Women
“So if I answer your riddle,” she huffed, “you’ll leave and take your sinful lifestyle with you? Fine. It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s ‘woman.’”
You blink, surprised at both the speed and the accuracy of her answer. Seems like you’ve received two out of three of the answers that you need. You’re about to pronounce a blessing or something on the successful woman when you begin to feel the tingles moving through your fur again. What now? Are you supposed to shrink down to the size of a bunny rabbit now?
But instead of the familiar shrinking sensation, you instead start to feel a much more welcome development: your hips are popping and shifting, pulling your torso up with them. You can feel your front legs pulling back a bit and becoming thinner, the paws stretching out into longer nubs, more like fingers. The heels of your feel sag back down to the grass as your weight rests on them, supported on two legs once more. Your wings are diminishing as well, turning into a much more compact set settled behind your back.
You wait with bated breath for more changes to come, perhaps the pulling back of the tan fur, or maybe even the restoration of your true sex! But the tingles vanish as quickly as they came. You still look about the same, and you’re still a sphinx…simply one shaped more like a woman than like a lion.
The old lady turns red in the face. “And now you look even more like a heathen, baring those breasts for the entire forest to see. Out, out with you, devil!”
Feeling ashamed for some reason you can’t quite pin down, you let your wings unfurl behind you and pull you back into the skies. You suppose you can grant your leaving as her boon for getting the riddle right…although it’s sort of a lame prize. She did have one thing right…now that you’ve regained at least a partial human shape, it feels even more embarrassing and scandalous to be as naked as you are! Maybe you can find a shirt or something somewhere…or maybe you just need to get this third riddle answered quickly so that you can get out of this mess once and for all!
Written by Kinky Chameleon on 27 June 2018