"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 …

The world was a blur.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He mutterred something incoherent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Awesome.” His brother grinned.

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

“Did you hit a rock or something?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lawrence grinned.

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

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

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

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

Something rustled, along the path to his right.

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

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

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

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

His mood could not get any better.

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

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

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

It was 12:00 AM on a Friday night, and if you stopped outside a white house in the country you could hear a guitar singing. “Magic” Mark Duncan was playing, his sixteen-year-old hands already callused and comfortable with the strings. And he wasn’t playing from memory either, but was lost in his own endless world.

He was all black jeans and metal band t-shirt, loose and way too big for him, with hair that touched his shoulders and got in his eyes and his face. He paused for a second and leaned back in his chair, stretching, and it spilled out onto the computer keyboard behind him. Then he sat back up, shook his head real fast to clear it, and got back to hearing this world that he’s in. His amp was plugged into the PC, and he strummed each chord into Audacity, recording his explorations for the rest of the world to see.

Feet brushed against cards and discarded clothes. Elbow nudged his top hat, upended right next to his keyboard. It was why his friends gave him the nickname. Sometimes he pretended to pull things out of it, and sometimes he actually did. But tonight, his friends were all on dates with each other, and he was stuck here playing the-

Blues? Forget those. Symphonic metal, soul-wrenching lows and soaring heights of dreaming and fantasy, reminding him that magic can happen. Distracting him, delaying discouragement, until he forgot it was there to begin with and was wrapped up in where the music could take him.

By the time he flopped down on his sheets, next to guitar magazines and sweatpants, he remembered nothing but music. The magical world was still with him, and as the GNOME desktop faded his PC’s screen into black, he knew that magic could happen.

Magic can happen …

He felt dead when he woke up. His body was completely limp, no energy left in it at all, and he wanted to fall back asleep before it persuaded him to get up anyway. What had gotten him up to begin with?

“Mark!” His sister pounded on the door again. “Mark, it’s 11:30 already. Get up so I can take you to get your hair cut.”

His hair … he didn’t want his hair cut. Sadly, his parents had scheduled it, and his sis wouldn’t let him sleep through it. She didn’t like that it was longer than hers.

He shifted around, trying to reach up and feel it, and something tugged at his behind. But he didn’t notice, because he was staring at his hands all of a sudden. They were wrinkled and gnarled, and he thought “How long was I playing guitar last night?” Then he blinked, and cleared his eyes, and saw something else in the light of the window above his bed. Something very Not Right.

He jumped up and leaned up against the windowsill, looking not at the garage but at his arms. They were covered in gray fur all the way down to his hands, and wrinkled unnaturally at the fingertips. They didn’t feel hurt or stiff. But claws curled out of his fingertips as he flexed his hands, and he stared at them.

A cat’s face stared back at him from the window, with green eyes and long, black hair. And his heart leaped into his feline throat and got stuck there.

“Mark! Come on, wake up!”

More pounding on the door. He tried to say something, but it came out as complete gibberish. The shape of his mouth was all wrong.

“Mark, what is wrong with you? Get up now!”

He flexed his mouth, wrapping his sandpaper tongue around it, coughing and swallowing and trying again. “Alrrright, one second … ”

“Did I just say that?” he thought. Mark stood up from his bed and stepped towards the door on reverse-jointed paws, and they felt strange and looked like they couldn’t hold him up. He held out his arms to step over the junk on the floor, but found that he didn’t need to, because his tail reflexively balanced him out. He could feel the new limb where there was none, but he was still too shocked to do more than just feel it, and let it do its own thing.

He looked down at his guitar laying across his chair, and at his desk and the upended top hat. “Maybe this was meant to happen.”

“Mark, come on!”

There was no time to question it. Given the choice between freaking out, not knowing what just happened, and acting as though he did know, he chose the latter. On a whim, he grabbed up the top hat and put it over his head, wriggling his feline ears and feeling the inside felt. Then he opened the door and looked up at his sister, who was now a bit taller than he was.

She jumped back, dropping the laundry basket that she’d been carrying and making a sound like he’d grabbed her by the throat.

“Good morrrning, Sara.”

The wrinkled sweats from the laundry basket were warm on Mark’s bare feet. He could see his sister’s black t-shirt and blue jeans, but the rim of his hat blocked out her face. He heard her struggling to form words. “Wh … wh … what happened to you?”

He tilted his head upwards, to look at her dark hair and makeup, and grinned at her. “Magic,” he said.

And from the look in her eyes, he could tell she believed him.

“I’ve canceled your appointment at the salon.”

Mark sat in a high-backed chair, hands clasped in his lap, tail swishing out lazily behind him between the chair’s wooden slats. Try as he might, he could not keep from grinning, even though he was scared.

“I called mom and dad. But I didn’t get a chance to tell them what happened, because they started telling me about this hurricane that just hit where they’re at. They’re stuck in Florida at least for the weekend. So we’ve got until Monday to decide what to do.”

He watched Sara pace, in front of the tapestry that hung on the wall segment that divided the kitchen from the dining room. Light shone in through the window, muted by the thick curtains. His sister had run all through the house, covering the windows and locking the doors.

She covered her face with her hands, and pulled downwards. “Oh man oh man oh man. What are we gonna do?”

“Let’s hold a cookout, and invite all our frrriends.” Mark’s grin widened.

Sara gave him a disdainful look. “Oh, sure. And maybe we’ll invite the MI5 over for mouse kabobs, too!” She threw her hands up in the air, and stomped off into the kitchen. “I can’t deal with this!”

But she could, Mark knew, and she was handling it better than he was. It occured to him that it was fun watching her panic. And it was a lot better than doing it himself. He decided to let her worry about everything, until he stopped being scared and was able to think.

He heard the kitchen cabinets squeaking open and shut. This went on for a minute or so, and he finally decided to see what Sara was up to. He hopped upright, amazed at how fast he felt and how quickly he regained his balance, his tail swishing out behind him. Then he padded out into the kitchen. The linoleum tiles were cool under his paws.

He saw her rummaging through the canned goods inside the cabinet next to the fridge. “What arrre you doing?” he asked.

“Seeing how long we can last.” She closed the door and stood up. “I’m going to try to convince mom and dad to stay there in Florida another week. It’s not likely to work, but it’s worth a shot.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll have to skip school … ” She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. “I’ll make up an excuse and cover for you.”

Sara looked over at him. “You’ll make it through this somehow. I know you will.”

Mark wanted to cry all of a sudden, and he had no idea why.

Sara went out to buy groceries, and Mark spent two hours trying to shower himself. When he came out all his fur was matted, and his clothes felt wet and limp.

He woke his computer from sleep mode and sat down to it, but typing and using the mouse was a chore. His hand would not fit his optical laser mouse the right way, and he had to hold it two-handed just to get it to do anything. With his fingertips gnarled, he could barely type. And his leather chair wasn’t comfortable anymore, because his tail kept getting in the way. He tried to sit on his knees, but that way just pressed his reverse-jointed feet into the back.

Mark finally gave up and sat down on his bed, as the screensaver took over his flat screen. He stayed there for a long moment, thinking without words, letting his subconscious mind churn. It occurred to him that he was still in shock, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

He looked over at his guitar, where he’d set it on one of the piles on the floor. And he knew what was going to happen, but he had to try anyway. Numbly he picked the guitar up, made sure it was connected to the amp and turned everything on. Then he found his pick, and began to strum.

It felt like he had gloves on. He couldn’t carry a tune in these hands, not without learning all over again. Not without more years of practice. On a whim, Mark set the pick aside and tried to play using his claws. But then he snapped one of the strings, and the tune he was picking out SPROINGed to a halt.

He set the guitar aside and looked at it, overtaken by a strange feeling. He was still in shock, so he didn’t know why he felt this way … this strange mixture of fear and homesickness. But tears were starting to well in his slitted eyes.

The front door opened.

Mark wiped his face on his sleeve, and hurried downstairs to help put up groceries.

“I don’t know what you can eat, so I just bought whatever. Hope you like Spam.”

Mark picked one of the cans up and looked at it. All he could see was canned cat food.

Sara went back out to the car to get the rest of the bags. It occurred to Mark that he was hungry, and he thought about how he could open this can. His claws wouldn’t work, so he needed something to flip the pull-tab with, like a spoon or a fork or-

A knife.

He slid a long, sharp one out of the block and looked at it, fascinated by its gleam. He imagined himself actually trying to open the can with it, and slipping and cutting himself up, and the thought did not make him squeamish at all.

When his sister came back inside she saw him holding the tip of the knife towards his heart, a blank look on his face. “No!” she cried, and dropped all the bags and came running at him.

“She shouldn’t do that,” he thought. “What if I slipped and hurt myself?” But then she was wresting the knife from his hands, and he let go but his claws sliced her. Sara dropped the knife, and it clattered to the floor, and she clutched her hands as blood seeped through her fingers.

She looked up at him, and he looked back. Then she began to cry, and that set him off too. And in a second they were both kneeling there on the kitchen floor, holding each other and crying. Mark saw where she’d kicked the knife to, when she’d dropped to her knees, and he couldn’t believe what he’d been about to do with it.

“Don’t you ever do that again. Do you hear me?”

The blood on her hands was sticking to his hair. He nodded quickly.

“Promise me you won’t do that again!”

He nodded even more vigorously.

They sat there for he didn’t know how long, crying and holding each other, and he clung to her as though to life itself. Then she finally unstuck her hands from his hair and stood up, and he stood up after her. “Come with me while I lock up the car,” she said.

“What if somebody sees me?”

“I don’t care. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

He stepped out into the world and looked around at it, at the overcast sky and the fields and hedgerows and the house across the street. There was no one there, and there were no cars in sight. But he felt a rush of adrenalin at the thought of danger, and the thought that it was okay to be there.

There was a CLUNK of mechanical car locks, and then Sara shut the door. “Okay … let’s go back inside now.” She offered him her hand, and he clasped it in his, this time careful not to extend his claws.

“We’ll make it through this,” she said. “I know we will.”

His tail swished happily.

They stayed up that night playing Dance Dance Revolution, because neither of them could hold a controller. Then they played board games, and talked, and ate expensive cheeses and snacks while they watched movies. Sara’s friends called to ask why she wasn’t out with them, and she proudly told them she was spending time with her brother.

Mark grinned.

He went to bed that night feeling utterly dead, but glad to be alive. Glowing directional arrows danced in front of his eyes, and it occurred to him he’d been great at that game. “Maybe it’s the tail,” he thought. “I should do that more often.”

“We should do that more often.”

He closed his eyes, and was out like a light.

The next day he woke up slowly, still feeling tired, remembering what’d happened the day before. Daylight came in through the window, and was just starting to shine in his face. Mark winced, and put up an arm to block it-

His arm was human again.

He sat up and looked at his hands. Then he reached up to feel his face. It was the one he remembered having, with a bit of fuzz on the chin from not having shaved in two days.

Mark pumped his arm in the air triumphantly, and did an air guitar solo as he jumped back to his feet.

“Yesterday was fun,” he thought, as he came down the stairs a few minutes later. “Who would’ve thought that I’d know what it’s like to be a furry? Who would’ve thought that my sister was actually a nice person?” He grinned. “I think that I’m better off for all that.”

“I wonder if I could make it happen again?”

It was two minutes to the curtain call, and Three Layer Steak was running behind. Axel pounded on Kayleigh’s door, his keytar already slung over his shoulder. “Kay, hurry up!” he shouted. “We have to be there right now!”

Then she opened the door, and he gasped.

Neko Neko was a good kitty. And she knew she was because her parents told her so. They didn’t look anything like her, but their hands petted and fed her, and their laps were warm to curl up in.

Sometimes they put tail-stompers on their feet, and a lot of the time they wouldn’t feed her when she asked. But she always forgot about it when it was time to eat. And then she would lay down in the sun, and laze until it was time to eat again.

One day Neko Neko’s parents both went Outside. This had happened a few times before, but Neko Neko could not remember any of them. She ate the food that they’d left her, and then lazed in the sun for awhile. But pretty soon she was hungry again, and her tail thumped agitatedly on the floor mat beside her. She wanted food, but she couldn’t ask anyone right now.

Then something happened to her. And while she didn’t quite understand it, she wondered if it had anything to do with her dinner …

* * *

Every day, I went off to school and memorized words, that seemed to have nothing to do with each other. And every night, I took the crowded subway home and wrote even more words about the words I was learning, on a tiny desk piled high with clutter in an apartment shared with four people.

I couldn’t see what sense it all made. I barely remembered what I’d learned the day before. When it came time to write answers on tests, my brain usually knew what to say. But sometimes it wouldn’t co-operate, and I had to fight it and make it give up the answers. I had to get perfect grades, or there way no way I was getting into Tokyo University.

My dad was gone most of the time, either working late at the office or hanging out at the bars, and my mom was busy taking care of the twins. I knew how much of a handful they were, and so I refused to burden her with the stresses of my days. Instead I listened to music on my iPod, and occasionally played PS2, when my brain could take no more cramming.

I thought I was doing a good job of hiding the stress I was under. I really did. Then one day, I snapped. Something that somebody did set me off – I still can’t remember what. But I climbed to the top of the tallest building I could find and screamed at him, at the top of my lungs. I called that kid every name I could think of, in English and Japanese. I made faces at him, when he replied in like manner. And I ignored my friends, who were pleading with me to climb down.

Pretty soon the GMs appeared. They warped me into Mordion Gaol, and explained why I was being given time to reflect on my misdeeds. Then they left, and I turned off my PS2 and stared at the bookshelves on the wall, my whole body covered in sweat from my outburst.

I’d just gotten a week-long ban from Final Fantasy XI Online.

* * *

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?"