Skunk too
Jared frowned. Jazz? Who the heck is Jazz? “That you, Maria?” Jared called from the kitchen.
“Yeah, it’s me. Why do you sound so weird?”
“Um… It’s complicated.” He heard her footsteps approaching the kitchen. “Wait! No! Don’t come in here!”
She stopped abruptly. “Jazz? Are you OK?”
“No. Well, yeah, kinda. Why do you keep calling me that?”
“I… always call you that.” There was a long pause. “What’s going on? Where are you? Where’s Jasmine?”
Jasmine!?!? “Jasmine? Who-? What are you talking about?”
He heard her take a step back. “Jazz, if that’s you, you’re scaring me. Come on out. Let me see you.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Jared took a deep breath. He stopped trying to sound like a man. “I might scare you even more when I come out.”
“OK. Are you hurt?” She didn’t seem concerned by Jared’s feminine voice.
“No, but what happened is… pretty shocking.”
“It’s OK. You can show me.”
“Whoo… OK.” God, this is gonna suck. “You sure you’re ready?”
“Just show me.” She was getting impatient.
“OK. Here I come.” With another pair of deep breaths, he stepped out into the doorway.
The reaction was instantaneous, one that involved a startled jump and a high-pitched scream. It was not Maria’s. The black and white fur across Jared’s body went into a great kerfuffle. He jumped so high the soles of his feet went almost a foot into the air. His heart seized in his chest and plummeted into a pool of ice water at the basement of his gut.
Maria was a skunkette too.
She was still Maria, of course. There was her usual outfit of jeans and a t-shirt. The purse she usually carried was slung over her shoulder and her sunglasses were perched on her brow. Her hair was even in the same long style that bobbed around her shoulders. That’s where the similarities to the Maria Jared knew ended. She was, like Jared, wholly and unmistakably a skunk, from the big bushy tail that sprouted behind her to the half-moon ears that sprouted from her hair.
She jumped when Jared did, but not because he was a skunk. “What? What?” she demanded.
Jared quaked where he stood, clinging to the towel vaporously. “Y-… y-… y-… You’re…” His quivering jaw could not get the words out.
“What? What is it?” Maria looked down at herself. Jared expected a sudden and violent realization that she was a skunk too. Nothing of the sort happened. “Is something on me?” Seeing nothing, she ran over to her brother/sister. “Are you OK? What’s under the towel?” She reached for Jared’s paw.
He turned away. “No!” Maria leapt back, startled. “I mean… Sorry… Sorry… I… Oh my God.” His eyes went up and down her mephitine form over and over. Most surreal was her face which besides its black fur and animal snout looked exactly like it had when she was a human. “You’re a… skunk.”
Maria frowned hard, then cracked a confused smile. “Yeah, no shit. So are you.” She tilted her head. “Is everything OK? I mean, obviously not, but did you hit your head or something?”
He wished it was that easy to explain. “No… I didn’t. I just…” He looked down at himself. The towel swelled around his recently acquired bosom. “I put a suit on… And it did something to me.” And to you, he almost added.
“Oh. Can I see it? Is it underneath the towel?”
Does she really not see any difference? Have I been a woman to her this whole time??? “Um… Yeah. Kinda.”
“Oh. Let me see.”
Jared blanched. “Um… I don’t know.” Showing his naked body to his sister wasn’t something he was comfortable with.
“It’s OK. We used to take baths when we were little babies, remember?”
“Uh… Well, yeah, but…” Then Jared realized. If she remembered her as a woman this entire time, they probably had grown up as sister and sister rather than brother and sister. Sharing bodily secrets must have been much less taboo. “Alright.” He opened his towel to reveal his trunk. He anticipated a severe reaction out of her, but got nothing but a confused frown.
“You look fine! Is something hurting?”
“Uhh…” Now that he thought about it, he felt kind of comfortable having a furry tummy and chest. “No.”
“Oh. Then why the hell’d you call me over?”
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 26 January 2023
