Become Your Fursona

We had to take the stairs, because my wings couldn’t fit in the elevator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This isn’t funny!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes!”

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

“Which way, then?”

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

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

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

“Is that better?” she asked.

“Yes.”

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just looked at her blankly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Absolutely.” Kath nodded.

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

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

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

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

“What is this?” I asked.

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

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

“Try it and find out.”

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

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

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

“It isn’t,” Kath said.

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

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

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

“You knew.”

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

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

Kath was unperturbed. “This is yourself.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t.”

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

“Uh-huh.”

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

“Are you claustrophobic?” I heard her ask.

“I wasn’t before this … ”

“What happened?”

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

“Uh-huh.”

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

“Like what?”

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

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

“Your wings?”

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

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

“You walked off the park grounds?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Did you know what species you were?”

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

“And?”

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

“How come?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The power went out.

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

“A brownout?” Jen asked.

“Looks like it,” Kath deadpanned.

I squirmed. “I should go … ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe you need to fly.”

TOCK-tick-TOCK-tick-TOCK-tick-TOCK …

The clock over the fireplace ticked, nearly drowning out the TV in the corner.

tick-tick-tick-tick-TOCK-tick-TOCK …

The female newscaster was standing in front of a bookstore. “But it’s now been two months since he’s sequestered himself away in that cabin, and there’s still no word from him or his publisher.”

TOCK-tick-TOCK …

A man in a suitcoat, in an office lined with books. The caption read MR. HOLMS’ AGENT. “I haven’t heard from him either! But I’m dying to read his new book, just as much as you are.”

tick-tick-tick …

A man in a winter coat, standing just next to the bookstore. “I was in line for The Rewair’s Orb, and I’ll be in line for the next one. They just need to say the word.” He grinned.

“What do you think’s taking him so long?” said the voice behind the microphone.

“I dunno. I guess his muse just hasn’t struck yet!”

TOCK.

TOCK.

TOCK.

The Great Author looked up with a start, from the pile of papers that he’d been buried in on his desk. His bleary-eyed gaze flicked back and forth, from the windows that looked out on the forest to the rough-hewn wooden inside.

They fixated on the clock.

He got up, sending papers flying everywhere. Then he jumped over his desk and stepped around the wicker furniture in the small living room, before grabbing the clock and sliding open the glass door to step outside.

* * *

SPLASH!

The Author’s muse raised one paw to shield himself. He was a short, stocky anthropomorphic raccoon, in a blue vest and a jaunty red cap. And he did not look happy about getting splashed.

He looked back behind himself, down the pier towards the shoreline, but the Author was already walking back to the house. The Author’s muse hmphed, adjusted his cap, and got back to fishing.

The water rippled from where the clock had been thrown in. But besides that, the lake waters were still. Evergreen trees reached shadows out to almost where he was, and the sun shone down on him, making the fur on the back of his neck warm even though his toes and fingers were cold. He opened the bait box and got out a sandwich, then started munching it, kicking his legs and showering crumbs next to his line.

His raccoon ears perked, as he heard the door slide open and closed back at the cabin. Then again a minute later, and footsteps crashed through the brush, shoshed through the sand, then clomp clomp clomped down the pier.

The muse pretended he didn’t hear anything.

The footsteps stopped a few feet behind him, and he found himself tensing up, waiting for another splash. But instead there was a sound like someone was unscrewing the lid from a jar, then pulling the cover off the inside. Something was set down beside him, and he tried to ignore it but a smell twitched his muzzle.

He sniffed at the air, then looked down beside him to see a glass jar filled with dark brown spread. “What is that?”

“Some kinda snazzy new peanut butter.” The voice came from behind him. “It’s made out of chocolate and hazelnuts.”

“Really, now.” The muse set down his sandwich, then dug a clawful of spread out of the jar and licked it clean. It wasn’t bad, and was very sweet.

“There’s more in the cabin,” the Author said.

“I’ll bet there is.” His muse began reeling in his line.

Behind him, the Author smiled.

The muse detached the fuzzy-shaped thing with eyes from the end of his line, and set it back in the bait box. Then he crammed the hook into the jar, and swung his line out into the lake, jar and all. It splashed, and his legs got all wet.

The Author’s face fell. “Geo, why must you be so unreasonable?”

“I’m not the one who’s being unreasonable, Mister Holms.” He turned around to scowl at the man, who looked younger than he sounded and was wearing a old sweater. “You’re the one who dragged me along on book tours, and signings, and interviews. You made me stretch out that story into a three-volume masterpiece, and now here you are back for more. Well, maybe I’m done for this year.” He turned back to his fishing. “Or this decade. Either way.”

“I thought you liked writing … ”

“I liked writing when it was fun.”

“It doesn’t have to be fun when you’re getting paid for it!” the Author shouted.

“Talk to the tail.” His ring-tail swished. “The rest of me ain’t listening.”

After a minute, the footsteps clomped back towards the house. Geo picked up his sandwich and took another bite, but it had been splashed with lakewater. He spat it out, and tossed the sandwich away. Ducks couldn’t eat peanut butter, he knew, but they’d all flown south for the year.

He wondered what a sandwich with that chocolate spread would taste like.

Geo was almost ready to go back to the house, when the door slid open again. He turned around to see the Author carrying a large duffel bag with him.

Geo’s ears flattened as he turned back to his fishing, listening to heavy clomps up the pier again. The duffel bag unzipped, and something big that smelled of oil and metal was pulled out. There were clicks and latches and bolts pulled back into place.

A last switch was thrown, and Geo’s raccoon ears perked as the Author spoke. “Alright, no more mister nice-guy. Come inside and help me, or face heat-seeking missiles!”

Geo tugged on his fishing line, and the pier rumbled and started to shake. The bait box rattled and nearly fell off, and the Author struggled to keep his footing. Then there was a SPLASH that washed over the pier, and Geo held his cap onto his head and gritted his teeth into the spray as an enormous black metal shape came to surface. It stretched across the horizon.

“Oh look,” he said. “I’ve caught a nuclear submarine. Now what should I do with it?”

The Author stared, as a hatch opened out in the lake and a confused-looking man peeked outside.

* * *

The Author slid the glass door shut behind him. The air smelled like cooked butter, and on the TV a loud ad was playing. He walked over and turned it off.

Out in the kitchen, a thing like a short, humanoid wolf wearing goggles floated up from behind the counter, as the microwave popped popcorn. “How’d it go?” he asked.

“If a guy in a fur hat comes calling in Russian, tell him we gave at the office.” The Author slumped down into the chair at his desk, sending a couple more papers flying.

The wolf-thing floated towards him, paddling in midair with his hindpaws. “Blender and I came up with something that might help,” he said.

“You and-” He looked up. The other was carrying a blender under one arm, its cord trailing just above the floor. “Oh, right. What is it, Zippy?”

Zippy set down the blender and picked up a big gun-looking thing, with a barrel half a foot wide and a bunch of lights and dials and gauges on it. “It’s the Inspiration Machine!”

“I thought that was your Annihilation Machine.”

“It was. I changed it. See, you just set it from ‘frappé’ to ‘blend’ … ” He swung the machine in the Author’s direction, and the Author dove under his desk, kicking his chair aside with a clatter.

“Don’t worry,” Zippy said, “you don’t use it on yourself!”

The Author peeked out from underneath.

“You use it on the thing you want to be inspired by. Like, say you want to recapture the excitement of your old novels. You just aim it at them, and- May I?”

The Author winced. “Knock yourself out.”

“Okay!” Zippy’s face lit up. “Just aim it at them and pull the trigger, like so!”

The BLAM sent the Author reeling and clutching his ears, and the shock wave sent half of his papers flying. Zippy was sent flying backwards and hit the refrigerator, and the punch bowl fell off the top of it and knocked him unconscious. It rattled to a stop on the floor as the Author stood up and took stock of things.

There was a huge burn mark on the front of his hardback copy of The Rewair’s Orb. He sighed.

Picking it up, he checked it over and stopped at the ad copy on the back. “Riveting! Spellbinding! George Holms’ Dementor-like creatures will capture your heart, if they don’t steal your emotions first. Evocative of Harry Potter and Twilight-” The Author groaned, and made a mental note to hunt the reviewer down with a spork. “-but able to stand on its own two (or four) feet, The Rewair’s Orb is in a class all its own.”

But was it, really? he wondered. The Author thumbed through his work, ignoring the scorchmark inside. Most Authors hated their older work, but The Rewair’s Orb had been written just a couple of years ago. He still liked it okay. More than that, he thought it was genuinely a decent book.

But in a class all its own? He’d have to think about that one. He knew it was good, of course. But it wasn’t substantially better than the stories he’d been writing online for years. In fact, he could think of one of two of those that he liked better than it. And the only reason its sequels had got written was because it had become a bestseller … a fact that seemed to have nothing to do with how good it actually was.

The Author turned pages absent-mindedly. Why am I trying to make myself write even more of this? he wondered. This story is over.

He shut the book, and set it on top of the old Thinkpad on his desk. His gaze lingered on the computer, and he remembered staying up all night reading fanfiction based on his work. Some of it had been scary, but some of it had made him think Why aren’t these people writing the next book? They know where it’s going better than I do. More than that, they’re enjoying themselves. I just want to get the wretched thing finished.

The Author mused on that for a moment before picking up the phone, as the microwave dinged and the smell of burnt popcorn seeped out of it.

* * *

A man in a suitcoat, in a room lined with books. He sat at his desk, leafing through a stapled-together manuscript. The bored look on his face changed to one of disgust when he saw the $100 bill in between the papers. He threw it all back on the slush pile, and woke his computer from sleep mode to send out another rejection notice.

The phone rang, and he reached over to hit the transfer button. Then he saw who was calling, and put it on speaker. “George!” he said, in a let’s-do-lunch kind of voice. “Good to hear from you! How’re things going out there on Lake Superior? Getting chilly this time of year, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah, uh, listen … ” George said, in a lost-my-train-of-thought-when-I-opened-my-mouth kind of voice. “Is there somebody else who could do this book? ‘Cause I,” he coughed. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this.”

“Of course you’re cut out for it,” his agent explained. “Just look at the Rewair trilogy! You’re the only one who can do it.”

“Uh, no,” George said, “I’m not.”

His agent gave the phone a patronizing look. “Oh, really,” he said. “So who else is going to write the next Rewair book? Please, do tell.”

George coughed again. “Well, um, there’s this person called … uh … ” He mumbled something.

“Speak up!” his agent said.

” … LatinoFurry87,” George finished.

His agent blinked. “Huh?”

“That’s what he’s called on the Internet,” George went on, in a rush. “He wrote this story based on The Rewair’s Orb-”

“He’s not authorized to do that,” his agent broke in.

“Well, somebody ought to have told him that, ’cause he wrote it anyway.” George sounded exasperated.

“Tell him what ‘copyright law’ means,” his agent said, steepling his fingers and leaning back in his chair. “I think he could learn a lot.”

“Will you just let me finish?” George huffed.

His agent said nothing.

“He wrote this epic fanfiction based on my stories, and it continued the Rewairs’ tale better than I could have. I was done with it at the end of the first book, Malcomb, you know that. And it was like pulling hens’ teeth trying to stretch it out into a trilogy.”

“Or laying golden eggs,” Malcomb mused, looking up at the crystal-and-glass awards on his bookcases.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Carry on.”

“This boy — I think he’s a boy — is talented. He’s at least as good of a writer as I am, probably better. And my readers deserve better, or at least better than two-month hiatuses.” He spat out that last past. “Your job is to find the best talent. Find this boy, and sign him up.”

His agent tsk’ed, and shook his head. “No can do, George.”

A sigh. “Yeah, I expected as much. So go ahead. Tell me why we can’t do this.”

“Because they want a book with your name on it.” His agent stabbed a finger at the phone, leaning forward all of a sudden. “Why else do you think you get top billing over the name of your own freaking books?”

“So give him a pen name, or something!”

“Signing someone to ghostwrite for you would be like replacing Coldplay with lip-synchers. It’s just not done.” He folded one leg over the other as he sat back again.

“Well, what do you want me to do, Malcomb? Fill two hundred pages with drivel off the top of my head, and leave the other two hundred blank? Because that’s what the fourth Rewair book’s going to be like if I write it.”

Malcomb shrugged. “An Author’s gotta do what an Author’s gotta do. Just put something on paper. We’ll clean it up in editing.”

“Good Gates, man, do you realize what you’re saying? Whatever happened to ‘George, you’re the greatest,’ or ‘George, this is one of a kind?’ Does quality count for nothing? Does craftsmanship? What sets our published fiction apart from his fanfiction?”

“The fact that you’re getting paid for it, and what he’s doing is illegal.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

“That’s what it’s been like as long as there’s been a market, George. I hate to break it to you, but it’s true.” His agent took off his suitcoat, suddenly hot in the enclosed room.

The voice on the phone was quiet. “Somehow, this was more fun before I was being paid to write garbage.”

“It doesn’t have to be fun when you’re getting paid for it.”

The Author hung up.

* * *

The evening was quiet as the Author went back down to the dock, the submarine having disappeared back into the depths of his imagination. No crickets were chirping; the waves were gentle and faint. There was only him and his muse … or in other words, he was alone with himself.

He stood there watching the raccoon fish for some time. So content … so unconcerned. So uninterested in anything that wasn’t fun.

The Author knew what was going on in his muse’s head as well as he did any of his other characters. And he knew what Geo was going to answer before he said “There’s nothing I can do to persuade you to help me, is there.”

Or did he? His muse surprised him with “Actually, there is.”

“Oh?”

Geo clicked a button on a remote in his bait box, and a hundred-foot neon billboard lit up out on the lake. It read “WRITE SOMETHING FUN.”

The Author sighed. “We’ve been through this already.”

“Yep, we have.” Geo clicked the sign back off. “And you still won’t see reason,” they both said at the same time.

The Author looked out at the lakewaters, still and silent and dark. “I guess I’ll have to write it myself, then,” he said. “And the next, and the next, and … ” A lump formed in his throat. He looked down at his muse, and realized that it would be for the last time.

“Remember what it used to be like?” he asked his muse. “The snark, the wit, the fantasy … ” And for a moment he was Geo, sitting there on the dock kicking his furry feet in the air, listening to this strange human state the obvious.

The Author shook his head, and brought himself back to reality. Things didn’t work that way in real life. If you were lucky enough to get famous IRL, you rode it as far as you could. Because you didn’t know when it would give out, and you’d be back to writing fanfics because no one would publish your work.

He looked down at the dock. Geo was gone.

The Author sighed, and began the long, slow walk back to his cabin.

* * *

He threw out the burnt popcorn, and microwaved some leftover spaghetti for dinner. After that he sat in the living room, polishing off the rest of the ice cream with a spoon while watching TV.

The Author stayed up too late watching it. In between he surfed the web on his laptop. He didn’t visit his online journal or microblog, or anything remotely related to his work. Just RSS feeds and webcomics, and leaving comments anonymously.

Finally he got ready for bed, still leaving all the lights in the cabin on. He left the downstairs light on as he climbed into bed, and left the door open enough to see. But after ten minutes of tossing and turning, he knew he couldn’t sleep since the light got in his eyes. So he slid out of bed, feet probing the cold hardwood floor for his slippers, leaving the covers still made to keep from losing their warmth.

The air was as chill as outdoors, except right by the space heater. He hurried like he was taking the trash out in winter, sliding up to the door with arms tightly folded and pushing it shut. Then he hurried back, and sat down on the bed and kicked off his slippers. First the one, then- wait, where did it go?

Something wrapped around his leg.

He tried to grab onto the covers but was pulled right off of his bed, kicking and flailing and clawing at the smooth hardwood as it dragged him underneath. A moment of struggle at the edge, and then he was brought face-to-face with …

A penguin.

“Heh-wo,” it said, and waved a flipper at him.

“Hi, Fluff,” he said, still gasping for breath. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

The penguin shrugged.

“M-may I … ” The Author gestured at the space outside.

Fluff said nothing, so the Author crawled back out on bare hands and feet. Then he jumped back into bed, and shivered for a moment before calling out to him. “What was that all about, Fluff?”

“Squaawk!”

The Author covered his ears for a moment. “Er, I didn’t quite catch that … ”

Fluff exclaimed a long chastisement at him, in the language of penguins that goes from melodic trills to harsh squawking. An exact translation would be as long as this whole story, but the gist of it was “Are you out of your mind!?”

“Fluff … ”

“Squaa-awk!”

“Fluff, listen!”

“Squawk!”

“Fluff!” The Author leaned on one elbow, and talked over the side of the bed as cold air seeped in to where he was. “Look, I know this is bad. Alright? I know what I’m giving up! But it’s not like I have a choice in the matter.”

“Hmph.”

“Do you see this place, Fluff?” The Author gestured around. “Cabins don’t just build themselves.”

“Squawk.”

“Build, buy, same difference. Not to mention, a couple of years ago I couldn’t have taken two months off if my life depended on it. Now I can just say ‘The book isn’t done yet!’ and no one can stop me from doing this. Who else is going to give them what they want?”

The penguin trilled something else, which basically meant “You know the answer to that.”

The Author slumped back, deflated. “Fluff … ”

No answer.

“Fine,” the Author said. “Let’s say I default on my contract and give up my rights to the book, so now anyone can write what they want based on it. And Latinofurry or someone else writes something amazing, and has fun with it, and makes a whole lot of money like he or she richly deserves. Everyone reads it, and everyone’s happy. But where does that leave me, Fluff? Because this isn’t about lakefront property, or having a car and an iPhone, it’s … ”

A questioning trill. Go on.

He sighed. “It’s about living the life that I want.”

The room was quiet after that. Almost ten minutes passed.

“Fluff?”

“Squawk?”

“What do you think I should do?”

Fluff coughed. “A-hem-hem-hem. Fish,” he said.

The Author groaned, disgusted. “No, Fluff, it’s not time for fish.”

“Fish,” Fluff insisted.

“Fluff, it’s the middle of the night! Can’t you wait until-”

“FISH!” he shouted.

The cabin creaked in the cold air. And the Author suddenly got a clue.

He got out of bed and looked out the window, shivering like mad as he did so. There at the end of the dock was his muse, fishing again by moonlight.

The Author scurried towards the door. “Where did I put my boots … ”

* * *

The Author peered out the ground floor windows towards the dock, as he was pulling his coat and boots on. His muse was still there, a shadow sitting at the edge of the dock. But as he hurried outside into the cold, hugging himself and moving quickly and wishing that he’d worn long underwear, he saw that the dock was abandoned.

“Geo?” The Author stopped at the end of the dock and called out to him. “Geo!”

There was no reply.

He ran out to the end of the dock. The moon shone on the still waters, which stretched out as far as he could see. But there was no anthropomorphic raccoon, no bait box, no fishing rod and line or nuclear submarine. There wasn’t even a hat.

The Author stood there for a long moment, gloved hands in his pockets, feeling very alone and dejected. Finally he sat down at the edge of the dock, and sighed a white cloud of steam. The motion sensor lights clicked off behind him, and he didn’t even turn to look.

“Missed my only chance … ” He leaned up against one of the pylons, and imagined a life of boredom and mediocrity. It’d seemed so compelling a moment ago. Now it felt like a death sentence.

“Maybe he’ll come visit if I work on a side project,” he mutterred.

“Like what?”

The Author turned around with a start, looking every which way, but he didn’t see anything. Then he realized where the voice had come from.

He was about four feet tall now, covered in black-and-gray fur. His feet and hands were bare, and he was covered in fur from his muzzle to the tip of his ringed tail. He reached up and pulled a red cap off of his pointy ears, and as he ran his claws and pawpads over the rough cloth half of him was in awe. The other half could only grin and say “Finally!”

He turned around and jumped into the air, waving his hat and calling out towards the cabin. A moment later the lights came on inside; then the motion-detector lights over the driveway turned on, as Fluff, Zippy, Blender and dozens more characters from his stories came crowding outside.

He threw in his line and reeled in his catch, and just as they all reached the pier the submarine surfaced, its long profile a silhouette in the dark. Dozens of hatches opened on top, with whirring noises and outlines of light. Then fireworks shot out into the night sky, and the crowd cheered.

Fluff directed the orchestra, as they played Geo’s favorite soundtrack. Zippy and Blender made juice drinks and smoothies, and served them to people from tables all strung with lights. Men in fur hats got out on the deck of the submarine, and set up beach chairs and watched the fireworks with binoculars. And Geo jumped up and down madly, controlling the fireworks by waving a baton in the air. They looped in circles, spun around in sync, dashed across the lake surface sending ripples out in their wake and exploded right above everyone, showering sparkles onto the crowd.

It was frantic. It was exhausting. And it was the most fun that he’d had all year.

* * *

Two hours later, teeth chattering in the cold, the Author stopped pacing back and forth on the dock. He looked over the story he’d typed on his phone, finger-scrolling on the glass.

It wasn’t long, but it was beautiful. And it had nothing to do with Rewair.

The motion-detector light came on as he walked back to the cabin and opened the door, savoring (slightly) warm air on his face. He closed it, inside, and set his phone down next to his computer, before writing a note on the paper beside it.

There were things that he needed to do, tomorrow. And people he needed to contact.

* * *

“What? Yes, I’m sure. I spoke with him just yesterday evening.” Malcomb grabbed another bite of his chocolate croissant, then spoke into the phone with his mouth full.

“No, there’s no end in sight … ” He swallowed. “But George knows what he has to do, and I’m confident that we’ll see some progress being made soon!”

A woman in an understated suitcoat poked her head in the door, and gestured frantically at the TV in the corner. What? Malcomb mouthed at her. But she wasn’t listening. When he stayed put, she finally walked over and turned it on, then set it to the right channel.

“ … has chosen a Creative Commons ‘Attribution / Share-Alike’ license,” the female voiceover said, as it showed people in bookstores and then a closeup of a copy of The Rewair’s Orb. “This will allow anyone who wants to to write and even publish stories set in his world, so long as they credit him for the original and use the same license for their own stories.”

Malcomb’s jaw dropped.

“He has already spoken with a different publisher-” Malcomb threw the phone’s handset at the wall, and his secretary jumped. “-and they are now conducting a search for authors, to find the fan who can write the next ‘official’ Rewair book. Mr. Holms also announced a forthcoming collection of unrelated short stories, to be called-”

The Author’s former agent got up and turned off the TV, then stood at the window looking out with his hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t move or say anything else.

His secretary quietly picked up the handset, ignoring the pleas that came out of it, and hung it up on his desk. Then she walked out, closing the door behind her.

* * *

“¡Enriqué! Ven aquí! Estoy hablando con usted!”

“Sí, madre … ” A brown-skinned boy in a white t-shirt and jeans got up from the old family computer, and stepped around the piles of blankets and sheets on the floor to go out to the trailer’s front porch. He clasped his hands behind his back, listening patiently to her chastisement, then promised to take care of things for her before stepping back inside, as her attention turned to one of his younger siblings.

His cousin was still on the couch. She was watching an English-language morning news show. Enriqué tuned the words out, trying to concentrate on the scene that he’d just been writing. But then as he was sitting back down at the computer, he looked over his shoulder and saw on the TV a picture of a hardcover copy of The Rewair’s Orb … the same book he’d gotten two years ago for Navidad. The book that had changed his life.

He heard the words they were saying, but it took him a moment to understand them, and even longer for them to sink in. When they did, he found that he wanted to cry.

Instead, he pumped one clawed fist in the air, tears streaming down his slender draconic muzzle. Then he stretched his crimson wings, before hunching back down in front of the PC and writing the last of the scene he’d been working on. The end of a chapter … and the start of a new story.

Many thanks to my penguin-obsessed brother for the RP sessions that provided the inspiration for Fluff’s behavior.

The trip to the country was my mother’s idea. My aunt and uncle owned a house about two hours out of town, built in contemporary style. She volunteered me to watch it for them, while they went on vacation in Hawaii.

I refused to go, at first. I needed to keep up with summer school, in order to get into Tokyo University. I knew three other boys from high school who were still taking classes, trying year after year to pass the exam. I didn’t want to end up like them, and I didn’t care what it took, or how many times I broke down. But she arranged with my tutors to let me submit my assignments by email, while I was away. And while I felt guilty for imposing on everyone, I was secretly glad to get away from it all.

No more hearing the twins fight over the DDR mats. No more hearing the rice cooker beep, or the TV hosts babble, or the door swing open and shut. No more feeling the pressure build up until I was ready to kill someone. All I had to do was keep up with my studies, and feed my aunt’s cat. Besides that, I could do anything that I liked. It would practically be a vacation.

I imagined that it would be peaceful and quiet outside the city. No pressure, no distractions, and certainly nothing weird happening.

* * *

My uncle was a gaijin who taught English at a school outside of town. He’d married my mom’s sister a few years back, and bought a house near the school where he taught at. I half-expected that it’d be a western design, a huge mansion with twenty rooms and an indoor swimming pool. But no; it just looked like any other house in its generic suburban neighborhood, with a ceramic tiled roof and dull pastel paint on the walls.

Their house was next to a rice field, and across from a baseball lot. There were mountains in the distance, but the ground nearby was flat. Several other houses were nearby, but it was a ways to the center of the nearest town, and I hadn’t brought my bicycle. I looked down the road, and wondered if I’d be able to walk. Probably not, in this heat … sweat was forming on my brow already.

“Are you sure you’ve got everything, Hiro?” My mom was getting my things out of the car.

“Yes, mother.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, mother.”

She carried my suitcase up to the front doorstep. I remembered when she was talking about my uncle’s courtship, how he’d carried things for my aunt and opened doors for her, and I wondered if she was wishing that I’d taken care of the packing. Then I wondered if she’d try to hug me farewell. But no; she bowed respectfully, and I bowed back.

“I’ll see you next week, Hiro.”

“I’ll see you too, mother.”

She got into the car and drove off, with a last look over her shoulder, and I found the right key on the keyring. Then I got the front door open, and stepped into the house of a foreigner.

I set down my suitcase and took off my shoes in the entryway. It looked fairly normal, with a pair of guest slippers right there on the step. I could see the living area just beyond, with mats lined up next to floor-to-ceiling windows.

The place smelled different, with hints of bamboo and straw instead of cooking rice and fast-food wrappers. I kept an eye out to see what kind of strange things this foreigner kept in his house, but the weirdest thing that I saw on the way to my room was an Xbox 360 hooked up to the television. Pretty soon I was in my new room, which was about as large as the living space back at home. I checked the closet to make sure that they had a futon I could use, then opened my suitcase and got out my laptop.

It was warm in there, but I could manage. And they didn’t have high-speed Internet out here, so that was another distraction gone. It would just be me and my schoolwork. For the first time since leaving home, I allowed myself a smile.

Then I heard a loud THUMP somewhere in the house. What was that? I wondered.

More THUMPs, coming down the hallway towards me. Is that their cat? I thought. That has to be their cat. But it sounds too heavy to be a-

Into the room ran a live catgirl.

I know what you’re thinking that she must have looked like. You’re wrong. She had the ears and the tail, but those were the only things “catgirl” about her. She was a lot shorter than I was, and looked to be about twelve or thirteen. And she had extremely long hair. But it was frazzly and matted, and her jeans and t-shirt were worn out. And she was very overweight. She had to stop and catch her breath, after running into the room.

I stared. Is that a catgirl? I thought. That can’t be a catgirl. She looks too-

She looked up at me, and our eyes met. I had no idea what she was thinking about.

As it turned out, she was thinking about less than I’d thought she was. She sat down on the floor with another THUMP, and looked up at me again. “Feed me!” she yelled, and gave me an expectant look.

It was a while before I could say anything in return. “What are you?” I finally asked.

“Feed me!” she yelled again, and her tail swished.

I slowly walked over to where she was sitting, but she did not move or get up. She just sat there and watched.

Her ears looked like a real cat’s. I could see the cartilage inside. I reached out and touched the fur on the outside, and her ear twitched and flattened. “Don’t do that,” she said.

“Sorry, I-”

“Feed me!” she cried.

I stared into her face, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on behind her eyes. She just stared back, still wide-eyed and expectant. And that’s when my shocked brain finally realized it. This girl was dumb as a brick, just like a real cat.

She nuzzled the side of my leg.

“Okay, okay, I’ll feed you,” I said, jumping back a step and trying to get past her into the hallway. She wouldn’t move, and I had to step around her. “Where do they keep your … uh … ”

“Feed me!” she yelled.

I got to their kitchen, sweating profusely. Why me?

* * *

I tried three different cans of cat food, but she turned up her nose at them. “These are yucky!” she said. Finally I opened a can of tuna, the girl practically hanging onto my arm as I did so, then dumped it onto a plate.

She picked up the plate in her hands, and gobbled the tuna in only a couple of bites, licking her lips afterwards. Then she gave me that expectant look again. We went through another two cans of tuna before she cried “I want something to drink!”

I gave her a glass of milk, and she guzzled it. Then she set it down on the table, and ran out into the hall. I stepped out of the kitchen in time to see the door to the toilet room close.

I just stood there, for at least a minute or two. This is impossible, I thought to myself.

The toilet flushed, and I heard the sink running. This is also ridiculous.

When she came out she didn’t even look at me, but just went farther on down the hall. I followed her into my room, where she flopped down onto my open suitcase and curled up on the clothes that I’d brought. She yawned, and fell asleep with a smile.

She’s acting just like a real cat, I thought, because my brain was taking a while to catch up. What has that foreigner done to her?

What’s going to happen to me if I stay here?

It took me a minute to get up the courage, but I slowly reached around her to grab my cellphone out of the suitcase. She barely seemed to notice. Then I ran outside, and I mean ran, just barely remembering to kick off my slippers and put my shoes back on. I tore out the front door, down the driveway that wrapped all the way around the house, and started gasping for breath right next to the street. A car drove past, but I didn’t see who was in it.

I looked down at my cell, and fumbled with the controls and the tiny display until I’d found the number for my aunt’s mobile phone. Then I punched the “call” button, and held the phone up to my ear.

It rang three times. Then it said “Hello! You have reached the voice mailbox of-”

I pressed “end,” and facepalmed. Of course. They were still on their flight to Hawaii.

I tried to think. Who else could I call? Finally I dialed one of my friends’ numbers, the oldest one who was still going to school.

It rang a few times. Then “Hello?” came my friend’s voice. I could hear battle music from Final Fantasy XI Online in the background.

“Daisuke?” I asked.

“Yep,” he told me, then yelled “It’s Hiro!” to someone else. I heard a clatter, and footsteps running up to the phone. “Hey!” two people said at once.

“Hey, Daisuke. Kenjiro. Um, I just got to my uncle’s house … ”

“The NA? Doesn’t he play on Sylph?” Daisuke asked.

I looked back at the house nervously. To my horror, I saw her peering around the corner. “Yeah. Um … ”

“What?”

She trotted up to me, and I panicked. “There’s a catgirl living in their house and she’s coming right at me!”

They both laughed. “Lucky you, huh?”

“No I’m serious there’s this girl and she’s like twelve or thirteen and she’s got ears and a tail and the brain of a refrigerator!” She stopped right next to me, I mean uncomfortably close, and gave me a blank look. I stepped back a bit. “Go on, say something!” I told her, and held the phone up to her.

“Huh?” she said.

There was a pause. Then I heard swearing on the other end of the line. “Dude, are you serious?” Daisuke asked. “And she’s like … they’re … ”

“Yes, her ears and tail are real.” I looked down at her, and saw that her tail was swishing. She was giving me a confused look.

“Take a picture!”

I barely knew how to use this phone, but I got it to take a few pictures and email them to my friends. By this time, the catgirl – whatever her name was – had sat down on the ground, and was pulling up clumps of grass and eating them. I’d had no idea that cats did that.

“I don’t believe it!” Kenjiro exclaimed, and he sounded ecstatic. “An actual Mithra!”

“A Mithra kitten,” Daisuke replied. They were talking about the playable catgirl characters from our online game. I was still watching the thing, afraid that it might touch me or something.

“Look!” I yelled into the phone. “She’s not a Mithra! She’s a … I have no idea what she is! I have no idea what kind of sick things they did to her. Maybe they fed her genetically-modified cat food. Maybe the radiation from their Xbox’s power supply caused a freak accident! But she’s here, and she’s alive, and we’ve got to do something about it!”

“Like what?” Daisuke asked.

“Like … like … I don’t know! But we can’t just leave her like this. She’s a menace to society! Or society’s a menace to her! Or something! I have no idea what I’m saying!” I shouted into the phone.

“Dude, chill out!” Kenjiro said. “You’re panicking over there!”

“Panicking? Who’s panicking? I just AAAAGH!”

Somewhere back in their Tokyo apartment, I just know that Daisuke and Kenjiro were giving each other a look that said “He’s losing it.”

* * *

“Bad kitty!” I shouted. “Bad!”

I’d been waving my hand in the air, as I’d been talking, and I hadn’t noticed her watching intently. Finally she’d leaped up and grabbed it, pulling me down to the ground and wrapping herself around my arm, biting and scratching. I’d freaked out, and tussled with her for a moment before throwing her off, jumping back to my feet and scrambling up to the house.

I stood there next to the wall, trying to catch my breath. She just sat there, a hurt look on her face, her ear smarting from where I had smacked her. “You’re mean!” she yelled. “I don’t like you!”

“I don’t like you either!” I shouted, wide-eyed with terror.

A tiny voice cried out. “What’s going on-”

I pressed “End.”

I ran inside, closed and locked the front door, then called my mom and begged her to take me back home. Then I ran back to the guest room and tried to get all the cat hairs out of my suitcase, before sitting there in a daze and desperately hoping that nothing else would jump out at me. My phone rang twice, but I didn’t answer it.

Finally I heard a car pull up in the driveway. I put my laptop back inside and snapped my suitcase back up, before I realized that thing was still out there. Once again I tore back outside, this time still wearing my shoes. “Mom!” I cried out. “Mom!”

There she was, all 4’10” of her, getting out of the car and giving me a strange look. “Hiro? What’s wrong? You sounded so worried on the phone.”

“Mom, we need to get out of here now!” I thrust my suitcase into her hands. “There’s this strange … cat … ”

My voice trailed off, as I looked down at her feet. There on the ground was a calico cat, an extremely fluffy and fat one. It narrowed its eyes at me, before rubbing up against my mom’s leg.

She reached down to pet it. “Is there something wrong with the cat?” she asked, a look of concern on her face.

“No, I … just … ” I sighed. “Please take me home, mother.”

I kept my eyes on the cat until we’d rounded the corner and pulled out of the driveway.

* * *

My mom decided to go back and take care of the cat herself. She felt that she owed it to her sister. I begged her not to go, but she did anyway, and left me at home to take care of the twins. Every day I waited for her to call and tell me that something bizarre had happened, but she never did.

The twins actually behaved themselves for once. Somehow, I was able to get along with them, even though they were on summer vacation. I think it helped that they went outside a lot. We played against each other a few times in Super Smash Bros. Melee, and I actually had fun with them.

As for my exams? I don’t know how, but I managed to study enough that I was able to pass them. Kenjiro and Daisuke congratulated me, even though neither of them had passed. I promised that I’d email them every day while I was at school.

They tried to get me to come back to the game. But I didn’t need an MMO in my life … I had bigger priorities now.

Like being active in our local kemono fangroup, and studying paranormal genetics.

The air was chill. The stars were bright. Toads qwerk-ed down by the pond; bats rustled and clicked overhead. And the forest was abuzz with a chorus of crickets, a soft and melodious din that almost drowned the other noises out.

But the only things Christopher Lander could hear were the pounding of his heart, and the rustling he made as he fumbled for his flashlight in the dark. Grabbing it in his teeth, still balancing the heated bag with the pizzas in one arm, he twisted it into the “on” position and then shone it onto his bare arm.

Brown fur. Just for a second. Brown fur. It receded into his skin, half of it turning back to his lighter hairs and half of it drifting away in the breeze. Then it was gone, and all that was left were his goosebumps.

Lander realized that he had been holding his breath, and gasped. Then he sniffled, and fumbled with his pockets again, trying to turn his flashlight off and put it away and get out a handkerchief. He brought it to his face, trying not to knock his thick glasses aside, blowing his nose and sniffling against the cold. Then he gasped for breath again, shuddering and scared, his heart still pounding fast.

He looked behind him, and waited for his eyes to adjust. There it was, fifteen feet down the road — the tree branch that he had just jumped over. And he remembered flying, flying for two seconds, then landing and realizing he couldn’t do that. And stopping, and feeling itchy all over, and hurrying to grab his flashlight …

He felt a draft. Then he whirled around to see what had happened, and his bare feet pressed onto rough pavement and loose pebbles. There was a hole in the seat of his pants. And he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

Lander knew what had happened. That was why his heart was still pounding. He was so scared he couldn’t think straight. But it had happened, and it wasn’t happening anymore, and the pizza was going to get cold!

The crickets chirped. And a gust of cold wind picked up, and reminded him that he had bigger things to worry about right now. He shivered convulsively, and straightened his glasses back out.

How? That was all he could think. What had made it happen? A latent mental disorder? The spoiled mushrooms he’d eaten on a coworker’s dare? Those had given him a stomachache, but he hadn’t thought they’d caused any lasting damage. And they couldn’t explain why he was barefoot, and why he was going to feel very awkward if someone suddenly drove up behind him.

He carefully went to the side of the road, afraid that he’d step on a bug or a nail, and faced away from the woods. Then he looked up at the sky. The moon was bright, and it lit up the logo on his pizza tote. But it wasn’t full, and even if it had been it was shining right on him, right now, and he didn’t feel any different. Not even the fact that it was Halloween night explained things, although it did make him feel nervous about standing around in the dark.

Lander’s stomach was tying itself into knots. He felt like he couldn’t move, couldn’t go anywhere or do anything until he figured out what had just happened, and then just as suddenly un-happened. Part of him was scared that it’d happen again, and wanted to know what had triggered it. But another part was scared that it’d never happen again, and that part was even more desperate.

He remembered the car engine had died, on the old, rusty station wagon with the parlor’s sign on the roof. He remembered nervously calling his boss, and being yelled at to do whatever it took to get that pizza there on time. And he remembered thinking it out in his head, and deciding that he could maybe get there if he hurried …

And then he remembered jogging. He remembered it being hard at first, because he was slightly overweight and spent his whole day sitting down. He remembered sniffling, and feeling like his ears were going to freeze right off in the cold, and speeding up so he would get warm faster.

And then he remembered how easy it’d been, and how alive and full of energy he’d felt. And he remembered seeing the fallen branch up ahead, and thinking I’m going to jump it. And then he had vaulted six feet into the air …

His breath caught. He knew now what had caused his change, and he knew what he had become. Of course he’d become that, he thought; that’d been his fursona for ages.

But why?

Another cold breeze. Lander was shivering constantly now, and was covered in goosebumps. And he realized that why wasn’t important right now. Because he was between his car and the house, and he was going to catch hypothermia. Because whether he came back as a kangaroo or sat in a broken-down car all night, sans shoes and with a hole in the seat of his pants, he was going to have some explaining to do. And because as afraid as he was of what might happen, the one thing that scared him the most was that it might never happen again.

He stood there for another few moments, building up his resolve. He looked down the road in the direction that he’d been going, and closed his eyes. He counted to three, his voice barely a whisper. And then he took off.

Cold wind rushed past his ears. Cold feet pressed into a rough surface, and stung as loose pebbles pressed into his soles, and into his bones. He jumped and came right back down, and his feet stung even more. But he kept jumping, holding the tote tight against him, holding his other arm out to balance. And each jump was longer, and each landing hurt less, until he was bounding over the road, his clothes rustling in the breeze.

Two seconds of freefall. Jump. Two seconds of flight. Jump. A low-hanging branch got in his face, and he tasted bark, and he sputtered and reached up to brush off his mouth but felt a muzzle instead, and laughed.

He didn’t stop. He kept jumping, all the way around the road that wound its way past the pond. He didn’t feel tired, or cold. He felt great. And he was still scared, but was giddy, with an intoxicating mix of adrenaline and runner’s high.

A car wound its way through the trees, somewhere ahead of him, somewhere down the same road. He saw it coming long before it saw him, and for second he thought What to do? Then it was coming towards him, and he was going towards it, and he thought: Jump. And then he did.

For a second he felt real fear, and as he flew at the car he thought I messed up, I’m so dead. Then he was on the other side, and the car had screeched to a halt, and he looked back after two more jumps to see the door open and somebody looking back towards him.

Lander had to slow down a little, because his heart was pounding and his lungs were burning, and he was going uphill and thinking He’s going to turn around and come after me. This is it. I’m so dead. And he wanted to keep going, but couldn’t. So he slowed to a jog, and then stopped all the way, and he looked back down the road from a bend on the side of the hill. Nothing was coming. The air was full of night sounds.

Moonlight shone directly on him, and on the pizza box and the guardrail and the grass at the edge of the slope. And way out past him were hills, and the countryside, and the lights of the cars on the main road. He looked out at them for a second, amazed at how real it all looked when he wasn’t inside of a car himself.

Then he looked down at himself, and his brown furry arms, and around at his huge swishing tail. He looked down at his feet, and pressed one into the grass and felt cold and wet, on reverse-jointed shapes that belonged to him. He reached up and felt his muzzle again, and his tall ears, and his glasses that were now awkwardly positioned. He adjusted them, and it took him a second to get them on straight.

This was it, he thought. This was real; this was him. And there was no mirror, no heart monitor, no scientist with a transformation gun asking him how he felt. Just wet grass, and cool air, and him standing there as an anthro kangaroo. And somehow, it all felt perfectly natural. He didn’t feel anything changing back, and he didn’t feel disoriented or like parts of him were out of place.

Lander grinned like an idiot, thrusting his fist skyward in triumph. He didn’t care what happened next. It was worth it. It was all worth it. Who said you couldn’t live your dreams? The world was such a great place, he thought. And he had such a great life.

And his boss was going to kill him if he didn’t deliver that pizza on time.

Lander took a deep breath, and took off down the road again.

* * *

It took him a few minutes to get to the house, during which he thought about everything. It didn’t even seem possible that anything bad could ever happen to him again. He settled into a steady rhythm, freefall and jump and flying and jump, and he almost missed the turnoff but for the Halloween decorations.

There they were, all over the lawn … glowing pumpkins, and friendly-looking ghosts and black cats. Lander didn’t need to check the address. He’d been past this house before, delivering to other places nearby, and they were decked out like this every year.

He looked down the road at their gravel driveway, imagined it on his bare paws, and decided against it. Then he looked down the grassy slope out at their lawn, and at the house more than a hundred feet away, and thought how small and far away it all looked.

Then he jumped.

He soared, for two … three … four seconds. Then he saw something dark on the ground, a row of small dark things, and for a split-second he wondered What are these? Then his feet smashed into the uncarved pumpkins, and raw pumpkin jammed up his toenails, and he yelped and flailed into the air for a bit before falling face-first onto the grass. The pizza tote slid away from him.

Lander lay there for a moment, arms in front of his face, wondering if any bones were broken. Then his toes started to hurt, and his toenails started to sting, and both his feet turned into masses of pain. He curled them towards him, reached down and tried to get the pumpkins off of his feet, and the fragments were jagged and more painful than he’d thought they would be. Wet pumpkin innards slid over his stinging toes, and wet pumpkin smell reached his sensitive nose.

He got the pumpkins off and stood up, and had to keep from crying out. Both his feet hurt so bad, especially his big toes. And what was that dark shape on the ground in front of him?

It was the pizza tote. He limped over to it, and tried for a second to reach it without bending over. Then he finally knelt down next to it, and cried out and winced as he got it and stood back up. Then he looked up at the house, still halfway across the yard, and at all the cars in the driveway. And he didn’t know what was going to happen once he knocked on that door, but he didn’t think it was going to be good.

Maybe if I hold this in front of my face … no.

I could tell them that it’s a Halloween costume! Nuh-uh.

Maybe no one will notice … No way.

Lander remembered a commercial he’d seen, where a cartoon character on a bottle of juice drink had come to life. The kids had both screamed, and the mom had cried “Run!” and the thing had chased them through the house. It hadn’t been an ad for the juice drink. And he wasn’t a cartoon character. But he was pretty sure that that was how this was going to play out … without the chasing, he thought, and looked down at his feet in the dark and winced.

He imagined being shot at by a desperate homeowner, or causing a panic and getting the party guests hurt. He imagined kids screaming, and horrified looks on people’s faces, and someone rushing to the phone to dial 911. And he could see himself spending the rest of his life in a government research lab, or even a mental hospital, and never jumping again. Never flying again …

A terrible thought struck him, and he got out his flashlight and shone it down on his feet. He had trouble telling the orange from the red, but he was pretty sure that there was a lot of blood on them.

Lander looked over his shoulder, up at the road, and at the miles between him and his broken-down car. Cold air blew across his wet nose, and the crickets seemed far away now.

He sighed, and looked back at the house. Then he limped towards the door, one step at a time, trying to think of what he could say. “This is not what it looks like … ” Ow. “I’m really not going to hurt you.” Ow. “Please don’t hurt me.” Ow. “Please don’t h-ARGH!”

He stumbled the last couple of paces and put out his free hand to stop himself on the wall. Slimy footprints followed him across the patio, streaked with pumpkin innards and trickles of red liquid.

He tried to catch his breath. Inside the house he could hear music, and talking, and people playing a video game. Excited voices called out to each other, and somebody shouted above the din. People laughed in response.

Lander cringed. Then he closed his eyes, counted to three silently, and got up and knocked on the door.

There was no response for a second. Then he heard light footsteps clicking towards him, like high-heels on a hardwood floor, and held his breath.

The door opened. Lander squinted in at the light. And then he gasped.

On the other side was an anthropomorphic bird, with fluffy white underfeathers and brilliant royal blue backfeathers and wings. He didn’t wear (and didn’t need) any clothes besides a many-pocketed belt, and he looked cheerful and pleasant.

Past him, inside the house, was a whole menagerie. A gray tabby cat-boy played DDR against a human girl, holding onto his top hat with one hand. Two red wolves and two foxes, one red and one pink, were crowded around a game console hooked up to a large-screen TV, and the red fox was shouting triumphantly and waving a Wiimote while standing up on the couch. And a young girl with pudgy looks and a cat’s ears and tail stopped in the middle of the room, a bowl of ice cream in her hands, and looked up at the newcomer.

“Hello!” the bird said. “We were wondering when you would get here.”

“Uh … ” Lander blinked.

The bird looked down at the doorstep, and jumped in surprise. He ruffled his feathers, and stared. “What’s happened to your feet?“

INT. HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM

The curtain is up on the stage, and unused props and backdrops are strewn all about as two kids, VINCENT and TIMOTHY, mock-swordfight with whatever's handy. Vincent is tall and athletic, and dressed in all black with a toolbelt and headset; Timothy is shorter, and wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans. Despite Timothy's size disadvantage, he presses the attack enthusiastically.

Vincent parries with a flourish, and holds his sword out at Tim dramatically.

RACHEL and COURTNEY run past, chasing each other behind the swordfight. Rachel is short and a tiny bit heavy-set, wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans along with cat ears and a tail. Courtney is taller and redheaded, and wears lighter colors.

The two tromp down the stairs to the side of the stage. Courtney comes out ahead of Rachel and runs past the front of the stage to the opposite door, and ducks in just as Rachel comes out.

Rachel looks around, sees the other door and starts heading for it, but then Courtney comes out with an armful of foam rubber rocks. She begins lobbing them at Rachel, and Rachel squeals and runs back to the door she came out of. Courtney chases her, laughing.

Onstage, the swordfight continues. Tim is swinging aggressively, and forcing Vincent to one side.

He swaps weapon hands with a flourish, and begins to force Timothy back again.

Behind them, Courtney peeks out from behind a canvas backdrop, holding a foam rubber rock and scanning the stage. Meanwhile, Rachel peers out from behind another backdrop across the stage, carrying an enormous Nerf (tm) rifle. They lock eyes; Rachel grins, and Courtney panics.

Rachel starts shooting foam-rubber darts at Courtney. Courtney drops all the rocks and runs, and Rachel shouts and chases her backstage as the swordfight continues.

The lights flicker backstage, and Rachel and Courtney can be heard laughing.

Rachel and Courtney scream, and Vincent jumps to his feet, startled. He and Timothy look around themselves, trying to see what just happened ... as Rachel's scream dissolves into laughter, and Courtney's into tears.

Vincent and Timothy run backstage.

Courtney runs back onstage, crying. There's nothing visibly different about her. Behind her, Rachel walks onstage.

The lighting flickers backstage.

A loud ROAR is heard, and Courtney and Rachel jump.

She runs backstage, and Rachel follows her.

The lights backstage flicker a couple more times, then turn off. Everyone walks back onstage, Courtney trailing with her arms folded.

Everyone turns to look at Courtney. Her face turns red.

Rachel backs away from Courtney, shocked.

Everyone turns to look backstage.

Vincent edges closer to the backstage area while they're all talking.

Vincent makes it to one of the canvas backdrops, and quickly ducks behind it while everyone is distracted.

The light turns on backstage, and another loud ROAR shakes the auditorium. Everyone jumps.

They run backstage, and more running footsteps are heard afterwards. Timothy looks around for a second, idly kicks at the loose props beside him, then walks backstage after them. A second later, the light turns off.

END OF ACT ONE

INT. HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM

The stage is divided in two right now, with stage left being well-lit and attractive and stage right made to look like backstage. Everyone hurries around getting stage left set up for the upcoming play, pulling backdrops into place and setting up a folding table, while leaving things strewn about stage right and occasionally running back to get them.

Vincent starts nailing something to the wall. Rachel panics and starts waving her arms at him, and he rolls his eyes and goes to put it up where she's pointing at.

Courtney checks her hair in a compact, and Tim gets out a handheld game console and starts playing it. Vincent gives him a disgusted look, and makes him take the hammer and nails before heading backstage.

The light turns on in back, and a tiger's ROAR shakes the stage. Rachel runs backstage and comes back dragging Vincent behind her-

Fade out for a second, then back in as the "play" begins. Stage left has a chair behind a folding table set up on a stretch of carpet, with ferns to either side. Anime posters cover the walls.

RACHEL is seated behind the table, wearing a beret. She files her nails, and flips through papers in front of her, looking bored. COURTNEY is wearing a tail, and cat ears over her long red hair, and the thickest glasses that can be found. Meanwhile, on stage right, TIMOTHY keeps checking his watch nervously, and VINCENT moves things around "backstage."

She sees Rachel (who doesn't notice her), and gasps.

Timothy walks on-"stage" and hands Rachel a note. She thanks him and reads it.

Rachel tosses the note over her shoulder, and gets up and starts walking.

Courtney turns around with a start, to head towards the desk, and collides with Rachel as she's walking past. Rachel falls over, dazed, and Courtney stares in horror.

Vincent steps to the edge of the partition and hands her a pen. She takes it, embarrassed.

SHIFT FOCUS from stage left to stage right, by dimming the lights, or adjusting sound levels, or whatever seems most appropriate. Vincent is pushing a broom across the floor, and Timothy is nervously fiddling with his game console.

SHIFT FOCUS, from right to left.

SHIFT FOCUS, from left to right.

SHIFT FOCUS, from right to left.

SHIFT FOCUS, from left to right.

SHIFT FOCUS, from right to left.

SHIFT FOCUS, from left to right.

SHIFT FOCUS, from right to left.

The stage light comes on, as Vincent passes through the partition. Through the other side comes either Vincent as his furry self, or a performer in the most realistic fursuit possible ... whichever is most convenient. ^.^ Courtney and Rachel stare.

She faints.

Rachel stares.

FIN! And as the performers take a bow, a creaking noise is heard over the speakers, right before Vincent's stage light comes loose and swings down to point at the audience ... above a gaggle of fursuited performers, who panic as only they can. THE END.