It’s not something I can do automatically. I wasn’t born as a robot, you know. And when I was human, I couldn’t tell myself to make my arm go to sleep. My “internal computer” was me. I would’ve had to learn meditation to control autonomic processes.

Making my new computer do that feels like meditation. It’s not like the way my desire to move is translated to movement. I already know what it feels like to move. This is more like imagining the color orange, just the right shade, and focusing on it for seconds. The menus and dialogues feel dreamlike and ethereal, as they float in front of my vision. I find myself slipping, unable to concentrate, and realize that I’m still distressed.

I give up on trying to think my way through this, and pull open a furry panel on my arm. Sam embedded a touchscreen in it, a phone of a different design than my company makes. Some nameless third-party thing; I can’t see the logo. But it works. I tap through menus carefully, underclocking my processor, turning off GPS and telephony systems. My fingers are shaky, but not as much as when I was organic.

I still have apps running in the background — the guide to the con, a game I was playing. I tap on “kill all,” and don’t feel any different afterwards. But I should have enough power to get back upstairs.

Walking’s slower than usual. It doesn’t feel any harder, but I move like I’m swimming in mud. I have to hold my arms out to each side, and concentrate to keep my gyroscope steady. My tails stick out like balancing beams. I wonder what people will make of me, if they see me. I left my conbadge upstairs, but everyone knows who I am.

Five more meters to the elevator.

I’m thinking about what just happened, in that room. I’m not trying to, it just comes to me. I feel like it shouldn’t be that important. It takes me a minute to realize that people aren’t supposed to be able to do that, and as soon as I realize that I know I’m in shock. If I weren’t, I’d be thinking straight.

Was it some kind of trick? A new program, or something, that made me see him that way and feel myself like that. These generic-brand computers get viruses and things sometimes. Nothing like my father’s Pomegranates.

I shake my head, slowly, after I lean on the wall next to the elevator and press the “up” arrow key. It wasn’t anything like that. I know what being organic feels like. That was it.

Two girls step out, talking and laughing, as the door opens. They see me and seem surprised, and I instantly perk up, waving and trying a little too hard to act in-character as I scurry past into the elevator. I barely keep my balance, and have to put out one hand to grab the railing. The door closes, and I lean against the wall again, letting out my breath. I don’t have any nerves to be on edge with, but I’ve got to calm down, or I won’t be able to think about all this clearly.

The elevator car is silent, and it takes me a moment to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. One of my tails taps the button for my floor.

It takes me another five minutes and one more “low battery” warning to make it the rest of the way to our room. I wave my arm at the door, and the light on the lock turns green. I open it and hear snoring, and realize that I cannot see anything because I just turned off my night vision.

I’m not going to wake Sam and Lena up. I shut the door behind me and step carefully towards the red light on the wall near the floor, the light where my charger’s plugged in. I hold out my hands in front of me, trying to balance, and one of them bumps into something sharp. I hear fabric tear, but I feel no pain.

I remember Sam brought a computer that she was building, so she could deliver it to someone here at the con. I remember telling her not to do that. I am not mad at her, though. She’s always insisted on paying her way. She says that she’ll pay me back, someday, for helping her start her own business. I keep telling her she already has. She won’t listen.

Everyone’s still snoring, except me.

I pull my hand back out of the case, and feel it where it is ripped. Not too big of a deal. If I have to, I’ll just wear gloves for the fursuit show tomorrow.

I sit down next to the wall, and feel around for the charger and the bottles of liquid coolant that I left beside it. Then I plug in the charger and down an entire bottle, feeling the cold liquid go down my throat without swallowing. I feel comfortably full, and alive.

I sit there, in the quiet and dark. In minutes, my mind’s drifted off into daydreams.

“Lena, can you give me a hand?”

On one of the beds, the thin-faced girl with light hair shields her eyes and squints up at me.

It is light outside. I am done resting, and have been working on mechanical parts for awhile. It is tedious work, partly my fingers are not as nimble anymore. But also because I am currently missing a forearm.

It occurs to me that that’s not what I meant when I asked her for help.

Lena sits up and gets her soulcrystal pendant out of the nightstand drawer, and puts it on carefully. Then she checks the time on her phone. “Agh, it’s twelve already … how could I sleep in that late?” The blue-green gem around her neck flashes with annoyance.

“Sam and I were careful not to wake you.” I am sitting at the table, the one that used to have Sam’s computer parts strewn across it. They’re gone now, and I’ve moved it between the beds and the picture windows, so I can use the natural light from outside to see what I’m doing. There are parts spread out in front of me, including two different versions of my left hand and forearm. One is the furred hand that got scratched, last night. The other matches my orange fur, but is armored and plasticy, and ends in a thing like a rounded gun barrel.

Lena sees what I’m doing, and crawls across the bed to take a look. “Isn’t that … ”

“Yes, my weapon mount.” I nod at it. “You may recall it was damaged at last month’s furmeet … ”

“Oh, right, the-”

“Yes. I am trying to fix it.”

Lena watches me work, for a moment. Then she gives me a worried look. “What happened, Claris? Did he hurt you?”

“I don’t know.” I tighten a screw with one hand. “The more I think about what happened last night in his room, the less it makes sense to me.”

Lena swings her legs over the side of the bed, and leans over the table towards me. “Do you want me to call the police?” she asks. “Whatever it was, if it wasn’t consensual, then-”

“That’s not what happened,” I interrupt, without raising my voice.

“Oh.” Lena sits there, quiet, watching me work.

“Can you help me with this?” I ask.

“Oh, uh, sure, one sec … ”

I wait for her to get out of the bathroom. Then I tell her what to do, and the extra pair of hands makes the repair work go faster. A few minutes in I remember she hasn’t eaten breakfast (or lunch), and I wonder why she hasn’t gone down to get something yet. Then I realize she’s very worried about me, and that it’s because I’m acting strangely, and that I’m acting strangely because I’m still in shock at what happened. And she doesn’t know what’s happened yet.

I decide to tell her, from the beginning. “Rone’s a Nahar,” I say, without looking up from my work.

“A kitsune?” Lena asks.

“Is that what fox-spirits are called in Earth cartoons?”

“In anime, yes.” She nods. “Um … ” Lena fidgets.

“Yes?”

“What do you mean by that, exactly?” she blurts out. “Is he, like, an Otherkin, or something?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What did he do, Claris?”

“Physically transformed the both of us into anthropomorphic foxes.”

I installed an app, awhile back, that lets me see when others have heightened emotional response by detecting their breathing and temperature. I turned it off last night, and forgot to turn it back on. But even without it, I can tell that Lena just tensed up, and is starting to sweat uncontrollably.

“Pass me that wrench.”

Lena can’t seem to be able to bring herself to. “Claris … this isn’t funny. What did Rone do to you?”

“I told you.”

There’s another long, uncomfortable silence, during which I realize that I’m just as scared as she is. Somehow saying it made it more real. I start to have flashbacks, and I shake my head to clear it.

“He has nine tails,” I go on. “Somehow he detached one of them. It was like that part of his power went into me and changed me.”

“You’re not making any sense.” Lena’s voice shakes.

“What part of it doesn’t make sense?” I ask, but I know that she understands what I’m saying.

“All of it. Is this a joke?” Lena stands up. “Because if it is, I’m not in the mood for it. I’m worried sick over what actually happened to you, and I don’t want to be taunted like this. You know how much this stuff means to me.” She’s starting to tear up.

I remember now that she told me something like this. How she said she was saving up for the surgery, and I offered to pay for it but she passed, because she was waiting for the techniques to be safer and the results to be more realistic. Waiting to look like an organic version of me.

“Now either tell me what really happened last night, or I’m going out to get breakfast.” Lena sniffles.

I try to think what I can say, that won’t cause her to leave immediately. It’s hard, because I know I need her support.

“We’d been talking by email,” I say, turning to look at the wall so I don’t have to see Lena’s face. “He had the strangest ideas, about souls and metaphysics. His parents never had his soul crystallized. They didn’t think it was natural.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see one hand go to the pendant around Lena’s neck.

“I don’t know why I kept talking with him. I certainly didn’t agree with him. But I wasn’t offended, either. He accused me of being an imitation of organic life; I thanked him for the compliment. He went on about the things only ‘persons’ can do,” I make the air quotes with my hand, “and I told him what it was like to be me.”

“It sounded like he just wanted to argue,” Lena says, hesitant.

“It was a fun argument. I enjoyed it.” I pull the phone out of my first hand and embed it into the weapon mount, locking the clasps into place one-handed. “I was already planning to meet up with him at the con. I wanted to see what he thought once he saw me in person. But he had other plans.”

I tap a button on my phone’s screen, and it reads one of Rone’s emails aloud in his voice. “I’d love to catch up with you there,” his voice says. “But actually, I had something to show you instead. How would you like to find out how being a real, living fox feels?”

Lena is shaking again. I tap on the button to stop playback, and look up at her.

“I don’t have a recording of what happened,” I say, “because I couldn’t record at the time. I was seeing through eyes like yours.”

“It was a trick,” Lena whispers, trying to convince herself.

“Yes, it was.”

Lena almost chokes. “What?”

“Whatever happened to me last night was a trick of some kind. I was led into a situation where I did not know what would happen, and had something shocking done to me without my knowledge or consent.” I’m glad I decided to talk to her about this out loud, because now that I think of it like this it’s obvious why I’m still traumatized.

“I don’t know what he did, or how he did it, or what it meant,” I go on. “But I didn’t like it, and I don’t like him, and I’m going to find him and let him know that. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry that it didn’t happen to you instead.”

Lena starts crying again. I get up and spread my arm-and-a-half for her, and she hugs me tight, shaking and burying her face in my furry shoulder. My indicators show that it causes some physical stress, but I am okay with that. This is what I was made for.

“There’s something I was going to tell you,” Lena whispers, while still holding on to me.

“What’s that?”

She catches her breath for a moment, then swallows. “Guess who Sam’s delivering the computer to.”

“Oh no.”

She just nods, quickly, her eyes squeezed shut and watering.

I let go of her, then give her a hand. A weapon mount, to be exact. “Hold this still so I can attach it,” I told her. “Then call Sam. We’ve got to get to her before he does.”

“What is he going to do to her?” Lena asks, her hands shaking as she tries to hold mine still.

“I don’t know,” I say, as the weapon mount clicks into place. “But I don’t plan on finding out.”

My night vision is gone. The hotel room goes from green monochrome to pitch blackness.

For a moment, I am confused. Then I realize what just happened.

I don’t know how I expected it to feel. Then I realize the feelings I’m used to are gone. Instead of the chill, liquid rush through my cooling lines, I feel a faint thump, thump in my neck. And instead of the whoosh of air over my circuits, the pump of mechanical breath, I feel … nothing.

I stand there confused, turning around trying to see myself and failing. My tail swishes, not with nervousness but annoyance. It feels floppy and loose, as though it’s not secured tight but is hanging limply on my skeleton. Everything feels floppy and loose, and I wrap my arms around myself, as if trying to keep my squishy flesh from sloughing right off of my bones.

It hurts, and I wince and let go as I realize I’ve pinched myself. But even the movements of my face seem unnatural.

There’s a tightness in my chest, and I unfold my arms, prodding the skin that’s stretched over my ribs and wondering if I have damaged myself. But then I remember where that pain comes from, and I take a deep breath through my muzzle — a dry, airy breath, that leaves me thirsty for liquid coolant.

I exhale, and realize I’ve got to breathe again in a second. Now I’m starting to feel something. Worry? I don’t know. I was never able to recognize it, not even when I was human. But the thump, thump in my neck is thumping faster, and I feel like a claw is gripping my innards. My stomach growls, and I worry about it, too.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” a male voice asks. And then I can see specks of light in the darkness, eight pinpricks bright as candles. They’re in between me and the television, and the man is between me and them; a silhouette in the dark. In the television’s wide screen, I see the reflection of a muzzle, and a knot of bushy, white-tipped tails like mine. They’re swishing and sly, like snakes.

I think of how to answer the man. Even when I agreed, I knew this was not what I wanted … not in the long run, at least. I realize now that the feeling that caused me to say ‘yes’ was not the deep, inner longing he spoke of, but a sense of curiosity. And that curiosity is abated.

My stomach tightens, and I clutch it, beginning to feel waves of awful. The feelings are strong enough that I remember their meaning from childhood. I must be very distressed, if I am about to throw up.

I decide not to answer the man. “Change me back,” I say, my voice sounding quiet and “off.” It wavers, reflecting the nervousness I must be feeling.

“What?”

I can’t tell if he doesn’t believe that I want this, or just didn’t hear me correctly. I decide to be generous and assume the latter. “Change me back,” I say again, putting more force in my voice. Remembering how to do that. Remembering arguments with my father, and roommates, and fellow board members. I won’t be denied what I am entitled to.

“But … why?” he sputters, less confident than when we first met. “You’re a living being again! Claris, you’re a living, breathing woman, and-”

“I was already alive,” I say, cutting him off. I realize I’m clutching my soulcrystal in my hand, and I open my palm, letting its faint violet light shine out into the room.

He points down at it. “That’s not life!”

“For me, it is. Now change me back.”

He’s silent. I see his fist-outlines clenching and unclenching, and I wonder if he plans to steal my soulcrystal. For a second, my worry intensifies, and I know it means I am afraid. Then I remember who I am, and what kind of power I have. And I tell myself no one would dare, not even him. Not even someone with powers like his.

He’s still silent. “What are you waiting for?” I ask, and I start to feel annoyed with him. “I don’t need more time to make up my mind. I remember what it was like to be this way. Having fur and a tail doesn’t change anything. Or is it because I’m a woman?” I ask. “Would you be so confused if a man had asked you to change him back? Or were you hoping I’d let you do something else to me now?”

It occurs to me that I am naked.

There is a flash of green light, and I stagger and fall. I am on my side all of a sudden, leaning against the bed, and I can see in infrared and feel the mechanical breath pumping throughout my system. But something feels wrong, and I realize the feeling of liquid throughout me is gone. My coolant lines are dry, my batteries are almost dead, and the thick polyfur all around me is making my innards heat up.

Brighter green fills the room as the door flies open, without anyone reaching for it. “Go,” the man says, and points outside. “Go, and get out of my sight.”

I don’t want to argue with him. I am scared now, as though the same neurons were firing and muscles were tensing inside me. The soulcrystal embedded in me glows brighter as I stumble and lurch outside, tripping and falling just past the door as it slams shut behind me. I look around for someone to help me up, but there’s no one here. Just a loud room party across the hall.

I look up at the door. A drawing of anthropomorphic animals is taped to it, and I wonder if the people inside know a real one is staying across from them. I realize I was one for a minute, but that doesn’t make me feel different.

I pull myself up by their doorknob. The sky past the window at the end of the hall is black, and I can see myself clearly in it: Claris, the mechanical vixen. The heir of Pomegranate Computer, and the best fursuit ever designed. The guest of honor, and sponsor.

The rig with a gaming-class power supply, and a carpet of insulation.

I have to get back to the room, with my charger and my liquid coolant. Before I either shut down, or watch everything inside me melt.

Species: Bat
Defiance: Nil

There are a man and a woman standing on the streetcorner, wearing face-concealing gas masks and gray-and-white camouflage uniforms. Each has a bulky, nozzled contraption slung over his or her shoulder, a dark gray menacing kind of machine with dual handgrips and a trigger.

The sky is gray. The streets are quiet. The cars are all stopped. A handful of people are out, beneath the skyscrapers with shuttered doors and blank windows. All of them have animalistic features, swishing tails and twitching ears, and clothes that are too big or too small on them.

Species: Dog
Defiance: Nil

A canid rounds the corner in front of the soldiers and gasps, then hurries past with his tail tucked between his legs. He does not look up at them. He does not make eye contact. The man swats at his back to hurry him past, and he jumps, before running to a safe distance.

The woman examines him, pressing one hand to the side of her mask and holding down a small button. Then she looks across the street, at a big, burly cat that bristles his fur at her, glaring as he goes by.

Species: Lion
Defiance: Significant

She says nothing, but watches slowly as he walks past. Seagulls cry overhead, and out in the bay the sky rumbles with thunder. Somewhere nearby, it is raining.

The man plays with a touchscreen set in the arm of his uniform, as the woman unshoulders her pack and sets it inside a doorway. She rummages through it and gets out a covered steel cup and utensil, then sets them aside before releasing the pressure lock and taking off her mask.

Sweaty, stringy hair clings to the inside of it, before she pulls it away and sets it on top of her pack. Her face is small, and her features look Inuit.

“Time,” the man next to her says, without looking up.

She twists a mechanical watch on the underside of her arm, to set it ticking. “1450,” she reports.

“You’ve got fifteen minutes, Tyris.”

“I know … sir.” Tyris nods, looking up at him. She doesn’t need to be told what happens to exposed humans on this planet.

She unseals the lid on her cup and smells the warm chowder inside, closing her eyes and communing with cream, milk and clams. They were powder this morning, but she doesn’t care.

A packet of crackers gets dumped in. Then comes a spoon, and it scoops out bite after bite. She eats slowly, pretending she’s home in her mother’s kitchen, and there are fish sizzling on the stove and the snow piles up outside on the-

There is a sound like a CRACK of thunder right next to her, and she startles and drops her half-empty cup. It clatters to the sidewalk, the only sound on the street as everyone in earshot freezes.

The man strides across the street, as Tyris fumbles to jam her mask back on. Everything is dark inside. Then it activates, and she sees her commander questioning a pale-skinned native boy, leaning over him and burbling in their fluid language. The boy is wearing their bright-colored clothes, far too light for this weather, and is doing a poor job of hiding how scared he is.

Tyris holds down a button on her facemask and sees the thin, black line traced by the shot, a zone of pure death that goes into the ground. Then she looks at the glowing outline of the talking native boy, next to the tiny pinprick of light in the soulcrystal on her commander’s person, and squints at the boy’s readout.

Species: ???
Defiance: Nil

She cocks her head at him, trying to figure out what’s going on and why her readout is messed up. Then she holds down another button, while unshouldering her own rifle, and hears their voices in plain Nearan.

“Go back!” her commander shouts.

“But-” the boy protests.

“Go back!”

Tyris watches the boy’s shoulders slump, dejected, as he turns and walks away. For a moment, she feels sorry for him. But she knows that was for his own good.

It is back there, further into the city, the way that human boy was going.

It does not like humans.

But as Tyris’ commander comes back to the streetcorner next to her, she realizes that this man just shot at one. At an unarmed child, no less. And in a moment of indignation, she asks “Was that really necessary?”

“At your attention, soldier!”

Tyris and her heart both leap to attention, as she stands still and rigid. Her foot is in the clam chowder spill, but she does not care.

“What is your rank, soldier?” His voice is modulated by his helmet, for no other reason than to sound intimidating.

“Legionnaire.” Tyris’ voice is muffled by hers.

“How long have you been on Earth?”

“Two weeks.” Tyris looks past his facemask without turning her head, knowing her visor is glossy enough that he can’t see her.

“How long have I been on Earth?”

“Three years.” He’d told her that morning.

He tells her about the savage, filthy Earth humans. The survivor camps that they live in. The crude machines that they drive, that they struggle to keep maintained, and the wars that they fight for the last drops of oil. And the way they mix animals’ souls with their own, turning themselves into animals. Turning themselves into beasts of burden.

Tyris listens, and reminds herself of how stupid she is. And how very out of her league she is on this planet.

“I saw what that boy had,” her commander tells her. “He was carrying a blank soulcrystal. He was a Spirit Hunter looking for a mark, an animal that he could kill or capture. Like one of the Company’s workers. It’s our job to guard their assets. It’s-”

Something yips. Tyris turns and sees the boy chasing after a fox, into a dark alley.

Tyris takes off after him, before her commander finishes unshouldering his weapon. He shouts at her. She does not listen. She hates him and she hates herself, but she knows what she needs to do. And how long she has to act.

Damp brick and street trash fill Tyris’ vision. Her echoing breath fills her ears. Her weapon is too heavy, so she unslings it and drops it as she rounds the corner.

Far past the alley, in between ruined skyscrapers, It reflects the dull grayish clouds. It sits there, a crystalline monolith, more powerful than the buildings that It displaced when It grew from the ground. Far beneath It, the boy runs towards a parking garage, across the street and towards It.

It is not dangerous until the sun comes out above It.

The clouds are beginning to part.

Tyris sees the boy running towards It, and shouts the only English word that she knows. “Stop!” she yells. “Stop!” She has to lean against the brick wall on the near side of the street, and gasp for breath after running.

The sun comes out, and It shines Its prismatic Glare, just as the boy dives into the shadows among ruined cars. Tyris stands there in the light, as the air wavers like a heat distortion and everything sparkles like diamonds. For a moment, her breath catches in her throat; but then she reminds herself I’m not like him, I’m not susceptible, it only swallows your soul if you have one.

I’m Hollow. I am immune.

Tyris lets herself catch her breath, feeling uncomfortably warm inside her armor. Then she forces herself to stride towards the garage, mechanically, trying to swallow her fear and uncertainty. Feeling less like a soldier and more like a robot. But that makes her remember Claris, the first woman to have her soulcrystal inhabit a robot after she died, and she thinks I’m not so different. And we’re both different from everyone else.

I can do this. I can save him.

Tyris crawls in between the concrete barriers, into the darkness of the parking garage. She can’t hear any sounds in there, from her quarry or the fox he was chasing, because the noise from near It is too loud; the vehicles rumbling, scaffolding shaking, drills chipping crystal and concrete. The mining operation’s in full swing, and the Company won’t let its Earth workers be interrupted.

Tyris doesn’t care about the Company. She wants to save that poor boy.

Clouds cover the sun again, and Tyris’ eyes adjust to the darkness. She taps the side of her visor again and squints at the vehicles’ outlines, looking for the boy’s glow. Looking for his soul, in between the inanimate objects. It was always easier for Tyris than anyone else, because she never had to worry about her own glow blinding her.

Species: Unknown
Defiance: Nil

There he is. In between two of the tiny Earth vehicles. He’s ignoring her, and crawling on hands and knees towards another, smaller glow. The fox.

A sudden longing wrenches at Tyris’ stomach. She doesn’t know what it is. She’s watching the fox, watching it past the glow in its fur, paws, and tail, and remembering the time that she went to the zoo. And stared at one the whole time.

Only when the boy sets up a large, scraping metal box, and begins to draw anima towards himself from the animal, does Tyris shake her head and clear it. She walks closer, looking down at the boy through the car he is hiding behind, seeing him so intent on the fox that he does not see or hear her. Until the fox notices her and runs, and he stands up and sees her and freezes.

“Stop,” Tyris commands.

He runs, towards the fox. Towards the far end of the parking garage, and the mining trucks around It.

“Thrak.” Tyris runs after him.

The boy stops abruptly at the edge of the garage, where its concrete floor gives way to the crater surrounding It. For a moment, Tyris thinks I’m gaining on him, and remembers her training in hand-to-hand combat and how to subdue a person. But then she sees him jump down and start climbing through broken concrete, as the fox peeks its head up past him. Staring up at It, and the scaffolds surrounding It. At the freshly-blasted crystal dust raining down one of Its sides, into a truck the size of a building. And at the hovering sky-truck above it, where Earth anthro workers are climbing onto the scaffolds and securing themselves by their harnesses.

The fox just keeps staring at It. And the boy’s fixated on the fox.

There’s only one way to end this, Tyris thinks. She puts on a fresh burst of speed, and jumps out into the air.

Tyris lands on top of the boy, cracking his head and kneecaps to the concrete, then rolling with him down the crater until cracked pavement gives way to dust. Her hastily-reattached helmet comes off, but her armor and training help her get the best of it. It only takes her a moment to regain her bearing, while the boy is still senseless.

“Are you insane?” she shouts at him in Nearan, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him as his head lolls. “What were you trying to do!? You could have gotten your soul eaten, you could have … ”

Tyris’ voice trails off, as she notices two things.

First, the fox is right next to her. It didn’t run. It’s just sitting there, staring up at It.

And second, the sun has come out.

The fox rears up on its hind legs and yips, its fur sparkling, as glittery anima wisps from its muzzle. It isn’t in pain. It’s ecstatic.

Tyris looks down, and sees the boy’s spirit escaping him right through her fingertips.

“No!” she shouts, and her training leaves her. She tries to shield him; she tries to shadow him with her body. But she can’t do that and hold him up at the same time, and a steady stream of anima trails out through the unconscious boy’s mouth and eyes.

Tyris leaps up and grabs at it, clawing the air, watching the boy’s and the fox’s souls scatter like dust in the sunlight. Then they twirl together past her arms, and beneath her the boy’s face is smiling as the fox’s form slumps to the ground.

Glowing wisps and motes of anima fill Tyris’ vision, and she knows this is bad but she doesn’t remember why. She’s scared, she’s in shock, she’s losing control of her breathing. She thinks I killed him, I killed him, oh Goddess I’m sorry, I hate myself, I’m so sorry.

Then she remembers her training. The videos, the drills and the hazmat suits. She remembers why she has to wear a mask at all times. And she looks down at her suit’s anima tag, that she has to wear like a radiation badge, and sees that it’s glowing bright red.

The two souls are taken in front of her, drifting up inside It right past the workers. And Tyris slumps to the ground, sobbing and shivering. Small and unnoticed beneath It, and beneath the Company’s hardware.

She finally crawls over and picks up her helmet, putting it on and keying the radio. “Sir, I’m in a hot zone,” she says. “I’m contaminated.” Her voice is flat. She knows what awaits her, and knows she deserves it.

It takes them an hour to pick her up. She just sits there, watching the anthros.

Ryan jumped backwards, staring down at the street. He thought lightning had struck right in front of him.

Everyone, everything stopped, except for the seagulls overhead and the distant rumble of stormclouds. The crumbling skyscrapers and abandoned cars weren’t moving, but neither were the anthros out on the street. They were as frozen as he was, and he could do nothing as booted footsteps ran up, until a thick hand grabbed him by the collar and shook him.

“What are you doing here?” The man’s voice was muffled. Ryan looked up and saw not ears and whiskers, but a face-concealing gasmask with a shiny black visor. He was a human, like Ryan — like he was for now — and he was wearing some kind of gray and white urban camo gear. It looked like he’d come off of a military base.

Ryan was instantly scared. Military gear meant he was a Tea Partier, or with a militia or something. They had to be trying to claim the city. But if he was with a militia, then why did his nametag look … Chinese, or Korean? And what was with his strange accent?

Ryan coughed and tried to collect his wits, clutching his smartphone tight and hoping the man wouldn’t confiscate it. “I’m hunting for an animal … ”

The man shook his head. “What is your name?” he demanded.

He just blurted out his first name. “Ryan.”

“Rye-ann, this place is for Earth workers.” He shoved him backwards and let him go. “Go back!”

“But I-”

“Go back!”

Ryan stood there in a daze, watching him walk back across the street to where a woman in similar gear was standing. They were talking, but he couldn’t make out what they said; they were carrying some kind of machines over their shoulders, but he couldn’t tell if they were rifles or vaccum cleaners.

“‘Earth’ workers?” he thought, crouching behind a car. His reflection looked back at him, a lanky human teenager’s with messed-up hair and a worn-out shirt and backpack. He put it out of his mind as soon as he saw it, and dug in his pocket for his empty soulcrystal.

He got it out and looked through it and the car windows, and winced as an anthro bird walked past them, his feathered tail glowing with bright blue anima. But in the humans across the street, there was nothing … nothing but a tiny pinprick of light, a soulcrystal in the man’s pocket. What were they? he wondered. Robots?

Whatever they were, they were in his way. He tapped the screen on his smartphone, still glancing through the car’s windows at them, and checked the map of this area. Someone had posted a fox sighting in this neighborhood just last night, and he’d gotten up early so he could go look for it. But now the city was crowded all of a sudden — he had to have seen at least two dozen people so far — and these gun-toting, uniformed jerks thought they owned the place.

He couldn’t fight them, not that he wanted to. But a fox lived right here near the shelter downtown, if all these people hadn’t scared it off. How was he going to find it if …

Something splashed, behind him. He turned to look, and saw a red fox’s face looking up at him over the puddle it was drinking from.

His heart started to pound.

Slowly, Ryan reached for his backpack, sideyeing his reflection to guide his shaking hand. The zipper seemed loud — too loud — and the fox cocked its head at him as he reached in and got out his imprinter. It was heavy and awkward, machined steel with sharp edges, and he cut himself trying to fix the soulcrystal inside.

The fox had taken a few steps towards him. “Please don’t have rabies,” he thought, as he stood and aimed the imprinter with both hands. Through the lens on its back he could see the fox anima, thick and swirling and crimson like blood, and as he held down the lever on the side it started to flow towards his gem. Not enough to kill the poor thing … just enough to make him what he longed to live as. Or at least, to bring him as close as it was possible to get.

Ryan’s heart raced. He couldn’t think straight, and could barely hold the imprinter still. Seconds stretched on to infinity, but he only needed a few more of them before-

“What are you doing!?” It was the man in the uniform, behind him.

The fox bolted, and the stream of anima wisped away.

Before Ryan could think, he ran after it.

It wasn’t the flapping that was hard. It was the soaring. Hawks … we make it look so effortless when we’re in the sky, gliding and circling overhead. But there’s so much to learn, so much to practice. How to angle your wings just right into the wind; how to recognize updrafts and take advantage of them. How not to get battered downward in storms, and how to recover from a fall before you panic or hit the ground.

I had a lot of learning to do, still. And I didn’t have the upper-body strength that I would’ve if I’d spent my whole life doing this, nor was I as small or as light as most hawks were. I figured that something had to have changed about me, to let me fly at all … maybe I’d gained some muscle or hollow bones, or maybe it was the same magic that kept people from seeing me for what I was. But whatever it was, it hadn’t made flying effortless. And after a minute or so, I was gasping with exertion.

I was still in “fight or flight” mode, and since there wasn’t anything for me to fight I had to keep flying. But I was at least a hundred feet off the ground, over streets and suburban houses, and it was disorienting to look down at them — partly because of the height, and partly because I could see things so well down there. I could read license plate numbers on cars, and newspaper headlines from bundles on doorsteps. It made my brain think I was right up close to them. Then I realized how high I was, and it felt like whiplash.

The wind was blowing across my earholes, and pressing my feathers close to me. It felt like riding a bike downhill for the first time, with all the wobbling and pedaling that entailed. I wanted to stop, to find someplace to land, and I remembered all the hawks I’d seen perched on telephone poles. But I didn’t have that kind of control yet, and I imagined myself getting tangled up and electrocuted. Even if I somehow managed to land on such a tiny perch, I didn’t see how I’d be able to take off again. Not without a running start, and a jolt of adrenalin like the one that I’d had when I started.

I scanned the ground below, my lungs raw from taking deep breaths of cold air, trying to find a good landing spot without getting vertigo. I didn’t want to fall in a heap on someone’s yard, and I didn’t want to splatter across the pavement, either. But that left me with few options, and I felt myself start to lose altitude as my wings became stiff and sore.

Finally, towards the edge of town, after five minutes or so of flight, I saw a cafe-style restaurant in front of a vacant lot. I angled towards it, turning my wings slightly, then harder as I saw that I wouldn’t make the turn in time. That caused me to drop sharply, and I flapped my wings in a panic to keep from smashing into the roof, before touching the ground with my claws and stumbling and rolling across the grass. That lasted a second or so, and then it ended with me face-up and one of my feet splashing into a muddy creek. Drips of brown water flew into the air, and landed on me and my beak.

I couldn’t move. I could only lay gasping for breath, feeling like my legs had turned into pain and my wings had turned into lead. I had to close my eyes, because of how bright the clouds overhead were. After a moment I realized the creek was ice-cold and yanked my foot out of there, but it felt like it was frozen already, and I shivered uncontrollably beneath my jacket.

I was a wreck. For a moment, I felt pathetic that it’d ended so badly. I felt like a pretender; a human with feathers attached. But deep down, I knew that was not the case. And when I imagined myself as a nonhuman hawk, doing the exact same thing and landing the exact same way, I realized it wasn’t pathetic, and knew how I’d feel if I saw it.

Then I remembered that’s me, and I gasped and squeezed my eyes shut ‘till they started to water. All I could think, through the pain and exhaustion, was “I flew. I’m a red-tailed hawk, and I flew with my own wings. I’m one of them now, and I know what it feels like, and I flew, I really flew … ”

I cried as soon as I started gasping for breath again. I couldn’t help it.

As soon as I could get up and walk, I trudged into the restaurant I’d crashed behind and made my way straight for their restroom. I probably spent half an hour in there, cleaning myself up at first but then making faces in the mirror. Somebody came in while I was doing that, then walked back out just as quickly. I don’t know what he saw.

What I saw was myself, for the first time. My clothes were torn up and my feathers were ruffled and dirty, but I was a real, live hawk. And after the whole flying thing, I was a little bit more accepting of how I was now.

I didn’t look exactly the way that I’d pictured myself, in commissions and artwork and things. I wasn’t wearing “Arrow’s” medallions … I wasn’t sure what I looked like without clothes on, the way he was normally drawn, and wasn’t willing to find out right there. But somehow, just seeing what I actually looked like made this seem more real, and less threatening. My life wasn’t over, I wasn’t being hunted down by anyone, I wasn’t even that bothered by my wingfeath-

“Sir.” The woman from behind the counter peeked inside and knocked on the door, at the same time.

I had been holding my beak open wide to examine the inside of it. “Hrh?” I asked.

“Sir, there are people lined up to use this restroom. If you need to use the showers, there’s a Quiktrip across the road from here.”

“Turh uh-” I stopped and closed my beak, trying to process what she’d just said. Then I saw how disheveled I looked. She doesn’t see me as a hawk. She thinks I’m a homeless person. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.

“Okay … ” I said. When she stayed there in the door, I followed her out. There were what looked like a dad and a couple of kids waiting in line behind her, and the youngest one looked up at me and stared.

I wondered what she saw.

The rest of the place was a bit shabby, more of a “family restaurant” kind of place than a chain. It had a counter, with bar stools and salt shakers and napkin dispensers. I ordered a hamburger, and the staffer who’d ordered me out of the restroom didn’t bat an eyelash. She just called back my order to the person behind her in the kitchen, and that was that.

I sat there on one of the stools a few minutes, hearing the sizzling grease in the kitchen and the traffic drive past outside. Kicking my bare feet, hearing the claws click against the metal.

There was a sign on the truck stop across the street: “NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE.” I read it as though it were right next to me. Then I looked down at my clawed feet, and flexed them. Couldn’t she see I was wearing no shoes? Or did she care?

There was so much I still had to learn.

I reached to get out my phone and gasped, wincing and fighting back tears as my taut muscles protested. I’d probably pulled everything in my arms … in my wings.

I tried again, more carefully this time, and realized that my phone was probably shot too. But there was a chance, I thought, slowly pulling it out of its pocket and bringing it where I could see it. It might still be able to-

It turned on.

I tapped it awkwardly for a moment, clicking my claw against the touchscreen and trying to unlock it. Then I realized that wouldn’t work, and slid my knuckle across it instead, then rapped it on the email app’s icon.

Using my phone’s slide-out keyboard (and generous spellchecker), I claw-typed a message to Jen. It was short, but it took a long time to write it, and not just because my claws slid on the buttons:

Sorry for leaving you there. I saw what I am, and I couldn’t face it. I’m okay now. I’m feeling better.

I flew.

I tapped “Send” and looked up, as the parent and kids filed out of the restroom and towards the front entrance. The one who’d stared at me kept doing so, looking away from her dad and her hand in his. I arched my feathers, and tried to look impressive.

I saw her say something to her dad as he helped her into their car, but I didn’t know how to read lips.

I tapped on the online payment app, as the nonchalant server brought me my hamburger. It smelled warm and wet, but I couldn’t smell grease or ketchup or anything; just steam. Somehow that didn’t make it any less appealing, and I tried not to let it distract me as I tapped out the dollar amount for a donation to Katherine Sato. Maybe that would help her with her rent.

Finally, I reached up to the counter — my feathers brushed one of the napkin holders aside while the server was watching me, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care — and scraped the bun and the condiments off of my burger, before picking at it with my beak. I did it without thinking; it was just all I was interested in.

Someone else came in while I was eating, and I slid my plate away from him and held one of my wings over it, my feathers fluffing out threateningly. Get your own, I thought, as my beak got tasteless grease smeared across it. But inside my crop, the meat was warm and delightful, if a bit dry.

Needs more juice, I thought. Lots more.

As I cleaned myself off with a napkin, and paid the nonchalant server my tab, I remembered that I would need some kind of indigestible matter for my crop … something to grind up this meal with. Would a few of the bones work? Could I crunch them to bits, in my beak? And what would happen if I changed back to a human … or could I, anymore? How long had I been this way?

First things first. After my dishes were taken away, I got up and limped out to the parking lot, trying to hide how sore I was. Trying to look as truly awesome — even if beat up and scratched — as that raptor I saw in the mirror was. As I felt when I realized I was him.

Finally I got to the side of the building, and knuckle-tapped the screen into dialing one of my contacts. He didn’t respond the first time, so I tried again. “Come on … ”

“QUIVERSHAFT, ARROW,” the LCD screen reads. Beneath it a light on the handset turns on, as the phone rings.

The phone rings a third, then a fourth time, before playing a recorded voice: “Please leave a message after the tone. *BEEP*”

“Look, Keys … ” Arrow sighs again. “Remember I told you I was starting to feel like I was my fursona? Well, I know why now. And I’m not telling you this because I’m trying to push you farther over the edge. I’m telling you this because of what you’ve been going through. I think I know what it is, and I think I can help.”

Outside, the bird flies away as two massive, taloned feet land on the branch, leaning forward as they grip it. A winged shadow falls inside the house, and the figure looks outside and stares.

To be continued in Lunarkeys’ commission …

“Okay.” I held the gauze pad to my face.

“I need to get bandages and disinfectant … ” Jen was tapping notes into her flip-phone. Either that, or texting someone. “Do you want me to get you anything?”

I shook my head, and winced.

“Okay.” She nodded. “I’ll be right back.” Then she left, and I was alone on the bench, facing into the empty park. The park where I had just soared.

I hadn’t asked Jen what it had looked like. I hadn’t asked what she’d seen me as, and if I’d actually flown but just convinced myself that I had. I didn’t want to ask. My knees were still shaking, and my heart was still beating fast …

… but not as fast as when I’d thought that I might be a bird.

It took me a moment to realize what that meant.

A couple of robins landed, on the grass just across the woodchip playground lot. They took off when I jumped to my feet, waving my arms around, trying to feel my wings. I couldn’t anymore, and my heart started pounding harder, just like that day on the submarine tour. The day that I became sick with horror because something had just changed about me, and I didn’t know what’d caused it or how to return to normal.

But isn’t this normal? I thought, as I kept waving my arms like an idiot. Trying to feel anything.

I took my coat off, still keeping one hand to my chin, because it was way too warm for me now. Then I checked the sleeves, feeling them up and down for the slits Jen had mentioned might be there … the ones that would’ve had to be there, if I had just flown. But there was nothing, not even a loose feather.

I sat back down slowly, shaking. Knowing my mind was playing tricks on me, but not sure which part was the trick.

Isn’t this what you wanted? The thought came unbidden. You asked for a cure, so she gave you one.

You said you weren’t ready. So here you are.

I buried my face in my arm, my shoulders convulsing, and hoped that I’d stop crying before Jen got back.

I’d almost settled down when I heard her sit down on the other end of the bench. Something clattered next to her, and I heard her talking to someone else — I guess she’d run into one of her friends.

I couldn’t make out the words. I was listening to my phone’s music player, the volume turned up on noise-canceling earbuds. My chin was in my hands, and my eyes were closed as the cold breeze rustled my hair. I didn’t say hi or look up; I couldn’t. I didn’t know when I’d be able to.

I could feel her presence there, though, as the silence grew thick between us. I wondered how long I’d be able to sit there … how long she would let me be. I remembered the soaring, the feeling of flight, and willed myself to accept that as a gift and not worry about whether-

“Hey.” She’d raised her voice.

I pressed pause and looked over at her, then blinked.

That wasn’t Jen. She was wearing a different-colored coat, and her voice sounded younger. Besides that, she had a pair of crutches beside her, although her foot wasn’t in a cast.

She coughed and called me by name, and I stared at her for a moment. “Um, yes … ” I said. Where had I seen her?

“I’m Kae,” she said, hesitantly. “My girlfriend and I were on one of your tours … ?”

“Oh, right … ” I tried to kickstart my tired brain, make it go back to ‘friendly guide’ mode. “Er, how did you like it?”

“It was nice,” she said. “But, um … ” She coughed, and looked up at me. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?” I noticed the gauze was sticking to my chin, and quickly put up a hand to hold it there. “Uh, yeah, I just … ” Scraped myself on the playground equipment? Got hurt while attempting to fly? “ … cut myself shaving,” I finished, lamely. Hoping it didn’t look bad enough that I sounded ridiculous.

She was quiet for a long moment, looking away. Then she said “Do you wear a mask when you’re giving tours?”

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I wasn’t sure that I’d heard her right.

Kae started rambling, still looking away and gesturing with both hands. “Hokay, this is going to sound totally nuts, but if I don’t ask you now I’m going to regret it later. See, my girlfriend and I thought we were seeing things in that sub … ”

“Seeing things?”

“ … like, your face. It was different, okay? We thought you were wearing a mask or something.”

“Like what?” A bird mask.

She fumbled with words for a moment, before saying “A bird mask.”

My heart started pounding again.

“See, that’s why I didn’t recognize you at first. But then I thought ‘Wait, that does look like him when he started the tour,’ and I took a couple minutes to work up the courage to ask, right? Because I wanted to know if you’d really put on a mask and stuff during our tour, or if my girlfriend and I are both going nuts. ‘Cause we’ve started seeing things … ”

“Things like what?” I tried to keep my voice steady, and began sweating hard beneath the coat I’d put back on.

“Well.” She fidgeted. “On the tour, it looked like you had tailfeathers … ”

I felt them bunch up behind me, where I was sitting on the bench.

“And these big, long primary feather things, coming out of your arms.” She made sweeping gestures with her hands, and I could feel them growing right there, coming out of my forearms and brushing my legs. I froze, unable to move or to control my breathing.

“And I mean, I know this sounds crazy.” Kae sounded a bit more high-pitched now, and she was talking faster while still looking out at the park. “But if we seemed distracted on the tour, it’s because we were trying to figure out what was going on. And, I mean, we saw your feathers get oily when you brushed up against the metal … ”

I could see my feathers. I started swearing inside my head, over and over. Until I was just thinking weird nonsense words watching my brown feathers sway in the breeze, through the gashes cut in my coat-

-a puff of down from it blew past my face-

“- and we could hear your claws click on the deck plates and everything. Then you started wearing the mask, or whatever, and I sound like I’m out of my gourd, don’t I? But I’m serious, I don’t take any weird stuff … not usually … and I just wanted to know if we’d gone crazy, or if you were pulling one over on us, or if some expired cheese messed us up or something. Okay?” She turned to look at me.

I had feathers, and a beak. I could feel my handclaws and footclaws, and see my shoes kicked off on the playground, and remember leaving them there as I flew. I remembered tearing the holes in my coat, and my jeans, and struggling to fit my feathers in clothes without breaking them because this can’t be happening and I am supposed to be at work right now.

I remembered breaking down crying, and trying again, and being late for work the second day in a row. And picking the vegetables out of my sandwich at lunch, then setting the bread aside too, then throwing those things away and just standing there at the trash can watching my hand. Watching the light shine off claws, and scales, and feathers. Watching and not letting it be a part of myself, unwilling to let it, scared to death of it, as scared as I was right now. Waiting to forget, to be distracted, as an avian heart pounded inside me like a machine gun.

I remembered the looks on people’s faces as they saw me, and I knew that they knew there was something wrong. But they said nothing, and I said nothing, and it was like we were all just trying to ignore it. Until two girls holding hands came in on a tour group and one of them was a black wolf, standing on her hind legs. And I tried not to notice, I tried not to stare, I tried not to realize what it meant. But I couldn’t, and I got more and more nervous, and I started to feel strange …

… and then the school group came in for their tour …

“Look, I’m sorry,” the wolf said. She held her handpaws up, looking away, as her tail thumped the bench beside her. “Just forget that I ever existed.”

I can’t, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t stop staring at my hands. Couldn’t tell why she couldn’t see what I was now … couldn’t tell if she saw herself. Couldn’t ask her what she saw. Couldn’t ask her if she knew.

All I could do was keep breathing fast, and hearing my heart pound, and sweating, and thinking nonsense mantras in my head as I felt my feathers rustle. Felt my claws touch my scaly palms as I clenched my hands into fists, and began shaking.

I can’t deal with this … My heart drowned out all other sound, and the world became a blur as my eyes began to water. I can’t-

“Hey,” Jen said, putting her hand on my shoulder.

She and Kae gasped as I jumped off the bench, ran into the breeze and flew. Beating my wings hard and taking off of the ground, clearing the trees and the buildings beyond. I heard car horns honking, and pigeons scattering, and saw my shadow on the rooftops, but it didn’t matter because I was so scared and I had to get away.

Even though I knew that I couldn’t.

I was standing on top of the wood-and-metal playground equipment at a nearby park. Behind me was a wheel attached to the wall, one that didn’t seem to do anything. And in front of me was a five-foot drop, where a slide went down to the ground.

Jen stood beside it, grinning up at me. “Yeah, it is! So what’re you waiting for?”

“Um.” I looked down at the dirt of the playground, and out at the trees and the buildings beyond. “I don’t know.”

“Just think happy thoughts … ” Jen spun around in circles, her arms stretched out to each side, as though she were a child herself.

A woman was walking a dog, on the sidewalk, and trying her best to ignore us. “ … right,” I said, sideying Jen.

She didn’t say anything else, so I held my arms — my wings — out, and tried to prepare myself. Could this really be it? Did I just have some secret desire to fly, and if I took care of it then this problem would go away?

Only one way to find out, I thought. I closed my eyes, and jumped.

I landed in a heap, just past the slide. Jen laughed, and I jumped back to my feet and brushed the dirt off myself frantically. I felt like my wings were dirty, and the fact that I couldn’t see how dirty they were just made things worse. “Not funny,” I said, swiping my hand through the air and feeling it brush off my feathers.

“I know what you need to do.” Jen was giving me a coy look.

“Oh?”

She held out her arms again, and flapped.

I rolled my eyes, but she protested. “I’m serious!”

“Hawks soar,” I told her, still cleaning my wings. “They don’t flutter.”

“You have to flap your wings to gain altitude, though.” Jen folded her arms.

I sighed. “Fine,” I said, and climbed the stairs back up to the slide. I was careful not to bump my wings on the side of the playground equipment.

One embarrassing leap later, I was in a heap on the ground again, for the second it took me to get up to my feet. “Told you,” I said, brushing my wings off again.

“Maybe you really do need to think happy thoughts,” Jen mused, one hand to her chin.

I ignored her.

As I climbed back up, sniffling in the chill air, something occurred to me. “How does this even work?” I asked, holding my arms out. “I’m wearing a coat, for goodness’ sake. These aren’t invisible wings, they’re imaginary wings.”

“Sometimes the change is all in your head,” Jen told me. “People have been known to have ‘phantom limb’ sensations before. But in a yokai’s case, you might see and feel yourself for what you really are before the physical changes start. And sometimes you only start to realize what you are after you’ve already been an animal for awhile.”

My heart turned cold, and I started to sweat. “That’s impossible,” I said, trying my best to believe it. “I’m wearing clothes that I couldn’t if I were a hawk.”

“Or when you wake up and realize what you are, you might also realize you’ve got slits cut in them for your wings and tailfeathers. That you blocked out the act of making, because it wasn’t a part of your human life.”

I swallowed.

“Do you want me to take a picture of you with that app?”

I shook my head abruptly. “No. Please.” My heart was pounding. “I … can’t.”

“Okay, then.” She folded her arms, and watched me.

You know she’s right, my conscience told me. You know that there’s something to this.

“Then what should I do?” I asked myself, in my thoughts.

Just accept it. That’s the only way you’ll get through this.

My heart was still pounding, so hard that if those had been actual words I wouldn’t have heard them. It seemed to be going extremely fast, and for a second I wondered if I had a condition of some kind. Then I remembered that birds’ hearts beat much faster, and it jumped at that. I had to lean against the wall for support.

Oh man, I thought. Oh man.

“Are you okay?” Jen asked.

I nodded at her, with my eyes closed. Then I shook my head.

“Do you need any help?” She sounded worried.

I just shook my head again, quickly, trying to get myself through this. Whatever “myself” turned out to be.

I didn’t want to be a hawk. Not now, not in the real world. Not in college, not at my job, and not here in front of Jen. I wanted to be one in my world, the one that I dreamed about, where it was okay and not weird to be like this. Where it was just something you were, and not something you had to accept and accomodate. What was the point of being able to fly, when you had bills to pay and college loans stacked on top? And when you couldn’t actually fly anyplace without explaining how you’d gotten there?

What was the point of these wings at all? Where was the freedom? Where …

I slumped against the wall, clinging to it and sliding down to the floor. I felt trapped, shackled, claustrophobic all of a sudden. My wings brushed all up against the platform, but I could barely feel them.

Jen gasped. “Do we need to get you to the doctor?”

I shook my head, barely hearing her words. I knew how the hawk in me felt, now … I knew how I felt. I felt like I was in a cage. I felt like the whole world was a cage.

Just once, this new voice in me begged. Please, just once.

I nodded, slowly, rising to my feet. Holding onto the wall for support, and digging my claws into it. I didn’t look, but I brushed my hand over it afterwards, and I could feel the mark.

Jen said nothing as I stood there, holding my arms out, facing into the air with my eyes closed. I remembered what it looked like. I didn’t need to be able to see … it would just make this harder.

I imagined — I felt — the feathers on each wing, and the claws on my hands and feet. I felt them grip the wooden platform, and squeeze into my scaly palms. I could feel the wind rustle my headfeathers, and play over my beak. And my tailfeathers twitched, as I prepared to jump.

For an instant, I “knew” it would not work. But I set that aside. I chose to. I wasn’t jumping off of a cliff, or a second-story railing. I was only five feet off the ground. If this didn’t work I’d be embarrassed, not injured. So I could afford to keep my eyes closed, spread my wings out …

And fly.

It happened so fast. I was flapping my arms (my wings), and I realized I was supposed to be on the ground now but I wasn’t. And my heart was racing, and the wind was rushing past me, and I wasn’t touching anything, I was flying and I was in the air and it was only my wings that were holding me up. Then I realized it’d been a whole second and I was going to run into a tree, so I opened my eyes …

… and fell to the ground.

“Are you okay?” Jen asked, running up to me. And I wasn’t; my knees had been skinned, through my pants, and I was wiping dirt and pine needles from my chin where I’d faceplanted. My hand came back with some blood on it, and I looked down and saw my hurt knees, and then they all started to sting.

I was still gasping for breath, still remembering the rush, still feeling the beat of my wings. Feeling my arms start to cramp. But I nodded to her anyway. “I’m okay,” I breathed … “I’m okay.”

And inside of me, my heart was still soaring.

Continue reading in part 3 …

It was embarrassing. I tried holding my arms high at first, trying to keep the feathers from trailing the steps, and it looked like I was pantomiming being led off in chains. But then I came to the landing, and even though it was on the outside of the motel it had an enclosed ceiling that my feathers were brushing against. So I had to backtrack and try again, walking backwards while holding my hands in front of me as though I were jogging or boxing.

“You look like Rocky in reverse,” Jen said, watching me from the landing.

“Hush.” I gritted my teeth, as I felt my wings brush the walls of the stairwell. I couldn’t see them, but I already knew they were curved outwards from my arms. I’d found that out yesterday.

I pressed my hands together like I was praying, trying to keep my wings close enough together that they didn’t bump into anything. “Now you look like you’re doing penance,” Jen observed, as I got up to the landing.

“Hush.” She went up the stairs the rest of the way, as I carefully rounded the landing without bumping my wings into anything. I stopped for a moment to look out over the parking lot, at the sides of buildings and the freeway in the distance, and I started to feel claustrophobic. I focused on the white puffs of breath in front of me instead, and started working my way up the second flight of stairs.

“I’m serious, Arrow.” Jen still called me by my screen name. “You’re being OCD about this. It’s like Mister Monk Becomes a Yokai or something.”

“I am not a yokai.” I finally got up to the second floor, beside her. “And I didn’t ask to have my nerves backfire like this. If my insurance was any good I’d be seeing a doctor about it, not this … this … friend of yours.”

Beneath her scarf and stocking cap, she was trying not to smile. I followed her eyes down to my hands, which I was still holding out in front of me.

“This isn’t funny!”

“Okay, then.” She started off down the walkway, on the side of the motel. “This way.”

I followed her past the rows of numbered doors. Trying to calm my nerves, and ignore the strain in my wrists from holding my hands up so long. I could just let my “wings” drag, of course, but it didn’t feel right. It was like walking up to a wall, and feeling your face plant into it from a foot away. I didn’t know how to describe it, except that it was just really unnerving.

I rounded the corner, and saw Jen stop in front of her friend’s room. I hurried to join her, but just as I did one of the housekeepers came out of a door ahead of me, and started pushing her cart past. I pressed myself to the railing with my arms out in front of me, but my inside wing wasn’t close enough, and I felt the cart slide slowly and painfully past it. My face contorted, as I felt my feathers get pulled back and break, and I squeaked in pain just as she went past.

Jen stood there a moment watching me from down the walkway, as the housekeeper rounded the corner. Then she came up and saw the pained look on my face. “What’s wrong?”

“It hurts,” I said through my teeth, my eyes still locked on the ceiling.

“Do you need me to scratch it for you again?”

“Yes!”

She started to do so, and I recoiled. “Not that way!”

“Which way, then?”

“Towards … that way,” I said, pointing. “Away from me.”

She moved her hands through the air out in front of me, trying to smooth my feathers back into place without being able to see or feel them. It stung at first, but after a moment I let out my breath as the pain stopped.

I stifled a grin. I could feel her massaging my wing, and it actually felt kind of nice.

“Is that better?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She stepped back, and I stood away from the railing, still holding my hands out. “Let’s go.”

Her friend wore a white sweater and blue jeans, and had vaguely asian features. “Sorry about the mess,” she said, sweeping food wrappers into the trash from the desk where her laptop was set up. “I’ve got ten more articles to write if I want to make this week’s rent.”

I looked around at the inside of the room … cardboard boxes piled against one wall, canned goods stacked next to the microwave. The coat rack was crammed full of clothing on hangers, and her laptop was old and beat up. She switched off the TV, then tossed the remote on the bed before looking up at me. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

Jen took a deep breath. “Arrow, this is Katherine Sato; Kath, Arrow Quivershaft.”

She held out her hand, and I looked back down at her. I’d been peering at the display set up on the nightstand … it looked like there were ceramic figurines of some kind, set up around a large “jewel” that I was pretty sure was made of glass.

I shook her hand carefully, stepping back a bit so that my feathers didn’t bump into anything. “Uh, hey … ”

“So you decided to take a new name?” she asked, letting go.

I just looked at her blankly.

Jen coughed. “I think it’d work great for him … but no, that’s just his screen name.”

“Oh.” Kath cocked her head at her. “I thought you said he was a yo-”

Jen coughed again, louder and more insistent, and I could feel my face turning red. “I see,” Kath said, examining me as if she were looking for something. Looking closely at my hands and arms.

I clenched my fists, and tried to think of a polite way to put this. “Can you help me, or not?”

“That depends,” she said, “on what you want to be helped with.”

“I want this to stop.” My eyes were drawn to the jewel on the nightstand again. “I want these feelings to go away, so I can get back to my life without worrying about … bumping into things with nonexistent body parts.” My face was still red. “Can you help me with that?”

“Absolutely.” Kath nodded.

“You can?” I stared at her. After getting talked at by Jen on the ride here, I’d thought I was going to get a hard sell on converting to yokaiism.

“Yep.” She sat down at her laptop, and typed in a URL. “I just want to make sure that you know what you’re dealing with, first.”

I sideyed Jen, as she sat down on a bed piled with more clothes. Then I looked back at the screen. It was a website for an Android app, and there was a big QR code — like a blocky bar code — to the side of the page. “You’ve got a smartphone, right?” Kath looked up.

“Yeah, one sec … ” I raised one of my arms, stepping around awkwardly to keep my wing from brushing the wall, and carefully got out my phone from its case. Then I brought up the barcode reader and scanned her laptop’s screen, and my phone asked me if I wanted to install the app. I tapped “Okay.”

“What is this?” I asked.

“An augmented reality app. It layers a visual overlay onto your phone’s camera view, so you can see things that you otherwise couldn’t.”

“Like what?” I watched the progress bar as it installed.

“Try it and find out.”

I started the app, holding my phone towards the wall in both hands. It was dark there, so I turned towards Jen where she sat on the bed. Then I stared.

She was looking up at me, bemused, but that’s not what I was staring at. I could see my wings — huge brown and tan primary feathers, protruding out from my arms. One of my fingers got in front of the screen, and I could see a bird’s scaly, taloned digit. (The jewel on the nightstand looked normal, though … I checked.)

“How is this possible?” I asked, waving one hand in front of the lens. My hand felt the same as I clenched it, and wiggled my fingers around. But it looked like a hawk’s foot, shaped like a hand.

“It isn’t,” Kath said.

“What do you-” I jumped back, dropping my phone. I’d turned to look through it at her, and had seen a white fox’s face, and three fluffy tails right behind her.

I stared at her, pressed back up against the door, as Jen reached down and picked up my phone. “That wasn’t because of the app,” Kath said, calmly, as though she’d expected my reaction. “You can already see people’s real selves. You just needed an excuse to try.”

My heart pounded, and I could feel sweat form on my fists as I kept them held out in front of me. “But you didn’t even tell me that that’s what it’s for,” I argued. “How was I supposed to know?”

“You knew.”

Jen was holding my phone out to me. I took it, carefully, and looked through it at Kath again. Her fox-form seemed blurred and out of focus now, and it hurt my eyes to look at it. I turned the phone off.

“Okay … ” I took a deep breath, trying to make the words come out right. Fighting down panic, and fidgeting with the phone in my hands to distract myself. “This is not what I came here for. I don’t want a lesson in yokaiism or what I’m ‘supposed’ to be. I just want to go back to being myself.”

Kath was unperturbed. “This is yourself.”

“I’m leaving now.” I reached for the door, feeling my feathers rustle as I did so.

“No, Arrow, wait … ” Jen stood up, and put her hand on my wrist. “She’s right, one way or another. Even if this is just your brain playing tricks on you, then that’s still a part of yourself.”

I looked at her, trying to control my breathing, and wondered if she could see just how scared I was.

“You know they’d just put you on drugs at the hospital, even if you could afford to be treated. So let’s see what Kath has to say, alright? Why don’t you sit down and tell her how this all started.”

I let Jen guide me to where she’d been sitting, on the bed next to the heater, careful not to bump my feathers against things. Then, slowly, I let out my breath and let my arms rest at my sides, feeling my wings touch the bed. Jen stepped over them, and came to sit down a few feet away.

I looked up at Kath. Just for a moment, I could see the fox muzzle that I’d seen through my phone. Then I saw her face, expectant and nonjudgmental. Waiting for me to begin.

I looked away and closed my eyes, trying to think how to start. “I’m not sure if you know what I do for a living … ”

“I don’t.”

“I give tours on an historic submarine. An old naval vessel.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The sailors who lived there … it wasn’t like Star Trek or something. It wasn’t even like today’s subs. They were crammed in with barely enough room to move. There’s a reason that we can’t give tours to handicapped or overweight people. The corridor’s only a couple feet wide, and just getting in and out of the bunks, or the tables in the ship’s mess … it takes some doing.”

“Are you claustrophobic?” I heard her ask.

“I wasn’t before this … ”

“What happened?”

I swallowed, tensing up as I remembered. “I was giving a tour … ”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was in front of everyone else. A whole tour group … like a homeschool group or something. Kids and younger teens. They weren’t playing on the equipment or anything, but they were asking a ton of questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like … how the equipment worked, and stuff. I don’t remember. It was getting harder and harder to think.”

I couldn’t hear her say anything, so I just went on. “It started with this itching, all over my forearms. I couldn’t stop scratching. I was getting embarrassed; I mean, I was wearing short sleeves and all. Then I felt them.”

“Your wings?”

“Yes.” My heart pounded harder as I said that. Up to that point, I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that that’s what they were.

I went on, starting to shake and to sweat. “I could feel them pressed against things, crammed up against the walls. I couldn’t reach out and demonstrate stuff anymore. I couldn’t … I could barely move.” I was losing control of my breathing, and had to take a couple of deep breaths. “I had to get out of there. I couldn’t explain why, I just needed to. The whole tour group had to go back outside and make way for me. And the kids made rude jokes about what they thought I needed to do, but I didn’t go to the bathroom; I didn’t even head for my car. I walked.”

“You walked off the park grounds?”

“Yes. I didn’t even explain to the manager. I couldn’t, I was messed up so bad. I was scared, I didn’t know what was happening to me … I mean … okay, I knew. Okay? I knew what was going on, but I was scared. I was scared that it’d keep going, and I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to stop it.”

“I had to give him a ride back to the dorms,” Jen said. “He called me when he was halfway there.”

As long as I was spilling my guts in front of them anyway, I decided to just keep going. Opening my eyes now, and fidgeting more with my phone. “It was knowing that made it so terrifying. If my legs had just given out all of a sudden, I wouldn’t have been afraid; not at first. I would’ve been upset, and confused, and then heartbroken when I realized I’d have to adjust. But this … ” I moved my hands to gesture at myself, and could feel my wings as I did so. “This is what I … what I’ve … ”

“What you’ve always wanted?” Kath asked.

“Yes, and I know it makes no sense for me to be so upset like this. Okay?” I fought back a shiver, as I saw her tails swish in my peripheral vision. “I’ve been a furry for years now. And awhile back I was on a huge reading kick about yokai … wondering what it’d be like, and stuff. Reading people’s stories.”

“Did you know what species you were?”

“Nnn … ” I gritted my teeth. Then I sighed, slumping my shoulders. “I knew what species I wanted to be. What caught my attention the most. I made my fursona a red-tailed hawk … ” I started sweating again, as I said it. It felt like the words were sacred.

“And?”

“And that’s it. I never ‘came out;’ I never posted on any yokai boards or anything. I just went back to being a furry.”

“How come?”

A chime sounded on Kath’s laptop. She walked over and closed the lid, and I looked away so that I wouldn’t see her; her fox muzzle, and her tails. I swallowed, waiting for her to go back to her chair, and went on. “Well, partly because of how silly it was. They never prove anything, I mean; it’s just like a religion that way. And besides that, they’re always some cool, awe-inspiring species, like raptors or dragons or something. How come there aren’t any cockroach or warthog yokai?”

“Maybe the kinds of people who are born with those spirits aren’t given to introspection,” Kath offered.

“Yeah, see?” I held up my wing. “That’s a ‘faithful’ answer. That doesn’t answer my question.”

Kath ignored that. “You said that was only part of the reason. What was the rest of it?”

I looked down at the floor, as my face turned red. “Because I felt like I didn’t deserve it.”

“Oh?”

I was turning the phone over and over in my hands. “I’ve been up close, next to an injured red-tailed hawk, before. They’re not … they’re huge,” I blurted out, talking until my brain caught up. “They’re like two feet tall, and they look so streamlined and perfect. They can fly, for goodness’ sake! I see them soaring overhead, and it’s like I remember what it was like. And I want to join them, so bad.”

“So because it meant so much to you, that’s why you had so much trouble accepting yourself as one.”

“Yeah, I-” I paused. I felt my skin crawl, as sweat broke out all across it. She hadn’t talked about turning into a hawk, she’d talked about accepting that I already was one.

“I don’t know,” I made myself say, my voice shaky.

“So what do you want to do?” Jen asked.

And I knew the answer, of course. I knew what I’d dreamed and fantasized about. I just wasn’t ready for this. I couldn’t; not with my job, not with the classes I needed to take. Not with my life the way that it was. But more than that, it was scary because I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t know what I’d become, or what it would feel like. I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to go back.

A change like this sounds wonderful when you dream about it. But when you have to face it, it’s terrifying.

I took a deep breath, then another. Trying to calm my nerves, and to think of a reasonable course of action. “I … I want-”

The power went out.

The heater shut down, and stopped blowing hot air behind me. The only light in the room came from the curtains, filtered through shade trees outside, and the soft glow of Kath’s sleep-mode laptop. She sighed, and I saw her outline facepalm.

“A brownout?” Jen asked.

“Looks like it,” Kath deadpanned.

I squirmed. “I should go … ”

I heard a puff like a furnace starting, and saw a flickering glow. Kath was holding out one hand, with a … cigarette lighter? … in it, but I only saw the flame, as though it was dancing on her fingertips. And as she talked, I saw the outline of a thin, vulpine muzzle, and saw hints of movement in the air behind her. Where her three tails were swishing.

“Listen.” My heart pounded, as I strained to hear what she was saying. “Your ‘problem’ is not going to just go away. I tried, when I was younger. But something always reminded me, and I fought and fought until I broke down, and realized I couldn’t anymore. Not and still be myself. I’ve seen people who’ve put this behind them, but they had to become someone totally different, so you’re going to change one way or another. It’s your choice what form that takes.”

“Okay … ” I was shivering, and not from the cold. My gaze was fixed on the twitching outlines of her tails, because I couldn’t look up at her face.

“Maybe you don’t have to change all the way right now. Maybe there’s a way you can live with yourself and still be this self. But whatever it is, you’re not doing it right now, because if you were this wouldn’t have happened.”

“So you think I should-” I stopped, as Kath got up. She walked right in front of me, to open the door, and as she did her tails smacked me in the face. I saw them, and felt them, and I jumped in my seat and tried to brush the fur out of my face.

When I looked up, and saw her in the light from outside, she just looked like a normal woman. “I don’t know what you should do,” she said, putting one hand on her hip. “But my guess? You’re a bird of prey, and your instincts triggered when you were locked in a submarine. Maybe that’s not natural for you.

“Maybe you need to fly.”

If Carol had ever been human, she was not anymore. She ran through the dark woods, weaving past twigs and branches, stepping over roots and leaping past puddles. There was no thought in her mind but that she was being chased, and she needed to get away.

She’d thought she had lost them … hadn’t thought anyone would be able to pick up her trail after she flew. Had there been police reports? Phoned-in sightings? People carrying cameras, down on the ground when she’d jumped off the ledge? Maybe she’d been on the TV news.

Maybe that’s why the people she’d seen, whose yards and schools and businesses she’d run past and flown over, had been giving her those looks. Not so much of fear, but of pity.

Maybe I am possessed, she thought, as she shook water out of her hair and tried to catch her breath. But if that was the case, then she was the possessing spirit, and had always been. And their “exorcisms” would kill her.

What do I do now?

Carol offered a quick prayer in her heart, to the God that she’d always prayed to. Begging him for help … hoping he’d listen to a soulless animal. Then, clutching the stitch in her side, she set off again, going as fast as she could.

Not two minutes later, she was caught in an enormous spiderweb.

She’d gotten to near the edge of the valley, looking out on the trees and the old highway beyond. There were very few cars out there, and the ones that there were had headlights and windshield wipers on. No one would see her … not if she flew overhead.

Maybe there’ll be a homeless shelter in the next town, Carol thought. Or just someplace dry. She took a deep breath, trying not to shiver, and shook the water from her face. Then she took off, wind rushing past her ears, flapping her wings to push herself farther from the ground. They were cramping up, but she made them keep working …

… until they twisted and tangled all up, along with the rest of her. She screamed, though it came out more like a canine yelp, as she was caught on what felt like a sticky net. It felt like tiny steel cables, and it stuck to her like duct tape. With the side of Carol’s face pressed close to it, she could see that it stretched all the way across the narrow valley.

She struggled, writhing frantically, not willing to find out who or what had made this. But her wings were caught, stuck at an odd angle, and she wasn’t strong enough to pull them free … not after fleeing for miles. Not in the rain, and the dark.

Then Carol felt the web shake beneath her, as something else climbed towards her. She couldn’t turn her head to see where it was, she could only fight, and struggle, and panic, until-

“Hold still!”

Carol yelped again, as what looked like a dog’s face peered down at her from above. It was glossy black, with blood-red tufts on its ears, and it had four eyes above its muzzle.

It also had a female voice. Resonant, and alien-sounding. “Do you know how long we’ve been trying to catch up with you?”

Carol tensed up, as she felt sharp objects pricking her wings. Then she heard a snap, and another, and realized the webbing was being cut from her. “N-no … ” she said, starting to shiver with fear and cold.

“It was all over the news,” the creature went on, her face out of Carol’s view. “Both when you jumped, and when you ran. They interviewed some teacher from your school, and he came off as a complete jerk.”

She crawled in front of Carol’s vision. Carol could see four spidery legs coming out of her back, moving lithely across the web, and a fluffy tail that kept twitching and freezing in place. But the creature also wore a backless top and cargo shorts, and was using her sharply-tipped legs and some kind of tool to shear away webbing from Carol’s limbs. “What are you?” Carol asked.

She grinned and held up one hand, while her legs continued to work. “Don’t worry, I’m not an eldritch abomination. I’m a lawyer!”

“That’s even worse!”

The dog-spider laughed. “Like I haven’t heard that before!” She cut one of Carol’s arms free, then held out her hand. “Name’s Shi Maria. I’m a wereism advocate.”

Carol shook her hand hesitantly. Then the adrenalin haze cleared a bit, and she remembered something. “I think I’ve read your blog … ”

“Cool.” Shi Maria grinned.

“And you’ve been trying to … catch me?”

“To catch up with you, really!” Another snap, and both of Carol’s wings were freed. “We pulled up to try to talk to you, earlier, but you ran as soon as we stopped the car.”

“I think I remember that.” Carol facepalmed. Then she looked up. “You’ve got a captive audience now, if you wanted to tell me something.”

Shi Maria bark-laughed again, then looked down at her with two of her red eyes. “I wanted to offer my services!”

“Your services … as a lawyer?”

“Yep. Your case is high-profile enough that it’s in the public eye. We’re going to force a hearing over your institutionalization, and we’re going to charge your school with religious discrimination and failure to abide by federal accessibility laws.”

My institutionalization. “Am I going to have to go to a-”

Shi Maria put a hand on her shoulder, and it was soft and warm. “I can’t promise you won’t have to go there. But I can promise that we’ll get you out as soon as possible. They can only hold you for three days without a hearing, and with everyone watching you they’ll know better than to do something stupid.”

Carol continued to shiver, even as fatigue caught up with her and her words slurred. “Three days … I don’t know if I can do that … ”

“I’ve got a psychotherapist friend who might be able to help,” Shi Maria said. “We’ll see what he says, and if he can keep you from having to go there. Okay?”

“ … okay.”

It was a half-hour later before they finally got her to the ground. By now there were a few others watching, both humans and weres, and they winced as Carol landed on her foot wrong.

It took them a moment to help her up, since it was still raining and the grass was slick. But finally Shi Maria and one of her friends started helping Carol, one under each shoulder, to the car they had parked on the side of the highway.

Shi Maria was going on about court cases, and hearings, and trial dates. But the light was on in the car up ahead, and it looked warm and dry. Carol relaxed a bit, letting them carry her weight, and allowed herself to feel safe for once … to feel okay being herself.

“You’re going to be alright,” Shi Maria said.

Thank God, Carol thought, and she did. Then she fell asleep in their arms.

Liz pulled her car up to the curb, headlights shining on somebody’s mailbox, and rolled down the window. It took her a moment to hear it, under the drone of cicadas and crickets.

Ring … ring …

She leaned over to the passenger’s seat and tapped the touchpad to wake up her notebook, then double-checked the map on the display.

Ring … r-

She pressed Cancel on her cellphone, and the ringing stopped.

Liz climbed out of her car, and walked up to the tree planted up past the curb. Wood chips clicked under her feet. On the other side of the tree, she saw a glint of metal and glass, and reached down to pick up the cellphone that had been laying there. The screen was cracked, but the stickers on the back were unmistakeable.

She cupped a hand to her mouth, and called up to the tree. “Carol?”

Liz thought she heard something in response. “Carol!” she tried again.

“Yes,” Carol’s voice called back, irritated.

“Carol, are you alright?”

“I appear to be.”

More cicadas, more crickets. Liz glanced across the well-manicured lawn up at the house, making sure that no one had gotten up to check on them. The lights were still off.

Liz looked back up into the tree. She couldn’t see anything. “What happened?”

“Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Carol, what happened?”

An exasperated sigh. “I p-shifted into something that flies.”

Gears turned inside Liz’ brain. “You jumped out a window-”

“Yes.”

“And as soon as you did, you took off?”

Liz couldn’t hear what Carol said, but it sounded like grudging acknowledgement.

“Carol, that’s great! Why don’t you fly down here now, and we’ll head home together?”

“I can’t.”

A dog started barking, somewhere down the street in one of the fenced yards. “Why not?”

“Need clothes.”

As soon as Carol said that, Liz imagined her getting ready for a date and lamenting not having anything to wear. Then she thought of what would happen if she sprouted wings all of a sudden.

“Carol-” The dog started barking again as soon as Liz talked. She raised her voice to be heard above it. “Carol, there’s nobody out here! They’re all asleep!”

“Just get me something to wear already!”

Now Liz was exasperated. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Find something.”

There was a rustling from up in the tree, and a couple of chips of bark landed next to Liz. She was sweating with the humidity and the excitement, and it took her awhile to think. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Carol muttered something in response.

Liz set Carol’s phone back down next to the tree. “I’m leaving your phone here so I can find you, okay?”

She said nothing.

Liz hurried back to her car, and pulled away from the curb just a little too fast. The wheels screeched as she tore out of the neighborhood.

The dollar store was closed, but the nearest big-box store was still open. Liz went in on autopilot, trying to unfreeze her brain enough to decide what to do once inside. The smiling people on ad banners seemed unreal, and at the same time more real than what had just happened.

She grabbed a shopping cart and started walking fast down the clothing section, looking through clothes without knowing what she was looking for. Nothing was designed for winged, human-shaped creatures … or weres at all, really. She could think of some outfits that might work, but they’d stopped selling them at the end of summer.

At the end of the clothes department was a display that had bathrobes, bath beads and shower gel set up on it. Liz grabbed up both of the bathrobes on display and stuffed them into her shopping cart, then headed to the checkout line and paid with cash, hastily pocketing her change and receipt.

The drive back to the suburbs took too long for Liz’ comfort. She passed a police car on the way, and had to slow back down to the speed limit. Finally she came to the right spot, got out of her car, and dialed Carol’s cellphone just to be sure. It rang.

“I’m here,” Carol called down.

“I’ve got … something,” Liz said, and ducked back inside her car for a moment, coming back with an armful of terrycloth. “What should I do with it?”

“Set it down on the side of the tree opposite from your car. Then go back inside and turn off the headlights.” Liz had to strain to hear her.

“Okay,” Liz said, and carefully set the bathrobes onto the woodchip pile. “Your cellphone’s on top,” she said, picking it up and putting it on them. The cracked screen was still on, and bright.

“Turn it off,” Carol said, just as it automatically went back to its locked state.

“I’m going back in the car,” Liz said. “Just knock on the door when you’re ready.”

Carol didn’t respond.

Liz climbed back inside and shut the door, then turned the headlights off. A second later the overhead light went dark. After that, Liz could hear rustling overhead, leaves shaking and twigs snapping. She wondered if Carol could climb trees very well. She wondered if she had become an animal that could.

It didn’t sound like it. The rustling continued for what seemed like ages, suddenly noisy at times and then halting again. It stopped for a minute when a light turned on over a garage down the street, but when nothing happened it continued.

Then Liz heard a wooden stumbling sound, and a crunch of wood chips beneath feet. She looked away as soon as she heard that, even though the closest streetlight wasn’t near enough that she would be able to see anything.

The crunching was quieter for a minute, as Carol presumably tried her clothes on. Then it started again, and Liz could hear footsteps coming closer. Finally there was a knock on the window, and Liz toggled the auto-unlock on her car door.

The passenger’s side door opened, and Liz’ heart stopped as a monster out of a horror movie sat down next to her. Its leathery wings got in her face, as it tried to situate itself, and Liz panicked and fought them off before they folded back into place.

Liz made herself take a closer look, as it slammed the door shut. It was wearing the bathrobe backwards, tied with a sash below the wings and another around the waist, and it looked awkward and out of place. It sat on the edge of the seat, not bothering to buckle its seatbelt, squirming to find a place for its ratlike tail to go and trying to keep its wings folded in. It kicked its bare feet at the trash on the floor, and Liz could see claws and reverse-jointed heels.

It turned to look up at Liz, its eyes glassy and animal, with a long muzzle studded by whiskers. Enormous ears swiveled towards her, on top of a face that looked part canine and part rodent, its jaw hanging open as it panted. It did not have Carol’s glasses, and if it still had any of her clothing it was hidden under the bathrobe. Liz wanted to see something recognizable in its face, but couldn’t.

It looked away, as the lights dimmed. There was a long, uncomfortable silence, and Liz could hear its breathing over the crickets.

“Thanks,” it said.

“Any time,” Liz said, and realized she was scooted up next to the door.

“Is the store where you got these still open?”

“I think so,” Liz said, and tried to sit herself down properly. “Why?”

“Because I’ve been up in that tree for hours, and I need to use the bathroom.”

“Ahh,” Liz said, still looking at its silhouette.

It turned to look at her, and its eyes glowed the way that a cat’s does. “Are you going to start the car?”

“Oh, right, right … ” Liz did so, and began pulling away from the curb.

“Hurry,” the thing next to her said, and gripped the sides of its seat.

Liz watched the thing come out of the car, and followde her up to the building. The rest of the shopping center was closed, so they had to go in the store’s main entrance.

She was afraid that someone would stop the thing next to her, but nobody did. A couple of people stared, from a distance. It ignored them, and moved surprisingly fast up to the bathrooms, so that Liz had to hurry to keep up. After that, she stayed outside. It did not sound like anyone else was in there.

The bathrooms were next to the $1 discount section. Needing something to occupy her nervous brain, Liz scanned over the merchandise without really looking at it. There were black and orange plastic spiders, rolls of streamers, and old horror movies with DVD cases half the thickness of a normal one.

Halloween was coming up, wasn’t it? All of a sudden Liz felt like she was in one of those movies, and the contrast between all the movies she’d seen and her waiting outside there for Carol made the world seem surreal. The adrenaline in her system did not help, either.

So many movies, Liz thought. So many portrayals of wereism. It’s captured the imagination, hasn’t it? The thought that your best friend could suddenly become a monster … She shivered. I was so young when Brandon changed. I never thought Carol would follow him. I wish I’d known …

Liz looked over her shoulder.

She didn’t go berzerk, like a wolf or a dangerous predator would have. She tried to kill herself. That’s how badly this has affected her. She’s handling this even worse than I am. To suddenly become that … that … She shivered again. I can only imagine what I’d have done.

I’ve got to help her. The thought made more sense than anything else that night had. She might get better, and she might not. Either way, I’ve got to help her.

Liz thought of movies, cartoons, TV shows where someone had changed into something else, and his or her friends had been able to look past the outward appearance. She grinned nervously, as she realized she’d just done the same thing. Carol is somewhere inside that thing, she told herself. And I’m going to help her.

A flushing sound from around the corner, then running water and blaring blowdryer. It cut through Liz’ train of thought, and for the next minute or so all she could do was stand there and wait. Finally, the thing — Carol — came out, and Liz made herself look at her.

She didn’t seem so threatening, in the bright light of the store. Her fur was matted and messed up, and the bathrobe still had the tags attached. She adjusted it, before looking around at the store as though seeing it for the first time.

Carol was taller now, Liz thought. It was probably the way tahther feet were shaped.

“Are we ready to go?” she asked.

A pause. Then, “Do you want me to get you anything?” Liz blurted out.

Carol blinked, and so did the eyes on the creature she was. “Huh?”

“Snacks, DVDs, a new phone … some actual clothes … ”

It looked away, and for the first time Liz could see Carol beneath, in the way that it hesitated and became lost in thought. Finally it said “No,” and closed its eyes. “Just take me home, please. I’m exhausted.”

“Alright.” Liz held out her hand, and for a long moment Carol did nothing, as her eyes were still closed. Finally she opened them, and looked at her questioningly for a second before seeing the proferred hand. Slowly, Carol took it in her own, as though she was not sure what it was for or why she was being offered it.

Her claws were dull, the fur on the back of her hand was scratchy, and the pad on her palm was thick and leathery. Liz squeezed it, to reassure her, and she tensed up and did not squeeze back.

They walked back out to the car, and Liz finally let go when they got up to it. She let Carol get in first and get situated in there, before climbing in the driver’s side and starting the car and pulling out of the parking lot. After that, they drove home in silence, as Carol curled up in the passenger’s seat and dozed off.

Liz finished unwrapping the sausage into the sizzling pan, and stuffed the wrapper into the trash before looking up. Carol had the second robe on this morning, and looked like she was having a very bad fur day.

She squinted at the sunlight coming in through the kitchen windows, and yawned silently, closing her jaws with a clacking of teeth. Then she looked at the clock over the stove, which read 10:30. “I’m up early, aren’t I.”

“Yes, you are, and your brunch isn’t ready yet.” Liz picked up a fork and messed with the scrambled eggs in one pan. “You should still be able to eat sausage and eggs, right?”

“I’m a scavenger. I can eat anything.”

She stood there watching Liz cook; or, rather, watching what Liz was cooking. Watching, and smelling deeply, nostrils flaring. Liz glanced over her shoulder at her. “You’re not going to start drooling, are you?”

Carol bared her teeth for a moment, then walked out into the living room.

Liz gave a sigh of relief, and started mixing in the rest of the ingredients. She heard the television out in the other room turn off, but didn’t mind, as she could barely hear it over her cooking anyway.

It wasn’t long before breakfast was ready. Carol sat down straddling the back of a chair, so that it wouldn’t be in the way of her wings. Liz set the pans of sausage and eggs down on the table in front of Carol, then went to go get her a plate.

Carol looked down at the food, her eyes widening. “Is all this for me?”

“You’ve had a long night, and a long day yesterday.” Liz set the plate down in front of her, along with silverware, and scooped generous portions out onto it. Warm egg and sausage and spice smells filled the air as steam came up out of each pan.

“I’m fairly sure I can’t eat all of this … ”

“We can, uh, save the rest for later.” Liz went through the cabinet looking for something, then came up with a styrofoam bowl. She set it down on the table, and started to get out the cereal.

“Are you sure you don’t want any?”

“It’s okay. Eat up.”

Carol said a quick, silent prayer to herself, as Liz moved around her to get the milk out of the fridge. But then Brandon pawed open the unlatched door that led outside from the kitchen. Liz closed it shut behind him as he trotted over and sat down next to Carol, looking up at her with wide eyes.

“He’s worried about you too,” Liz said.

Carol sideyed him. “I think he’s just hungry.”

He nuzzled Carol’s arm hard at that, and she reached around and scratched him on the back of his neck. Then she got up and put some of her food into his bowl, and he nuzzled her again before running over and chomping it down.

Liz watched, but said nothing, and went back to eating her cereal.

Carol watched him too, for a moment, before looking up. “Aren’t you going to ask me what it’s like?”

“How is the food?” Liz asked, before realizing that wasn’t what Carol had meant.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, and took her first bite. “It actually tastes kind of funny, though … ” She swallowed. “Kind of bitter.”

Liz began to sweat. “Well, your nose is a lot more sensitive now … ”

“Yeah, I’m probably going to have to get used to it.” She looked up at her glass of orange juice for a long moment, before taking a careful sip and dribbling sticky juice down her chin.

“So, er … what’s it like, physically being an animal?” Liz asked.

Carol dried her fur off with a napkin. “Well, aside from my face and my feet everything seems to be in the right place … ” Her tail swished, and she looked up at Liz expectantly.

“And?”

“And, mentally, I don’t feel any different at all. I’m nervous, and scared about what’s going to happen, and mad at myself for giving away the fact that I was an animal and letting this happen to begin with.” She indicated herself. “But I don’t feel like my personality’s changed or anything.”

Liz’ spoon hovered over her cereal. “Why are you telling me this?”

Carol took a deep breath. “I guess because you always tried to reassure me by telling me I was different from Brandon.”

The collie looked up, at this.

“And by different,” Carol said, “I mean ‘not an animal.’ As in a non-human one. But I am one, Liz … ” She looked down at herself, and gestured helplessly. “More than one, it looks like.”

“I can see that.” Liz took another bite of cereal.

“And I always have been.”

“So what are you going to do now?” Liz asked.

Carol sighed. She looked down at the food on her plate, which suddenly didn’t seem very appetizing. “I’m not sure.”

“Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

“I dunno.” Carol shifted around, trying to get comfortable on the chair. “Why do you ask?” Behind her, in the hallway, Brandon laid down next to his food bowl and swished his tail sleepily.

“I, uh-”

The doorbell rang. Carol’s ears perked towards it, and her tail held still. “Who’s that?”

“That’s, uh … ” Liz was sweating a lot.

Somebody knocked on the door.

“Liz, what’s going on?” Carol looked up at her, from her nearly untouched food. Then she looked back down at Brandon. He always got up and ran to the door, whenever anyone knocked. But now he was just laying there, sprawled out with his eyes closed. Breathing slowly and rhythmically.

“Carol, I can explain-”

“You’re trying to drug me.” She stood up. “You’re trying to have me committed!”

They both turned to look through the window behind the kitchen sink, as two men in white coats brushed past the bushes beneath it. Heading towards the back door.

Carol bolted, jumping over Brandon and trying to outrun them to get to it.

“Carol, wait-”

She flung open the back door just as they got there and elbowed her way past them, running another couple of steps before taking off into the air.