Onto all fours
You take a step forward, your legs quaking. You hear the joints in your hips pop and you fall forward on all fours. Before you can right yourself, your legs bend inward, your thighs growing thicker and shorter while you lift the heels of your feet, locking them into a digitigrade stance. You try once again to stand up, lifting up on your back legs but you can only manage to flail your forepaws in front of you before falling back down. Walking upright has become impossible.
But whatever force is at play, it is not done with you yet. You feel a throbbing between your back legs around your manhood. You clinch your eyes shut, panting heavily as it shrinks inward. When the sensation passes, you roll yourself on your side and peer down between your legs to see that whatever you are becoming, it is not a male of the species. Your back aches once more, this time a pulling sensation right above your haunches. You lift your backside up in the air like a puppy and let out a low, breathy growl as a thin, tapering tail with a tuft of soft chocolate brown fur on the tip sprouts out of your body like a plant in spring. You look back at it and twitch and swish it back and forth and you can’t help but smile. In an act of kitten-like curiousity, you paw at your tail, then turna and pounce on it, rolling on your back with it pressed between your paws, the tuft tickling your face. As the soft brown furs tickle you, your face itself starts to grow softer. Your cheeks grow round and supple, the skin turning a deep, sun-kissed tan.
Then it dawns on you that you were doing something... The ankh!
Your leap to your feet, surprised at how graceful your new body is. You pace around where you dropped the relic, your paws silent on the carpet. Something isn’t right, you know it isn’t right. No matter how much you search the same stretch of hallway, the ankh does not turn up. Every time you try to recall its exact location, your mind starts to fog up. Names and memories and places melted into distant blurs like the mirage on the edge of a desert.
Written by feder on 29 March 2017