon as the archway finished forming, its interior was filled with completely different scenery from what was actually behind it: Bright, morning-like sunlight bathing a field of flowers, yet somehow not lighting up the area around the portal, nor the woman who had summoned it.

By the time the portal had formed and existed for a couple of seconds, Sal had caught his breath enough to let out a long, high-pitched "Whaaaaaaaaat?"

"Shh, dude!" Rogan whispered, but Agatha was already turning around toward (presumably) the source of the noise, each of her eyes emitting an eerie, bright green glow. Her expression was briefly stern and terrifying, projecting an unimaginable power, before it suddenly settled into a much friendlier chuckle and grin—but still with the glowing eyes.

"..Ahh, it's only you two," she said. "Hey, come over here—you're curious, right?" she waved for them to come, so they did.

Rogan gestured to the portal as they approached, trying to ask gently: "So uh, what is um...?"
"Duude, are you one of the fair folk? Like, for real?" Sal was much less restrained.
"Heheh, got it in one," Agatha said. "I thought it might be fun to try and make you work it out somehow, but it's my own fault if you found me out because of my own incaution. Perhaps I did have one too many tonight after all," she mused.

"That means we get wishes, right?"

Rogan facepalmed. "Sal, seriously, why do you act like that sober?" he half-growled at a low volume.

Agatha, fortunately, took this well, just giggling. "That's really not how we work, you know. But—eh, I do like you guys, and..can't imagine anything you'd actually want that wouldn't be trivial for me anyway. What would you like?"

"Ooh! Can you get one of those domestic foxes? They're such cute little guys."

She headtilted, and Rogan gave him a 'seriously?!' look. "Well—"

"Wait wait, could you like, make me actually attractive?"

"That would be easy enough, too," she said, shrugging.

"What about—I mean, maybe this is dumb, but, I think you know, uh.." Rogan half-mumbled, not feeling nearly as bold in the face of a being of unimaginable power.

"You want me to help you find a beautiful woman who'd actually be interested in you?" Agatha said.
"Well—yeah. Or..if not that, I'd settle for a better job?" he said, a little more confidently. "I mean, I don't need to be rich, just, something that pays better, with more vacation days and maybe more fulfilling?"
"Hold up," Sal said, "Is wishing for a cute girlfriend seriously on the table right now?"

"Pfffheheh!" Agatha put her hand over her mouth delicately, interrupting their exchange with some full-bodied laughter. "See now, this is why I like you two. Okay, I think I've got the idea. You'll both get something I think will make you very happy, but..it might take a couple of days, alright? Just—hold still a moment." She then drew a couple of flowers from..somewhere; it looked like she just got them out of thin air or something, taking one into each hand.

"Uh..sure?" Rogan said. The fae nodded, turning to face him and holding up one of the flowers between her face and him; its petals were a bright, sky-blue color, and she took a short breath before blowing gently, sending the flower's petals flying out like it was a dandelion. They flew up to him with purpose, briefly swirling around his body before seeming to vanish. Then she did the same thing to Sal, except that 'his' flower was different, with longer petals cast in a pale, pure white.

"There we go~," she said afterward. "Now, I really must be off. You two drive safely, and have fun! See you again soon."

"S-sure," Rogan said, still looking down at himself and trying to see anything that might've happened from the flower-petal-swirling.

"You have fun too!" Sal said, as she stepped through the portal.

Agatha briefly turned back, grinning at both of them (but her eyes were glowing green again) and nodded. "I'm certain I will, thanks~." Then she stepped through, and the portal immediately vanished, the stones turning back into some gray-colored, wilted petals which blew away in the wind.

The two guys stood there in the parking lot of a closed store for a long moment, then exchanged a glance. "Soooo...that happened," Sal declared.
"It did." His friend shook his head. "I think I'm too drunk to believe this is real right now. Remind me when I wake up tomorrow."
"You mean after work?"
"Yeah...after work," he nodded.

As they walked back to Sal's car, he said, "So, I guess I'm probably not getting the pet fox. I mean—if she was gonna just summon one of those, it would've happened, right?"
"You wanted the other two things you asked about more, didn't you?"

"Hey, I don't mean I'm disappointed or anything. Just trying to figure out what is gonna happen."
Rogan sighed. "I feel like we modern humans are at a disadvantage, you know that? Back in medieval times, everybody got a good warning at some point in their life not to screw with the fae."
"Well, I say getting chummy and joking around with one is a totally different thing," Sal said.

"Does that make it better, or worse?"
He shrugged. "Guess we're gonna find out!"

---

Sal's first sign that having a fae blow a flower at him had any actual effect came when he got up the following morning. It wasn't instantly obvious, either; it was something that required him to carefully check himself out for a moment before getting into the shower. Regardless, he was pretty sure that his gut had withdrawn itself, flattening down just a little compared to the day before, and his shirt seemed looser by a slight but present margin, enough to confirm it for him. It wasn't enough for him to completely rule out the possibility that his hopeful expectation had him merely perceiving the change, but really, he'd be okay with it if she'd just pranked them both and done absolutely nothing.

He went to work that day, and gradually noticed that his scalp was itchier than usual, fully realizing this fact as he was about to break for lunch and caught himself vigorously scratching it, slowly pulling his hand down before his face and staring at it once he really thought about what he was doing. "Hmmn." Reaching it up with a bit more purpose, he gently teased his hair around, and confirmed that it was noticeably longer than before, and fairly unkempt at that. He decided to take his break from doing very little a bit early to head to the bathroom and look at it in the mirror.

Sal gently brushed the longer bangs, and especially the hair coming from the back of his head, which was halfway down his neck, into a slightly straighter, less messy shape. With how thick his hair always was, this was probably the best he could do without a brush. As he did, he noticed that its color overall seemed somewhat faded, paler and brighter than usual.

This also provided an opportunity to take stock of his body overall, the way his clothes fit on him. His pudge was all but gone now, which made his shirt fall a bit loose and long; however—maybe it was just his imagination, but he thought his pants were longer than before too, the leggings falling far enough to touch his shoes instead of stopping off at the ankles. But..he couldn't imagine a good reason why he'd actually be shorter. He knelt and folded the hems up so they wouldn't trip him anyway, and went on to eat his lunch.

Rogan didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when he awoke—nor did he particularly expect to. Despite the presentation with the blue flower, what he'd asked Agatha for was to help him meet someone else, which he expected required time and setup for entirely different reasons. Or..the same was basically true for finding him a better job, too.

Notwithstanding, he did notice throughout the morning that his ears itched uncontrollably from time to time. Once, a couple of hours in, he had to pause what he was doing to scratch them, and when he did, he thought his fingers and nails found something..soft there, like peach fuzz. This had him narrow his eyes and carefully hold his hands around each ear for a second, and he could swear they were bigger than before, too—with noticeably more surface to hold. At this point someone glanced his direction, and he quickly got back to work, pretending he'd only been briefly scratching his ears.

He took a few more opportunities to examine them (and couldn't help scratching them several more times), and the fuzz seemed longer and thicker each time, the ears gradually getting bigger. By the time he was able to break for lunch and go to a mirror to look, they were big enough to poke out past his hair, peculiarly pointed tips covered in short hairs which had a familiar, bright blue coloration to them. He crossed his arms, glaring at the strange sight of that shade interrupting his much darker hair, and muttered, "What're you doing to me, Agatha..?" But his job wouldn't let him stop for much longer than that, and it seemed like it might be inevitable at this point anyway, so he tried to put it out of his mind.

Sal's scalp itched some more as the day went on, and the hair kept on getting longer and longer. Some locks slowly trailed their way down the sides of his face, while the hair behind him accelerated even more after it hit his shoulders, slowly making its way down his back. Its color also continued to change, like someone was slowly pushing a saturation slider downward, draining away its yellowish shade. Some of his coworkers noticed this, of course, and he just told them he'd bought a bad hair-growth potion on a whim and planned to get it cut once it stopped taking effect.

The truth was, however, that whenever he'd finished scratching his scalp for a moment, he'd run his hand or hands through that increasingly long hair. It was strangely soft ever since lunchtime, and therefore quite pleasant to the touch. He especially liked the way it felt running through his fingers like that, and he wondered if it might actually even..look good?

What Sal's coworkers didn't have as much of an opportunity to notice, thanks to his usual choice of clothing already being somewhat loose, was that his fat was continuing to vanish away. Not only did his belly flatten the rest of the way as the afternoon went on, but even his arms and legs trimmed and slimmed a bit more. What concerned him just a little was a different subtle change, however: The hem of his shirt occasionally bunched and needed to be re-tucked, and he thought that how much longer it seemed on him couldn't quite be accounted for by just the loss of fat from his torso. And even though he'd folded the leggings up before, when he got up to do something about halfway between lunch and the end of the day's shift, he found them trailing back down over his feet again. He was...almost certainly losing height, even though he had a hard time really gauging any significant change in perspective.

Rogan's ears itched less throughout the afternoon, but kept on growing. People began to take notice, of course, as the bright blue..fur, probably..made its way out from the sides of his head, but he was able to glare away any questions before they could actually be asked. He soon noticed them becoming mobile, too, twitching and turning around with increasing flexibility in a way that seemed to reflexively help him listen to whatever he was trying to hear. A brief examination near the end of the day found that, despite a drastically different shape they were taking on—similar to a pair of tall, fuzzy triangles—his right ear still retained its piercings and the rings through them. His examination also found that the fur remained soft even as it grew longer and thicker; if anything, it seemed even softer now, peculiarly fluffy.

They seemed to finish growing near the end of the day's work, becoming the size of his hands or even a bit bigger, and he observed in a brief glance in the mirror that they weren't entirely bright blue, with the inner ears sporting snowy white fluff instead. He was already starting to get used to the way the air ran across their fur, their heightened sensitivity both to touch and sound, and the way they moved, flexibly twitching and rotating around. He even found it very easy to control them manually, so to speak, although that didn't feel particularly necessary.

The one thing those ears didn't seem too well suited for, however, was the use of human-centric devices like headphones or...cell phones. Rogan really noticed this when he stepped out to his car and almost immediately got a call from Sal. He answered it, and tried unsuccessfully to find a comfortable way to press the phone against his left ear. "Yoo, uh, what's up?" Sal's voice came through; he could actually hear it without putting it close to the ear anyway, especially with both of his ears instinctively pointing toward the phone. So he just gave up and held it horizontal with the mic close to his face instead.
"Hey. Not much. Just grew..giant furry ears today."
"Whooaa, seriously?"
"..Yes. Very seriously."
"Can I see them!?"

"I'm pretty sure you'll have a hard time missing them," Rogan said.

"Sweet!"

"...What were you calling me about?" It obviously couldn't be the ears, since he didn't know about that until just now.
"Oh, right! I wanted to know if you wanna hang out for supper or something? I..had some stuff happen too!"

"..Yeah, sure."

Getting in his car and needing to adjust things before he could drive conclusively proved to Sal that he'd really lost some height, maybe four or five inches. And when he pulled up to the restaurant, got out, and waved Rogan over, he got another indication of the shift: His eye level, once around his friend's chin, was nearly down to his chest. "Heyy, wow," he said, looking up toward his face—and those ears, of course. "You were not kidding."
"Uh, you either. Actually, I almost feel bad for complaining now," Rogan said, crossing his arms. "You, what, shrank six inches and got stupid long hair?"
"Yyyyeah," Sal ran a hand through it absently. It was an extremely pale, washed-out yellow now, clearly approaching pure white, and the locks streaming out from the back of his head fell as far as the middle of his waist. "But hey, check it out!" He patted his stomach. "Fat's all gone, at least!"
"Heheh, well uh..I guess as long as you're happy?"

Hearing about his friend's ears suddenly growing had no particular meaning to Sal at first. However, the sight of those giant, bright blue fuzzy ears instilled in him a strange urge to reach up and touch them—particularly, in fact, to pet them like an animal's, rubbing them between his fingers gently. They had to be super-soft, he thought. But—boundaries existed, especially here in public. So he began to hatch a plan to try and get them alone somewhere instead...food, however, still came first.

Rogan got a beer to drink, figuring he was having a strange enough day to justify it. Sal watched him do this with an expression of slight concern. "Dude, it's fine, I'm eating too," he said, and felt his ears fold back alongside his frown.

"Yeah? You better at least be careful," Sal said. "Actually, my place is way closer than yours if you wanna crash for a couple of hours or something."
"I'll be fine," he insisted.

There was more different about Sal's appearance than he himself seemed to have noticed as of yet. Rogan had noticed right away the way that his friend's long, slightly wild hair trailed out into long bangs and even longer locks down the sides of his cheeks to his shoulders framed his face, drawing quite a bit of attention to..the fact that his face, itself, suddenly lacked hair now, leaving its skin smooth. It was also a bit softer and rounder than before, a bit..cuter, even? He caught himself almost-staring once or twice, trying to make sense of the thought of his friend looking a bit cute, especially when he was laughing and joking around like usual. And his arms seemed slimmer, his hands a little smaller than before—or maybe that really was just Rogan's imagination. After he'd had some drink and before the meal arrived, he got the strangest urge to feel those fingers in particular touching his ears, but shook it off as quickly as it came. It had to be the alcohol talking, or...something.

"So anyway..Agatha's a fae, I guess. We didn't really get much time to talk about that last night, huh?" Sal said.
"Yeah. Crazy. I would've guessed some kind of..Kitsune, or minor forest spirit or something."
"Nah, man. The signs were kinda there from the start, in hindsight. Like: She pretty much never lies. You notice that?"
"What about the whole 'being a legal consultant' thing?"
"I don't think that was a lie. Fae are supposed to be really good at twisting words and getting people to agree to things they wouldn't otherwise. Isn't that a total lawyerish thing?"
"Ehh, maybe."

"Hey, what do you bet she actually used her power to give her computer a personality, just so she could negotiate with it? Heheh, I am so glad I'm not on that IT team."

"It's just—she seems really down-to-earth for a 'dangerous being with godlike powers' or whatever."
"Well, they can't all be baby-eating tricksters. I mean, that'd get boring after a couple of centuries, I bet!"

"What about iron? She never seemed bothered by iron."
"Dude, I don't think we've been around any iron with her."
Rogan held up his silverware. "Steel?"
"Well, she tends to wear gloves, so...?"

"And when it's in her mouth?"
"What, you never noticed? Look:" Sal picked up some food with his fork. "This is how she eats." He carefully placed his teeth on the food and pulled it off of the fork, taking the utensil away from his mouth before chewing and swallowing. "No contact. With the fork. And she'd delicately pour soup in her mouth with a spoon, I bet."
"She never ordered soup, though," Rogan said, with Sal saying "but" and then those first four words at exactly the same time.

"Jinx! Hahah..I guess I should be careful with that, though. Uhm, unjinx?"

"I think that's supposed to ward the jinx off anyway, or something," Rogan said, idly scratching an ear.

It wasn't that Rogan's ears itched anymore, with their transformation apparently concluded, but he felt a kind of unconscious urge for them to feel the touch of a hand on them or something. His own hand was okay, but...now, midway through his meal, the feeling came on even stronger that he wanted it to be Sal's hand. At least...just once. But it wasn't like he could ask him to do that in public, or maybe even at all? It was definitely too weird.

Once they had settled their bills, Rogan said, "Look: I'm still fine to drive; I hardly drank anything at all."
"Yeah, compared to usual, I guess..." He was visibly almost succeeding at hiding some sort of disappointment.
"But, you wanna hang out at your place for a while anyway?"
"Wh—uuuh, yeah! Sure," he nodded, making his hair swish around a bit from the motion.

"Okay. See you there." He got up.

Sal followed his friend out, then drove to his small house, heading inside. While the change had been gradual enough at the office for him to not really notice his change of perspective, it couldn't be more obvious here. Everything, from the door to the walls and ceilings and every bit of furniture, simply seemed taller than he remembered it being this morning. But, of course, he was just shorter. He glanced around briefly before turning around and pulling the door open for Rogan. "Heheh, come on in," he said, grinning. This was far from the first time one of them had come to the other's home to hang out, of course, but he was still feeling a little bit of unaccountable nervousness. It was..actually, probably just because he was still thinking about making the bizarre request to pet Rogan's ears.

"Thanks," his friend nodded, coming in and pulling the door shut behind him.

"So, we haven't really addressed the elephant in the room," he said, going over to a couch.
"Yeah, what's that?"
"What exactly is her...spell or whatever, doing to us? I mean, I definitely didn't ask for these," he said, gently pulling his ears outward with his hands. "And you didn't ask to be shorter, or have ridiculously long hair, either."
"Well, yeah," Sal said, sitting on the opposite side of the couch. "But I was pretty vague, to be fair. I just asked to be attractive, right? And I did lose basically all my fat, and I don't think this hair is ugly, exactly.." He lifted some of his hair around in front of him, running his hands over it; the color was all gone now, leaving it a pure, snowy white.

"..Waiit. I also asked for a pet fox."
"That was before you changed your mind," Rogan said, folding his arms.
"Yes, but, she didn't really say she was granting any one thing, either. Just 'oh, I've got the idea, now lemme blow flowers at you'."
"Well, what does that have to—" He stopped short, particularly noticing his ears folding back. Noticing, that is, his ears. "...These are fox ears." He poked one of them with an index finger. "Fox. Ears. Right?"

"I mean, I think so? They look too tall for cat ears, and..well, a lot of canine ears can be hard to distinguish, but they're pretty spiky to be dog ears anyway."

"So she's turning me into a fox!?" Rogan sat up toward his friend and raised his voice, feeling his ears stand straight up.
"Uh—I mean, probably not?" Sal put up his hands. "Or at least not exactly. I can't imagine that Agatha would expect you to be happy about turning into a literal animal, so maybe more like..fox-person?"
Sitting back again and crossing his arms, shaking his head, and slowly folding his ears down again, he said: "..That's, not as bad, I guess. And it explains, uh.."

"What?" Sal was curious now that he'd almost said it, but hesitated.
"Um, nothing."
"That was definitely not nothing! C'mon, man, you can trust me." He leaned up and forward toward his friend a bit, grinning conspiratorially.

Rogan's eyes widened slightly; Sal's face was round, soft—it was even cuter than before, especially with this expression! When had that happened?

"Uh, I got a. Weird urge to have your hands on my ears. Like, just brush their..fur a little," he said. "Uh—weird, right?"

"Oh. Yeah, that's..a little weird to suddenly feel, I imagine," Sal said. "At the same time, I have the exact same urge! I mean, on my end though, so...to pet them." He leaned a little closer still, looking up in Rogan's face. "Can I?"

"Uh, okay fine. Just, a little though, okay!?"
"Sure. I'll stop if it seems at all like it's bugging you," he promised, scooting toward the center of the couch to be close enough that he could reach. He brought his hands carefully up to either side of his friend's head.

Rogan was unprepared for what he felt when Sal's hands touched his ears. The touch was gentle and hesitant, yet it caused him to shiver, something racing down through his ears to their bases, down to and through his spine. His ears instantly lowered completely out to the sides, and he felt calm and warm as the hands began to slowly run along them. "Mh..mnnhh.." The sort-of-chill that had run down his spine seemed to settle at its base, forming into a strange kind of tingling there. And his mouth felt odd too, the teeth and tongue particularly, as the utterance from his throat changed into an odd, deep "Mrrrh" sort of sound—a more animal-like churring.

Sal's fingers played around with his fur for a moment more, totaling only ten to twenty seconds, before he slowly lifted them away and brought his hands back to his sides. Rogan didn't even seem to have noticed that his eyes had closed, as he slowly opened them and blinked a couple of times. He looked confused that it had stopped so quickly, before he finally noticed the look of concern on his friend's face. "...What?"

"You um..don't panic, but you..shrank," Sal said. From the moment his friend had started making a rather cute, low churring sound from his throat, his height had started to abruptly sink downward, rivaling Sal's loss of size by the time he'd even noticed it happening and quickly withdrawn his hands as a result. In addition to that, now that he was looking, he could see that the bright blue coloration of the ears' fur seemed to have 'bled out' from where it contacted his hair, immediately turning those patches of it touching the ears to the same hue. And, when he'd opened his mouth to speak, Sal had also seen some clear, canine-like fangs sticking out among his teeth where there hadn't been any before.

"Oh..oh great. So, whatever this is, she set it up so that both of us wanted you to pet these," he said, pointing to an ear, "and whenever you do, it changes me more. Did it stop?" he asked quickly.
"Uh, yeah, as soon as I let go of your ears. But your hair's kinda, weird now."
"Weird how!?" Rogan pushed himself to his feet and almost tripped over the leggings of his pants, immediately drawing attention to his clothes hanging noticeably longer and also slightly looser across his body than before. He pulled them up and marched to the bathroom to take a look.

"Uh, sorry!" Sal called, still sitting on the couch. "I didn't know."
"It's fine, you didn't know," Rogan echoed, and then loudly sighed, walking back to the living room.

"I guess whatever's gonna happen to me is probably inevitable," he said, crossing his arms. "But..I still want to delay it as much as I can."
"I guess that's understandable," Sal said, but looked rather sad about it anyway. It was true that the feeling of those fingers on his ears had been rather blissful in the brief moment it had existed, and evidently the feeling was mutual.

"Look, I'll..let you do it again tomorrow," Rogan said. "I just, want to stay as normal as I can for now.."
"That's fine. You're okay to drive, right?" Sal said, hopping up off the couch and heading toward his front door. "You, might want to adjust the seat and mirrors and stuff after that."
"Yeah, I will," he nodded.

Unfortunately, just having Sal stop petting him wasn't enough to entirely prevent Rogan's transformation from continuing. The strange tingling he'd felt around the base of his spine seemed to return as he drove home, and then grew stronger after he'd walked inside. It progressed into a faint sort of pushing/tingling feeling, and when he eventually took a look, he found a small stub of bright blue fur coming from his lower back as the source of the sensation: A tail. Besides that, the same shade, which had bled from his ears to some of his hair, steadily spread out over the course of the evening, until only the tips of his hair retained their original color.

By that time he was going to bed, the tail had grown to half the length of an arm and begun to move around on its own—similar to the ears, but to the purpose of helping him balance and walk instead of hear. He fully expected the tail to gain its full length, and the rest of his hair to change, before he awoke the following morning...but he desperately hoped that was all that was going to happen for now.

As he lay in bed trying to sleep, Rogan realized that they hadn't applied the logic used to explain his sudden growth of fox ears on Sal's condition. Long hair, slim body...cute face? That had to mean...but no, he couldn't believe it. He refused.

Sal took a moment to measure his height after Rogan left and make a record of it, checking it occasionally as the evening went on. In this way he confirmed for himself that it didn't change throughout that whole time—and yet his clothes gradually fell looser across his body anyway. As he was close to getting ready for bed, he decided to take a good look at himself with his shirt off to try and figure out why, and then it was fairly obvious.

His shoulders had narrowed considerably, his waist not only flat now but trimmed in a bit at the sides. His arms and legs were even slimmer than before, taking on effeminate proportions, and even his hands and his feet were smaller. Really looking at his own face now, Sal realized that its features had subtly changed: The hair was gone from it, for one thing, but the skin there and all the way down the rest of his body had a decidedly softer, smoother, paler complexion too. And..it was smaller and rounder, rather...cute, with the way it was framed by his hair.

He tilted his head slightly at the altered face in the mirror, the long hair, the slim body. "I..kinda like this?" In the same vein as long, soft, white hair, he was really beginning to appreciate a sort of attractiveness to this look. He wasn't sure he'd ever really envied the way Rogan looked: Tall and buff and muscular and all that. And yet he had genuinely wanted to be attractive, even if it was in quite a different way. This other direction...seemed strangely promising to him now that he could see it in action.

After a bit more staring, brushing his smooth cheeks with his hands a bit and then teasing the long hair around a couple of times, he shrugged and continued on his way to bed, feeling no worry whatsoever about the trajectory of this change.

Rogan dreamed of Sal's hands. He dreamed of them rubbing his ears, maybe even stroking his growing tail. The desire to have that happen again, to chur with enjoyment and fully realize the potential of all that sensitive fur, seemed especially sharp and extreme in that dream, and lingered even after he woke up, now sporting bright blue hair, a long, fluffy tail in the same color, and—as he found when he looked in the mirror after he awoke—new eye colors. Yes, colors plural: Instead of their previous dull brown, his left eye was a brilliant red, and his right a deep blue, much darker than that of his hair but still fairly hard to mistake for any other hue.

Sal woke up several times throughout the night, which was rather unusual for him. He usually simply went to bed, fell asleep, and woke up to the morning. But tonight he seemed restless, helplessly tossing and turning. At first he wasn't sure why, but around the third or fourth time he awoke, he noticed a strange, tingly sensation down between his legs just in the process of fading off. Some...careful examination later found that his equipment down there was....considerably smaller than it had been before.
"Ah." He lay back on the pillow, contemplating this newly-discovered facet of Angela's gift to him. He...found it hard to be upset about this, or really feel much more than disappointment at himself for being at all surprised by it. Between all of the other, very obviously feminine, changes to his body, he really should've put it together before it came to the point of his sex trying to change itself.

As he came to accept what was happening, Sal found himself drifting off to sleep once again, even though he kind of wanted to know what it was going to feel like when things...really changed. But he got this wish anyway, waking up again an hour or two later to that tingling again. Only this time, it intensified as he gained consciousness rather than fading off, and began to be accompanied by an odd slipping, tugging feeling down there that made his heartbeat accelerate, his body and especially cheeks begin to feel rather warm.

"Oh...i-is this..?" He slowly sat up, pulling his thighs together. "Is this it..?" he mumbled softly, noticing that his voice was still exactly the same. It would..probably change later, he thought, and anyway there was something more important to pay attention to right now.
"Mmh—!" A somewhat sharper tug came through, and Sal squirmed in place a bit, slowly moving his hands down to touch his thighs. "Aa, aaaahh..!" It came on even stronger—it felt good—and he leaned his upper body downard, pressing his hands fairly hard into his thighs. "Oh, oooh man, thah, that's...mnnnnhh..!" Sal's manhood now melted away, what bit of masculine anticipation it had been capable of feeling seeming to flip straight over into feminine pleasure as new equipment formed into place.

"Ah, aaahhnNNnnnnn..." This noise sounded strange in a guy's voice, but Sal couldn't help it. The wonderful, pleasant, fuzzy feeling down between her legs that welcomed her to her new sex was irresistible and disarming. She let out a soft "Aah, aaah..!" in as high a pitch as her voice would go for a moment, then gasped and let it out in a slow, satisfied-yet-relieved "Ffffhhh.." as she slowly lifted herself upright again, picking her hands up off her legs and dropping them down her sides. "Aah, w-wooow.."

Suddenly feeling awfully tired, the new girl leaned back, falling with a soft thump back onto the bed, her head on the pillow. She panted softly for a minute or so, slowly closing her eyes, and then drifted off to sleep, beginning to imagine the kind of sexy voice and amazing figure she might eventually wind up blessed with if things kept going the way they were...as she was now very much hoping they would.

Rogan was most of the way through getting ready for the day's work—after examining the new changes to his body—when he got a text from Sal. He picked up his phone to glance, and received a second one before he'd read the first.

so uh

woke up female this morning

He blinked at the message a couple of times in disbelief, and received a third: anything new with you?

Instead of answering this question, Rogan asked one of his own: WHAT?!

Then: Are you okay?

perfectly fine, feels a little weird but not bad at all

He folded his foxlike ears down, feeling increasingly bad about this. Of course Agatha had decided to just magic his best friend into a girl to honor his request for a girlfriend! Why go looking for someone compatible when you can do something easy like that instead?

thinking about asking off from work today, Sal sent him.

It hadn't even occurred to Rogan to do that before this very moment, but he replied: me too

Somewhat to her disappointment, Sal's body hadn't changed much after becoming female. She still had very androgynous proportions, a boy's voice...but her eyes had changed now. They had taken on an almost magical-looking, bright purple color that she felt complemented her cute face and long, brilliant white hair perfectly. She couldn't discount the possibility that Agatha's magic had messed with her mind, making her want to be a girl and now a curvy one—especially as she noticed herself taking on more feminine mannerisms from the moment she woke up and giggled softly at the texts she sent Rogan and his replies—but it all felt really good, and she didn't feel not like herself either, so it was kind of difficult to say.

you want to come over was what she typed first, but then she thought about it. Rogan...she kind of wanted to wait until she had some curves to show off to him first. It was a weird thing to think about, but suddenly being female really brought into focus for her how attractive of a guy he was. Of course, there was also the lingering, if not strengthened, urge to pet those ears some more, but...anyway, she added the word 'later' to the text before sending it.

After a pause that seemed long enough to hold some serious consideration, he replied, Sure, maybe this afternoon.

Rogan's job didn't afford him very many days off, but there were more sick days. He'd called in with a fake cough and pretended to be sick before, so he did the same thing now, with about equal success. He got the sense that the person on the other line maybe knew he was faking it, but also wasn't being paid enough to care. She assured him she would find someone to cover his shift, advised him to get lots of rest and get better soon, and that was it: He was free for the day. And...the first thing he was going to do with that freedom, was get out of his work clothes and into something much more casual and comfortable.

Sal quietly urged her body to hurry up and change some more as she got up, filled out the online form for taking a sick day, showered, and had breakfast. She occasionally made quiet "Aah" sounds to try and test her voice, but heard no obvious change by the time she was through eating. However, she did notice occasional moments of discomfort that made her wriggle around in her seat, and a careful examination after standing up to take the dishes to the sink found her hips and bottom decidedly more plump than before. Her thighs also seemed to be in on the action, looking a little thicker than before—especially when compared to slenderness of the rest of her legs. Given her recent shrinking of height and frame, and present expectation of more changes to come, she'd only put on her longest t-shirt, a pair of boxers, and some socks—to keep the cold floor from bothering her feet—so it was easy enough to see changes without even going to a mirror.

To her delight, her voice started to change not long after that. It was subtle, but her range pulled upward just slightly, and the masculinity ebbed slowly out over the course of an hour or so until her voice, despite being fairly deep still, was a decidedly womanly alto instead of anything remotely boyish. At the same time, her hips and thighs continued to grow, steadily plumping and thickening until she had a very satisfying curve coming down from her waist to her upper legs. Tracing a hand down along that in front of her bathroom mirror, she grinned and blushed, giggling softly, noticing that her waist had also slimmed a bit more too, accentuating that curve yet more.

It was true that Sal found herself wanting to be a beautiful woman, basically entirely for herself. But, simultaneous to that desire, and seemingly parallel to her still-standing urge to pet Rogan's fluffy foxlike ears again, she was...sort of looking forward to impressing him with it? It was a silly thing to think about, of course, considering that her appearance was increasingly not her own doing at all, but she still wanted to see him blush at how pretty she was. She took a moment in front of that mirror to pick up a brush and try to tame her hair a bit, and even though this wasn't an entirely successful endeavor she figured the remaining bits of wildness to it were an enhancement rather than detriment to her cuteness. Now there was basically just one major change lacking, she thought, and anticipated it just as eagerly as she had the others.

Rogan wasn't sure how he felt about any further changes might come. He argued with himself over whether he dreaded or anticipated them, whether he wanted to get things over with, or wanted to see what would happen, or just wanted things to stop here and leave him like he was. It all seemed to be academic, however, as his every glance in the mirror since waking up that morning found him looking just the same: A little shorter than he was used to, sky-blue hair and fur, the odd red-and-blue eyes, and of course the ears and tail and fangs.
When he thought about those last few features, his mind immediately jumped to the experience of Sal petting his ears and he had to bite back an instinctive-feeling desire to get him..her now, to do it again. This was something that felt especially inevitable, and he was really beginning to suspect that it would be a catalyst for his body changing even more when it happened.

He was also imagining Sal's gorgeous, long, white hair, framing that adorable face. He had no idea what his friend's body looked like now that he was a girl, but those traits were likely to still be there. He shook his head, annoyed and even a little disgusted at himself. Agatha had put them in this position because he wanted a girlfriend, or at least a steady date, and it wasn't fair at all to Sal to just..give in to it. He would've been fine with a solution that didn't involve coercing or changing anyone like this, and he wondered if it was a subtle message from her that she thought he was just undateable or something.

As the day wore on, all the way to lunchtime, Rogan's urge to have his ears..maybe even that tail pet by his friend became stronger and stronger. He tried running his own hands across both periodically to quell it with only partial success. After habitually drinking for years and never really becoming an alcoholic, he had to wonder if this was what a real addiction was like..absurd as its target of desire was. He denied himself for as long as it took him to make and eat lunch—because then, at least, it would be afternoon as agreed—and then he sent a text asking whether he could come over. It took some serious restraint not to run out to the car before sending it, or before receiving a positive reply.

Sal's chest changed about as slowly as everything else had. One moment she was sitting playing video games, and the next she moved a certain way and felt a soft, high gasp come through her lips at a sudden sensitivity of her nipples. A bit of careful examination found them taller and wider than before, and within a few minutes there were small, soft bumps rising up from behind them. She had to move a little more carefully as she played, and of course the mere knowledge that she was growing now was pretty distracting itself!

She took a break thirty minutes after they started to grow to prod them, finding them still fairly sensitive. Her face flushed warm when she held her hands against the just-budded breasts, finding them pliant to being pressed gently inward by her palms. "Heheh..ooh man, this is ridiculous," she said. "I guess I've had a certain obsession with boobs since puberty, so maybe getting my own pair's just a logical conclusion?"

Maybe it was a stretch to call any of what was happening to the two of them logical, but..Sal was okay with that. If it felt good, if they both enjoyed it..that was good enough. She had always wanted to be happy, and for Rogan to be happy too. Even if that happiness took on a bizarre dimension thanks to Agatha, she couldn't really be upset—if anything, gratitude was the most dominant emotion.

She paused after another half an hour, finding the peaks rising up under her shirt to be pretty unmissable now, maybe about average size for girls her present height, and decided to try and look up how bra sizing worked. Sal had always had the vague impression that the cup letter indicated the size, like maybe her present size was a B and she was hoping for D or better, but it turned out to be substantially more complicated than that. Feeling that she was going to need some good, properly-fitting support if she got what she wanted, it was easier than expected to distract herself in some careful research on the topic. Nonetheless, she periodically placed her hands across the steadily blooming breasts, squishing them in or toward each other, and always blushed, sometimes giggled, at the feelings this produced. She was also starting to imagine how they'd feel pressed against somebody else's chest...a very specific somebody, in fact. Seeing him blush was maybe half of the appeal of the idea!

When she got hungry, Sal put her computer aside and got on her feet, feeling a certain satisfaction at the way the new assets bounced in response to this motion. They were almost as big as she could hope for now, two large globes for the loose, oversized shirt to hang over, emphasizing her womanhood in direct contrast to her presently very tomboyish clothes—or maybe even more so because of them than in spite of them. It was the last bit she needed to complete a generous hourglass figure, and she hummed happily to herself in satisfaction at her new look as she quickly got something to eat.

Rogan rang the doorbell and waited, wondering what he would see and trying to drive back the idea of immediately begging for his ears to be pet out of his mind. A deep, sexy woman's voice called "Coming~," and after a moment it opened to a sight he wasn't sure he could've imagined.

"Hi~!" Sal grinned pleasantly up at him, her face slightly red. She was...gorgeous. Her face and hair were just as pretty and cute as he remembered, aside from a change in eye color and that blush; she was wearing one of her shirts and a pair of dark socks, which both did little to hide her ridiculous, curvy figure and especially showed off some long, shapely legs with soft, smooth skin. The way her shirt hung down over a shoulder and teasingly showed part of her neckline, plus how it draped over an enormous pair of breasts, falling too loosely around her waist to show any of it, before hugging a pair of generously wide hips, was all impossibly sexy. Rogan was struck speechless, and he could feel his face warm with a blush, his ears lowering and his tail wagging, swishing steadily back and forth behind him.

"Uh, sooo, what do you think?" she asked. The answer to that was fairly obvious, but she wanted to hear it anyway.

"You're uh, really beautiful. I-I mean uh..wow."
"Heheh," she giggled softly. "Thanks. Uhmm, I mean not that I did anything to make this happen, but...it feels good hearing it anyway." Her voice dipped as low as it could go on this last part, which visibly made him blush a bit deeper. Having that effect on anyone—but somehow, especially on him—was exciting!

It took a long moment for Rogan to gather enough brain cells to quit staring and remember what was important—what needed to be said. "B-but! Uh. Look..um. We should..talk? Inside, maybe?"
"Yeah, okay," she said, opening the door and moving out of the way. "So, uh, guess you got a tail to match the ears, huh? It's seriously cute."

"Um, thanks I guess? No, I mean...it, feels kind of weird...but I'm already getting used to it, too," he said, slowly shutting the door.
"I totally know what you mean, trust me!" Sal said, gesturing vaguely at her own appearance. "Feel like I should be upset or at least more shocked about this, but it's felt more natural by the minute since I, you know, went female."

"Uh, y-yeah—that's, what I should talk about. You..remember what I told Agatha I wanted, right?"
"Sure. A hot date or a better job, right?"

"That's right," he nodded. "So—after I went home last night I realized, if she fulfilled your wish by making me part fox, then uh.."

"I'm not in any position to offer you a job," she said, crossing her arms. Rogan folded his ears back and shook his head. "Hahah, dude I'm just messing with ya!" she said. "I get it, you think she set me up to be the hot date. Honestly, I don't mind."
"You, don't."
"Nah," she put up her arms. "I mean, a date isn't a huge commitment or anything. We already know we like each other as friends, and coming off of being a girl for like half a day so far? You are really cute."

"Uhh." He blushed even brighter than ever before, but tried to keep the conversation on-track. "You're not, worried Agatha just made you feel that way?"
"I still feel like me," Sal argued, shrugging. "If you notice any signs of mind control, then I guess you can point it out, but I think the only thing that really stands out is the urge to pet you—which is, waay stronger than it was yesterday, by the way."
"Yeah...s-same here....but I think it might, change me more...if you do," he said slowly, failing to fight the urge to take small steps closer to her, one by one, as he spoke.
"Well, maybe the urge will go away if we do it? And get it all over with? I feel like she'll be happy to take back any changes we absolutely hate." Seeing him approach this way, Sal grinned invitingly before gliding over to her couch, sitting on the nearest seat and waving for him to come, holding her arms open for him.

The combination of his pent-up urge to be pet, Sal's newfound, unimaginable beauty, and now this open invitation completely broke Rogan's remaining resistance. He slowly shuffled over, taking off his shoes, and let himself down into her arms, letting her hold him in a close hug and slowly returning that embrace.

"Well, here we go," Sal said softly, and got back a quiet "mmh" in response. This wasn't an objection, so she brought her hands up and began to gently brush her slim, delicate fingers through the soft fur of Rogan's ears again. He flinched from the intense sensitivity he felt to this touch, but didn't draw away or try to stop her, instead leaning in slowly closer, even as he felt a faint tingling starting to wash across his body.

"M-mrrhh.." Rogan began to let out a soft, low churring of enjoyment again, and Sal could see his hair beginning to grow longer as his face drew closer to hers. His facial hair was vanishing away too, steadily thinning and shortening until it left his face—now framed by long, bright blue hair—visibly soft and smooth.

She let out a soft, high "Aah!" as his nose contacted her cheek and he began to nuzzle her in appreciation. She kept on rubbing his ears with her left hand, going back and forth from one to the other, but used the other one to move off of his ears and down through his hair. It was definitely a little longer in the back, and when her hand reached the edge of it it seemed to tease it out a few inches more, so that when she brought the hand back up and brushed down again there was even more to feel. Besides the length, his hair was just as soft and nice to touch as hers was, and running a hand down it like this was making him shiver just a bit. And his face was warm and bright with a blush, and she could feel his heart racing in his chest pressed right against her generous pair of breasts.

Rogan could feel Sal's hand running down his hair, seeming to pull it out longer and longer; he could feel the smoothness of their faces against each other. And, he could feel a slight pressure across his whole body, beginning to shrink it down once again. It was slow at first, so slow that the gorgeous girl holding on to him probably didn't even notice, but as he continued to nuzzle her, his tail whipping back and forth behind him in a happy, eager wag, he could feel himself getting shorter, slimmer, narrower, his clothes all falling looser and looser around him. As his arms grew shorter and thinner, his hands smaller, he found himself pulling close against the white-haired woman, seeming to find more room to pull closer into in the wake of his own body's loss of size. And his brain was too frazzled between strange, newfound instincts and the enjoyment of Sal's body holding so close to his to fully register what was very obviously happening, much less worry about it...

Sal realized he was shrinking, and then noticed the soft churring in his throat was changing pitch, too. It was pulling higher and higher, and by the time his height sank down to about where it matched hers, it had shifted register into a tenor or higher. It felt..curiously nice, his hair now trailing almost as far down as the base of that tail and his body feeling slim and soft in her arms, but she knew...if things kept going this way, she might not get another chance! So, she moved her left hand to the back of his head, leaned her head back just enough to make room, and quickly pulled him close, planting her lips directly on his in a kiss.

"Mmh!" Rogan's eyes, closed from the moment he'd started nuzzling her, popped open wide in surprise at this. But he didn't pull away, instead beginning to return the kiss as she made it more aggressive and passionate. "Mm, mm~mh.." He was still shrinking, if a bit more slowly, and his voice lilted higher in his throat. There was a..weird tingling, slipping sensation down between his legs, right where his body was 'enjoying' this kiss the most.

"Mmm~mmMMnnnh.." Sal let her eyes flutter shut, and she rubbed his ears a bit with her right hand, squirming a bit in place as his reciprocation gave her a brief but intense burst of feminine pleasure. She knew it wouldn't be long before he could feel something like that too, and eagerly anticipated sharing such a wonderful sensation with her friend, but...hopefully Agatha could arrange things so they could still do this again too.

The white-haired girl ended the kiss with an audible smack, leaving both of them panting heavily for air. Rogan's first gasp of breath afterward came out in a boyish "Aaa~aaahhh..!" As his height pulled down another inch or two, his body growing ever so slender and slight, with a narrow frame, slim arms and legs, and a small, round, adorably girlish face.

"Aa~ah..rrfh, mm~mnrrfh..!" His voice changed still more, his body squirming around in Sal's arms, quickly pushing toward a high, girlish soprano as his manhood began to fully melt away. He could feel it getting more and more difficult to even think of himself as male, with how small and cute his body was and his voice sounded.

Sal felt some disappointment that he, too, was changing sexes now, but a simultaneous burst of excitement. He was so cute, with such a pretty face and amazing hair! The ears and tail were adorable, too! So what showed on her face was a big grin and a bright blush as she held on tight.

"W-waa~aaahhh..!" A cute, breathy sound came out as Rogan's manhood disappeared entirely, and everything rapidly rearranged itself down there. "Rr~rfh..! Oh, oo~oooh..." She squirmed, feeling a wonderful, deep, fuzzy sensation down there as things settled into place, and almost instantly her hips and thighs pressed out, giving her a modest but very present figure down there—and her chest puffed forward with a soft pushing sensation, growing into a small but undeniable pair of breasts squishing directly against Sal's enormous globes.

A deep, womanly "Mm~MMmnnhh..!" replied back. Sal felt surprisingly good with the change suddenly finished, leaving a small, cute fox-girl in her arms. It seemed to..awaken or spark a new change for her own body too, which manifested first as a strange sensation from her lower back, around the base of her spine. "O-oh? Mnh, mnnrrr~rrrhh.." As she hurried to pull the adorable, blue-haired girl close and start petting her ears again, the sound from her throat changed to a deep, sexy churring noise as she felt a slight shift in her mouth, the feeling from her back progressing into a tingling, pushing sensation as a thick, fluffy white tail made its way out from there.

And then...! "Mrr—rrfh!" Sal's right ear felt like it was stretching, then suddenly popping out all at once into a huge, tall triangle of snowy white fur. Another high-pitched "Rrfh!" came out in response to her left ear doing the same, completing her own change into a fox-girl just like Rogan had become. Well—she thought, holding the small girl close and starting to nuzzle her, drawing the new tail up to curl around Rogan's—not exactly the same, with all the size differences taken into account. But similar enough for her to enjoy the sensation of Rogan's suddenly small, delicate fingers playing across her own ears, and for her to join the smaller girl in a chorus of pleased, vulpine churring as they both gave in to their newfound animal instincts for a little while.

As the petting continued, there was a steady shuffling around of their clothes as they, too, changed. Rogan's pants crawled down her legs and then off of them entirely, falling audibly to the floor, and her now quite oversized shirt steadily shrank smaller and smaller against her slender frame, its sleeves lenghtening until they began threatening to swallow her wrists. Soon it became a dress just barely long enough to cover her hips—leaving her long, slim, soft legs totally exposed. Sal's shirt pulled tighter too, its sleeves detaching to expose her shoulders instead, and her socks grew longer, softer, and thinner, pulling all the way up to her lower thighs as a pair of tight black leggings that gently rubbed across Rogan's bare legs as they both continued to fidget and wriggle around.

It took a while for them to finally come out of it, in the form of Rogan letting go of the other girl's ears but not the hug, pulling her face back enough to look Sal in the eyes. "Mrnngh..w-wah..why'd I turn into a girl too!?" she said almost as soon as she had some command of her own mind back. "Neither of us, w-wished for that!"

"Uhh, I dunno—I did ask whether wishing for a cute girlfriend was an option," Sal pointed out. "Maybe she figured this was 'fair'? Annd, me being a foxgirl too?"

Rogan replied with a slightly annoyed "Mmh."
"Well, I like it, anyway! Look how keey-uute you are~!" she said, grinning brightly.

Rogan felt her face warm again with a blush at this compliment, but frowned, folding her ears down slightly. "I can't, I'm still trapped in a bear hug."
"Pffheheh! More like a fox hug, right? Anyway," she said, running a hand through the other girl's bright blue hair, "You can't tell me you've never wanted a girl to hold you like this."
The touch, and Sal's voice going deep and sexy again when she said that, made Rogan blush, feeling the nice, fuzzy tingles down below again. "Mrrrngh." She frowned cutely, both loving and hating that Sal was now able to do this to her basically at will. "I'd still really like a look in a mirror, though."
"Okay, okay." Sal loosened her grip enough for the smaller girl to get loose and hop down to the floor. Her pants had turned into a pair of light-colored tights since falling there, which after a brief glance to see them she decided not to put on, instead continuing on to Sal's bathroom to get a look at herself.

On the way, it was hard not to notice how much bigger everything was. Losing so much height at once was something of a shock, and it was especially surreal to see Sal—who came up behind her as she examined her reflection—being the taller one by a wide margin, even after her own bout of shrinking. She could also feel a drastic difference in just how her body walked, the wider hips swaying around, the ultra-long hair blowing around through the air around and behind her. Rogan..couldn't bring herself to hate it, though—any of it. Now that she'd gotten to really experience Sal's embrace, her petting of those bright blue ears, that..fluffy, warm white tail against her own—she could only blush at the taller girl grinning back at her in the mirror.

"Uh, s-so...girls, have it pretty good, huh?" Rogan asked, slowly turning around to face her.
"We really do," Sal said, her tail-wagging going into overdrive. "My bed's probably comfier than the chair, if you wanna double check?"

The shorter fox-girl couldn't do much but sigh at her own helplessness and nod, taking Sal's hand in her own. "Come on..."

They lay together, holding and petting each other, for at least twice as long as before. The more familiar each fox-girl became with her own body, and with the other's, the happier she became with their new situation. Then, feeling fully satisfied for the moment, they slowly pulled apart.

"So, now what do we do? Wait for her to show up and wave this in our faces?" Rogan said. "I, don't see how this is supposed to help me get a better job at all."
"Well, uh, none of my clothes really fit now, besides this one magically-transformed outfit," Sal said, tugging at her skirt. "Bet yours don't either. You wanna go shopping with me?"

"..Okay."

---

Rogan learned something new the first time she pulled up her dress top to change clothes and saw her upper body in the mirror: For as small, slender and girly as she looked, she still sported quite some muscle, with some decently toned arms and legs and even a six-pack on that slim belly of hers. Come to think of it, she didn't actually feel any weaker, just...very much smaller and, softer, for lack of a better word.

Sal insisted on getting them both undergarments first, for reasons anyone could guess the instant they saw her walking around with those enormous globes on her chest. After that, she started trying on almost exclusively girly clothes: Dresses, skirts, and so on. Every time, she asked the smaller girl what she thought of it, spinning around a bit to display all sides, and then announced her decision on whether to buy it or not before Rogan could verbally answer.

Rogan, on the other hand, was after tomboyish clothes, starting with boyshorts for her undergarments. T-shirts, shorts and pants featured prominently, as well as tank tops. It wasn't just practicality she was after; she often chose clothes in dark tones, several with chains or built-in rips, thinking to somewhat recapture the sort of fashion she used to wear in high school. For every single outfit, the bigger fox-girl only had one word to introduce her opinion of it: "Cute." And, every time, Rogan couldn't help but frown and fold her ears back adorably, blushing in appreciation for the compliment at the same time.

"What d'you think of this outfit, huh?" Sal said, showing off some daisy dukes and a top that was sort of like a normal, cream-colored t-shirt, except that its sleeves had been intentionally torn off and it was a few inches too short to entirely hide her midriff. "..Yep, this one's a keeper."
"Why d'you keep doing that?!" Rogan finally demanded. "Do you want my opinion or not?"
"What, duude, you didn't figure it out yet?" Sal giggled. "I just wanna check how red your face gets looking at it. This one's only a little above average, but I do want a few bottoms that aren't skirts. What about you, you run out of things to try?"

Rogan was currently wearing her latest purchase, a pair of short black jean-shorts and a black tank top with a white skull on it. "No, I ran out of budget," she said, folding her ears back. "You don't make that much more than me, either—how're you paying for all this stuff?"
Sal shrugged. "Credit card. Maybe we can guilt miss fae into spotting us some cash for this too, since it's totally her fault. Anyway, you're supposed to land a high-paying job, so what're you worried about?"
The blue-haired fox-girl put her hands on her hips. "The fact that I haven't yet."

"Well, whatever, I'll put it on my credit then! Try on something else!"
"Fiiiine..." Rogan made her face and voice seem unhappy at the prospect, but she couldn't really fool her friend—her tail was wagging, after all.

They entered another store a few minutes later, and had started toward the racks when both of their vulpine ears picked up hurried footsteps in their direction. Both turned around to find a guy in a suit approaching: Tall, on the thin side, pitch-black slicked back hair, wolf ears and a slim tail in the same color, bright red eyes. "Hey, 'scuse me—miss? With the blue fur?"
Rogan crossed her arms. "What, me?"
"Yes! Where on Earth did you come from?!"

"Uhh." She folded her ears back, uncertain just how to take this question.
"Oh, excuse me," he said. "I, should introduce myself first. Name's Jackson," he pulled a business card from a shirt pocket, offering it at her. "I'm a model scout with Black Fang, been interviewing people for the last two weeks seeking someone to wear our brands?" She took the card and examined it briefly, nominally confirming this claim. "We cater exclusively to ahh, tailed folks, like ourselves," he said. "I haven't been able to find anyone with a build like yours in all this time, and here you just wander into our store! But, ah, excuse me, jumping you out of the blue like this must be more irritating than ingratiating."

"..A little," Rogan crossed her arms, looking up at him seriously. "But, I'm listening. I mean—I'm not really 'trained' as a model or anything, but if you're that desperate..."
"Oh, there isn't really that much to it," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "You put on our clothes for some professional shots, and preferably be seen in them otherwise, though not exclusively or anything. The way we do it, it's practically a part-time job—but pays much better than one, of course. Besides your build, I must say your sense of fashion clearly complements our line of products—might not've even noticed you coming in otherwise.

"..Anyway, sorry for ambushing you like that, but—just gimme a text or call if you're interested!" he said, making a 'call me' gesture with his hand. "I'll keep an interview spot open for you."

"Sure," she said, "Thanks."
"Thanks're all mine!" he said, waving and hurrying off.

Rogan gestured for Sal to follow her once he was turned away from them, and led her close to the opposite wall of the store—seeing the wolf-man take up a post behind the counter with the checkers, though not taking on that task himself. "What do you think? Is this some kinda trap?"
"I dunno," Sal shrugged. "You got his card, some research should say if he's legit. Maybe this is Agatha's doing?"
"How? She'd have no idea we'd walk into this store specifically."
"You could always ask him if he's ever met someone who looks like her. Or we could ask her later, I guess.

"Sooo, are you gonna go in for an interview? If he's for real?"
"..If I get an offer, and the pay's good enough," Rogan said.

---

The two of them hadn't seen Agatha in a week and a half or so—not since the night she first "blessed" them, causing all of the changes. She hadn't answered her phone either, but then they hadn't tried but a few times. They went back to the restaurant they'd last seen her—not to look for her, of course, but to celebrate Rogan's first paycheck from Black Fang and the end of her time at her old job. She'd even insisted on treating them both.

Sal watched the blue-haired girl taking a deep drag of beer. "You know your body mass affects how much you can handle, right?"
"Aah, shaddup. I'm celebrating! And you're driving us back anyway."

"So you're testing your new limits, or what?"
"So what if I am?"

The white-haired woman shrugged. "I guess I finally get to find out if you're a funny drunk."

"Hello there, ladies~." Both of them turned around to the source of the voice, who neither of them—despite the fox ears—had heard walking up to the position it was coming from. "Mind if I join you?"

Both of them identified her at once: "Agatha!" The fae was looking about the same as usual, characteristically over-dressed and everything.

"Pull u—pull over a. Sit here!" Rogan finally concluded, waving at a chair to her right. "Where've you been, huh?!" Sal was too busy giggling at all the verbal stumbling to interject.

"Here and there. Not in this world, mostly," she said, coming to take the offered seat. "How do you like your new look, Sal?"
"Pretty sweet."
"And the new job?" she asked the smaller fox-girl.
"Are you seriously taking credit for that? I mean—yeah, I wouldn't have it if I didn't look like this, but.."
"I only asked you how you like it."
"Eh." She shrugged. "Too soon to say, but no complaints yet. Pay's pretty good, and they say they can hook me up with some work with their partner companies for extra, too."

"Well then..no complaints overall, I guess?"
"Nah," Rogan said. "I mean—being a, small girl was weird, at first, but I'm already pretty used to it. I guess uh, I kinda like it. I thought I'd hate being part-furry too, buuut..." She trailed off, blushing, rather than continuing this thought.
"Aaactually," Sal said, "It'd nice if she could be a guy? You know, sometimes? When she wants?"
"I could arrange something for you," Agatha said, smiling knowingly.

"Sweet!

"Hey, are you staying for dinner? It's Rogan's treat~," Sal added.
"If it's not overboard or anything," the smaller fox-girl corrected quickly.

Agatha chuckled. "Heard a thing or two about making offers to fae, I guess? Not to worry, I'll pay for myself. My wealth eclipses yours by a fair bit, after all."
"...Then why don't you ever buy for us?!" Rogan demanded. "Are we friends or what?!"
"Doown, girl," Sal said, putting a hand on her head. "She just got through giving us something way better than cash, right? Sorry, just the alcohol talking I think," she added to the fae. Rogan's ears folded down and she crossed her arms, blushing, but she didn't speak to the contrary.
"It's quite alright. Perhaps I will sometime," Agatha said.

The following morning, a package showed up in the mail at Rogan's home—where both of them had spent the night. It was a special order from some online alchemy shop, a vial of swirling pink-and-blue potion. There were none of the usual labels or booklets included indicating what the potion's name or purpose was, only a handwritten note in a fancy, cursive script that said: You know what this is. Enjoy! -A. They tried it that night, and Rogan gained a new, male form which she could change to and from at will. The new fox-boy form still had long, bright blue hair and multicolored eyes, and was only a few inches taller than Sal—decidedly on the short and slim side for a guy. But ultimately..neither of them had any complaints!