Raindeer
Stripping your clothes off article by article, you reveal hairy legs, pale with the threat of winter, and wriggle your toes. Your nails need cutting, but your socks have to come off anyway to get the strange hooves of the costume on. You grumble, although there is nothing good-natured about it, and push your foot into a brown sock tipped with a felt cloven hoof. It looks cheap and you sigh, screwing up your face, but it’s the best you’ve got.
He really wants to see you as a reindeer.
You squirm into the leggings, brown fabric clinging to your legs. If you were a deer, there would be splodges of white marking your inner legs and backside – for certain species’, right? – but there is only clean, cheap faux fur and you can only be relieved that it, at least, appears to have been well laundered.
Surprisingly, for a one-piece costume, it is easy enough to pull up your body, fabric stretching over very light, hardly toned at all muscle. Your arms push into the sleeves to find the gloves at the end and, leaving the hood for the moment, you twist to yank up the zip on the back. You grunt and puff, struggling to clasp the tricky flap of fabric, but it slides up to the back of your neck and you flip the hood up from the side, securing it with the last bit of the zip, all snug around your neck. A pair of antlers bobble atop your head and you fasten the elastic red nose around your face too, letting it sit on top of your rather hook shaped one.
Your heart twists. He always made fun of your nose. He doesn’t even realise he has the exact same one as you. But he won’t be making fun of you all that much longer.
Oh, what is the point? Nothing will make him smile again.
Your head swims and you teeter on one foot, the hoof digging uselessly into the threadbare carpet as you groan. But you are not dizzy and not even the crippling wave of darkness can save you from the tingling warmth spreading through your skin, all the way up from your hooves. It’s as if your hooves are sinking into the ground, but somehow, everything is feeling much more solid and real in the suit and your toes stiffen as if they have suddenly been frozen inside your costume.
Drawing in a sharp breath, you steady yourself on the wall. Why are your feet tingling? This can’t be right. But why? What is wrong? Glancing in the mirror, all seems to be well, even if the costume appears to be fitting a little more snugly and more revealingly than you expected. Rather, everything is highlighted in sharp definition, even your little muscle tone, as the suit seems to press in even closer to your skin still.
Strange...
You try to think, but your head is slow and sluggish, thoughts of your brother, the last of your family, slipping from your mind. What is happening? Maybe you should take the costume off? Yes, that is a good idea. Reaching behind you, you grab for the zip, but it’s not there anymore and you suck in a breath, staring in the mirror wide-eyed as a faint coat of brown fur spreads across your face.
No!
You claw at your face, groaning and giving out a strangled yell, but it’s as if there is a hand closing around your throat, allowing only the barest shreds of breath through while speech is cut off. As you watch, horrified and yet unable to do anything to stop the terrible progression without a name, your face bulges out grotesquely, eyes repositioning themselves more to the sides of your head. They darken, shifting from blue to a dark, dark brown that is very nearly black, and flick up a moment later to where the antlers are becoming more solid. Your skull itches as they seat themselves into the bone, growing larger and taller and yet nothing like what a real reindeer should boast in the height of the rut.
They are impressive, however, and you can’t help but take a step back, inadvertently, to admire them, pushing up as if onto your toes with the new hooves. Your nostrils stretch into a new shape as your nose becomes soft and moist and you whimper, pawing at them as your hands become tipped with hoof-like protrusions on the end – something that is neither a fingernail nor a hoof. You rub and pinch your forearm, but the suit is no longer such and has well and truly become your skin, fused irreversibly to bone, sinew and muscle as if he had always had a coat of fur.
And it isn’t the cheaply furred costume either. As you glare and try to squash your new muzzle back in to your face, ears twitching badly with those muscles also connecting themselves, it thickens all over, fluffing up into a hide that any reindeer, you’re sure, would be proud to wear. It darkens, the strands of hair taking on different shades through brown and grey with a warmer layer beneath the top coat to protect against the elements. Luxuriously thick, you can’t help but run your fingers through it over and over again, a low moan breaking your lips with a breathy sigh that simply does not seem masculine.
And...it’s not. Oh, no it’s not. Your chest tingles and, even as you stare into the mirror, stepping back all the way until your shoulders brush the curtain, something changes in the muscle there. What can only be described as female breasts round out from the flesh on top of the muscle, clearly answering the question as to why your antlers are not quite as large as those of a male and yet altogether still impressive. Nipples form themselves beneath the thick coat of fur and you gasp softly, pressing the back of your arm across them as if to protect your dignity.
But it is far, far too late for such a modest act when who you are has been stripped from you in its entirety. There is no longer any sense of maleness around your crotch either and you gasp, covering up yourself as your genitalia becomes something inherently feminine, something that you previously admired and yet never craved for yourself.
Well, how times change, don’t they?
Blinking and gawping at your reflection in the mirror, you turn a full circle, shuddering as your tail bursts to life, wriggling and twitching as if it has suddenly been possessed with a mind of its own. But it is a part of you, as is every other one of the changes forced on you and you may yet know the higher power that has transformed you into one of his own, just for his park and show and all in the manner, of course, of his entertainment.
Now you are just a pawn, like everyone else who crossed his path, falling into his hands, one by one.
But the door! You can still leave! You’re not trapped here, after all – not really!
Wheeling about with a sharp puff of air from your wide nostrils, you go for the curtain and...find nothing. It isn’t there anymore and there is only a door residing where the mirror used to be. You were just staring at it, aghast and yet appreciative of your new body, but, like the magic that has transformed you, it no longer exists. Your paw is on the wooden doorknob before your mind catches up with what your body is doing and, with a low grunt, you open the door.
Cold air washes over your muzzle and you catch your breath, stepping onto something pristinely white that crunches beneath your hooves. With your thick coat, however, you are not chilled by the atmosphere and tip your muzzle up defiantly, willing to challenge what you can while the rest of your life has been turned completely and utterly upside down.
“Welcome to your new life, little one.”
The voice purrs, its rolling, soothing quality trembling over you like a hand brushing down the length of a cat’s warm fur coat. You shiver instinctively and step forward, light on your hooves as your new tail twitches, the shape of your female form somehow comfortable and yet still terrifying at the same time.
A world stretches out before you of ice and snow, yet it welcomes you in with the glow of a cabin out in the distance. And, somehow, you know that that is where you are meant to be. This is the life you are meant to lead and there is only one path left for your hooves to follow.
And so, transformed from male to female, you take a deep breath and trust the road that has been laid out before you.
Life as a reindeer is bound to be different.
Written by Amethyst Mare on 07 April 2018
The end (for now)