Become Your Fursona

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.

scratch scratch scratch

Knees pressed into the carpet, elbows up on her bed. Scraggly fluff under the tops of her feet. Darkness playing across her eyelids.

“Um, God … ”

scratch scratch scratch

The rushing sound of the central air conditioning. The buzzing whirr of her notebook’s fan, on the desk behind her.

“I don’t know if this means anything to you … ”

scratch scratch scratch

” … but I’m pretty sure that I’m going to die … ”

A ping, from the notebook behind her. Somebody else had just logged in.

“You saw what happened … ” She swallowed, and fought to hold back the tears. “You heard what he said.”

scratch scratch scratch

“I don’t want to be like this anymore … ”

The microwave dinged and a chair scraped the floor, somewhere downstairs.

“Please, God! I don’t want to be like this anymore!” Tears ran down her cheeks.

scratch scratch scratch

“I want … I want … ”

scratch scratch scratch

The scratchy tag on the back of her shirt. The scratchy wool on the top of her bed. The scratchy scratchy scratching on the scratchy-

“Go away!”

A frightened yip, and then four feet pounded the floor, running away from the door to her room. But she wasn’t paying attention. All of the hairs on her body had stood up and fluffed themselves out, and she was fighting them back into place. She finally collapsed, drenched in sweat, leaning up against the bedframe and gasping for breath.

Footsteps outside. A knock at the door, and a muffled female voice. “Any reason why you just yelled at my brother?”

She couldn’t say anything.

The door opened, and in walked a light-skinned woman in pale blue jeans and a red t-shirt, carrying a plate of steamed vegetables. She stopped when she saw her. “Carol, are you alright?”

Carol shuddered. “I’m going to die, Liz … ”

‘Liz’ set the plate down on the desk next to Carol’s notebook, and sat on the carpet next to her. The wood squeaked, underneath, and the central air turned off.

They were silent for a few moments, Carol regaining her breath and Liz watching her intently, before Liz spoke. “It’s about what he said today, isn’t it. The teacher at your criminal justice class.”

She sniffled. “Yeah.”

“Carol, you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself.” She started to reach out a hand to her, then thought better of it. “He wasn’t talking about you. He was talking about-”

“People like your brother?”

They both glanced towards the door. They could just barely hear him out in the hallway, scratching his neck with his hind legs. “Well, yeah … ” Liz lowered her voice and cupped one hand to the side of her mouth. “But it’s not like he could get married anyway. You know that.”

Carol looked up at her. “But I could?”

“Of course! You’re not-”

“Like him?”

Canine panting and breathing, out in the hallway. Liz glanced in that direction. “Well … yeah.”

“Wrong.”

“Listen-”

“No. You listen.” Carol’s voice was shaking. She glared up at Liz for a second, before looking back down at the floor. “People act like Animal Syndrome and Wereism are two separate things. I thought they were separate things. I wanted to think I was normal. But I’m not.”

Liz sighed the sigh of a person who’s had to deal with this before. “You’re also not walking on all fours.”

“But I want to.”

She raised one eyebrow. “You really mean that?”

Carol winced. “I mean deep down! Deeper than wanting to go to college, deeper than wanting to be a normal human being. I look at him and I don’t think ‘Oh, the poor thing’ or ‘Ha ha, what a cute dog.’ I think … I think pictures, and feelings, and sounds, that translate to ‘Canine, male, juvenile. Smaller than me. No threat.’ And then I want to smell him.”

Liz laughed.

“I’m serious!” Carol looked up at her, frightened and pleading, and the laughter stopped.

Out in the hallway, claws clicked as her brother sat down.

“What are you afraid is going to happen?”

Carol clenched and unclenched her fists, still leaning up against her bedframe and looking away from Liz. “I’m afraid I’m going to lose my soul.”

“What?”

More claws clicking, out in the hallway, and a short canine whimper. Carol turned to look to the doorway and stared out through it, blankly, as she spoke in a monotone. “You heard what they said. Only humans were made in Imago Dei. Animals weren’t. They don’t have souls. That’s why men are supposed to subdue and dominate them. And that’s why it’s okay to brutalize weres who resist arrest. Never mind that they’re scared and don’t know what’s going on. Never mind that they’ve forgotten how to talk like a human being. They aren’t real people anymore, so it’s okay to do whatever you want to them. We’d better stop them from breeding, so there aren’t any more freaks like them ever.”

A pause. Liz coughed. “You’re afraid that you’re going to turn into a were, and you’re going to be disoriented enough that somebody like our teacher is going to beat you up?”

“No. I’m afraid that I’m going to lose my soul.”

“But you said you were like my brother, deep down. So wouldn’t that mean that you’ve already lost it?”

“I don’t know.” Carol looked up at the ceiling, and closed her eyes.

Liz fidgeted, and glanced over at her steamed vegetables. “Carol, you never had this much trouble with it when we were growing up … ”

“It wasn’t as hard then.” She spoke with her eyes closed. “Now there’s all this pressure on me to be a human being, the same kind of human as everyone else. And every day I feel more like an animal, who doesn’t understand why they’re asking her to do all these tricks. And just wants to hide somewhere and be safe.”

Nobody talked for a few moments. The room was silent except for her notebook’s fan.

“I’ve started to P-shift,” Carol remarked.

Liz jumped to her feet. “Right now?”

“No, a few minutes ago. Second time today. And again last week.” Carol opened her eyes partway, and stared half-lidded up at the ceiling for a moment, before closing them again and letting out her breath. “It’s exhausting.”

“Carol, we’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

“I’m not going there … ” She still had her eyes closed.

“I mean it. If you’re changing then we have to-”

“I’m not going to be institutionalized.”

Liz groaned and looked skyward. “How else are you going to get the help that you need?”

“The help … that I need … ” She grunted, and struggled to sit upright. Liz came over and helped her. ” … is not to be drugged up and locked away. If anything, that’ll stress me out so much that changing will be inevitable. Then I’ll be locked up, muzzled, restrained … kept there as long as they can keep me, and thrown on the street once my insurance runs out.” She glared at the wall.

“Carol … ” Liz knelt next to her now. “Prescription pharmaceuticals can help people. That’s what they’re made for. You can take drugs that’ll keep you from changing. But you can’t get a prescription without going in there for an evaluation.”

Carol clawed the carpet with both hands, digging deep with her nails, and spoke through her teeth. “How come I have to get drugged up to keep me from changing, and they can’t just hire someone who isn’t a stupid evil hateful bigot?”

She shook and held her breath, as though fighting something back, and Liz broke out in a sweat. Then Carol stopped, and started gasping for breath again. “And that’s three,” she managed.

She sat there for a minute or two, her breathing fast but gradually slowing and becoming more stable. Liz stayed there beside her, listening. Finally, Carol crawled up onto her bed by herself, rejecting Liz’ offer of help, and lay down and closed her eyes.

“You should take some time off from classes,” Liz finally said.

“I will.”

“And you should pray.” Liz stood up. “I still think you should get professional help. But whether you do or not, you need God’s help on this.”

“Will God help a soulless animal?”

She remained still, breathing regularly with her eyes closed. Liz watched her a few moments, before taking her plate, turning the light out and walking out, leaving the door open. “Good night, Carol.”

“‘Night.”

All was quiet. The notebook’s screen faded to black, up on the desk.

Then claws clicked out in the hallway, and into the room walked a fluffy orange collie, without a trace of human features. It looked up at Carol and whimpered, and she said nothing in response.

Finally it sat down, head pressed low to the carpet, eyes flicking upward to glance worriedly at her until it, too, fell asleep.

* * *

The week passed slowly. Carol spent the time reading and writing online, in the upstairs room of her friend’s house. She stayed up late, slept in late, and had headphones on 24/7. The homework piled up, but she didn’t care. She didn’t have enough energy to care.

Every day the orange collie trotted into her room, and gave her a worried look before sitting down on the carpet beside her. She stepped over it coming in and out of her room. Aside from that, she paid it no attention.

Carol slept in late the day that she had to return to her classes. She didn’t have classes until that afternoon, so she was only a little late getting there, after waking up and eating lunch and getting herself ready. Liz had already left by then, and they promised to meet up after class.

The halls of the Southern college she went to were quiet, and nearly deserted since everyone was already in class. She stopped outside the door to her criminal justice class, next to the bulletin board with posters up for mission trips and Bible study times, and took a moment to compose herself. It’s not going to be long, she told herself, fists and eyes squeezed shut. Just a few hours, and then you can go back home and do whatever you want. It won’t be so bad, and you’ll have time to recover afterwards.

You can do this.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open and walked inside, going behind all the rows of seats lined up and over to an unused desk. She sat down quietly, ignoring the squeak in her chair, and tried to be as small as possible as she got out her notebook and pencil from her backpack.

It wasn’t until after she’d done so, and started thinking about what to draw during class, that a couple of things occurred to her.

One, the teacher had stopped in midsentence a moment after she’d stepped inside.

Two, everyone in the room was watching her.

Not “a few people had turned their heads to look at the person who’d just sat down.” Everyone in the room was watching her.

Lowering her head nervously, starting to sweat, she glanced around the room and caught the following up on the whiteboard:

WEREISM, CRIMINOLOGY, AND THE BIBLE

WHAT?
- mental / physical disorder
- epidemic -- 1 in 150
- early childhood
- mind/body turned into animal partway / fully
- loss of humanity

HOW?
- animal bites?
- genetic disease?
- demonic possession? Mark 5:1-13!

WHY?
- fallen / sinful natures
- last days -- 2 Tim 3:1
- final judgment / THE BEAST!!

WHAT IS SOCIETY TO DO?
- stoning? drowning? (God's law / man's law)
- sterilization (possession + genes)
- incarceration / institutionalization

WHAT ARE CHRISTIANS TO DO?
- insanity plea? maximum sentencing
- prayer cover
- rebuke / cast out!!

She read the whole thing, cheeks burning red and sweat pouring down her sides. I am going to die.

“Brethren and sisters … ”

All eyes, including Carol’s, looked up at the teacher — tall, bald, and commanding.

“I sense an evil spirit in our midst.”

It barely even registered. The world was nothing but heat and despair and humiliation, so overwhelming that Carol began to feel disembodied. This isn’t happening. I’m not really here. This is just my imagination.

“A spirit that has taken over the body and mind of one of God’s sweet children … ”

I should never have spoken up in that class. They knew. They could tell. It was so obvious.

” … and held her in bondage since she was a little child.”

I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

“And I say to that evil spirit … ”

I’m going to die.

He stretched out his hand. “Begone.”

For several long seconds, Carol couldn’t make herself move or do anything if she’d wanted to. Then she felt the burning on her skin turn to intense itching, and spread into her organs, her feet, her face. And she realized what was happening to her and jumped out of her seat, taking off running for the door to the hallway.

“In Jesus’ name, begone!”

She jumped as she heard that, right as she opened the door, and fell out into the hallway sprawling and kicking and clutching her sides and crying noiselessly. She barely caught sight of another girl carrying textbooks, and she registered the feel of her legs making contact with something as she writhed and struggled and changed. It hit the floor right next to her, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t.

I’m dying I’m dying I’m dying I’m dying I’m dying …

I’m dead. She shuddered, and took in a gasping breath through her wet muzzle, as tears streaked down her fur through closed eyes. I’m dead.

Stephanie glared menacingly at the blue screen, though despite her best efforts it refused to retreat and go back to the online encyclopedia she’d been looking at mere seconds before. Rolling her eyes at the all-too-familiar problem, she jammed the restart button just a bit harder than necessary. The blue screen faded to black, then to a colorful splash page with a load bar crawling its way towards completion. And then blue again.

Knowing fully well it was futile, she looked inside the computer case and was met with a confusing mass of crystals and wires and goodness-knew-what else. Her eye twitched. “Come on…” Restart. Black. Blue. Curse. Kick desk. Fist-to-keyboard contact.

“What did you break this time?” Her brother, Alex, was poking his head in through the door she thought she’d locked, a smirk playing across his face.

“I didn’t break it.” Her voice was defensive in spite of herself. “It’s just…” She struggled to come up with a technical-sounding term, before deciding simply on “…blue-screening.”

“Right.” Alex hovered over her shoulder. She forced back the urge to punch him in the jaw. “Should be easy enough to fix.”

There was a long pause, punctuated by Stephanie drumming her fingers against the edge of the desk. “Well…?” She finally asked. “Are you going to do anything?”

“What’s in it for me?” He fired back. “Reagents are expensive, you know. I can’t be using them on just anything.”

Stephanie knew quite well this was a blatant lie, considering that he’d run off with her other brother and a group of their friends to test out spells that involved explosions, ones which she heard from half a mile away. She also knew quite well it was not going to do her much good to argue with him and it certainly wouldn’t do her computer any good to make him angry. “I’ll clean up the living room for this week.”

“Deal.” Given the size of her room, it took him about three steps to get out the door and out of sight.

A few moments later and he returned, dragging his backpack behind him and holding a stick of charcoal in his hand. “Move.”

She obliged, sitting on the bed and inadvertently waking up Bonnie, who opened her one good eye and yawned, before relocating to Stephanie’s lap. Stephanie smiled down fondly at the kitten and stroked her fur. Bonnie purred loudly enough to nearly drown out her brother’s incantations.

There was a sound much like someone slamming an eraser against a chalkboard, followed by shrill electronic beeping. The beeps decreased in volume and pitch, then simply stopped altogether.

“And that should be it.” He dusted the charcoal off his hands. “Have fun.” And he disappeared out the door again, leaving an unsightly ring of black dust on the carpet.

“Great. Thanks.” She muttered, half-sincerely. She carefully ushered Bonnie off her lap and with a spare shirt attempted to clean the charcoal off the ground without success. She sighed. Too late to get the vacuum now with her mother in bed, it’d have to wait until tomorrow.

The computer was indeed working now, at least. So she re-opened her browser, and went back to reading about mages and thinking about how wonderful it’d be if she were normal.

Sure, she knew what other anaetherian activists would say. She’d lurked on the message boards, even posted once or twice, and written about anaetherian rights in the privacy of her own blog which nobody ever read. “People without the Gift are just as capable as mages, because lacking the Gift does nothing to hurt our mental capacities. It’s society that restricts us. We don’t need a cure, mages need to stop gearing everything towards magic-users blah blah inclusiveness blah…”

It was true on some level, she was very aware it was right. Still, it seemed so much easier to just change one person than change all of society. So, just maybe…

She skimmed through the “Anaetherian rights controversy” page, listing false cure after false cure, fraud after fraud. Or maybe not. A false hope was better than none, but there didn’t seem to be much insight.

“Oh well.” She closed the tab. “No use dwelling on what can’t be.” So she spent the rest of the night skimming through pictures of baby animals, reading news feeds, and talking to people hundreds of miles away she’d probably never meet. Time slipped past her, and once she finally decided to check her clock, it was five in the morning.

She sighed. Though she wasn’t tired, Mom would be up any time now, and the last thing she wanted was to get caught up this late again. She issued a few quick goodbyes to the few people still up, and half-fell into her bed, with Bonnie curling up beside her.

* * *

The mechanical droning of an alarm clock woke her up, and the sunlight streaming in through her window conspired to ensure she stayed awake. Despite the fog enshrouding her mind, she had just enough in her to slam the snooze button and take a bleary glance at the clock. Two o’clock. She groaned and slammed her head on the pillow.

“At least Alex is in school now.” She reluctantly kicked the blankets off. “Nobody can yell at me for sleeping in so late anymore.” She made it into the kitchen before realizing something odd. She hadn’t kicked off a kitten along with her covers. She was put at ease for a moment when she considered that Bonnie obviously had gotten up before her.

But there was something else wrong. All the while telling herself she was being too paranoid for her own good, she took a look back at her room.

Bonnie’s food bowl was empty, except for a few crumbs she was sure were left over from last night. And Stephanie was sure Bonnie would have woken her up well before two. A hungry cat was a nigh-unstoppable force, as she’d found out.

“Bonnie?” No response, not even the clicking of claws across the hardwood floors of the hall. She poured a bit of cat food into the bowl, rattling it as loudly as possible. Still nothing.

With deepening dread, she stepped out onto the porch, “Bonnie?”

She heard a high-pitched and familiar mewing, and her paranoia dissipated. She knelt over, and her kitten ran straight into her arms. “Don’t do that again, alright?” She sighed. “You scared me.”

She then found another reason entirely to be afraid when she turned around– a very tall man dressed in the robes of a high mage. She jumped backwards, almost dropping Bonnie.

“Don’t be afraid.” Stephanie figured his tone was supposed to be soothing, but it wasn’t doing much to banish her contemplations on where her mother had left the guns. “I’m here to help you.”

She was certain she’d seen a scene just like this in a movie, right before the female lead was kidnapped and almost murdered. So she took a few careful steps backwards towards the house, hoping he wouldn’t notice. “Who are you?”

“We’ve met before.”

She reached for the handle of the door.

“You’re a member of several Anaetherian Rights forums. So am I.”

Her mind spun, trying to remember what kind of information she’d disclosed that would help him find out where she lived.

His eyes flicked to her hand on the door. “I’m only here to help. I promise.”

“Why should I trust you? You…” She tried to come up with a creative way to tell him off, like her brothers always could. Nothing worth saying came to mind.

“You don’t trust me.” He paused, looking thoughtfully to the sky. “What if I told you that you wouldn’t be the first person I cure?”

A million questions buzzed in her mind. If he really had a miracle cure, why wasn’t he telling anyone? Why wasn’t it all over the news by this point in time? How could he have succeeded where scientists had failed? Who was he in the first place? Unfortunately, she couldn’t manage to come up with anything more articulate than “Prove it.”

“As you wish.” He bowed his head slightly and flickered out of view.

The closet, that’s where the guns were! She rushed inside, almost tripping over the rug. It was right about when she threw open the door she remembered the gun rack was locked. And not without reason, they’d been expensive, not to mention hard to find in the first place. After weeks of scouring mainstream stores, her mother had finally given up and had them special-ordered.

Her mother had also been exceptionally paranoid and reinforced the locks on the rack with magic, reasoning it was the only way to deter potential thieves. In retrospect, it was ironic– the one equalizer she had she couldn’t even use without other mages around.

There was a strangely polite rap at the door. She cautiously peered out from behind the door. It was the mage, a familiar woman beside him.

“Rose?” Her jaw dropped. How long had it been– several months? All the things she’d been warned about, how a mage could easily create an illusion of someone she knew or trusted, and she’d have no way of knowing, dropped out of her mind. She stepped outside to meet her.

Rose smiled shyly at her, the same smile she remembered from pictures and webcam conversations. “Sorry if I worried you.”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t, she’d been at the back of Stephanie’s mind ever since she disappeared from the boards. “What happened?”

“I was cured.” She held out her hand. It contained a tiny flame of raw aether. “It’s real, see? I can use magic now.”

Stephanie’s eyes widened. Her hand shaking slightly, she reached out to touch the flame. It wavered and flickered as she drew nearer.

Rose snuffed out the flame before Stephanie could. “I’m…” Her voice sounded shaky. “I’m really sorry I left without telling anyone. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, you know how most of them are. They wouldn’t believe me, or if they did they’d say I was a terrible person for wanting to be cured. They didn’t understand what it was like to be that bad.”

“I know.” She sniffled and forced back tears.

“Things have changed now, though.” She brushed at her eyes. “His cure really works. I can already use elementary-level magic. This could turn my life around. It’s already changed so much.” Her voice cracked. She took a deep breath. “And it could change everything for you too.”

“It’s alright if you can’t decide now.” The mage stepped in. “I will give you time to decide.”

“Okay.” Was all she managed to get out through the growing fog in her mind. This was all too much.

“I will be back tomorrow.”

“W-wait.” She protested, her hand subconsciously reaching out for the mage. “Could you–” Could she stay? That would require some extremely awkward explanations. After all, she’d kept her online life secret from her mother, and her mother had never taken kindly to the possibility she could be talking to forty-year-old men pretending to be teenage girls or weirdos who write poems about killing themselves, or everyone at their school or both, the only people she seemed to think existed on the Internet.

“What is it?” Rose asked.

Stephanie heard the sputter of the school bus’s engine drawing close. “It’s nothing.”

And then the two of them disappeared from sight.

She trudged back inside, collapsing on her bed just in time for her brothers to go barging in the hall, arguing about something-or-another. She’d long since learned to shut them out, and paying attention to their arguments wasn’t going to help her figure all this out. She just needed to calm down and clear her mind.

Easier said than done. The conversation she had kept going through her mind over and over again, and all she could think of was what she should have said, what she should have asked, what she should have done.

She grabbed her laptop and brought it out of sleep mode. Maybe a little distraction would help. And as soon as she logged in an IM window popped up, from someone named Maranatha. ‘Hey there. How’re things going?’ It took her a moment to recognize the username– it was one of the members of the Anaetherian Rights message board.

‘Hey. ^_^’ She rested her chin in her hand. Now there was something that was going to be difficult to give a straight answer to. ‘I could be better. Lots of things going on.’ There. Honest, yet not direct.

The reply was almost instantaneous. ‘Aww. :/ What’s going on?’

She tapped her hands on the trackpad, trying to figure out how to dodge the question. ‘It’s a long story.’ Cliché, but effective.

‘Ah, alright…’ The person typed back.

There was a long pause, and no indicator Maranatha was typing a message. She bit her lip. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to at least bring up Rose. But she still had to close her eyes while typing the message. ‘Do you remember anyone named Damask from the forums?’

Maranatha took a few moments to respond. ‘I think so, yeah. She hasn’t posted in a while though.’ Another pause. ‘Did something happen to her?’

“Yeah, something happened to her, alright.” She muttered. ‘She’s doing fine. I just met her today. She just needed to take a break from the forums, I guess.’

‘Yeah. I can’t really blame her. After that whole flame war over the cure issue.’

Stephanie winced. She remembered one (or several) flame wars erupting on the site, but only had the vaguest understanding of them– she’d always made it a point to stay out of the controversial topics. They’d always gotten extremely heated, and it usually took no more than a few posts before someone got called an idiot (or some more colorful iteration thereof.) ‘I know she was pro-cure…’

‘Well, her and a bunch of overzealous parents. Versus a bunch of overzealous people with a lot of pent-up anger. Nobody came out looking good.’

‘And then she just stopped posting…’ No wonder she’d seemed so worked up about accepting a cure.

‘Yep. :/ That topic was the last I saw of her. Is she thinking about coming back…?’

‘No.’ And with good reason, she thought. ‘She’s had some other things come up.’

There was an awkward break in messages. ‘Are you anti-cure?’ The question came out before Stephanie even had time to think about how stupid it was to ask something so controversial. That was always the advantage of a forum. You had time to think about what you were saying, and you could always just take it back by deleting your post. Then again, if you did put it out there and couldn’t do anything in time, everyone saw it.

Maranatha didn’t reply for a while, which left Stephanie to pace around her room, trying to figure out how she could defuse what would most likely be an explosive argument. And then her computer pinged. ‘In a sense, yes. I think saying that we need to be cured is saying we’re inferior people. And we aren’t. I’ve always agreed that we’re only disadvantaged because of how almost everything in society is so dependent on magic. Yet things don’t have to be like that.’

Once Stephanie could have believed that. Now she wasn’t so sure. ‘But if there was a cure, no strings attached, and you could choose to have it…would that be better?’

‘I don’t believe in no strings attached.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘If there was. Just hypothetically.’

‘Then all anaetherians would be pressured into getting it. We’d lose the insight we get from having to go through life without magic. Think of all the anaetherian inventions and scientific discoveries and progress we’ve made, gone. And those who they can’t pressure into taking their cure would be even more marginalized.’

‘It’s easier than having to change the world.’

‘But is it really better?’ Maranatha replied without missing a beat.

Stephanie could feel a headache coming on and she wasn’t sure if it was from stress or the fact she’d barely eaten or had anything to drink the entire day. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Just think about it, alright? Just because something is easy doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile.’

‘Yeah.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘And I’ll BRB. Time for dinner.’ She left without checking to see if Maranatha bid her farewell.

Dinner, however, turned more into a thirty-minute hunt for decent food and ingredients, followed by another thirty minutes of trying to cook it, followed by another bout of picking at it, then trying to hide from her mom arguing with her brothers, then playing with Bonnie to calm down, followed by a massive video game binge into the early hours of the morning. She finally crashed at three in the morning into a deep sleep.

* * *

The doorbell dragged her into consciousness. Her clock indicated it was twelve, but she felt like she’d barely slept at all. She trudged to the door. Her heart skipped a beat when she opened the door to find what she thought was a complete stranger until she realized it was the mage. Rose was nowhere in sight.

“Have you decided?” He asked.

“Yes.” Her voice was shaking, and she couldn’t manage to spit out her answer.

He arched his eyebrow. “And it is?”

“I…” She prayed she wouldn’t regret what she was about to say. “I want to be cured.”

“As you wish.” He nodded. “Please follow me.”

She didn’t quite understand why they had to use the woods behind her house for this. The mage had rambled on about leylines and some other things she vaguely remembered from her brother’s textbooks. Then he traced out a circle around her and started sprinkling powders, scrawling runes in the earth and muttering incantations. All-in-all it was nearly an hour before he finally said things were ready (and considering it was starting to glow faintly, it was fairly obvious things were.)

He told her he had to leave now, but all she had to do was just sit in the circle until it was done. Easy enough. It was so quiet and peaceful out here, dead silent except for the wind and the faint sound of bird wings flapping overhead. She couldn’t resist closing her eyes, and couldn’t resist letting her mind drift away.

* * *

Something jabbed Stephanie in her knee. She lifted her head up, her eyes snapping open, and immediately regretted doing so. It was painfully bright, despite it being sundown. Everything was like there had been a dimmer on the sun that had been on low, and now someone had turned it all the way up. Furthermore, it seemed like everything she could make out without going half-blind had a green-blue ambient glow around it. The circle she was sitting in was especially bright.

She covered her watering-up eyes with her hand and felt something strange. Something soft and downy, something that definitely wasn’t human skin. With a sense of growing dread, she let her hand travel to the center of her face. She had what felt like a delicately curved beak. Her blood ran completely cold. “Where is the mage?”

She tried to stand up, but stumbled, nearly falling forward onto the ground. There was a weight on her back, something that felt like it was jutting out of the very bone of her shoulder blades. She reached her hand behind her back and tugged at it. It moved, and she could feel muscles and tendons stretching as if it were another limb, along with a covering of the same downy substance on her face. Feathers.

“I have wings.” She realized with a sense of awe and horror and shock all mixed together. “And I’m some kind of mutant bird-thing.”

The next few moments were a whirl of disjointed and panicked thoughts. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply. “Okay. Okay, it’s going to be alright. Transmogrification is a normal magic discipline, it’s reversible. I’ll just have to get the mage somehow.” She tried to speak, but her words came out as harsh screeching.

She clamped her hands (talons?) over her beak, and took a few deep breaths. And then she tried again. The screeching was quieter this time, but still nothing remotely human.

She hobbled around, trying to pace to help herself calm down and think straight, but movement was far harder than it should have been. So she settled for her mounting frustration by kicking around some leaves. And then within the circle the mage had created, she unearthed what was most likely the source of her problem– a single owl feather. She’d heard of minor contaminants and mistakes causing catastrophic results. Just her luck.

With an irritated sigh, she collapsed on the ground. “What am I going to do now? And what am I going to tell everyone?” There was always the off chance it was just a temporary issue. Or maybe she was a shapeshifter, like they always talked about in fairy tales. Owl-creature by night, human by day.

“Or it’s just punishment for wanting something I never should have wanted.” She thought bitterly. That seemed to be the way things always went, after all. Or maybe Maranatha was right– there’s no such thing as no strings attached. And now she had to deal with them– it was just a matter of how.

She began pacing anew, her steps slowly becoming more and more natural, though she still had to hunch over. Still, it was proving hard to think through her headache, and therein one course of action revealed itself. Go back home and get some asprin.

“And try not to get attacked by my family. They’d probably think I’m some mad mage’s latest transmogrification experiment.” And the irony of it was that it was half-true. She collapsed underneath the biggest, shadiest tree she could find. Best to wait until nightfall. Maybe then they’d just think she was a very malnourished bear and not a monster.

She tried to start speaking again in an attempt to pass the time, but even something as simple as going through the alphabet was hard. Vowels proved to be much easier to enunciate than consonants. “At least speaking Japanese won’t be a problem.” Then she remembered how long it’d been since she picked up the books and DVDs she’d gotten to help her learn it in the first place, and cringed.

The sun was getting lower and lower now, and her surroundings got a deeper and deeper tint of red to them. It had to have been a beautiful sunset, and she couldn’t even look at it. The upside was that it was almost dark enough she didn’t need to shield her eyes anymore. The leylines were still bright, but at least they were nowhere near as bad. And the world was coming more and more into focus. If anything, now she could see even better than she used to.

“Guess I should get started now.” She hoisted herself off the ground and began the walk back, taking in the sights of the forest as she went. Everything was as clear as, well, day, and despite it having been months since she’d gone for a walk in the forest. Of course, the fact her house lights were still on helped.

She winced at the flourescent lighting, and tried to take a look inside. She couldn’t see anyone in the main rooms, which meant her brothers were probably playing video games, and her mom was in bed, a stroke of minor luck after several major misfortunes. And she was finally getting to the point where she could form actual words, something that made her happier than it should have considering her situation.

She couldn’t resist taking a quick look in the window glass to assess the damage done to her. A bipedal barn owl stared back at her with wide, pitch-dark eyes, its tawny feathers stirring slightly in the wind. She traced a talon around its…no, her heart-shaped face, trying to force her mind to register that the creature in the glass was her. And when that proved to be a depressing prospect, she tried to force herself to remember it didn’t have to be permanent.

She broke eye contact with her reflection. “The sooner I get this over with, the better.” Steeling her nerves, she carefully opened the window and attempted to slip inside. Though she might have been able to do this as a human, she failed to take into account she now had wings. The result was an audible thump much like the kind one would hear if a bird flew into a windowpane.

She didn’t even bother to check and see if anyone was coming. She ran the best she could, ducked behind a tree, and huddled there until she stopped feeling like she was about to die of cardiac arrest. When she recovered, she opted instead to go through the back door, and the sudden change in light made her flinch.

Inside, she could hear the faint sound of the TV in the basement. She breathed a sigh of relief– they probably had their game up too loud to hear much of anything. She poured herself a glass of water and after a struggle with the bottlecap, finally managed to fish out a pair of asprin. She then raised the glass to her mouth, and tapped the edge against her beak, splashing a bit of water on the ground.

“Aaaawh, come on…” She muttered. She glanced at the basement door. The game’s sound effects were still audible even with it closed, but that did nothing to quell her uneasiness. “Don’t have time for this.” She took the asprin dry, tried to ignore the horrible aftertaste, headed back for the door, and almost tripped over her kitten.

She stopped dead in her tracks, and almost fell over on her face. Bonnie was staring at her with wide eyes. The kitten fluffed out her fur and hissed, backing away from Stephanie. Stephanie felt her heart sink, and fresh tears came to her eyes. She stepped over Bonnie, and opened the door. Then she felt a cold nose poking at her heels, followed by purring. Bonnie rubbed up against her leg and mewed– her usual call for attention.

“Good girl.” She stroked Bonnie’s fur as gently as she could. A lump was rising in her throat, and she was reasonably sure it wasn’t because of the asprin. “I gotta go now, okay? I’ll see you again soon.” She sincerely hoped she wasn’t lying, and slipped out the door before Bonnie could react.

“At least someone recognizes me.” She thought dourly. She tried (and failed) to formulate any other upsides to her current situation when a glint of light caught her eyes. There was a ladder leaning against their shed, and thus an idea formed in her mind…

* * *

She carefully ascended the ladder onto the roof and looked below her. It looked a lot higher up than she thought it would have, and she felt her hands shake a bit at the thought of having to jump.

It was about this point in time she remembered that owls were hollow-boned, and that a fall would not bode well for her skeletal structure. She sighed and sat down, her feet dangling over the side of the roof.

She looked up again at the sky. She could see bats darting erratically about chasing after moths, and even another owl.

More than anything, she wanted to join them. To be free, and get away from the dismal situation she was in.

So she sat for a few more minutes, staring enviously at the owl and the smoothness of his (for she was almost certain it was a male, though she wasn’t able to place a reason why other than simple intuition) flight. So she closed her eyes, let her instincts take over, and jumped.

And after a few seconds in, after she was certain she hadn’t broken anything or otherwise hurt herself, she opened her eyes. She could see the world below with so much more clarity than she had as a human, right down to the crickets leaping from grass blade to grass blade and mice scurrying about. Part of her thought that the mice would make a nice midnight snack, but it was drowned out by sheer exhilaration.

Half-delirious with joy, she pumped her wings faster. The world below grew smaller, her house farther away, the crisscrossing leylines began to blend together, and the blasted, lonely, middle-of-nowhere town that’d felt like a prison for as long as she’d been there started to fade, and even if just for a moment, everything she’d been through was worth it. Even her bizarre new body.

* * *

She flew until she felt as if her wings were about to fall off, and made a somewhat rough attempt at a landing. After plucking some twigs from beneath her feathers, she trudged back to her house, daydreams of a nice warm shower dancing in her mind.

And she was preoccupied enough with those daydreams she didn’t notice a few irregularities inside. Firstly, the lights were still on even in the middle of the night, when her early bird mom and not-quite-as-night-owlish-no-pun-intended brothers would have been long since asleep. Secondly, there were some aether leylines planted in the ground that hadn’t been there before– not that she would have noticed, given she’d never looked at her house with the Sight before.

Not being entirely disconnected from reality, she realized the two unfamiliar shadows skulking about did not bode well. With her heart rising into her throat, she slowly, carefully, and as stealthily as she could crept up to the window.

The lights inside were far too bright for her tastes, but she could make out who was inside. The mage and Rose. Her feathers fluffed out in irritation. “So now he decides to show up.”

Instincts were telling her there was something very wrong with this situation, and reason was quickly filling in the blanks as to why. She knew for a fact that her mother wasn’t a light sleeper, that the doors were supposed to be magically locked at night, and the mage’s body language was far too casual for someone who’d just broken into another person’s house.

And most importantly of all… “What’s he done to them?” He couldn’t have just waltzed in there without anyone noticing. Horrible ideas of what he could have done to ensure nobody saw his entrance ran through her head.

“You can come in, you know.” She stifled a screech of shock– how could the mage have heard her? “I know you’re out there.”

“He’s bluffing. I hope.” Not to mention being in a room with just him was the last thing she wanted right now.

He sighed. “Please be reasonable. I just needed to see you.”

“Reasonable!” She said in a low hiss.

“Yes, reasonable.” She saw him nodding from her vantage point near the window. “And before you say anything, yes, I can hear you too. Please, come inside. I don’t feel like talking this loudly.”

“Tell me what you’ve done to my family first. Or…” She trailed off. What could she threaten him with?

“Oh, them. Don’t worry, they’re fast asleep. Very fast asleep as a matter of fact.”

The thought of punching him entered her mind before she remembered how much frailer her bone structure was now. “What’s that supposed to mean? What have you done with them?”

“It was just a simple sleeping draught, now will you calm down? You’re being very unreasonable.”

“You drugged them? Why? Why are you even here?”

“I just needed to get your attention, seeing as you’ve been avoiding me. And I’m sure you don’t want your family to see you in the state you’re in. Now will you please come inside? It’ll be a lot easier on both of us.”

“Stephanie, please.” She could just barely make out Rose’s voice. “We just want to solve this problem, and we can’t do it while you’re out there.”

“Fine.” She’d hoped what she was saying sounded defiant. The self-conscious side of her told her she just sounded petulant. And to ease a little bit of her frustration, she gave the door a jab with her clawed foot to make it look like she was kicking it open.

“Thank you.” Despite her new appearance, he was staring at her impassively.

Rose, on the other hand, was not. She let out a tiny gasp of shock and jumped back slightly. “What happened to you?”

“Something must have contaminated the spell circle.” The mage answered for Stephanie. “This could be difficult to fix.”

“Really.” Stephanie tried to make her displeasure as readily apparent as possible.

“Really.” He intoned back. “It wouldn’t be as much of an issue if you’d just turned yourself into this after you’d become a mage, but now being a whatever-you-are and a mage are…intertwined, so to speak.” He paused thoughtfully. “Incidentally, did the rest of the spell work?”

If Stephanie had lips, she would have been scowling at him. “You’re worried about that?”

“Well, did it?”

She threw up her hands. “Yes, it did! I can see leylines, I tried to tap into one, but that’s the least of my problems now!”

The mage was stroking his chin, oblivious to her distress. “Well, that much is good. Shame illusionism is such a complex matter, otherwise I could at least make you look human.”

“So you’re saying there’s no way I can be human again.” She wondered how long it would take her to get to the phone and call the police. Probably too long. But maybe if she could just get him to keep rambling on…

“Oh, there certainly is.” He nodded. “Actually, I’d rather prefer that solution, it will be easier on everyone.”

There was a pause, most likely engineered by the mage for dramatic tension. For the most part, it was just wearing down on Stephanie’s already frayed nerves. “And it is?”

“Reverse transmogrification. Basically, I could try to turn you back.”

She tapped her claws on the dining room table. “This sounds too good to be true.”

The mage clenched his jaw ever-so-slightly. “It can be a slow and painful process. For whatever reason, your transformation was unusually fast, but now I’ll have to work much more deliberately to make sure I don’t take away your new gifts, or anything else.”

“Have you ever done this before?” The tapping was quickly turning into a drumbeat from her favorite metal ballad.

“It’s an experimental procedure.”

“And I’m supposed to trust you won’t mess up again?” She tried to glare at him, but couldn’t quite manage to meet him in the eye.

“It wasn’t my fault!” And that was the loudest she’d ever heard the mage get. “It was just an unforseen error. Trust me, nothing like that will happen again.”

“Trust you!” She snapped. “This is the second– no, third– time you’ve randomly shown up at my house! And this time you’ve broken in! And you drugged my family! And you’re acting like this isn’t even an issue! What is wrong with you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me!” He turned away from her. “I can see you’re not going to listen to me. Shame some people just don’t know what’s good for them.” He took a small cloth from somewhere within the folds of his robe.

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

He upturned a small vial, dabbing the cloth with a pungent, clear liquid. “Oh…and don’t bother trying to run.” He returned the vial to his robes and with his free hand snapped his fingers. Stephanie felt as if someone had kicked her in the stomach and knocked the breath out of her. “I’ve just activated an anti-magic forcefield. As long as its up, you’ll be unable to use any kind of magic or leave here.” He continued. “Last chance. Will you undergo the procedure or will I have to force you to do so?”

“Stephanie, please.” Rose said softly. “I didn’t get my powers the first time around, just do what he says. He’ll be able to fix this.”

“No.” Her voice might have been shaking, but she was sure in her convictions. “This was a mistake. All this was a mistake. I never should have…” She stopped herself before her voice started to crack too much. “If anyone’s going to fix this, it’ll be me.”

“I see.” He advanced towards her, an impassive look on his face. “If you insist.”

She flattened herself out on the counter, her talons splaying across the cold surface, the very tips of her claws scraping against a frying pan. And without taking any time to even consider the potential consequences, she grabbed the frying pan and slammed it into the mage’s head as hard as she could.

The impact jarred even her, but needless to say the mage had it much worse. He crumpled bonelessly to the ground without a sound.

* * *

Stephanie bundled her covers around her, trying to lull herself into sleeping. Being questioned by the police had been exhausting, yet unnervingly enough she couldn’t get it out of her head long enough to rest. Then again, ever since she’d changed she’d been quite literally sleeping all day. It hadn’t taken much to get to that point given her previous sleep schedule, but that didn’t stop her mother from griping about it.

Still, if that was what she chose to gripe about, Stephanie was fine with that. It was already something she was quite used to hearing, and she’d take any semblance of normalcy she could. She was sure her family was horrified by her change, seeing as how they were avoiding her even more than usual, but at least they weren’t talking about it, and more importantly they weren’t asking her questions about what had happened. They just avoided her. So had Rose, for that matter– she’d only heard from her once in the past few days. She seemed to be coping, but barely. She’d overheard in the police station that there was some residue of magical tampering with her mind and memories, and it’d take a while to recover from it.

At least Bonnie was taking things well– she had a near-infinite supply of feathers to play with now. And things were easier that way, being left to her own devices with the one being in the world she knew could care less about her appearance. Still, she couldn’t say the past few days had been easy at all. The police station had been particularly bad. At least her mother had teleported them straight to the station, but Stephanie still had to insist on wearing a very heavy raincoat, the baggiest pair of sweatpants she could find, a hooded sweatshirt underneath that, and a wide-brimmed hat to hide as much of herself as she could. It was hot as blazes, but it worked.

Then once they were done interviewing her, they had to do a physical exam of her. The horrified look on the nurse’s face the moment she took off her coat and hat was burned into her mind and would be for a very long time, though the actual exam was a blur. And the second it was over, she hid in the bathroom and cried. Her mother took her straight home afterwards, but the damage had already been done. She was certain her mother at least felt bad for what happened, because once she woke up from a fitful sleep, she found a cheeseburger from her favorite restaurant with her name literally on the styrofoam box in the fridge.

If she didn’t find something to do, she’d just get more depressed. As of lately, escapism had been proving to do her a lot of good. There were even times, however brief, that she could forget about what had happened, usually when she let herself get lost in a story.

That was something she fully intended to do right now. It wasn’t hard to find her computer, all she had to do was follow the glowing leylines. As she was skimming past the numerous sites on transmogrification reversals on her bookmark list, someone IM’d her. “Who’d be on at this hour?” She squinted at the font on the screen– Maranatha was, apparently, greeting her with the usual ‘Hey there! ’

‘Hey.’ She might as well be civil, even if she didn’t especially feel like talking now. Besides, it’d give her a chance to practice typing with claws again.

‘How are things going?’

She sighed. Not this again. ‘Kind of rough. Not sure if I want to talk about it.’

‘Ahh, alright. Well, I remembered the talk we had about the cure, and I was just wondering if you’d seen this…’ A link to a topic on the Anaetherian Rights forum followed. Out of morbid curiosity, she clicked on it. Her blood ran cold in her veins when she recognized the title– it was a headline from their local newspaper. Someone had posted an article about the mage’s arrest.

‘They haven’t said much about the reason why,’ Maranatha continued, ‘they just cited reckless endangerment and unsanctioned magical experiments. But the rumor is he was trying to find a cure.’

She stared blankly at the screen. How could word have spread so quickly? And more importantly, how could they have found out?

‘Anyway, it was in your area…I was just wondering if you’d heard more about it.’

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’ She replied, and subsequentially realized she was probably just leading on Maranatha.

And surely enough, his response came back within mere seconds. ‘Try me.’

It might be nice to talk to someone who wasn’t a police officer about everything that had happened. If she’d had more sleep, she might’ve had the sense to decide against doing that. But she’d been up for nearly twenty-four hours and her mind was frazzled from stress. ‘Yeah, he was doing experiments. They had side effects, that’s probably why they’re not giving out details.’

‘That’s not so unbelievable. I mean, call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think those kind of experiments happen more often than we like to think. The side effects must have been pretty severe, though.’

‘Oh, they were.’ She sighed and looked at her hands. Now she was almost getting used to seeing them there.

‘Do you know if the people he experimented on are alright…? :/’

‘Yeah, we’re alright.’ Something registered about that sentence as being wrong, but it took her a few moments (after she pressed Enter, unfortunately) to work out what. “We’re.” Just the wrong pronoun to use, even if it was true. She felt her skin heat up beneath her feathers. Maybe she could just claim it was a typo?

‘Wait, we?’ And Maranatha noticed. Just her luck.

She took in a shaky breath, and after a great deal of struggling for the proper words, came up with ‘I really don’t want to talk about it.’

There was a break in messages. She was almost to the best part of the chapter when the message alert started flashing. ‘Can I tell you something?’

She scratched the side of her head. “Okay…?” ‘Yeah, I guess.’

There was another long pause without so much as an alert that a message was being typed. And then, finally, ‘It might be easier to show you.’

She received a webcam invite. Her curiosity piqued, she accepted it.

Her breath caught in her throat. Looking at the webcam, a weak smile on his face, was a huge, humanoid bobcat. “H-hey.” His voice was barely audible, and on top of that it was scratchy and sounded barely-human. It almost reminded her of hearing a parrot talk.

Fortunately, the webcam conversation wasn’t two-way or he would have caught her gaping at him.

“Um, I know this must seem really weird to you. I can explain…I think.” He cleared his throat. It inexplicably brought to mind Bonnie when she was trying to cough up a hairball. “I guess you can tell I had some, uh, side effects too.”

Her hands quavered as she typed. ‘Did someone do that to you?’

“You could say that.” His tufted ears twitched. “So,” he laughed, or tried to do something that sounded like it, “how’s this for side effects?”

“It can’t be.” Then again, it probably could. Who knew how many other people the mage had gone after? She desperately wanted to ask how and who and why, but couldn’t quite work up the courage to do so.

“I’ve gotten used to it, though.” He went on, his voice growing more confident. “And there are other people like me out there. It’s a bigger community than people think. And there’s a lot of support for people who live with magic-related disorders other than anaetherianism.” He cast his gaze askance. “I guess I just wanted you to know you’re not alone.”

She brushed tears away from her eyes, self-consciously straightened out a few stray feathers, and sent a webcam invite of her own before she was able to process what she’d done enough to regret it.

She knew the moment he accepted, because his jaw dropped open. “I…did…” He took a deep breath. And then another, just for good measure. “Did you ask for someone to do that to you?”

She stared blankly at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know.” There was a desperate look about him. He gestured furtively to his tail and ears. “Right?”

She shook her head.

He sighed. “I guess it really was an accident for you.”

Stephanie found herself gaining a new hatred for people with an aversion to straightforwardness. “What are you talking about?”

“Shapeshifters. Or anthros– I mean, anthropomorphic animals. Some people like…um, like me, we turn ourselves into them with transmogrification. Or try to.”

Stephanie had a vague recollection about seeing a news segment on them. For the most part, it had played up how insane they had to be to undergo the difficult rituals needed to become one, and other alleged deviant aspects of their lifestyles. The report had seemed thrown-together and sensationalistic, like most news reports. “You wanted to be that?”

“No! I mean, I wanted to be like this sometimes. I was just going for shapeshifter, but something went wrong and I couldn’t change back. So,” he pointed to his muzzle, flexing out the claw on his index finger, “I’m stuck as an anthro. And I didn’t want to be. I mean, I really didn’t want to be. You’d be amazed at how hard it is to get used to not being human. Everything’s made for human mages.”

“Tell me about it.” There was a smile in her eyes– faint and bitter, but there.

“Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to. I don’t get to talk to other anthros much.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “You probably think I’m a hypocrite. All that talk about resisting a cure and being yourself, and look at what I did to myself.”

She shrugged. “No. You’ve just got more personal experience than most anti-cure advocates do.”

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.” He returned the smile. “Um, if you’re interested, there are some forums and places I could show to you.” His voice grew quieter and quieter as he went on, making the last few words difficult to make out. “Everyone’s really nice, and they won’t care you didn’t change on purpose. And they can help you deal with it. They really helped me out.”

The bitterness in her smile started to fade away. “I’d like that.”

His ears perked up. “Really? Um, hang on a second, let me send you the links.”

She sorted through them, the other part of her mind on the outside. Dawn was breaking outside, and she could feel exhaustion creeping in, the edge at last taken off her anxiety. After everything that had changed, the sky hadn’t fallen, and the world was still there. She could fly again any time she wanted.

For the first time she could remember, she finally felt free.

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

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

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

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

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

His throat began to tighten.

“What if somebody saw me?”

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

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

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

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

The whine came out of his throat.

“What was that?” His mother was startled.

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

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

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

“Go away go away please just go away … ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ … and I never … I … I … ”

“Are you alright?”

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

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

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

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

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

What was he supposed to do now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

“What can I do?”

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

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

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

… after he was done on the ‘net.

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

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

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

His tail really was fluffy, he thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beter start runing

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

The footsteps stopped. Whomever it was said nothing.

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

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

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

“What happened?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know.”

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

“Okay.”

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

And that real anthro fox was soon joined by others …