NothingSpecial: gender-bending transformation stories, comics, and occasional poetry =^_^=
I felt like a coiled spring when I awoke the next morning; there was a tension – not nervous, but restless – charging my entire frame. Truthfully, I wanted to laze around in bed, or better yet, go back to sleep – I'd sure as hell earned my unscheduled time off – but I simply couldn't do it; there was a part of me that needed to get up, move around, go out. I hadn't really been out in…what, two weeks? Even for an introvert that was forever…
I battled with myself for a bit, but I couldn't shake the feeling from my limbs; there was potential energy there that wanted – needed – to become kinetic. Even fresh out of bed I was bouncing antsily on the balls of my feet, springing lightly from step to step as I went to the kitchen and put the coffee on; it was almost enough to make me abandon my morning routine and stalk straight outside to prowl. My tail lashed and my ears flicked to and fro, tracking the subtle reflections of quiet Friday-morning apartment sounds off the walls around me and feeding my brain an aural map of the place in a way I'd never truly experienced before.
It was only when I got to the bathroom and looked in the mirror that I processed that last bit; sure enough, my ears stood proudly atop my head, fully-grown and independently mobile. The fur was all grown in as well, the coloration unchanged from yesterday: a uniform soft gray on the outside, and tufts of white fuzz within. For a minute or so I just watched as they explored this new sonic space, gently modulating the drone of the fan as they turned this way and that.
I glanced back at my tail; yep, a dense but short-haired coat in plain old gray, with a white tuft at the tip. It was nearly as long as my legs now, and carried itself with more assurance, curving up away from the floor and stirring restlessly. Geez, I thought, was there any part of me that wasn't all twitchy this morning…?
The curves of my legs and butt were more pronounced, I noted – still fairly modest, but hard to stop noticing considering I'd never had them before. I'd continued to fill out in the bust, too; enough now for the pajama shirt to drape revealingly over my breasts even without the hem tucked in. They were less sore than yesterday, at least, but still tender.
The weight was definitely noticeable, but I felt less off-kilter overall; my brain did seem to treat the tail as a counterweight, and my limbs had settled into their final proportions. I remembered feeling off, back at the start of the week – like my body was a suit that didn't fit quite right, I'd thought – and that feeling was gone, now; this damned virus must've re-wired my mental map early on, and now the rest of me was put together to match it…
It was a basal relief to be rid of that – I hadn't realized how much I had felt it 'til it was gone, like when you finally locate and kill some appliance with a whining power supply and are left in blessed silence – but it got me feeling all weird to think about it. I hadn't asked for any renovations, dammit, and it was a dirty trick to alter the blueprints on file before I'd even noticed, to deny me the opportunity to feel viscerally wrong about it. Okay, maybe it'd be stupid to want that, but still!
Then I glanced back up, and had a whole new thing to feel all weird about. The face in the mirror was clearly a woman's; not strikingly beautiful, but fully within the usual parameters for an adult female Homo sapiens…or whatever weird subspecies or sister taxon we'd° end up classified as.
° (God, I thought, that was a "we" there…)
It was strange, but not alien; me, yet not-me. I ran over the clichés in my mind: "what I'd look like as a girl?" Well, arguably, but it wasn't like I had access to some alternate universe where I'd been born this way to compare against. "A younger version of my mother?" The influence of heredity was clear, but…no, not quite. "The sister I never had…?"
…Oh hell, I thought, I did look like a brunette Caitlin. Not exactly – my chin was a bit sharper and the cheekbones more pronounced, the face overall a bit less round – but put us next to each other and there'd be no missing it: I was obviously my little sister's older sister.
But not, I noted with a sigh, her big sister; I didn't have a measuring tape to hand, but by all the familiar reference points of my bathroom mirror, I'd probably lost a whole head in height over the course of the week. I tried not to get self-conscious – I'd had enough of that in grade school, when she hit that pre-adolescent growth spurt that girls tend to° – but I knew damn well where it'd put us, relative to each other…
° (Between that and puberty taking its sweet time with me, she was the taller one for several years, which was horrendously awkward for both of us. She felt like a gawky giantess, I felt like a shrimp; and my peers definitely noticed. I might've developed a complex over it, if I'd ever related to them in the first place.)
And yet I wasn't some petite little waif; if I had to guess, I was still comfortably north of five feet,° my hips definitely hadn't shrunk, my limbs and digits were slenderer but not exactly delicate, and if my shoulders were narrower, it wasn't by a whole lot. But then I wasn't full-figured enough to qualify for "shortstack" status, either; I was just kinda…short.
° (Not counting the ears.)
It was a weird thing to be irked at, but for some reason I found myself feeling that way. It wasn't like I wanted to be a dainty little flower or a statuesque goddess or any of the other things my brain wouldn't stop imagining me getting stuck as, but this? How in the hell did it make any sense for me to go through something so completely out of the ordinary and come out so…ordinary?
Hell, it was even weird trying to apply that descriptor to myself. A lot of people say "plain" of a woman when they really (fairly or not) mean "gawky and kinda ugly," but this wasn't that. Looking at the face in the mirror, there wasn't anything unpleasant about it, æsthetically; it just…didn't stand out, despite the cat-ears. But then, I didn't want to stand out – so why did that annoy me?
I sighed, shook my head, and returned to staring at my new reflection. I drew up one corner of my mouth, watching the way my cheek bunched up under my eye, revealing my fangy canine° teeth, then relaxed it; stuck out my lower lip, and drew it back in. I cocked an eyebrow, blinked, frowned, scrunched my nose and peered into the glass.
° (Was that…what, a cat-pun-by-association? Damn it.)
It was deeply strange, looking into the mirror and seeing another face: a different flavor of strangeness from the last couple days, when it was still a work-in-progress. This…was probably it, or near enough, and my brain seemed to realize that; I recognized this face, even though it wasn't the one I'd grown up with. Watching it respond to my commands…
It was too familiar to feel creepy, but the thought that this was the "new me" got me a unique kind of miffed, like if you came home one day to find that someone had rearranged your living room, and they assured you that it was really okay because they'd carefully studied your habits to make sure you'd adapt to it; even if they were right… Just who the hell do you think you are!? I thought, incensed. That's my face – who said you could have it!?
But that got me nowhere; I knew perfectly well that it wasn't some other-self there, someone I could be justifiably mad at. I closed my eyes and thought back, recalling the face that'd looked back at me just a couple weeks ago; I still could remember him, and that was a comfort, but it was no use – he wasn't me anymore. Instead, the job had fallen to the creature in the mirror. It was like I'd been brought in as an understudy for myself.
I stood there feeling all weird and restless, the experience just uncanny enough to set me a little on edge. My tail gave an agitated lash, and I realized my ears had angled back as I'd gotten all worked up. Was it all over now? Was this who I'd be from…from now on?
Or…was this really it? What if there was some last surprise in store, just when I'd vaguely started coming to terms with the notion? I hadn't read as much on the process for more extreme changes, but I hadn't heard of any last-minute left-field stuff…but did that mean it couldn't happen? What if I ended up too far gone to ever live a normal life? But…would this ever feel "normal" to me?
Did…did I want it to…?
With a groan, I set that question aside, and tried to focus on my morning routine instead.
Showering was still…novel, particularly as things had developed up top; there was a defined "underboob" area yesterday, but there was more of it now, and the "valley" between the breasts was more distinct. At least I didn't have to handle them quite so gingerly, I thought…but then I accidentally flicked a nipple, and I twinged at the one-two punch of ow-shit! tenderness and a whole other kind of sensitivity that I really was not ready to deal with yet.
My fur somehow got even more soaked than yesterday, to boot; I had to wrap my tail in the towel and wring it out two handspans at a time, while the dumb thing twitched and thrashed with my own annoyance. By the end it was still damp, and the fur was all mussed, which drove me crazy. I spent another couple minutes straightening it, and had to suppress the urge to just curl into a ball and groom it out with my tongue, which was a mortifying thought. That was it – I had to get a blowdryer.
It was a passing thought, but it slotted neatly in with my urge to go out. I was used to buying stuff online, but it'd take days; if I just went and got one I could have it ready tomorrow morning and – hopefully – stave off any further awkward grooming instincts. Besides, I kinda wanted a beer, and for all Nicole's thoughtfulness, she'd neglected that part of restocking the fridge. I felt more than a little nervous at the thought of being out in public like this, but I'd have to get past that hurdle, sooner or later…
I dried my hair and tidied it up as best as I could – a hairbrush, I could get one of those while I was at it – and dressed in the clothes I'd borrowed from Nicole, still feeling a little weird at how fluttery they were; I tucked the hem of the blouse into the waistband of the skirt, which helped somewhat, but emphasized my waist and hips more than I'd anticipated. Gah, just figuring out how to dress like this would be a whole separate challenge, wouldn't it?
This was the point where I'd don my glasses, normally…but a glance down at them, resting on the sink counter with earpieces out, called attention to an obvious issue. I knew this was one of many little "furgonomics" problems° faced by catgirls trying to fit into a world designed by and for humans, but I hadn't given much thought to it applying to me at some point.
° (As the Internet had insistently dubbed the topic.)
I could've gone without – my good eye was enough for reading at short distances, and I didn't have depth perception worth a damn in any case – but a glance in the mirror made me reconsider. I'd worn glasses since I was ten; I'd long since gotten past feeling embarrassed by it, and by now it almost felt wrong not to have them, like they were a part of me.° If I did have to face the world as…this, I was damn well gonna hold onto one stylistic choice I kinda-sorta cared about.
° (That was one reason why I'd never gotten contacts. Total inability to stick a finger in my eye without flinching and shying away was the other.)
Luckily, I found an elastic band in the drawer under the sink, dating from the period when optometrists insistently gave them to you every time you got a new pair.° I had to cinch it as tight as it'd go and rest the earpieces atop the ridges of my temples just so for them to stay in place, but it did work, sort of. I'd have to look into…what, pince-nez? at some point, but that'd do for now.
° (Presumably on the theory that it'd encourage you toward a more active lifestyle…? I never did figure that one out.)
I looked back into the mirror and, oddly enough, felt better about what I saw. This was still all weird and confusing, but the surly, bespectacled brunette mutant freak reflected there felt a whole lot more like me than any of the fevered speculations my brain had been conjuring unprompted the last few days, at least. As long as I could just function, I thought, rounding the corner out of the bathroom and—
Wait. My ears perked; my eyes darted to the corner of my vision. I'd caught motion; something was there.
I could sense it – a presence, hovering just out of view behind my shoulder. Already restless, my muscles tensed and my focus sharpened. Not too sudden – move too hastily and I'd give myself away – but if I could just…
Ha! I whirled 'round to catch it – but it was gone. The crafty little bastard; I could feel it behind me, still. I'd been too slow – but I wouldn't make that mistake again. I twisted around once more—
Damn it! I could just see it out of the corner of my eye before it disappeared. Nothing for it, then; if I wasn't quick enough this way, I could use all of my limbs instead. I crouched on all fours, muscles tensing, absolutely intent on apprehending this menace.
I sprang, throwing my front half to the side and contorting my whole frame to lunge back towards it – but it was already engaging in evasive maneuvers of its own. Round and 'round we went, bounding in as tight a circle as I could manage; with every turn, I was more fiercely determined to catch and kill!
…
Realization came on all at once, like a flying brick wall. I lurched to a halt mid-bound, planting my palms in the carpet so hard that I almost somersaulted before dropping back to my haunches. That was…I'd been…
That…that did not happen. Nobody could prove it had, they weren't there. They weren't there to see nothing happen, because nothing had happened. Picking myself up off the floor after a couple minutes of vigorous nothing, I licked the back of my hand, straightened my hair, adjusted my glasses, and went to my nightstand for my wallet and keys.
Getting out the door presented its own challenges; for starters, I had no pockets for my wallet or phone. I made do with a spare grocery bag, but I felt like a tool; I'd have to suck it up and get a purse satchel 'til pants were an option again. (Maybe not even then, if my sister's gripes about women's jeans were to be believed.) I'd need new shoes, too, but my flip-flops would work for now; cripes, this was turning from a quick errand into an expedition, and I hadn't even left the house yet.
Then came the door itself. I stood there for a minute, trying to steel myself; it'd been one thing trekking to and from Nicole's, but now I was going out – out of my territory and into the rest of the world, where other people were,° to face society for the first time as something different, on a couple of levels…
° (HIC SVNT HOMINES)
I could do this, I told myself; there was no reason I should have to care what The Masses made of me, no reason it should bother me if they found me weird or unsettling. I chose to remove myself from these considerations, purely of my own accord. I could go out like this and run my errands, and it wouldn't be awkward or embarrassing; and I could come home, have a beer, and relax like a basically together adult-type person…
And then I took a deep breath, opened the door, stepped outside, and shut it on my tail.
Not hard, thankfully; I've never been in the habit of slamming doors. But I let out a loud, startled, and very feline yowl all the same, and my muscles reflexively clenched in response to the pain – drawing in my arm, which was still clutching the handle, and pinching it tighter still. By the time I'd extracted myself, my poor tail required a whole minute of gentle rubbing to feel anything like better.
This has become a rite of passage for transformees. The basic problem is that, while your brain already has a map of your new body, all the familiar actions you've compiled in muscle memory over the years don't just magically adapt – you know where your tail is, but then you execute the door-exit routine in your mental library and only learn that it's out-of-spec the hard way. It's a mistake pretty much everyone makes once, but very few people make twice, at least in the same way…
…So of course I went to get in the car, and immediately clotheslined my ears on the top of the doorframe.
It was much less painful, but plenty annoying; getting situated was pretty weird, as well. There wasn't room to thread my tail between the seat-back and the base; maybe later I could pry the cushions apart to make a gap, but for now I had to let it pass between my legs, which felt weird on principle and had the fur brushing against my inner thighs as I worked the pedals. The tip kept poking around curiously under the dash, to boot.
I also had the nagging feeling that my ears were just shy of brushing the headliner; at my new height they probably weren't, but it felt like it. And it turns out that, no, there is no way to wear a shoulder-belt across your breasts that isn't awkward and irritating. They were back to being sore, too, after all the jostling around during my bout of nothing; I really would need a bra, I thought with a sigh.
After sitting idle for a fortnight, the Bug coughed blue smoke at ignition, and it kept wanting to stall at stop signs for the first few minutes – but at last, I was off. Curiously, however, I found myself turning the other way onto the main road; rather than heading directly up Hwy. 49 to what passed for "downtown" Sutter Springs, I was going further into the foothills. I wasn't really sure why; I just…felt like roaming, a bit.
The weather was starting to turn, this late into February, and the morning was crisp rather than cold; the skies were clear and the Sun shone bright, with the Sierras coming into view over the treeline at this or that bend. A buzzard wheeled lazily on some distant thermal, but it was too far off to trigger my new instincts; let it land, my brain told me, and we'll worry about it then.
The further I got from town, the more it felt like I was leaving human territory behind. Not entirely; there were still tiny quick-stop markets every few miles, and I passed a little Italian place with patio dining on the right (had I been there? I couldn't remember,) but as exurban sprawl gave way to vineyards and orchards dotting a sea of pines, it stirred something in me that I couldn't quite put a name to.
You could really smell them, up here – most of all in the summer, when the heat slow-roasted the sap like incense, but even now the air was full of it. The pines back east had a clear, fresh Christmas-tree kind of scent; it was muted in my memories, recorded by my old, human sense of smell, but still distinct from the warm, arid scent of California pines, like a campfire waiting to happen. There was something magical about it…
The road forked, and I followed the jog right; I didn't know where I was going, I was just…going. This way went down into the river gorge, and the road began to twist and turn more sharply as it descended; come summer, there'd be cars parked on the side of the road as people went down to fish – fish, I thought – but for the moment, it was deserted.
The Bug's steering fought with me a little on one particularly hairpin turn – there was a gap around the 12:30 position, I'd have to get that looked at – but I recovered with no real trouble; then I was across the river and heading back up. Several roads intersected up ahead, in a tiny island of civilization; turn to the south and you'd head down into one of the local wine regions, keep eastward and you'd pass a little winery with a rusted-out Karmann Ghia out front before the long haul out to Grizzly Falls.
I wasn't going either direction, though; for whatever reason I was doing any of this, I hooked a left and headed north, up towards Pleasant Grove. There was another crossing, upstream from the first, a little ways on; then it was back into the forest. Off on the right I could see cleared space and outbuildings for another vineyard, but no signs beckoned me into anybody's tasting room.
Suddenly, I was back in town, another outpost of the Sprawl springing up out of the trees like a bad mushroom. Normally this didn't bother me – it was nowhere near as noisy or crowded as Rancho Dorado – but after the tranquility of the last half-hour, it was almost shocking. I turned and crept along the main drag like a covert operative in enemy territory, then turned right, heading back into the wilderness with a palpable sense of relief.
There followed a long stretch of road without anything much on it; somewhere off to the north, I knew, was one of the local reservoirs, and I vaguely recalled the Forest Service having a research center in the neighborhood, but as far as I could see it was just me and Nature…
Well, me, Nature, and some lunatic driving a rattletrap Jeep that must've had a bent axle by the way it juddered and bucked as he screamed up out of nowhere to pass me at 70+ MPH, but we got these types, out here. You learned to distinguish between normal crazy and asshole crazy, and I could tell he didn't mean any harm, though I was glad that if anything did happen to him, it'd be at a very safe distance ahead of me.
And then, to my surprise, I found I was driving past the mobile-home park at the far eastern end of town. I hadn't consciously planned to end up back here, any more than I'd planned any of this, but somehow I'd managed it…?
Maybe I shouldn't complain, but I felt a twinge of regret at re-entering human territory; still, I did have stuff to take care of. I switched on the radio as I headed back into town, just a few bars into "Red Barchetta;" secure in the knowledge that nobody could hear me, I sang along. It was still strange to hear my altered voice, but Geddy Lee was no longer just outside my range, at least.
The local Wal-Mart was right out; not so much because I found it gross and distasteful (although it was) as because this was about the smallest town they'd bother to put a Wal-Mart in, and it was perpetually out of stock on everything. I didn't know whether the local supermarkets would have appliances, but it was still a better bet. I parked the Bug outside the Save-Mart and grabbed reflexively for the face-mask I kept in the glove compartment, before it dawned on me that there was no longer any point to it. After taking a moment to steady myself following that realization, I got out and shut the door,° squared my shoulders, and took a deep breath – time to do this.
° (I never bothered locking it; it wasn't a collector's piece, and I didn't keep anything worth stealing inside. The locks were more of a suggestion, anyway.)
It was never as crowded as Safeway, but it was still a Friday, and I felt like every eye in the store was on me as I entered. I knew that was absurd – it wasn't like I cut a more distinctive figure than any other newly-minted catgirl – but nothing makes you self-conscious like switching sexes and becoming a whole other species into the bargain. I was out in public in a skirt and blouse, fully transformed; could anyone tell I'd been a guy? Was being approximately woman-shaped and wearing the right camouflage all it took to escape notice, as a single face in the crowd, or was I giving myself away in ways I didn't even realize? How did they see me, and how did I want to be seen…?
I skirted warily around the edge of the store to the very back and stalked from aisle to aisle, trying to remember what was where. Chips, cereal, salad dressing…I got sidetracked for a long minute at the meat counter, staring at filets of raw fish that I could smell from behind the glass as clearly as I could've picked them up right in front of me before, then caught the pricetags and was startled out of my reverie. There'd definitely been a surge in demand lately…
Ah, there we were – diapers, feminine products, hair care – and yes, they did have a basic, cheap blowdryer in stock. I had no idea if I'd need anything heavier-duty, but it'd do for a start; I grabbed that and a hairbrush and went back to the refrigerated section. But while I was pondering over beer selections, I felt one ear twitch and re-orient to face a presence I sensed at the end of the aisle.
It wasn't as weird as I'dve thought. I think humans experience it, too; it's that odd feeling you get when you just know someone is in the room with you, even though you haven't seen them or noticed any obvious hints (creaking floorboards, etc.) Noticed is the key point; human senses pick up more than the brain consciously realizes, but there's some survival instinct from æons past, down in the monkey-mind, that processes that stuff. And you're just a lot better at it when you've suddenly got independently-mobile acoustic mirrors mounted on your head.
The interloper was a man – I caught his scent before I even saw him – in what looked to be his mid-thirties; clean-cut Young Professional type, not pompadoured and manscaped in the manner of the chronically insecure, but definitely someone who fancied himself a Serious Person despite the fact that he was making a beer run on a Friday morning. He didn't quite jump at the sight of me, but I could see him tense up when I turned to look his way.
We stood there, neither of us quite sure how to react. Was I in his way? I didn't think so; even my tail was behaving itself, for the moment. He wanted something either past me or in my vicinity, I guessed, but it wasn't like I was stopping him. There was no reason I should have to move, even ignoring the part of me that felt like folding my paws and silently daring him to encroach on my territory…
But it was galling when he actually backed up to the opposite shelf and sidled past me, trying (badly) not to look like he was doing it – even moreso than with the JWs the other day. That was just primal fear, whether or not it was justified; whereas this dickweed was obviously in a position to make rational evaluations, and still chose to treat me as less than a person, despite my posing no danger to him…!
My ears flattened out, and I could feel my tail puff up a bit. I tried to temper my irritation, reminding myself that this was maybe not a million light-years removed from some of my own behavior, but…no, I was still pretty miffed at it. Remember me as you pass by/As you are now, so once was I, I thought peevishly, but kept it to myself. Sic transit virtus mundi, pal!
With a sigh, I added a couple four-packs to my basket° and headed for the registers.°° It was better there, in that the people in line didn't treat me like a walking avatar of disease, but it did mean having to remember how doing people stuff went, after two weeks of not even leaving the house except to go to my neighbor's, a month and a half of lockdown, and a lifetime of never exactly getting it in the first place.
° (With only four items, I'd normally have carried them, but I was leery of clutching anything to my chest right now.)
°° (Well, register, singular – inevitably, only one lane was actually open.)
But I couldn't deny the subtle, quasi-illicit thrill of anything resembling social interaction. There were people here! And I could just stand around next to them vaguely not-quite being together, without any masks or social distancing or anything! And if I stood there saying nothing, it was just normal awkwardness, and not because I was literally trying not to breathe any more than necessary! Hell, I could even engage in physical contact with someone, without putting either of us at risk! And maybe if I hung around and insistently nudged up against them just right, they'd get the hint and scratch behind my—
I power-cringed and glanced around uncomfortably, wondering if anybody'd heard me think that. Casting about for anything else to focus on, my gaze drifted across the tabloids racked up by the conveyor belt, and the cover photo of some random celebrity bimbo showcasing her new triple cleavage.° Guh, I thought in exasperation, I didn't know who she was before – why am I supposed to care now, just 'cause she's also a catgirl!?
° (Of somewhat greater interest was the blurb about a stray mouse disrupting some royal wedding reception.)
But it did hold a sort of train-wreck fascination; not as the photographer intended, but as a stark warning that the virus wasn't in the business of fixing chronic plastic-surgery addicts. The poor woman had been through so many nose-nips, cheeklifts, eye-tucks, and God-knew-what-else that, ironically, she reminded me of a terminally fancy-bred Persian – only she'd paid for the privilege of going under the knife, rather than getting selectively mutated by neurotics with terrible ideas of what a Cat should be…
Happily, I was distracted from having to look at that. Less happily, it was by someone grabbing my tail and nomming on it. I turned to see a child of four or five – the face was so cherubic as to be indeterminate, and the playclothes and frizzy blond bowl-cut were no help, but I could tell by the scent° it was a boy – employing the Shark Method for determining the properties of the thing in front of him.
° (Somewhere underneath that Play-Doh smell all grubby little kids have, anyway.)
He seemed a little old for the just-put-whatever-in-your-mouth stage, but he was on a leash, which suggested that he was one of those kids who march to a different drummer – the kind of child who, in a couple years, would be wandering off from elementary-school field sports to ponder whether ants get dizzy when they're climbing on the underside of a branch or see what happens to a leaf when you pick out all the little bits from between the lattice. As somebody who'd been that kid, I felt a certain amount of sympathy.
As someone whose fur was getting saturated with spittle, however, I was less than thrilled. I stared down at him, trying and failing to figure out what combination of eyebrow position, mouth shape, and head cant counted as The Look; he met my gaze with a placid stare, showing no hint of awareness that this wasn't perfectly reasonable behavior on his part. I felt flummoxed; what was I supposed to do here? I didn't want to snap at the kid, but seriously…!
As I was starting to get properly flustered, the boy's mom glanced up from the coupon flyer she'd been perusing. She was also frizzy and blonde, and full of a nervous energy which "mother to this critter" explained perfectly. "Oh, ah, honey," she said, with a harried expression, "let's not do that, okay…?"
Kiddo said nothing, but let go of my tail, with some hesitation and no trace of guilt; he then proceeded to wander over to the rack of candy bars below the tabloids and began methodically turning the topmost one in each column upside-down. His mom gave me a weak, please-don't-hate-me kind of smile. "Sorry," she said, picking up her feet to step out from the loop he'd made around her legs. "You know how they can be."
Do I…? I thought, feeling all weird and uncomfortable at her assumption that I could relate. I found the leash thing a little off-putting, as well; but I doubted she was inviting me to critique her parenting style, and it wasn't like I had to deal with him 24/7. And he wasn't biting, I thought, trying to get a handle on myself, just…gumming a total stranger's intriguingly fuzzy body-part, as you do when you're a Weird Kid. I offered a weak little chuckle and half-hearted grin of my own, and she returned to her flyer, satisfied that she wasn't, I didn't know, at risk of Shunning or whatever.
At last, the elderly woman ahead of me finished counting out exact change for her Marlboros° and Wild Turkey and hobbled off to the exit, and I stepped forward to the register. The clerk was a certifiable Pimply-Faced Youth, and while I couldn't hold that against him, I couldn't stop remembering that phase myself as he rang up the beer and looked me up and down. Was he looking at me as an oddity? A woman? A piece of meat? Or just a Fungible Customer Entity…?
° (Trust me, if you think standing next to a life-long chain-smoker is An Experience as a human, you don't know the half of it.)
I shook my head, trying not to dwell on it. I didn't want to be all passive-aggressive – I could empathize with customer-service types, and there was no call to be an asshole to them over trivial matters – but I was already feeling out-of-sorts, and part of my tail was now wet, slightly sticky, and getting cold. Go on, I thought irritably, just ask to see my ID…
But he didn't, no doubt sensing the waves of psychic intimidation emanating from me…or possibly just noting the way my ears ticked back a bit. "Birthday?" he prompted.
"November 15th," I sighed, "1992."
He nodded and slid the Controlled Substances onto the other belt, then rang up the rest. I paid, went out to the car, and spent the next few minutes taking a shop towel to my fur until it was only mildly damp, and then smoothing it back out 'til it no longer bothered me to the point of distraction.
The trip back was uneventful; I felt no urge to wander, and my only other stop was for lunch. I could've made something at home…but while I was out, I realized, I could take the opportunity to have a proper damn hamburger for the first time in months. So I drove over to Tom's Burger…and promptly ordered a filet-o'-fish. Well, it still counted – broiled animal flesh, cheese, lettuce & tomato, and (tartar) sauce onna bun, piping hot and in no danger of getting cold or soggy on me. Heavenly…even if it did get me some funny looks.
When I finally got home, I opened the door and was caught off-guard by a strange scent – faded but lingering, like the woman's cigarette smoke. It wasn't altogether bad, but it carried notes of anxiety and strain with it, and I could feel them prickling at the back of my neck like they were petitioning for readmittance to my nervous system. Had somebody come by? But I was the only one with keys to the place…°
° (Well, I and my landlord, but I could hardly get him to come out when there was a need. When my fridge died, I had to spend a day and a half pestering him before he gave in and arranged for a replacement.)
It took a moment for realization to set in: the scent was my own, a last little remnant of what I'd been my whole life, a ghost of the old self. I was taken aback; okay, the pandemic was a big societal upset, and lockdown had been no fun, and I'd struggled to figure out how to feel about what'd happened to my neighbor and what I was afraid would happen to me…but, I wondered again, had I really been that stressed? I thought I'd been handling it pretty well, aside from the boredom, the uncertainty, the nervousness, and the uncomfortable existential questions…
And…that was all over, wasn't it? So…now what? I'd have to go back to work eventually, have to break the news to my family, have to settle back into the basic routine of life as I tried to figure out what it even meant to be this other-me I'd never asked for. And if I was still me, I'd have to deal with all my old baggage, too; it wasn't like this was some narratively karmic cure-all for that. I was still introverted and awkward, still didn't really get people…had I really changed so utterly, for so little?
Shaking my head, I caught sight of the living-room floor. The early afternoon sun was streaming in through the window, bathing a large patch of carpet in warmth and light, and dammit, it beckoned to me. I felt ridiculous thinking about it, but I was pleasantly logy from lunch, and it was all warm and sunny and…you know what, screw it. If I had to deal with everything else new and confusing about my altered form, I might as well get something nice out of it. I stashed the beer in the fridge, tossed the brush and blowdryer on the counter for later, and curled up on the carpet for a goddamn catnap.
I drifted back to consciousness a couple hours later in a pleasant haze; the light had shifted and the floor was no longer warm and sunny, so it was no longer a place for a nap. That was logical, wasn't it? I rolled onto my hands and knees, strreeetched, and got up, but it took me a minute to get my wits about me.
And cripes, I realized, I did need to vacuum in here; I'd twisted around in my sleep, and my hair and fur had picked up bits of carpet lint, dust, and miscellaneous crud. I spent a couple minutes picking them back out before heading to the bathroom to break in my new brush with a full going-over of my hair. That felt good, but a part of my brain insisted that it'd be much nicer if someone else were doing it…
Still feeling my metaphorical oats a bit – and prompted by some instinct that valued a tidy living space more than I used to° – I actually got as far as dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the hall closet, plugging it in, and switching it on. GAH!!! I immediately turned it off; if they'd bothered to dampen the noise at all, it was only with respect to human hearing. That'd have to wait 'til I figured out what I could do for earplugs.
° (I really didn't want to think about what specific feline behaviors that'd map to.)
My fur was on-end, and I took a moment to let it settle back down; after that, maybe I just wanted to relax. I grabbed a beer from the fridge, then hesitated. One of many assorted people things I'd never grasped was how adult beverages are treated as a gendered thing, like this or that cocktail or beer style was for one sex or the other Because Reasons. I found it baffling, but now I had to wonder if there was any validity to it. What if I just didn't like the things I liked anymore…?
Well, here was a chance to be empirical about it – and either way, hesitating would change nothing. I popped the cap off the bottle, took a deep breath, and drank. Nope: Russian imperial stout, still God's own drink, myth busted. Feeling inordinately pleased at disproving what'd never made sense to me in the first place, I settled in at my computer desk; I had to drape my skirt around the perimeter of the seat cushion so my tail could hang over the back.
Funny; this was the first time I'd sat down to just chill out since the whole thing started. I'd been in and out of consciousness, and half the time I was up it was to deal with some weird, uncomfortable part of my body's spontaneous remodel and/or visitations from half the planet; it felt both comforting and strange to sit in my usual spot, doing my usual thing, in a new and unusual personal context. The basic sensations of sitting were different, even – my bits having been taken in, my spine drawn out, and my rear at least somewhat more cushioned than previously…
Headphones were a no-go, for now; earbuds might work, but I hated them, even as a human. I switched on the speakers, put on some music, and took another sip as I logged into my usual MUD; was it just me, or was the flavor stronger? Maybe it had to do with my enhanced sense of smell. And speaking of senses, the music seemed…a little odd. It took me a minute to put my finger on it – I hadn't noticed in the car, but it was missing all the high-end I'd never been able to hear before, thanks to audio standards specced for human ears.° I wondered what it'd be like to catch a live concert, but if the vacuum cleaner was too much for me…
° (I also wondered if I should look into 96 KHz remasters – or was that just typical audiophile snake-oil…?)
A while later, I heaved a frustrated sigh; I was trying to relax, let myself go, and settle into my usual routine…but it just wasn't working. My character wasn't exactly a self-insert, but wasn't leagues removed from resembling me – less because I was enamored of myself and more because role-playing didn't come naturally to me, and it was easier to get into character when the character was approximately me. But dammit, now me was all different, and it felt weird trying to get into the headspace of "being" this character who was kinda-sorta the old version.
It didn't make any sense, on a rational level. I wasn't literally my character, or vice versa; I didn't even strongly identify with "him," it was just…kind of a convenient "face" for the game, to me. But it felt like wearing that "face" when I'd just gotten saddled with this one would be…I didn't know, misrepresenting something? Like putting on a fake grin and pretending that everything was Situation Normal when it suddenly wasn't.
I had a new sense of empathy for the player who'd been the subject of that argument a while back…assuming that (s)he really had been indicating something about the situation IRL. Okay, yeah, it was bad form to drag real-world drama into the game, but what were you supposed to do with Big Life Changes that weren't going away anytime soon? Sure, escapism was a big part of the point in gaming, but one of the points of escapism was as an aid for coping with Life Stuff…
Well, I wouldn't be pulling a stunt like that, anyway; I had a ways to go before the level cap and reincarnation. But: standards vary for "alt" characters in MUDding culture, but around these parts it was accepted, as long as you didn't engage in sockpuppeting, self-assisting through gameplay challenges, or other shenanigans. It'd be a first for me, but I could roll one up, just to putter around with while I figured out how to even feel about this little slice of weird in the layer-cake of weirdness that was my life now.
The idea went from "I could do that" to actually doing it surprisingly quick; then I got all bogged down in thinking about it. Did it matter if my alt was female, as long as it was clearly not the old me? Would it be cringey and on-the-nose to go with the catfolk race,° and did I even want to? What class should I pick? Was I trying to say something with my choices, or just looking for a "face" that didn't feel weird due to life circumstances? Was it a question of "presentation…?"
° (There had been an uptick in them lately, come think…)
While I was getting flustered over that, I felt my ears swivel: my phone had just pinged. I turned and reached for it, and – whoa, geez, only the one beer and I was already loopy!? Not full-bore drunk, but a bit disoriented and fuzzy in the head. I thought it over, and groaned; I hadn't weighed myself, but I was smaller, and some body mass had gotten metabolized just to fuel my transformation. It was a high ABV, and with less blood to diffuse it across, my BAC was higher for the same drink; God, I was a literal lightweight.
My fingers danced across the screen, tapping out my standard lock code. I hadn't kept up on things, I realized; I'd been too whacked-out at first, and then too busy coping with the reality of what was happening to me. I wasn't that involved with too many people, but even so, things piled up over the course of a week. I glanced over the list: a very late New Year's update from relatives in Massachusetts, photos from my parents of some random day-trip thing they'd done last weekend…
I paused over that one, noting my own sign-off from our last conversation. Wouldn't trade you ;) It was such a little thing, part of the standard family lexicon for so long that it was almost protocol; but even through the alcohol buzz, I couldn't help thinking that now I'd gotten traded…
The latest message was from my sister, the last in a string that she'd sent from Saturday onward. I felt a little guilty, looking it over; it started with a casual how-ya-doin' and good-natured ribbing about me getting lost in reading when I hadn't replied, then more straightforward concern that my phone might've broken. And finally:
Caitlin: Seriously, brother o' mine, you OK?
Caitlin: It's not like you to go *Total* Radio Silence.
My ears flattened out, and I felt myself cringe; I hadn't meant to make anyone worry, and I felt bad about it, extenuating circumstances or no. I sighed, and tapped out a reply:
Kit: Ah crjd,° sorry. Not dead, just undr the weather.
Kit: Its, you know, "what's going aroubd."
° (I will own my typos; they are far preferable to the horrors of auto-correct. Anyway, I was tipsy.)
I probably would not have added that last part if I wasn't slightly drunk – but by the time I realized, Caitlin was already responding. Damn it, I thought; I'd put my foot in it, now…
Caitlin: !!!
Caitlin: =^_^= …?
Groaning, I buried my face in my hands, and felt my fingertips brush at the base of my ears. Dammit, dammit, dammit, I hadn't meant to let that slip; but I'd hardly been thinking about it at all 'til the last day or two, and I hadn't formulated anything like a plan for how to break the news. I could lie, I supposed, but I didn't like the idea, and I knew she'd never believe it. I heaved a sigh, and:
Kit: Yes
Caitlin: OMFG
Caitlin: PICS
I stared down at that for a moment, then rolled my eyes.
Kit: Yeah, no.
Kit: Stjll adjusting to even seeing it in the mirror, thamks.
Caitlin: Phooey. Bet you're gorram adorable.
Kit: Mostly lool like a brunette you.
Kit: Totally ordinary.
Caitlin: Bullshark, *I'm* gorram adorable.
Caitlin: Man, now I gotta wait for spring break.
Caitlin: It was mean of you to change during the semester. *pout*
My hackles rose a little at that, but I knew she was teasing; this kind of snarky back-and-forth had been our default mode of interaction for many years. It was a little comforting that our dynamic wasn't suddenly different, though I had Premonitions about what she'd be planning when she came to visit.
Kit: Neet time I'll be sure and schedule it ou with you.
Caitlin: You *better* XD
Caitlin: So many questions!!!
I was waiting for the deluge, but there was actually a delay, as if she'd paused for a moment, started typing, and paused again.
Caitlin: …You want I should tell Mom & Dad?
Caitlin: I won't if you don't, solemn swear. =;
It took me a minute of staring at the last bit to determine that it was her attempt at a "zipped lips" emoticon;° then I had to think about what she'd actually asked for another minute.
° (I forswore the use of "emoji" glyphs since I resent corporate interests offering me a palette of pre-fabricated Approved Feelings to choose from and have opinions about cluttering up the Unicode space; my sister simply found them too limiting in her quest to turn text messages into a medium for creative expression.)
Kit: …Yeah, acyually.
I wasn't worried about their reaction…not seriously…but I had no idea how you'd even start that conversation – oh hey, Mom, how's planning for the garden coming along? What're you guys planting this year? Fine, thanks, I just spent a week turning into something completely different than what you gave birth to, thought you should know. Did Dad ever get involved with that Baroque group…? – and if she was willing to shoulder the awkward part, I was all for that.
Caitlin: Roger that ^3
Caitlin: I'll tell them you're neither adorable nor unadorable until observed [=^_^=]
I felt one ear twitch.
Kit: Cait, I am going to fibd innovatife ways to hurt you.
Caitlin: Scary XD
Caitlin: Guess I oughta ask: what's it like?
I made to answer, then had to stop and think about it for a minute. What was it like…? I could run off a litany of squishy biological factoids, but most were things she was already familiar with, things which were only novel to me because I hadn't grown up with them; and anyway, was that truly "what it's like" in the final analysis? I could spend an age summarizing the weird cocktail of feelings I'd had at the sight of my own reflection, as it gradually altered on me; was that it? How did I feel about…all this?
Kit: I unno? Still figurinh that out?
Kit: I'm alive, I guess, but *being* frels kinda diferent, in a bunch og ways?
Kit: Or something? Not sute how to explain it
Caitlin: That is 100% the Most Kit Response.
Caitlin: Guess we don't need the hot wire after all ~~ [_____]
Kit: The tail tskes more getting used to than yoy'd think.
Kit: Ig that's mire what you're wondering.
Caitlin: I expect a 2,000-word essay, due by the end of the semester.
Caitlin: Also I am going to pet the ever-loving heck outta you.
Kit: Dont make mf get a restraiming order. I'll do it
Caitlin: | |E|o.O|3| | Love ya, bro <3
Caitlin: Or sis <3
Caitlin: Or whatever [?]
In spite of myself, everything I'd been through in the past week, and everything I was still trying to figure out, I smiled.
Kit: You tko.
Kit: *too