NothingSpecial: gender-bending transformation stories, comics, and occasional poetry =^_^=
Sunday passed without incident. I woke, showered, dressed, killed some time, went grocery shopping, killed some more time, made dinner, did the dishes; real thrilling adult-type stuff. That in itself was a little strange, returning to the rhythms of daily life after a literally transformative experience, going through all the usual motions but feeling the hem of my skirt swish 'round my legs, my bust shift in the confines of my bra, my ears and tail twitch and emote: a real reminder that, yes, this was really me now, but being me wouldn't be quite the same, going forward…
(I'd also discovered the quiet relief of taking your bra off at the end of the day, when you're winding down – a bit like kicking off your shoes after a day on your feet. I hadn't anticipated that, but it made sense; still, it felt slightly ridiculous. Well, you take your simple pleasures where you can find them, I guess.)
I was eating better, at least, now that I didn't have to plan around holing up in the apartment for as long as I could manage before going back out.° I've never been a particularly elaborate cook, but I realized, when I was first living on my own, on shit wages, that you actually save money and eat better cooking for yourself – and it's amazing how much of a difference fresh-ish, non-frozen veggies and meats make.
° (My natural tendency to do so notwithstanding.)
Then came Monday. I could've put in for a longer leave, but I'd have to do this eventually…unless, I didn't know, I quit my job, changed my name, moved to Cleveland, and went into waitressing in hopes of avoiding ever having to admit to people who knew me previously that I was Suddenly Different…
…
…The idea, I thought, did have a certain appeal – but I definitely didn't have the temperament for food service; I could just about manage to cope with customers when they were on the other end of a phone line.
Anyway, it wasn't like my coworkers didn't know; even assuming Bryce hadn't blurted something out on Teams when Nicole called me in, I'd been AWOL for over a week in the middle of the pandemic, and even Curtis could put that particular two and two together. And, I recalled with intense embarrassment, there'd been the meeting that Thursday, when I was already half out of my gourd…
I stood there in front of the mirror, staring at the reflection I still wasn't used to and half-expecting her to start talking back like this was one of those bits in Bloom County. I'd washed my face, brushed my hair, dressed in clean clothes that fit my altered frame reasonably well…and still felt hideously unprepared.
(I also felt like I needed a shower after all – but it was too late now, and I didn't relish the idea of getting up earlier just for time to dry my fur before work. Maybe I could tie a garbage bag around my tail, as a makeshift "shower cap…")
Was a T-shirt really enough? I hadn't gotten any button-up shirts (blouses? What was the difference?) on Saturday; would those be that little bit more professional, sufficient to eke past the "slob" tier and achieve "unremarkable background entity" status in order to keep people off my case? Or did I need to go further° than that, now…?
° (Damn it.)
It's strange, the notion we have that clothes change something about you; like somehow, if you swish into the office cutting a suitably dashing figure, you'll be warded against criticism, charmed for Confidence and Success; like the outfit itself is a talisman, an enchanted suit of armor. In truth, I was still me, and even if my dress could fool everyone else, I'd know it. And while the me in the mirror wasn't exactly a stunning beauty, I wasn't gonna count as unremarkable anytime soon…
Giving my top one last nervous adjustment, I went to pour coffee, sat down at my desk, and popped my work laptop open; then, to my chagrin, I was greeted with the login screen for Christopher Robinson for the first time in ages.
I stared at it for a bit, surprised at how much it irked me; it'd always been a minor annoyance, nothing worth listening to Bryce fret over "best practices" for, but after everything I'd been through in the last week, being confronted by a system that refused to call me what even my own parents did was slightly maddening. With a sigh, I logged in, took a slug of coffee…
…and paused. I did have access to the domain admin account for our office,° since half the random things I managed day-to-day required it; I'd long since taken advantage of it to liberate myself from the "best practice" requiring us to change our goddamn passwords every ninety days.
° (The extent to which concessions to practicality rendered half our other practices empty security theater was also mildly galling, but that's all IT outside of fintech – and probably even there.)
Once I'd thought of it, it was just a matter of modifying the user in Active Directory, editing my Office 365 account° to make c.robinson@ an alias just so's I wouldn't miss any of the undoubtedly thrilling and essential e-mails coming my way, forcing a Group Policy update, rebooting for good measure, and – yes, there you had it, Kit goddamn Robinson, officially.°°
° (They weren't linked; Bryce'd been making noises about Azure AD, but after a brief survey I'd concluded that I'd sooner take a hacksaw to my own limbs.)
°° (Well, okay, still FULCRUM\crobinson on the back end; some things in Windows are even more of a bitch to change than others.)
Surprised by how much this little victory improved my mood, I settled in, reached for my headset, and realized that there was no chance of it fitting my remodeled head; even if I got the band situated so's to hold the earpiece in position, it'd leave the mic jutting into space somewhere above my nose. Laptop mic and speakers, then; I'd worry about better solutions later.
The meeting started, and – oh shit, I thought, I'm on camera; they can see…! It was silly to get hung up on that after everything I'd been through, but I still felt a little intimidated. But there was no going back now; even if I killed the camera, they'd already seen, and I'd be speaking in what was clearly a woman's voice. Nothing for it, then…
To my immense relief, I was not immediately greeted by a chorus of cringey commentary. Not that I really expected it; two-thirds of us were, if geeks of one flavor or another, at least minimally socially-functional, and while that was harder to say for Curtis, he kept his bloviations from straying into personal remarks.° If nothing else, we could all more or less manage professional courtesy, I hoped…
° (I attributed that to his being among the half of our staff who were married men, though I did wonder how that'd happened.)
…not that this made me any less intensely self-conscious or not a mildly nervous semi-wreck. I couldn't stop assessing myself in the mirror-view; the lag between this me and that me threw me off even more, and I kept getting the feeling I was watching someone else. I took a look over the array of webcam images; geez, it felt like years since I'd last seen these people.
"Ah, Miss..ter…? Robbins, you're back!" Bryce said, hanging for a moment like a glitching robot before continuing on with the usual blithely disconnected spiel. Nothing much had changed while I was out, though we were onboarding a new client – a decking contractor down by the river, in the port district. I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew which of us he'd be tapping for the on-site work.
While it was encouraging that things were business-as-usual, it did mean that, once again, the morning stand-up ran for well over forty minutes in contravention of all sense and decency. I spent most of it fidgeting, trying to work out the most comfortable posture for me, now; sitting up straight pressed the base of my tail into the seat cushion harder than I liked, but my usual slouch killed the support my bust got from my spine. As I was experimenting, the chat client pinged:
Michael: Good to see ya back, man. You doin' okay?
I just stared at that, for a minute, feeling…oddly comforted by it. I wasn't used to coworkers expressing any particular concern for my well-being, aside from the obligatory get-well-soons if I was down with stomach flu or whatever. He really was a decent kinda guy, I thought, a slight smile crossing my lips. Though it was plenty weird pondering whether I was doing "okay…"
Kit: Alright considering, I guess. Still all weird and confusing, but I'm getting by.
…That was a weird thing to see myself write, but…it didn't feel incorrect. It was about what I'd told Caitlin, wasn't it? I'd already had my big emotional breakdown the other day; for now, I was feeling less traumatized than just stuck in day-after mode, wondering what this even meant for me in the long run…
Michael: Glad to hear it. Tried to keep things from gettin' too hairy while you were out.
I glanced over the ticket queue; while the automated-monitoring spam I usually cleared out was piled up on that board, the main one didn't look too bad. I wasn't thrilled about slogging through the junk to sift out anything legit, but I smiled anyway.
Kit: Thanks.
Michael: No worries, man. Glad to have ya.
I almost left it at that; then, for no accountable reason, I felt the urge to engage in small talk.
Kit: Guess you haven't been camping while I was out. Could probably cover for you if you wanted.
Michael: :D Might take ya up on that in a month or two.
Michael: Still pretty cold at night, 'specially up in the hills.
I remembered Monday night, but I hadn't thought about that; it'd been ages since I last slept outdoors. Way back when Caitlin and I were in our single digits, our dad took us to the Boundary Waters for a week; while beautiful and tranquil and whatnot, between primitive toilets in stands of brush hosting Creatures Unknown, a voracious mosquito population, and portaging packs that weighed as much as we did while he and his old roommate took the canoe, I'd come home feeling perfectly content to admire Nature from behind glass henceforth.°
° (Every so often I'd be stricken with wanderlust; I managed this affliction by holing up with something open-world and heading off in a random direction as soon as I was past the intro sequence.)
Thinking back on it now, I was more fixated on memories of perch, crappies/sunnies, and one very lovely rainbow trout that Dad and Uncle Carl had landed, and the nagging knowledge that walleye could be had there, but I'd never had walleye. I was so lost in reverie that I almost missed it when Bryce finally called the meeting to a close, and was just about to reply to Mike when the phone rang. Right, this was my job, wasn't it.
"Fulcrum Solutions, how can nya help you?" I said, taking a deep breath and tapping the "answer" button on the softphone. C'mon, me, you can do this…
"Oh Christ," said a voice, "are you the receptionist? You're the receptionist, aren't you."
For a moment, I was so taken aback that I wasn't quite sure how to respond. You learn to deal with angry, demanding, and/or distraught customers in tech support, but this was a new one…and then the pieces clicked into place. Really? Truly? Just because it was a woman's voice on my end of the line!?
"Actually, I'm—" I began, but she cut me off. I recognized the voice; while I'd said it in exasperation before, she was now and forever branded in my mind as the Stupid Cow.
"God," the Cow said, "that's just what I need right now. Listen, transfer me to one of the people that can actually help, okay!?"
I had, up 'til this point, intended to help her, but I found my inner troll chomping at the bit, and the Gremlin of Malicious Compliance rose up and seized hold of me. You wanna play that way!? I thought. Fine, heifer, I'll show you "receptionist…"°
° (Apologies in advance to the receptionists of the world. You're all probably fine people, and it's a consolation to me that you can likely empathize.)
"I understand, mya'am," I said, adopting the best infuriatingly-chipper tone I could muster. "But all of our techs are currently busy assisting customers," – and, counting myself, this was approximately true – "so I'll need to get you added to our call log. Can I start by getting the phone number of your business?"
She gave an aggravated sigh. "What, do you not have caller ID!?"
Of course we did, and I knew who she was, anyway, but she didn't know that. "I'm sorry, mya'am," I said cheerily, getting into the role, "but this number isn't coming up in mya database. Is there a chance that nyew might be calling from a personal cellular phone?"
"Christ! Yes!" she hissed, before giving me their number. I watched the call timer tick upwards with a growing sense of schadenfreude.
"Alrrright," I said, "and would you like me to put this nyamber on file for you…?"
"Of goddamn COURSE I would!" she bellowed; I responded with loud staccato typing, about triple the necessary number of keystrokes.
"Nyand can nyew tell me a little bit about what seems to be goin' nyan?" I prompted. I had a feeling I knew the answer, but in fairness, she might've regurgitated cud into her printer or something.
"Dammit, who is this!?" she fumed. "Your manager is gonna hear from me after this…!"
"This is Kat here at Fulcrum, mya'am," I chirped; like hell I was giving her my real name. "Niaow would you like to tell me what seems to be the prrroblem?"
"My goddamn E-MAIL keeps going white!" the Cow replied, seething.
"'Going white?' Could you be more specific?" I queried, knowing full well that she meant it was doing that (not responding) thing that newer versions of Windows indicate by draping a cheesecloth over the application window for some damn reason.
She growled audibly. "Why do I have to explain this to you, you bimbo!?" she snapped. "It circles, and then it goes white! Just get someone who actually knows what they're talking about to call me back! ASAP!"
"Of courrrse, mya'am," I said warmly. "I'll make a note of that, and we'll get you that callback. Niaow, is this the best number for us to rrreach you at…?"
She hung up in a flurry of profanity, which I decided counted as a "yes."
In truth, I was perfectly familiar with the issue: for reasons known only to some dread Elder God whose blasphemous name requires seventeen screaming mouths to pronounce, the product-development staff at Martha's All Fruitcake did all their planning and coordination by means of a single, massive spreadsheet, which they e-mailed to each other daily rather than use any remotely sane file-sync method.
On top of the obvious problem,° the Cow was department manager. While I'd seen no sign that she contributed meaningfully to the work, she insisted on being CCed with every change and refused to delete old copies, so her mailbox was astronomically proportioned, and Outlook would simply grind to a halt under the weight of it.
° (To wit: person A opens the sheet and makes changes, e-mails it to the group; meanwhile, person B has been making changes, also e-mails it to the group; now you have two different copies floating around. The version history after years of this was fractally complex.)
All of which we'd explained to her, and had proposed several non-insane solutions, which were rejected on the grounds that it'd break their workflow – but, inevitably, she still wanted it fixed, and called in regularly to demand that we wave our collective wand and make the problem vanish in a puff of pixie dust. In that regard, the call was nothing unusual – mildly infuriating, sure, but not a surprise.
What was novel was someone deciding right off the bat that I wasn't even competent to address the problem, solely on the basis of my (altered) demographics; I knew intellectually that this was A Thing,° but it was my first time experiencing it. It was, to put it mildly, absolutely maddening; I couldn't decide whether it made it worse that the Cow was on the same side of the fence as I was, now. But what could you do? I wasn't not gonna do my job…
° (Funny; people write about sexism in IT re: coworker or management interactions, and rightly so – but they mostly neglect the customers.)
…but, under the circumstances, I didn't feel an iota of guilt when I tagged the ticket as low-priority, took a deep breath, and pointedly turned my attention to clearing out several hundred monitoring alerts instead, tail flicking in quiet satisfaction.
It was later in the morning, just as I'd almost gotten myself back on an even keel through the quiet zen of pruning the alerts – no RAID failures, no persistent backup issues, a couple servers running low on disk space due to that dumbass Dell partitioning scheme, which I could tidy up later – that I got the notification I'd been dreading since I first contemplated returning to work.
Bryce: Got time for a 1&1?
My inner pedant chafed, but I'd long since had to accept that there was no point trying to get through to him that it was "one-on-one;" anyway, that was the least of my worries. But this was another thing there was no getting around, unless I were to just bail and look for another job…
Kit: Yeah, I suppose.
He e-mailed the link for the video call; I licked the back of my hand, gave my hair an antsy once-over, and joined, feeling all self-conscious again. I never liked these things to begin with, but there was an extra layer of uncertainty now, and it was me that was the unknown, the X factor…°
° (I'm going to beat any of you people thinking "…the XX factor!" to the punch just to spite you.)
"Mister…? Robinson," Bryce began; he usually managed a tone of Generic Professional Cordiality with these things, but it was obvious that he was just as uncomfortable as myself. "Good to have you back…?"
"…Thanks," I replied warily. I had a general idea of what he'd insist on covering, and I didn't imagine either of us were looking forward to it.
There was a long moment of awkward silence; I could practically see him racking his brain for what the management handbooks recommended by his golf buddies said about Best Practices for dealing with employees who've undergone a sudden, involuntary sex/species reassignment thanks to a globe-spanning epidemic. Unfortunately for him, that'd probably be in the next edition.
"…Well, I expect there's a lot you're still adjusting to," he said at last, with the confidence and conviction of someone stepping onto pond ice in April. "But I do want to reassure you that we're fully committed to fostering a diverse and equitable workplace here at Fulcrum."
"…Of course," I said through my teeth, trying not to point out that our staff was entirely white and (until recently) male. In fairness, I'd never seen any indication that this wasn't just the kind of statistical anomaly you got when taking a sample size you could count on one hand from the population of low-level IT grunts. Besides, I was more annoyed at being addressed like I was some new hire instead of the same person he'd been haranguing about server replacements Thursday before last.
"And of course if you have any preferences with regard to, er, pronouns or…anything of that nature…we want to make sure you feel heard," he continued, reading off his mental teleprompter and wavering between discomfort and a little frisson of novelty at (I assumed) finally getting around to a flavor of managerial liturgy he'd never had the chance to recite before.
"For sure," I said, feeling extremely Heard and Welcomed.
I kinda had to pity the guy; it didn't help that he was inevitably clammy when he shook your hand in what was meant to be an assertive manner, but he'd always exuded an aura of being almost aware that he was out of his depth. He'd ramble through meetings with blithe quasi-confidence, but in one-on-ones you could tell he was trying not to acknowledge that he didn't know what he was doing in a leadership role any more than we did. But the position was his by divine right, as Company Founder, and to abdicate would be to admit inadequacy before the golf buddies…
"I, ah, did notice," he said nervously, as if he wasn't sure what our nonexistent HR department would say, "it looks like your account's showing as 'Kit…?' I'm sure you're aware, but our Best Practice is—"
"Yes," I said, as firmly as I could manage without hissing outright, "it is." I tried not to roll my eyes so hard as to stare at the back of my own sockets, but my ears told the whole story. Typical Corporate Caring, I thought; all that hoopla about pronouns, and you can't even lay off about proper nouns!? Did I seriously have to go through a sex change to get you to accept this!?
There was another awkward silence, as Bryce sat frozen in malfunctioning-robot mode again. I could sense his palpable unease at the violation of Best Practices from across the Sierras; no doubt he was worried we'd anger the spirits with this transgression.
Finally, without so much as an acknowledgement, he pivoted. "W–well," he said, picking up a stack of papers and shuffling them not very authoritatively, "I thought we should also run over the sections of the employee handbook that are…er, relevant to you, now that, uh…"
"Brrryce…" I said, putting a hand to my forehead and failing to suppress a groan.
"…ah, of course you'll still have insurance under the company health plan," he said, sounding slightly less uncomfortable as the conversation turned to paperwork, "but our provider is requiring documentation of the change before they'll cover medical needs arising from—"
"Mya, that's fine," I said hurriedly. No doubt that'd be its own carnival of joy and wonder, but I could worry about it later; I had, overall, been blessed with a mostly healthy body° and a hardy immune system.°° "Niaow, if that's all…?"
° (Vision issues aside.)
°° (Except in one critical instance.)
"And, ah, of course you know that we have a zero-tolerance policy toward s–s–sexual harassment and, er, discrimination." He stammered through the litany, right back to looking as mortified as we both felt. "And in the unlikely event that anything were to…come up…I hope you'll—"
"I kniaow, yes," I said, still trying to keep from hissing. I doubted he was ignoring me so much as just sticking to the script because he couldn't conceive of doing otherwise, but I was more than ready to be done with this.
It was hard to tell over the webcam, but he might actually have been sweating nervously; he gave his papers another meaningless shuffle. "I, ah, I should a–also explain our policy with, with regards to matern—"
"BRYCE!" I snapped, ears flat and tail puffed out. He stopped short and stared into the camera with a stunned-fish look.
I took a deep breath, flexed the claws I didn't have out of instinct, and tried to get ahold of my temper. "Can we please," I sighed, "take it as rrread that…that I have a copy of the handbook, and will rrreview as needed? Please…?"
You could watch his face and see the gears turning in his head, as the Points That Must Be Covered heuristic strove doggedly against the fact that neither of us wanted to be having this discussion. "…Ah, y–yes, of course," he said at last. "A–and obviously, if you need anything, my door's always, er, open…"
"…Of course," I said, measuring out the syllables. Keep your head about you, I told myself; that's what it means, to be a…an adult…
More awkward silence.
"I, uh, a–also wanted to talk to you about getting some of our, ah, overdue BPAs—"
I hung up.
With another deep breath, I went to the living room, grabbed my guitar and powered up the amp, cranked the gain right to the edge of feedback, and spent the next little bit thrashing out snarling chords and yowling vibratos high up the neck, dragging my fingernails down the strings in horrible Godzilla screams, even just batting the damn pickups for percussive thumps like bombs dropping on the kitchen linoleum. I wished I'd bought an amp with a spring reverb, so I could kick it and get that spine-cracking KSHOWWW at max volume.
Stupid Bryce. Stupid Management Culture. Stupid HUMANITY! The hell of it was, this wasn't even actual prejudice, just awkward conversations about stupid shit that lay in the intersection of stuff I've been through and feel all weird about and stuff my boss feels Professionally Obligated to grind his word-mill over and I Just. Did. Not. NEED. That. right now. And this after that earlier altercation – stupid customers! Stupid COW! – had already spiked my blood pressure…
I knew it was irrational to let it get to me this much – it was the same kind of nonsense I'd dealt with every weekday for my entire adult life – but dammit, it really was sticking in my craw more than usual. I hoped it didn't mean I was just "more emotional" as a woman, partly because that'd always felt like a hackneyed stereotype, but mostly 'cause if it was the case it'd get old real fast; this better be some last symptom of my hormonal balance settling after a major upset.
Or…was Nicole right? Was I habitually stressed all along, and just having trouble keeping it contained, now? I didn't like that notion, either; maybe "girl-Kit" wasn't exactly the same as the original model, but the thought that she might be some hair-trigger hell-bitch was not a thrilling one. I don't wanna be that, goddammit! I thought, raking my hand across the strings. I'm an adult, aren't I? AREN'T I!?
The universe, possibly deafened, didn't answer.
When I was done caterwauling° and felt like I'd gotten it out of my system, I switched off the amp and returned to my desk, though I kept the guitar in my lap to fiddle with as I tried to get my brain back into Work Mode after a week-plus of unplanned and extremely novel vacation. Mike had jumped on the grenade with the Cow; I felt a little guilty over that.
° (That…I'm not sure that's even a pun, technically…? Well, I'm still irked by it.)
I'd more or less cooled my head by lunchtime; I made a tuna sandwich with chives, and almost managed to justify having a beer with it before remembering my reduced tolerance. Like it or not, I did have hours left to go, and I'd probably need my brain.
Later, as I was falling down a Wikipedia hole on trobairitz, my phone pinged; the screen showed it was my mother. I took a deep breath; it didn't take a psychic to divine what she was texting about. Switching the sandwich to my off hand, I pulled up the SMS client.
Mom: Hey, kiddo <3
Mom: Your sister tells us you've, shall we say, been through some things lately…?
Well, that wasn't the worst way to start off, I thought.
Kit: That's a mild way of putting it.
Mom: No doubt. Just wanted to tell you that we love you very much.
I hadn't exactly been dreading this conversation, but I didn't know how to feel; it wasn't one I'd ever imagined having. Despite that, I found myself smiling; she was particular about wording, and the omission of a still from that sentence was doubtless meant to avoid any suggestion of an in spite of your deformity that only she and I would ever think to read into it.
Kit: Thanks.
Mom: Would you like either of us to come stay with you for a bit?
Mom: Just to put that out there.
I considered it. I'd have to face them like this sooner or later, and I had no reason to think it'd go horribly wrong – she might kibitz over my low-effort wardrobe revamp, but we'd long since reached an understanding on my being a slacker. And I did kinda feel like it'd be good to see them – but then, another part of me wanted to maintain a certain amount of distance…
…and while I never quite understood that, I couldn't think why I'd need them to haul across the country on short notice. The day-to-day was mostly a matter of things I'd been used to for decades suddenly feeling all different, and of coming to terms with the raw fact of it all; and if anything serious did come up, I'd apparently have a support group right next door.
Kit: Think I'm okay, for now. Just a lot to wrap my head around.
Mom: Need the space to sort yourself out?
I let out a soft sigh; it was a relief when they understood without me having to explain it.
Kit: Yeah.
Mom: Understood.
Mom: We were thinking about coming to visit in summer/fall, if you're comfortable with that.
Kit: Sure you don't wanna wait 'til it's 105° here and send photos from the Lakewalk instead?
(I smirked; there'd been much mock-consternation a couple years back, when Caitlin sent them a photo of herself sitting in a roommate's parents' hot tub, drinking local wine, while they were caught in a freak April blizzard.)
Mom: Have to do that before we leave, I suppose ;)
Mom: We'll touch base with you two when we've narrowed things down.
Kit: Copy that.
Kit: And thanks.
Mom: Wouldn't trade you, kiddo <3
I felt a twinge in my chest, at that, and stared down at my phone for a minute, feeling maybe just a little bit verklempt…but I couldn't think of a reply, and that seemed like as good a place to leave things as any.
There wasn't enough of my lunch hour left to get deep into MUDding, so I went to check the mail. I hadn't ordered anything, so it was just a week-plus worth of the usual: too early for donation pleas from my alma mater, but plenty of corporate ghouls trying to sell me life insurance, statements from my credit union, fliers from "home energy" and HVAC contractors who never seemed to grasp that this was a rental property…
I saved myself a step and went straight to the dumpster, which walloped me in the olfactory bulb with a panoply of scents: myriad flavors of decay, from empty tuna cans to discarded fruit rinds to little bits of egg white clinging to the broken shells, plus scents that weren't organic enough to turn rotten, but had steamed within various containers in the heat of the day long enough to burst forth with the rush of air when I lifted the lid. Ye gods, I could even pick out Parker's cologne…
As I staggered back, breathing deep in an attempt to clear my nostrils, I spotted one of the neighborhood strays sunning on the hood of the Bug; it was just the right color° to get good and warm in the sun rather than searing hot, and the roof afforded a higher vantage point than Nicole or Parker's sedans. I didn't usually pay them any mind, but for some reason I found myself approaching slowly, cautiously.
° (Red faded nearly to orange.)
The cat, a bushy black tabby, regarded me warily, not sure how to function around this strange creature that was both like and unlike herself; I could relate. After a moment of mutual uncertainty I held out my hand, and she consented to sniff it curiously. Satisfied that I wasn't a threat, she relaxed; I beckoned gently, and she nudged her chin up against my fingers for a scratch.
I obliged, and she leaned into it. Running my hand over her flank, I noted the burs and bits of debris tangled in her coat; I'd always felt sorry for longhairs on that score, and it'd only gotten keener and more instinctual now that parts of me had fur. I felt an urge to pick them out, but when I tried she gave me a Look and pulled away. Alright, I thought to her, some other time.
Satisfied that I'd gotten the message, she sidled back up to me in that it's-not-as-if-I-care way that comes so naturally to cats. Funny, I thought, ruffling the fur around her neck and smoothing it back down, how they can be at such pains to not look like they want something, and yet be so comically obvious about it…
She rolled onto her side, inviting me to rub her tummy, but got twitchy when I did; I left off, and she calmed down. Then she rose and leapt up the windshield to the roof. This wouldn'tve been a problem before – but I was shorter now, and parts of me got in the way when I tried to lean across the top of the car. It was the first time I'd actually knocked them into anything, though it was a low-speed collision and not so much painful as just weird.
While I grappled with yet another Oh-Right-I'm-A-Woman-Now moment, she eyed me like I was the jerk for leaving off with the attention. Annoyed at Miss Didn't-Care-A-Minute-Ago's attitude, I stepped onto the running board…and quickly stepped back off. Rust is just a fact with classic cars, and I'd bought the Bug down by the Bay, where the salt air hadn't done it any favors; even at my reduced size, I could feel it flex beneath my toes.
I was just weighing the possibility of clambering onto the fender against the question of why I was even doing this when she tensed, leapt from the car, and darted off into the shrubbery. I wondered what triggered her, but I could hear someone approaching, and I smelled Parker's cologne again. I turned, and—
—holy SHIT was he tall now.
He'd been taller than me before, but having shrunk, it was impossible not to notice. For that matter, it was hard to stop noticing his frame in general; he was more a fitness freak than a bodybuilder, but he kept himself in shape and no mistake. I'd always been put off by his young-sales-type intensity and mutually-incompatible sense of personal space, but this was the first time I'd found him physically imposing.
"Man," he said, in the same aggressively-confident-and-positive tone as always, "it got you, huh?"
For a moment I just stared, not sure how to respond to that. "Seems that way," I said at last; I felt my cheeks flush, and glanced away in embarrassment.
"Wild, bro." He stepped towards me; I inched back, trying to ignore my brain's efforts to discern his scent from the one he'd doused himself in. "Got one of the seniors in my office, too; out sick for a couple weeks, and came back in total furry mode." He shrugged and shook his head. "Seems like he's takin' it well, though – never woulda guessed…!"
"N–nyo kidding," I said uneasily, trying not to study his features too closely as I attempted to disengage. I wasn't in the mood for small talk about the kind of Big Life Changes I'd just gone through myself, and I was feeling all self-conscious again at being seen like this by someone who knew the old me. It was one thing with Nicole or Frank or Alex, who'd been through it themselves; but what did he make of me? Did I even want to know…!?
"Man, though," he mused, studying my features closely, "you're the spittin' image of yourself. Never really thought about that. D'you have to get your license updated, or what?"
"Mya, uh, maybe? yes? I–I think so…?" I sputtered, edging my way around him and backing into the entryway; he followed. It was weird enough sorting out my reactions here, and that just muddled additional flavors into the cocktail of confusing feelings; DMV aversion I was used to, but the thought of having official legal acknowledgement of what I'd become was deeply strange…
"Probably still stick you with a lousy photo," he said, with an annoyingly gregarious chuckle. "Reminds me, you seen the new iPhones yet? The camera's really something – here, lemme show you…"
He fumbled in his pocket and produced his fondleslab, closing in to begin the gadget-display ritual that'd consume the next half-hour if I let him. I breathed a sigh of relief – yes, please, remind me of all the regular reasons I feel prickly and irritable around you – then felt novelly awkward again when I succeeded in picking out his personal scent and had to process my reaction to that.
"A–actually," I said through my teeth, smiling nervously and backing up against the door, "I…gotta get back to work. Lunch hour's almost up, myakniaow…?"
Parker got a sad-puppy kind of look at having his display interrupted, triggering another newly weird and discomfiting set of reactions somewhere in my chest, then reasserted his usual breezy confidence. "Ahhh, back to the daily grind, huh?" He shrugged, stowing his device. "Well, no helpin' it – next time, then. Good to see ya, bro!"
He waved goodbye, and I slipped inside, shut the door, and took a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Gahhh, as if I didn't have enough weird new Life Stuff to deal with…!
I heard his car fire up and drive off. I felt very annoyed at him for…for just being him, but part of me insisted on being reasonable and fair and I knew that wasn't either; he didn't mean anything by it. A nagging inner voice wondered if that didn't make me the jerk here, but what was I supposed to do, tell him to back off!? He'd get that damn sad-puppy look and then I'd really feel like an asshole…
Heaving a sigh and trying to put it out of my mind, I stalked to the fridge and had that beer after all.