Change your shape.
Becoming the Sphinx is harder than your body recalls it- the muscle remembering, the mind hesitating, and both of you fearing to take up again a shape that was lost. But the change is a song- a high octave of release- as it shudders through you.
Your spine shivers as if brushed without warning, and you feel the soft dimpling of your internal tissues as the tines of your rib cage splay and round out, shaping the deep bellows chest of the lioness. Falling to the floor now, letting come what will, you know the moment when your arms-forelegs buckle in to your flanks and snap-recurve, shoulder blades driving hard through red meat and skin to crest above your ribs. Your hind legs contract, skirting your belly, thickening with sprouting fibrous muscle. The tail of yours- that boneless thing- stiffens, the sane muscle rolling the caudal vertebrae in a tight whipcord cosh, tufting a little with black hairs at the tip- the point to an exclamation of you, you, you. Prairie-yellow hair slides rough from all you pores.
Above the thin flute of your breastbone, your eyes stretch to dark cat’s almonds in your human woman’s face. You, goddess of the sands: the Sphinx. The symbol of the betrayed king’s nation. His herald. His glory.
You have changed.
What now?
Written by ouroboros666 on 27 July 2016
The end (for now)