“When you come back… will you still be you? Or… when you come back, will you be… something new?”

There was a long silence. Her girlfriend’s mannerisms had changed, now that they were at the train station. Standing on the edge. She had been supportive, more than anything. Mary couldn’t blame her for being apprehensive.

Mary felt heavy. Tired. She hadn’t even left yet. She itched all over, like her body was too tight on her.

She sighed.

“I fucking hope so.”

Jem cried. Tears fell down her face.

“Will… will you still be my girlfriend? If everything else changes-”

“Don’t. I’m doing this for myself. Not for you, not for anyone else. And I’m going to be a better person for it.”

Jem’s tears stopped. She looked at Mary with a horrified expression. Mary sighed.

“I’m sorry. It’s just… I don’t know.”

Sunbright is a place of changes. Changes in people. Changes in time. Changes in humanity. The city embraces change, in a way that is equal parts brilliant and terrifying. Mary couldn’t help but feel like the city was trying to take something from her. And it was, of course. It was pulling at the threads that make her up already. She felt a sense of disconnection, like an orange waiting to realize that it had already been peeled.

The sun had just set. The sky was still tinted blue from twilight, but the night was beginning. It was her first time being outside during the night, and she felt… alive. Dear god, she felt alive. Like she could take on the world. She wasn’t sure if it was her time with Willow, her comfort with the city… or just her preference for night. But she felt good. The chilling wind wrapped around her, a wonderful feeling of calm and happiness rolling over her-

Snap.

She felt something. Not a physical sensation, not an audible sound. Nothing she had ever experienced before. It was just… a shift. Something was different. Something. 

She looked around. It felt like she had spent minutes considering the sensation… but she hadn’t. It had only been a few seconds. She had stopped walking, but only for a moment, and people just stepped around her. She only took a moment before she kept walking- she didn’t want to be an obstacle. She felt warm, hazy, confused. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but she knew she didn’t want it to be happening here. She ducked into an alley, away from the city’s nightlife crowds.

“B-breathe, Mary. You’re fine. It’s probably just- just a panic attack or something. You’ve got this.”

Her breathing is heavy. She’d been sweating, too, as if it was a hundred degrees outside, but she still felt the cold air against her skin. This couldn’t be a panic attack- she was perfectly fine two seconds ago- glowing, even. Heart attack? No, there’s no pain, and she’d be on the ground by now. Dehydration? No, she hadn’t been thirsty, and she had plenty to drink today… she took out her water bottle anyway, and took a swig, sitting down on the ground. Her breathing was heavy, but the feeling was slowly subsiding. She touched the ground with the palm of her hand to stabilize herself.

“H-huh. Even the alleyways are clean, here…”

“Yup.”

She jumped, and instinctually backed up. She had sat next to a dumpster, and it seemed to be the source of the sound. The voice was tinny, and echoed a couple times. Mary jumped to conclusions.

“Oh god. I’m hallucinating.”

“Oh shit, you got shrooms? Can I bum a few?”

The lid to the dumpster creaks open, as a… person? Attempts to crawl its way out. One arm, then a leg… then they just fall to the ground, graceful as a bloated pelican. They hop up, looking at Mary with a big grin.

The figure was odd, compared to what she had become accustomed to in the city. So many people took on regal or beautiful forms, an expression of their true selves. Brilliant wings, long tails, ample curves… No-one here seemed unathletic, or creepy, or dangerous. The raccoon person in front of her didn’t seem like any of those things either, but she did seem unflattering. She was wearing a simple outfit- loose jeans, a stained and branded tank top for a punk band called the Rat-Scallions, and a black beanie. Her bra strap was visible creeping its way down her arm, but she didn’t seem to care. Her fur was a mess of white, gray, and black, with a bandit’s mask pattern across her face and black paws, one of which was currently holding a gun. Mary threw up her hands the moment that her eyes finally come to rest on the weapon.

“D-don’t shoot-”

“...Wha?”

The raccoon just blinks, looking confused. A second later, she steps forwards, into a ray from the twilight sky… That’s not a gun. It’s too mechanical, too bulky. It’s in the general shape of one, but it isn’t one. Mary feels stupid.

“O-oh, that’s… not a gun, is it?”

The raccoon person looks down at the object, and laughs.

“Bwah! Nah, this lil’ thing is what I was scroungin’ ‘round the garbage for. Used is a whole lot cheaper than buying brand new, ‘specially when you can just shop at your local dumpster.”

Mary nearly laughs. On one hand, this person just jumped out of a dumpster, asked her for shrooms, and nearly attacked her. On the other hand, Mary was here as a reporter… and she wanted this person’s story.

“What… is it?”

The raccoon pipes up, holding it in the air like a character in an RPG.

“It’s a mind controlling raygun!”

Mary blinked.

“What?”

She knew about magic items, but they were usually jewelry, clothing, sometimes food. Never machines. Willow had talked at length about the process- machines were too complex, with many moving parts. Each part would need its own enchanting. It was theoretically possible, but incredibly difficult.

“Oh, no, not a real one. Here, watch-” She points it at the ground, pulling a string on the back of it, revving the device and tightening some internal spring. Once she lets go, a flimsy plastic part folds out, revealing a cheesy spiral shape, which spins at what would be the barrel of the gun. The raccoon points it at Mary in a joking fashion. “It’s from the 90s, I think. Sorta thing you’d buy off the back of a comic book.”

Mary looks at the thing with a bit of distaste, before letting herself laugh a little. She’s still a bit shaken, but there’s something innately amusing about the whole situation. The gun’s spiral slows down, before the raccoon pulls the trigger to send it spinning again.

“Th-that’s it?”

She mocks offense. “Oh, too simple for you, fancy-pants?” She pulls the trigger again and makes a silly ghost noise. “OoooOOOooo you’re feeling sleepy…”

To Mary’s abject horror, this almost works. She feels herself tipping over slightly before she focuses herself, and it takes her a second to restart her brain. Years of hypnokink had trained her brain to be… ridiculously susceptible. She closes her eyes for a second and calms herself down.

By the time she opens them, the raccoon is in her face.

“SHIT”

She jumps, but the raccoon woman just laughs. And laughs.

“Th-that worked on you, didn’t it!? Just a lil’ bit, I saw that- I see well in the dark, ya know-”

“N-no, I’m sure you’re mistaken-”

She pulls the gun on Mary and pulls the trigger again, a big smile on her face. “Shhh, shhh, just watch~”

Mary melts immediately. The expression drops off of her face, and her shoulders droop, her mouth hanging open mid-word. Her eyes stare, intently. It’s easy, so she’s happy to do it. She doesn’t really have time to think of not doing it, in fact. She’s too busy doing it to consider not doing it.

What’s she doing?

She’s standing up, which she doesn’t really remember having done. She’s a bit dizzy, that post-trance lightheadedness apparent. Standing in front of her is the raccoon, a sly grin on her face and the gun in her hand- now lowered.

“I know that face~!”

Mary blinks. She’s very confused. “Wha-”

“That face! That face you make in trance, and before it, and after it.”

She leans in slightly, with a menacing grin.

“I know what you are.”

Mary steps back slightly, still a bit dizzy. She looks around- it seems like all the raccoon actually did was get her to stand up.

“Y-you… What?”

“Oh, sorry, let me be less vague.” She cups her hands around her mouth. “YOU’RE A SLUT.”

Mary immediately looks over to the street, but sees no-one. The sunlight is fully gone by now and it seems like most people are home.

She looks back towards the racoon. “B-be quiet. Someone might hear.”

She just smiles more. “But I’m right. Aren’t I? We’re one and the same.”

 Mary sighs. “Yes, fine, alright. Just stop yelling. I work for a kink news site-”

“Kinksters?”

Mary blinks. The raccoon says it rather matter-of-factly, but she has a glint behind her eyes.

“You- how did you know that?”

“Oh you know, I might be, say… your biggest fan. Or at least one of your biggest. I’m sure there’s some other weirdo who’s even more obsessed than me. I really liked your guys’ piece on rope safety back in October, been sharing that around.”

“Y-you know, I actually co-authored that. I found some professional doms in the field and got some pointers… Also got info for the breathplay piece at the same-”

Mary’s breath gets heavier as she speaks, before her legs begin to shake. She notices it as she nearly falls over, her vision unfocused and her head hazy. Something’s wrong.

“Shit- are you okay?”

As her vision flickers in and out, she can see the raccoon holding her up by her shoulder, looking worried. She shakes her head.

“N-no, something- something is-”

Her legs nearly give out underneath her, but the raccoon holds her up. She looks into Mary’s eyes for a moment, an intense expression.

“You’re changing. It just started for you, didn’t it? You’ve… been here a while.”

Her eyes widened. That’s what’s happening. Shit, she had expected it to take longer. To be less… intense. She can barely stand on her own, she can barely think.

“Hold on, I’ve got you.”

She’s guided away- through a couple doors, up an elevator. Her vision and consciousness fades in and out like a flickering lightbulb.

She tries to focus, tries to calm herself-

If everything else changes…

Tears run down her face.

Will you still be my girlfriend?

Soft. So soft.

She wakes up in a bed, warm and cozy, covered by a big, soft blanket.

She smells food. Eggs and bacon. Two apartments down, three across. Scrambled, the heat's a bit too high. They’re using too much paprika.

She sits up with a start. Her head hurts, but she can sense… everything. It’s almost overwhelming. She’s in a bed- a circular one, in an unfamiliar bedroom. There’s a bucket of ice next to it, full of orange juice and water bottles. A stack of chocolate bars next to it. Towels. A bowl of chicken soup. There’s a blanket underneath her, and another on top of her, both soaked in sweat.

She sits up. She doesn’t… feel any different. She runs a hand over her body, feeling for anything out of the ordinary. Her skin is sore, like a bruise, but otherwise she feels like her. Slowly, she tries to stand up, out of bed. 

Floor.

She’s suddenly lying face down in the carpet, eyes still open, looking at the floor.

Sure is a floor.

She begins to roll over, and suddenly realizes the problem. She didn’t feel any changes, but there was one. Not to her skin, or her body shape, not to any of the things she actually wanted changed. No, of course not- that would have been too easy. Tears run down her face. She doesn’t even realize she’s crying until she hears them hit the carpet.

She slowly, shakily, stands up. It takes her a moment. Like a newborn deer, she struggles to know where to put her legs- until she suddenly feels the ceiling meet her forehead.

She nearly falls over again but just barely keeps herself up by grabbing ahold of a nearby shelf. It’s covered in old retro games and 90s toys. A couple fall to the ground- normally she’d be terrified of damaging them, but she doesn’t have the mental wavelength right now.

She takes a deep breath.

It’s okay. This is fine. Maybe she’ll turn back eventually.

No. No, the curse never goes back on anything. When it happens, it’s for good.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

She’s stuck like this. Forever. Clumsy, lanky. She stands out.

Door frames are a bit under 7 feet. Which would make her…

About 7’6”.

She takes a deep breath.

She isn’t larger- just taller. Lanky. She feels like a joke. Like a parody. Her proportions are all wrong. How the fuck is she supposed to be seen like this? How is she-

She’s snapped out of her spiraling as the door opens. She immediately grabs a blanket from the bed and wraps it around her body. She isn’t certain when she lost her clothes, but she’s more focused on just covering up the change. Looking some semblance of normal.

The raccoon steps in, and jumps slightly, seeing her. She’s carrying a basket of clothes- Mary’s folded neatly on top, smelling like flowers. Recently cleaned. Magnolias specifically. She doesn’t know how she knows that.

“Y-you’re awake! And standing up- oh, no no no, you need to lay back down-”

She sets down the basket and walks up to her, reaching her hand out to lead Mary back to bed. She flinches like a wild animal. The raccoon lady blinks, and sighs.

“This… this is the hard part, ok? People here will tell you how much they love their new bodies- and they all do. But most folks…”

Mary slowly lowers herself to the ground to sit, as her legs begin to shake. The raccoon sits next to her, giving a… morose smile.

“Listen, you ask anyone about their transition, and there’s this… awful moment, when it starts. When you start to change, but before… before you understand why.”

Mary sobs, slightly. She doesn’t even know this person.

“My name is Holly.”

Mary blinks. She looks down at Holly, and the raccoon blushes immediately.

“O-oh, sorry, I should have warned you. I can sort of… pick up on thoughts around me. Not quite hear what someone is thinking, but… I get the jist of it. B-but yea, my name is Holly. I didn’t mean to pry.”

Mary feels her energy draining. Her panic disappears as her body finds itself out of adrenaline to keep it going. Her posture collapses. Holly puts a hand to her shoulder to stabilize her.

“W-woah there, careful. Do you think you can speak?”

Mary blinks, a couple times.

“Water.”

Holly jumps to her feet, quickly running over to the bed to grab a bottle. She returns, and opens it before handing it to Mary. She turns it upside down over her head and drenches herself in the ice cold water.

“Okay. I’m okay. No. No, I’m not okay. But I’m stable.”

Holly nods. “I went through the same thing. I mean, obviously different contexts, different changes. But it’s always hard, at first.”

Mary shakes her head. “No, there’s magic- that can fix the curse. It’s expensive, but I can-”

Holly narrows her eyes. “You don’t want to do that. You really don’t. It works, sure, but you need to accept things head-on.”

“That’s not your decision. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

Holly sighs. “Okay, you’re gonna make me do this, huh?”

She grabs ahold of Mary’s wrist, and looks into her eyes.

“Your name is Mary. You chose it on a whim and always go to sleep wondering if you should have thought harder about it. You grew up in the country, and ran away from home when your coming out went wrong. You took a bad batch of psychedelics and got horribly sick when you were 21, and you broke into a nearby basement window to have somewhere to recover. That was the little office that Kinkster works out of. The owner gave you somewhere to stay, and you recovered in a few days. Since then, you’ve been working out of that basement. Sleeping, eating, living there. And when you leave your shelter, you try to be as inconspicuous as possible. When people look at you it makes you scared. When they talk about you, it makes you feel sick.”

Mary backs up against the corner of the room. “Y-you said you only got the jist-”

She frowns. “I can pull more info if I need to. Point is, I know why you’re panicking. I know why you think you don’t want this. But I know that you’re wrong. There has never been a person in the entire history of this city that has regretted their transition once it’s over.”

Mary holds her knees close. “But I don’t want to look like this.”

“Yes, you do. Deep down, you do. That feeling is not your own hatred. It’s the hatred you’re expecting to get from everyone else. Girl, this is Sunbright. Do you really think people are going to make fun of someone who’s tall? One of my best friends has tentacles for arms, and she’s not even the weirdest person in the room half the time.”

Mary laughs, slightly.

“Why are you-”

“Because everyone has been through it! I want to help you because someone else helped me through mine, and I wouldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for them.”

Mary blinks. She looks down- at her covered body, and the ground beneath it. She doesn’t like this. She still really, definitively, does not like this. But… maybe she can live with it, for now.

“I-I’m sorry to intrude, you probably have more important things to do than take care of me.”

Holly raises an eyebrow. “I was rummaging through a dumpster when you met me, dumbass.”

They both laughed. A calm, slightly nervous laugh. Holly looks back to Mary and offers her hand.

“So, ready to try and walk?”

Mary takes a deep breath, and looks at Holly. “I mean, I’ll have to take off the blanket…”

Holly grins. A sly sort of grin, one with some mischief- but still just as genuine. “I mean, it wouldn’t bother me. If you want me to leave, I can.”

Mary blushes slightly. It confuses her, for a moment, that Holly would enjoy seeing her. In this state, she doesn’t feel like she’s particularly… attractive. But she puts those thoughts aside. Holly is probably just being nice. Slowly, she begins to stand up, leaving the blanket behind her on the floor.

She uses the shelves for stability, as she pulls herself up. And up. And up. Finally she gets her legs underneath her- shaky and uncertain they may be- and lets go of the shelves. She has to keep her head down slightly to keep from banging into the ceiling of the apartment, and she’s generally huge- she knows in that moment that her old clothes would not fit her. She’d have to get new ones. She’s missing the bit of weight around her midsection that she used to have, and some of the muscle mass on her arms. Her thighs and hips, though, for whatever reason, are just as large- if not bigger than they were. Even her chest has flattened out, slightly.

Holly looks up with… a strange expression. She still has a bit of that sly grin, but it’s mixed with a look of subtle awe. Mary looks down at her, a bit confused- and feeling very exposed.

“W-well. I can’t read your thoughts. Wh-what do you think?”

Holly pulls herself up from the ground, nodding her head as if considering. “Well, if it’s not too forward of me, I’d say you’re fucking stunning.”

Mary mostly shuts out the compliment. She doesn’t have the mental energy to unpack the idea that someone else finds this body attractive, at the moment. But it does make her feel a bit less uncomfortable. “Th-thanks.”

“You’re probably not done changing, but it’ll almost certainly be a couple hours- or even a couple days, before it continues. It won’t be as intense as the first burst, but it’ll still be intense. You’ll want to be somewhere safe when it happens.”

Mary nods. “C-could I come back here?”

Holly’s face lights up. She did a good job! She did a good enough job that the human feels safe here. And she’ll be able to see her again. See her body again, too. N-not to say that’s her only motivation! But… it definitely helps.

“Yea, of course! Hold on, I went through my stuff earlier to find it…” She scampers off- truly scampers, running with all four limbs- and grabs a pendant out of a pile of assorted items. “This is my old transition predictor. It’s simple magic, designed to track your hormones and predict when you’re about to change.” The pendant is golden, with a blue gemstone set into its center. When Mary grabs it, it turns a slight shade of purple. “When it turns fully red, you have about a half hour before it starts. Generally about a full hour before you pass out.”

Mary nods. “S-so that’s something that happens to everyone, then.”

Holly smiles. “Yep. Changing your body so significantly- and permanently- is taxing. Your body needs to shut down for a while to handle it.”

Mary subtly nods, and looks away slightly. “And uh- the other-”

Holly cuts her off. “Yea, the arousal is normal. It lasts the whole process, generally. Folks tend to call it a ‘heat’. It’ll get more intense as time goes on.”

Mary blinks. “Y-you mean it’s going to be like that… until I finish changing?”

Holly nods. “Hey, cross your fingers you don’t end up as one of the folks with yearly heats. That friend I mentioned, she gets one in the winter every year. She stays over here most of that time~” She winks. Mary blushes.

She’s about to say something, but her pendant begins to feel hot. Almost painful. Holly whistles, looking at it- and Mary looks down as well, to see it already turning red again. “Oh wow, that’s quick. Probably a second wave of the same changes. You’ll probably want to lay down, it’ll be coming fast.”

Mary already feels her heartbeat quickening, sweat beading on her skin. “H-hey, this is an odd thing to say. I know it is. But…” She struggles to get the words out. “L-look, just…” She swears under her breath, and grabs the raccoon’s hand, putting it onto her wrist.

Holly blinks. “Ah.” She grins. “Ahah. I hear you.” Her grin turns mischievous once again, leading Mary back to the bed. What she couldn’t communicate, of course, was consent. Consent to do a lot of things. And a plea to help… relieve some of her stress. Most forefront in her mind was consent to do any and all of those things… while she’s passed out.

Despite being so much smaller than her, Holly leads her to bed, and helps her down into it as her vision begins to haze. “I-I think I’m about to g-go…” Her eyes unfocus, and Holly holds her hand for a moment.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of you.”

As with everything the raccoon does, it’s both a genuine reassurance and a mischievous threat.

And it’s also the last thing that Mary hears before everything goes black.