Something More Nocturnal
It's a good thing you're hanging by your hind paws, because your front ones are the first things to go. You nearly fall off the tree as your front claws shoot off away from you. You still can't see very well, but you can just make out what used to be your fingers as they stretch out into long, thin digits, little more than tendon and bone. Webs of skin stretch between them. The fur on your tail shrinks away, leaving you looking surprisingly ratlike until the tail itself starts shrinking. your head does the same thing. In fact, all of you seems to be shrinking except your front paws - whatever they are now - and your ears. Those seem to be getting larger. Your teeth shift from rodent incisors to a mouthful of tiny fangs. More webs of skin pull themselves out from the sides of your shrinking body, stretching between your front and back legs and joining them to your tail.
The changes stop a few seconds later. You cling tightly to the tree, a tiny, furry body between two huge, leathery wings and an enormous pair of ears.
"Huge" and "enormous" are relative terms, of course. You're barely two inches long from nose to tail - a rather small bat. Surprised, you let out a high-pitched squeak, and the echoes tell you the position of every tree around you. Those ears are for more than just looks; you're hearing in 3-D. Suddenly, the night doesn't seem so dark.
This is an improvement, you think - until you realize that, so far, each change has made you smaller. This may not be a good thing.
Written by Chrysalis on 11 May 2009
The end (for now)