Snow Leopard
You slipped out of your clothes, into the fur of a fluffy, toothily grinning snow-leopard, and the very moment that the head of the suit had slipped down over your own...
You woke up.
You had been so eager, so desperate to put on the costume, but when you were all wrapped up in its warm synthetic fur, breathing heavily into the head surrounding yours, that began to fade. You found yourself wondering why? Why had you been so eager, so overwhelmingly delighted by the idea of putting on this snow-leopard? Indeed you felt your cheeks beginning to burn. Embarrassed. Frustrated a little by how childish you seemed to have gotten so carried away.
You had a job to do, and this was most definitely not a part of it.
So, you tried to take the head off.
Tried being the operative word.
You felt for the seam, the obvious gap on the fabric between the base of its neck and the top of the bodysuit. You dug your big, padded, fur-enclosed fingers into the fabric, but couldn't find the point where the two items of this costume's main form were connected. It was then your heart rate began to quicken. To race. You tried to flick off the gloves, the paws making it so impossible for you to feel that seam which was obviously still there, how could it not be, after all. But even now, those gloves seemed tighter than you remembered. They didn't slide off with the ease you'd put them on, indeed the more you tried, the more it felt like a futile effort. Like trying to throw aside not a costume or a piece of clothing, but a part of yourself.
It was then that panic truly began to overtake you, as you grasped one hand in the other and pulled, only to draw back your hands with a cry as you realised that you could feel yourself tugging upon the fur. Fur that seemed to be affixed to your own skin. Looking down at the paws before you, they weren't quite as bulky or cartoonishly large as they had been before. They looked more natural now. More real. Only, still belonging to a bipedal, anthropomorphised snow-leopard rather than the human you had been.
No.
No.
Not had been. The human you were. The human you were, dammit!
Your head began to spin as you tried to pull off the costume. To tear it from your body, uncaring now if you damaged any part of it. You grabbed your ears as you felt them begin to twitch. Your tail as it began to flick urgently, nervously from side to side. You clutched at your own muzzle and snarled in pain as you tried to pull your head up and off, fur bristling as your hands instinctively drew back, not wishing to damage the sensitive whiskers protruding from your growling muzzle.
By the time you collapsed to your knees, hyperventilating through a mouth that was not yours mere minutes before, you knew you had to be dreaming. You pinched yourself with clawed fingertips, mewling in frustration and pain but still not waking.
Darkness.
You fell down to all fours, passing out for a moment but lurching back to consciousness just long enough to see trembling grey furred hands resting on the floor beneath your gaze, clenched into tight fists of fear, confusion, dismay.
That was exactly how you felt in that moment, and that was the first time you admitted to yourself what was happening. The first time you allowed yourself to believe.
There was a good reason why those hands looked and felt like they were experiencing the same emotions as you.
Because they were your hands, and this body in which you were trapped and panicking, it wasn't some costume. It wasn't some trick.
This body, this snow-leopard, was you.
Written by Jeeves on 01 September 2017
