Katherine Sato sipped at her styrofoam cup, the hot cocoa’s steam warming her muzzle. She blocked out the lobby of First Federal; the rows of tellers and lines of patrons; the obsidian floor, and the high glass windows that looked out on snow-covered skyscrapers. There was only her, and her wet coat and cold desk, and the delicious warm drink in her claws.

She winced, and squirmed in her seat, trying to get her tails comfortable again. They were still sore from where she had fallen on them. And they were dirty and wet, and the back of her coat was dirty and wet, and her hair was all dirty and wet too. At least her side desk faced out into the lobby, so that no one would notice. But she noticed, and it grated on her like her unpaid credit card bills, and her boyfriend’s unbought Christmas gift.

She found her claws digging into the styrofoam, and forced herself to relax. Zen, she thought. Clear mind. Nothing in the world except cocoa. Nothing in the world but expensive, overpriced-

She sipped a little too deeply, and started breathing through her muzzle trying to cool off her burning tongue. Good cocoa, she thought, and fanned cool air onto her tongue. Very good.

Stupid Kath.

Something made her tails twitch and her ears perk, and she looked up to see an unusual presence enter the building. It wavered like it was out of focus, and she shifted gears back and forth with her mind to look at both sides of it, like she would have at one of those books with the 3d illusions. One side was a young man in a business suit, clean and executive looking. The other side was a Kitsune like her, with brilliant white fur that had a golden sheen. But he only had one tail, and his clothes — his real clothes — looked old and cheap. A worn out jacket covered a thin t-shirt, and a pair of jeans that went down over his shoes.

Kath raised her eyebrows, watching him from across the lobby without his noticing her, and wondered what kind of prank he was trying to pull. She remembered her older Kitsune brothers’ dumb antics back home in Vancouver, and the thought of someone like them trying to pull something at First Federal made her grin with anticipation. Go ahead, she thought. Bring it on. We’ll see who has the last laugh — the foolish young fox or the corporate behemoth.

Over the next few minutes, she kept glancing up from her paperwork to see how far he had gotten in line. A fox scent drifted towards her, on the cold air blown in by the doorway, and she detected a hint of forced confidence, overlaying an intense nervousness. She began to sweat as she realized that, because it made her recall her Becoming, and she didn’t want to remember it. Or how scared she had been, or how much her brothers had tormented her.

Her conscience began chiding her, and as always it had her mother’s thickly accented voice. "He is scared young man who has first Become, and you are just to ignoring him? You should getting up, going over there, saying hello to him. Those papers will still being there when you are to getting back." She imagined her mother’s tails fluffed out, as she folded her arms in a huff.

Not NOW, Mother, Katherine thought, and made herself focus on work. But her mind kept drifting off. Was he really trying to prank them, she wondered, or just trying on a persona? Did he have any foxes in his family? Had anyone explained to him what had happened?

A few minutes passed, a few frustrating minutes spent writing reports in Microsoft Word. Then something loomed over the flat panel display on her desk, and she looked up to see the other fox. He was projecting a sheen of businesslike confidence, so strongly that she could only see the young man in the suit coat.

His eyes flicked down to the nameplate on her desk. "Hello, Miss Sato." He smiled at her.

His persona was strong, but felt so fake that it was off-putting. Just like most of the real execs I know, Kath thought. She vanished her own persona for him, letting him see her fox muzzle and three bushy tails, and relished the look of shock on his face. His persona flickered a moment, and past him Kath saw someone in line staring at his fox tail.

To his credit, the young fox recovered quickly. "Do they, uh … " His eyes flicked to the side, and when he looked back down at her he seemed sheepish. "Do they hire a lot of Kitsune here?" He grinned nervously.

"Oh yeah," she said, and typed something into her report. "Lots. We’re just all over the place here." She looked up at him. "Can I help you?"

"Well I, uh … " He coughed, and pulled up a chair to her desk. "I was told you had a job for me," he said, and sounded like he was trying to be professional.

"Ah, yes," Kath deadpanned, still typing and looking away from him. "Can I see your resume?"

He got something out of his briefcase, and slid it across the glass desk towards her. She took it and glanced at it for a second. High school graduate, Microsoft Office experience, last position held two years ago. Unhireable. No wonder he was trying so hard to fit in.

"I’ll make sure my boss sees it," she lied, and put it into a drawer without looking. "If you like, you can take a card," she said, and waved a hand at her business card holder.

He took one, and sat there looking at it for a long moment. Kath’s face started to burn, as she realized that he wasn’t going away that easily.

"Can I ask you a question?" he finally said.

"Make it quick," she told him.

"How’d you get hired on, here?"

And Kath knew what he meant. He had just Become, after all; he had discovered his powers all on his own, and the world seemed like a new place to him. Kath remembered flying for the first time, and thinking her brothers could never find her up there. She remembered trying on new personas, and grinning at herself in the mirror, and discreetly playing with foxfire, careful not to burn anything important.

But she also remembered the shock of discovering that her brothers were Kitsune too, and that now that she knew they had no end of ways to torment her. She remembered how quickly her elation and self-confidence had worn off, and how the Monday after that weekend had been just another school day, and how her friends hadn’t even been able to tell that there was anything different about her.

She remembered her teenage years, and how irrelevant it had been that she was a mythical creature. Because nobody had liked her, and nothing could make up for that.

Kath remembered all this as she looked over at him, narrowly considering the naive young fox. And she knew that someone would have to burst his bubble, and that it’d be better done sooner than later.

"Fine," Kath said. "You want to know how I got this job?" She stood up, and indicated herself from the neck down. "This is how I got this job."

The young fox’s face turned red, and he looked away.

"I know what you’re thinking," she said, her own face reddened, and folded her arms as she spoke. "You’re thinking ‘Oh, I’m a Kitsune now, the world is magic! My every dream can be fulfilled! I’m going to go in and get a job at the bank, even though I haven’t held a position in two flipping years.‘" She gave him a scornful look. "You think anything can make up for that? Or for your lack of a degree?"

He had clasped his hands in his lap as she spoke, and was looking down at them now. "But … " He looked up at her. "Isn’t the world a magical place?"

"Yes." She sat back down. "And you know what the magical force that drives this world is? Money. That’s why you are applying to work at a bank, and not at a dumb charity."

"But … " And now all she could see was his real side, his fox side, sitting in a chair that cost more than his worn-out clothes did. "Today I … I discovered that I can become anyone that I want to. And I flew. I flew under my own power! Does all that count for nothing?" He gave her a pleading look, and his voice cracked as he spoke.

"Have you tried foxfire yet?" she asked, abruptly.

"Fox … fire? No," he said, twisting his face as he tried to think.

Kath held out her hand, and a flame the size of a cigarette lighter’s appeared in between her fingers. "This is foxfire. See? There it is," she said, and idly played with the flame for a moment, a bored look on her face.

He held out his hand and concentrated on it, but failed to produce a spark.

"Know what it’s good for?"

He looked up at her, his eyes daring to hope.

"Setting off the sprinkler system, and lighting cigarettes. That’s it." She snapped her fingers together, and snuffed out the flame. Along with his hopes.

He looked shocked and hurt, and Kath found that she didn’t enjoy that look on his face as much as she’d thought she would. She glanced back over at her display, and hoped that he would leave soon.

The corners of his eyes moistened, and his face twitched as he fought to maintain his composure. "I’ll show you," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I’ll show you what Kitsune powers can do. I’ll imagine myself as the brightest, most successful college student ever. I’ll get the financial aid that I need. I’ll ace every test, and I’ll get that stupid degree, and I’ll come right back here and shove it in your face." He glared at her, his eyes wet. "And then I’ll rise to the top! I’ll-"

"Want to know a secret?" Kath asked, her hands clasped underneath her chin and her elbows leaning on the top of her desk.

He stopped, and gave her a confused look.

She beckoned him closer. As he leaned over the table towards her, she pointed out into the lobby, and he looked where her fingers were pointing. "See that lady right there?"

"The, uh, African-American one? In the red suitcoat?"

"That’s the one." Kath looked up at him. "She’s a Kitsune."

He stared at Kath, not sure if she was joking or not. Then he looked back out into the lobby and squinted at the woman she’d indicated, trying to see her fox muzzle and tails.

"She comes in here every week," Kath went on, "to deposit her paycheck. Every now and then she asks us about a loan."

"What does she do?" the young fox asked.

"Some high-level position. President, Vice President, VP of Marketing. I dunno. She’s gotten promoted a few times since I first saw her. Works at some Internet company."

Kath followed his gaze out into the lobby. The woman looked like a lioness … poised, elegant and powerful. She looked like she didn’t have the time to be waiting there. And in fact, as he watched a man came out of a back room and greeted her apologetically. She forgave him and shook his hand, and then they went down the hallway together.

"I couldn’t see her tails," the young fox said.

"That’s because she’s forgotten she has them."

He recoiled, and stared at her again.

"That’s what happens, when you take on a persona so intensely. You become it, and it becomes you, and you forget who you actually are." Kath continued to look out into the lobby, idly kicking her feet. "First you forget how many tails you have … then you forget that you have a fox tail at all … then you forget you can fly." She looked up at him. "Go ahead. Ask her if she’s a Kitsune. See what kind of response you get."

He stared into the hallway, visibly shaken, trying to comprehend what he’d just heard. "How … why?" He looked down at her. "Why would anyone let that happen?"

"Didn’t you just tell me, yourself? You don’t really want to be a Kitsune. You want to be another successful human, with money and power and fame. And you don’t mind having Kitsune powers, if they’ll help you accomplish your goal. But if they won’t, you’re willing to set them aside, and do whatever it takes." She smiled at him, a sly kind of smile that enjoyed the horrified look on his face. "You’re starting to see how the world really works."

He looked away and just stood there, his hands in his pockets, staring down at the floor. And after a moment, Kath turned back to her PC’s display, and started typing again.

The young fox mumbled something, and Katherine’s ears perked. "Excuse me?"

"You," he said, and looked up at her. "How come you’re still a Kitsune?"

She gave him an incredulous look. "I beg your pardon?"

"How come you still remember that you’re a Kitsune? I mean, if that’s really what you’re supposed to do. Forget who you are, and forget you can fly, and do whatever it takes to earn money and buy things. Then why do you still have your tails?" His eyes bored into hers. "Did you lie to me, when you said your Kitsune powers don’t help with anything? Or when you told me that’s how the world really works, were you just lying to yourself?"

Kath stood up, kicked her chair back and gripped the edge of her desk. "Listen, you little snot!" He jumped back as her tails went ablaze behind her, the air rippling with heat distortions, and several people in line gasped. "Don’t you ever talk that way to me. Ever!"

She glared up at his shocked face, and her eyes glowed. "Yes, I have my tails. Yes, I have my stupid powers! But I also have a job, and a life, and a place to stay besides my parents’ house. And you’ll never have any of that, because you’re worthless! The corporate world doesn’t want you, and you’ll be lucky if you can find a job scrubbing tables at Arby’s! Do you hear me!? I said-"

A loud, beeping noise cut her off. And for a second she looked around, startled, before the sprinkler came on over her desk.

The people in line cried out in alarm, unable to see why her outburst had made the sprinkler system go off but able to see the results. Her tails went out, and her suit was instantly soaked through. A second later her computer fizzled and gave off a loud spark, then shut down. Steam poured out of the case.

The young fox was nowhere to be seen.

Kath stood her chair back up and slumped into it, soaking wet all the way through, as her mother’s voice chided her. "That was not a wery nice thing you did, Katerina."

She sighed. It’s not a nice world, mom …

Two weeks later

" … consumer confidence at an all-time low, as evidenced by this year’s dismal holiday sales. Macy’s and JC Penney’s have revised their fourth quarter earnings projections, and … "

The TV newscaster went on, unaware that he was sitting inside of a beat-up plastic box on a bare wooden floor. The furniture had already been moved out, and Katherine’s things were piled up in boxes, hastily patched up with boxing tape and with black marker scrawlings across them.

She stood in the kitchen nook, wearing blue jeans and a white sweater with the sleeves rolled up, and mopped at her face with the bandana she’d been using to tie back her hair. Then she looked past the TV set out the window, at the tops of the trees on the street outside, and sighed into the telephone. "Hi, mom … "

" … been unable to stem the tide of rampant bankruptcy. Many lending institutions have been forced to close their doors altogether, including the First Federal Bank of … "

"Yeah, it’s me." Kath smiled a sad smile, and twisted the telephone cord around her finger. "Listen, can I … " She coughed. "Can I ask a favor of you and dad? I kinda need a place to stay for a few weeks — maybe months — and I … " Her voice cracked.

She turned away from the window and hid her face, as she started to cry uncontrollably. "I know, mom," she said, her voice husky. "I know."

" … pleas for a bailout were soundly rejected by both parties. But leading analysts warn that if taxpayer money isn’t pumped into the system, and soon, the entire country could face a financial crisis."

Kath sniffled, and tore off a wad of paper towels before pressing it to her eyes, and then blowing her nose on it. She kept the phone to her pointed ear, occasionally nodding to it. "Yes," she said, and sniffled again. "Yes. Yes, I’m looking forward to your cooking, too." She opened the refrigerator door. There were a pizza delivery box and a half-empty two-liter bottle inside. "Believe me, mom, I’m looking forward to it."

" … was brought to you by Consumer Refinancing Center. Got debt? We can help!"

"I love you too, mom." She nodded, then laughed, then sniffled again and brought another paper towel to her muzzle. "Yes. Okay, I’ll see you there then. Do svidaniya!"

She hung up the phone, turned around and then stopped, taken aback. Floating outside her window was a familiar-looking young fox, leaning one arm on the windowsill and looking up at her blankly.

He didn’t move or say anything. And Kath finally stormed over to the window, unlocked it and pulled it upward, paint flaking off as she did so. Cold air poured inside, and she ignited a foxfire in one hand, to ward off the cold and ward back the intruder. "What do you want?"

"Do you need any help?" he asked, unfazed.

"What makes you think I need your help?" she said, and sniffed.

He said nothing, but looked past her. And she turned and saw the stack of boxes piled up against the wall, haphazardly placed and crushing each other.

Kath took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. She hung her head in defeat, and squeezed her palm shut to extinguish the flames. "Come in," she said, without looking up.

He went around to the front door. And the TV played a commercial, that ended with scenes of a family playing on swings in a park. "So you can forget about your finances … and spend time on what’s really important."

"Hayaikawa!" His mother pounded on the door again. "Hayaikawa Iwao! Come out of there at once! We’re not paying for your Internet if you’re not going to get a job."

One ear on top of his head cocked towards the door. And a part of Hayaikawa’s brain, the part that hadn’t panicked, thought "Hey, that’s kind of neat." The rest of him just stared at his fox ears and muzzle, and the white fur and claws on his hands, and the bushy tail that was brushing the bathroom wall as he crouched on the sink in front of the mirror. And he was so scared that he was starting to have those detached thoughts, because it was like the part of his brain that could think and the part of his brain that could feel were no longer speaking to each other.

"I wonder what my friends online will think?" the part of his brain that was still working thought, and it was like the thought just came to him without his having to think it. The rest of him was gripped with this panic that was just getting worse and worse.

More pounding on the door. "Hayaikawa! You don’t have time to be staying in there. I’m supposed to be at work right now. Come out of there, I still need to drop you off at the bus stop!"

"That would not be a good idea," his brain thought, unbidden.

His throat began to tighten.

"What if somebody saw me?"

An animal whine started to build up in his throat, and he fought it back, not knowing what would happen if his family heard it.

"I mean, if you saw me, for instance. You’d start crying and screaming … "

He tried to hold it back as best as he could, but his eyes began to water. He could no longer breathe.

" … and you’ve already been mad at me for not getting the grades that you want me to. So what’re you going to do when you see … that … "

The whine came out of his throat.

"What was that?" His mother was startled.

Hayaikawa jumped down from the sink and curled up next to the bathtub, hugging his shoulders and burying his head in his arms and rocking back and forth slowly, too terrified to do anything else. "Go away go away go away … "

He kept repeating that in his head, as his fox ears cocked towards the door and listened to his mom and his dad arguing. They were talking about what to do with him, and they had switched to Japanese but he still understood most of it. So he knew that his mom was talking about grounding him for life, and his dad was being patient with her and suggesting that she wait on that.

Finally his mom left for work, and his dad knocked on the door. "Hayaikawa?" he asked. "Are you alright?"

"Go away go away please just go away … "

"Your mother is worried about you. You’re not talking to us, and we don’t know what’s happened."

The thought came to him that "I’d like to talk to you right now, but I don’t know what my voice will sound like and I’m scared that you’ll find out what’s happened."

"She’s worried that you are using drugs, and are trying to hide their effects from us."

"I’m not, dad. I’ve just been having these strange dreams lately, and they’ve been getting so real and vivid … "

"I told her that that was preposterous, because our son would never do that. But it’s hard to defend you to her when you are refusing to talk to us."

" … and I learned how to control them, and I looked forward to them every night. And that’s why I started getting my homework done fast, so I could get to sleep and get back to the dreams … "

"I would very much like it if you would talk to us."

" … and I never … I … I … "

"Are you alright?"

Another short whine escaped his throat. He buried his face in his arms and shook as he cried his new eyes out silently, choking back the noise that he wanted to make and just screaming inside.

His father stood outside, saying nothing, the entire time. Then, finally, "I have got to leave for work, or I will be late. You have my cellphone number. Please call me and let me know how you are."

Footsteps went away from the bathroom door. Then the front door opened and closed, and the car door opened and closed, and the engine started and his dad drove off. Hayaikawa was amazed at how clearly he could hear it all.

Then he heard a loud CLICK somewhere in the house, and it made him jump up and look around, fur standing on end. A second later there was another click, and then the heater vents turned on. Warm air blew into the room.

Hayaikawa huddled next to the heater vent, letting it dry his tears. He sniffled, and grabbed a tissue from off the sink to dry his muzzle with. Then another, and another, until he had a small pile of them. He threw them all in the trash, and shivered next to the vent.

What was he supposed to do now?

The thought came to him that what was happening was impossible. Because of that, he realized, he had to be dreaming still. The thought gave him hope, and helped him to calm down.

How had he lost control of the dream? How had he forgotten that he was dreaming? Hayaikawa did not know. But he knew a few ways to find out.

The first way he knew was to look in the mirror. If he wasn’t himself when he looked in the mirror inside a dream, his reflection was always distorted, and he was unable to look at it clearly. Hayaikawa had already looked in the mirror that morning, but he wanted to be thorough, because dreaming could mess up one’s perception of time. (He made a mental note to make sure that the clock readouts made sense.) So he crawled back onto the sink, and looked at his face.

His face was not even the slightest bit human. It looked just like that of an arctic fox, with thin white fur that was tinged with ice blue. His nose was black and his eyes were brown, and he stared into them, seeing a wide-eyed fox on the other side of the mirror and unable to comprehend that it was him.

He touched the tip of his muzzle, and could feel the pressure placed on his nose bone. Then he pinched it shut and tried to breathe through it, and was unable to. Finally he traced one claw all the way up to his forehead, and it made him want to sneeze. A thought came to him, and he scritched at the top of his head, but he wasn’t sure what to make of the feeling.

He held up his hands to the mirror. They looked strange, but he could see them clearly, too. He did not have fingernails anymore, but dull claws, which he could not retract and which stretched out past his fingertips. And the undersides of his fingers and the palms of his hands were coated in black, leathery pads. He pressed his two palms together, and it felt like he was wearing gloves. But from the back, his hands looked almost normal.

So did his arms, except that they had thin white fur on them. These are my arms, he thought, looking at them. And yet they’re not. They weren’t like his face, which looked all fox. They almost looked human. He traced a claw along the top of his forearm, feeling the hairs part in front of it. And then he carefully pinched himself. It hurt, just like it always had, and he smoothed out his fur afterwards.

Okay … he thought, and looked in the mirror again. Now what?

Behind him, his tail swished, and he turned around to look at it. It was bushy and pure white, and looked spectacular. Hayaikawa wished that it weren’t stuck behind him, because he very much wanted to look at it. He reached around and felt it, running his hand all along it, and it felt fluffy and soft. But it was uncomfortable for him to do that, because his tail didn’t want to be pulled upwards in the arc that his arm was traveling. He let go of it and let it do what it wanted to, and it swished itself as he looked at it and grinned.

Hayaikawa sniffled and blew his muzzle again, then tossed the tissue into the trash and looked back up at the mirror. There he was, a real live fox, with ears and tail and a muzzle.

He shrank from himself, because he didn’t want to accept it. It wasn’t a thought so much as a feeling; his subconscious was scared, and wanted his human parts to be him, and to think that his fox features weren’t. It felt like it had been violated, and was refusing to let itself be this.

Hayaikawa closed his eyes, and counted to ten in his mind. And when he opened them and looked in the mirror again, he was the fox, tail and facial features and all. And he sniffled, and grinned nervously, and let his subconscious stop worring about "How can I be that?" and just accept that he was.

Then he hopped down from the sink, unlocked and opened the door, and went to go set up his webcam.

Hayaikawa took a whole slew of pictures of himself, after drawing the curtains and making sure that the front and back doors were locked. Then he realized that he hadn’t showered yet, and decided he might as well do so.

It took him a long time, because his fur wanted to tangle instead of wash. By the time that he finally got out he was covered in soaking wet fur, which stayed damp even after he’d used two thick towels. He wiped the fog off of the mirror and looked at his messed-up fur, and decided that it was a good thing that he’d already taken the pictures. Afterwards he put on his pants backwards, so that his tail would have someplace to go.

It was eleven o’clock when he finally ate breakfast. Sugary cereal didn’t appeal to him at the moment, so he fried up some vegetarian sausage instead. It was warm and delicious, and he didn’t even need to add cheese.

He tried not to think as he ate, because he knew if he did he’d be scared again. But he couldn’t help it, because his mind was starting to wander. "What’s going to happen to me?" it thought. "What should I do?"

"What can I do?"

He tried to think of a government agency he could call. Then he imagined men in black suitcoats quarantining his house, their guns photoshopped into walkie-talkies as people in spacesuits climbed through the windows. And he didn’t think that he liked that idea.

Try as he might, though, Hayaikawa couldn’t think of any scenario in which that didn’t end up happening. The only question was, what would he tell his parents?

He did not want to face them, because he was scared of how his mother would panic and he had no idea what his father’s response might be. So he decided instead that he’d write them a letter, and somehow manage to be outside the house by the time they came back home. He wasn’t sure how he’d get anywhere on foot in suburbia without being noticed, but he decided he had to try …

… after he was done on the ‘net.

It was easy to get distracted on the Internet, because Hayaikawa really wanted to be distracted right now. He didn’t want to think about what he’d have to do, or how badly things would turn out, or what sort of panic his mom would be in. So he sat there on the chair in his messy room, in front of his old computer, and played Flash games for two hours.

After that he decided he needed to start planning what he would do. He wanted to pace, but there was nowhere in his room where he could, so he crawled over the clothes and things on the floor and went out to the hallway. Then he started pacing, going up and down the hallway, thinking with hands clasped behind his back and occasionally fiddling with his tail.

He had to go someplace. But where? Who could he trust? Was there anyone he knew online well enough? Would his relatives take him in?

His tail really was fluffy, he thought.

Hayaikawa began pacing faster and faster, not because he felt nervous but because he was forgetting how nervous he was, and realizing that he wanted to be out and about. He included the kitchen and living room in his circuit, weaving around obstacles and moving them aside when he could, surprised by how good it felt just to move around.

The lights were off, and the only light came from through the cracks in the drawn curtains. Hayaikawa wanted to look outside, but he didn’t want to be seen in case a car was driving past outside. And he knew what he’d see out there, anyway … suburbia, with its two-car garages and seven-foot fences that went all the way down to the curb.

All of a sudden, Hayaikawa wished that his family still lived at their old house up in the hills. His mom had hated driving down their dirt path to get into town, then coming back home when it was raining and driving uphill over ice and slush. He remembered looking out the window at wet branches that brushed over the window, and clanked along the roof, and went on forever in the thick forest … and he remembered breathing onto the window, in the chill air, and drawing faces in the fog.

But he also remembered how he had cringed, as his mother had shouted and swore and stepped on the gas pedal, making the wheels whine as they struggled to pull their car up. And he remembered sitting there in the stuck car for over an hour, listening to furious silence from his mom and talk radio from the speakers, and waiting for his dad to come down there and tow them up. By the time his dad had shown up, he’d really needed to use the restroom, and the jarring motions of the tow cable on his mom’s car hadn’t helped matters any.

Hayaikawa remembered curling up next to the wood-burning stove in a blanket, sipping hot cocoa and thawing out from the cold. He remembered looking outside at the rain, and thinking of how it would snow soon, and of how much he loved to sled down the hill that his house was on top of. And he realized that he missed it terribly, and wanted so much to be out there again.

"Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do," he said, talking aloud to himself and listening to the sound of his voice. It sounded like it always had. "I could go out and live in the forest … I’ve got the instincts for it, right?" And he knew that this was a big thing that he was suggesting, but it seemed so unreal that the impact did not even register. All he knew was that he had to get away, because being seen by his parents — or by anyone — was not an option. He didn’t want to think about what would happen afterwards.

Hayaikawa imagined himself catching rabbits, fishing with his bare hands, and climbing up trees to get away from bears. It didn’t seem like it’d be so hard. After all, foxes were designed to live in the woods, and he was a fox now, wasn’t he?

He set a pizza cooking for dinner while he thought about what he would do, and imagined himself living off of the land, running barefoot through the trees and starting a tribe of fox people with other outcasts like him. These thoughts kept him occupied, and helped to take his mind off of things. But pretty soon his mom pulled up in the driveway, and Hayaikawa took off for his room and shut and locked the door.

He knew that it didn’t make sense. But somehow, the thought of how he would deal with his parents didn’t seem half as upsetting as the fact that he’d had to leave that pizza behind.

For awhile, the house was silent. He heard his mom watching TV in the living room, and after a little while he smelled smoke and heard her open the oven.

When his dad came home they started to talk around the table while eating his pizza, and Hayaikawa realized that he did not want to hear what they said. So he put on his headphones and turned up his loudest MP3s, and played more Flash games with the curtains drawn and the door locked. Later on, when his dad knocked on the door, he turned the volume up even louder, until he couldn’t hear anything his dad was saying.

The headphones were kind of uncomfortable, since they weren’t designed to fit onto a fox’s ears. But he made himself tolerate it, because he did not want to talk to his parents. He couldn’t talk to his parents. He was barely sane as it was, and if he had to confront them and see their reactions he knew that he would break down again. And he did not want that to happen. So he turned up the volume as loud as it would go, and felt like a heel for it but knew that he had to.

Finally his parents went to bed. And he took off the headphones and sat there in silence, and knew that he was just delaying the inevitable. But he couldn’t deal with it now … he didn’t know when he’d be able to deal with it.

Hayaikawa was hungry, and his throat was dry. But he didn’t want to go out there yet, not until they were sound asleep. So he kept on surfing the ‘net.

An interesting idea occurred to Hayaikawa, and it was late enough at night that it made sense to him. So he went into his favorite IRC chat, and onto his favorite messageboards, and showed everyone the pictures he’d taken, just to see what would happen.

His thread didn’t get too many hits, and most of the people on IRC ignored him. But a few of them said "o.o;;;" and told him that he was amazing with Photoshop, while the people on the messageboards said "lol" and told him that’d made their day. One person posted a lengthy critique, saying that Hayaikawa should have used better lighting conditions, and that he could see the seam where he’d cut-and-pasted the fox’s head onto himself.

Hayaikawa was amused, and reiterated that he hadn’t used photo editing software at all. Pretty soon somebody called him on it, and made him take a video on his webcam. But his webcam was an older model, and was not very light-sensitive. And in the light of his 40-watt overhead bulb, all that could be seen was a blur.

Most of the people who’d clicked on the link stopped watching him, but a handful of them continued, in between doing other things. And when Hayaikawa finally held his flashlight right up to his face and waved at the camera, and spoke for the microphone, and held open his muzzle and ran his tongue along his teeth, they said "o.o;;;" again and started telling everyone else to watch.

Hayaikawa was sweating by now, but it was late and he didn’t feel he could back out. So he did his routine a few more times, and started taking requests like picking things up and balancing them on his nose. As time went on the requests got weirder and weirder, but it wasn’t until someone insulted him that he got embarrassed and turned off the webcam. After that, he watched people speculate as to how he had done that, and realized that he did not want to tell them.

He went back to the forums, to see that he’d gotten a personal message:

i kno that u did not fotoshop thos pics. u r a real fox n i believ that u r.

Hayaikawa grinned. But that grin was frozen on his face as he read the next part:

my dad works for the fbi. i am teling him about u. i traced ur ip adress so i kno wher u live. he is coming to lok u away 4 EVER.

Beter start runing

And Hayaikawa knew, in his head, that this person was just a troll. But that’s not what his heart thought. As soon as he read that, it said "I knew it. I knew this would happen. I’m dead. I’m so dead. My life is over, and I won’t even get to tell my parents how much I … "

He turned off the computer right there and curled up on his bed, rocking back and forth softly and holding his knees to his face. But he only did that for a second, because it reminded him of how long he had locked himself in his room, and when the last time he had used the restroom had been.

Hayaikawa got back to his feet, crawled over the piles of things on the floor and pressed one ear up to the door. When he heard nothing on the other side, he turned off the light, and carefully unlocked the door and went out.

When he got out of the restroom, it occurred to him that there was probably some leftover pizza in the refrigerator. He went down to the kitchen and got it out on a plate, then set it microwaving. By this time he was starving, but he was worried about the noise he was making, which seemed loud to his ears.

Finally, the microwave dinged, and he took the pizza out of it. Some of the cheese on top had charred, but it smelled and looked delicious, with tiny pools of hot grease amid deep-fried vegetables. Hayaikawa was about to start eating when he heard a door open elsewhere in the house, and his heart stopped.

He held his breath. He felt nothing but fear. His mind went blank. And the footsteps were almost there.

Hayaikawa dropped the dish next to the microwave, then dove behind the counter and cried "Stop!"

The footsteps stopped. Whomever it was said nothing.

Hayaikawa’s mind raced. He tried to think of something to say. "I … you … you can’t look at me right now!"

"What’s wrong?" It was his father’s voice, quiet as always.

Sweat poured down Hayaikawa’s sides. "I don’t know!" he cried. "It just happened!"

"What happened?"

"I can’t tell you!" Now he wanted to cry.

The footsteps came closer, and Hayaikawa panicked. "Please, stop!" he cried.

"I got up to make sure that I locked the car. I will not look at you."

His father walked past him, opened the front door and went outside. There was the sound of a horn honking for a split-second, and the locks on the car cycling. Then his father came inside and closed and locked the door with his eyes closed.

He went back into the hallway without looking at Hayaikawa. And then he stopped there, as if waiting for something.

Hayaikawa let out his breath. "I’m sorry," he said.

"I know."

"I’ll tell you what happened tomorrow," he said, without even thinking about it. "Okay?"

"Okay."

There was a pause. Then, finally, "Good night, Hayaikawa." His father went back to the bedroom, and Hayaikawa exhaled.

He sat down on the kitchen floor, his shirt soaked with sweat, too exhausted to do anything else. His eyes flicked up to the clock on the microwave; it was late, much later than he was used to staying up.

He microwaved another slice of pizza, then ate it and got out another. A little while after that he went to bed, so tired that he couldn’t think straight. His last thought before falling asleep was that he’d committed to showing himself. But somehow, the thought no longer held much fear for him.

That night, he had control of his dreams again, and imagined himself becoming a human. The next morning, the start of the weekend, he woke up to find that it’d come true. This made explaining things to his parents a bit awkward. But he made french toast for them, and helped clean the house, and got all of his homework done early so that they could go watch a movie together. They all had a good time, and his parents soon forgot about the whole incident (or at least acted like they did).

Hayaikawa, however, did not. He still had those pics, and when he logged on to check his email he found that he had quite a following. But as the months went on, and turned into years, they forgot about what they’d seen, and explained it away in ways that made sense to him. Later on he was amused to hear people tell him about "the guy who put uploaded vids of himself as a fox," and to see how many hits those videos had.

He never gave any sign of recognizing his fox self, except for a knowing grin. But later on, when he’d moved out to live on his own, more videos started to circulate on the Internet, from the mysterious real anthro fox. Who knew how to mask his IP address, just in case.

And that real anthro fox was soon joined by others …

Adele sat upright in bed, going into a sneezing fit. She’d dreamed that something had been tickling her nose, and now she felt like something was stuck in it. She knew it was still nighttime because it was cold, and the freezing air made her sneeze all the more.

Finally she finished, sniffled, sneezed again and rubbed her nose on the shoulder of her nightdress, when all of a sudden she stopped.

Something was wrong with her nose.

Adele brought both hands to her nose, sniffling again, and felt the tip of it. What she felt was protruded and leathery, like the nose of one of her father’s hounds. Her mouth, too, jutted out just beneath it. She felt at her face for some time, unafraid but unsure of what this meant.

She patted the bed beside herself until she found her plush rabbit, and held it close. “What do you think, Mr. Thomas?” she asked. “Is this just part of growing up? I don’t recall mum’s face feeling like this … ”

Adele thought for a moment. “I sound like I have a cold,” she said.

She attempted to purse her lips, then tried out a few faces, just to see how they felt. The activity made her sneeze again, and she sniffled.

The cold air was getting to her. She shivered and held her bare arms for a second, trying to warm up. Then she threw off the covers and swung her feet onto the cold floorboards, before feeling her way to the door. “Come on,” she told Mr. Thomas, holding him in one arm. “Let’s see if mum’s still awake.”

The hallway outside Adele’s room was just as cold. She walked slowly, keeping one hand on the wall until she reached the stairwell. Then she held tight to the railing as she descended the staircase. The steps were huge to her tiny feet, and she did not want to fall down.

She heard the wind whistling outside the front door when she reached the landing. But she also heard the fire going in the sitting room, and hurried to the door.

Adele put her hands on the freezing brass doorknob and turned it, then pushed the door open and stepped inside. The warmth of the fire tickled her nose, and she bit her lip to keep from sneezing. It tasted strange. “Mum?” she asked.

No one replied, so she tried again, before she heard the crinkling of paper from a magazine. “Adele?” came her mother’s voice. “What are you doing still up? Didn’t Miss Winslow put you to bed already?”

“Mum, I’m sorry, it’s-”

“You’ll have to speak up, dear. I can barely hear you.”

Adele tried to speak up. “Mum, I need you to look at something for me!”

“Well, alright, then. Bring it over here.” Porcelain scraped against porcelain, from behind the back of her mother’s favorite chair, as Adele hurried around to the other side of it. “Whatever’s the matter with your voice? You aren’t coming down with something, I-”

She screamed. And Adele screamed too, as the cup that her mother had been holding shattered onto the floor and splashed her feet with hot tea. She jumped, and backed away from the shards.

“Mum! What’s wrong?” Adele asked.

Her mother only kept screaming.

Now Adele was starting to cry. “Mum, please tell me what’s wrong!”

A door opened, out in the hallway. Adele ran, leaping over the spill and bumping into the wall along the way, then wrenched the door open and collided with her nurse, Miss Winslow, out in the hall. Adele buried her face in her nurse’s nightgown, sobbing in terror.

The nurse guided her back towards the doorway. “What’s wrong with ye, child? Have ye broke somethin’ of yer mum’s?”

“Her face!” Adele’s mother cried. “Look at her face!”

Miss Winslow tried to tilt Adele’s head up towards her, and Adele obligingly looked upward, tears still streaming from her eyes. As soon as she did so the nurse stepped away and uttered an oath, leaving Adele clutching the folds of her dress.

Adele let go, overcome with despair. “Please, tell me what’s wrong!” she cried. “I don’t know what I did wrong! I … ”

She started sneezing again. And she kept sneezing as Miss Winslow hurried her up to her bedroom, shoved her inside, and then shut and locked the door. She could still hear her mother sobbing downstairs.

Adele crumpled to the cold, hard floor, crying and sneezing and shivering, holding her stuffed rabbit tight. Finally, when there were no more tears left to shed, she climbed up into her bed, then crawled under the sheets and lay still until she fell asleep.

The next morning Adele lay in bed for a few minutes, examining her nose again. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it felt a bit different from last night. And when she held her arms, she thought that the hairs on them seemed fuzzier somehow.

Miss Winslow came by to take Adele out and help her attend to her toilet, then locked her back in her room afterwards. A few minutes later she came back and set a dish with her breakfast on it on the table in the corner. Adele checked it, and found toast with jam and egg, and a basket of fruit. She quietly ate her breakfast, then sat in the chair underneath the window, leaning against the windowsill.

After awhile, she heard the sounds of a motorcar pulling up into the driveway. Adele pressed her face up against the cold window, trying to hear what was going on outside. She heard someone climb out of it, and exchange words with her mother, but he did not sound like her dad.

Afterwards the front door opened, and they stepped into the sitting room. Adele got up from her chair, and quietly went over to her bedroom door. The door to the sitting room was closed, so she could only hear the tone of their conversation, and not any actual words. But her mother sounded distressed. The man she could barely hear, but she thought he was trying to reassure her.

Finally the door opened. She heard them bid each other goodbye; then the front door opened, and the man left. She heard her mother shut and lock the front door, then start to pace up the stairs.

Adele ran back up to her window seat, hands in front of her face. When they touched the chair she pulled herself up to it, and sat down and clasped her hands in her lap as her mother unlocked and opened the door.

Adele waited for her mother to say something, but she did not. A shiver ran down Adele’s spine.

“Mother?” she asked, polite but scared.

“Yes, child?”

“W-what’s wrong with me?”

A sigh. “You’ve come down with a serious disease, Adele.”

“Is it serious like the mumps?”

“More serious.”

Adele squirmed. “I don’t feel sick … ”

“You’ll have to take cod liver oil again.” Her mother’s voice was shaky. “And Doctor Swan has written you out a prescription, which you will have to take as well.”

“Is it my face, mother?” Adele felt at her face again. “Is that what the illness is doing?”

For a moment there was no sound. Then Adele heard her mother choke back a sob, and it froze her heart inside of her. “Mum, don’t cry!” she pleaded. But then the door was shut and locked, and Adele broke down into tears again as her mother’s footsteps went down the stairs.

She heard Miss Winslow say something to her mother, and strained to hear what it was. But all she could hear was her mother yelling: “First blindness, and now this!”

Miss Winslow said something more quietly.

“Calm down?” her mother exclaimed. “How can you say such a thing? She could die from this, and there’s nothing that we can do!”

They said some more things after that, but Adele could not hear them. She felt like her whole body had frozen, and the only things that could move were her beating heart and the tears that were left on her cheeks. Everything else in her room was still and quiet, and the shouting she heard coming from downstairs no longer made sense anymore.

The rest of that day was a blur.

After that, the days started to blend into each other. Adele stayed locked in her room the whole day, except for trips to the bathroom, and no one ever came up to her room except to serve her meals or make her take medicine.

The medicine was sharp and foul-tasting, and Adele hated it. It left her whole mouth and her throat burning. She thought it might be because of the medicine that her food was starting to taste bland … the corned beef tasted like mud, and the toast tasted like shingles. But the fruit that they left her was sweeter than ever, and she found herself devouring it.

The dogs were her only entertainment. No one let them into her room, but she sat by the window whenever they were let out and listened to them play in the yard. She thought she could hear where each one was, and she remembered their warm noses and happy, affectionate natures. Adele wished they would let her play outside again, but knew it would do her no good to ask. So she just imagined herself running barefoot on the wet grass, holding onto a dog’s collar, then being nuzzled from behind and falling over and laughing before getting her face licked.

Every morning Adele checked herself all over to see what had changed. Her nose and mouth weren’t doing anything anymore, but her ears had started to move, and they felt more floppy and rounder. Her whole body was furry, and her feet and lower legs felt sort of like a dog’s back legs, but with fingers on the ends. Adele could feel them, and could just barely manage to do things like take hold of the sheet covers with them.

She wondered if she was becoming a dog, and if that was what had everyone worried. The thought struck her as strange, but she didn’t see why everyone had to be so upset about it. There were plenty of other dogs in the house, and it wasn’t as though she had stopped being herself. Adele knew that she looked different on the outside, but she still felt the same on the inside. Just worried and bored and frustrated.

Maybe they were afraid that they’d catch it from her, she thought. Adele wasn’t sure why they’d be so upset about that, either. She imagined her mother taking Doctor Swan’s medicine, and giggled. Didn’t the whole house come down with the flu earlier? What was so diferent about this? Adele remembered her mother saying that she was afraid that Adele would die from this, but by now it didn’t seem real to her.

Then, one day, the pain started.

It started one night when she was tossing and turning in bed, trying to get to sleep and realizing she couldn’t because her back was sore. Adele turned over and lay on her side and forgot about it, but the next morning she tried to stand up and her back was so stiff that she fell over. She spent that whole day leaning forward in her stiff wooden chair, wanting to get up and move around but still too sore to do so.

That night wasn’t any better. And the next morning when she tried to feel around to see what had changed, she cried out in pain when she prodded her back.

It brought both of her parents up to her room. Her dad had long since come back, and she stood at attention as he took charge of the situation. “Show me where it hurts,” he told her.

“M-my back,” Adele said.

The ears on top of her head perked, and swiveled to face him as he walked around her. Then she heard him stop, and the breath caught in his throat. “Clarissa,” he said, “do you see this? What’s happened to her?”

Now she heard her mother walk around and kneel down in behind her. She unbuttoned the back of Adele’s nightdress and put a hand on her back, and Adele could feel her mother’s cold hand, and her back bulging and swollen behind her.

“What do you suppose this is?” she heard her father say, as he leaned in a bit closer. “Is this where … ” Then he poked at her back, and the pain shot all the way through her. She cried out, and collapsed.

When Adele woke up, she was laying flat on her stomach on top of her bed. Her mouth was dry and tasted like cotton, and her arms and legs were splayed out to either side.

Indistinct voices sounded around her. Her head was still ringing, and it hurt when she tried to move it. As soon as she did so she heard footsteps coming towards her, and her mother’s voice saying something. But she couldn’t tell what it was.

She heard Doctor Swan’s voice, and it was clear and distinct because it was so unexpected. “We need to lance it to let them out.”

Adele heard her mother sound taken aback, and call her father’s name as though she were asking him to agree with her. But she did not hear her father’s voice.

Then she felt something on the bed next to her. A second later there was a cold hand on her back, and she realized that it was still bare.

Then there was a sharp pain, firey and jarring and making her wake up partway. Adele was still just barely conscious, and she gritted her teeth and clenched her hands as the pain traced its way down her back, unable to do anything else.

Then her back exploded, a horrible pain that lasted a split-second and was followed by blessed relief. She heard her mother’s oath, and she felt something warm and sticky around her, especially on her back. But what she mostly felt was the things that had been inside her back, that felt like two tiny, warm, sticky arms. Adele could feel them attached to her, and she stretched them out luxuriantly, not caring what had just happened and just glad that the pain was over.

She heard her parents and Doctor Swan talking, and felt warm, damp rags washing her back and running over the bed. Parts of her back still felt sore and raw, and she winced when they were touched. She also winced as the rags went over her new “arms,” because whoever was doing it didn’t seem to know how to handle them, and kept squishing and twisting them in ways they did not want to go.

Adele tried to pull her “arms” back, but the hands holding the rags were insistent, and she heard her mother’s voice chiding her. Her mother took her time cleaning her off, and Adele muttered something to her. Then finally, everyone left, and Adele let her wings settle next to her as she blissfully fell back asleep.

When Adele woke up, it was nighttime.

She knew it was nighttime because it was cold. The cold had woken her up. She was still laying on her stomach without her nightdress, and her fur was thick but not thick enough. She shivered, and rolled onto her side.

When she did so, she felt her folded wings like a blanket behind her, and felt one of them press into the bed. It was uncomfortable, so she sat up. One hand pressed onto a dry, crusty spot on the bed beside her, and Adele realized what had happened. It was still strange to her, but she did not question it. She didn’t have any reason to do so.

Outside her window she heard an owl’s hoot, and her ears perked towards it. Then she heard the chittering of bats, and something about them sounded familiar … like a voice that she’d heard but forgotten.

Adele grabbed her stuffed rabbit and ran over to the window seat, hands in front of her, before leaping on top and perching on it, hands and foot-fingers splayed out. She pressed her nose up to the cold glass and listened. The bats’ chirping sounded melodious; more musical than anything she’d ever heard.

She tried to mimic them, just like she’d playfully barked at the dogs before her mother had told her to stop. And the same song came out of her throat …

… and bounced back into her face.

The bats outside seemed to pause for a moment, and so did Adele, blinking in confusion. She’d felt the song on the tiny furs on her face and neck, and inside her large, rounded ears. And it’d felt like there was something in front of her. She wasn’t sure what that meant.

Adele tried it again. And this time she felt a picture in her mind, the same way that she had imagined the feelings and sounds of the stories her mother had read to her, before she had become ill. It was like feeling without touching; knowing that there was a flat pane in front of her just by singing at it.

The window.

She turned around and sang a short, clicking song at her bed. Now she could feel all of its lumpy textures, and even the backboard and the wall in behind it, and the nightstand which had things set up on it still. She knew how far away it was, and could even tell that she’d left the covers a mess.

Adele had to catch her breath when she realized that. A grin slowly spread over her face, and deep in her throat her voice box started vibrating, a happy song that was even higher-pitched. As she did that she found that she could feel everything in front of her, everywhere that she looked, and could even turn her head and feel what was in front of it.

She jumped down from her chair and did that for as long as she could, marveling at the sensation, amazed that she could now walk without having to hold out her arms in front of her. Was this what it was like to see? Adele got dizzy just from turning around every which way, feeling the whole inside of her room including the ceiling. Then she took a deep breath, and the feeling stopped until she started her song again.

Adele jumped up and down, clapping her hands and flapping her wings happily. The air currents swept her off her feet, and a second later she found herself on the floor across the room, rubbing her sore elbows. “What was that, Mr. Thomas?” she asked, and turned her head to face the chair where her stuffed rabbit was. “Did I … ”

Her hands reached out and felt the leathery wings on her back, as she realized what they were. And as she heard the chirping of other bats outside, she knew what she had become, as well.

“So that was why mother was so afraid,” she said, elbows and knees still smarting. Every time she’d heard bats described, she’d been told they were ugly creatures that got caught in people’s hair. And when she’d first recognized the chirping outside, and been told that it was because of bats, she’d always imagined them being like wasps or mosquitoes.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Adele protested, and screwed up her face in dismay as she stood up and tried to reason things through. “Mosquitoes aren’t furry,” she said, and walked over to Mr. Thomas and picked him up. “And they don’t have faces like dogs. I feel more like a dog than a mosquito, so I can’t be as ugly as one of them, can I?”

She held her stuffed rabbit so that he could see outside, and pressed her face to the glass. All of a sudden she wished that she were on the other side of it, or at least that she knew what it felt like. She wanted to be let out of her room, to play outside again, to have fun wrestling with the dogs and to actually be able to run …

To run. Without holding her arms out in front of her, running smack into trees and tripping on roots.

To fly.

Adele grinned again. “If this is because of my illness, I do hope that I never get better.” One hand went to her mouth. “But what if I am better now, and this is what I’ll be like from now on?”

She turned her head to “look” down at her stuffed rabbit. It said nothing. Then Adele looked back out into the room, and recognized something she hadn’t before: The door had been left open.

She walked through it confidently, feeling excited and happy and extremely hungry. On the landing she could hear the fire going in the sitting room downstairs, and she did not even have to hold on to the handrails. “Come on, Mr. Thomas,” she whispered. “Let’s go ask mum and dad if it’s okay to go outside again.”

The world was a comforting mass of darkness, which was slowly becoming lighter. Sasha knew he’d been having dreams inside of it, because he was still worried that he wouldn’t be able to find enough platypus eggs to make an omelet. Somewhere in his muddled head he knew that that’d been a dream, but it seemed more real to him than the strange lights and colors outside.

He could tell, just barely, that there were people moving about him. People in white uniforms moving around him, writing things down on a clipboard, crouching next to him and doing something he couldn’t see. He saw one of them pull a needle out of his arm, and stick in a new one. And he couldn’t feel pinching of his skin, but he felt the icy coldness, and it made him shiver.

Everything was numb. His mouth felt like it was crammed full of cotton. He couldn’t feel his tongue, and he didn’t think he’d be able to speak. He saw strange, colored lights in the distance, and realized that they were the picture on a TV screen, up on the wall. He made himself focus on it ’till his eyes watered, and afterwards he was finally able to see the newscaster. But there was something else in front of his eyes, something large and oblong which took up a lot of his field of vision.

Sasha looked down gingerly and tried to see what it was, but could not. Then something occurred to him, and he looked up.

There, above his hospital bed, was the mirror that’d been there before he’d been wheeled into the operating room. And in the mirror was a pale white, hairless face, with pointed ears and a long wolf’s muzzle. It was swollen, and there were bandages on it.

Sasha grinned drowsily, baring his teeth, and his tongue lolled out the side.

One of the nurses took his muzzle in her hands and held it open, before placing something on his tongue and making him swallow it. He barely felt anything, and didn’t put up a struggle. He just kept looking at his face in the mirror.

A few minutes later he was back asleep again.

The hospital had a separate room for people who were recovering from or preparing to undergo a trans-species procedure. It was kept dimly lit throughout the day, although Sasha could see the bright daylight outside in the cracks between the curtains. The nurses kept him on painkillers and made him take sleeping pills at odd hours, so that was the only way that he knew what time of day it was.

That, and the curtain. At night it separated him from the room’s only other occupant: A sickly-looking boy with almond eyes and dark brown features, who couldn’t be more than 10. His head had been shaved, just as Sasha’s had been, and he got even more attention from the nurses than Sasha did. When they came to take care of him during the daytime he smiled at them and asked them questions, and they smiled back and told each other how cute he was. Because of him, they had the TV tuned to educational shows for most of the day, but whenever he got the remote he put on anime instead.

One day, Sasha was feeling coherent enough to turn his head and ask the boy a question during the commercials. "Hey … " he tried to say, although it came out more like "Hrh … "

The boy looked up. He was sitting up in bed, playing with toys.

Sasha moistened the inside of his dry muzzle, and tried again. This time he only slurred a little. "Whuush your name?"

"Aiden," he said. "What’s yours?"

It took Sasha three tries to get his own name right. The boy giggled. "That’s a girl’s name!" he said.

"Yesh," Sasha said, and tried to smile.

"I saw you before you came in here," Aiden said. "How come you’re an anthropomorphic wolf?" He did not trip over the word.

"Well," Sasha said, "there’s two waysh to become one … either you’re born that way, or you pay the doctorsh to make you into one. Guesh which one I chose."

He grinned, and Aiden grinned back. "How come?" he asked.

"Alwaysh wanted to be one." Sasha looked up at the mirror again, one arm behind his head and the other hooked up to the IVs. The bandages were off of his head now, and he could see the scars clearly. They’d be visible until his fur grew out.

"Aren’t you worried that people will look at you funny?"

"Hey." Sasha turned to look at him again. "I don’ look at them funny for bein’ ugly, hairless apes."

Aiden giggled again.

"So how come you’re … uh … " Sasha’s mind went blank all of a sudden, as the IV’s timed painkillers were released into his system. " … y’know?"

"Trans-species?" The boy perked up. "It was my parents’ idea."

"Your mom and dad want you to … "

"Yup."

"Seriously?" Sasha tried to sit up, and his stiff muscles protested.

"Uh-huh." Aiden watched.

"And you’re okay with that?"

"Yup." He nodded, then looked back up at the TV. The commercials were over.

Sasha sat there a moment and thought about what it must be like to have a family that was supportive of his decision. His had disowned him when he’d told them about it; there had been a huge argument, and he hadn’t heard from his parents or sister since. At least he still had his friends, he thought, as he started to become drowsy and laid back down … at least he still had his friends.

They came to visit him one day two weeks later, during his physical therapy. Sasha was happy to see them, and showed off. He’d opted to have synthetic muscles installed, to replace the mass that he’d lost during pre-op chemotherapy and retroviral infusion, and even with only a thin coat of fur he thought that he looked rather handsome. He suspected his friends thought as much, too, even though they were laughing and being sarcastic.

After they left, he found that he’d pulled every one of those muscles, since their nerve endings hadn’t been formed yet and he hadn’t been able to tell how far he was pushing himself. He spent the next week trying to lay still, unable to feel his aching muscles but knowing that if he moved them too far he might tear them apart, and have to have them surgically replaced. One time he reached for a cup of water on the nightstand, but his arm had simply refused to work and he’d knocked it over. Aiden had pressed the button to call for a nurse.

A week or two after that, almost his date of discharge, his friends snuck him out of the hospital. He still had trouble pronouncing some words, and they had to help him walk sometimes. But he felt alive and full of energy, and was tired of just doing exercises. The people at the front desk had looked surprised, but they waved to him and wished him good luck.

He couldn’t remember what’d happened next. He remembered that there had been drinks, and pizza, and more pizza and drinks. He remembered making wild boasts to his friends, and pointedly calling a moustached man in a Stetson an "ugly, hairless ape." Sasha had been taller than him, and had been itching to start a fight. But to his surprise, the man had mumbled something and backed down, and he and his family had left the restaurant.

He remembered staggering back into the hospital, the nurses intercepting him and shooing his friends away. He remembered being helped back up the elevator, into his room next to Aiden, and collapsing into his bed. Now he was wide awake looking up at the ceiling, darkness outside the crack in the curtain, and realizing that something was wrong. What was it?

His stomach lurched. Oh yes, he thought … that was what.

Sasha threw up, over and over again, and the noise woke Aiden up. He said something, panicked, but Sasha couldn’t hear him because he was busy throwing up. Pretty soon after that the nurses came in, and by this time Sasha was glad they were there, because his stomach was twisting itself into knots but all that would come up was blood.

The nurses said lots of things to each other, and Sasha couldn’t hear what they were saying because all he could do was feel pain. They pulled at his arm, but his arms were wrapped tight around himself and his hands were clutching his sides, digging in with his claws, trying to make the pain stop. But they kept pulling, and he finally lashed out, and the nurse fell and knocked something big and expensive over.

After that they forced a mask onto his muzzle, and he started to cough blood into it, too. But a few seconds later, that did not seem to matter. The world became black, and quiet.

Sasha’s release was postponed by a month. He barely knew what had happened; could barely think, could barely sit up. He was pretty sure that they’d operated on him, because his midsection stung like razors every time he coughed. And for the first few days he had to cough a lot, so the pain would become unbearable.

At one point, after a violent coughing fit, he started whimpering uncontrollably, tears running down his face. And Aiden had come over and watched for a moment, before placing one of his toy cars on the sheets next to him.

Things hadn’t seemed so bad after that.

Sasha began to get better, to be able to sit up again, to have the bandages on his stomach removed. He began to talk to the nurses, to ask for things to read, to use his phone to respond to messages from his friends. He began to look at the light coming from between the curtain and the windowsill, and to think what it would be like once he finally stepped outside as his now-finely furred self.

And he began to look over at the opposite bed with concern. Because while he was getting progressively better, Aiden was getting progressively worse. The boy was taking all sorts of medicines and was barely coherent anymore, only lifting his eyes when his favorite anime came on. He didn’t talk to the nurses anymore, and he didn’t reply to Sasha when he talked to him. He just lay there, looking up at the wolf with a glazed-over look on his face.

Sasha felt terrible for him, and decided to keep talking to Aiden anyway … partly to try to get a response out of him, and partly because he was feeling lonely and needed someone to talk to, even if they didn’t respond. He told him what it was like working for one of the country’s largest banks, and how his boss had been totally against his decision but would have to hire him back, thanks to the anti-discrimination laws. He told him what it’d been like seeing a natural-born anthropomorph, and reaching out and touching his fur and realizing he was alive, and how that had affected him and had changed his whole life.

He talked about befriending the anthropomorph. About going to the conventions together and meeting his current friends, who’d been supportive of his dream to become an anthropomorph himself. And he told Aiden how much he would like life as an anthropomorph … how he’d be able to see, and hear, and smell things that he couldn’t before, and out-wrestle anyone, and how awesome his friends would think he was. And he thought Aiden smiled at him, but he couldn’t be sure.

Towards the end of Sasha’s stay they let him get up sometimes, and walk around the hospital. He had an idea for where he wanted to go, and he told the nurses about it and they thought it was wonderful. That was how he got to visit the children’s ward.

Sasha remembered what it’d been like to see people dressed up in costume like they were anthropomorphic animals, smiling and waving and hugging each other and little kids. He remembered hearing the people who did things like that talking about going to hospitals, and visiting children who’d come down with terminal illnesses, and putting smiles on their faces.

He wanted to do it too, as long as he was in a position to. And make them smile, and laugh, and ask weird questions he did. Some of the children could barely look up, or had to start coughing in mid-sentence, and those were the sad ones because he knew there was nothing he could do for them. But others were more cheerful, and would wave or even run up and hug him as soon as he entered the room. It made Sasha’s heart melt.

Suddenly he no longer cared who was ugly and hairless and who wasn’t. He was just happy to be alive, both because he’d come so close to dying and because he got to be around the greatest people ever. And he would look in the mirror and see someone else, and realize he liked being this someone else. He was acting the way that he’d wanted to act, but had never allowed himself to. And it was the most fun that he’d had in his life.

Every day before he went out to visit the kids downstairs, he would try to get a smile out of Aiden. Today, though, he was still asleep. Sasha just tiptoed around him, and went down the hall towards the elevator.

When he came back, there were nurses rushing into and out of the room. They were bringing a crash cart inside, and giving each other orders.

Sasha watched, in shock, unable to realize what’d happened. He tapped a nurse on the shoulder and asked "What’s going on in there?"

"We’re trying to save that boy’s life." Her face was grim.

Sasha wanted to step inside and see what was going on, but there were too many people in there. All he could do was stand in the hallway and watch, and try not to get in anyone’s way. Sasha had never thought of himself as religious, but he couldn’t help but pray that someone would save Aiden.

Finally he heard what sounded like Aiden choking and coughing. His ears perked, and he looked up. Then he heard the boy gasp, and let out the most horrible, anguished sound that he’d ever heard, trailing off into nothing. And the activity inside stopped.

For a second, Sasha did not know what that meant. Then he saw one of the nurses hang her head, and another begin crying, and he felt like his insides had frozen up.

He didn’t cry at first, because he couldn’t believe what had just happened. Then he remembered the pain that he’d had, of his insides tearing apart the night that his friends took him out; and, later, after the operation, the pain like his coughing would burst himself open. And he imagined that ten-year-old feeling that pain, and that pain getting worse and worse, and Aiden begging it to go away until finally something just gave.

That did it. Sasha began to cry too. And he remembered how morose Aiden had been the night before, and wished he’d said something to the nurses about it. He should have seen! He should have said something. He should have gotten one last smile out of him. He wished that he had.

He stood there in the hallway numbly watching people file out of the room … doctors muttering something about malpractice insurance, nurses hugging and reassuring each other. They hugged Sasha, too, and let him know that they did their best and that it was okay to cry. And he did, all over again.

Finally there was just one nurse left, when Sasha went back in the room. She was standing over Aiden, and the way the curtains were drawn Sasha could not see his face. All he could see was the lifeless lump under the covers.

"I’m sorry," Sasha said.

"We all are." She didn’t look up.

"He didn’t even get to find out what it’s like … "

"What what’s like?"

"What it’s like to … " Sasha coughed, and tried not to cry. He couldn’t talk about that. "What happened to him?"

"His body rejected the human organs." The nurse’s voice was a monotone. "We tried all kinds of therapy, but nothing was working on him. And so his organs stopped working on him, and he just gave out and died."

"Wait … " Something about that didn’t sound right. "His body rejected the human organs?"

"This boy was hatched as an anthropomorphic dragon." The nurse looked up at Sasha. "His parents were bred to fight in the People’s Golden Army. When they moved here, they asked their son if he wanted to become a human. And he said yes."

The nurse finished writing something down on her clipboard. And Sasha could only stare, down at the lump on the bed that had once been a dragon.

"We’re going to move you to another room," the nurse said, as another one entered the room. "Almost time for your discharge anyway. Come on, come with me."

She walked out, and Sasha walked out with her, looking over his shoulder until the door was out of sight.

The world was a blur.

Lawrence blinked the tears out of his eyes and kept pedaling. The trees swept past him, the branches whipped at him and slid over his helmet, the wind rushed past his ears and the speed — the flying sensation of riding a bike — told him he was going way too fast for this narrow path, and he was going to get himself killed.

He didn’t care. He vaulted a short hill and splashed into a puddle, and brown water soaked the front of his pants legs and splashed the lens of his welder’s goggles. And he just kept going, as it trickled down the lens and across the backs of his hands, rippling in the wind and then flying off to splash onto the leaves behind him.

He didn’t stop until he saw the wolf just down the path.

Lawrence pulled on one of the handbrakes. He realized too late that he’d forgotten which was which, on this new mountain bike, and sent himself flying as the front wheel locked up. He tumbled over the ground, splashed into another mud puddle and cut his leg on a sharp rock, so fast that he didn’t have time to cry out. His bicycle bounced off the ground and landed right next to him in a heap, the back wheel still spinning and chain still rattling, and the only thing left of the wolf was the sound it made crashing through brush to escape.

Lawrence jumped back to his feet, scared and confused, a jumble of emotions and impulses. He checked himself over and didn’t see anything wrong; the cut was on the back of his lower leg, and the pain hadn’t registered yet. He stood there, hands on his knees, gasping for breath and trying to reassure himself that he wasn’t dead. And he looked at his bike, at the metal contraption sprawled out beside him, and could only think “I am so glad it didn’t land on me.”

Then he remembered the wolf, and all of a sudden he held his breath, for fear that it was still nearby and he’d drive it away even further. His heart was still racing from the accident, and he tried to take slow measured breaths, to get enough air without making noise. The wheel of his bike was still spinning, and he reached out and stopped it. Now the world was quiet, and wind rustled the forest as birds sang above him.

He took his helmet and goggles off, wiped sweat from his brow and looked out into the woods, having trouble controlling his breathing. He wanted to see if the wolf was still there. He had to know if it was still there. He wasn’t afraid it would eat him. He was afraid that he’d scared it off. He could still remember the look on its face, eyes wide and ears swept back, as it’d seen him barrelling down at it on his mountain bike.

Lawrence had seen coyotes before, down in the hills; small dog-like things, not much bigger than a housecat. They were skittish, and ran off when he got near them. This had been a wolf, almost as long as the trail was wide. And if his eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on him, it had not been a common gray wolf. It had been a red wolf, a member of an endangered species that had been hunted down and nearly killed off by humans. A creature rarer than hen’s teeth, that he’d never come across in a zoo and had known he would never see in the wild.

A creature that he was in awe of. That he personally identified with. And that he had just frightened away.

Long seconds passed, as squirrels peeked out of their hiding places and bees crawled over weeds on the path. And Lawrence found himself fighting back tears again. Because he could imagine them standing next to him and mocking him again. Making fun of how pathetic he was. Laughing at how he drew pictures of animals instead of plowing them over in Hummers.

The last time he’d gone riding with them, out on the country roads, they’d hit the brakes and backed up to run over a turtle. A little girl had been standing on the side of the road watching it, and he still remembered the hurt look on her face as they laughed at her and took off.

They would have charged ahead whooping and hollering, as the wolf took off into the woods. Maybe they would’ve shot at it, with BB guns … or .22s. And they would have laughed at Laurence’s wipeout, because it wasn’t something a real man would have done. Only a dumb furry.

They wouldn’t have even known what it meant if he hadn’t told them.

He couldn’t believe that he’d told them.

Lawrence sat there in the dirt, letting the tears out and shuddering. After about a minute he noticed his leg was cut, and while it didn’t look life-threatening it was long, and bleeding, and stung like crazy — a fact that he’d just now noticed.

The pain brought him back to reality. He didn’t have any water to wash it with, or anything with which to bandage it. He stood up to examine his bike, and as he did so his leg stung sharply, making him wince. His bike looked intact, but there was no way he was stretching his leg out to pedal it. And he was at least a mile from home, across the muddy trails behind the house.

He gingerly began to stand up his bike, trying not to pull any muscles in his hurt leg, knowing that he’d need something to lean on for the long walk home. But it was harder than he’d thought, because it’d gotten stuck on something and its center of gravity was towards the other end. He tried to move around it, but pulled on his hurt leg by accident and fell on top of his bike, in a crash of metal and pain.

Sprawled out on top of it, hearing the sounds of the forest around him, feeling the bike press into his organs — and the firey cut in his leg that was going to get infected — he wondered if it would be such a bad idea to just lay there and wait for something to eat him.

He imagined what the others would’ve said; bitter, hurtful and mocking. Those were the sort of words that were supposed to make you get up and fight, just to spite them. But somehow, he couldn’t find the energy.

Then he imagined what his friend would have said. His real friend, his best friend, his friend who’d always been there for him. Who’d expressed her doubts about his latest “friends.” Who’d gotten into arguments with him over whether or not it was a good idea to try to impress them. Who’d never gotten mad with him, even when he’d told her what he thought of her, and the words had been not his but theirs.

He imagined her standing there right now, looking down at him, a look of concern behind her glasses. “What are you doing?” she asked.

He mutterred something incoherent.

“You need to get up,” she said. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

Lawrence stood up. He did it under his own power, even though it hurt, because he didn’t want her to strain herself.

“That’s good,” she said, and brushed her long hair out of her eyes. “Now pick up your bike. I can’t carry you the rest of the way to your house.”

He limped around to the other side of it, and pulled it back upright. Then he situated himself so that he was leaning on it, holding onto the handlebar, facing the way he had come.

“Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” his friend asked.

She kept him company for the next hour or so, as he limped over the trail. He told her everything; his doubts, his misgivings, his pain. And she was forgiving and patient, but she asked him a lot of hard questions, that he spent a long time thinking about. When he said something that did not seem to work, he pretended that he hadn’t, and tried it a different way. And somehow he felt that she knew he was doing that, but was playing along for his benefit.

After a while Lawrence wasn’t sure what else he could say to her, and she politely bid him farewell, letting him know that she looked forward to hearing from him. He looked down at the wheels of his bike, now caked with mud and debris, and realized that it was slowing him down more than helping him now.

He walked another ten feet with it, until he got to a fallen branch about an inch or two across. Then he leaned his bike up against a tree, and picked up the stick, testing its ability to support his weight before breaking the twigs off and leaning on it.

His younger brother ran up to tag along with him, in his mind’s eye. “Your friend told me you aren’t hanging out with those kids anymore,” he said.

They weren’t exactly kids, but Lawrence nodded, gritting his teeth as his staff slipped on a rock.

“How come you wanted to hang out with them to begin with?”

“Sometimes,” he took a breath and staggered forward, “when you’re surrounded by people who act a certain way,” he staggered again, “it starts to make sense after awhile.”

“So it’s sorta like peer pressure, huh?”

“Yeah.” The sun was setting behind the trees, and he knew that he’d have to hurry to get home before dark. Lawrence braced himself, then tried to walk normally with his staff, on a level stretch of the path. It worked … his leg did not seem to hurt as much now.

“What happened to your leg?” His brother peered at it, with the morbid fascination that little kids have with blood and injuries.

“Wipeout,” Lawrence told him. “Major wipeout.”

“Awesome.” His brother grinned.

“Yeah.” Lawrence winced. He couldn’t talk much while he was trying to walk on his hurt leg.

“Did you hit a rock or something?”

“No. I saw a wolf in the middle of the path. So I braked to avoid hitting it.”

“You saw a real wolf out there?” His brother was wide-eyed with fascination.

Lawrence told his brother what it’d looked like; the scared look on its face, the gray-red fur of its pelt. The way that it’d taken off when he’d wiped out. And, cautiously, he began to explain why he was so interested in them.

“So you pretend you’re a wolf, on the Internet?”

“Pretty much.” He stepped around a thick root, which was snaking out into the path. “Sometimes we play pretend. Sometimes we write stories, or draw pictures. Maybe someday I’ll have a fursuit — it’s like a big costume.”

They walked in silence for a moment, before his brother said “I wanna be a wolf too.”

Lawrence grinned.

The two of them walked and lost all track of time, the injured red wolf who leaned on his staff and the energetic young pup, who pounced on anything that moved. The walking had long since become rhythm, and Lawrence could imagine himself as his fursona — as a living, breathing, anthropomorphic red wolf, whose face looked just like the one that he’d seen for a second. He could imagine the way that his ears would move, and his tail would swish, and his fur would ripple in the breeze. And he could imagine the way that it’d feel, to be so alive and so strong and so confident.

He clenched his free hand into a determined fist, and felt not fingers but thick pads and claws. His wolf-self would be able to handle a scrape like what he’d had. And would know how to apologize and set things right, with his family and with his real friends. And so would he.

By the time he got within sight of the edge of the forest path, and bid his brother farewell, he felt like he’d been transformed, in a very real sense. He felt that he could stand up to those people, who were cruel to both people and animals and who’d mocked him for things they did not understand. And as soon as he got his leg treated, he wanted to spend some time with his brother, and call his best friend on the phone. He had a pretty good idea of what he would say to them. And, hopefully, how they would respond, as well.

He inhaled deeply through his muzzle, nose wet with perspiration and breath billowy in the cold, and looked out across the last twenty feet of the path. The illusion was partly dispersed as he stopped to think about it, but it came back to him as soon as he started walking again. He was almost there-

Something rustled, along the path to his right.

Lawrence turned and looked. And there, not ten feet from him, was the red wolf he had seen down the path.

It had a squirrel in its jaws, its bushy tail hanging limply from them. And it had the most shocked look on its face, like it’d been caught with its paw in the cookie jar. Lawrence froze, as his heart leapt into his throat.

Slowly he reached for his pocket. Carefully he pulled out his camera, hoping against hope that it hadn’t been damaged. He turned it on with a beep, and the wolf’s ears went back and its tail stiffened, as it stared up at him in fear.

He lined up the wolf in the viewfinder, and pressed the button. His digital camera made a noise like a real camera’s shutter, and the flash went off and lit up the whole trail. The wolf bolted, crashing through brush and running away from him. And Lawrence pumped his fist. “Yes!” he exclaimed.

His mood could not get any better.

Hastily, Lawrence cycled back through the camera’s options menu, to review the picture he’d taken. His hands were shaking, with the cold and with excitement, and it took him a few tries to press the right button. But when he got it to the right picture, he stopped.

There on the camera’s screen was a tall boy in a green jacket, with a pair of goggles around his neck. Holding a squirrel in his mouth.

Lawrence began to sweat. Then his skin started to itch, and he suddenly felt dizzy …