Shifti - User contributions [en]

User:Leasara

2014-07-03T14:28:40Z

Leasara: /* Leasara */

=Leasara=
==About Me==
I wrote quite a lot for six or seven years starting at age sixteen. By the time I was twenty, I had some 32-35 screenplays and a few sundry short stories and essays. Then some ''Big Dark Things ™'' happened and I gave up on writing, destroying all of that work. Then in the Spring of 2006, the bug got me again and I wrote ''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]'' for [http://foxx.furvect.com/ Foxx's site] where it's listed as ''Exam'' since that's the name of [http://foxx.furvect.com/phase10/Exam.html the picture] it's based on and attributed to ''Lady Amalthea'', since that's my email address. A bit more time passed and in December of 2006 I started writing for the first short story archive I found, [http://doc.furvect.com/ Doc's Lab]. I didn't realize that it was a fetish site at first, but I decided to see if I could write erotica, so most of the stuff I wrote in 2007 has some sort of sexual overtones if it's not just out and out blatant sex. Starting with ''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]'' I have been moving away from the erotic aspect, and am a happier author for it. I think I might still write erotica if it's requested or commissioned, but it's no longer on the menu for my usual stuff.

My style is probably a little rough, but I don't have any real education in regards to writing. I barely graduated high school. Even so, I'm currently working on the first book of what I plan to be a Sci-fi/Fantasy trilogy, the scripts for two web comics I'd like to start, and I usually have no less than four short stories going. My writing style is mostly stream-of-consciousness, I think it lends a nice flow to my writing that seems a bit organic to me, but it also seems to get me stuck for ages if I get interrupted or lose the thread of where the story was going. The novel is the first thing I've ever really planned out, and it's going very slowly. I hope to make a crossover and be a mainstream unicorn.

'''''I welcome all comments and criticisms, and I can be reliably contacted through email''''' (lady.leasara@gmail.com) '''''or introductions first.'''''

==Stories==
<div class="floatright">
{| class="toc" width="300px"
|-
!Legend
|-
|
*[[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - Explicit Sexual Content
*[[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - Illustrated
*[[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] - Work In Progress
|}
</div>
These are arranged in roughly the order I've written them, with the oldest stories at the bottom. For an alphabetical listing you can go to my Category by following the link at the bottom of the page.

===2009===
*'''[[User:Leasara/Door in the Mountain, The|The Door in the Mountain]]''' - March 20, 2009 - An unnamed man falls into a really strange fantasy.
===2008===
*'''The Natural Thing''' - September 30, 2008 - ''Published in Midwest FurFest con book''
:A unicorn discovers something new about herself and is forever changed by the experience.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whims of Fortune|Whims of Fortune]]''' - August 1, 2008
:Frank loves the sea and its beaches, but when he is given a gift from them, things start to change.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Drawing Conclusions|Drawing Conclusions]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - April 4, 2008
:John is an artist that has a pretty lose style, tonight he's getting more involved in his illustration than ever before.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Sacagawea's Journal|Sacagawea's Journal]]''' - March 15, 2008
:A man embarks on a quest to verify the authenticity of an heirloom, what he finds will change everything.
===2007===
*'''[[User:Leasara/What You Eat|What You Eat]]''' - December 30, 2007
:Samantha loves to bake, despite the many and varied warnings she has received from the fire department. She really should have known the cookies didn't come out as perfect as they seemed.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Hope Awakening|Hope Awakening]]''' - December 28, 2007
:The nearness of a loved one sparks a momentary inspiration that fades much too soon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Awakening|Awakening]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - December 24, 2007
:Eventually everyone needs a little support from their friends, but it's the little surprises from those that know you best that can really make a person happy.
*'''[[User:Leasara/They're Coming|They're Coming]]''' - December 20, 2007
:A man finally breaks down after his dog runs away, but subsequent investigations may turn up a story much more sinister.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Refraction|Refraction]]''' - December 11, 2007
:An Xmas Xchange 2007 story that stresses the importance of knowing oneself.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Three-Fourths|Three-Fourths]]''' - November 18, 2007
:Rose, Shelly and Temeka have nothing in common, but a school trip allows them to discover just how close they can be.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Change of Flightplan|Change of Flightplan]]''' - Autumn 2007
:A man waiting for a taxi gets the impetus to make a last minute change in his travel plans.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal|Whiner's Dismissal]]''' - Autumn 2007
:Sometimes those that complain have a point that should be listened to.
*'''Pursuit''' [[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] - July 13, 2007 (Story taken offline while I work on it)
:Aithne and Caradoc had grown up together in the bourg of Eilginn. When Caradoc is suddenly swept away, Aithne can't help but go after him.
*'''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - June 2007
:1870 had the entire world being powered by steam or electricity, but Charles wanted to be a botanist. He could get lost in books that simply related the allure of nature in even the most abstract fashion. Perhaps it was fate that lead him off his path.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Dark Horizons|Dark Horizons]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - Spring 2007
:Allusions of war are lost on a pair of lovers as they are used to display the effects of an ultimate weapon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/As Subtle as Sphinx|As Subtle as Sphinx]]''' - May 2007
:Rose has had a hard time since she was left to the cold Chicago streets, but with a little help from a stranger she might be able to make something of herself after all.
===2006===
*'''[[User:Leasara/Corruption|Corruption]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:A visitor from the near future paints a bleak picture of what is to come as she assaults her former self. Can the past version of her possibly avert the suffering that should never happen?
*'''[[User:Leasara/180 Meters|180 Meters]]''' - December 2006
:After years of papers and theories coupled with a contract from the Navy, Jim has finally managed to find a way to let Lysette swim again. Of course, most scientific advances are not without their setbacks.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Chain Reaction|Chain Reaction]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:Jake was on his way to hang out with his friend Jason, but the girl in the lobby of Jason's building seems to be in some sort of trouble.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Bodies Entwine|Bodies Entwine]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:Simone has sacrificed her entire adult life to save up $10,000, but with the passing of an unknown uncle her situation improves drastically. The question is, how might the inheritance change her?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Look Before You Leopard|Look Before You Leopard]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance run. Get in, gather evidence, get out. However, neither the ex-agent nor the agency that hired him had any idea what exactly they were investigating.
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Dream Dreams the Dreamer|The Dream Dreams the Dreamer]]''' - December 2006
:Can a dream change the world?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Free Solo Dragon|Free Solo Dragon]]''' - December 2006
:Alone with a sheer rock face and her music, Erin is about to find the ultimate thrill.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Slow Change|Slow Change]]''' - December 2006
:An unnamed apartment dweller keeps a journal detailing several strange changes over the course of two weeks in April 2005
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]''' - Spring 2006
:Pete woke up late for his exam. Still he managed to slip into his seat before the test began, thinking that if he could just get through the hour he would have the entire summer break to rest, relax, and recuperate. Little did he know how badly he would need some R&R by the time the hour was out.

{{author page}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leasara}}

Talk:Best of Shifti

2009-06-30T05:06:16Z

Leasara: /* Any progress on this? */ new section

No, no, NO! Not that one! ANYTHING but that one!

Yea, sure, you can use it.

--Michael Bard, Oct 1/2008

:Given that it's going to cost ~$20 a copy to give one to the authors, I voluntarily give up my free copy. I will buy it to support Shifti. I strongly recommend other authors do the same.

:--Michael Bard, Oct 7/2008

Yes. I give full permission to use my story 'Gaia's Rain' in your Anthology.

Felix Sagittarius

Aka James Wolf
10/1 2008

Thank you both! ^^

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 17:51, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Meh. Feel free, so long as the publication process doesn't screw up the formatting.
--[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 20:47, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Go for it. [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] 01:07, 2 October 2008 (EDT)
:Addendum to above: I'd like to receive a contributor's copy. [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] 06:51, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

I hereby give permission to use my story in exchange for a contributor copy of the anthology.
--[[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]] 14:50, 2 October 2008 (PDT)

Hiya! I'd be happy to see Hoof Beat in print - for my part, since this is a fund raiser, a courtesy copy (or two, :grin:) of the book would be all the payment I would look for. Hope it works out! --[[User:Posti|Bob Stein]] 16:30, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

Huh. No objections to using 501st, but I think I've written better ones more recently. Maybe the Perils of Voice Acting. I'll see if I can draw something related and scan it. --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 22:16, 2 October 2008 (EDT)
* Sudden thought - 501st is borderline fan fiction. Lucasarts mostly ignores fan fiction, but a couple of years back there was a lot of trouble when someone wrote a fan novel and put it on Amazon. I'd rather not stir anything up. Maybe this story should be pulled. --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 12:34, 7 October 2008 (EDT)
:Potential is there, always…
:# This is clearly not "Star Wars"
:# Where it does touch on Lucas Arts/Lucas Films licensed material it is edge-on - ie: it doesn't do so in any manner that could be construed as anything but deferential
:# I don't think we have anything that could replace it - and besides, this story is one of the few that received multiple nominations, so it is, quite clearly, one of the "Best of Shifti"
: However… If you feel that strongly about it I will discuss replacements for it with the rest of the administrative staff. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:41, 7 October 2008 (EDT)

:: Hmm. You should have seen the fan rage about that novel; people really thought Lucasarts was going to come down on fanfiction in general. And my story doesn't have just a few name drops or comparisons... I don't feel strongly about it, no, I'm just wary.
:: Guess I'll follow Bard's example and say no copy for me, thanks, but I ''would'' like to see scans of front and back cover. What are you thinking about in terms of cover art? --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 23:07, 7 October 2008 (EDT)
::: The cover is being done by Craven and is planned to be a version of DaVinci's "The Vitruvian Man" showing someone in mid-TF. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 06:12, 8 October 2008 (EDT)
:After discussion among the staff here, we've decided to err on the side of caution and run with your suggested replacement, "The Perils of Voice Acting". -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 09:07, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

You have permission to use "Public Domain" for this collection. However, if I can sell it elsewhere, I reserve the right. I probably won't, mind you. But...
Phil Geusz

Sure, you can use "Sisters Three" as long as Jon approves; he's ''in'' the story so he should have some say. CGM
:I don't mind the story getting included if we make some changes to the names of the characters. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 22:03, 3 October 2008 (EDT)

You may use my story "A Long Forgotten Madness" in your Best of Shifti book. I'm honored that you would so ask. --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 21:40, 3 October 2008 (EDT)

I have no problem with you using "Swift of Foot and Hoof", though someone might want to give it a quick edit first. I'm sure that I ran into the occasional "pronoun trouble" as Sylvester used to say.--[[User:Eirik|Eirik]] 10:51, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

I'd be honored to have my story, ''"What You Eat"'', included in your fund-raising book. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help this along, I can be reached at lady(dot]amalthea[at)gmail(dot]com -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 16:04, 4 October 2008 (EDT)
:Looks like I misread the page, thought we were getting a copy of the book unless we declined it here. I would like to request a complimentary copy, since it's the first time anything of mine will see print and I don't know if I'll be able to afford it otherwise. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 23:15, 28 October 2008 (EDT)

Ye Editor here, with a progress report: I've finished tweaking RUSH HOUR, REPLAY, and TWO-PAGE SUICIDE NOTE. Should I send the edited manuscripts to their authors for review (which is what I'd do if this were ANTHRO)? If not, what ''is'' the protocol? Currently in progress: Working over HOOF BEAT... [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] 06:47, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

I need to trim down "Perils of Voice Acting", but I can't decide what should be cut! I've been blinded to its flaws, and I would really appreciate someone telling me how I can edit it down. --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 13:06, 2 November 2008 (EST)
:I'd suggest you not worry about it - [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] is editing all the stories for us. When he's got each one done he's been sending the edits back to the authors for approval. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 17:29, 2 November 2008 (EST)

== Any progress on this? ==

Just wondering. Haven't heard a thing since I was asked if I wanted to be included, and it looks like the page hasn't seen any action since November 2 of last year. --[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 05:06, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Leasara/What You Eat

2009-04-10T02:02:05Z

Leasara: so many typos...

{{DEFAULTSORT:What You Eat}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Animal]] [[Category:Ambiguous]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This was done in about three hours on the last day of a contest held at the Lab for the winter holidays. I'm not a big fan of the winter holidays, so the closest I connected with it was the cookies. I still love the trigger on this story.}}

{{title
|name=What You Eat
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Samantha wasn't very good at baking, in the same way stones aren't very good at swimming, but every now and then the urge took her to very strange and dark places. This holiday season her casualties included no less than five tubes of various premade cookie doughs, two trays of brownies, and something that theoretically should have resulted in a large pumpkin pie. However she didn't let these glorious failures get her down, and once the smoke had cleared and she was reasonably sure the fire was out, she went back to the supermarket to prowl its aisles for her next victim. This time she thought she might try a mix. Something simple, like a cake or some lemon bars.

The grocery store was disappointingly bare, however. They did have some eight inch round pans for the cake, but the mixes themselves were missing. The naked shelves made her think it was as if the boxes and bags of baking goods knew she was coming. She went to put the cake pans back and met a courtesy clerk doing returns. In the front of his basket, slightly crushed under the weight of a frozen turkey, was a red box with bright gold lettering declaring its contents to be Genderbread Cake and Cookie Mix. She puzzled at the typo for a moment, then helped herself to the contents of the cart.

"Can I help you?" the boy offered.

"No thanks, I just want this gingerbread mix at the front here." she replied without looking up.

"Oh, that has to go back, it's not in the system. In fact, we don't even carry it at all."

Finding her prize at last she wasn't going to give it up so easily. "Well, this looks like the last box in the store, and I really wanted to take something to work tomorrow before the break."

"Yeah, the snow keeps closing down the interstate, so most of the shops around here are getting low on their stock, but we can't sell you something that's not in the system. We're returning it to our distribution center for them to sort out." At least the desert mixes hadn't retreated. It took all of five minutes talking to the store manager to liberate the wayward box, but they didn't have any gingerbread man cookie cutters left. She would have to make due with the Animal Shapes set, since the Halloween set would seem a little too out of place.

Back home, she carefully measured the water according to the directions for cookie dough. She folded in the egg after removing all of the stray shell fragments. She rolled the dough to a uniform thickness of about a quarter inch as the box instructed. She carefully laid out her cookie cutters to get thirteen cookies and placed them on a greased sheet, then rolled out the dough again and made another three cookies. One for everyone at the office. Since it contained raw egg, she threw out the rest of the dough, having learned about the dangers of salmonella poisoning the hard way, twice. Double checking the oven temperature, she set three kitchen timers plus the timer on the microwave and put the baking sheet in the oven. Certain that everything would go well this time, she set about cleaning up the workspace wondering how she had managed to get flour on the ceiling again.

Samantha beamed as she walked into work carrying the foil covered plate. She returned her coworkers' looks of apprehension and astonishment with a giggle and a nod as she strode triumphantly to her desk. Placing her purse in its usual drawer, she retrieved a sign she had prepared on an index card and posted it above the plate before removing its cover. In her best script the sign read, "One Each, Please. Happy Holidays." The cookies certainly smelled edible, and the rest of the staff began to find excuses to walk by her desk for a closer inspection. When they began their second passes, she finally took the top cookie, broke off it's forelimbs and popped them into her mouth. Everyone stopped and stared intently. When she took a second bite the office manager, Rob, was the first one to her desk.

"Plain gingerbread?" he asked as he took his share.

"I didn't want to press my luck with decorating them," Samantha admitted.

"Why the bunny?" was his next question, holding up his earless cookie.

"All they had left were animal shaped cutters. Are they OK?" she wondered.

There was a nervous laugh in his answer, "They're great!" he announced more to the rest of the office than to the woman in front of him. A moment later, after a few muttered thank yous and congratulations, her plate was empty and everyone was munching a morning snack. Samantha, having accomplished one of her life's goals, merrily returned to setting up her cubicle for the day's work. It seemed like the joy of her accomplishment would burst from her chest at any moment, and she had to restrain herself from singing aloud as she typed in her password to log into her workstation, but the keyboard felt strange. While her workspace loaded, she inspected the keys for the source of the velvety feeling, but was met with the same hard black keys she had become accustomed to.

Another distraction popped up as the swelling pride in her chest gave way to an itching heat on the surface of her skin that slowly sank into her stomach. Scratching at her sternum, she felt that same velvet sensation and checked her left hand to find it had a light dusting of black hair growing along the back while the palm side was turning a black leathery texture. Her right hand had taken its explorations down to her moderate bust which seemed to be the source of the irritant. Fear gripped her as she watched her breasts rapidly deflate leaving fairly toned pectoral muscles and shriveling nipples plainly visible in the cups of her bra. The weird warmth was nearing her crotch and she remembered the strange typo on the box. Just then a woman screamed in Rob's office.

Rob flew out of his office, panic as apparent on his face as the two giant orbs of flesh that bounded on his chest as he ran, their nipples threatening to shred his shirt. Even more disturbing to Samantha were the points of a pair of ears poking through his lengthening hair. The rest of the office was on their feet, but she sank to the floor looking at her hands. Trying to ignore the very wrong way her slacks no longer fit, she began to think. She had eaten the forelegs of her cookie first, Rob had eaten the ears. Her hands were quite black, and their backs were covered in fur, but otherwise they were unchanged. Everyone had rushed to Rob's aid, and she peeked around the end of her cubicle to see what was going on.

His pants had ripped along the seams to make room for his hips, and the only people that would mistake him for a man were those present in this room. Among the rest of the employees, she could see a fox tail, a horse tail, and what she hoped was a chameleon tail. Most everyone had become more concerned about themselves and their ridiculous proportions and changing hides. Everyone had an obvious problem in their pants, and most of the former guys were struggling with their new additions up top. Sam slunk back into her cubicle before anyone caught her spying.

The fur that had claimed her hands had turned a brownish gray on her upper arms, and she deftly retrieved the powder compact from her purse. In its mirror she confirmed that her cookie was not, in fact, a dog with a fat tail as dark circles formed around her eyes, trailing down her cheek to form a mask in her fur. She wanted to cry at the thought of what she had done to her friends, even as she told herself that she had no way of knowing this would happen. A menagerie of semi-human noises assaulted her ears as they twitched higher on her head and the last of her hair was absorbed by her fur. She decided to stop blaming herself as she took stock of her body again.

The tail was coming in at the base of her spine with the telltale heat. It was making her slacks even more uncomfortable, and she undid the clasp and slid them down her legs. Waiting between her legs was a sight that might have gotten her quite excited if it weren't on her body. In fact, as the fur moved to claim her new appendage, she was only slightly surprised to find that her preferences in that department seemed to be as malleable as the rest of her in the grip of whatever was happening. Hazarding another peek, she found that most of the rest of the room had quieted down and was probably in a similar contemplation. It was only natural given the situation, Sam decided.

He took off the blouse and bra that he had worn to work and left them in a pile with his slacks. The fur had begun it's march down his legs, taking care of what little modesty concerns he had left, and he rose to find that he could barely see over the three foot wall on the back of his cubicle. He had a sort of waddle to his walk as his hips were still warm, indicating that they were probably still settling in. Rob was almost all bunny now, having lost that impossible chest. Sam wondered what might have happened if the store wasn't out of the gingerbread man cutter. The image of him bouncing around behind his chest suddenly had very different implications than it had when he rushed out of his office twenty minutes ago.

Everyone was watching Sam while he hurried along as fast as his shortening legs would carry him. His goal was the office door, which was the only real barrier between them and freedom that would require hands. John, who would make a nice painted filly once her face finished coming in, fell in behind Sam since it was unlikely, she reasoned, he would be able to hold the door open himself. The pair got the door open, then Sam got a desk calendar and jammed it into the doorway over the bottom hinge to prop it open without blocking passage. Their procession startled the mail carrier as he made the morning rounds, but such a diverse group of animals walking quietly down the hall would have had most anyone questioning their sanity. The carrier finally decided not to report the incident when they called the elevator, filed in one after the other and pressed the button for the parking garage level one. Who would believe the raccoon had smiled and waved at him?

User:Leasara/Drawing Conclusions

2009-03-20T08:39:14Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:Drawing Conclusions}} [[Category:Adult]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Anthropomorphic]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}} {{XXX}}

{{author's note|This was done as my half of a trade with iCheetah.}}

{{title
|name=Drawing Conclusions
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

John eased into his desk chair, breaking the seal on a new set of colored pencils. He loved the scent of wood and wax that spread through his workspace as he lined them up in their little holder that ran along the side of the drafting table. He had a good idea of what he would be drawing, a jaguar warrior holding a spear while crouched in a tree, but the image in his mind kept moving, even his fur patterns refused to settle. As he continued to line up his pencils then set out his erasers, the little ritual of getting everything in place helped crystallize the warrior's form. Taking the non-photo blue in hand, he began roughing in the shape.

He had never been able to come up with a solid image and draw it, instead he would get an overall idea of what he wanted to do and let the details sort themselves out as he went. This gave his style a loose appearance, since everything was apt to change in the process, but also instilled his drawings with a feeling of their own life. His warrior didn't seem to want to crouch today, so he was standing instead, holding onto a higher branch, most likely. The branch wasn't behaving either, it was too regular, maybe it was the door frame of a hut then. As the sketch progressed the hut had somehow become an apartment, in fact, it was starting to resemble his own place. The warrior had a rather lusty look about him leaning on the door frame, and his loincloth turned out to be a pair of boxer shorts.

It had been a while since he had drawn anything overtly erotic, and then it had almost always started with a female character. Holding his pencil under his lip for a moment, he sat back and considered what was already on the page. The sketch itself was more or less ready for inking, but the composition seemed off. The warrior was obviously looking forward to an evening with a companion, but she was missing from the frame. There were a number of places she could go, sitting at his desk chair or reclined on the sofa against the wall. Maybe standing in the arch that lead to the kitchen. Thinking of the kitchen, he decided to make a sandwich and mull over the problem of her placement.

He flopped onto the couch across the room from his desk to eat taking better stock of the space. At his desk, she would have to be facing away from the viewer, which might work rather well. She could be sitting sideways in the chair with one arm on its back and the other on the desk, her legs leaning to one side, crossed at the ankles. Might be a little too much of a cheesecake pin-up shot though. In the kitchen arch, the warrior wouldn't be able to see her after all, and having them both standing wouldn't look right anyway. The couch's end was almost exactly opposite the doorway his warrior occupied in the sketch. Finishing his sandwich, he leaned over, approximating where she would be. They would both have an nice view of each other.

She would be a lighter cat, something sleeker, like a cheetah. Her toned muscles lending more curves to her curves. Of course, if she had her head on the other end of the sofa, he shifted to get a better idea of the pose, he might have to redraw the wall a bit but the shot could be from her point of view. He could almost see it, her bust at the bottom of the page, framing her tail drooping over her hip and maintaining some of her modesty. Her hands playing with the tip of the tail while below them her legs lay lightly on the far cushion, and her lover standing in the door right where the-

He blinked a moment and rubbed his eyes before looking to the doorway again. There stood the sketch of his warrior, quickly gaining definition. He heard himself giggle nervously as he glanced back to the sheet on his drafting table, and as near as he could tell from across the room, there was more color than there ought to be on the page. Trying to rise from the couch to get a better look, he seemed to be bound by some invisible force. Desperately he tried to call out for help, to get the attention of one of his neighbors, but no one answered his cry.

The jaguar before him had been done in flat colors, and now his spots were drawing and redrawing themselves. They finally came to rest, and the figure received a quick shading job. Shadow played over his form, and it was like watching someone motionlessly step through the fifth dimension and it taking a moment for the new environment's light to figure out how to land on him. The spectacle of his character coming off of the page had stilled John, and he watched quietly. The cat in the doorway achieved a level of realism that photo manipulation artists try to achieve before it started breathing. Slowly a new scent mingled with the smell of acrylics and brush cleaner that wafted through the door. He smelled almost exactly like the lion cages at the zoo if you could filter out the wet cement and popcorn.

John had always considered himself bi-curious. In his twenty three years he had been excited by men on six occasions before, though three of those had been his own drawings, but had never had the nerve to act on those urges. Tonight he questioned if he would have the option to refuse, and a chill ran down his back. Actually, it ran down his front too, and he wondered what had happened to his clothes. The warrior strode up next to him and sat by John's stomach. He began to trace one perfect claw across his chest, making figure-eights as his hand strayed towards John's belly. It felt very nice, maybe better than it ought to, and John was surprised to hear a low quiet rumble coming from somewhere under the top of his sternum.

The jaguar smiled down at John once he started purring. For his part, John didn't know what to make of things. His partner was a very attractive cat, but he had imagined a woman to be his mate. Answering his concerns, his warrior began to reposition him on the couch, closer approximating the final pose he had seen in his mind. A pair of moderate breasts soon graced his chest, their weight changing his purring slightly. They vibrated with every soft rumble in his chest, which only served to heighten his excitement. Being the starving artist type, he had been rather skinny, but still his waist drew in on itself, moving its mass lower on his frame. This was absurd. It couldn't be happening, he must have fallen asleep on his couch after the sandwich.

His apparent partner continued his ministrations, teasing and raising John's emotions and confusion. He began massaging John's thighs letting his thumbs stray close to his member, which was obstinately remaining soft in spit of the attentions it was receiving. In fact it began to sink under a rising mound of flesh that had already consumed the contents of his scrotum. His equipment was further altering its configuration to be more compatible with the warrior's growing weapon, and the most John could do to complain about the situation was a series of soft mewing gasps between purrs. Fine hair began to sprout around her navel, slowly at first before rapidly spreading over her stomach and breasts, clearing any doubt that he was becoming the cheetah he had imagined for his jaguar. Under the wave of fur she gained the muscle tone he had always wanted but had never done anything about.

The fur was white on her belly and breasts bordered by a black stripe along her stomach then light gold on her sides where her spots started. Her warrior had finished her legs, now ending in a paw-like foot. As he took her around the waist, she could feel the claws on her toes extending as the digits wriggled seemingly of their own accord. He gently licked the top of her chest, as if to coax the fur further up her lightening frame. He nuzzled her neck in front of its advance and her nose began to push into view, partially obscuring the cat she had become. Her silent partner, she wished she had come up with a name for him, shifted a bit to reach her ears. She discovered she was free to move again, and found herself embracing the other cat as his hot breath slid over her ear heralding the arrival of his teeth. He was very careful as he pulled, first one, then the other ear to their final position and shape. Finally, one hand glided up her back to stroke her short brown hair. With each pas of his massive paws, it lengthened and lightened until it fell mid-way down her back in tawny curls.

She couldn't imagine what had caused this change, if it had happened at all and he wasn't just passed out in his apartment having feverish dreams after a bad tuna sandwich. Taking her mate's hand, she carefully rolled them both off the couch as she pushed those thoughts out of her mind. Instead, she decided that whatever was the cause of all this, she was going to enjoy it tonight, and she followed the nameless warrior into her bedroom.

User:Leasara/Sacagawea's Journal

2009-03-20T08:37:33Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sacagawea's Journal}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Mythical]] [[Category:Aquatic]] [[Category:Animal]][[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This was done as a collaboration with Tincrash . He wanted to do an otter TF, I came up with a story. He may be doing illustrations for this in the future.}}

{{title
|name=Sacagawea's Journal
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

The journal was nearly two centuries old by the time it came into Jonas Clark's hands, having been in his family since his ancestor had returned from his historic exploration of the Pacific Northwest. It was bound in dark leather, but its stiff pages had fallen victim to time, so he carried copies of a transcript he had typed of their contents. This way the precious book was secure in a safety deposit box in Florida while he followed its directions to their ultimate goal on the Pacific Ocean.

When he had brought the book to the attention of his history professor at TSU, the response was not what he had anticipated. In fact, historians knew Sacagawea to be illiterate, so as far as his professor was concerned the book was a very nice forgery. Even as a forgery it would have held some historic value, but Jonas couldn't let it pass as anything other than genuine, so he had spent the last nine weeks in an old VW Vanagon conversion retracing the path laid out in its print looking for something that might prove that it had originated from the Lewis and Clark expedition. Most of the landmarks mentioned were easy to verify, but they were all common enough knowledge after the expedition had returned that their inclusion had only supported his professor's assertion that he held an artful counterfeit. Soon, however, he would reach an area where a single curious line had been penned all those years ago.

"(The scout party) was too near (the cave or site), (took them) back to (the river or landing)." was the best translation he could manage of her rough script. She wrote in a mixture of French and English, substituting pictograms for words and ideas she couldn't manage otherwise. She was hired as a translator to the natives, but also served as a guide on the journey. If he could find whatever it was that she had avoided and add that to the rest of the sites he had surveyed, he was certain the book would be validated. As near as he could tell, the entry had been made in early November 1805, which put the expedition on the Columbia River some thirty-five to forty miles East of Vancouver. Tomorrow's hike would put him at the beginning of that range if he didn't take the time to explore the shore too much as the expedition would have.

It was approaching half past seven when the sun finally crested the mountains though the sky had turned azure an hour before that. He had gotten used to the strange daybreak of the steep valleys on his journey, and as the first rays began to hit his broad shoulders directly he began the day's trek. Nine weeks on the trail had melted away two years of the physique dorm life had given him with its pizza and takeout and replaced it with a soft muscular build that he decided to try to maintain once he was back on campus. With his new trim form and the stout jaw that he had always been proud of he should be able to more than make up for his dull brown tangle of curly hair and broad nose that he had never liked. He thought it made his hazel eyes look too small and strangely spaced. With the change in his looks and the publicity from the paper he would write during the fall semester, he imagined he would have his pick among the co-eds. These thoughts lightened his step under his heavy pack and he was within his estimated range of the cave or site before noon.

Camping was not allowed along the river, but there were little towns that dotted the highway along its banks where he was able to resupply and spend a night or two in a comfortable bed. Still he would speed most of the weeks under his backpack and sleeping under the stars or in his little pup tent. The nights were warm and he had a backpacking stove, so there would be no need of a fire. Breaking camp he made a light lunch before heading out to survey the countryside for the afternoon.

He was on a small creek that fed a larger stream which in turn fed the Columbia River. Thus far he had seen many noted historical sites, but nothing that might have been described as both a cave and a site, which is what he had decided would fulfill his requirements. By three in the afternoon he still had had no luck and decided to sit and eat his sandwich before looking for a suitable camping site. Finding a nice rock with a nearly flat top in the middle of a little clearing that offered a view of his creek on one side and the river on the other, he had his lunch. He was just starting the second half of the sandwich when he noticed the little game trail that ran from the creek and practically under his perch before continuing into some brush at the base of a low bluff.

It looked like a rabbit trail, and finishing his lunch he confirmed his thoughts with the discovery of rabbit spoor. Following the trail into the scrub, he found that it had not turned to run along the base of the bluff as he had guessed, but terminated at the base of three small improbably placed boulders where a slight depression had been dug under the crevice where two of them rested together. The stones themselves had been worn smooth and looked more like river rocks than large stones. Realization of how out of place they looked started a small thrill in the pit of Jonas's stomach, and he leapt back to the platform where he had eaten to get a better look at the area.

The Columbia was about two hours away on foot, and though farms swarmed its larger tributaries, there wasn't so much as a service road along the stream he had come up yesterday. It was well within range of a survey team if they had landed at the sandbar at the stream's confluence, but there wasn't much that he could see that might have been of interest to draw them up here. Unless it was this clearing itself. Perhaps it was a hunting party stalking game and not a research party that had worried Sacagawea. Dropping his pack on the friendly flat rock, he found a stout fallen branch and returned to the three curious boulders. Prying the front most from where it lay against the rear two, he was rewarded with a blast of dank musty air from a triangular opening he could probably squeeze through. A moment later he returned with his flashlight and a hip pack containing his keys, wallet, and some basic survival and first aid essentials, just in case.

The two other boulders were held solidly in place in the side of the hill, but with some work he managed to pull himself through and into a space he could comfortably crawl in before it opened up to a cavern so large the beam from his little mini-mag knock off couldn't reach the far side. The floor was a rough grey stone that had a noticeable slant towards the back of the cave, and the moisture in the air made the floor feel slicker than it really was. The walls were a darker gray stone that was very slick from the moisture. They leaned in towards the roof and had relatively large symbols chipped into their otherwise smooth surface. On the floor under each symbol were what appeared to be small stone lamps. He could hardly contain his excitement at having found the place that would finally testify to the journal having been written by Sacagawea.

The area had a rough oval shape to it that was maybe twenty feet across the short way and thirty the long way with a ceiling high enough that his meager flash light didn't seem to reach it. The far side of the cave had a passage that dropped away steeply on its left side, and on the right was a deep depression that was black from ancient fires, but now held the bedding of the rabbit that had claimed the cavern. This place definitely held some significance at one point in time, but it was obviously no longer used. He was aching to get a better look at his discovery, so he picked up some of the dry grass and twisted it into a serviceable wick. From his hip pack he pulled his fire starting kit made up of a one ounce plastic bottle of lamp oil and a box of weatherproof matches, then he picked one of the stone lamps roughly in the center of the longer wall. It had a concave plate to hold the oil and a small nick in the rim to let the wick sit under a pebble then rest on a special flat spot. Once he was satisfied that the wick was no longer dry, he struck a match and in a moment had a small but strong flame.

Its dim light cast a warm glow on both walls, almost reaching the ends of the room affording him a better overall view of the place. With its added illumination he found that the ceiling wasn't very high after all, but it was black from the soot of those same ancient fires. His disappointing flash light did still serve to brighten different individual things around the room for closer inspection, but without the lamp's light he wouldn't have noticed that the other lamps had animals carved into their base. He was marveling at the detail of the rabbit on the lamp next to his when his lungs began to ache and his hands started cramping.

"The air must be more stale than I expected," was his first thought. Dowsing the oil lamp with another small stone from the floor, he decided to let the cave breathe overnight while he went back to town to get a couple lanterns. As he rose, however, he became dizzy and the room seemed to stretch before him, the entrance retreating from his advance. His flashlight fell to the floor, its beam rolling back around to shed its light on the recently extinguished lamp and the symbol on the wall behind it. He soon followed the flashlight with a thud and sat bewildered rubbing his aching hands.

They felt strange, somehow smaller than they should be, and the nails seemed to have a higher dome than they should. In fact, as his mind clouded further his whole body felt like it didn't fit properly, then he felt the webbing coming up between his fingers. Some part of his befuddled mind knew what he was feeling couldn't be possible, and was more likely some form of hallucination brought on by the bad air in the cave. He dearly wished that he had prepared better for actually finding what he was looking for. Suddenly the air seemed to thicken and it was even harder to breathe. He felt very hot sitting on the clammy floor with his legs splayed before him, and flopped to his side to rest his head on the cool floor. The impact of the motion seemed to stab his cheek in several places near his nose, and he wondered at this for a moment, but it didn't seem so important. At the same time the motion pulled his feet through the air, flinging one of his shoes off of his shrunken foot. His entire body seemed to be screaming at him in pain, but he couldn't manage to focus on any of it. As he sunk further into euphoria, he completely lost track of himself.

His hands had become smaller even before he dowsed his oil lamp, and by the time he fell to his rear they were well on their way to their final shape. By that time as well, his arms and legs had lost a lot of their length. His feet had also become much shorter and rounder, all of his limbs began sprouting a dense slick brown fur before he dropped to his side. By that time as well the changes had taken most of the human traits out of his face, and a fine set of whiskers graced his short muzzle. As he lay on the ground, his tail grew to a little more than twice the length of his stubby legs revealing his naked form from the waist down including a radically different crotch. At least physically he was no longer male, and in his delirious state he vocalized little chirps and murrs as his body contorted and twisted into a more streamlined form. His arms and head had been lost in his t-shirt for a moment before he twisted out of it, and soon he bore a striking resemblance to the river otter holding up the lamp he had lit earlier.

As his senses returned to him, there was more otter than Jonas Clark in his mind. He was stunned at the extent of the changes as the creature bounded for the entrance, and what little was left of him struggled to gain control over the joyful entity that was sharing his body. She was feeding him information on his new form while they ran for the creek that would eventually lead them to the river. It was an awkward communication at first, but with her guidance he could feel a part of his mind locked away, carrying most of what he had lost, he hoped. Her method of speaking to him was more like a barrage of sensory data that he might have had an easier time of comprehending if he hadn't grown up living in a city or if he was a little more than just a self-aware shell of what he had been. As direct as it was, it confused him more than another language might have, and this seemed to delight her. He did get a sense that she had been more or less confined in whatever it was that lamp connected to, and now that she was in the corporeal world again she was going to have some fun.

He did marvel at how the simple act of running in her bounding lope seemed to fill them both with a simple pleasure he had never experience before. This was doubled, at least, once they started their easy glide down the creek to join the stream. Faster than he could believe they were in the Columbia River, playing along its shores and searching for any tasty morsel that might swim by. Swimming as an otter in her element was possible the best thing he would ever experience, even better than sex, though at the moment he didn't want to consider that prospect. When that thought had crossed his mind, she stopped for a chilling moment and seemed to contemplate finding a partner to help really broaden his horizons. Ultimately they wound up spending the afternoon fishing before finding a place to sleep shortly after sunset. His companion of the afternoon seemed to fall asleep first, and he was alarmed to lose her presence and finally regain control over his altered form.

After missing his weekly phone call home for a second time, a search was called for the wayward backpacker. The red nylon of his backpack was easily spotted in the clearing during a flyover, and the forest service almost lost a ranger to the same magics that were assumed to have taken Jonas. She had lit the lamp he had prepared two weeks earlier, but her companions had managed to subdue her before she got out of the cave. With the timely intervention of a nearby tribe, she managed to tell the story of her meeting with the playful spirit. The veracity of Sacagawea's Journal was proven as Jonas had hoped, but he wasn't found for another twenty years, by which time he was ancient by otter standards. Given the choice, she elected to stay in the wild that had become her home by that time. She made a remarkable otter, outliving several generations of her own offspring.

User:Leasara/What You Eat

2009-03-20T08:36:32Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:What You Eat}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Animal]] [[Category:Ambiguous]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This was done in about three hours on the last day of a contest held at the Lab for the winter holidays. I'm not a big fan of the winter holidays, so the closest I connected with it was the cookies. I still love the trigger on this story.}}

{{title
|name=What You Eat
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Samantha wasn't very good at baking, in the same way stones aren't very good at swimming, but every now and then the urge took her to very strange and dark places. This holiday season her casualties included no less than five tubes of various premade cookie doughs, two trays of brownies, and something that theoretically should have resulted in a large pumpkin pie. However, she didn't let these glorious failures get her down, and once the smoke had cleared and she was reasonably sure the fire was out, she went back to the supermarket to prowl it's aisles for her next victim. This time she thought she might try a mix. Something simple, like a cake or some lemon bars.

The grocery store was disappointingly bare, however. They did have some eight inch round pans for the cake, but the mixes themselves were missing. The naked shelves made her think it was as if they knew she was coming. She went to put the cake pans back and met a courtesy clerk doing returns. In front of his basket, slightly crushed under the weight of a frozen turkey, was a red box with bright gold lettering declaring it's contents to be Genderbread Cake and Cookie Mix. She puzzled at the typo for a moment, then helped herself to the contents of the cart.

"Can I help you?" the boy offered.

"No thanks, I just want this gingerbread mix at the front here." she replied without looking up.

"Oh, that has to go back, it's not in the system. In fact, we don't even carry it at all."

Finding her prize at last she wasn't going to give it up so easily. "Well, this looks like the last box in the store, and I really wanted to take something to work tomorrow before the break."

"Yeah, the snow keeps closing down the interstate, so most of the shops around here are getting low on their stock, but we can't sell you something that's not in the system. We're returning it to our distribution center for them to sort out." At least the desert mixes hadn't retreated. It took all of five minutes talking to the store manager to liberate the wayward box, but they didn't have any Gingerbread Man cookie cutters left. She would have to make due with the Animal Shapes set, since the Halloween set would seem a little too out of place.

Back home, she carefully measured the water according to the directions for cookie dough. She folded in the egg after removing all of the stray shell fragments. She rolled to dough to a uniform thickness of about a quarter inch as the box instructed. She carefully laid out her cookie cutters to get thirteen cookies and placed them on a greased sheet, then rolled out the dough again and made another three cookies. One for everyone at the office. Since it contained raw egg, she threw out the rest of the dough, having learned about the dangers of salmonella poisoning the hard way, twice. Double checking the oven temperature, she set three kitchen timers plus the timer on the microwave and put the baking sheet in the oven. Certain that everything would go well this time, she set about cleaning up the workspace wondering how she had managed to get flour on the ceiling again.

Samantha beamed as she walked into work carrying the foil covered plate. She returned her coworkers' looks of apprehension and astonishment with a giggle and a nod as she strode triumphantly to her desk. Placing her purse in its usual drawer, she retrieved a sign she had prepared on an index card and posted it above the plate before removing its cover. In her best script the sign read, "One Each, Please. Happy Holidays." The cookies certainly smelled edible, and the rest of the staff began to find excuses to walk by her desk for a closer inspection. When they began their second passes, she finally took the top cookie, broke off it's forelimbs and popped them into her mouth. Everyone stopped and stared intently. When she took a second bite the office manager, Rob, was the first one to her desk.

"Plain gingerbread?" he asked as he took his share.

"I didn't want to press my luck with decorating them," Samantha admitted.

"Why the bunny?" was his next question, holding up his earless cookie.

"All they had left were animal shaped cutters. Are they OK?" she wondered.

There was a nervous laugh in his answer, "They're great!" he announced more to the rest of the office than to the woman in front of him. A moment later, after a few muttered thank yous and congratulations, her plate was empty and everyone was munching a morning snack. Samantha, having accomplished one of her life's goals, merrily returned to setting up her cubicle for the day's work. It seemed like the joy of her accomplishment would burst from her chest at any moment, and she had to restrain herself from singing aloud as she typed in her password to log into her workstation, but the keyboard felt strange. While her workspace loaded, she inspected the keys for the source of the velvety feeling, but was met with the same hard black keys she had become accustomed to.

Another distraction popped up as the swelling pride in her chest gave way to an itching heat on the surface of her skin that slowly sank into her stomach. Scratching at her sternum, she felt that same velvet sensation and checked her left hand to find it had a light dusting of black hair growing along the back while the palm side was turning a black leathery texture. Her right hand had taken its explorations down to her moderate bust which seemed to be the source of the irritant. Fear gripped her as she watched her breasts rapidly deflate leaving fairly toned pectoral muscles and shriveling nipples plainly visible in the cups of her bra. The weird warmth was nearing her crotch and she remembered the strange typo on the box. Just then a woman screamed in Rob's office.

Rob flew out of his office, panic as apparent on his face as the two giant orbs of flesh that bounded on his chest as he ran, their nipples threatening to shred his shirt. Even more disturbing to Samantha were the points of a pair of ears poking through his lengthening hair. The rest of the office was on their feet, but she sank to the floor looking at her hands. Trying to ignore the very wrong way her slacks no longer fit, she began to think. She had eaten the forelegs of her cookie first, Rob had eaten the ears. Her hands were quite black, and their backs were covered in fur, but otherwise they were unchanged. Everyone had rushed to Rob's aid, and she peeked around the end of her cubicle to see what was going on.

His pants had ripped along the seams to make room for his hips, and the only people that would mistake him for a man were those present in this room. Among the rest of the employees, she could see a fox tail, a horse tail, and what she hoped was a chameleon tail. Most everyone had become more concerned about themselves and their ridiculous proportions and changing hides. Everyone had an obvious problem in their pants, and most of the former guys were struggling with their new additions up top. Sam slunk back into her cubicle before anyone caught her spying.

The fur that had claimed her hands had turned a brownish gray on her upper arms, and she deftly retrieved the powder compact from her purse. In it's mirror she confirmed that her cookie was not, in fact, a dog with a fat tail as dark circles formed around her eyes, trailing down her cheek to form a mask in her fur. She wanted to cry at the thought of what she had done to her friends, even as she told herself that she had no way of knowing this would happen. A menagerie of semi-human noises assaulted her ears as they twitched higher on her head and the last of her hair was absorbed by her fur. She decided to stop blaming herself as she took stock of her body again.

The tail was coming in at the base of her spine with the telltale heat. It was making her slacks even more uncomfortable, and she undid the clasp and slid them down her legs. Waiting between her legs was a sight that might have gotten her quite excited if it weren't on her body. In fact, as the fur moved to claim her new appendage, she was only slightly surprised to find that her preferences in that department seemed to be as malleable as the rest of her in the grip of whatever was happening. Hazarding another peek, she found that most of the rest of the room had quieted down and was probably in a similar contemplation. It was only natural given the situation, Sam decided.

He took off the blouse and bra that he had worn to work and left them in a pile with his slacks. The fur had begun it's march down his legs, taking care of what little modesty concerns he had left, and he rose to find that he could barely see over the three foot wall on the back of his cubicle. He had a sort of waddle to his walk as his hips were still warm, indicating that they were probably still settling in. Rob was almost all bunny now, having lost that impossible chest. Sam wondered what might have happened if the store wasn't out of the gingerbread men cutter. The image of him bouncing around behind his chest suddenly had very different implications than it had when he rushed out of his office twenty minutes ago.

Everyone was watching Sam while he hurried along as fast as his shortening legs would carry him. His goal was the office door, which was the only real barrier between them and freedom that would require hands. John, who would make a nice painted filly once her face finished coming in, fell in behind Sam since it was unlikely, she reasoned, he would be able to hold the door open himself. The pair got the door open, then Sam got a desk calendar and jammed it into the doorway over the bottom hinge to prop it open without blocking passage. Their procession startled the mail carrier as he made the morning rounds, but such a diverse group of animals walking quietly down the hall would have had most anyone questioning their sanity. The carrier finally decided not to report the incident when they called the elevator, filed in one after the other and pressed the button for the parking garage level one. Who would believe the raccoon had smiled and waved at him?

User:Leasara/Hope Awakening

2009-03-20T08:35:47Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hope Awakening}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This was just a quick thing my muse beat out of me. I was supposed to go shopping, but she wouldn't hear of me wasting my time buying a blanket to keep myself warm until after this little vignette was complete enough.}}

{{title
|name=Hope Awakening
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

"C'mere, hun." There was a sadness to the plea that drew me to lie down next to my adopted sister. I had known her for some six months, chatted with her online a bit was all, but a scant eight weeks ago we had adopted each other. Now I was sharing her bedroom, sleeping on a pull out sofa bed that might have been older than me and hadn't aged near as well as I had in it's thirty years. Consider that I've been disabled for the last three of my thirty years, and you might begin to get an idea of the state of the poor love seat.

The last couple of days we had been having too much fun and it had eaten away at her sleep time, so when her love interest broke up with her from two thousand miles away, she didn't have much in reserve. She had gotten home about an hour ago, we had plans to run to the store, but she was far too exhausted to make the trek even if she couldn't tell. Having climbed onto the rickety bed where I had been writing all night, she fell asleep almost immediately. This was a slight problem, since I hadn't eaten in twelve hours and my stomach was starting to voice it's concern over this. Excusing myself as quietly as I could I snuck upstairs to make a bowl of oatmeal.

Returning with my prize, I found she had moved back to her own bed, a queen sized pillow top purchased second hand from the hotel she works for. My meal was finished quicker than I would have liked, and she was snoring softly from the other side of the room. That was when I decided our jaunt for some bedding could wait a few hours and went to turn off the light. Unfortunately, my sleeping bag is rather noisy and the commotion of me getting out of bed stirred her from her light slumber. "C'mere, hun." she mumbled, and I couldn't do anything else but comply.

She had offered to trade beds with me somewhat frequently during my stay, and now that she had finally gotten me to lie down on it, she pointed out how comfortable it was again. I suppose this is where I should tell you that, even though we were sisters, neither of us was born in a particularly feminine body. If I let that tidbit go much longer, the next part won't make much sense. In fact, that was one of the factors that had prompted us to adopt each other, the way neither of our chromosomes matches our personalities. She likes to point out that I'm further along than she is, but I don't really know that it's something that can be measured so simply.

I've never been an intimate sort of person. Some folks say it's because I've been raped twice, others think it's because my physical body is so divergent from my mental image of who I know myself to be. I don't think either of those are the root cause, but I suppose they could contribute. However, when I lay down with my adopted sister, something strange started to happen. It was perfectly innocent, I was even above the covers that she was under, but I lay there with my neck resting on her wrist and she fell asleep, then I had this ephemeral epiphany.

Suddenly everything was crystal clear, like the cogs and springs of the universe were laid out on a jeweler's cloth all neatly labeled. The laws of physics, laws of thermal dynamics, laws of biology, they were all more like suggestions. They were in place just because that's the way things had started to work at the beginning, but it didn't mean they couldn't work differently. It was as if causality itself was simply coincidence, things continued to happen as they did simply because that's the way they always had happened. Then that translated physically.

It was as though a string had been pulled that was the final lace binding me in a garment I had worn for so long I had forgotten it was there. Like water bound in a balloon that was suddenly released by the edge of a razor sharp blade, for an instant my form held, then rushed to what I perceived to be it's natural state. I felt myself slide on top of the simple cotton comforter as my shoulders and heels were elastically drawn several inches each toward my hips, which took up the slack by expanding to a gentile cradle. The shock of the nearly instant change rippled through my softer tissue, redistributing much of my mass in a moment. Then the more subtle things started happening.

With a slight tickle, my foreskin slackened before an unknown force pulled it taut, reeling in my vanishing member and allowing the glans to nestle into it's new home. My scrotum had been bisected in the process, and was pulling itself tight as fast as my gonads were shrinking. They shot over my pelvic bone with a sucking gurgle noise and came to rest somewhere deep inside me, but the gurgling only got louder. My new labia having reached their final location, the changes focused their attention inward connecting to wherever my gonads had wound up. The whole process only took a moment, a fraction of a second, but the events were as clear in my mind as though it had happened over a half hour or so. Then I made a mistake.

I tried to comprehend my ephinany. Some part of me couldn't accept this as some karmic gift from the universe and tried to dissect and categorize every little thing of what I had been shown and what had just happened. If I live another thousand years I don't think I'll lose the regret I feel today, for as quickly as my body had become the way I knew it should be, the laces were redone on my prison, and it felt even more restrictive for that moment of freedom. All that had happened was undone even faster than the few seconds the radical changes had taken in the first place.

Now I've taken an hour to write this all out, and I can still feel myself as I should be like a soldier's phantom limb. She walks right behind me again, right where she's been my entire life.

User:Leasara/They're Coming

2009-03-20T08:34:37Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:They're Coming}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| I forget who I was chatting with, but I suddenly got the beat from the Dr. Demento classic ''They're Coming to Take Me Away'' stuck in my head. The song is about a guy that goes insane after his dog runs away. My story is also about a guy that goes insane after his dog runs away, but the dog herself might dispute the state of his sanity before she ever met him.}}

{{title
|name=They're Coming
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

"Nine one one, what is your emergency?" Joan's tone was flat, a result of desensitization from years of dealing with the worst kind of crises.

"It worked! Oh Jesus, I didn't think it would. Not like that."

"Sir? What worked? Are you injured?"

"I gave it to her. I did it! But that was... I mean, that was supposed to happen, but I didn't think it would, you know?" He seemed to be in shock. The Emergency Address System placed him about thirty miles out of town in an abandoned and mostly dismantled chemical plant. Joan rolled the Sheriff and EMS just to be safe.

"Sir, I need you to calm down and tell me whats going on. Can you do that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I can... Wait, what? No, she hasn't come back, you see. I thought she would come back for sure. Two days, tops. I told her. I told her what would happen and she left anyway. Six years, you know? I was so close. We were so close and she just up and left. She left! I told her what it would do to me. What it would do to her. She left anyway and she hasn't come back. It's too late now. Much too late. They're coming, right? You sent them already, didn't you. Didn't you? They're coming to take me away... I know..."

"I knew what would happen. I told her. She wouldn't listen. She stopped taking them and she wouldn't listen. Not even when I told her. Not even when her teeth fell out. She wouldn't listen to me. We were so close. How did she get out? I was so careful, how did she get loose? I cooked for her, you know? I cleaned up after her, and she never thanked me. Even once, she never thanked me. I can't stand it. What am I supposed to do? Do you know? She never talked to me the last two years, but last week she laughed. Her hands!"

The shrill scream caused Joan to throw her headset to the desk and topple her chair as she jumped out of it clutching her ears. Her training taught her to keep the caller talking until help arrived, but there was something unnerving in his giddy recollection. For the first time in a long time, Joan was becoming emotionally invested in a call. She was frightened, but she didn't know if her fears were for the the man on the line or for the girl he was talking about. The commotion had drawn the attention of the Shift Leader, and a red LED on her phone let Joan know he was listening in. Reticently, she picked up her headset and resumed her job.

"- anymore they would have come off easy. How did I miss that? Lab's are so much thinner than people's after all. I should have known. I should have known. It's why she laughed. She laughed and now they're coming to take me away. And I can't help her on the funny farm. Oh no. They'll find her and she'll go to the ASPCA and I can't help her there. I should have seen it. How did I miss it? It was hard to look at her after it started. But I did. I watched and I tried to tell her, but she wouldn't listen. She just laughed. She was crazy! I wonder if it hurt?"

"She threw up everything I fed her the first two days. I knew she would, it was happening inside. I wonder what it felt like? I could see it. Before it happened, I could see it. Her skin stretched over her bones as they moved. It wasn't pleasant to watch, even though I did. She looked emaciated, you know? But I fed her. I fed her and cleaned up after her, and she never thanked me. Never once. And then she stopped taking it and it changed her like I told her. Why wouldn't she listen? Do you know? When her feet grew, I should have seen it then. But it took days, you know? I mean, they are bones after all."

"It took days. How could I see through time? She cried until she could eat again, and then the muscles came with the tail. Her face was the same, I think, even when she left. She wasn't human anymore, but I still loved her. She left me all alone. God, I love her. Have you found her? Hello? Have you found her? She'll be a yellow lab, mostly, I think. Young for her age. Bring her to me and I can help her. I can help if you bring her to me. Ok? Oh, they're here. The sirens are breaking through the window. They've come to take me away. I knew it. I knew you called them. And now they're coming to take me away..."

User:Leasara/Refraction

2009-03-20T08:33:43Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:Refraction}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:2007 Xmas Xchange]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note|This was done for my new friend, Nikon, as part of the TSA List's 2007 Xmas Xchange. I thought it was a pretty original TF device at the time, but I may have lifted the idea from a movie where one character in the scene went out of focus while the rest of the world remained in focus. I don't recall the name of the movie, but if I did see it (and it's not just in my imagination) the character went out of focus because he had lost mental focus in his life. In the story, people appear out of focus because they don't really know who they are, since nothing has ever really challenged them to do that kind of soul searching.}}

{{title
|name=Refraction
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Stephanie checked the viewfinder again, she couldn't believe what she was seeing. It had to be the new lens, but inspecting it she found nothing to indicate it was anything else but the Nikon 55-200mm zoom she had ordered a week ago. It had arrived late yesterday, so she decided to try it out before work. She turned the camera on her friend, Rob, who was out collecting carts. Lightly touching the shutter release activated the auto-focus, and everything looked even crisper than she was used to, but Rob was hardly visible.

Picking around the parking lot, Stephanie tried a multitude of settings trying to get someone into focus. After a while, she noticed that the children tended to come into clearer focus than their parents, though they were still too soft to make a decent picture. Finally she decided she would have to leave the mystery for after work, and packed the camera back into its bag, then hid it under the back seat.

All through her shift she wondered what could be wrong with the new lens. The packing it had arrived in had a slight dent in it, but she couldn't imagine what might have been damaged to make it unable to focus on people. Shortly before lunchtime she thought she had a breakthrough. Since everything else came in quite clearly, maybe it was something strange about the people themselves that was causing the focusing problem. Now she began to regret not snapping any of those shots earlier. At the very least they would have made for interesting discussion on the photo boards. Since it would be dark when her shift was over, she decided to do a self portrait when she got home.

The rest of her shift couldn't pass fast enough. She was still preoccupied, but now she was wondering how the weird lens would render her, if it found her image at all. The children had looked like a kaleidoscope of fuzzy colors and shapes tumbling through the perfect parking lot, but she was closer in age to their parents. They had appeared as ethereal wisps of colors in a more or less human shape. After a little more idle speculation and another talk from her supervisor, she finally got her mind back on checking out the holiday shoppers and finished her shift.

Back home she added a flash and diffuser to her camera, then set it up on a tripod in the kitchen across from one of her dining chairs. After framing the shot, she set the timer and settled into her chair before realizing she hadn't taken off the silly blue vest that was her uniform. The camera caught her shrugging out of the flimsy garment, and the flash dazzled her eyes for a moment. Sitting back down and rubbing them, her fingers began to feel cool on her eyelids. Blinking, she opened her hands, and couldn't keep them from shaking.

The chill in her hands seemed to be turning them a pale blue. She kept her apartment fairly warm, and was wearing a sweater, so she couldn't imagine what might be causing the cold that was now making her shiver. Torn between her desire to take another shot with the new lens and her need to keep warm, she stood a moment trying to come to a decision. Finally the cold won out and she shuffled into her bedroom as fast as her shaking legs would carry her. It was a small apartment, but her sudden chill and the promise of a heavy down comforter made the few steps seem to take forever. She was barely at the threshold of her bedroom when her pants started to fall down on their own.

Reflexively grabbing at their waist, she glanced down to see what had happened and was shocked motionless. Her hand on the waistband had gone past the pale blue one would expect, and was nearing a primary blue similar to the hue of the vest she had shed moments ago. Releasing her pants again to gravity's whims, she examined her hand. The fingers seemed finer, maybe smaller compared to her palm than she was used to. The palms themselves were a light azure, but the backs of her hands and fingers, upon closer inspection, had a fine dusting of hair in that shocking blue that had stunned her in the doorway. A blue that she knew far too well.

She stepped out of the pants that had pooled at her feet, and saw that her feet were undergoing a similar change, but in place of the fur there were scales. Taking this as confirmation of her suspicions, she began to laugh as she stood and shook. Running to her dresser, she found that her sweater now hung to her knees and was difficult to keep from falling off her shoulders. With a little work she managed to climb atop the dresser where she finally gave up on the sweater. Holding onto the frame of the mirror that was mounted to the dresser, she couldn't believe she was really seeing her reflection.

The fine fur on her hands gave way to a much thicker coat above her wrists in a lighter shade of blue. The coat was coming in on most of the rest of her body, save her stomach and tops of her feet which were developing a shine that made her want to dance, if only she could stop shaking. Her whole body was alive with this freezing electric tingle that numbed her and made her tremble. The poor mirror was rattling against the wall, vibrating the drawers our of the dresser as well as all the pictures hung in her room. She had been slightly crouched to see herself in the mirror, but as her face began its alterations she had to let go. Both because her shoulders were starting to ache through the strange numbness, and because it was too high for her to reach.

The blue fur had grown in a thick collar that was beginning to encroach on her cheeks as her nose seemed to try to retreat from the advancing follicles. It ran right off her face, pulling her chin behind it as she worked her jaw and mouth around the fine muzzle. Soon, however, it was overtaken by the fur which continued up her face and was met with a midnight blue mask around her eyes, just exactly like she had always imagined. Her ears were rounding and moving into their final position right below a pair of horns that were pushing their way out of her scull. Without the shiver-inducing numbness, she imagined those horns would have been quite painful, but as she was the most she felt was a hard pressure as they grew.

That same strange ache had been building in her shoulders, and she turned to get a look at her back in the mirror. Two small hands were erupting from her back similarly to the horns, and she fell to her hands and knees as they pressed outward. Measuring against the width of the mirror, she was able to estimate that she was under two feet tall now. In her reflection the hands on her back were becoming a perfect pair of wings, developing a translucent sapphire webbing that ran down her back. The webbing neared her hips, and it was like slowly pulling a string in a pop-up book as it seemed to pull a fully furred tail from the base of her spine. For a moment she was forced to wonder at the tail as it wore a coat of the lighter fur, but once it reached half its length the lighter fur was split by bands of the midnight blue that expanded as the tail grew.

Now under a foot in length from nose to tail-tip, she watched the skin on her feet split into scales. They ran like dominoes up her leg into her fur, then continued up er belly. At first they were very uncomfortable, sending a burning itch through her cold-numbed nerves, but as she lost her height, they settled into a configuration that seemed perfect. Warmth began to return to the world and she knew her alterations were slowly finding their final forms. Finding her feet, she traveled across her dresser top to the base of the mirror. Above its two inch frame, she could only see her head, shoulders, and the tops of her wings, which gave her an idea.

Her sweater had fallen on the ground below the dresser, her pants were in the door way, maybe ten feet away, and her vest was in the dining nook another ten feet beyond that. If she had become the Nikon in her mind, then these wings ought to be able to be put to some use. After a few minutes figuring out their movement, she took a running leap to see how far she could get. She made it about fifteen feet to the back of her sofa without losing much altitude, and found that the little claws on the end of her fingers and toes helped her climb the fabric quiet easily. From there a quick glide took her to the dinette, where she was able to use her coupon clipping scissors to cut a section of napkin to make a sort of sarong and improvised halter top before getting to work.

It took two hours to get her camera off the tripod and into the box the lens had come in. It took another twenty five minutes to get the marker from her desk and fifteen minutes to black out the addresses on the box then write in a new recipient. She took her time getting interior of the box set up just right, but even that only took forty-five minutes. Retrieving the new roll of stamps from her purse only took five minutes, but getting them all on the box took ten. Getting it taped closed from the inside was easy, once she figured out how, she just hoped $41 was enough postage to get her to England quickly.

User:Leasara/Three-Fourths

2009-03-20T08:32:58Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:Three-Fourths}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| Soty and I were chatting and the subject turned to a hyena transformation. I told him I could probably write something up and offered a trade. He asked for the merging of three girls, and this was the result. The opening is based on a [http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/kenya/ Weebls Stuff Cartoon] that was popular around 2003, and makes a lot more sense if you've seen it. I only found out after I had posted it to the Lab that not everyone had seen the meme.}}

{{title
|name=Three-Fourths
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

"Where Kenya see lions?" Rose braced herself for the incipiently enthusiastic response of her schoolmates. Only two more hours to go on their flight across the Atlantic, seven hours sitting in Heathrow, and another eight in the air before they landed in Nairobi. It was her love for big predatory cats that had pulled her along on this safari, and true to the annoying meme she would likely see lions as well as cheetahs and leopards, but no tigers. In fact, tigers had never been in Africa, and she brooded over this fact and the deception of the song as she returned to her sharpie tattoo and tried to tune out the rambunctious college kids.

"Come to Kenya, We got lions!" The geeks were being way too noisy for Shelly. She was surprised that they had managed to fill the back section of the 747, but TFU was a pretty big school. Wondering how many of her fellow travelers were only here for the extra credit, she continued to play the nerd in the window seat. Having already decided that they would be joining the Mile High Club together, she just needed to make sure he would also write her paper once they were back home.

"Got lions and tigers, only in Kenya!" Temeka was so happy she had remembered the Weeble Cartoon, it was proving to be a pretty popular time passer. Seven choruses might be a bit much for the passengers in the forward compartment, though, and now that it seemed everyone was singing together she began worrying that they might get in trouble with the flight's staff. Still, it was nice to have the recognition of her peers for once. She was very glad to have taken this opportunity to return to one of the countries of her ancestors.

"Listen up!" Ms. Flemming's sharp tone made half of the students jump and the goth girl in the back actually cursed, "We still have two hours on this flight. I know you're all excited, but we must have some consideration for the others on board." As she sat back down she added, "This isn't high school anymore," half to her self. The rest of the trip was comparatively uneventful except for the pair of students caught using the lavatory together.

{{Separator|f}}

Most of the students had chosen their roommates for the week, but Rose and Shelly couldn't be bothered while Temeka, like a few others, were unable to find anyone willing. The result had the three girls in a double occupancy room with a spare cot brought up for the extra girl. Rose and Temeka managed to get along rather well after Temeka had managed to fix Rose's tattoo where it had been interrupted during the flight, but Shelly kept herself at a distance. Temeka did her best to include her but Shelly never could get the hang of relationships with other girls. By the third day, the trio had settled into a routine that kept them all as happy as they could be under the circumstances. It was quite a surprise when Rose went out for ice and didn't come back.

"How long does it take to get ice?" Temeka finally wondered aloud.

"What's it matter to you? Maybe she met a guy," came the terse reply.

"Oh, please," she returned, "she's not you."

"What's that supposed to mean? You don't think a Emo Chinese chick like her could get a boyfriend?"

"First, her family is Japanese, not that it's even a factor. Second, I think she would tell us if she were going to sneak off to meet someone, and third, I don't think there's anyone in this entire hotel that she would be remotely interested in."

"Hah! Know her that well, do you, 'Meka? After three days with you two, I'm about ready to take my chances on the guy's hall-" a noise at the door made her stop short. "Forget your key, Rose?" Shelly grinned at the other girl as she ran to get the door. Temeka had barely turned the latch when the door burst open, knocking the girl into the bathroom. A tawny brown streak shot into the room and under the cot, knocking it over in the process, while the door ricocheted off the wall and slammed shut again.

"What the heck was that?" Temeka staggered back into the hotel room cradling her left elbow which had caught the knob on the bathroom door.

Shelly was standing on her nightstand wielding the bedside lamp at the upturned cot. "There's something in here, behind your bed." Temeka froze and a faint whine could be heard from the corner of the room.

"Ok. Ok. We need to call someone. Did you see what it was?"

"You're kidding, right? And the phone is on its side." As if to confirm the fact, a loud tone came from the dark corner to let them know the receiver was off the hook. The noise startled the creature, and it leaped over the cot onto the unoccupied bed, giving the gathered girls a good look at the largest hyena they had seen yet. Shelly moved the lamp to keep it between her and the animal while Temeka pulled a drawer from the dresser to act as her shield.

The creature was glancing from one girl to the other and back, panting and making a nervous cackling noise. Something about it seemed very wrong to Temeka, aside from it being in their hotel room, but she wasn't sure what. They had learned that hyenas were pretty decent hunters, not scavengers as they were often thought of. She was trying to work out why the frightened thing wasn't attacking when she saw its leg. She lowered the wickerwork drawer as she recognised the pattern adorning the beast's left foreleg, especially the stylized rose that she had drawn three days earlier. "R-Rose?" it closed its eyes and sat on her bed.

Shelly finally lowered the lamp. "What?"

"Look at her arm, it's the same as the tattoo." The hyena began scratching at its neck, and the girls noticed its collar for the first time. Its design, done in wooden beads, blended with the fur so well it was hard to tell exactly where it started and where it ended. Temeka dropped her drawer and pulled a sewing kit from her bag before rushing to cut the collar from her friend. Once it was off it was a matter of seconds until Rose was back in her familiar, though naked, form.

"We've got to get out of here. I don't think I stopped her." Rose wasted little time getting off the bed, only pausing to make sure everything had returned to its original shape. Taking a sheet from the overturned bed she wrapped it around herself as she made for the door. Turning back, she beckoned to her stunned friends, "C'mon! It's not safe here! And bring the collar, we can't let her have it back." The pair looked at each other, but neither having a better idea they followed Rose's pleas.

As they ran along the hall other doors were already open from the earlier commotion. Many of the girls were spilling out into the hallway trying to discover what had happened. The trio had made it to the stairs before Shelly found her voice. "What is all this? What was that back there? What the hell is going on?" The stairs were full of the guys rushing up from the floor below to see what was going on.

"This is going to sound really strange, but it is the truth," Rose began, frantically pushing the elevator's call button. "Ms. Flemming -"

"Neurakknu!" A voice rang through the halls, and the gathered girls searched to find it's owner. Rose spun around, looking for one person in particular, then caught a glimpse of Temeka, who was fighting against an animated collar.

"Don't touch it!" Rose's warning was too late as Shelly took a hold of the writhing thing. She sighed and began to chant in a language neither of the other girls understood, if it even was a language at all. The pair began to panic as fur matching the color of the collar's beads began to flow up their arms and they found they could not release the lively strip. In their struggles they forgot about keeping the thing under control and it easily snapped home around Rose's neck.

Her eyes flew wide as the charmed collar consumed her voice, disarming the only effective weapon she had to combat its magic. She felt for the collar in hope of removing the cursed band before its spell had completely taken hold, but was shocked when its magic grasped her hands. In her first encounter with the collar she had been able to hold the thing until it had overtaken her elbows, not that it had done any good. Something was definitely different this time. Most likely an unforeseen effect of the two girls struggling to free their hands from the back of her neck. The pair behind Rose pulled and tugged in vain trying to get loose, but all they managed was to knock her sheet to the floor. Rose simply tried to smile at the assembly before of her, but failed as her jaw was lengthening, jutting out in front of her nose.

The halls had filled with students, all watching the spectacle from a respectful distance. Some screamed, some gossiped, some gasped, some murmured, but none dared get close enough to attempt to help. The noise of the throng finally woke the teachers, and Ms. Flemming began pushing her way to the center of the crowd's attention. "What is the meaning of this? You all should be in bed! Get back to your rooms!" she called as she moved forward. At the sight of her, Rose instinctively tried to retreat, but found that she had lost most of her strength. She realized that Temeka and Shelly's struggles had stopped altogether, and the trio were fighting just to stand. Rose's sudden movement had upset their balance and the three fell back into the open elevator car. The only sensation she felt was the other girl's arms being pushed through her neck, and even that seemed like an afterthought.

The elevator car was empty except for an odd hyena sitting in in the exact center of the floor. The girls weren't certain what was so strange about the animal until they fell through it. At that point they became less concerned with the seemingly incorporeal creature and were shocked silent realizing that they had watched themselves fall. "What the hell is this, now?" Shelly was screaming but her words were muted in the short distance between the girls. It was faint, like a shout from the other side of a forest thicket.

"We're outside." Temeka was desperately trying to keep her sanity, and that purpose behind her nervous narration allowed her voice to carry easier in the weird space. "We're out of our bodies, and our bodies... Oh god, they're all mixed up. This can't be happening. But it's too real for a dream, isn't it? And where have our clothes gone?"

Rose started the same quiet chant she had begun earlier, "Kan gon shin son ri kon da ken," each syllable rang like thunder through the environment, and almost seemed to leave ripples in the air. The effect was deafening, then like lightening the hyena leapt at the chanting girl. There was a momentary flash of light as it slid through the slight barrier she had managed to place in front of her. Catching her by the throat, it silenced her as she began her second repetition.

Shelly looked to see what had just happened and found the hyena sitting in the hall, on the far side of their friend. Rose was motionless on the ground, the bite marks on her neck oozing a strange bluish white fluid. "And now they're just gone," Temeka was continuing her account of the gross alterations happening to their bodies. "It looks like our shoulders are melting into her neck. I was right handed, how am I going to take notes now? Poor Rose has lost both arms. You can just make out where her elbows were absorbed above her collarbone." She was quite observant in her monotone monologue.

The gathered students were shuffling to get a better look at what was happening in the elevator, but the chaperons were able to keep them at a safe distance after Ms. Fleming voiced her concern that anyone who got close enough might also be affected by whatever was going on. Shelly and Temeka were unable to see any of this, since it appeared to them that a dense fog was rising in the hallway. "Look how thick her neck has gotten. It seems longer by at least three inches too. Oh! She's turning back into a hyena. I guess that makes sense." Temeka had gained momentum in her report, and it seemed like nothing could stop her until the hyena in the hall spoke.

"Quiet." The simple command instantly silenced the girl's litany, though her gaze remained transfixed on the scene in front of her. The longer she watched, the more it seemed like she was able to view their entire body at once. It was confusing at first, like being able to see all sides of a cube simultaneously, but the more she trusted this new aspect to her vision, the more it showed her. Her right shoulder was joining with Shelly's left shoulder at the base of Rose's expanding neck, fusing with the vertebrae there. Meanwhile their torsos seemed to be converging. "The charm was meant for one person, so I don't know what will happen with three, but three is a sacred number. I believe I will mark this up as another happy accident."

"Ms. Fleming?" Shelly suddenly realized it wasn't actually the hyena that was talking, but that their mythology teacher was speaking through the animal.

"Very good, Shelly," her mocking tone made it more of an admonition than a complement. "I'd give you extra credit, if that mattered any more. To be honest, I'm happy to see you girls will have a chance to become so close to each other. These days it's nearly impossible to find a friend with whom you can share absolutely everything."

"Can the stupid jokes, bitch. Why are you doing this?"

"Actually, I hadn't intended any of this. I helped organize the trip with the hopes of gaining a hyena as a familiar, that was all. It was purely chance, or maybe fate, that lead me to the collar. The prospect of a magikal animal that started out with the intelligence of a human was too good to pass up. I thought I could find a suitable subject once we got home, but your roommate overheard the shaman giving me the instructions for its use, so I had little choice at that point. It seems, though, that little Rose knows some form of Eastern religious magic."

"Shinto," Rose offered, her voice now only a weak rasp. "My folks are Christians, but my father's parents met when they worked at a shrine together." She stayed on the floor and held her injured neck while Shelly's mind filled with images of Rose and her grandparents as well as her parent's disapproval of her learning a 'heathen' religion. At almost the same time, the world seemed to split into pieces. The two girls were looking at each other, but could also see themselves from the other's vantage point. When Temeka's augmented vision was added a moment later the girls fell silent, or maybe deaf, while they tried to sort out the dizzying display.

On the floor of the elevator car, their torsos had begun to meld under a bony plate left from Shelly and Temeka's shoulder blades. It was beginning to look like a western saddle under their thickening pelt. On the other side of their conjoined body three sets of breasts were moving into two columns. Temeka's had been the largest and were settling in above Shelly's pert B's, while Rose's proud A's had been pushed to the bottom of the stack. Above them, three heavy necks carried heads that were rapidly losing their human traits. Their earrings were changing as well as their ears slid to the back of their skulls, becoming large silver hoops with fine chains that lead back to a knob on the plate at the base of Rose's neck. Their faces pushed out to a blunt muzzle as the domes of their heads flattened, pulling their pointed ears to an upright position.

Temeka was still keeping her silent vigil over their altering form, and seemed undaunted by their shared sight. Rose and Shelly were just learning to sort their distorted vision when another wave of memories washed over the trio. This time Temeka was the source, and the others saw sights of growing up in the inner city. The loss of friends and classmates to drugs, gangs, and violence, despite her best efforts to help them and her subsequent mounting desire to escape that life resulting in her graduating salutatorian. The pair trembled with a pang of grief that Temeka didn't share over the loss of her future. She was still absorbed in the spectacle on the floor.

Their navels had nearly merged, fur having been drawn around them like a jacket that had been buttoned from the top down, leaving a triangle of unchanged flesh. The coat covered them from the tip of their noses to just under the third set of breasts. The breasts themselves were a mottled motley of all three girls skin tones slowly resolving to an even color, slightly obscured by a light velvety dusting of hair near the nipples that grew in thicker closer to their body. The advance had been slowed by their hips however. The bones had joined and begun their slow dissolution of what was now two center ridges where Rose's pelvis had met the other girl's while being reshaped for a quadruped stance. At the same time, Shelly's right leg and Temeka's left were rising into the air, while the four in the center were beginning to atrophy rapidly. Shelly winced as their crotches seemed to swell between the dwindling legs.

She closed her eyes to try to block out the painful sight, but was still subject to Temeka's unblinking vision. She was forced to watch as each girl's sex was closed and a tube of flesh slowly rose in their place. Memories of the joys of a shared bed, as well as echos of the sensations and pleasure she had taken flooded the three girls. Temeka, who was a virgin, was rocked by a powerful orgasm, and for a brief time her strange sight fell silent in the other two. Rose had remained celibate after her first experience failed to impress her, and was likewise unmoved by Shelly's perspective. Shelly fell to her knees and began to cry for the loss of her womanhood.

"Silly girl," the hyena transmitted Ms. Fleming's voice again.

"Stop it," Shelly pleaded, "it's bad enough that you're making us some kind of freakish animal, but do you have to take that away too?"

Ms. Fleming laughed at this. "Dear child, I've not taken anything away. Your gender isn't being changed, but spotted hyena females have a pseudo-phallus that plays a large part in maintaining their matriarchal power structure. That matriarchy was the reason I began considering a hyena for a familiar, but the folklore behind the animal cinched the decision. If half the stories are only half true, you're still becoming a magnificent creature. I'm almost envious of you."

"Then you take the collar, dammit!" Rose was regaining her voice. Her demand earned another peal of laughter from Ms. Fleming.

"What then, Rose? Trust you three not to tell my story? Simply allow myself to pass into a minor legend, forgotten within a year? No, we have much more to accomplish once we're Stateside again. You girls may curse me now, but in time you'll come to thank me."

Temeka's sight returned to the pair behind her as she regained her senses after being ravaged by Shelly's memories. She was in time to catch the last vestiges of the spare legs disappearing into a shrinking crotch. Each girl had her own equipment, but as the extra legs were absorbed for their mass the three strange sexes began to merge. It only took a moment before the three had become one. As a thick tail slunk out from the base of their shared spine, there was no physical evidence left that they had ever been human. In their dusky realm, the phantom hyena rose from where it had been sitting and moved toward their new form.

Every step it took seemed to add size to the creature they had become. "This is interesting," Ms. Fleming's voice remarked. "The spell was meant for one, I hadn't considered the possible side effects if it was used on three." They started about the size of a Labrador, and quickly scaled up. Larger than a Mastiff, past a Saint Bernard, everything seemed to grow equally for the most part. Their breasts spread out along their chest, but retained a mostly human shape. They were larger than a deer now, growing past the size of a small horse. As the hyena spirit stepped into their body, their size settled somewhere around that of a small elephant.

Their companion hyena disappeared into their physical body, and the girls started to feel a strange pull towards the alien shape. Temeka, having found an unexpected escape from a life she loathed, willingly returned to their altered form, and the pull doubled on the remaining two. "What do we do?" Shelly was desperate as she was pulled along the floor on her knees.

"How should I know?" Rose used the force of their body's pull to sit herself upright. "I did my best and it didn't work. I could try a ritual cleansing for a new home."

"Yeah, very funny." Shelly was clawing at the floor trying to slow her acceleration towards their comatose form.

"I suppose we sit back, try not to get on each other's nerves too much, and wait for our chance to get back at the bitch." She found it odd that she could remain so glib in such a situation, but Rose did have a tendency to take life as it comes. Her new friend vanished the moment she touched the body, and it began to twitch its legs and tail with the addition of it's new resident. "Looks like we'll be room mates a little longer," she thought as she was the last one to be rejoined.

The elevator cables were creaking under their strain, and Mr. Fitzgibbons, the assistant football coach that had always wanted to go on safari, decided it was too much of a risk to leave the girls in there much longer. He tried to pull them to safety on his own, half to make sure it was safe to touch them, and half to see if this hadn't been a mass hallucination. Coordinating several of the larger boys that had assembled, he managed to get the beast back into the hall. The teachers had no idea what to do in such a situation, but they wound up following Ms. Fleming's suggestion of having the animal crated and returned to the school. The trip would have to be cut short.

When the girls finally awoke, they found themselves in the dark in a large wooden box. They were unable to move, and Rose came to the conclusion that they had been drugged. From the noise outside the box, she guessed they were at an airport, and with some concentration, she could make out Ms. Flemming's voice.

"That should be more than enough, all you have to do is make sure this crate goes somewhere other than the United States. Clear?"

"Yes, yes, can do that." came the reply as she was being overtaken by the fog of the drugs again. Suddenly all three of them were roused simultaneously with a command from their mistress that rang in their minds.

"Awake." Ms. Flemming paused a moment to pick up her carry-on and let the girls fully recover from the tranquilizer. "You should be able to take your new body to the dream-state. If you can't figure out how, the Spirit should be able to teach you." The girls realized there was another entity sharing their connection. "Return home and wait for me." The fourth occupant of their changed form spurred them to their feet. It seemed that they would have to overcome the spirit that had been with them in the hallway before they would be able to take action against the Witch. In Customs no one noticed the large crate shake for a moment before a fine mist escaped through its cracks.

User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal

2009-03-20T08:30:42Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:Whiner's Dismissal}} [[Category:Leasara]] [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Avian]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| I was talking to one of the denizens of the Lab one day, and he was bored. Since he worked at a wine shop, I gave him the idea of a cursed crate of wine, spoken about in hushed whispers at tastings. He never ran with it, so I took it back.}}

{{title
|name=Whiner's Dismissal
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

The Divine Fruit was a little wine and spirits shop on the edge of what was coming to be known as 'Health food Row' among the town's residents. Five years ago, the Tehachapi city council had passed a renewal measure, and the renewal came in the form of half a dozen health food shops, a Sleep Number bed place, and a couple new-age stores. Thomas Mercer had devoted nearly thirty years of his life to the shop, and he had seen more than a few changes to his little piece of Main Street. At least these folks were easier to get along with than the ones that had tried to turn the area into a red light district.

As he had always done, Tom invited the new store owners in the area to join his wine club, a small group of previous and present tenants in the area that gathered once a month to taste some wine and enjoy a little light conversation. These new recruits also provided an interesting assortment of cheeses, breads, and meats, and their conversations proved to be quite interesting, ranging from philosophy to pop culture, from ancient mythology to modern folklore. This Tuesday couldn't come fast enough for him, since he had tracked down a curiosity that would almost certainly spur some excitement.

Tina, who ran the crystals and palmistry shop next door, had caught a glimpse of a strange case of wine being delivered to The Divine Fruit, and by the time Tuesday rolled around, most of the group had their own theory on what lay within. Their gossip had so piqued their anticipation, that everyone was at least fifteen minutes early. Inside the shop, Tom happily made the last preparations for a theatrical reveal of his prize before opening the door for his waiting friends.

Escorting them all in and thanking them for coming, he conducted the band of entrepreneurs into his receiving room where they deposited their foods on the usual table. The room was dimly lit by a pair of battery-powered lights shaped to resemble candlesticks on either side of, presumably, the storied wine crate under a tablecloth.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Tom began as he crossed to the covered crate, "I was just going to open a bottle of tonight's wine, when I noticed you all outside. Given the buzz it's already created, I thought you might enjoy this a little more." With that he pulled the cloth from the crate, knocking both faux candlesticks to the floor and leaving the room dark. The scent of old wood and dust filled the area as Tom made his way to the light switch. A moment later the florescent tubes blinked and hummed to life, pulling surprised gasps from the assembled shopkeeps.

"That can't be..." the manager of The Whole Tomato, Bill, started as murmurs and whispers danced around the room.

"Oh yes it could be!" Tom finished. "Two months ago, Bill, you brought in that printout from the Internet. I shared it with my brother, we both got a kick out of it, but when he saw the bird on this box at an estate sale, he knew he had to buy it. Don't you think it looks almost exactly like the one from the article?" The chatter in the room had picked up as Tom pulled the first bottle from the crate and wiped the dust from the label. "A 1990 Pinot Noir from the northern reaches of South Australia. This will be a treat, she should just be coming into full bloom." He opened two bottles and took the first around the room, making sure everyone had enough to appreciate the flavor. Leaving the second bottle to breathe, he poured his own share and raised his glass for the toast to the vineyard. "To Dionysus' Folly!"

The sound of wine glasses chiming filled the air for a moment before returning to the normal din of the club member's conversations. The only one who did not look pleased was Bill, who quietly made his way to the front. "What if this really is the wine from online?" his lips were white, but he spoke with measured tone, trying not to disrupt the others. "They never did find the guy."

"Bill, relax," Tom reassured his friend, "you can't possibly believe there's anything to the idea of a case of wine playing a part in a man's disappearance, can you? Look, the longer you're in this business, the more of these stories you hear. I've heard a version of the one in your article off and on for the last ten years." Bill was nodding his head, but still looked nervous. "It really is an excellent bottle," Tom continued, raising his glass. Bill mimicked the motion with a wan smile and the two men drank.

"That's odd," Bill noticed. "Does it make your mouth tingle?"

Tom considered this for a moment, "It does a little, doesn't it. Strange," he worked his mouth a bit before continuing, "you know, I think my lips are going numb." Pulling his key from his pocket, he struck his glass to get everyone's attention. "Has anyone noticed anything strange about the wine?"

"Lihe my mouf goin nub?" Tina asked. "We were jus--" she was cut short by a scream which rapidly fell mute as well and the sound of a wineglass breaking. Everyone turned to see Janice, from Wild Oats, with one hand over her mouth and the other in the air as she hopped from one foot to the other.

"Dammit! I knew it!"

"Calm down, Bill!" Tom was trying to think of what might have been wrong with the wine. "Someone help her, I'm going to make a phone call." Bill shot him a look then moved to help the girl. In his small office, Tom dialed the Poison Control hot line, who weren't certain what might be wrong. "Bill," he called into the other room, "what's wrong with Janice?"

"Her teeth are falling out, and she can't talk. Tina is losing her teeth too." Tom conveyed this to the hot line, which advised not to induce vomiting and to try diluting whatever they had imbibed by drinking lots of water. The sink in his restroom barely supplied enough water to rinse your hands, but there was a hose spigot out back that would work. He let the man on the phone know where to send the ambulance, then grabbed a stack of paper cups and began ushering everyone into the back alley.

Janice was in bad shape, she had a two inch black beak sticking out of her mouth, and had lost all but a few dozen strands of her hair. Everyone watched her, knowing that their fate would follow hers. It took a moment, but she managed to figure out how to drink with the beak, and once she had her fill, the other fifteen in the group took turns getting their own. Janice was frantic under everyone's scrutiny, but they had to try to help her or risk their own panic. As the others drank, the few hairs she had left stiffened and swelled, then produced black feathers. By the time they were done, her head was covered in jet plumage to match her beak. Then it began shrinking and her fear managed to catch the crowd.

Bill started a fight with Tom, and the three other men at the gathering got pulled into the fray, while most of the women couldn't decide between arguing mutely and weeping silently. Other than the scuffle of the men fighting, there was no noise to be heard, which made Janice's sudden squawk that much more deafening. All attention back on her, they found her head had likely found it's final shape, and her body had lost a lot of weight as well. Her shirt would no longer stay on her shoulders, so she was trying to hold it up, but her hands were changing, lengthening quite fast now. Once it finally slipped from her grasp it revealed the sinister feathers had claimed the top of her chest and were continuing to advance down her back. Her falling shirt caught her slacks on it's way down and the garments fell in a heap at her feet.

People's voices were returning now, changed as they were, they raised an unearthly noise in protest of their situation, but no one took notice. Everyone was busy trying to keep their own modesty now, so they missed witnessing Janice's final seconds of change. As the feathers sped down her back, her spine pushed on ahead of the tide shortening the distance between her hips and ribs to the point that her much larger sternum hung between her legs. Her spine then expanded on the other side of her pelvis, pushing her coccyx to form a stubby tail and pushing her vulva and anus to form a single vent.

While her neather regions were getting a make over, her arms were being overrun by the feathers. Her hand had become almost as long as her forearm before the feathers reached her elbow, and by the time they made it to her wrist, her fingers were all but gone. Her wings arrived just in time to support her in the air as her big toes inverted and her little toes disappeared, her knees having moved to either side of her sternum and her ankles having moved half way up the rest of her leg.

As she landed, she watched the rest of her rookery hop and flap in a strange ripple. In the front parking lot, a siren wound down as the ambulance arrived. The paramedics rushed in, but there was no one there to greet them so they made their way through the back room and back door. All they found were sixteen sets of clothes and a flight of crows taking to the air and heading North.

User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream

2009-03-20T08:29:55Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:Early Spring Night's Dream, An}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Mythical]] [[Category:Animal]] [[Category:Leasara]] [[Category:Illustrated stories]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This was a collaboration with Soty. He wanted to do an OpenCanvas and asked me for an idea, then he offered three options on my TG Unicorn idea, and I picked the one that sounded easiest to write. This was the first story I wrote after I had decided to stop trying to add erotica. I borrowed the title from a play I read where a fairy turned a guy into a donkey.}}

{{title
|name=An Early Spring Night's Dream
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

As Charles began to realize he might be lost, he surveyed his location looking for a place to rest. There seemed to be a clearing a short ways to the south of him, so he made his way there. Entering the small forest glade, he was very excited to find a motley collection of flowers and grasses overtaking what must have once been a riverbed. Opening the case he carried from a strap on his shoulder, he carefully began collecting and cataloging samples, all thoughts of his predicament having given way to the prospect of discovery.

Charlie, as he was called, had come to the Charnwood Forest to try to find a sample he could use for the subject of a paper. Several of his mates also needed to find a subject for their own papers and had traveled with him to the rocky forest in the middle of England. None of them had his passion for botany, which is probably why he had become lost, he mused. Corking the last sample vial his case held, he noticed how dim the light had become and guessed it was probably near dusk. He had spent four hours collecting his samples, but now that he had them, he wondered how he was going to get back to the hotel.

He was a thin man, but with a decent build afforded to him by his years on the rowing team. He had blue-gray eyes that told of his natural curiosity, and kept his dirty blond hair short under his usual Windsor cap. He wore a Norfolk jacket over a brown wool waistcoat and matching trousers with field boots. He also wore his father's pocket watch on a new brass chain. The day had been warm, but he was starting to regret leaving without his topcoat.

There appeared to be a burned out fire pit to one side of the clearing, which would mean someone had camped here before, so it couldn't be too far afield. Hopefully a campfire would attract the attention of his mates, and if it didn't it would keep him warm through the chilly May night so he could find his way home in the morning. He soon had a cheery little fire going in the small ring of stones, and wished he had some food he could cook on it. Soon he was drowsing by the warm fire as he considered topics for his paper.

"Hey!" the small voice startled him, "Listen!" It sounded like a child, probably calling to a playmate somewhere behind him. In the woods. At night. He felt his shoulders tense as he strained his ears to find the voice. It was defiantly coming from behind him, though he couldn't quite hear what was being said. Peering into the gloom of the trees, he could make out a dim light coming from the direction of the voice. Whoever it was carried a lamp and spoke in tones that were most likely trying to soothe their companion. He chuckled to himself, thinking he would have to thank Artie Doyle, his dorm mate, for all their conversations on deductive reasoning. They had been more useful than he would care to admit. Using sand to douse his small fire and donning the case on which he had been sitting, Charlie moved to meet whoever it was that, he surmised, was coming to his rescue.

The wielder of the lamp seemed to be somewhat frantic, as the light darted about rather haphazardly. Charlie wondered how they managed to keep the oil from spilling. The soft glow appeared to be retreating from him, "Over here, lads! This way!" he began to shout in panic. Since he had snuffed out the fire, it would only be luck that could guide him back to his clearing should he not meet his rescuers. His feet found a small game trail through the underbrush and his pace quickened as he noticed the light coming back to meet him. "Praise be!" he called to whoever might hear him. "I had thought you'd gone! I daresay I wasn't relishing the prospect of bedding down out he--" his thoughts fell short as he met the source of the light.

"Good evening to you, weary traveler," the little thing said as she drew near. He thought she was no more than a foot tall, probably closer to eight inches. She seemed to be made of starlight, and wore nothing other than the fine silvery wings on her back that looked to be a flurry of motion and perfectly still at the same time. Her hair was a hopeless shamble, except that it had captured the golden rose hues of the first rays of dawn. He felt fear and awe at seeing the fae creature, and he didn't know weather he should run away or remain perfectly still. Finally he resolved that the decision wasn't his to make, as his nerves had locked him into the latter option.

Her nude form fluttered in front of him, hands clasped behind her. All he could manage was to blink at her until he finally found his voice, "W-what is this? Who are you?" he stammered.

"This," she spread her hands to indicate their surroundings, "is a large stand of trees on the land you call Charnwood Forest. I am known as Paeony. What are you doing out here all by yourself?"

"I was looking for a bit of flora that might impress my professor back in London." The answer had spilled from his lips before he had thought about it. He thought back to the fairy stories his mother read to his sister and remembered something about fairies having to answer any question that was asked of them. He hastily added, "I came out here with a few of my mates, but we became separated. I'm ill equipped to spend a night outdoors, might you be so kind as to help me find my way?"

The pixy darted to a position above and behind his left shoulder, then she flitted to below his right hip. She took up several more positions, peering at him intently each time she stopped. Much to his surprise, he found her sudden scrutiny arousing. She was a very attractive sprite, and he was not inexperienced with women, but he wondered what actions he could possibly take with the luminous little thing. He began to back away from her, fearing the thoughts that were coming to his mind, but stopped suddenly as his back hit a thick old oak tree. Suddenly she flew to where she was even with his eyes, only a few feet from his face. She bent forward in a strange bow with a broad smile on her face and clasped her hands behind her back.

"My dear traveler," she began, "It would be my sincere pleasure to help you, however, my mistress has tasked me with assisting another poor soul who is also looking for his mate." Though he tried to concentrate, he was distracted by her posture, which seemed to be designed to make her minute breasts frame her tiny crotch. He had seen the same pose in a bawdy house, and had she been a full-sized woman, he imagined they would already be in a more intimate position. "If you would agree to help," she continued, "I'm sure my task will be completed much quicker, and both my mistress and my charge would be quite grateful. What say you?"

He had been so mesmerized by her voice that he didn't notice she had stopped speaking immediately. "What?" blinking, he came back to himself. "Oh! Yes, of course. I'd be happy to help in any way I can." His cheeks and ears were burning with the embarrassment of the moment. Noticing this, she tilted her head to one side. "What do we do first?"

"I excite you?" Her speech was odd, more of a statement than a question.

"Well, yes-"

She cut him off, "I make you horny?" He wasn't certain what that meant, but he had an idea.

[[Image:Charliecorn1.jpg|left|200px|]]"Yes!" At this, she started a run up like a flying cricket bowler. "I just don't see what-" this time he was cut short by a ball of glittering dust hitting the center of his forehead right below the brim of his cap. Heat seemed to bore into his brain as a slight pressure began to build against his skin. As the pressure mounted, he felt as though it was stretching his scalp and face, then, with a sharp prick, the pressure abated and the brim of his cap lifted from his head. It took a moment for him to realize what was happening, but once his cap dropped down over his face, hanging from his new horn, he came to. Reaching up to inspect the protrusion, he missed the fairy's movement. The rush of the night air to his private areas alerted him to her position.

"Hmm," she intoned, "this won't do at all. It'll have to go." Before he could object, another flash and more heat in a very tender spot made his eyes go wide.

"Now wait just a tick!" he shouted as he swatted at her to get her away from his trousers, clenching his fly in his other hand to keep them from falling. He took another swipe at her to try to catch her, but she nimbly dodged again. His previously swollen pride was rapidly sliding up into an alien but not unfamiliar configuration. "This needs to stop right now," he gave up on trying to catch the pixy and covered his abdomen where the heat had come to a rest but was obviously not finished with it's business. The feeling of his insides rearranging themselves was making him nauseous, and he fell to his knees, braced on his left hand, the waist of his trousers having gone back to its original shape. "Why?" was all he could manage before starting to expel the contents of his stomach.

"You agreed to help me," was her cheerful response. He looked so pitiful retching on the forest floor, she decided to wait upwind and let him finish. Thankfully he had missed tea and supper, so it didn't take long. The nausea passed, he found his anger at being so violated battling a strange serenity that to washed into his mind from the new horn.

"Please," he begged, "you have to undo this."

"Our bargain is made," she answered. "You agreed to help me find a mate, and founder her we have! You will be the mother of this land's next generation of unicorns!"

"Mother?" panic crept into his voice, aiding his rage in it's struggle. "I cannot be a mother! I'm not a woman, you wicked little thing!"

"No? I'm not so familiar with humans, but you seem womanly enough to me, what with all your picking of my flowers." She started with feigned innocence, but there was a certain venom in that last part.

"I'm a botanist! I study flowers!" He got to his feet and cleared his throat, trying to calm down. Trying to believe that this may be an honest mistake, he changed his argument, starting with what had proved to be his best features. "Look at my chin, it's much broader than a woman's, and my cheeks are coarse with whiskers. Their faces are different, their features finer, and they are shorter in stature. Human women appear much like you, with broad hips to cradle unborn children, and breasts to feed them after their birth." As he continued the description, a vision forming in his mind drew more and more of his attention. "Their slender arms hang from finer shoulders, with delectate wrists supporting elegant hands." The more he spoke, the easier it was to see this woman. "Their legs," he started again, but a button flying past his nose and a blast of the night air on his chest brought the realization that the fairy had been at work again.

"No, no, no!" he shouted as he watched his blossoming bust, trying to ignore the shrill falsetto his voice had climbed to. His trousers tore at the seams, finally failing in their valiant attempt to contain his expanding rump and thighs. His skin in the air felt as though it were on fire as it struggled to keep ahead of his changing physiology.

"What about your legs?" Paeony asked as she popped out from behind him.

"I demand you fix all this at once!" his voice had settled to a honied contralto that softened the anger behind it.

"But I just worked so hard to address your concerns," the pixy pouted. "Now, never mind about your legs, I'll have them ready to support the weight of two in no time." She backed up a pace, which opened a path of escape for young Charlie, and he took it. Smiling, Paeony gave chase, firing off little balls of glittering fairy magic that would explode in Charles' path like Chinese fireworks. She expertly herded him until they were near enough to their destination, then a spell caught the changed man like a rabbit in a snare.

His feet stopped suddenly and he fell forward onto his chin. He rolled to his side, clutching his tender new breasts and ignoring his bleeding chin. The spell had started his thighs growing again, and heat in the rest of his legs told him his thighs weren't the only target. Soon his pants had split into four pieces, and he could feel his heel climbing the back of his boot, though his toes were cramped in the front. His legs spasmed as they changed, kicking off the ill-fitting boots and revealing a pair of nearly perfect gold-toned cloven hooves.

[[Image:Charliecorn2.jpg|right|320px|]]"Oh, your poor chin!" the little fairy seemed genuinely concerned over the scrape, and with another spell set the wound to healing. He was about to thank her for her consideration, but the telltale warmth crept up his jaw to his ears, and he remembered why he was trying to get away. He tried to scramble to his feet, but found that he couldn't stand. He could, however, run on all fours, and as he got used to the stride, he found it much easier than running as a biped had been. It was suddenly hard to breathe, as his nose flattened out, but soon his jaw began to lengthen, and his upper lip followed it. As the muzzle grew in, his upper lip split with an electric sensation, forming a cleft in his lip that went up to his nostrils. His sinuses grew with his new face, and he found breathing easier than it had ever been. The sprint was exhilarating, the high spurring him on faster than any human would ever run. Bushes and brambles tore at the tatters of his clothes, shredding them until only small pieces remained.

Paeony was keeping pace behind him, and as her last two spells were winding to their end, she started turning her quarry back the way they had come using her little fairs again. Once he was on the right heading, she caught up to Charles and hopped on his back, elongating the chain on his watch for a makeshift bridle. The sudden addition of his torturer spooked the man-turned-unicorn, and he began to try to dislodge his tiny passenger. The fairy was not going to be thrown so easily though, and with one hand released two more spells. One started the final alterations to Charlie's rear, sprouting a tail and finishing his hind legs, the other reinforced the changes starting in his body and arms. As the spells took hold, the he began to buck and juke, throwing himself into trees and bushes, but his rider remained unharmed.

He slowed to a canter, then a trot as naturally as if he had been born to four legs. Finally he stood still, working out his muscles as they settled to their final configuration. Looking around at his surroundings, he wondered at how differently everything looked. It was if he was seeing the verdant life of the forest for the first time, and he gained a new appreciation for the plants around him. His new snout allowed him to smell the smoldering fire pit in the distance, and his closer vomit, along with a myriad of other spicy and musky scents of the forest. With a little concentration, he found he could sort out each individual one. The decay of last year's shed foliage, the leavings of various animals, the scent of spring buds, he closed his eyes and began to make a mental catalog of everything around him. Satisfied he was done for the moment, Paeony left her perch and began removing the last pieces of clothing, healing scratches, and repairing the unicorn's new coat as she went.

He stretched his long neck, gently sniffing the air for the scents it held like a librarian handling an ancient manuscript. He managed to place all but one scent. It reminded him of all the other smells in the air, except that it was more like a separate, musky echo. The more he searched it out, the more it uneasy he became. It caused a strange reaction within him, especially, he realized, in his new sex. His eyes flew wide with the realization and his head shot up. Looking around, he found the little fairy placing his watch on his sample case. She turned around and smiled.

"You guessed it!" she clapped her hands with a little laugh. "It's the unicorn's mating season. As you reckon time, the unicorn rut happens once every other century, so you can see why it was so important to find a mate for our young buck. Unfortunately, there are no does left on this isle, so my Lady Titania gave me permission to improvise. Of course, the laws can not be subverted, so your cooperation was mandatory, thank you." She made a little curtsey and the new unicorn wondered why this didn't anger her.

She shook her head, realizing how she had just thought of herself, but she could no longer imagine herself as Charles. She could hear the approaching buck now, and his scent was covering her mind in a lustful haze. He was nearly in sight and her fear and anticipation of what was to happen next was maddening. The pixy attended the new unicorn, cleaning her with a couple quick spells, then adding another to ensure conception. She had turned her attention to the unicorn's mane when the stag strode into the little clearing. He was a proud creature, instantly commanding his mate's attention. He circled her once, and obviously liked what he saw. She found it hard to stay still as he moved around her, watching the object of her desire stiffen under him. She turned and presented herself to him as the sprite ran down her back and helped her lift her tail. In one motion he covered her, and she new she would never mourn the loss of her old self.
[[Image:Charliecorn3.jpg|center|570px|]]

User:Leasara/Dark Horizons

2009-03-20T08:28:57Z

Leasara: Removed depreciated comments tag,

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dark Horizons}} [[Category:Adult]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Animal]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}} {{XXX}}

{{author's note| I had been chatting with Something Wild, and he showed me a couple of his pics ([http://www.furaffinity.net/view/228338/] & [http://www.furaffinity.net/view/227718/]) including two of women turning into donkeys. I thought the pair might be connected, and this story was the result of that.}}

{{title
|name=Dark Horizions
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Over the weeks, they had gotten to know each other rather well. Their enclosures were not much more than a few expanses of chain link. The floor was concrete, and had a slight curb that ran under the fencing. On the only solid wall was a locked door with a small window that allowed a view of a sandy courtyard. Opposite this wall, set into the chain link, was a bin their food was deposited in, and a basin filled with water. They had known each other before, in fact they had been taken together as they slept huddled under an overpass. Jordan had been pressing for more intimate terms to be woven into their relationship, but Judy was against it. The weather was turning colder, and he was sure she would relent as she spent her first winter on the streets.

He had to admit, they were more intimate now than either would have liked. Living like caged animals had stripped them of their modesty in front of each other, though they still did their best to cover their nude bodies when the orderlies came for their daily checkups. The shared adversity had also strengthened their relationship more than their captors had expected. They had helped each other as best they could as their ‘D-2’ tattoos had healed, and this had progressed to a limited exploration of the other’s body through the chain link. Today they were interrupted in their continued attempts at intimacy by the door at the end of the hall opening an hour earlier than was normal.

“Down here we have experimental group D-2, Equus Asinus virulent recombinant strain, in regression.” The sound of hard leather soles against the concrete drew near, and and they stood as Dr. Marcus came in escorting men in military uniforms.

They had learned the consequences of trying to talk during these examinations early on in their confinement, so they stood on display for the representatives of whatever military these men served. “I think you’ll like this one, since it leaves it’s victims as docile beasts of burden. The strain is transmitted through the consumption of infected food or water. It can even be seeded into rain clouds with the purchase of some extra equipment.”

They looked at each other through the chain link. This wasn’t the spiel they usually heard. It should be about how their health has improved, after the initial colds they had. This was the first they had heard about tainted food, and they reached for each other as they inspected their food bins.

“Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me, this way.” The doctor lead the military men further down the hall, “we’ll continue with the demonstration.” They left through a door to the courtyard, as two orderlies entered carrying long cattle prods. The locked doors to the courtyard emitted an electric buzz, then the noise of a bolt being drawn, and they swung loosely on their hinges.

“...activates the strain within the infected victims through those sprinklers above the doors,” Dr. Marcus was continuing the sales pitch outside. “So long as your forces aren’t infected, they’re safe, as you’ll see when my men bring out the subjects.”

The men prodded the couple into the courtyard through a curtain of rain being sprayed from above the doors. The orderlies followed through the water, and took up positions between the couple and the group of onlookers. The naked pair began rubbing their eyes as the water made them burn.

“The activation serum can be absorbed through the skin, but will act faster if it’s able to come in contact with a mucus membrane or open wound. That is to say, it works best if it gets in their eyes, nose, mouth, genitals, anus, or something like a splinter or cut. You can see the subjects are experiencing a mild burning sensation in their eyes and throat. This is the beginning of the first stage. The virus will begin to activate first where it has come in contact with the activation serum, then begin on the hands and feet of the victims.”

Judy cried out in surprise and fear as her hands flew to her groin where the water had matted her pubic bush. She stumbled toward Jordan, as the irritant seeped into her crotch. The doctor chuckled, “Some victims may become stimulated from the burning sensations. We may get to see one of the more unusual side effects.” The rest of the crowd looked on with heightened interest.

Reaching her target, she leaned on his shoulder as her left hand explored deeper within herself. “Jo,” she whispered, pleading, “Jo, I need you.” She was having trouble standing, and he helped her to the sandy ground.

“I didn’t want it like this,” he whispered back, but a fire had lit within her eyes, and she rolled over, landing on top of him. In an instant she found his straining member, and slammed herself home with a throaty moan. He didn’t last long under her onslaught, it had been a while for him, but his orgasm triggered hers, and she came to rest for a moment. It had passed quickly for him, but too fast for her, and she began trying to ride his softening erection in an attempt to keep it up. This brought him a sharp pain between his balls and asshole, and he looked down to his crotch.

Grabbing her hips he managed to get her to stop her motion and drew her attention to her own physiology. Her clit was growing, and had turned black. It was already half as big as his dick’s head, and as blood coursed into it, each throb saw another expansion. She didn’t seem to care and went back to her wild ride, slapping her lengthening cock against his belly. He became absorbed in his fear as his own sex refused to react to her attentions and he was more acutely aware of something very wrong below his balls. Finally he slid out of her and she stopped only to look for what had gone missing.

Inspecting his anatomy revealed he could no longer match her need, but she did find a reddened area just below his shrunken manhood. Turning her attentions to this brought an excited hiss from her lover. Her prodding produced an electric shock that flowed up his abdomen, causing him to arch his back involuntarily. His breathing became deep as she explored further. He brought down a hand to help her, while the other was on his chest, playing with an expanding nipple. He was well on his way to orgasm, and her need had quieted, so she sat a moment. His feet had changed, from the ankles down he had a pair of perfect hooves. The beginning of a tail was inching it’s way along the sand as he contorted in an attempt to get more of his hand into himself. The scent of his developing sex was getting to her, and she felt the haze re-taking her. Something was stirring below her waist, and she was starring at it’s home. She rose, and turned her lover over.

The sudden motion startled him, but seeing what was behind him, he got his changing hands braced just in time. His lover filling his new sex drove him over the edge, and the last vestiges of his manhood were lost in the throes of his first female orgasm. His balls were replaced by a pair of teats, the new jenny’s growing tits. Her jack pumped into her as more changes passed unnoticed. In tandem they grew a slight mane and their ears lengthened. Their tails grew tufts of hair at their ends, and their hands finished forming into hooves. Finally the jack tensed, as fluid ran from his jenny and the men with the cattle prods separated the pair, taking the jack inside first.

“Now, without the sexual encounter, they would have remained their original genders. Even then the gender change only occurs in about a third of the subjects. You can see the human side of their personality reasserting itself now, as they realize what they’ve become and what they’ve done. The problem is, it’s too late. their hands and feet are hooves, and in another day’s time, they will be fully formed asses. The jenny may finish her transformation faster, as she appears to have been impregnated during the coupling. This tends to speed things along, and her foal may drop within three weeks.” he turned to the stone-faced military men and began to escort them back inside. “Now, imagine what an increase in labor and meat like this could mean to an army on the move?” They disappeared back inside.

User:Leasara/As Subtle as Sphinx

2009-03-20T08:28:05Z

Leasara: removed depreciated comments tag at the end.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Subtle as Sphinx, As}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Mythical]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| Mutamancer, a poster on the Lab, had wanted to do a collaboration. He wanted a unique transformation, and after a little brainstorming we decided to do a sphinx. I wrote the story and he was going to illustrate it, but he's been delayed by medical problems.}}

{{title
|name=As Subtle as Sphinx
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

It was cold outside but the theater was warm. Plus it gave Rose the opportunity to watch the new Garbo picture again. Rose had lost her home shortly after she lost her parents, and had learned to survive on the castoffs from the concession stand. When it was warmer, she would sell pencils and matches on the corners around Chicago, but in the winter she usually bounced from theater to theater, she became an expert at sneaking in, and eventually got to know the staff of several of the larger houses. Tonight she had snuck into the Adams, it was easy to hide somewhere under the six hundred seats until the doors were locked. 'Fin' appeared on the screen and she sat there dabbing tears before they could roll down her cheeks.

As the rest of the moviegoers rose and began to exit, she remembered herself and started to sink to the floor to seek a hiding place, but an usher had seen her and she was escorted from the building. In need of a place to sleep, she wandered a bit before arriving at a deep doorway of some business that looked to have already closed for the night. It at least offered shelter form the wind, so she huddled against the door and dozed off.

Richard hated being late, a late start meant he was going to have to stay late. He cursed his luck at having been pressed for information by some cut-rate detective about some imagined crime. He was a short man, with a mind for business and not much else. In his mind, he could be bigger than Capone, though some part of him knew he?d never make it as a tough guy. His knack for sitting on the edge of the underworld without actually getting into it too deep is what made the cops think he might be a decent informer, but he knew the loss in business outweighed whatever reward the police might give him, so he kept quiet. Turning the corner, he saw the band was already standing at the door, discussing something in hushed tones.

"Sorry, fellas! I got held up." he called to them. They looked up, startled, and the sax player put a hand to his lips before beckoning him over. He pulled his keys from his pocket and began searching for the one to the club, and the noise drew annoyed looks from the small group of musicians. "What's so interesting about my door?" he asked as he approached, the last word falling softly as he caught the vision sleeping on the threshold. "Fuck me," he swore under his breath.

He estimated she was eighteen or twenty, with a slight build, but ample breasts. He watched their slow rise and fall for a moment, mesmerized until the sound of his keys on the sidewalk reminded him he needed to get through that door. He bent down to pick them up and her eyes opened, a deep emerald green through her blinking away her sleep. Her black hair was dull and matted, and her face was a mess, but with a bath a haircut and a change of clothes, she could really bring in some money. Her eyes went wide and he realized he was starring, He bolted upright as she lithely gained her feet.

"I'm sorry!" she was frightened and looked like she might cry. "I thought you were closed!" She deftly moved between the men, whatever God had taken from her, he had returned in an unearthly grace. Now that she was standing, he could see that she had broad hips, but was in need of a few good meals to fill out her figure. "I'll go, please don't call the cops." She started to run down the sidewalk, she wore only stockings on her feet and made almost no noise. Rich tossed his keys to the base player and ran after her.

"Hey, honey! Stop! Please wait," he called to the fleeing girl. "I ain't angry, I swear." Damn, she could run too. He was running out of breath. "Why don'cha come back an I'll get yous a sandwich?" this turned her around. "C'mon, it's cold out here, and I got a guy what delivers." She began walking towards him.

"You sure?" She was being cautious, but now he knew which button to push.

"Sure, I'm sure." Time to sweeten the deal. "I got a club over here, but this guy, he's got an all night deli. C'mon back and I'll get 'im ta bring ya a nice reuben, or some roast beef. How's that sound?" She walked up to him and took his arm, the way she'd seen it done so many times in the movies, and gave him a big grin. "Oh, well, right this way, mademoiselle." He chuckled and led her back to the club.

Inside the club, the band was setting up. It wasn't quite like the movies, but it was closer than she'd ever been. She thought the dance floor was a little small, and maybe the tables were too close together. There were only four booths, and the decorations around the room weren't as elaborate as she would have expected, but still the place had a glamour to it. they crossed to a little door, which he opened and the glamour began to fade. The light in the stairwell seemed ill as it reflected off the dirty walls.

"So what's yer name, doll?" he asked as he lead her up the stairs.

"Rose, what's yours?"

"Richard, but everyone jus calls me Rich. You ain't got a place to stay?"

She shrugged, "Well, I have a couple flops."

"Right. Well, I might could let 'cha stay here, if you wanna work fer me, that is."

Her sudden stop pulled at his arm, turning him around to see her looking up at him. "You'd hire me?" Her eyes were shining with hope, and looked out of place set in her dirty face.

"Well, you could be a cigarette girl ta start." She looked ready to burst, and he started to realize just how naive she might be. "And it don't pay much, jus room an board, but you can keep fif... twenty percent of yer tips." She jumped up and hugged his neck like a girl half her age.

"Oh, thank you, thank you! I'll do my very best, I promise."

"Yeah, yeah, Don' mention it." He had a laugh in his voice as he pealed her off himself, "I'll call some girls over ta fix yous up tonight, then ya can start tomorrow." With that, he lead her up the rest of the stairs and to the dressing room across from his office. "There's a bath in here. Go ahead and get in it, an' when Mary and Suze get here, I'll send 'em in ta get you scrubbed up." She ran in and started drawing the bath. "Hey, what kinda sandwich you want?"

"Oh, whatever you like is fine," she couldn't remember the last time she ate more than stale popcorn, so she had no idea what to order. He just shook his head and went to his office. First he ordered the sandwiches, then he called Mary.

When she turned off the faucet, she could hear him in his office. "Hey, Mary? Rich. At the Dolphin. Yeah. No, not this time. I swear! Nah, it's cool, listen. I got a girl you gotta meet. No, you'll love her. Pretty young. Nah, not my type. Right, bring Susan, and that outfit you make for my girls. Big. No, like Fat Jenny's, but she's skinny. Right, she'll have it in an envelope. I got her in the bath now, so soon as you can. Good, jus go upstairs. I gotta go open the place. If I got time. Yeah, bye."

She finished getting undressed and slid into the bath trying to remember the last time she?d had access to so much water at one time. She heard him crossing the floor, and then the hall. She reached for her dress as she heard him at the door and pulled it into the bath to cover herself as he opened it.

"Hey, doll I... Oh." He looked up and saw her red face and covered his eyes. "Sorry, kid, that's how it's done in showbiz. Look, I got this envelope you gotta give to Mary when she gets here. Jus stay in the bath until then."

The bath was beginning to cool when the door opened again, and a pair of women blew into the room, startling her into covering up. "I'm Mary, this is Susan. She don't talk."

Rose watched wide-eyed as Mary crossed the room in three great strides and Susan followed behind her. "We're here to get you gussied up so you can do what you do downstairs." She stuck her hand in the bath water, then pulled out the plug and turned on the hot water. Susan produced a narrow packet from her coat and rolled it out revealing a comb, a hair brush, some hair clips, and a pair of scissors. from another hidden pocket she pulled a series of bottles and started pouring them on Rose's hair, then began massaging the soap and sweet smelling oils into her scalp.

Mary grabbed Rose's chin and turned her face from side to side. She let go, took a step back and brought a finger to her lower lip, the squinted. "Looks like you cleaned your face well enough at least. Let's give her the 'Queen of Sheba,' long. Hmm. Well, the rest can wait until she's out of the bath," and Mary reached in to take Rose's foot, but came up with the dress and looked into the water for the first time.

"Excuse me," Rose's voice was barely audible. "I-"

"Aw, honey." Mary rolled over her as if she hadn't heard the girl. "If you're going to work at the Dolphin, you have to get used to letting people see you. That's just the kind of joint it is." She pulled the dress out of the water and dropped it on the floor. "Don't need that anymore. A few weeks here and you'll be in furs before you know it. Just don't let that snake, Dick, take advantage of you." She produced a razor from the basket she had been carrying and pulled Roses leg out of the water, then decided it was hot enough, stopped the drain and turned off the faucet. Going back to the leg, she couldn't find a reason to use the razor so she switched to a washcloth and a bar of soap and went to work. Rose decided she couldn't fight these women and bore her embarrassment as best she could.

Mary was had finished the legs and was starting on her arms when Susan finished un-tangling Rose's hair. She sat Rose up in the tub and cut a line just below her shoulders, halving the length. Then she went to work. Mary moved to Rose's back while Susan kept cutting and shaping her hair. Rose could tell they were used to this situation, and it allowed her to relax a bit.

"That's better." Mary had noticed the lessened tension as she moved down her back and up her side. "But where did you come from? Skin like this, I can't believe you didn't have someone to take care of you. I bet you'll have five suitors in a week." She finished at her other arm. and started scrubbing her stomach. Rose gave a small yelp as she moved to her breasts, but the older woman was gentler there. She reached in and pulled the plug as Susan put down her scissors. Mary produced a large towel and wrapped Rose in it once the water was gone.

"That is quite a figure you've got there. We're not going to be able to get you fitted tonight, but you'll be ready tomorrow." She took out a tape and began barking out measurements, which Susan quickly wrote down. "I tell you, I've never heard of such a thing as a 38 D. Especially as undernourished as you are, which reminds me. Susan, where did those sandwiches go?" The taller woman reached into her coat again and pulled out two sandwiches wrapped in butcher's paper, which she handed to the towel clad Rose.

Rose sat down at the little vanity table and began eating while Mary went to the small wardrobe my the bath. "I know he keeps a dressing gown in here somewhere. Ahh. there we are." She put the dark garment on the table and picked up the envelope. "We'll just leave you to your supper then. Have a good night, and we'll see you tomorrow." The two women departed as suddenly as they had arrived, leaving Rose to find a place in the small room to sleep on her own.

{{Separator|f}}

The weeks passed, and with Rich's instruction, she was beginning to earn more in tips from the customers. She would do her best Hollywood Vamp for the guests, and after her first week she had regular customers that waited to buy their cigars and cigarettes from her. By the end of her second week, the spectacle of such an innocent girl trying to act sultry, and unaware of how badly she failed, became quite a draw for the little dive. With the twenty percent of her tips, she had been able to buy a little cot to put in the dressing room, and had almost saved up enough to add a floor screen to the room. She was dressing for the beginning of her third weekend when she heard Rich's heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. She shrugged her little top on and began smoothing it out as he burst in.

"Hey, doll," he snapped his fingers, she was already dressed. "Listen. I got a guy commin' tonight, they're gonna help me out with easin' the pressure I been gettin' from the cops. I need yous ta really turn it on tonight, got it?" His nerves were getting to him, whoever was coming must be important.

"Sure, I've been practicing my Clara Bow all day, I think I can do her pretty well now." The gleam in her eye told him she was going into her dreamland again. "Who's coming? Could it be the Commissioner's son?" She could see the scene as the handsome and powerful man came to whisk her away from Rich's den of inequity. He would - She was interrupted as Rich garbed her by the arm and spun her around.

"No time for that now. You really gotta be on tonight. This is inportant." The fear in her eyes made him realize what he was doing, and he loosened his grip. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn'a done that, but these guys..." He brushed at her shoulders, trying to calm himself and reassure her. "These guys is bigger than the Commissioner. We get in good wit' dem and they could solve a lota' our problems. Now, you got thirty minutes, then I want you downstairs. They're gonna be here before we open." He held her shoulders for a moment, then a silly grin spread across his face and he left.

Rose walked to the vanity to start applying her makeup in a haze. Who could be bigger than the commissioner and hold sway over the police department? Maybe it was the mayor's son that was coming to take her away! She felt bad that the man that had rescued her weeks earlier had been cast as the villain in her life, but movies had taught her that the appearance of the villain usually meant the hero wasn't far behind. As she applied the finishing touches to her face, she had a feeling that she'd spent her last night on a little cot.

The band was warming up as she came down stairs, and they began improvising on a melody she couldn't place once she opened the door to the club. The piano and base players were smiling at her as she crossed the dance floor, but the scowl on Rich's face reminded her that the cameras were rolling, and she dropped into the character she had picked for the evening. Standing next to Rich was a striking man, dressed a level better than the clients she was used to seeing in the Dolphin. "He must be the mayor's son after all," she thought to herself as she neared the men.

James watched as the girl spilled out of the door and onto the dance floor. The band began playing a bawdy tune, accentuating how out of place this girl was at the club. Her walk, the way she carried herself, the cast of her shoulders, the loft of her chin, she was certainly meant for something grater than selling cigars and cigarettes in a run down gin joint. If she was half as trusting as Richard made her out to be, he knew the rest of his cabal would take to her in no time. He smiled at this opportune find. She seemed to notice them then, and she changed her stride until she was almost gliding across the floor. The change was shocking, to say the least. Her hair in a long bob directed an onlookers attention to her emerald eyes, which had not lost the glimmer of a hopeful dreamer, in spite of the budding sexuality the rest of her now exuded. However, the spell was broken as suddenly as it had been cast, as she fell off her four-inch heel and was pitched over her cigarette tray.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she apologized as she righted herself and began collecting the spilled tobacco. Rich's rage was visibly percolating, and his fists worked themselves in small circles as face passed red and headed towards violet, but the well dressed man stepped forward with a smile of relief and stooped to help her gather what she had dropped.

James glanced over his shoulder at the fury behind him, "It's good to see this place hasn't gotten to you yet." His voice was smooth, and something about it reminded her of the milk chocolates her father used to bring home from his business trips to Europe. It drew her attention up from the floor, and looking up at him it was as if Valentino had stepped off of the screen. His hair was a darker chestnut color than she imagined Valentino's would be, and the man in front of her seemed even larger than the actor did up on the screen. She felt herself flush as his grin made her realize she was starring.

"I'm Rose, Rose Parker," her voice was nearly inaudible as she offered her hand to the dashing man, who took it with even more gentility than she had dared hope for.

"James Covington. Pleased to meet you, Ms. Parker." The way he said her name gave her a thrill, and she knew she couldn't deny any request he might ask of her with that voice. The moment was broken by Rich's heavy footsteps, as he crossed to them wringing the frustration from his hands.

"Good! Now that we're all friends, why don't I get us some drinks so we can get ta know each other a little bit?" He was trying to sound cheery, but his nerves were apparent.

"I don't think so," James replied, returning doubt to the overly jovial Richard. "If you don't mind, Ms. Parker, I haven't eaten yet, and I was thinking of trying a new place I've been hearing about in Woodlawn. Won't you join me?" Richard had told him of her flights of fancy, and her eyes indicated she was not entirely still in the dance hall, so he took the cigarette tray's band from around her neck and with the suggestion of motion through their clasped hands, helped her up. "Why don't you go put on something nice, I'll wait here," he suggested, and with another slight movement of his hand, sent her on her way back towards the stairway door.

Relieved, Rich lowered his voice, "You gonna take her then? You saw how outta' it she gets?"

James matched the man's whisper, "She's perfect. Just what we need. Though for a moment there, just before she dropped the tray, I thought you had ruined her."

"So you'll do your thing then? Cool the cops, like yous said?"

"She's certainly all you said she was. Besides, I'm sure the police have better things to worry about than a two-bit operator in such a rundown speakeasy." The round little man chuckled at the lackluster summation of his character and livelihood.

Rose stopped and turned suddenly, looking guilty. "Um, Mr. Covington? This is the nicest outfit I have."

He smiled and beckoned her back, "We'll just have to pick something up on the way then," he offered as he put his trench coat on her small shoulders. Taking her arm, he led her out of the dark room to his waiting black limousine.

{{Separator|f}}

The night had been full of shopping, dining, and dancing, and now she found herself in a room where each wall could host a movie screen. The bed might have been as big as the room she had stayed in at the dolphin, and had a large canopy hanging over it contrasting the dark drapes tied back over the windows. The floor was a deep red cherry wood with rugs defining the sleeping area, dressing area, and sitting area. The sitting area was furnished with a couch and two chairs around a small table holding a china tea set for four, while the dressing area had a fine oak rack for hanging clothes and a floor screen for privacy. Rose was certain she would never be able to sleep in such a well appointed room, especially after the night she had just experienced. Having explored the room, she decided to draw a bath before trying to sleep, so she was surprised when she came back into the room for her new robe to find Mr. Covington standing by the bed with two drinks.

"I thought you might like a nightcap," he offered, as he handed her the small flute of clear greenish liquid. Taking a sip, she started coughing and sputtering, the sight made him laugh.

"There's alcohol in this!" It burned her throat and sinuses and made her eyes water, "That's illegal, and I'm underage besides! What would your father say?"

"My father? Dear child, he's been dead for three years now. I don't think he'd have much to say about anything." His smile seemed wrong for talking about his dead father.

"But, the mayor... the police..." She had never drank alcohol, but didn't think one sip should be making the room heave back and forth as it seemed to be doing. Her eyes didn't want to stay open either. "Wha-?" James caught her as she succumbed to the opiate in the absinthe, and casually wondered what her dreams would be like.

An acrid odor hung heavy in the air as the rhythmic chanting roused her from her drugged slumber. Forcing her eyes open, she could see dim points of light that writhed around the room adding to the dizzying miasma forming in the black circle drawn around her. Underneath her the floor was cold and slick against her bare skin, and combined with the stench it pulled her out of her stupor. She tried to sit up only to be forced back to the ground by a thick metal band on her neck and the short chain that wouldn't allow her to rise above her hands and knees. The silk sash from the robe that had been Mr. Covington's gift was bound around her mouth, keeping her from crying for help.

Picking up it's pace, the chanting was also becoming louder, adding to her confusion as the incomprehensible syllables slid past her. Smoke began to rise from the circle and the lines and symbols that were inscribed within it, as Mr. Covington's voice joined the growing din, adding a counterpoint to the rhythms of the rest of the chanters. Tears began rolling down her cheeks as the realization came to her of what part he had played in her betrayal. Her breaths came in great heaving sobs, inhaling more of the noxious fumes, as she understood her situation. Within the circle the smoke was getting deeper, and it caused a searing pain in her lungs as she tried to breathe.

In the faint candle light, she could see the edge of the circle clearly defined as the dark vapor stayed within it's confines. It obscured the floor below her, and crept along the skin of her hands and calves with a sickening oozing quality. A thinner fog floated above the black mass, and it was this that was stinging her lungs and eyes as the dark cloud below slowly engulfed her. Her heart pounded in her ears, as something seemed to whisper below the chanting. As it spoke, images filled her head, and something awoke in her mind. Shards of something were slowly coming together to create a vision, and as the picture resolved itself, she became panicked. Her desperation peaked, and she started struggling against the chain and collar that were keeping her prisoner. She thrashed about on the chain like a wild animal, then suddenly became calm.

She looked around herself, bewildered as understanding seeped into her with the smoke. The seven lines within the circle mad up a septagram. The symbols within the figure were blessings and wards. The circle had been drawn in an ichor brewed from fermented camel dung, papyrus, and blessed date wine. The fourteen candles... this was a circle of summoning. The chanting echoed off the bare concrete walls and floor and pounded a spike deep within her head. The words were becoming clearer, she could almost make them out. She looked up at the gleeful expression on her captor?s face as she gripped her ears to shut out the sounds, wincing at the pain they brought. The High Tongue continued to pound within her, but the sloppy accent of these cloaked figures gave it a hissing and a buzzing that was wholly wrong. They droned through the song of summoning, but had no feeling of meaning behind their words and the pain caused by their poor attempt was driving her mad. With relief, she finally found the answer, and pulled her consciousness in on itself.

She collapsed on the floor, and room became still. James felt a pang of regret at the loss of another beautiful girl. He had been certain she would be the one, but if she followed the last two to the asylum, the influence they could exert may not be enough. They had practiced for two months after the last girl had emerged from her trance in a catatonic state. The hospital had been reluctant to take her after the first one, but at least the second hadn't been as strangely deformed. Of their group, only he was able to see a fine mist that rose from the seven-pointed star on the floor. Some didn't believe in his sight, but the backing of the rest was enough for him to keep control. The mist continued to flow into the girl, so he kept them from breaking the circle. Everyone looked on intently, then a slight murmur rose as the changes appeared in her feet. His glance silenced them, and he watched with rapt attention, as if his concentration alone could save the girl from her predecessors' fate.

Withdrawn into the blissfully silent darkness, she found that she was still awake in her dream. A memory of the headache they had caused nagged at her, but she dismissed it easily enough. She was alone in the universe, floating in a void, when there was a sudden flash of light. Turning, she was unable to find the source of the momentary illumination, but she could feel a dark presence prowling in the silence. She peered into the inky blackness around her, but every time she thought she could make out a form in the shadows, it disappeared. She knew she should be frightened, but her need to know what was waiting just out of sight overrode her instincts of preservation. Finding her feet, she began wandering in strange realm, searching for whatever was in here with her. Weather she was stalking it or it was stalking her, she couldn't decide, but it gave her a thrill she had never imagined. Suddenly, she was stopped by the feeling of a hot breath on the back of her neck.

Slowly she turned, readying herself for whatever might be behind her. There was a winged creature there, smiling, and she felt that she had passed some test. The creature opened it?s mouth and began to whisper something. The familiar voice took on form as it left her mouth, and flooded the void with images. The emptiness suddenly becoming full caught her off guard, and the past flashed by her like the movies she had enjoyed in a simpler life, only now she could feel the character?s minds touch on her own. Every hope, every aspiration, every depraved thought and desire, in the moment their minds met, they were all laid bare. Soon she became aware of patterns within the chaos of the human mind, and the patterns those motives wove into history. Before Uruk, the first great city fell, she had found the patterns so complete, the secrets of the universe were laid bare.

Lying comatose on the concrete floor, her toes had already contorted themselves into a feline shape, and a fleshy black pad was growing from the balls behind them. As they settled into their new form, her toes flexed and relaxed, revealing the cruel black claws that had been her nails. Muscles in her calves twitched as her feet began to lengthen and her shins shrunk, moving her heel closer to her knee. A moan escaped her lips as the changes reshaped her thighs, and her arousal became apparent in her nipples. Her consciousness elsewhere left her body to it?s base tendencies, and one hand went to her groin as the other played on her bare breasts. Some of the group allowed her arousal to spark their own, but James stayed focused as her deep breaths drew in more of the magic mist.

The winged creature continued it's tale, unmindful of Rose's discomfort. Something was pulling her back to the waking world, but every new mind she touched brought new understanding to her expanding knowledge. New civilizations were rising to power in the world, and their ideas tinted her views. The people were racing past, and already the Greeks had fallen. How foolish she was to have thought the lives of one culture could explain the true nature of the universe. The patterns she had seen before were unrecognizable now, though some were still hinted at. Wisdom was added to her being, like milk poured into tea.

Tawny hair began to cover her paws, and a coat was running up her legs to the site of her enjoyment. She screamed, a mix of pure pleasure with an odd guttural roar, and arched her back as her hips softened and flowed into a new shape. The hand at her breasts became busy with new nubs of flesh that appeared in two rows down her belly. She climaxed again and a tail shot from her new hindquarters, the tip twitching in her ecstasy as brown-gold fur fought to cover the new appendage.

The pace of the figure's story had doubled again, dangerous things stirred and were slain in Europe as wars were being fought in the East. Rose imagined her mind was fit to burst as her awareness was being pushed to its limits. Still the tale continued and every aspect of every life added its resolution to the picture. Trends became obvious, and patterns were refined. The last of the Druids left for Avalon, and education ceased in the West. In the East, the understanding of subtle truths became paramount. History was passing in a headlong rush, and Rose could begin to make guesses about possible conclusions.

The changes slowed as they entered her torso, taking care with her organs as they moved about and reshaped. She slowed her play as gurgles and slurping noises echoed from her abdomen. Her face took on a pained look, and her hands crossed over her stomach as she rolled into a ball, stretching out her spine into it's own new configuration. Her paws were growing, her pads measuring about ten inches across at their widest. James did his best to keep his excitement restrained, this was much further than they had gotten in the past. He dared to hope they had succeeded.

Rose was getting lost in history, now keeping track of life on six continents. She struggled to keep up, but the simple complexities of some of the minds were staggering. She started to apply what she had learned, and was able to slow the story to a more manageable deluge. The one from who the story spilled smiled at the skill of her protégé. She learned from her application of magic, and began experimenting to find other practical uses for what had been filling her mind. Her teacher sped along again, but the influx of life experience was secondary now, as natural as rain falling, and she was able to soak up every ounce like parched desert sand. With a lurch, the show stopped. The scene was a room full of robed figures peering into a churning black pillar. Adjusting her eyes allowed her to see herself on the floor, the center of their attention. A quiet rage began to build in her chest. The story sprang back into motion, but was done in a flash, and her education was complete.

The mist was beginning to settle, and the girl on the floor was more lion than human. Her coat had reached to her shoulders on her back, but only brushed the bottom of her human breasts underneath. Her body was taking on mass from the haze, and he estimated her back would be as high as his shoulder once she stood, probably five and a half feet. At her shoulder, two naked wings pushed through her coat, and her head lifted as her eyes opened.

She rolled onto her belly, lying in a crouch in deference to the chain around her neck. She blinked around the room, her eyes casting a pale glow on the individuals starring back at her. Enjoying their unease, she yawned, changing her teeth and biting through the gag. She stretched her arms in front of her as they took on a more leonine shape and fur ran down them, but she stopped the transformation before it took her thumbs. She stood and stretched out her hind legs and back, her head and breasts growing to match her massive body. Finally she threw out her wings, and once they reached their full span, eagle?s feathers appeared in an instant to cover them. She turned her gaze over each of the people once more before folding her wings lightly on her back. Her eyes fixed on James, who took this as a sign and stepped to the edge of the circle.

"Great Sphinx!" he began the speech he had been wanting to give for over a year now. She sat and let him continue, "To you we have offered this innocent as a sacrifice in the manner we found in an ancient tome. We now request that you honor the ancient pact and impart your knowledge to us."

"I know." Her voice was the same, but it was accompanied by a low rumble in her chest. "I am a Guardian of Knowledge, after all. Your book told you I would appear, but you don't seem to have learned anything more."

"You stand in my circle! I will compel you to-" her laugh, with it's guttural undertones, filled him with dread.

"You would bind me with this? You do not begin to comprehend the idea behind the simplest of these sigils, how can you hope to imbue them with a power greater than my own? You, James Covington, have a slight gift, but the rest of these bored socialites are dullards of the worst kind." Most of the room began to move toward the exit, she grinned as they tried to escape. The first one to arrive at the door found it sealed, and with a flick of a forepaw, they vanished, their robes falling to the floor. A moment later they emerged from their discarded garments as large Egyptian temple cats, which returned and made a circle around their former leader. Rose stood, pulling the chain from the concrete floor. The steel band around her neck became gold, and the chain flowed into it as it expanded to cover her shoulders to the tops of her breasts. She paced out of his circle, and the pressure of her eyes on him made James lose control of his bladder.

"P-please. I only wanted..." his voice trailed off as he felt his power surge within him. He turned to follow Rose as she walked behind him and sat down.

"You do not know what you wanted, and what you thought you wanted is laughable." She fed him another sliver of magic and watched as he became drunk on his own energies. He staggered backwards as the heat of his power began to overwhelm him. As he crossed the border of the circle, she gave him one last crumb to send him over the precipice he'd been teetering on, and his eyes went wide as he lost hold of what he thought he wanted.

Blue flames burst from his skin, consuming his clothing and igniting the circle he'd drawn. He dropped to the floor, occupying the space Rose had recently vacated, and the temple cats that had been his friends ringed the edge of the circle. The fire of his magic glowed brighter, consuming his matter as his form began to shrink. He writhed in agony as Rose blew on the ember of his soul, fanning the flame and choosing his shape. The cats watched, his fire lending their eyes a frightening glow as it guttered and went out. They began pacing the circle, waiting for her to let them enter as his form settled into it's new shape.

"You should know, I took their minds as well as their forms. They don't remember ever having been anything other than a cat." She warned him as he regained consciousness. "I left you your wits so you might entertain them a bit longer." She drew up a portal to an ethereal plane, and as she entered, the cats fell on the rat that had been their master.

User:Leasara/Corruption

2009-03-20T08:27:10Z

Leasara: removed depreciated comments tag at the end.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Corruption}} [[Category:Adult]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Mythical]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}} {{XXX}}

{{author's note| This was from my Story-a-Day exercise I did in December 2006 or January 2007. I was worried that my attempts at eroticism were corrupting my poor innocent mind. Cujoe_da_Man and I were chatting a lot and he wound up doing a Poser pic based on those worries that lead to this story.}}

{{title
|name=Corruption
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Light was streaming in through the windows, rending the curtains that tried in vain to hold it at bay. Time was short. The winged woman stood naked in the slight bowl that had been carved into the granite floor. Pulling her drugged servant’s hair, she slashed his extended neck, then dropped the body in a slump to allow his blood to mingle with the four others she had slaughtered. Their life energies throbbed in the gathering pool at her feet, and she tapped into them, pulling them up in a globe around her. Taking the energies from her outer defenses, she prepared to cast her spell. Her raven wings dissolved back into her heart with a sensual thrill, as the doors to the chamber burst open.

“Shannon!” The man’s rage rang through the empty hall. She had sent her captain, the white witch had been too much of a coward to come herself. Shannon laughed at her opponent's foolishness, and the man leapt at her, his fists shining with white light. His attack fell on the border of her spell, his energies crackling along the surface of the sphere as it became more opaque.

“It’s too late, Captain!” she twisted the word with a laugh, “The spell is cast, and your insignificant powers aren’t even an annoyance. Be glad this spell keeps you out of my reach as it keeps me from yours. Prepare yourself, for my return to this time marks the end of your days.” The globe finished forming, and vanished in a flash.

{{Separator|f}}

My little trailer rocked violently on its springs as a flash of light deposited something outside, interrupting my meditation. I tried not to allow my annoyance at the disturbance to cloud my mood. If I was going to have any luck casting my spell this weekend, I couldn’t allow minor disturbances to distract me from marshaling my energies. It had taken months to find an intersection in the lines far enough out of town to have cleansed the psychic pollution of the city. Another two weeks had been spent taping into the ley energies of the earth, and now I waited for Saturday night. At the moment of the new moon, I would cast my spell, and if everything went right, I would return to town a full woman and finally be able to start living. “Patience,” I reminded myself as I rose to inspect the powerful emanations of whatever had just arrived. As I grasped the door’s latch, there was a knock from its other side. Opening the door, I almost did a double take, as I recognized my face on the naked woman that stood before me.

“We need to talk,” she smiled, her expression a wicked mockery of the smile I wore on occasion myself. Taking my robe, she pulled me out of the doorway, but where I landed, I couldn’t fathom. There was no point of reference on the stark white landscape. While I stood wondering where we were, she placed her right hand on my forehead and her left on my chest, above my heart. A gleam in her eye told me something was about to happen.

“First thing’s first.” I gasped at the sudden heat of her left hand as it pierced deep into my chest to grip my heart. The middle finger of her right hand sank into my brain, into my mind, forcing my eyes open wide until I thought they would burst. She spoke to me though this new link, “, “I’ve come back to you because you are a weak, trusting, naïve little git, and it pisses me off to think I was ever you.” The heat of her hand was spreading in my chest as she tossed her head back and closed her eyes. As she rolled her head over her left shoulder, large black wings, their feathers shining in the light of this world, sprouted from her back. As hers grew, I could feel similar appendages on my own back, sprouting from my heart. Sliding like a silken cord over my shoulder blades, their tips came into my peripheral vision and I could barely make out the white feathers, nearly the same shade as our surroundings. She opened her eyes and her ice-blue irises had gained a thick black border on their outer edge. It wasn’t until this moment that I felt fear, and she laughed at my dawning realization of my danger.

Whatever she was doing in my mind allowed me to understand that what she was doing in my chest was flooding me with energy. My own energy. I became aware that, even though I had planned so diligently for so long, the spell I had planned to cast was woefully inadequate to rid me of my penis. “Yes,” she spoke in my mind again, “it’s a laughable attempt, in the scope of the universe. We didn’t realize our ambition then, but it did give us these.” I knew she was talking about her large, proud breasts, and contrasted them to the small B’s two years of hormones had given me. “No, it wasn’t enough to give us the body we know belongs to us, but it was enough to find you among this, the dawn of the magic age.” Considering it, even though my power had grown so much in her care, I still wouldn’t be capable of changing my sex. I began to despair.

She released my mind and pulled her hand from my chest, the wound sealing itself on its own. “Now, that you begin to understand,” I could still hear her in my mind, “Let me show you.” She embraced me then, touching her nipples to mine, and from my heart I felt a surge of power as my breasts grew to mirror hers. I took hold of that power, and examined it, learned from it, and started trying to find other uses for it. Her hands slid down my back and she knelt, causing an involuntary flutter of my wings at the sensation, and spreading their light grey feathers into the void. My new magic followed her hands, narrowing my back and waist as they went. “No, you can’t do it all at once, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

Her words rang true, I could probably have completed my transformation on my own in another ten years. I started to feel anger at a world that couldn’t provide me with what I need. It occurred to me then, with my new abilities, I could replace it. True, I couldn’t change it in one wave, but this power was enough to reduce the world to its foundations and once it had been destroyed, I could rebuild it however I saw fit. Images were forming in my mind of the end of civilization, and the birth of my new world.

She found my small member, the piece of my anatomy I hated most, and gave it a gentle kiss before pulling into her mouth. I was startled out of my thoughts of domination by the feeling, an echo of the sensation on my own lips and tongue. I had been a virgin all of my 35 years, never having had a desire towards sex, since I knew I had the wrong equipment. My penis began to stir, something it hadn’t done in uncounted years, under the attention of a woman that I started to comprehend had been its previous owner. From the small of my back, she lightly traced the arc of my hipbone, bringing her hands to rest above my stiffening member. The resulting burst of transformative energy was focused under her hands as my hips grew to proportions I had only wished for. It was so exhilarating, I almost gagged as I felt the echo of my dick in her mouth slide along the roof and to the top of my throat.

Disengaging herself from me, she put her fingertips on my backside and brought them down to my heal so fast it felt like the change followed in the wake of an electric shock. The sensation made me stand on my toes as the transformation hit my feet, then rebounded back up my legs. New thoughts were entering my mind, new desires, as I became drunk on my power that was still increasing. I could feel my cheeks flush from mingled embarrassment and excitement as I started to want her on me. I wanted the feelings I would get from her as I filled her. For the first time in my life I wanted an orgasm.

I flapped my wings again, this time trying to regain my balance as I fell backward, spreading graphite feathers as I did so. As they fell, they seemed to trail their color like smoke behind them. Where they fell, their shadow started to spread, and soon I could make out the features of the dessert desert where I had parked my trailer, as if it were a black and white photograph. I wondered at this for an instant, but then the feeling of her hands on our tits brought me back to our play as I hit the ground.

In a flash she moved on top of me and kneeled on my wings, pinning me to the ground. Her hands were still on her breasts, though I felt them like they were on my own, as she lowered herself onto my waiting rod. Feeling the coupling from both of our perspectives almost sent me over the edge, and from her expression with the echo of a warming sensation in our abdomen, I knew it had a similar effect on her. I braced her thighs as she took a couple full strokes allowing us to feel that sensation again before switching to grinding our clit on my pubic stubble. This last was too much and I had my first orgasm. Her orgasm echoed in me and reverberated back to her, sending us both to mounting plateaus, until she finally shot her fluid, covering my stomach. It shook my entire body, and my dark charcoal feathers flew into the air, adding their tone to the landscape.

As I came down from the peak, I realized she had collapsed, and was sleeping on my chest. Looking at the world around me I could start to make out the stars in the sky with the added definition from the newest shade of my feathers, and I had an epiphany. I rolled her off of my chest and onto my arm and thought about this revelation for a moment. As I worked it out in my mind, I watched our feathers lighten to a silvery gray, and a warm smile spread across her sleeping face as she began to fade.

Going over the images she had left in my mind, I saw a future where magic had replaced the world’s nuclear arsenal. As her I had worked to destroy the world, in an effort to replace it with one we assumed would be more fair for us. Our opposition had started late, but grew rapidly, and on the eve of our defeat, she had come to me to give me the powers I now had. She had not foreseen that without the frustrations she had suffered in gaining her power, I might turn out differently. She had evaporated completely, so I stood and folded my wings back into my heart, wondering at the strange twists of fate. I didn’t think I would like being worshiped, but if it should happen again, this time, I would be a goddess of balance.

User:Leasara/Chain Reaction

2009-03-20T08:25:53Z

Leasara: removed depreciated comments tag at the end.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chain Reaction}} [[Category:Adult]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Mythical]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}} {{XXX}}

{{author's note| This is another from another of my Story-a-Day exercise I did in December of 2006 or January of 2007. I believe it was my second attempt at an erotic story. The idea is that succubi are so wanton because the loss a certain something has left this hole that they just can't seem to fill.}}

{{title
|name=Chain Reaction
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Something about her made Jake think she was in some kind of trouble. The way she was sitting hunched over her stomach in the lobby by herself, or the look on her face, she seemed to need something. She looked up and met his gaze, and a fire lit in her eyes. Standing up slowly, she made sure Jake got a good view of her profile. She turned towards him and tucked her thumbs in the back of the waist of her miniskirt, pushing her breasts out in front of her. With a deliberate stride she walked to him and whispered her invitation. He figured Jason would understand if he was a little late, given the circumstances, and followed her.

The apartment had been sparsely decorated, but the bedroom was an altar built to worship the gods of passion. Despite her size, she managed to throw him onto her bed from the doorway, and with an easy jump landed on top of him, straddling his midsection. He propped himself up on his elbows, knocking her into his lap and and said, “What, no foreplay?”

She answered by undoing the button on his jeans and opening his fly, then reaching into his boxers like she was looking for the prize in a box of cereal. Finding what she was looking for, she slouched in disappointment as his cock still had a ways to go before the main event could start. She dropped down to help it along with her tongue. He moved his jeans down his legs to give her better access. She seemed to know the exact spots to hit to get him hard fast. Once he was fully at attention she moved in one smooth motion, thrusting forward, driving him back onto the bed with a passionate kiss, then sliding back, planting his rod in her sex and sitting up.

Slowly she began rocking, and he reached up to unbutton her blouse. she let the garment slide off her arms and onto the floor, revealing her naked breasts. They had to be D cups at least, with large, pink nipples. She took his hands and together they started to play with them. She began to moan as she started riding him faster. He was nearly done when he noticed a wave of cardinal red creeping up her belly and down her thighs from under her skirt. Her tits were getting hot as well, but he couldn’t get her to stop. Her head rocked back and she screamed as her orgasm rocked her, and he followed her over the edge.

With the first spasm of his ejaculation, the bright red color overtook the rest of her body. The next turned her blonde hair jet black. Then her teeth became fangs. She rolled her head forward as two large horns grew from the side of her forehead and grinned a wicked smile as her eyes turned a golden green. His crotch started to ache from his own orgasm as his soldier continued jerk inside her. Three more spasms and she had grown a pair of black, leathery wings. She began to laugh as his face showed his concern at the pain in his dick, which was still... no. She was drawing something from it. Her hourglass figure became more exaggerated as her hips and ass grew, then her legs began to change.

Planting her hands on his chest she leaned forward without releasing her death grip on his poor cock, and gave him another deep kiss. She raised herself again and her hands became hot. The heat flooded his own chest as two fleshy orbs grew under her hands. She finally dismounted, and his dick went limp. His balls had already disappeared, and as his penis rearranged itself, he could feel his hips and ass growing. Having taken his manhood, the succubus stood admiring her work.

She undid the clasp on the skirt and let it slide down her legs, then kicked it off her hoof onto the forming woman on the bed. She leaned over and whispered in her ear, “You’ve followed me this far, my sister, now there’s just one more step.” With that, she vanished into a cloud of brimstone smoke.

The nameless woman on the bed rose and put on the skirt, followed by a blouse she found on the floor. Something in her mind was screaming, something was gone, missing. Something was missing between her legs. She needed to get something between her legs, and soon. She remembered that three floors down, was a man named Jason. He could give her whatever was missing. She walked to the elevator. On the ride down, her stomach began to hurt, she needed Jason. She walked to his door and let herself in.

Jason was on the couch playing a video game and looked very surprised to see her. Hadn’t he been waiting for her? She sauntered over to where he sat, removing her blouse and skirt as she went. Jason’s jaw dropped. Kneeling down, she helped him out of his pants, he was starting to get a hard on, but wasn’t ready yet. She helped him get ready with a mouth that had intimate knowledge of exactly what felt best. Once he was hard enough, she launched herself into the air and landed perfectly on his waiting knob.

“Who-” she shut him up with a kiss as she began to go to work. She began with a rolling movement and found that the muscles in her pussy would let her grab his cock and hold it. His breath came faster and she knew he wouldn’t last much longer. She could feel his ecstasy as a heat in her abdomen and the pleasure it brought drove her to a climax just before he went off. Every twitch of his little dick sent her to a peak just higher than the last, and with it she felt herself changing. Her horns came in first, followed by her fangs. Next were her legs and a long, sinuous tail. She looked at her partner and his color had completely drained. Not sure why it was funny, she laughed anyway as her wings sprouted and grew. Finally she was sated, for now, and she decided to give her meal a gift. She kissed him again on the lips and left him with a fine pair of tits as she vanished.

User:Leasara/Bodies Entwine

2009-03-20T08:24:02Z

Leasara: removed depreciated comments tag at the end.__I enjoy Haiku

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bodies Entwine}} [[Category:Adult]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Mythical]] [[Category:Anthropomorphic]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}} {{XXX}}

{{author's note| This was part of my Story-a-Day exercise I did for a week in late December 2006 or early January 2007. It was a lot of fun, but this one got too big to finish it in a day, so it's still a little rough and not quite finished. This was also my third or fourth attempt at writing erotica, and might be the strangest transformation I ever came up with. Wish I could remember what prompted it.
~Finished 7/24/08}}

{{title
|name=Bodies Entwine
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Simone was a very tall, slender woman with a cute face. Somewhere, just below the surface, was the idea that she could be strikingly beautiful, if she could just see the notion. Today she was in her usual Birkenstocks, jeans, and generic Target T-shirt, with her hair pulled back in a braid that fell to just below her shoulder blades. She followed the assistant into the lawyer's office feeling a sense of awe. The idle thought crossed her mind wondering how many mahogany and oak trees had been felled to provide the walls and furnishings of the place.

It was an amazing contrast to her rat and roach infested studio apartment just six blocks away. She felt a wry smile as she realized you could probably fit two of her apartment within the office, and probably another two of them on top, with enough room left over to run laps between the book-lined walls and the make-shift construction. The assistant ushered her to a seat in front of a desk that could easily double as a tournament-size pool table, informed her that Mr. Cambridge would be with her presently, then excused herself and was gone. Simone marveled at how quietly the assistant walked across the hardwood floor.

The next few moments, while she waited for Mr. Cambridge, she examined the contents of the room and decided that if she could sell the pair of leather wing-backed chairs in the corner, she would probably be able to top her $10,000 goal. It was a little habit she had developed over the past five years, ever since she found out that's all it would cost to go to Bangkok and have the operation to complete her gender reassignment. Suddenly there was a faint mechanical whine as a section of bookshelf broke free from the wall and pivoted providing Simone with a momentary glimpse of what looked like a safety deposit vault that would make a Swiss bank proud. As the lights dropped in the vault, her focus was drawn to the man standing in the hidden doorway.

At first glance, Mr. Cambridge looked like a failed genetics experiment to combine Danny De Vito with Dustin Hoffman. He might be five feet tall, if he weren't slouching over a large envelope, examining it's contents. His head was wreathed with white, downy hair that served to exaggerate the baldness of his crown. Suddenly he seemed satisfied with the envelope, gave a little nod, and hurried to the other side of the desk. The absurdity of this little man behind the enormous desk called to mind the thought of him using any of the other over-sized furniture, and Simone had to stifle a giggle. At this Mr. Cambridge waived a hand and said, "Yes, yes," his voice and the inherent mirth in it perfectly completed the image of a gnome, "I ought to fire my decorator, but I inherited this office, and the effect was worse with furniture I could actually use. You may as well come over here, no use in us shouting across this silly expanse." Simone dutifully rose and walked around the desk to see what the envelope held, and find out why she had been called to this office. As she neared, Mr. Cambridge looked up for the first time and got a puzzled look on his face. "You're Simon Stewart? Simon Edward Stewart?"

"Not anymore," came Simone's reply. "I changed my name to Simone some two, three years ago now. No middle name. What's all this about anyway?"

"But you were Simon Edward Stewart, son of Rebecca and Milton Stewart?" he asked. Simone nodded, and he went on, "Would you be able to prove your former and current identity? This is a matter of some importance."

Digging through her purse, Simone pulled out her driver's license and passport. "These prove I'm me, the passport has my gender down as female, but the driver's license has me as a male. If you call over to the Family Courthouse, they should have a record of the name change, it was filed in January of 2003 or 4 and the Judgement came through in April of the same year. Now, please-"

A gesture from his hand cut her short as pushed a button on the phone, "Ms. Smitts, please verify a judgment for change of name filed under Simon Edward Stewart in January of 2003 or 4 with the Family Courthouse." His finger came off the button and he turned to Simone "You see, I have here your Uncle Robert's will. He's named you as the sole beneficiary of his estate, the total assets of which, after his affairs were settled, amount to approximately $463 million." The color drained from Simone's face and he quickly had her sit in his chair.

"Four hundred?" the little man nodded, "Sixty three. M-million?" She could only blink as the sum of money dwarfed the monstrous desk in her imagination. Suddenly she realized, "Wait. I'm afraid I don't know any Uncle Robert."

"Indeed, but he knew of you. He was your mother's half-brother. When your grandfather re-married after his first wife's death, he was never accepted by his new mother. He left home at the age of sixteen, and joined the Army as a requisitions clerk. Two years later he was in Korea, where he saved up a few thousand dollars and made some very fortunate contacts. Once the war was over, he ran a very profitable import business bringing goods in to the States through China and India. Unfortunately, he was never able to integrate himself back into his family, but he did keep tabs on all his step-siblings. Since you seem to have become the black sheep in your own right, and since he never married, he's left all of his wealth to you. Providing, of course, that at one time you were Simon Edward Stewart. I must say, I would have trouble believing you're a man."

"I'm not, thanks. I'll admit to having a penis, but I feel that being a man or a woman is more than a question of genetics and genitals." He noticed that she dropped into what was probably her standard argument quite naturally. "Philosophers have asked some form of the question 'what makes a man' throughout time immemorial, and never come up with a satisfactory answer. I am a woman. A Transgendered woman, but still a woman. That said, how many genetic women do you know that stand several inches over six feet?"

"Not many, and I meant no disrespect, but I still say it's hard to believe." At this he pressed the button on his phone that had begun flashing. "Yes?"

Ms. Smitts' voice came from the intercom, "The Family Courts have a record of a Simon Edward Stewart changing his name to Simone Stewart filed in January of 2003 and a judgment entered in April of 2003 granting the name change. Shall I have a courier bring over a copy?"

"No, that's fine," he turned again to Simone, "Would you like anything to drink Ms. Stewart?"

"Water would be nice."

"Thank you Ms. Smitts, that will be all." The bottom drawer on his desk turned out to be a refrigerator, from which he pulled two bottles of water and handed one to Simone. "Now that that is out of the way, we just have a little paper work to complete, then I'll familiarize you with your assets, and take you out to your ranch." Noticing her expression he added, "oh, your uncle loved horses."

{{Separator|f}}

The strangest thing, Simone found, about suddenly gaining such a windfall is not knowing what to spend all that money on. All this time Simone had spent saving every dime, she had cut out entertainment expenses, reduced her food budget where possible, she even did without heat and air conditioning as much as she could. As her savings slowly grew, she would imagine what she could buy with it if she weren't saving for a goal. New bedding, new clothes, then she had enough for a new computer, then that 23" monitor, she was nearing the amount that would allow her to buy a Digital Projector when she suddenly became a millionaire. Of course, she had scheduled the appointment for the operation the day after everything was transferred to her name, but the first appointment was still nine weeks away.

Where she had spent her days before working as a wage slave or waiting on doctors, she now had nothing but free time, which she mostly spent turning down requests for grants and investments. It seemed that everyone everywhere wanted some of her money, which she could sympathize with, but out of all the requests and pitches, there was nothing resembling a good cause. Everything from dot com start-ups to big budget movies that had been turned down by Hollywood for good reason, to inventors that were on the edge of a break through in finding a cure for boredom, halitosis, or mothers-in-law. Eventually she gave up, managed to put a faucet on the deluge, and got it turned down to a trickle. Now she spent the time waiting for her operation with her horses.

She had never been much of an animal lover, though she did like birds, but as she spent time with them and learned how to take care of them, the horses grew on her. As it turned out, one of her horses had placed in a stakes race some time ago. Her stable hands were quite happy to report the lineage of each horse, and tell her all about the strengths of them, but she was more interested in the animals themselves. She was surprised to find that each had their own personality, and they were much more intelligent than she would have believed. She still had six weeks to go until the operation, but she decided, on the advice of her stable hands, that once she was back she was going to look into getting a dog.

One morning, after her riding lesson, Simone was on her way into the house, when a black envelope caught her attention. It was sitting on the welcome mat, and the only mark on it was the word EDGE embossed in silver lettering. Opening it, she found a white envelope and a piece of black stationary with silver lettering reading:

"EDGE Research Corp. is seeking investors. For a tour our facilities, please respond to this message using the enclosed envelope and indicate when you will be available to spend at least two weeks in Las Vegas. We will make all arrangements for your flight and lodgings at that time. Upon your arrival, we will grant one wish."

The only mark on the white envelope was the words EDGE Research Corp. embossed in gold. Her interest was instantly piqued. She had never been outside of Colorado, and this seemed to be offering a free trip to Las Vegas. At the very least it was something to do for two weeks. By the time she made it to her study, she had already decided to go. She hastily wrote that she could leave immediately, sealed the reply in the envelope, and left it on the top of the outgoing mail. The next morning a black SUV arrived at seven am.

Tim, the driver, was very understanding. She had thought she would be notified when to expect to leave, at the very least she thought it would take a couple days. Tim just patiently waited by the car while her bags were being packed and she had a quick breakfast. Through the kitchen window, Simone watched as he wiped down the SUV. There was a quality of purpose to his every movement that stood out, almost masking his striking features. He had a very clean look to him, and could probably be a GQ model, if that's what he wanted to do. His chestnut hair was worn back in a short pony tail, which cleared the way for the piercing gaze of his hazel eyes. His tailored suit gave the impression of a lean, muscled torso. For the first time in her life, Simone found herself wondering what a man might look like without so many clothes. Making sure everything would be taken care of in her absence, she rushed out the door. The trip to the airport was fast, and Tim was able to make up some time on the freeway, so they arrived on schedule.

As they approached the plane sitting on the tarmac, Simone started to wonder how many other people were invited to Vegas for this tour. Except for the EDGE logo on the side, the jet looked like a normal commercial passenger plane. Having never been on an airplane, Simone really didn't mind, but the trip started to lose some of it's mystique as she realized she might be flying coach. She was broken out of her momentary disappointment by Tim opening her door and helping her out of the car. Certainly everything else about these EDGE people was top notch, she'd probably be in first class. Tim saw her to the ramp-way, then stowed her bags in the belly of the plane as she ascended the stairs.

At the top of the stairs was a goddess made flesh. Her voluptuous beauty and perfect complexion called to mind ancient artistic treasures, and was only accentuated by the cut of her hostess uniform. Her amber hair was swept up and back away from her heart shaped face, and probably in a little bun under the cap she wore. "Welcome to the EDGE cooperate jet. I'm Rhiannon, and I'll be assisting you with anything and everything." Her eyes were a bright, cheerful blue, but her smile seemed a little strange. It wasn't the fake plastic smile of someone just doing their job, it seemed to be hiding something. "If there's something you want, just let me know." With this she turned abruptly on her heel to lead the way inside. "If you'll please follow me, I'll show you the amenities while we wait for Tim."

"Tim's coming with us?"

With another flash of that strange smile, Rhiannon replied, "Oh, Tim's the pilot!" Like a marionette on a swivel, she turned back to her designated route. "This is an Airbus A319CJ, capable of..." As she went on about the capabilities of the plane, the galley, the restroom, the lounge, Simone tuned her out and tried to figure out what else was hiding behind that smile. It was something that Rhiannon seemed to need from her, there was a pleading quality to her voice that echoed this need, but beyond money, Simone couldn't come up with anything she had that someone might want. Rhiannon continued her programmed litany of the interesting facets, when suddenly Tim showed up and announced they would be departing shortly. Right on que, "If you'll follow me to the lounge, we'll get you buckled in for take off." Rhiannon didn't miss a beat.

The flight there was uneventful, Tim stayed in the cockpit, and Rhiannon attended to Simone's every need with mechanical precision. Usually the whole royal treatment made Simone uncomfortable, but with Rhiannon at least it gave her some occasional peace. With some distance between them, she could just spend time enjoying the flight. Upon landing, Simone decided that her favorite part of flying is the take off. The sudden acceleration pressing you into your seat, then down as the plane begins it's ascent, as far as she was concerned, there could be nothing better, though she did wish they could have encountered some turbulence to complete the experience.

They were met at the Signature Air Terminal by two black SUVs. Tim drove Simone in the first, and the second was apparently for Rhiannon. Though she only caught a moment's glimpse, Simone could have sworn the interior of Rhiannon's vehicle was ablaze with little lights. Laughingly she wondered to herself when the trip had become about the mystery of the hostess instead the mystery of EDGE Corp. After driving for about a half hour, Tim pulled into the parking lot of what seemed to be a forgotten rest stop. Rhiannon's car passed the stop by, and Simone wasn't surprised a bit. It didn't appear that the place had been maintained within the last 15 years, but Tim got out and opened her door anyway. "Welcome to EDGE Research Corporation's main research facility."

"This place?"

"Think of it more like a secret lab. The projects we're working on in here are prime candidates for corporate espionage." What else could she do? She got out of the car and allowed herself to be led to the men's restroom. Inside the restroom they went to a little door marked JAN, Tim put the inside of his wrist against the door jamb, and a moment later it opened. This door led to a large open glass box suspended from rails in a room that was otherwise dark. Embedded within the glass seemed to be circuit pathways that led up to a narrow panel along the far edge of the box. Tim manipulated these to make the box move, but the only way to tell they were moving was by inertia, since beyond the glass of the box there was nothing more than an impenetrable blackness.

She could feel that they were descending little by little. Every so often they would move left or right, forward or back, but always down. Simone was getting more and more nervous, as they seemed to be taking a very round about path and she could hear something moving in the thickening dark surrounding them. Just as she was reaching her limit, a red rectangle appeared on the wall behind her and they stopped moving.

"What is it, why did we stop?"

Hearing the nervousness in her voice, Tim dropped his cool demeanor in favor of reassurance. "It's OK, we've just arrived at the residence level. I'm sorry I let you get so scared, but it takes a lot of concentration to navigate the path down here. I'm afraid I just didn't notice. That's the main ventilation shaft, but it can be very dangerous if you don't know the way down. It's one of our more elaborate security measures. Of course, there are faster ways to get down here, but you need to have a chip to use them. This really is the best way to get a visitor in." Here he motioned toward the red rectangle, "In any case, Rhiannon should be here with your luggage by now. I'm sure you're anxious to see your room?"

Relieved from her fear, Simone was suddenly upset at this new set of information "This is where I'm staying? I think I'd prefer something on the Strip. I don't much care for the ride down, and getting a chip under my skin is even less appealing."

Tim chuckled at her emotional turn about, "Your chip will actually be in a wrist bangle, I assure you they're really quite attractive. Let's go see your room, and if you still feel the same way afterwards, I'm sure something can be arranged." She acquiesced and moved through the rectangle. As dark as the last room was, this atrium was light. After taking a moment to adjust to the brightness, she found herself being guided along a stone terrace overlooking a park. There was a slight, fragrant breeze blowing from somewhere. It was hard to believe she wasn't outside, near an apple orchard. "Here we are," another scan of his wrist revealed a green rectangle, that seemed to be hanging in the air, "after you." The room appeared to be Vintage Vegas, like something from a Rat Pack film.

"If you don't like the decor, the room can be reconfigured. Perhaps something more contemporary? If you'll give me your preferences, I'll be happy to make the arrangements." Rhiannon somehow seemed like she had never left. "Also, I've taken the liberty of preparing lunch, if you're hungry." she added, motioning to the set table in the dining area.

"Actually, Tim, I think this will do fine."

"Great, after lunch we'll get your bangle, and I'll show you the project we're hoping you'll invest in. You've probably noticed we're years ahead of the curve on most any technology out there. The truth is we've garnered a little more information from various government contracts than we were intended to, which is how we came to be Incorporated in Nevada. Recently, however, we've been working on our own research and development outside of and built upon those contracts. Have you ever heard of a nanobot?"

The nanobots did cinch her investment. If they were successful, they could have applications from anti-aging to cancer and HIV treatment. Still, they wanted to give her a demonstration, so they took a drop of her blood, and under a microscope, she watched as three nanobots attacked a virus she didn't even know she carried. After another two days of tours and demonstrations, she wrote a check for $25 million, and that night they celebrated.

{{Separator|f}}

The next morning she woke up stark naked in a sterile white room. She tried to remember what had happened, and then in an instant the fog cleared. After a toast, she had felt faint, then two people in haz-mat suits picked her up, and now she was here. Trying to look around, she found she couldn't move her limbs at all. The things she could get to move were her eyes and their lids. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Rhiannon sitting, also nude, starring at her. Suddenly she recognized the room as a nanobot treatment room like the one she had seen after lunch the previous day. It had a number of antennas arranged around the room to triangulate the location of the bots and give them their instructions. "You should be fully awake by now." It was Tim's voice. "You're probably wondering why you can't move or talk. Right now, the bots in your spinal cord are blocking all voluntary nerve functions. Your autonomic functions are continuing unimpeded, so your heart beats and you breathe, et cetera, but they're not as strong as they normally would be. We thank you for this valuable data, and now it's time to grant that wish. Give her her voice and begin recording."

There was a momentary flash of pain, then her head rolled to the right. Rhiannon had a grin of pure delight, and a hungry look in her eye. "What about a wish? And what did you do to her?"

"That was it? Cut her voice." Another flash of pain and Simone was silent again "We're about to grant my wish," she couldn't see him, but the sound of Tim's voice made her feel sick, "and you are both integral parts in that. Your wish is also being granted, after a fashion, as for Rhiannon, well, she has no wish. Rhiannon is a genetically engineered clone. She is what you might have been had you been born genetically female, and had you been removed from all the various environmental factors that shape a person. However, she wasn't you enough to take your place. There is apparently something to be said for having a soul. This Rhiannon is actually the sixth iteration of you, and was designed with a single purpose in mind, specifically, coupling with you. Rhiannon, if you please?"

On his command the clone straddled Simone's chest, and started sucking her dick. Simone began to cry silently. "You know, I was actually a little sad that you didn't have implants. I mean, those breast forms are great, and you're pretty enough with them, but you have to keep your clothes on to keep your illusion of a feminine body. That flat chest just really does nothing for me. I was relieved you still had your balls though, since your genetic material is needed for the next phase, and frankly, we've run out of what we had on file making all those clones. Of course, this would still work without them, but it would take a lot longer to obtain then prepare the sample, and then there was the possibility of having to make more clones. The investment in time and money was starting to become too great." Simone started to sob loudly, in spite of her vocal chords being arrested, and Rhiannon slumped down on Simone's chest.

"Looks like you've reached the finish line! But we better be careful where we leave her." With that Tim finally appeared, also nude, and with two more people in haz-mat suits. The two orderlies hefted Rhiannon's lifeless bulk off of Simone, and Simone's eyes went wide. This drew gleeful laughter from Tim, who had been anticipating this moment for almost a decade. "Yes! It's worked! But you see, this is just the beginning of my gift to you. Giver her her own arms at thirty percent." A shock of pain down both arms and she could move them with some difficulty, but she had do see what had happened. Rhiannon's lips had some how fused around Simone's penis. Her balls were starting to meld with Rhiannon's face, and suddenly Simone realized she could feel the orderlies' hands holding up Rhiannon's body as if it were her own.

"Ninety-one percent of tolerance, sir" came a call over a speaker.

"Oop! Looks like it's my turn." Simone was still wondering at the feelings of merging with Rhiannon when Tim lay down on his back with his head between her legs. "I really wanted to get into the Uncle Robert thing too, but we should be able to talk more in about a week." He signaled the orderlies who lifted Simone's posterior, then set it back down on Tim's face. Then they spread Simone's legs as far as they would go and set what had been Rhiannon's body down on top of Tim. Tim thrust his dick into the ass of Rhiannon's body, at which point the nanobots took over, rendering him unconscious.

The orderlies left the room and released Simone's bots from her spinal cord. The sensations that had been so intense before doubled and redoubled again as her own fleet of nanobots joined in the effort to join three bodies into one. She thought she would pass out from the sensory overload, but her bots countered with endorphins and adrenaline. Sorting out which hand was which became a priority, she wanted to touch the seams where the bodies were merging. She slowly became aware of all twelve limbs, including thirty fingers and thirty toes. With concentration she was able to move them each independently, but she found it was easier to separate them into three groups.

Splitting her body between her original self and her new self that had been Rhiannon and Tim, it was easiest to think of herself in terms of an upper body and a lower body. Even in groups, she managed to retain mastery over her upper body's limbs on their own. She moved her hand over her smooth crotch, trying to determine where she had ended and her clone had begun, and found an opening. The lower part had probably been Rhiannon's lower lip, the upper was just skin that followed the contour of her pubic bone. She could feel a soft breath as her lower body’s respiration continued. The nostril’s location reminded her she had gained a vulva, it just was not where she had ever anticipated it being. Her life-long dream had been realized, in possibly the strangest way it could. Closing her eyes, she forced her consciousness to her new posterior.

She could feel what had been Tim's scrotum as it was joining with her new labia. Having found that, she tried to find his penis, but it had already been dissolved. A sudden movement in her bones directed her attention inward. Her eyes still closed, she discovered Tim's pelvis had already partially fused with her lower body's pelvis, and her lower body's spinal column was raising. following that, her lower bodies' rib cages had fused in front of her lowest spine and were in the process of opening up. Rhiannon's skull had vanished, but there was still a large part of Tim's skull left.

Now her lower thighs were joining, as were her lower arms. Losing four of her limbs was a relief to her over-taxed mind. Her lower shoulders began to merge with her original hips, changing their orientation. She found that her original legs were folding back up into her lower body, and being absorbed at the same time. Six limbs seemed much more manageable than eight, and were downright easy compared to twelve. She found that she could stand, as it were, on her lower hands and knees, but the orientation of her lower body to her upper body made her doubt she would be able to stand upright again. Now that she was making use of her mobility, she found that the wall with the door had one-way mirroring from floor to ceiling. Her lower arms and legs were still pretty human in form, but her lower chest looked much too big. The same with her rear end. The effect something like a big cat's body with scrawny little human arms and legs. It reminded her of Mr. Cambridge and his desk, and she began to laugh. The orderly took the laugh as a sign of mounting stress and decided to bring her to a place where they could stop.

Tim’s skull began to move within her, being pulled down and back, towards her lowest body’s stomach. The feeling of it moving through her body was making her ill, and she tried to move her awareness away from it, but couldn’t find anything that might distract her. It displaced other organs as it migrated. Some returned to where they had been, and some continued to move to new locations. Trying to concentrate on her heart beat gave her a momentary respite from the chaos of her commingling organs. She found that her original heart had synchronized exactly with her lower body’s heart, while Tim’s heart had stopped. There was something primal about sitting there, listening to her hearts beat, and her innards seemed to be coming to rest.

Her meditation was broken by Tim’s esophagus rudely attaching itself to the bottom of her bronchial tubes. The other end was attached to her lower body’s bronchia, and she found it hard to breathe. Opening her eyes, she saw her pubic nostril was sealing itself. Her chests were burning, and she was starting to get light headed when she finally took her first deep breath, supplying all four of her lungs. The rhythm that worked best, she found, was filling her lower lungs first, then the upper pair and exhaling in the opposite order. She stood there getting the hang of breathing when the door opened again, and in walked Mr. Cambridge, wearing a lab coat over a tan suit.

“I would be willing to bet that you have some questions. We’ve finished our session for this morning, but we’ll need to get started again after lunch.” An orderly walked in behind him with an IV stand and two bags of fluid. “Now, we wern-”

“What is all this?” Free of the distractions of her changing form, she felt a rage building. She blinked at how different her voice was with the extra pair of lungs supporting it. “What are you doing to me?” as quickly as it came on, her anger subsided, probably the nanobots again, she thought.

“Very valid questions, but first you’ll need some nutrients, and since we were unable to get your digestive tract into it’s final state, Mr. Johnson here will need your arm.” She cowered away from the man with the needle. “I assure you, those bags don’t contain anything other than a standard intravenous meal," he seemed to think to himself a moment before continuing, "if we wanted to drug you, we could have used gas.” She relented and cautiously allowed the man access to her arm. He inserted the catheter, started the drip, and left the room. The fluid was cold and it made her shoulder ache as it entered her blood stream.

“Now. To answer your first question, this is Edge Research’s underground secret laboratory. It’s something like a privately owned Area 51. Some of the technology here has been pieced together based on information gleaned from various government contracts. Some of it was invented here, and the rest was recovered from extra terrestrial crafts.” He waited for her reaction, but she just nodded as Tim had explained most of that the previous day. “As for what we are doing to you, I do apologize, but Mr. Veldts, Tim, left very specific instructions on what could be said.”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m fairly certain that Tim is dead. I can’t feel his heart beat, and while I don’t know about his brain, his skull wandered off on it’s own. Whatever was Tim is becoming whatever I am.” She was still trying to regain commend of her voice as it played between her natural tenor and the contralto she had trained it to.

“Indeed? Well, that is unfortunate.” His tone proved that he was hiding something, or he just didn’t believe her.

“Ok. What are you doing here?”

“I am Mr. Veldts’ private lawyer. I take care of all his personal affairs. He’s asked me to look after you while he’s indisposed.”

“I see, and what about the last time I met you? Uncle Bob’s will and all that.”

“Ahh, yes. That was an act, put on for your benefit. The office was rented for the day, and Robert never did exist, nor did his estate. The contents of the estate belonged to Mr. Veldts, but are now legally yours. Everything beyond that was a fictitious invention.”

She stood there blinking at this tidbit. “He just gave me seventy-five million dollars, half a dozen small companies, and a large Colorado ranch? Why?” Her voice was beginning to behave again.

“We needed you to make arrangements to be free for two weeks. It was a most expedient method to get you to do so, and he did feel some reparations were in order.” She gave him an incredulous look. "Mr. Veldts is a very kind man. His means are questionable, but never his motives."

“Ok, why me?” that sounded almost the same as usual.

“I had hoped you would open that door. A little over a year and a half ago, you had blood work done in preparation for starting hormones. The facility that did the testing was a subsidiary of ours. The Edge Group obtained a sample of the blood and found you to be one of seventeen candidates that were a good biological match for Mr. Veldts. All of you were transgendered for the sake of the merging process. Of the candidates, your psychological profile, living status, and social life were the closest to the ideal for this project. We obtained more of your genetic material through our subsidiaries, and began cloning you." Again her reaction was quieter than he had anticipated, so he continued.

"Because we weren’t making a direct clone, but were redesigning your personal genome, we hit a few snags. The first three were unable to live without life support. Number four was severally retarded, and needed daily dialysis. The fifth was a little smarter, but still had the kidney problems, and the sixth, you met. Even she took constant attention from a nanobot detail just to keep her functional.” He looked genuinely upset by what the clones had gone through.

The orderly reentered the room, “It looks like your bag is getting empty. Please let Mr. Johnson remove the catheter, and we’ll see if we can get you out of here before supper.” While Mr. Johnson disengaged the plastic tube from her arm, Mr. Cambridge exited the room. She stood there holding her arm where the catheter had been as the orderly left.

Taking stock of herself and the two bodies that had been fused with her, her attention kept being drawn to the untreated hole left in her arm from the IV. She still had a spare spinal column floating in her lower body, but none of the rest of her bones were duplicated. Her hearts were beating, though the lower one was still a little weak. Her original legs had crushed the breasts on her lower body, and she could find no sign of either legs or breasts. She was down to the four lungs, and supposed the sets in her lower body had fused. In fact, as near as she could tell, most of the organs in her lower body seemed to have been joined together. She could feel one stomach, one bladder, one colon, one heart. Curiously, Tim’s scull was missing. She concluded that she must have missed it finally being absorbed. The spare spine began to lurch, and the puncture from the IV in her arm began to seal itself under the influence of the microscopic machines, so it looked like it was time for the end of the ride.

As the spare spine drew closer to the one that still held her lower body's ribs, it started shrinking, while the main lower spine grew in length and thickness. She knew it was just the nanobots using the materials from one to expand the other, but the sensation was making her upper stomach turn. Suddenly her tail dragged on the floor and and she wondered when it had developed. While she wondered, it grew another several feet. It seemed much too long for a horse, which is what she had supposed her lower body would eventually resemble. Now the tube of flesh and bone was even longer than would be proportional for a large cat, which was another possibility that had crossed her mind. As she stood wondering at the new limb, her upper stomach broke free and started to descend into her lower body, trailing a growing esophagus in it’s wake. After some time it settled into position in front of her other stomach, while the extra innards that had been housed in her torso sorted themselves out and joined their counterparts in her lower body.

She figured the nanobots were suppressing the pain and nausea this should have caused, but they didn't do much for the uneasy feeling in her mind. Instead it was bemusement that calmed her as she realized her emotions were being telegraphed by her restless tail. Finally it seemed that the internal changes might be done, except that her upper lungs grew a touch, and her bronchial bridge expanded as well. The rest of the space that had been recently vacated was filled in with muscle and fat, leaving her a very strong but trim waist. A tingling in her nipples let her know her abdomen wasn’t the end of the sudden fat production, as her breasts grew from their AA size to a full C cup in a matter of moments. How many times had she seen that happen in her dreams? She reached up to feel their heft and prove to herself they were real.

“We can make them bigger, if you want,” said a voice over a hidden speaker. She instinctively crossed her arms over her new flesh to hide their nakedness.

“No, tha-” her voice was much higher, she didn’t have to work to reach a feminine pitch. “These are fine, thank you. I don’t suppose you have one of those paper gowns out there, do you?”

“Sorry, no,” came the reply. “We’re starting the second phase in a moment, which will also employ most of the bots that have been reinforcing your lower half so you didn't crush yourself while you were upright. You'll need to lie down on your side.”

“Second phase?” There was no answer. “Hello?” Giving up, she turned her back to the window, laid down on her right side, and closed her eyes. She waited for phase two to start, and after a while, got impatient. She tried to roll herself up to see what was happening, but found she couldn't move below her waist. Hooking her left hand under what would become her left foreleg, she pulled herself up and around enough to be able to see her legs over her shoulder. They were reforming into the hind legs of an animal. She had expected this turn of events, but with her tail only adding to the enigma, this would be her first real clue as to what sort of animal she would be from the waist down. Her thighs were almost done, and looked fairly powerful. Probably a large cat after all. Her ankles started to move up her legs as her shins shrunk and her feet stretched out behind them. The shin settled, but the feet kept going and becoming thinner. A tall cat? Some kind of horse? She wished she could remember what a zebra’s tail looked like.

The shape her feet were taking was folding her toes together, and though she couldn't feel anything below her contorted waist, she still winced at the sight of what was happening to them. In each foot the middle three toes were way out in front, and her big and little toes had moved behind them until they were almost right next to each other. Her feet stopped changing for a moment before her center toes on either foot started to diminish. Soon she was down to four toes on each leg with a small gap between each set of two. Her big toes shrank as well, and almost disappeared with the little ones. The remaining toes’ nails began to thicken and became quite opaque. Soon she had a fine pair of opalescent cloven hooves. A cow? The cloven hooves and a long tail definitely fit, but the rest of her would have to become a lot broader.

Her soon-to-be foreleg started vibrating as the nanobots entered it, so she released her grip and leaned forward enough to see what was happening. Again they started from the body and worked out. At first they shortened the upper portion, almost bringing the elbows into the body. The forearm section they seemed to leave alone, maybe lengthening them slightly as the hands started to stretch. This time her thumb and pinkies almost met and almost disappeared, the middle fingers on both the lower hands did disappear, and the ring and index fingers became the main hooves. She admired the efficiency of the process and then berated herself for having felt any kind of approval for what was happening to her. Feeling her legs under her control again, she waited for the disembodied voice to signal she wouldn't hurt herself. Once it remained silent for a while she decided to try out her reconfigured limbs and rolled onto her belly after three failed attempts. Standing proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated, but her lower limbs had had a much broader range of motion the last time she had been able to move them.

Finally gaining her feet, or her hooves as it were, she found that she was tall enough to keep her tail from dragging by just curling the end a bit. Turning back to the mirror, she decided her lower body mostly resembled a long-tailed deer, if such a creature exists. As she examined her reflection, her lower body seemed to be turning white, looking down she discovered she was growing a fine white fur. Leaving the task of maintaining her modesty to one hand she ran the other through the developing coat. It felt more like rabbit’s fur than a horse’s. Also the hair was much longer at the tip of her tail just above her hooves, covering the vestigial hoovelets. She stopped in mid turn as she realized what her lower body resembled. From the waist down, she was a unicorn. As if to confirm this realization, the nanobots picked that moment to erect a nine inch horn on her forehead, starting about an inch above the bridge of her nose and pointing out at about a forty-five degree angle. All she could do was stand staring at her reflection in the one-way mirror.

Coming back to her senses she couldn’t notice any more changes, but no one had come to let her out of the room either. She gave them another fifteen estimated minutes, and still nothing happened. At some point she examined her nails and discovered they had the same opalescent shine as her hooves and horn. She got familiar enough with her legs that she wasn’t slipping on the slick floor of the room any more. After what she estimated to be 45 minutes, something finally happened. Her left foreleg got painfully heavy, then it seemed to bleed quicksilver. The mercurial fluid formed itself into a little box about the size of a large briefcase complete with a handle on top. Finally, as the handle fell over on the top of the box, Mr. Cambridge opened the door.

“Mr. Veldts wanted you to have these too, he thought they would compliment your new form.” He crossed the little room and handed her a light blue peasant blouse and a bra. Mr. Johnson followed him and picked up the box. “If you’ll follow me, I do believe you could probably use a walk in the park.” She had seen the nanobots leave her body, so she knew it wasn’t their influence, but she wondered what had happened to the rage she felt earlier. Was she accepting this form? She should at least be upset about the way she’d been violated. If they had asked, and explained it to her, she might have gone along. In fact, given the nature of her new body and her love for the mythical beast she now resembled, she might have jumped at the chance. She had a lot to think about as she followed the little man down the labyrinth of corridors.

“This part is probably going to be difficult, so I'm just going to say it.” He stopped and glanced over his shoulder at her. “You are going to be a mother, of sorts.”

“Of sorts?”

“In a week, you’re going to give birth to a colt housing Mr. Veldts’ brain.” Seeing the lack of reaction he had come to expect from Simone, he continued walking but stopped and turned when he didn’t hear her following. “Mr. Veldts has always wanted to be a centaur, you see. He says it’s the same as you always having been a girl. In his heart, it’s who he is. Nanobots can do some amazing things, but only cosmetically. They can’t build a whole new creature from nothing. They must have living cells to move around, not entirely unlike a child's building blocks. Just to get you to your current state, we had to build a clone and provide acceptable spare bio-matter. This was the only way.”

She just looked at him for a moment. “You're telling me that the only way to make him a centaur was to drastically change me first without even stopping to ask me if it was OK? I don't buy that. I'm sorry, but you'll have to do better." She had folded her arms almost naturally under her new bust.

"I didn't expect that would go over, your profiles were spot on. While I sympathize with your situation, unfortunately I am bound by my friend and client against shedding further light in that direction. However, he will be happy to discuss it with you in a little over a week's time." His tight-lipped smile brooked no argument.

Dropping her hands she relented, "I need to go to the park.”

"Indeed, it's not much further," the little man replied. He looked much smaller now, and she figured she had topped seven feet and was probably looking closer to being eight feet tall. As they walked, he began to educate her on her new form. Genetically her upper body was the same as it had always been. Likewise half of her lower body was genetically Tim Veldts. Rhiannon turned out to be more horse than human on that level. All of the unicorn attributes were purely cosmetic. The cloven hooves, the long sinuous tail, the spiral horn on her brow, all of it.

Simone did her best to listen to Mr. Cambridge, but plodding along at this slow pace was wearing on her nerves. She had never had such a strong desire to run in all of her life, and if she knew the way to her destination, she would have left the man behind. Some of what he said did give her pause though. As long as she could remember she had wanted the chance to be a mother, but this was all rather extreme. In order for it to work, she would have to undergo nanobot treatments three times a day until Mr. Veldts was born again. These would serve several purposes. First to further obscure the genetic line between the equine and human in her lower half, for her health, she was told. They would also taking care of any signs of rejection of the radical graft while helping along Mr. Veldts' development and ensuring he would have a compatible genetic diversity. Mr. Cambridge seemed to catch his tongue too late with the mention of compatible genetic diversity, and Simone found the term further unsettled her. They walked the rest of the way in silence.

At the door to the park her wrist bangle was returned to her, and Mr. Cambridge made his farewell. According to the chronometer integrated into the wrist device, her run lasted for more than an hour and a half. She had gotten used to her gait during the walk from the treatment room to the park, then spent the first half hour of her time alone discovering how to move herself through the paces she had learned from the stable hands, a trot, a canter, and a gallop. Full gallop was exhilarating, and the rhythm of her breath split between two pairs of lungs seemed to serve to reinforce her excitement, but she was unable to sustain it for very long. Instead she found a bounding motion easier to maintain and possibly as fast as the gallop. The thing that surprised her most was how much joy she derived simply from being in motion.

If it weren't for the inviting smell of the apple orchard, she might have kept running all afternoon. However she had been warned away from eating apples for the week. Something about the possibility of them fermenting in her new digestive tract. Now she wished she had been able to pay more attention to Mr. Cambridge in the hallway. As she began retracing her path, she was surprised to find how well her new form suited her. She was already comfortable with how she had been changed, even though she still had strong objections to the means of that change. Of course, she questioned the genuineness of her acceptance, the nanobots had proven themselves capable of manipulating her emotions already, but everything she had read and seen yesterday indicated that they wouldn't be able to do anything outside of the treatment room.

Soon her bangle let her know when she was near the entrance to the atrium, and raising her wrist rewarded her with a green rectangle forming out of the air. On the other side of the portal she found Mr. Johnson apparently waiting patiently for her. While he escorted her back to her room, she tried to recall more of the conversation with Mr. Cambridge, specifically the part that had shut him up. There was really only one reason she could imagine she and Mr. Veldts would need 'compatible genetic diversity' and while she had often daydreamed of how nice being a mother would be, she was less than happy with the available choice for a father. Then she remembered that physical spark she had felt the day he came to pick her up, and was surprised to find that that door wasn't completely closed. They would certainly have much to discuss by the end of next week.

User:Leasara/Look Before You Leopard

2009-03-20T08:23:01Z

Leasara: removed depreciated comments tag at the end.__So as I edit pages

{{DEFAULTSORT:Look Before You Leopard}} [[Category:Adult]] [[Category:Animal]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}} {{XXX}}

{{author's note| This was also done as part of my Story-a-Day exercise that I did for a week in December of 2006 or January of 2007. On the Lab, Mutamancer was looking for someone to do a collaboration with. When I offered to try, I was told by someone else that my stories weren't erotic enough. I decided to view that as a challenge and see if I could write something erotic. I think I got pretty close.}}

{{title
|name=Look Before You Leopard
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

The masonry of the wall had created an illusion that caused him to misjudge the distance to the ground, this landing was really going to hurt. Knees and feet together, hit, move the momentum into a roll, and stand. Fortunately his training had also taught him to ignore the complaints from his joints that invariably resulted from this maneuver. Sprinting for the tree line, he checked his sub-dermal compass to verify the direction of the package. The display on the bangle let him know had about six minutes to remove it before the injection it contained went off, plenty of time, as long as the guards didn't catch him. He allowed himself a glimmer of hope.

Admiring the escaping subject, Dr. Lydia Clayton was sitting on the rucksack she assumed to be his destination. It had been hidden well, but was still easily found if you knew what to look for. She had moved it a little further into the forest to provide better cover. Next to her stood a trim woman wearing a severe expression to match her blazer and pencil skirt and holding a spotlight. Impressed at his roll, she leaned towards her aide and whispered, "He's really good, pity. Hopefully he'll be as graceful landing on his feet." He came out of the shadow of the wall and into the light of the moon and she grabbed at her aides arm. "Look! This is my favorite part, he thinks he's out. See! Look at his eyes!" she was having a hard time keeping still as the moment she was anticipating drew near.

He left the manicured lawn behind and the terrain took a slight downward slope, causing him to shift his posture more upright as he ran. He thought he caught a flash of light inside of the forest, like the moons reflection from a lens. He instinctively dropped and rolled to a stop. Creeping forward on his belly, he peered into the shadows in front of him. He was about a yard from the trees when the bangle gave a double-beep and fired. He sat up staring wide eyed at the device who's timer had stopped at 5:32. It gave a slight hum, then split and dropped to the ground as he was bathed in a light from the forest. Holding up his newly freed hand out to shield his eyes, he could make out two silhouettes at the source of the light.

"Oh! That was perfect! Thank you. You are a day early though." The one not holding the light was was clapping her hands. His arm was becoming hot as whatever drug had gone into his muscle started doing whatever it was meant to do. "They had another eighteen hours to make your ransom, but I guess it's all the same in the end. You might want to lower that arm, holding it above your heart will only speed the effects."

He dropped his hand and moved to cover the wound from the needle with his other hand, but found his skin too hot to touch. This moved his focus from the shadowy figures to his arm. He retrieved the knife he had liberated in his flight and cut the sleeve of his infiltration suit to his shoulder. In the spotlight, his skin appeared to have a greenish-yellow tint spreading slowly from the injection sight. It had reached half way down his hand, and was nearly to his elbow. He cut a strip from his bisected sleeve and wrapped it around his arm, just above the elbow, then used a stick from the ground to tighten the tourniquet until he could no longer feel his arm. A peel of mad laughter answered his efforts.

"That's wonderful! He's still fighting it. I wonder how long it'll hold back the serum?" She stood and appeared to be taking off her coat, when she then draped over the arm holding the spotlight. Stepping into the beam cast from her aides hand, he could tell that she was wearing very little, if anything at all. She slowly walked toward him. "You came here to investigate an animal smuggling ring, selling rare and endangered species to those that can afford them, correct? Well, it's true, that is how I make my money, but that's only the very end of a cycle. You're about to gain more intelligence on my operation than you had planned for. Too bad you won't be able to share it with anyone." As she neared him, she could see that the tourniquet had become lose and the telltale discoloration had already claimed his naked shoulder.

He had been taught to resist many, varying forms of coercion, and he now fought a battle against her seduction. Her lose gait as she crossed to him, combined with the way the light played along the edges of her silhouette, and the dimensions of the voluptuous silhouette itself held him transfixed. She was talking, and he knew he should be listening, but he had more immediate needs. He was losing ground. The sway of her broad hips contrasting the steadiness of her eyes was the same hypnosis some cobras used to trap their prey. Adding in the tempo and temptation of her sultry voice, his resolve dissipated like steam in a gale before her onslaught. His jaw went slack as he realized he was seeing a vision of Venus descending from Olympus.

She picked up his knife from where it had fallen, and with a few deft movements he was as kneeling, naked before her, the tourniquet and stick still clutched in his right hand.She walked a tight circle around him, inspecting her prize for the first time. His body told the story of a battle hardened warrior, bearing scars that doubtless held many stories. Scars that disappeared as her serum spread, preparing his skin. He was well muscled, but lacked the definition usually gained from weight training. As she passed behind him, she traced the lines in his shoulders with a finger, these shoulders were the proof that he had come by his physique through the strenuous work in the field. Completing her circle, she brought her attention lower. She was elated to see that he wasn't another steroid-pumped pencil-dick.

Seeing that the injection was already working on his legs, she slid her hand down his torso. eliciting a shiver and soft moan from the man, and cupped his sack. She played with his stiffened rod for a moment, but as the discoloration finally overtook it, it began to soften. With a gentle tug she pulled out a clump of his pubic hair. Reaching up with her other hand, she began to brush the hair from his head, and in a moment he was bald in both areas. She moved back up his torso, gently removing the dusting of hair on her way while confirming the tension in his muscles was locking him in place. She depilated his arms in a similar fashion and, as she finished with his beard, his eyes began to regain some vitality.

As consciousness returned to him, he was feeling very strange. His whole body seemed like it would burst into flames at any moment. In spite of his training, he began to panic. He couldn't move at all. Even his face had frozen into a mask. To battle the panic, he was just glad to still be breathing. She was smiling as she brushed something from his cheek. Back-lit, he couldn't be certain of the color of her hair, it was most likely black. Judging by the features of her face, she was probably from the Middle East, somewhere between Northern Egypt and Kuwait. She was caressing his legs with that same strange smile, and he realized he was naked. The heat in his body seemed to diminish in temperature, but deepen in scope. Starting with his feet, he could feel a dull ache as he regained control of his toes. She began to rub his feet, and the sensation sent thrills of spasms up his legs and back.

"You can probably hear me again, though I doubt you can speak." She had an implacable accent that called to mind visions of ecstasy and danger. "It really is a pity that you didn't come here on your own. We could have spent days, even weeks, in our play. You're such a beautiful specimen. Why do the best ones always limit us to one encounter?" She didn't seem to be speaking directly to him. He could move his legs again, though the ache persisted. She had moved on to his calves, and was releasing spasms of pure pleasure as she massaged deeply into his muscles. He was becoming aroused in spite of himself. "Not yet. Oh, not yet. You should wait at least until your hips are ready." What was she talking about? He used his limited mobility to turn to see his legs behind him, and she quickened her pace, moving to his thighs.

His feet were not recognizable. They bent at a strange angle in the middle, and the balls and toes looked like -- They looked like paws. His feet had become perfectly formed paws, and were starting to grow hair that matched the black spotted gold pattern that had covered his skin replacing the greenish discoluration. Likewise his calves had become impossibly short and narrow. He tried to object to whatever she was doing to him, but all that came out was a rumbling noise from deep inside his chest. She looked up at this, and he could see that her eyes were an unnatural golden color.

"I see you're back." she said with the strange smile again and turned back to his thighs, starting to work around to his hips. The sensations were threatening to wash him away again. "You're lucky, you're going to a breeding program. Most of the animals I sell become pets to the rich and frivolous. Some of the poor things are even eaten by their new masters." as she started working on his hips, he rocked forward and found himself standing awkwardly on his new feet. "I try not to sell to people that I know will just kill the animal for it's skin or meat, but I do what I must to survive." He strained forward as she dug a fingernail into his lower back and moved it down towards his butt. The sensation of his new tail following her finger as she drew it to it's final length was possibly the most sensual thing he had ever felt. She came around to face him again and kneeled "You know, I kept a pack of, what are today called, Persian Leopards, the cat you'll soon be, even before the days of Alexander." His eyes, only slightly changed, were wide and his mouth hung open, panting. She put a hand under his chin and looked in his eyes, "Is there nothing of the soldier left?" He blinked and shook his head as if to clear it. "That's better. I hoped you would be here for this part. This is the moment that sustains me." She turned around and raised her ass into his field of view.

Weather it was nearing dawn, or what was happening to him, he found it easier to see. As she presented herself to him, he could see that the edges of her sex were turning black. New instincts moved him, and he sniffed her, and gave her two licks before climbing onto her back. He reached around and cupped a breast in each hand as he got into position. Alarms started to go off in his mind, but he couldn't resist her, and he felt his manhood changing in concert with her willing pussy. On his first thrust he could feel the changes moving up his spine, and his partner's tail coming in. He started pounding into her, and her transformation sped on ahead of his. He could feel himself slipping away into this instant, every part of his being was focused on the release that would come any moment. He didn't notice his hands becoming paws, or the changes in his neck and head. Finally he reached the end and as he exploded within his mate, his fur grew in spurts in time with each spasm of his release.

Spent, he dismounted the other leopard, and lay down to clean himself. The aide turned off the spotlight and walked to where Dr. Clayton was regaining her natural form. as she stood up, the aide wrapped her in her coat. "It really is too bad he didn't come on his own. That was at least fifty years, but I bet I could have gotten five hundred out of him."

User:Leasara/The Dream Dreams the Dreamer

2009-03-20T08:22:04Z

Leasara: removed depreciated comments tag at the end.__May as well have fun

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dream Dreams the Dreamer, The}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Anthropomorphic]] [[Category:Ambiguous]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This was also part of the Story-a-Day exercise I did for a week in late December 2006 or early January 2007. Someone had posted a fairy tale that read like something out of the early 1800's and I was so impressed I wanted to see if I could change my voice similarly. It turned out that the fairy tale really was from the early 1800's and the poster just wanted to share it, but I think my attempt at changing my voice helped set apart the dream sequence rather nicely anyway.

I used my own name. And I reused the 'angry little box waking me up' thing from [[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]. That actually happened to me, I was two hours late for work and caught the tail end of my alarm going off on the other side of the room. Took me an entire song before I realized it was an alarm clock and what the numbers meant.}}

{{title
|name=The Dream Dreams the Dreamer
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

I knew I was dreaming by the way the road I was on stretched to an infinite horizon. The sky was dark, black with a delicate violet hue where it touched the ground, and it held no stars. In fact, I couldn't identify any source of light for the perpetual twilight I found myself in. It might have been the sand, for this path ran through either a desert or a beach, that cast the strange glow into the atmosphere, but having nothing other than speculation to base the argument, I decided to be happy enough that there was light on this road, in this otherwise featureless arena. The path I was on was made from the same stuff as the sand, and could only be differentiated from the rest of the sandy expanse by it's innate hardness as opposed to the fluidity of the fine granules that surrounded it. Since I was already on the road, I began to walk.

As I walked, I became aware of an intense stillness. Either there was no air, else the air moved with me, for nothing I could do would allow me to feel it's touch. No breeze upon my cheek as I walked, nor scent in my nostrils as I inhaled. Still, I did breath easily enough, and the sound of my footfalls was transmitted to my ear through some medium, though no other sounds pervaded this ethereal space. As I concentrated on the stillness, I could feel an energy behind it. As if the world was holding it's breath for some event, anticipating it's beginning. I paused my ambling to see if I could catch a hint of the secret.

Casting my gaze about me, I sought clues to the nature of this immanent event. After searching for some moments, I found that the path had diverged into three separate routes, though I was certain the fork hadn't been there before, and I knew I hadn't moved from the time I started my search. I was standing, pondering this sudden development, when the air beside the left route began to boil. From this atmospheric disturbance, a road sign appeared bearing an image of a Greek Tragedy mask, it's face twisted in some agony. I shifted my vision to my right and found a similar sign had appeared to the right side of the right route. This had on it an image of a Greek Comedy mask, it's eyes glowing with an unseen joy or pleasure. On the center path, no sign had appeared. This gained my curiosity, so I continued my journey without changing directions. No sooner had I set foot on the center path than the energy behind the stillness felt as though it had heaved a sigh of relief and the other two paths passed from my awareness.

My options having narrowed to forward, backward, or out into the wilderness, I made my choice and proceeded. I had barely made three strides when I was presented with another choice of only two paths forming a "Y" in front of me. This time the sign on the left displayed a thought bubble, while on the right was an image of a concrete block. I thought for a moment, and for a moment more, then took the path on the left. After a step or two the road to the right had disappeared, I looked behind me, and in spite of my turning to the left, the road was as straight as it had ever been. I had come to expect some strangeness in this dream, so when I turned back to the path I had chosen, I was only mildly startled to see I was standing at a fountain in a park.

The fountain was a marvelous multitiered affair, carved in a white stone with an iridescent sheen, depicting scenes from different mythologies. From my limited studies I was able to identify visions from Egyptian, Greek, Germanic, Norse, and Celtic mythology, but there were others I couldn't identify that gave the impression of being Oriental, and Native American in origin. I wanted to sit and study this strange artifact, but the energy made it clear to me that my journey was not over. Inspecting my surroundings further, the variation of the foliage of this park made me wonder what hand had planted them. There were more trees than I could count, and no two appeared to be the same species. In fact, none of the bushes or flowers were duplicated either, but their locations and arrangement was so perfectly planned and considered that the effect was stunning. Walking around the fountain I counted six paths leaving the fountain, each with their own sign. Weather one of them was the one I had arrived on or not, I was uncertain. The first five signs were numbered: Zero, Two, Four, Six, Eight, The sixth sign had a greater than sign on it. I began to wonder at the meaning of the signs, then I began to wonder if this entity I was understanding as energy might be blocking my comprehension of the signs so far. Shortly after my thoughts turned to the energy, I had an inexplicable feeling compelling me to move on. Spurred into action, I made one more circuit around the fountain. The Zero path was paved with a ruddy brown clay, the Two path with stone, the Four path with concrete, the Six path with grass, the Eight with cobble stone, and the other with something resembling black glass. As I was barefoot, I decided the grass looked the most inviting, and made my way onto the lawn-paved road.

There was a pang of regret at leaving the fountain, knowing it would disappear behind me, but it made my companion happy, which let me relax to some degree. I stretched my arms behind me to exercise my shoulders a bit, as they had begun to ache, then plodded on down the path before me. Before I had traveled far, the path split into three again. To my left was a sign with a stylized foot emblazoned upon it. The sign ahead held a depiction of a hand, and on the right, a wing. I could find no rational reason to chose one path over another. I decided that having gone ahead once and left once, I would go right now. Growing weary of these nonsensical decisions, I resolved to end them as quickly as I could and ran down the Wing path. Arriving at the next fork, I examined the signs for a moment, scales or water, and hair or grass. I bolted down the path of hair and presently found myself at the fountain I thought I had lost.

The numbered paths had were gone, replaced with a much larger variety of walkways. Thankfully there was now a dipper on the edge of the fountain, and tasting the water, I found it sweet. Having had my fill, I looked again to the signs on the paths circling the fountain. These were all stylized versions of animals. Going around once again, it dawned on me that these were all mammals. Remembering my fondness for horses, I committed myself to that route. The next fork caught me in the middle of my second stride, and I thought my companion was beginning to share my desire for haste. This was a simple choice between the number Two or One. Two being more than one, I took a step and was at another three-way split. On the right was a horse again, and on the left, a symbol recognized by anyone who has ever used a public restroom as representing a woman. Once again, the center path had no sign, so it was the one I took. I found myself at the familiar fountain almost as soon as I had made up my mind.

I studied the signs again, each resembling an animal again. I began to trace the circle again with my steps, marking off each sign in turn. Goat, Deer, Antelope. My feet stopped themselves. This sign appeared to be the face of a doe, but with a single horn rising from the center of her forehead. I could feel the burbling joy of my companion as I walked through the gate with the sign of a unicorn. A cacophony erupted from the silence resolving itself to the euphony of a cheering crowd of unimaginable size.

{{Separator|f}}

I sat, starting at the angry little box. I knew it's lights and sounds held meaning, something important, I just needed time to figure it out. Time? Oh no. It was a quarter after nine, and my lecture started at ten. Dr. Jones would kill me if I was late again. I hopped out of bed and found I was still dressed. Grabbing my bag I double checked to make sure the artifact was back in it's place. It wasn't. I gave my room a quick scan and found it under the bed. Retrieving it, I wondered again how it had found it's way into my bag instead of it's replica, but once it was back in the materials room, everything would be fine. I just hoped no one had noticed it was gone. Rushing down the hall, I jumped over the first stair and glided to the landing, turned and repeated the maneuver.

"Shannon? What have I told you about gliding in the house?"

"I know, mom, but I'm late!" I rounded the corner and headed for the front door.

"Come get your toast at least. I've already made it."

Spinning around, I almost tripped over my own tail and made for the kitchen. "Thanks, mom, but I'm still moving into the dorms next semester."

"Look at your feathers! What happened? And your hooves are all scuffed! Are you alright?"

I swallowed the bite I was working on. "I'm fine, this is how I like to wear them, and no one polishes their hooves in college. I really gotta go." I touched my horn to hers, ran out the back door and leapt into the air, beating my wings to gain altitude as quick as I could.

User:Leasara/Free Solo Dragon

2009-03-20T08:17:07Z

Leasara: removed depreciated comments tag at the end

{{DEFAULTSORT:Free Solo Dragon}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Mythical]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This was done early in my Story-a-Day exercise that I did for a week late December 2006 or early January 2007. Just a quick transformation Vignette detailing a dragon change while falling, one of the scenes I've had in my head on and off again over the past ten to fifteen years.}}

{{title
|name=Free Solo Dragon
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

No one knows the true length of a second like a person realizing they're about to die. Erin was gaining a sudden education in this fact. She gazed through her splayed, chalk-lined fingers at the small town at the base of the mountain and wondered how long it would be before she was found. The surge of adrenaline and fear she had felt when her foot hold had broken lose had settled to somewhere just above her stomach, where it seemed to be igniting her diaphragm. This wasn't the first time she had felt the sensation, but it was the most intense. Her brother would say she had fallen victim to her instincts again.

As far back as she could remember, she had been drawn to heights. Because of this inexplicable draw, she had washed windows on sky scrapers when she was younger, and had become a sky diving instructor at the age of twenty-three. She had followed the friends she had made along the way through roller derby, and street luge, snowboarding, and bungie jumping, but nothing gave her the thrill of seeing the arc of the horizon like flying and skydiving. Now she remembered the first time she felt this fire as it infused her chest, it was her first solo dive. In the moments between her primary chute's malfunction and the opening of her reserve chute some five seconds later. That experience was now fresh in her mind as was the feeling of wasted potential she was just remember having felt. Her iPod changed songs to The Delgados, The Light Before We Land, and she started laughing.

She took a moment to estimate and was surprised to see she had only fallen ten feet or so. It had obviously been a poor decision to chose such a technical, 90 foot face for her first free solo climb, and turning on the MP3 player for the last 10 or 15 feet of ascension had turned out to be a terminal mistake. She was also surprised at how rational she seemed to be, given the circumstances and wondered what other memories would bubble up unbidden in her final moments. As her focus moved from the town to her splayed fingers, the thought crossed her mind that something new might also occupy that time.

Some trick of the light played along the line where the white of the chalk gave way to the deep tan of her skin to make it look like her fingers had doubled. As she pondered the optical illusion, the fire in her diaphragm leapt to her sternum and ignited her breasts. In that instant, time seemed to be stretching for her benefit, and she lost the feeling of falling as she became absorbed in this second hand sprouting from her wrist. It seemed to be pulling her skin behind it as her arm began to separate. The skin stretched between the new hand and her old one finally pulled free, leaving a thin membrane connecting the four new digits, leaving her new thumb out on it's own and looking for all the world like a small deformed bat's wing. turning to check her right hand, she saw it had undergone the same mitosis, and her pseudo-wing was starting to look more like a bat's wing as the digits elongated and rotated into a more recognizable fashion. The flesh on these wings had a metallic bronze sheen, with a dusting of iridescent sea-green on the webbing.

Where her rapidly forming wings had pulled out of her arms, a stripe of the same bronze colored skin was spreading, and had already consumed her hands. As it spread, she recognized the same flame she was feeling in her chest, she looked down just to confirm what she already knew. In place of her breasts, she now had a sack of the bronze flesh, similar to a dove's crop, sitting on top of her sports bra. Where she had expected to see more bronze flesh, below her crop and spreading down her belly and the inside of her arms to her palms her skin had taken on a silvery-white glow. As her ribs began to expand, the fire crept it's way up her throat and sat in her sinuses. At the same time, the separation had reached her shoulders, where were now pulling themselves apart.

This was the first touch of pain in the process. The separation of her wings from her arms and the changes to her breast had been accompanied by a warm surge of power, but this was the initial caress of a white-hot brand. Screaming, she felt herself wretch from her new crop. The flame that she belched consumed her, and she lost herself in the agony.

Epilogue:
In the park, a man was testing his new telephoto lens, focusing on a Cardinal, he composed his shot with a dark cliff face in the background to accent the bird's vibrant plumage. He snapped a couple quick exposures before he noticed the climber that seemed to be resting a moment in preparation for their final push to the top. Deciding to capture the climber's triumphant moment, he took a moment to refocus on them. While he was still getting the shot sorted out, the woman on the cliff started moving again. He got what could have been a great shot of her reaching for a hand hold, cursing his short-sightedness all the while for not having brought any bigger lenses. Once she was happy with her hand position, she brought her right leg up, but her left foot slipped before her right could find purchase. Sensing the tenuous situation of the climber, he quickly switched to continuous shot and held down the shutter release as if it were the only lifeline he could throw her.

He captured the moment she lost her grip, a moment of the bicycle kick that pushed her away from the cliff's face, a moment of her rolling over to spread her self out like a sky diver, a moment where she clutched her chest, the moment a fireball erupted in front of her, the moment the fire had completely engulfed her, the moment the fire started to die, the moment the dragon burst from the fire ball, and three frames of the dragon flying before it was too far out of focus. Eleven exposures, spanning almost four seconds of an event that he still can't get anyone to believe.

User:Leasara/Slow Change

2009-03-20T08:16:18Z

Leasara: removed comments tag at the end

{{DEFAULTSORT:Slow Change}} [[Category:Adult]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Age regression]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}} {{XXX}}

{{author's note| This was the second story after my break written just as a study on the process of a magical transgender transformation. The AR/AP thing near the end just kind of snuck itself in. I think I lifted the journal format idea from Dracula which I had read fairly recently. Done in December of 2006}}

{{title
|name=Slow Change
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

April 14

I saw Dr. Kerageosis earlier today, he doesn't know what's wrong, so we're waiting on my blood work to come back. He recommended I start keeping a journal, since my memory is so fuzzy recently, in case a specialist wants more info than I'll be able to provide. I guess I'll start with catching things up. About a week ago, maybe a little longer, I started feeling sick. Like a flu, but without the upset stomach. Just feeling tired, aching everywhere, hot and cold spells, dizziness, all that stuff. I took some big doses of Zinc and Vitamin C, like I usually do, but it didn't go away, so I made the appointment to see the doc. Three days ago I noticed that the opening of my urethra has extended at the bottom. I thought I was imagining it, but over the last three days, it's progressed down my penis about 3 mm. Dr. K. didn't believe me when I mentioned it, so I let him examine me. That was rather uncomfortable, but not so bad as I thought it would be.

April 15

Nothing big to report today. I Still feel sick. I'm starting to feel weak too, I can't really explain it, maybe it's my imagination. Maybe drained is closer? I don't really know. My friends at work have started to notice, Tabby remarked that I was looking a bit pale and thin. I hadn't noticed it, but I think she may be right. I might have to go buy a scale.

April 16

When I went to the doctor a couple days ago, I weighed 183 pounds, today I weigh 175. I've been wanting to lose the 30 pounds I gained when I quit smoking, but eight pounds in two days is a little extreme. My guess is that I should have bought a better scale. This morning I also found that the opening along my urethra has extend a bit more, and the channel won't stay closed anymore. This makes peeing difficult, sort of like when you put your thumb over the end of a water hose. I guess I'll have to sit to pee until whatever this is gets fixed. The inside of this opening feels really weird, kinda like my nail bed did when I lost my toe nail when I was nine. It's super sensitive and kinda ticklish, just like my nail bed was, but I'm guessing the strange tickle go away the longer it's exposed, just like the tickling in my nail bed did. This brings me to another observation. I think the weird tickly sensations should probably have given me an erection, but they didn't. I realize now that I haven't been aroused in close to two weeks. I never had much of a libido, but this much of a span is rather odd. I'll have to make sure to mention all this to Dr. K. when I see him the day after tomorrow.

April 17

I've lost another three pounds. I have no idea how I'm losing all this weight. Tabs even brought in some of her famous chicken and dumplings, last night. Since I'm off my diet until I'm feeling better, I must have eaten half of the full crock pot she brought. There are only five of us that work graves, and I know no one else ate near as much as I did. Still, I'm losing weight. At least my appointment is at the end of tonight's shift, and then I get my weekend. Hopefully I can catch some extra sleep.

April 18

Well, my blood work came back clean, so he's sending me to an endocrinologist, a gastro-intro-something doc, and a bone guy. We were both worried to see my weight was down to 165 pounds, but what was more alarming was that I now stood 6 feet and one half inch, where I had been six foot two for the last ten years! The absolute worst though was when Dr. K was examining the changes in my urethra and noticed that my testicles were smaller. I don't know what's worse, all these weird changes, or the fact that, aside from the obvious one, I haven't noticed them happening. I'm going to try to stay up today so I can make it through the three appointments tomorrow.

April 19

Tabitha just left, something is definitely up. She's never come over before, I didn't even know she knew where I lived. She wanted to check up on me to see how my doctor's visit went, and I told her all about it. I had a hard enough time bringing it up to my doctor, I can't imagine why I would suddenly feel OK talking to her about it? And when she wanted to see the changes, I just showed her! It all seemed so perfectly normal at the time, but now I can't believe what just happened. I know it sounds crazy, but I can't escape the idea that I'm becoming a woman. After my last entry, I sat down in front of the bathroom mirror and studied myself closely. I'm not sure how, but I think I look different. Then again, I might just be letting my imagination run wild. Either way, I think I'll start taking Polaroids as part of my morning routine. Maybe I should call my therapist? Or maybe I just need to go to bed.

April 20

Ok, so apparently Dr. K has the best staff in the world. Yesterday's visits to the specialists took the whole day. I'm told it's pretty much unheard of to get an appointment with a specialist so quickly, at least according to the other patients in the waiting rooms. I swear I must have given a pint of blood between the phlebotomist at the bone guy's place, and lab the endocrine guy sent me to. The gastro man had no clue what might be causing my “medial separation along the urethral tract” he just looked rather perplexed, and let me know that there is no medical reason that he might be familiar with that could come close to explaining what was going on. My weight is down to 156 pounds, and I'm now just under six feet tall.

April 20 (evening)

Tabby came over again, this time she brought bag of stuff with her. She had me burn some sage in each room of my apartment, and then hang a piece of unburned sage over each window. She also put a piece of amethyst under my mattress and another piece under my pillow. She wanted to do more, but I reminded her again that I had had enough of religions, even the ones as fringe as Wicca. She's been trying to get me involved in her circle almost as long as I've known her, saying that my energy has a quality she's never felt before. Thankfully she didn't dwell on it too long, since her shift started soon. I know she means well, and she seemed really excited about recent accomplishments in her circle, but having just given up on the LDS faith, I'm rather enjoying being agnostic.

Before I forget, I better run to the store for some Polaroid film and some pants with a drawstring for work tomorrow.

April 21

I hate messing up my sleep schedule over the weekend. It's 1 in the afternoon, and I just woke up. I need to sleep another four hours, but I can't get beck to sleep. The whole place stinks like sage, so I took down the bits I had over my windows, and left the windows themselves open a crack. With any luck I'll get to go home early. Fridays are usually slow for graves tech support, and I have been sick, though I'm feeling a bit better at the moment. I actually gained a pound. Now, I am starting to feel drowsy, maybe I'll get back to sleep after all.

April 22

What a night! I slept through two hours of my alarm and woke up at 8:30, half an hour late for work. I was going to just call in sick, but with all these medical bills I can't really afford to miss a shift. I don't know how, but I made it to my desk by 8:45. Tabby took her break late so she could talk to me, and demanded to know what had happened. Apparently taking down the sage had broken some ward or something. I had no idea what she was talking about until she pulled me into the lady's room. This isn't usually such a big deal, since she's the only woman on the grave shift, so it wasn't until we got around the corner and in front of the mirrors that I became worried. At the time, I couldn't measure, but I was noticeably shorter and lighter. My hair was different too. The roots are now a rich strawberry for about a half inch, easily showing through the short blond hair I've always worn. Actually, I kinda like the effect. I was rather pale, but not the pallor of illness I was expecting. In fact, my skin seemed very healthy, and a couple acne scars I had were gone. I had skipped shaving in my haste to get to work, and from the looks of it, I wasn't going to need to shave tomorrow either. My left eye was emerald green, and my right was ice blue. Previously they had both been a sky blue. This was odd, but we agreed that it was time to see what promised to be the strangest change. We dropped my trousers, and found that my penis had shrunk in length until it was practically gone. All that was left that was moderately recognizable as having come from a penis was the foreskin and the glans. The separation was at the top of my scrotum, and the scrotum itself seemed to have shrunk some, and had no sign of housing anything solid. It had a pinkish line down the middle that continued half way through my perineum.

At this point, we had a rather heated conversation. I really don't remember the conversation, but the gist is that some one must be using some sort of magic to turn me into a woman. The sage and stuff blocked their spell or whatever, but when I took it all down, I caught a sudden surge of whatever it is that's changing me, which would seem to account for the radical differences. Neither of us can think of a reason anyone might have to want to change to me. I don't seem to care one way or the other. I don't know why I don't care, but I don't mind that I don't care, if that makes any sense. Tabby thinks my indifference is part of the spell or whatever, but again, I don't care. By now it was time for us to return from break, and we had an outage in Phoenix that took my mind most of the way off my situation. Of course, by the end of my shift, most of my customers were calling me ma'am, which I didn't know if I should take as disconcerting or reassuring.

Anyway, as of this morning, my scrotum has pulled tight against my body, and the line down the center is quite red. What's left of my penis seems to be forming a hood over what is obviously a clitoris, and the foreskin seems to be becoming labia minora, I think. I've shrunk to just under five foot eight, and I'm down to 143 pounds.

I'm supposed to be packing to spend the day at Tabby's so I'm safe from whatever is happening to me, but I think I want to let whatever it is finish. Maybe I should put in a call to my therapist after all? She'd definitely have a field day with this, she always maintained that I was a latent homosexual.

April 23

I have about two inches of red hair now, I rather like the way it blends to my former white-blond. I didn't need to shave today either. As far as I can tell, I'm fully female now, except I don't have the figure. I still ache everywhere, but I'm feeling more energetic. In fact, if it weren't for the aching, I'd say I feel great. I don't know if I buy into the whole magic thing Tabby and I talked about yesterday, it just seems too strange. I can't really call it a curse, since I don't care weather I'm a man or a woman, and I can't really call it a blessing for the same reason. It doesn't make any sense that someone would go out of their way to cast a magic spell on me, and not make me either hate or love it. So if it's not magic, what's left? Spontaneously changing gender seems rather far fetched. I'll have to think about it more later.

April 24

ALL of my body hair fell out while I slept yesterday. I probably have little hairs here and there, but the mess of hair in my sheets was ... gross. The white tips of my hair also fell off, I did this Meg Ryan/Pixie thing with what was left, it was pretty cute. I still don't know when the rest of me is going to go fem, I find it strange that I'm starting to anticipate it though. I'm finding myself wondering what I'll look like when I'm ... developed?

I had a follow up with Dr. K today after work. Needless to say, he was very skeptical that I was me. I still look like me in the face, but that's starting to change too, I think. He wants me to see an OB/GYN, “just to make sure the new parts are OK,” he thinks it's important enough that he managed to get me an appointment tomorrow. I'm not really looking forward to that. He also took a swab from the inside of my cheek to send to a geneticist friend. He's just as baffled as me about the change, needless to say the reports from the specialists came back normal. I'm down to five foot four and a quarter, and 112 pounds. He thinks the aches are normal considering the radical changes to my body recently.

April 25

The OB/GYN was weird. Wasn't what I expected. She seems to think that I have all the normal bits of a pre-pubescent girl. Not quite what I was expecting, considering I'm almost 30. Then again, I have lost another four inches and twenty pounds today, so who knows how I'll end up. She also gave me a letter certifying that I am female, apparently I'll have to take it to the DMV. I'll also have to change my gender on my birth certificate it seems.

Tabby continued her investigations and has decided there are definitely magical energies at work, she just can't tell where they're coming from, if they're coming from anywhere. She seems to think that this could be a naturally occurring magical phenomena. If I understand the way she explains it, it's like my bedroom was the host of a micro Big Bang on a magical plane or something. I didn't really understand, but she was pretty excited by it, saying that it might explain the recent successes of her circle. When I tried to tell her that I didn't really believe in all that magic stuff, she found a way to convince me. She held out her hand, palm up, and told me to imagine something. The first thing that popped into my mind was the amulet from the Secret of NIMH, and no sooner had I thought of it than a globe of white-blue light flashed in her palm, and she was holding a mouse-sized ruby amulet. I couldn't really read if there was an inscription on the back, but it was a pretty impressive trick, considering the most she could do before was cause a candle's flame to flicker. So, I guess I'm the unwitting recipient of some naturally occurring magic phenomena.

Work is getting really weird too. No one is certain how to treat me. I admit, I look like I'm too young to drive, but I don't think I've changed mentally. I still do my job better than most everyone else, but there have been some customer complaints about the company employing a child. I guess there are a lot of things to consider.

April 28

I seem to have stopped. Physically I'm about ten years old, mentally I'm still 28, I think. I know I've retained all my technical knowledge, my vocabulary seems undiminished, and I seem to reason as well as ever. Still, I'm about four foot eight, and only sixty pounds or so. All physical evidence points to me being a little girl.

With this in mind, Dr. K. surprised me again with his connections by finding me a lawyer to help me determine my status. It wasn't easy at first, but my recent medical records combined with this journal did the trick. Work is even going to help me with the legal fees. He seems to think that as long as I can continue to demonstrate my ability to reason on par with others my age, we shouldn't have much trouble. It is a pretty unique case though.

Speaking of medical records, the geneticist Dr. K knows has proven that I'm probably me, thanks to the cheek swab and some blood that was left over from my original tests. He can't explain the transformation though.

I've been taken off the phones at work, and after a two week vacation, I will be promoted to Night Supervisor, which will be a switch, having been unsupervised on the grave shift thus far. Of course, that means I still have to take escalated calls, which should prove rather amusing. The hardest part, I guess, are the little adjustments. I'm not much taller than a grocery cart, which makes shopping interesting. I can't drive for now, though I'm told my car can be modified to suit my new body. Business Casual wear does not exist in my size.

There's also the idea of the future. It's an even bigger question than ever. I mean, no one ever considers that they might grow up to be a little girl, right? What if I don't age? What if I age backwards again? Should I keep my apartment? Will I change more if I do? I'll have to think about this stuff tomorrow.

May 1

I moved in with Tabby for a couple days, and regretted it almost instantly. I was OK on the 29th, but I couldn't stop eating. Overnight, however, I seemed to have started puberty, and hit what I can only describe as an insane growth spurt. Over the course of the night, I gained a whole four inches in height, and my hips have broadened a bit. My breasts were incredibly tender, and they grew to about a full A cup that night. The worst part was the menstruation, Tabby was a great help here, though she could only provide moral support for what she called "ridiculous flow." The cramps got so bad, I had her drive me home and I went to bed to lie down with a heating pad on my tummy, which seemed to help a bit.

This morning I woke up in my own room, and I'm feeling much better. Tabby stayed with me all night, though I don't remember much after having gone to bed. She has a little bag of something that she wears around her neck, which apparently shields her from the effects of the magic thing. Her theory is that the "magic vortex," as she's calling it, stabilized me after about a half hour of being in it's "radius of influence." All I know is that as miserable as I was last night, today I feel fine. According to the chart Dr. K gave me, my height puts me about half way between 11 and 12 years old, but my weight is between 10 and 11. I suppose this means I get to take back all the clothes I bought for my ten-year-old self, and get some new clothes. Tabby has run out to get me something that will fit so I can return all the clothes I bought for my ten-year-old self. Considering how I'm changing again, maybe I'll stick to wearing my old t-shirts with a belt like a tunic.

May 2

I'm definitely growing up again. Shortly after returning the clothes yesterday, I got hungry. Every time I finished a meal, I was hungry again. Fortunately, spaghetti with meat sauce and a large salad seemed to come the closest to filling me up. Unfortunately, I had to spend all the money I got from returning clothes on pasta, prego, ground beef, and bag salads. According to last night's measurements, I was probably about 14. This morning's measurements put me somewhere between 15 and 20. I'm five foot six, and 140 pounds, so the weight probably puts me about 18. I don't expect to get much taller, and I might be a bit plumper than I need to be, but at this point I'm not too worried about it. Getting used to these hips and rear end is going to take some time I imagine. Logically I know they can't possibly be as big as they seem, and Tabby tells me she might take off her talisman to try her luck at getting a figure like mine, but still, they're very different from what I'm used to. Having breasts is weird too. They've settled in at a full C, and I seem to bump them into everything. I'm sticking out in places I've never thought about sticking out before, and I find myself missing my ten-year-old body because of it. Actually, now that I just wrote it out, I think it's probably odd that I don't miss my masculine body for those reasons instead.

May 2

Ok, this is weird. After that last realization, I went and put in a call to set up an appointment with my therapist. Tabby was wondering why I wanted to see the therapist, and noticed I looked younger again. By the time I finished setting up the appointment and explaining to Tabby, probably ten minutes time, I was my ten-year-old-girl self again. After some visualization practice with Tabby, I got myself back into my adult body. After about two hours of practice, I seem to be able to switch back and forth at will, with the transformation taking about 5 seconds. It feels something like jumping into a pool on a hot summer day. The sudden drastic change in environments, going from air to water, and then just as suddenly becoming accustomed to the new environment. There's also a kind of a rush, something like being able to feel the line between the water and the air as it starts at your feet, then closes over your head. I think that's the best I'm going to be able to describe it.

Anyhow, we went to her house to see if I could change while I was away from the Magic Vortex, and it was a little more difficult, but I was able to get it to work. I also noticed a feeling of energy or power or something that accompanied the shift while I was at her house. She said she could feel it radiating from me when I changed, and that it's very similar to the energy from the Magic Vortex. I was not able to shift back to my original body at my apartment or at her house.

We went shopping afterwards, and I got a couple outfits for both "modes." There are definite advantages to being in ten-year-old mode. It might just be my imagination, but in adult mode, I had the feeling that everyone was looking at me. It could be that I'm just self-conscious, what with my body sticking out in places I'm not used to and all, but I was very relieved to shift back to young-me when it was time to shop for those clothes.

May 3

I've been practicing switching modes all morning again, but now that I'm aware of the energy stuff, I get the feeling that there should be more some how. I wish this magic stuff was more like computers, easier to understand and diagnose. I think I'd be able to describe a lot of this stuff better. Ok, it's like when you beat a game that might have multiple endings, and you're not sure if you're completely satisfied with the ending you got. It's a little like that, at least. I guess for now I'll just be happy with what I can do, I mean, it's not everyone that can chose to be 10 or 18. I think for now I'm going to be 10 most of the time, and use the 18 on special occasions. The potential for double-takes alone make it tempting. Add in not having to deal with uncomfortable stares from people, and I can deal with only being small. Plus I can't wait to try to de-escalate an irate caller in my ten-year-old voice.

User:Leasara/The Transformed

2009-03-20T08:15:39Z

Leasara: removed comments tag at the end

{{DEFAULTSORT:Transformed, The}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Anthropomorphic]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}} {{Hiatus}}

{{author's note| This was the first story I wrote after my break. I had promised to write something for Foxx's site, then put it off for way too long. I wound up doing this in the Gmail Compose thingie. I think it only took two or three hours, so it's an OK story that I executed rather poorly. I've thought about redoing it, maybe making a shared universe out of the setting, but I never seem to get a start.}}

{{title
|name=The Transformed
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

"The Transformed. Tape 12-B, Case: Peter Stewart. Pete was changed into a female California Grey Squirrel over the course of the ten o' clock hour on Tuesday, May 18, 2005. Today is the 20th. Prior to the start of this recording, she indicated that she would like to be referred to as Jean. Jean, you are aware that we are recording this, correct?"

"Uh, yes, yes I am."

"Oh, feel free to sit back, the mic can pick you up from anywhere in the room, actually. That's fine. Now, I'm going to start by having you read the written statement you gave two days ago, ok?"

"All of it? It's just that I was a bit nervous when I wrote it and I don't think the start is really relevant."

"That's alright. We're having all of the transformed students record their statements, we'll follow up with questions if any clarification is needed. So, from the beginning, please."

"Well, Ok."

"When I woke up, I sat there staring at the angry little box that seemed to be making noise. After ten minutes or so I began to remember that it's red stick-lights had some sort of meaning, and after another five minutes it finally dawned on me. Their meaning was that my alarm clock had been going off for about an hour and fifty minutes, so I had about ten minutes to make it a block and a half and then to the center of campus. Fortunately I had fallen asleep fully clothed, I don't know if they'll let you take an exam in your boxers. I grabbed my bag, jumped from my balcony, Oh, my studio is on the second floor, so if I'm in a hurry I sometimes jump into the planter below."

"Just what it says on the paper, we'll do clarification later."

"Oh, right, sorry. Um, I grabbed my bag, jumped from my balcony, and hit the ground running."

"Everyone tells you the pitfalls of cramming the night before tests, and everyone does it anyway. This is the main reason I keep a supply of Power Bars in my bag, but eating on the run proved too difficult today so I had to finish the thing in two bites. Mom always taught me never to waste food after all. I was still trying to manage the second bite when I made it to my room. The professor was at the door handing out scantrons and papers for essays, but when he saw me he quirked an eyebrow and instructed me to take one of the packets from his desk instead. I took one of the sealed envelopes and found an empty desk at the back of the room. Opening the envelope, I noticed my scantron was pink while most everyone else had the blue one the Prof had been handing out. I wondered about that as I filled in my personal information, but the tests were being handed out while I was finishing up so I decided to let it drop. I was also being distracted by a bit of a sinus headache, my late night must have earned me a head cold."

"In all honesty, I probably didn't need to cram for this class, but I suppose the announcement that there would be essays as well as the multiple choice had spooked me. Up until now I had breezed through the course with a high B average, so a good grade here could easily tip me up to an A. It was around the eighth question that I noticed my glasses were cutting into the backs of my ears and riding UP my nose. Even stranger was when I took them off, I could actually see the test clearer, so I let them drop onto my book bag and got back to work. I managed three more questions before the pressure on my lower back demanded my attention. I knew I was in a bad desk, and had guessed that the bottom of the chair's back was cutting into my spine, but when I tried to adjust myself in the seat to releve the sensation, it only got worse. When I went to inspect the chair to see what was causing the pain, I had to stifle a gasp. My shorts had shifted around while I was trying to get comfortable and were now almost falling off, but the sight that had startled me was the tube of flesh hanging out of the BACK. I was growing a tail."

"What could I do? I could go to the restroom, or the infirmary, but that would mean letting the entire class see my predicament. No one seemed to have noticed yet, though I thought I caught my professor glancing my way. As much as I was fidgeting, he must have thought I was cheating. I decided to try to hide the tail by sitting on it. This worked long enough for me to get to question fifteen, but I couldn't really concentrate on the exam. I could feel the ... my tail growing out from the bottom of my spine. I realized that the sensation was very similar to what I had felt in my face earlier. Now that I had directed all my attention to the sensation that had started in my sinuses, I realized that a similar but not as substantial feeling had spread and disappeared through most of my body. I became acutely aware of the pressure I had been feeling in my hips and pelvis for the last ten minutes, then I noticed what my tail was NOT touching that it should be."

"My head began to swim. I could feel my tail against my stomach, and my stomach against my tail, but my ... special purpose was nowhere to be found. I gripped the edge of my desk to steady myself as I tried to reconcile the implications of what I didn't feel. I think I started to cry, then I just had to get out. I don't know why, but something was telling me I couldn't stay there a moment longer. As I tried to rise from my chair, my new boo, uh, breasts hit the cold hard desk, and the pain from that encounter snapped me out of my panic. Apparently this commotion had drawn the attention of the classmates nearest to me, most of who were very pointedly not looking at me, but were sushing me anyway."

"They had to have noticed me then. I sat back down, being careful to thread my tail through the back of the chair. I noticed the back of the chair was hitting me higher than I'm used to, and I also noticed my top was getting pretty baggy. Then I found out about the changes to my hand as I accidentally tore my top while trying to pull it tighter. I finally managed to finish my test, so I went to hand it in and almost tripped over my shorts. They no longer fit me even a little bit, so I took them off and put them in my bag. I was naked from the waist down, but I had to get out of there. My top was big enough now that it mostly covered me, and my new fur covered the rest, but I was still terribly self-conscious all the way up to the Professor's desk. He took my papers and recommended I go to the dean's office. I left in such a hurry, I forgot my bag, I was so glad to be able to go anywhere else."

"Thank you. How are you adjusting to the change?"

"Well, better than some, but not as well as others, I guess. I was never too comfortable with people anyway. See, I'm studying to become a Park Ranger so that I can live in some of the more wild areas of the nation. Other than the gender thing, which I'm getting more comfortable with, I don't think this effects me too much. I guess the most disconcerting thing is this weird ache in my jaws. The only thing that helps is to chew something. It seems weird, but I guess I am a rodent."

"I see. That would be a little awkward. What do you think caused this change?"

"Well, I really don't know, actually. At first I thought it might have been something in the packet that I was given, but that was tested plus not everyone who changed got the separate packets. The truth is, none of us have too much in common. I mean, we're not even the same species anymore, right? I've heard that one guy that doesn't come to our group meeting became a dragon, like in fairytales, you know? They say he's hibernating, and they think he might have switch gender too, but no one knows for sure. I mean, I guess there aren't a lot of people who know how to accurately determine the gender of a fu, uh, of a dragon."

"Right. Well, let me just say, we don't have any reported cases of dragons, though we may have confirmed a unicorn and a gryphon. We seem to be running out of tape for today, so I'll say thank you for your time."

"Oh, WOW! Oh, no, thank y--"

User talk:ShadowWolf

2009-03-20T08:10:09Z

Leasara: /* Story submission captcha? */ still me, must remember the tildias.

how do you delete a page that has no content? I've had to modify a title of a story page and removed it's content, but the title still appears on my author page.
:Please sign with the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> - but generally you have to remove all content and then kill any links to it you've made. That'll "orphan" it and then an admin can go and do the actual delete. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:43, 3 October 2007 (EDT)
:Page deleted, Oberon. (Recent Edits is a wonderful tool!) - in the future, though, please sign all entries on a talk page using the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> specifier - it's what gives the nifty user link and timestamp. (and in requests for deletion, could you please include the page name ?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:48, 3 October 2007 (EDT)

==Sitenotice text==

Where did you put the text for the donation sitenotice? Normally it'd be at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]], but I'm assuming since it's not there you've inserted it into the source code somewhere. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 20:46, 3 January 2008 (EST)

Never mind, I found it - MonoBook.php, right? I should move it out of that and into sitenotice, it won't appear for anyone who's using a different skin otherwise. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:01, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:Didn't know about the Sitenotice bit, so yeah, I did a bit of hacking and dumped it straight into the code from the primary skin. I actually had thought about dumping it directly into the Skin driver, but decided not to. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:08, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:There, fixed up. I pulled the code from the source and added a version to the [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]]. "A Version" because I had to use the same custom tag I created for [[Shifti:Site support]] to do the button. (PayPal kinda requires it be a form with a crapload of hidden fields) — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::Heh. I was just working on that myself. Good to know I was on the right track. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:20, 3 January 2008 (EST)
::This is odd. It appears that integral.org is in the spam protection filter, I can't save [[Main Page]] now. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::Not in any of the spamfilters I installed. It's not in the central MediaWiki list or in the site-specific list. I'll look deeper. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:00, 3 January 2008 (EST)
:::[[Special:Version]] doesn't have any spam-blockers besides [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] and none of its lists have "integral" anywhere in them. So I don't know what the problem could be... Everything I've installed is hacked to not bug people that are in the Admin group about '''''ANYTHING''''', so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::::Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have passed. I should have saved a copy of the error message but I suppose it's moot if it doesn't come back. BTW, I hope you don't mind the little tweaks I made to the sitenotice banner. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:38, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::::Nah, it works. And I've reverted the changes I made, since it wasn't the cause of Felix's problem. He saw the Captcha, but apparently either 1) Didn't know what it was or 2) Couldn't read it. So I've just gone and given the "Author" permissions group a Captcha exception. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:49, 3 January 2008 (EST)

What do you think of the notion of putting a progress bar in the donation request, as demonstrated in [[Shifti:Sandbox]]? Wikipedia does it that way, and it might give people more incentive to donate in order to get rid of the banner. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:23, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:That's pretty nifty. Maybe have the bar in red, though :) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 4 January 2008 (EST)

::There, added a color parameter. Red's a bit garish, though, maybe something a bit more pastel? [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:43, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:I hate that banner!! It offends me, I must destroy it by donating! *snicker* :)

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 23:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)

== Broken Discussion pages and Captcha errors ==

Not sure what's going on. When I click on the Discussion link on a page that doesn't have a discussion, it takes me direct to that page's edit frame (NOT the Discussion page), and I seem to have full edit rights on it. Something seems to have gone wonky along the way.

Pre-existing Talk pages seem to work fine (as evidenced here), though when I was trying to post it gave me an "out of captcha" error (When I tried to post it on the Current Events page that is.).

Oh and for the TF Types, you may want to add "Plant" (for TF's that are not animal based, but not quite Dryad based for the mythical category), and "Inanimate" (and maybe even Robotization or however you want to classify it).

I'm not quite sure if inanimate would be good enough as a catchall for a "living material' type TF (think X-Men's Colossus, and Ice Man, who turn into living steel and living ice respectively), or if we might want another type for that as well.

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 13:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

:I'm working on this, but apparently the 'title' parameter isn't being properly set. When it's a red-link PHP is getting a URL that looks like 'index.php?title=XXX?title=XXX_talk&action=edit&redlink=1' and it's seeing that first 'title=' and not the second one. I'm trying to figure out how to solve that.
--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

== Story submission captcha? ==

I just went to post a new story and after I hit the 'save page' button, it took me to an edit screen that had:
Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box
at the top. I looked and looked again and couldn't find any external links in my story. In fact there was no markup at all once I removed all the tab-indention on the paragraphs.

I'm all for automated systems blocking automated systems, but this sort of struck me as odd. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Also, as long as I'm bugging you guys, any chance of getting an inverted color scheme skin? Dark text on a light background seems to be more difficult for me to read for any length of time than light text on a dark background. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

User talk:ShadowWolf

2009-03-20T08:09:25Z

Leasara: /* Story submission captcha? */

User talk:ShadowWolf

2009-03-20T08:01:46Z

Leasara: /* Story submission captcha? */ forgot to sign the silly thing.

User talk:ShadowWolf

2009-03-20T08:00:06Z

Leasara: /* Story submission captcha? */ new section

User:Leasara/Door in the Mountain, The

2009-03-20T07:51:03Z

Leasara: Added the actual story to its page.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Door in the Mountain, The}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Mythical]] [[Category:Anthropomorphic]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note|This was done for a Thursday Prompt exercise on FurAffinity. The ending I had planned was rather cliche, but not bad for a quick draft. Then I got distracted and read a friends entry to find they had employed roughly the same cliche. Having to change my ending resulted in some weirdness I find quite entertaining.}}

{{title
|name=The Door in the Mountain
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

There was nothing for it, I was lost. I kept going over the orienteering merit badge I had earned all those years ago, the one that had gotten me interested in backpacking in the first place. As much as I applied what I could remember from the Boy Scouts, the more I realized that I had gone off the edge of the 8x11 topographical map I had printed out as adequate for the weekend. The problem now was I had wandered long enough I was no longer certain which edge I had left. The report from inside my hiking boots was that I had been on the trail a few hours too long, or off the trail, as the case may be. It was echoed by the sky, which held that the 10% chance of precipitation was likely to beat the odds soon.

The light was quickly fading as the clouds thickened above me, then it nearly disappeared as they burst with a rolling of thunder you can only hear in the mountains. The downpour brought bursts of wind with it and I wondered at the weather service's inability to predict the late summer gale. It had been twenty years since I'd seen weather so mispredicted, but it kept my thoughts off the hopelessness of my situation.

My little camp would likely have washed away before the storm was over, situated as it was in a meadow at the bottom of a wide gully near a random spring. I had left it before dawn to take a few pictures of the scenery as the sun rose, and now I doubted I'd ever find it again. If I quartered the rations in my day pack, I could likely hike out to a road before food became an issue, but if I didn't find shelter from the storm soon I'd probably be fighting a cold all the way as well. Fevers could be fatal when you're alone in the wilderness.

The day had taken me along the tops of a series of ridges as I tried not to ascend too far into the mountains, but the footing was getting questionable near the slopes on either side of the path to which I was now left. I knew that soon I wold have to make the choice to head down into the gully between ridges, or try to knock one of the smaller trees over in an attempt to make some form of shelter here. It was a surprise then when the choice was taken from me as the ground on which I stood as I considered my options refused to bear my weight any longer.

I didn't hit the ground as hard as I might have expected, mostly due to to the fact that the earth wasn't as firm as it would have been in better weather. I slid along a sudden chute of slurry strangely at peace with the knowledge that I would be buried alive and leave little more than an apartment with a computer, bed, and refrigerator more full of condiments than food as my mark upon the world.

There is a known phenomenon when you're excited where the brain's activity jumps due to a number of chemicals put into the bloodstream, one of the effects of this is that time seems to dilate. Events that take mere moments can seem to take several minutes or more. Another common effect when you're really hopped up on your own juices, is that you tend to notice things you would have missed without the influence of stimulants in your system. I think this is the reason I found time to be amused that my digital single-lens reflex camera, fitted with a good heavy lens that took me three months to save for, not only tumbled out of the case I had on my hip as I neared the bottom of the gully, but with three bounces released its fairly useless built-in flash and blinded me. The irony was that after the third bounce it flew into my face with enough force to break my glasses and the nose they rested on, further confounding my sight. It was by simple luck then that the mineshaft I fell into had been flooded sufficiently to break my fall.

It was further fortunate that the flood was trickling down a tunnel where I could hear it falling down a secondary shaft, leaving the tunnel itself mostly dry after splashing through the first several feet. Nevada was riddled with these shafts, and I had reported more than a few to the Bureau of Land Management to be filled in, but for the moment I was just happy to be out of the storm. I wrung my shirt out before using it as a compress to stop the blood I could feel draining from a gash the camera had left. With my other hand I dug in my day pack for the first aid kit and emergency flashlight. I lay the kit on the ground before me and began to shake the flashlight to give it a charge in anticipation of my vision clearing.

Once my sight was useful again, I employed the steri-strips in closing the cut that was slightly left of center between my eyes, then set about finding safe combustibles for warmth and light. The flashlight was good in a pinch, but my arm was getting tired of getting it charged enough to cast its weak beam. Soon I had a fire going, and all my clothes were laid out to dry. Except my macro lens, everything in the day pack had survived, thankfully, and I even found my camera caught in a large branch floating in the pool that had saved me from any broken limbs. Not wanting to press my luck for the night, I unfurled the mylar emergency blanket from the day pack and sought the solace of slumber.

The morning found me in better shape than I had reason to hope for. It's hard to estimate the height of something when you're standing at its base, but it was only a twenty or thirty foot vertical climb to get out of the mine. Still, the walls were going to be slick and damp, especially after last night's storm, so I had to hope last night's sudden shelter might yield one last boon for my survival in the form of some sort of climbing gear. Taking my little flashlight, I headed deeper into the tunnel. I was moving slowly, but it wasn't long before I came upon the door.

A door in a mine is an odd thing, to be sure, but stranger still, this looked exactly like my closet door from when I was five. The airport had bought and demolished that entire tract of housing for its expansion shortly after I started school, so knew this particular door couldn't be where I last saw it, but what it might be doing in a mid-level tunnel of a forgotten mine was any one's guess. Well, what it was doing beyond leaning against the wall, that is. More importantly, I began to wonder just how hard my camera had hit me last night.

The door was a perfect replica, right down to the space-themed stickers my mother had applied to both of its sliding panels. Both of which were sitting in their flimsy metal and plastic frame. I could never manage to keep them in their frame while they were still set squarely in a wall, but here they were, pristine save the stickers and scuffs from my childhood. I decided to sit.

I was injured, facing a slow death of starvation if my wound wasn't already infected by something nasty. Miles away from the nearest civilization, it would be another week before anyone was expecting me anywhere, and I seemed to be hallucinating, of all things, my closet door I hadn't even thought of in twenty years or so. It had to be stress, though I felt fairly calm, but why a door. Why this specific door? It felt real enough to the touch, though my fingers were strangely large on its surfaces to my memory. It was, as the memories flowed back, the only thing he considered to be his between his birth and moving out at eighteen.

A rift had formed between him and his family that baffled the latter part because the cause was hidden by the former. The rest of the family were still quite close, and he had always tried to fill that gap formed by the wedge of his difference, but never managed it. Once he had revealed the secret, the family had rejected him outright and violently in the cases of his brothers. His mother was the only one that tried to keep in touch with furtive emails sent off in the dead of night while her husband watched TV.

It had been hard realizing his freedom after moving out. He slowly integrated the hidden parts of himself into the face he presented to the public and gradually came to know himself better for it. I reconnected 'him' from my memories to me, who had lived them, and realized that my life was, more or less, flashing before my eyes. I started to wonder about the nature of this door again. For some unspoken reason I felt the prickly beginnings of fear about opening it.

Though in my memory they stuttered across their track, it was an easy enough motion to open the door. In fact, I had often sat behind these doors under a pile of clothes when we played hide and seek. My siblings had never discovered that hiding spot, and eventually it became a place to explore the secret that would later cut me away from them. I knew there was nothing behind the door now except for the earthen wall of the tunnel we were in, and maybe that looming disappointment was what was staying my hand.

There was a part of me that desperately longed for the comfort of that hiding space, and it didn't want to accept that opening the door would not result in a few moments of feeling completely safe and warm. I was, I reasoned, probably delirious. This door and its strange mystery was keeping me from finding the climbing gear this generous cavern most likely didn't have anyway. Of course, there was a simple way to dispel that mystery and get on with saving my own life. I took a deep breath and the door slid smoothly, almost effortlessly, open.

Through the open door I found exactly what I should have expected, the wall and floor of the tunnel, in the most unusual way. Within the confines of the door's frame the cave appeared to be a charcoal sketch. It was all simple lines with suggestive shading to give it a feeling of depth. So perfect was the illusion, it was as if someone had done a giant charcoal rubbing of this section of wall. In fact, as I moved to inspect the other side of the door, the image adjusted to include everything within my field of vision through its frame. Feeling adventurous, I poked my hand through the plane of the portal and was only half surprised when it took on aspects of a sketch as well.

This was a very strange door. I weighed my options. If I did manage to find something to help me climb out of here, it would likely be so old and time worn as to be worse than useless. Here I had a door that, strange enough and as near as I could tell, opened on a rough sketch of the world. Whether it was the fever I was still nervous about not feeling, or the stunning amount of strangeness that had happened recently, the answer came to me in a flash.

Retrieving a piece of charred stick from last night's fire, I returned to find the door exactly as irrational as I had left it. Once again my breath caught in my throat as I stepped across the threshold that was complex beyond reason into a simplified version of the world that I guess I hadn't really left. The instant my ears passed into the sketch realm I could hear the same four bars of synth-pop repeating. Catchy, but annoying.

It seemed to me that I was now in a world of almost pure imagination. Almost pure because I still draw things instead of them leaping from my mind fully formed. I started with the rope by drawing a coil on the ground, then continuing that coil up into previously unfilled space. I drew in other simple climbing gear that I was familiar with, but anything that was supposed to have a moving part didn't work properly back on my side of the door. The GPS unit I made turned into an empty box with a static map on the front, but the rope had come across as intended. The cams were a disappointment, but the hammer and pitons would work perfectly, so long as the climb face was solid enough. I had drawn a full pack to replace the one I lost, a close approximation of the Arc'teryx model I had been wanting, but it came out empty. The tent was odd, I had to draw it fully set up, then carry it through the door before I could strike and stow it. Then I had an idea.

I could create any simple thing I wanted, once I had figured out the trick of it. Then I dampened a bit of gauze from my first aid kit and took it and my signaling mirror back into the sketchy realm. There I took a chance with erasing some of the cut across the bridge of my nose. I didn't feel a thing. In fact, this world was distinctly lacking a tactile component. It took some time to garner the courage to take that last step back through the door again. I let my signaling mirror lead me through the portal, and to my relief and elation the cut was repaired and my nose still worked. I was careful with the repair of the rest of the gash before it sank in what exactly I had done.

I had never been comfortable in my body, I could feel bits of myself that weren't actually there and some parts of my body never really felt like they were connected to me. Starting with what I hoped was the least radical of what I might do, I erased the middle finger of my left hand all the way back to my wrist. For a moment there was simple blank space where the metacarpal and phalanges had been, but I pressed the gap together and the lines leading out from my index and ring fingers fused. Again I was nervous at the old familiar door, but when I thrust my hand back into the world I was familiar with, I felt no untoward effects. I stepped back out and my hand actually felt more real to me than it ever had before. My head began to swim with the possibilities.

To be certain, I wasn't the best artist around. I had played at sketching characters and landscapes, but had never really put much more effort into learning to draw. I was much better at sculpting, and this combined the two disciplines in a delightfully strange way. Still, I gathered the rest of the usable charred wood from the fire, noting that most of the day had passed and I'd likely be spending another night in the cave, but this time I had a pack full of brand new gear modeled on what I considered to be the top of the line. I certainly wouldn't mind another night.

I actually experienced nightfall on the flip side. It was very strange. The black and white started turning more and more grey. There were a few minutes where nothing was distinguishable from anything else, then the colors had traded off, white fell into where black had been and vice versa. It was very disorienting, so I made my way back out to the world I was familiar with. This time I didn't give a second thought to the crossing. That was a mistake. For starters there was a certain resistance as I crossed this time, and accompanying this was a searing pain as I passed through the membrane that separated the two worlds. The pain faded as soon as I had completed the journey of a single step, but it was none the less upsetting.

As often as I had imagined it, felt it, walking on hooves on this side of the door was disconcerting. Over the years I had given thought to the problem of balance, but balancing on a pair of human feet is as different from balancing on a pair of cloven hooves as drag racing is from hot air ballooning. It took some getting used to, and the short walk to my campsite was not nearly long enough to complete the task. Still, I made it without too much trouble, but the combination of fur and shorts presented another problem. They rubbed against the sable-soft white coat that was now permanently attached to me from just below my lowest rib. This caused the fur to bind, especially under the waistband, and was not unlike being pinched on every inch where the shorts covered. Also the hole I had left for my tail rubbed very uncomfortably between the tail itself and the top of my newly rounded rump.

My legs were a perfect blend of cervine and human attached to outrageously curved hips. I had only managed to redraw myself from just below my ribs, but from there down I was also perfectly female, I hoped. As I boiled water for a dehydrated dinner, I began to question the decision to alter myself so radically. At the time I had been so taken with the possibility, now I was confronted with the realization of my fondest dream. What worked so well in dreams and even the sketch world was very different in the waking world. It wasn't altogether unpleasant, especially while I discovered the depth of my success in certain matters, but it called to question my judgment. I should be able to undo the changes in the morning, I certainly couldn't do anything with the sketchy world as it was, so I decided to sleep on it.

The sleeping bag was worse than the shorts, and stifling hot with the new fur. I was almost sad that I wouldn't get much use from it once I was done with myself, but moreover I regretted I had spent so much time making it on the other side. Instead I slept on top of the bag and covered my chest with the emergency blanket again.

The morning brought a very pleasant surprise, up until I remembered all the work that had gone into making that surprise the day before. Still, it was a great way to wake up. I half expected the door to be gone or broken today, but everything was exactly as I had left it. Walking was even a bit more natural this morning, or maybe my mood had improved and made it seem so. Either way I gathered the remains from last nights fire again and went back to work. My arms were a challenge, especially my right arm, but neither needed much reworking. I had learned to leave the fur sparse under my arms from getting around last night and this morning. I also thinned it quite a bit near the very tops of the inside of my thighs, hoping that would relieve things some.

I tried and re-tried my breasts three times before I got them about right, but then I went on to my head. I wished I could have made a larger mirror, but nothing I did would make a decent reflective surface. It was slow going at first, but some time in the early afternoon I was nearly done. I was deaf for a while when I moved my ears to the top and back of my head, but those same four bars of synth-pop began repeating themselves again once I was done reshaping them. It was strangely soothing in the silence. I was much more hesitant when it came to moving my eyes to their proper place so I could finish my nose.

I reasoned that I would be OK if I did them one at a time, but it was still very odd. The place had a strange two-dimensionality to it to begin with, but the loss of one eye, even for so short a time, flattened things further somehow. I had worked through lunch, and it wasn't long before dinner when I finally stepped out of the doorway for the final time. The pain was amazing, and that step across worlds seemed to take forever just getting my head through, and my eyes in particular. I can't describe the feeling in my eyes, but once I was through and standing on my side again I was finally more myself than I had ever been from horn to hoof. I could have cried.

Exiting the mine was more difficult with hooves. The harness bound on my fur again and didn't fit right, plus I wasn't certain I was using the pitons and carabiners right, but I made it out with my new semi-superfluous gear. The backpack would have been quite comfortable if it weren't for the fur again. I would just have to learn to put that out of my mind, and no better time than the long hike out to a road. As I remembered, the highway between Vegas and Reno wasn't too far west of my location, and these were the same range if not the same mountains where I had earned my wilderness survival merit badges. At least I didn't have to worry about blisters from my boots anymore.

User:Leasara/Whims of Fortune

2009-03-20T07:38:03Z

Leasara: removed comments tag at the end

{{DEFAULTSORT:Whims of Fate}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Aquatic]] [[Category:Ambiguous]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note|This was done for another contest on The Lab, and once again I wrote it right up to the last possible moment.
Completed August 1, 2008}}

{{title
|name=Whims of Fate
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Frank O'Sullivan had always loved the ocean. After some thirty years, he could still remember the first time he had seen its blue expanse when his parents had taken him to the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Of course, time had tempered those memories with the knowledge that they were more interested in the casinos that lined the side opposite the ocean, but to him it was a treasured memory from his early childhood. The effects of that single family trip had taken him to the beaches of dozens of tropical islands and the coastlines of various countries. As nice as they all were, however, they couldn't compare to that first evening leaning on the rail, looking out to sea as the sun dropped below the horizon behind him and the night's chill set into the air.

His mother had squirreled away whatever she could of her husband's winnings, and by the time he was old enough she sent her boy to an Ivy League school. That memory kept him warm all the way through the long New Hampshire winters at Dartmouth College and the Tuck School of Business. The singular memory had served him through the tedious times saving up the funds to launch his own business in real estate development, though he was slowly adding scenes from the many more luxurious locations he visited to his treasure. By the time O'Sullivan Holdings was starting to find itself in direct competition with The Trump Organization and the Rockefeller Group, Frank had seen most of the loudest and quietest coasts of the world. It really shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did when he finally returned to the boardwalk along that New Jersey shore to find the stark reality that lay at the foundation of his fondest memory.

It was almost as if someone was playing a prank. The lights were too garish, the sounds of the slot machines battered their way out of open casino doors to intrude on the evening air. He was wandering the walk considering how different everything seemed from the way he remembered it, and wondering how well their proposed hotel would actually fit in with its surroundings. Suddenly he recognised the stretch of beach beyond the rail where he had come to rest, and turning around confirmed that he was almost in the exact spot where he had first laid eyes on that impossibly blue horizon. Here the clattering and clamouring of the casinos was dampened. Their cacophony was still audible, but seemingly held back by a thick concrete wall or the like. He could hear the sound of the surf again.

Turning back to his first crush, he watched her waves play over the sand like the lace hem of a lover's skirts in the breeze. Their rhythm was hypnotic, almost lyrical to his ears. It seemed to be calling him to walk along the wet sand at the tide's edge. The tide had been going out for some time now, leaving a broad band of sand with a surface as even as glass. He was nearly at the bottom of the steps leading to the beach before the thought occurred to him to doff his shoes and socks. The sea breeze had already claimed its victory over the afternoon's heat, so the cool of the wet sand felt even colder against his bare feet. It was refreshing and soothing, rousing him from the unpleasantness of the contrast borne between the dream that had replaced his memory of the boardwalk and the reality he had found himself in. On the beach, the casinos had all but disappeared.

He lost track of how long he walked in that soothing sand, carrying his Italian shoes, going from one pier to the next. Before too long, however, he began to hear singing. It was distinct from the lulling and retreating waves, but it sounded like it almost used them as a harmony to its wafting melody. Soon the song held so much of his attention, he could have been walking along a bullet train and not have been distracted from the delicate music. The source of the ballad must have been drawing closer, but Frank couldn't tell weather it was coming from the beach or the boardwalk, or maybe the sea itself. He began peering into the darkness under the boardwalk, into the far horizon, anywhere and everywhere looking for the fountainhead of the fantastic notes, but couldn't find their origin.

His search grew more fevered, almost picnicked, the longer he was unable to find a focus for the music. Suddenly he stumbled over a concrete footing for one of the boardwalk's supports. Turning to curse the impediment he found that, in fact, none of the supports appeared to have concrete footings. Instead his stumble had uncovered a very improbable shell. It was almost double the size of the largest conch shells he had seen used through the South Pacific. He couldn't imagine what such a thing was doing buried on a New Jersey beach, but stranger still was the sound emanating from the shell.

It was a wholly unnatural sound for a piece of nature to be making. Something like a soft french horn made from porcelain. The tone was rising and falling in a syncopated rhythm that was just out of sync with the the rolling of the waves. Picking it up changed the tone very slightly sharp, but it was still just as beautiful. He had no idea how a shell this large might have become buried under the sand this far north off the Atlantic, but that mattered very little as he toted it back to the hotel.

He couldn't find any way to stifle the sound of the shell's music, as the whole thing seemed to be reverberating with its tune. Feeling a little embarrassed, he walked into the lobby carrying the thing stuffed with his socks and shoes and wrapped in his coat, but the clerk at the desk didn't pay him much more attention than courtesy required. The rest of the lobby was mostly empty, save for the screeching of the slot machines and their players just out of sight around the corner. The couple that rode up in the elevator with him didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary either.

That night, with the seashell singing softly on the nightstand, he dreamed of the ocean. The strange song was there as well, or maybe it was the cause of the dream. He could not see himself, but he was bobbing in the water as a storm approached and there was no land in sight. Strangely calm, he could feel the waves that passed around him gaining height and coming more frequently. The storm moved terribly fast, and the deafening thunder and rain from his time above the waves was counterpointed by the relative silence from below them. Still the song kept him company, changing it's tune and timbre with his time in the air or under water until eventually he left the maelstrom in favor of the cool calm of the depths.

O'Sullivan Holdings did not win the contract for the resort, but it did wind up going to another smaller company. His friends and investors noticed he was strangely unmoved by the loss, but most took it as a positive sign that he had his sights set on a bigger, more profitable prize down the line. No one knew of the effect his souvenir had on him. In fact, he found, none of them could hear the music at all. He felt a sort of pity for his friends once he realized this, then set about to figure out why it was.

The shell was subjected to every test he could imagine, and when he heard of tests he hadn't imagined, it underwent those as well. None of them ever concluded the shell was anything more than it appeared. He ran as many of the same tests as he could on himself and his housekeeper, but no demonstrable difference was found in either of them that might explain a difference in audible perception. When he finally started to get into the more destructive tests, she finally quit. It came as a minor shock to him to have her leave after a happy twelve years, but she had become more obstinate as of late. He never noticed the concern she expressed for him.

After the minor setback, the tests continued, this time with various vagrants to provide the baseline for comparison. Still nothing would turn up to show why he might be able to hear something other people couldn't. The more demanding the test, the more he wound up paying the technician to run it, though there were always more doctors that were all too happy to pour over the results. The sale of O'Sullivan Holdings left him with more money than he thought he would spend in a lifetime as well as all the free time he would ever need. There wasn't that much left to test when his accountant for the past twenty years left him as well.

He was still well off by most standards, he still had enough to live fairly comfortably if he moved out of the city and made a couple investments that would need to turn out more lucky than wise. However, if he continued the way he had over the two years since he found that haunting music, he might make it another three months before he joined the vagabonds he had been employing. It was a startling way to wake up to the remains of a life that had such promise. The social columns as well as the tabloids rang with the rumors of how far he had fallen, and he had to admit they didn't quite hit the mark as to how bad it really was.

After some hard thought, all he could see was that the shell had consumed his life the way his memory of the sea had bolstered it. Packing the thing in the mahogany box that had been built to protect it, he took a drive back down to Atlantic City, and the ephemeral melody became served as a homing device, becoming more urgent as they neared the place they had first met. It had come from the sea, and it was his intention to return the shell to its original owner. It was after midnight when he made it to the beach, and the tide was coming back in.

Freeing the shell from its case, he carried it down the few steps to the sand, cradling it as he had so often since their return to New York. Its tune returned to the same joyous melody he had heard that first night, and for the first time he wondered at the way the song kept changing. Over the short time they had been together it had always sung to him of the sea and its glory. He could recall now how frequently its tune had brought back memories of the various beaches he had visited, but not once from that day to this had he actually gone back to the shore.

The feel of the air carried on the back of every wave that crested and crashed on the sand seemed to rejuvenate him. Now he even blamed the shell for having taken this away from him. He was suddenly disgusted by the thing held so gently in his arm, and after only a moment's thought he heaved the shell toward the ocean. Everything he had loved about the shell coursed through his mind as it sailed through the air, and everything he'd offered to it followed as it hit the sand barely fifteen feet away and a good ways short of the waxing tide. For a while he stood there considering what he had just done, balancing it against what he had given to feed his obsession.

He still had enough money, it wouldn't be too difficult to start over. This time he already had a pretty strong network to help him back to the heights he had achieved before. Maybe now that he was aware of the shell's effect on him, he could temper that too. If he only listened to it when he needed to relax, perhaps things wouldn't go so badly this time. As he was beginning to see how things could work out, he found himself a little further down the beach with the shell back in the crook of his arm, and he finally knew he wouldn't be able to take the shell back with him if he was going to have any chance of regaining what he had given up for it. Still, he was torn.

The shell was just a thing, just a souvenir of a trip he'd rather not remember anyway. True, it was the most unique thing he had ever possessed, but no one else could share in its value. If he took it back, he would likely lose everything else, but no one would want his shell. For the first time he thought he knew why he would have to get rid of it, but he couldn't bring himself to take even one step towards the water's edge. The sky over the ocean began to turn lighter before he moved again. Behind him the boardwalk echoed with the foot falls of a morning jogger still a ways away, but drawing nearer. Something in him told him that he would have to make up his mind before whoever that was saw him.

The song from the shell seemed to grow nervous as they stood there together while the jogger drew closer in a steady rhythm. He managed to take three strides between the crash of every wave, and the shell's song became the saddest waltz Frank thought he would ever hear. Finally the moment of his decision was upon him, and he closed his eyes before taking three quick steps of his own ending with the hurling of the shell. It managed an even shorter distance this time, as Frank's blind aim caused it to shatter against a support moments after leaving his hand.

The noise of the shell breaking startled him almost as much as the sudden absence of its music. His hand still felt heavy from the weight of the shell he had held for so long. Absently he started rubbing it as he watched the tide claim the remnants of the shell continue to break down until all that was left of it was a pinkish hue in the sand. In the same moment Frank felt enormous freedom as well as unbearable loss. It knocked him off his feet and he sat hard in the strangely shaded sand clutching the hand that had held the shell. He felt numb all over as his emotions jockeyed for prominence in his mind, but his right hand was particularly empty of sensation.

While he sat trying to take in what had happened, he started humming one of the tunes the shell had sung to him. Before long, he could almost hear the shell's answer to his song. He looked around again for the source of the sound, but this time was more surprised than the last when he found it. His right hand had a glassy quality to the skin, and between the fingers was a fine film with a familiar fluted edge. It was as if his hand was becoming the shell that had so often been its occupant over the last two years.

Frank's every sound was echoed in his changing hand, and he began to doubt the stability of his mind. It had been a difficult choice to let the shell go, and the result of his decision had had the worst outcome he could have imagined, but he didn't think the strain of it all was enough to cause this obvious hallucination. His thumb was sticking straight ought from his altered hand, as if it was determined to be the spire the shell wound around. The jogger was almost there now, and to hide his hand from being seen, he stuck the hand under his knees and rested his chin on them. He almost immediately regretted the decision since there couldn't really be anything wrong with his hand in the first place, and so far as the jogger would be concerned, he was just out to watch the sunrise.

The jogger in question seemed to be taking much longer to pass the scene than Frank would have liked. Soon he found another reason to regret putting his hand under his knees. He tried to shift his position and found that his knees were stuck together, and furthermore his chin seemed perfectly happy where it was as well. His back, on the other hand, was starting to complain quite loudly about being hunched over for so long. To take his mind off of it and calm some of his panic during this strange episode, he resumed humming the song from the shell. The power of the tune was such that he didn't notice when the heal of his right hand began to encircle his back, though at its touch the aches faded. Once it started moving, the whole process went rather quickly as his hand moved to overtake the rest of his form, leaving a very large shell indeed. He wasn't certain at what point he knew what was happening or when he had accepted it, but now he would never need more than the shell that let him sing his love for the sea.

User:Leasara

2009-03-20T07:33:20Z

Leasara: Adding a story

=Leasara: Shannon Robertson=
==About Me==
I wrote quite a lot for six or seven years starting at age sixteen. By the time I was twenty, I had some 32-35 screenplays and a few sundry short stories and essays. Then some ''Big Dark Things ™'' happened and I gave up on writing, destroying all of that work. Then in the Spring of 2006, the bug got me again and I wrote ''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]'' for [http://foxx.furvect.com/ Foxx's site] where it's listed as ''Exam'' since that's the name of [http://foxx.furvect.com/phase10/Exam.html the picture] it's based on and attributed to ''Lady Amalthea'', since that's my email address. A bit more time passed and in December of 2006 I started writing for the first short story archive I found, [http://doc.furvect.com/ Doc's Lab]. I didn't realize that it was a fetish site at first, but I decided to see if I could write erotica, so most of the stuff I wrote in 2007 has some sort of sexual overtones if it's not just out and out blatant sex. Starting with ''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]'' I have been moving away from the erotic aspect, and am a happier author for it. I think I might still write erotica if it's requested or commissioned, but it's no longer on the menu for my usual stuff.

My style is probably a little rough, but I don't have any real education in regards to writing. I barely graduated high school. Even so, I'm currently working on the first book of what I plan to be a Sci-fi/Fantasy trilogy, the scripts for two web comics I'd like to start, and I usually have no less than four short stories going. My writing style is mostly stream-of-consciousness, I think it lends a nice flow to my writing that seems a bit organic to me, but it also seems to get me stuck for ages if I get interrupted or lose the thread of where the story was going. The novel is the first thing I've ever really planned out, and it's going very slowly. I hope to make a crossover and be a mainstream unicorn.

'''''I welcome all comments and criticisms, and I'm usually available on AIM, MSN, or YIM, though I prefer emails''''' (lady.amalthea@gmail.com) '''''or introductions first.'''''

==Stories==
<div class="floatright">
{| class="toc" width="300px"
|-
!Legend
|-
|
*[[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - Explicit Sexual Content
*[[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - Illustrated
*[[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] - Work In Progress
|}
</div>
These are arranged in roughly the order I've written them, with the oldest stories at the bottom. For an alphabetical listing you can go to my Category by following the link at the bottom of the page.

===2009===
*'''[[User:Leasara/Door in the Mountain, The|The Door in the Mountain]]''' - March 20, 2009 - An unnamed man falls into a really strange fantasy.
===2008===
*'''The Natural Thing''' - September 30, 2008 - ''Published in Midwest FurFest con book''
:A unicorn discovers something new about herself and is forever changed by the experience.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whims of Fortune|Whims of Fortune]]''' - August 1, 2008
:Frank loves the sea and its beaches, but when he is given a gift from them, things start to change.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Drawing Conclusions|Drawing Conclusions]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - April 4, 2008
:John is an artist that has a pretty lose style, tonight he's getting more involved in his illustration than ever before.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Sacagawea's Journal|Sacagawea's Journal]]''' - March 15, 2008
:A man embarks on a quest to verify the authenticity of an heirloom, what he finds will change everything.
===2007===
*'''[[User:Leasara/What You Eat|What You Eat]]''' - December 30, 2007
:Samantha loves to bake, despite the many and varied warnings she has received from the fire department. She really should have known the cookies didn't come out as perfect as they seemed.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Hope Awakening|Hope Awakening]]''' - December 28, 2007
:The nearness of a loved one sparks a momentary inspiration that fades much too soon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Awakening|Awakening]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - December 24, 2007
:Eventually everyone needs a little support from their friends, but it's the little surprises from those that know you best that can really make a person happy.
*'''[[User:Leasara/They're Coming|They're Coming]]''' - December 20, 2007
:A man finally breaks down after his dog runs away, but subsequent investigations may turn up a story much more sinister.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Refraction|Refraction]]''' - December 11, 2007
:An Xmas Xchange 2007 story that stresses the importance of knowing oneself.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Three-Fourths|Three-Fourths]]''' - November 18, 2007
:Rose, Shelly and Temeka have nothing in common, but a school trip allows them to discover just how close they can be.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Change of Flightplan|Change of Flightplan]]''' - Autumn 2007
:A man waiting for a taxi gets the impetus to make a last minute change in his travel plans.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal|Whiner's Dismissal]]''' - Autumn 2007
:Sometimes those that complain have a point that should be listened to.
*'''Pursuit''' [[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] - July 13, 2007 (Story taken offline while I work on it)
:Aithne and Caradoc had grown up together in the bourg of Eilginn. When Caradoc is suddenly swept away, Aithne can't help but go after him.
*'''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - June 2007
:1870 had the entire world being powered by steam or electricity, but Charles wanted to be a botanist. He could get lost in books that simply related the allure of nature in even the most abstract fashion. Perhaps it was fate that lead him off his path.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Dark Horizons|Dark Horizons]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - Spring 2007
:Allusions of war are lost on a pair of lovers as they are used to display the effects of an ultimate weapon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/As Subtle as Sphinx|As Subtle as Sphinx]]''' - May 2007
:Rose has had a hard time since she was left to the cold Chicago streets, but with a little help from a stranger she might be able to make something of herself after all.
===2006===
*'''[[User:Leasara/Corruption|Corruption]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:A visitor from the near future paints a bleak picture of what is to come as she assaults her former self. Can the past version of her possibly avert the suffering that should never happen?
*'''[[User:Leasara/180 Meters|180 Meters]]''' - December 2006
:After years of papers and theories coupled with a contract from the Navy, Jim has finally managed to find a way to let Lysette swim again. Of course, most scientific advances are not without their setbacks.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Chain Reaction|Chain Reaction]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:Jake was on his way to hang out with his friend Jason, but the girl in the lobby of Jason's building seems to be in some sort of trouble.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Bodies Entwine|Bodies Entwine]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:Simone has sacrificed her entire adult life to save up $10,000, but with the passing of an unknown uncle her situation improves drastically. The question is, how might the inheritance change her?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Look Before You Leopard|Look Before You Leopard]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance run. Get in, gather evidence, get out. However, neither the ex-agent nor the agency that hired him had any idea what exactly they were investigating.
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Dream Dreams the Dreamer|The Dream Dreams the Dreamer]]''' - December 2006
:Can a dream change the world?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Free Solo Dragon|Free Solo Dragon]]''' - December 2006
:Alone with a sheer rock face and her music, Erin is about to find the ultimate thrill.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Slow Change|Slow Change]]''' - December 2006
:An unnamed apartment dweller keeps a journal detailing several strange changes over the course of two weeks in April 2005
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]''' - Spring 2006
:Pete woke up late for his exam. Still he managed to slip into his seat before the test began, thinking that if he could just get through the hour he would have the entire summer break to rest, relax, and recuperate. Little did he know how badly he would need some R&R by the time the hour was out.

{{author page}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leasara}}

User:Leasara

2008-11-27T00:36:07Z

Leasara:

=Leasara: Shannon Robertson=
==About Me==
I wrote quite a lot for six or seven years starting at age sixteen. By the time I was twenty, I had some 32-35 screenplays and a few sundry short stories and essays. Then some ''Big Dark Things ™'' happened and I gave up on writing, destroying all of that work. Then in the Spring of 2006, the bug got me again and I wrote ''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]'' for [http://foxx.furvect.com/ Foxx's site] where it's listed as ''Exam'' since that's the name of [http://foxx.furvect.com/phase10/Exam.html the picture] it's based on and attributed to ''Lady Amalthea'', since that's my email address. A bit more time passed and in December of 2006 I started writing for the first short story archive I found, [http://doc.furvect.com/ Doc's Lab]. I didn't realize that it was a fetish site at first, but I decided to see if I could write erotica, so most of the stuff I wrote in 2007 has some sort of sexual overtones if it's not just out and out blatant sex. Starting with ''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]'' I have been moving away from the erotic aspect, and am a happier author for it. I think I might still write erotica if it's requested or commissioned, but it's no longer on the menu for my usual stuff.

My style is probably a little rough, but I don't have any real education in regards to writing. I barely graduated high school. Even so, I'm currently working on the first book of what I plan to be a Sci-fi/Fantasy trilogy, the scripts for two web comics I'd like to start, and I usually have no less than four short stories going. My writing style is mostly stream-of-consciousness, I think it lends a nice flow to my writing that seems a bit organic to me, but it also seems to get me stuck for ages if I get interrupted or lose the thread of where the story was going. The novel is the first thing I've ever really planned out, and it's going very slowly. I hope to make a crossover and be a mainstream unicorn.

'''''I welcome all comments and criticisms, and I'm usually available on AIM, MSN, or YIM, though I prefer emails''''' (lady.amalthea@gmail.com) '''''or introductions first.'''''

==Stories==
<div class="floatright">
{| class="toc" width="300px"
|-
!Legend
|-
|
*[[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - Explicit Sexual Content
*[[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - Illustrated
*[[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] - Work In Progress
|}
</div>
These are arranged in roughly the order I've written them, with the oldest stories at the bottom. For an alphabetical listing you can go to my Category by following the link at the bottom of the page.

===2008===
*'''The Natural Thing''' - September 30, 2008 - ''Published in Midwest FurFest con book''
:A unicorn discovers something new about herself and is forever changed by the experience.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whims of Fortune|Whims of Fortune]]''' - August 1, 2008
:Frank loves the sea and its beaches, but when he is given a gift from them, things start to change.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Drawing Conclusions|Drawing Conclusions]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - April 4, 2008
:John is an artist that has a pretty lose style, tonight he's getting more involved in his illustration than ever before.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Sacagawea's Journal|Sacagawea's Journal]]''' - March 15, 2008
:A man embarks on a quest to verify the authenticity of an heirloom, what he finds will change everything.
===2007===
*'''[[User:Leasara/What You Eat|What You Eat]]''' - December 30, 2007
:Samantha loves to bake, despite the many and varied warnings she has received from the fire department. She really should have known the cookies didn't come out as perfect as they seemed.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Hope Awakening|Hope Awakening]]''' - December 28, 2007
:The nearness of a loved one sparks a momentary inspiration that fades much too soon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Awakening|Awakening]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - December 24, 2007
:Eventually everyone needs a little support from their friends, but it's the little surprises from those that know you best that can really make a person happy.
*'''[[User:Leasara/They're Coming|They're Coming]]''' - December 20, 2007
:A man finally breaks down after his dog runs away, but subsequent investigations may turn up a story much more sinister.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Refraction|Refraction]]''' - December 11, 2007
:An Xmas Xchange 2007 story that stresses the importance of knowing oneself.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Three-Fourths|Three-Fourths]]''' - November 18, 2007
:Rose, Shelly and Temeka have nothing in common, but a school trip allows them to discover just how close they can be.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Change of Flightplan|Change of Flightplan]]''' - Autumn 2007
:A man waiting for a taxi gets the impetus to make a last minute change in his travel plans.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal|Whiner's Dismissal]]''' - Autumn 2007
:Sometimes those that complain have a point that should be listened to.
*'''Pursuit''' [[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] - July 13, 2007 (Story taken offline while I work on it)
:Aithne and Caradoc had grown up together in the bourg of Eilginn. When Caradoc is suddenly swept away, Aithne can't help but go after him.
*'''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - June 2007
:1870 had the entire world being powered by steam or electricity, but Charles wanted to be a botanist. He could get lost in books that simply related the allure of nature in even the most abstract fashion. Perhaps it was fate that lead him off his path.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Dark Horizons|Dark Horizons]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - Spring 2007
:Allusions of war are lost on a pair of lovers as they are used to display the effects of an ultimate weapon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/As Subtle as Sphinx|As Subtle as Sphinx]]''' - May 2007
:Rose has had a hard time since she was left to the cold Chicago streets, but with a little help from a stranger she might be able to make something of herself after all.
===2006===
*'''[[User:Leasara/Corruption|Corruption]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:A visitor from the near future paints a bleak picture of what is to come as she assaults her former self. Can the past version of her possibly avert the suffering that should never happen?
*'''[[User:Leasara/180 Meters|180 Meters]]''' - December 2006
:After years of papers and theories coupled with a contract from the Navy, Jim has finally managed to find a way to let Lysette swim again. Of course, most scientific advances are not without their setbacks.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Chain Reaction|Chain Reaction]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:Jake was on his way to hang out with his friend Jason, but the girl in the lobby of Jason's building seems to be in some sort of trouble.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Bodies Entwine|Bodies Entwine]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:Simone has sacrificed her entire adult life to save up $10,000, but with the passing of an unknown uncle her situation improves drastically. The question is, how might the inheritance change her?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Look Before You Leopard|Look Before You Leopard]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - December 2006
:It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance run. Get in, gather evidence, get out. However, neither the ex-agent nor the agency that hired him had any idea what exactly they were investigating.
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Dream Dreams the Dreamer|The Dream Dreams the Dreamer]]''' - December 2006
:Can a dream change the world?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Free Solo Dragon|Free Solo Dragon]]''' - December 2006
:Alone with a sheer rock face and her music, Erin is about to find the ultimate thrill.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Slow Change|Slow Change]]''' - December 2006
:An unnamed apartment dweller keeps a journal detailing several strange changes over the course of two weeks in April 2005
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]''' - Spring 2006
:Pete woke up late for his exam. Still he managed to slip into his seat before the test began, thinking that if he could just get through the hour he would have the entire summer break to rest, relax, and recuperate. Little did he know how badly he would need some R&R by the time the hour was out.

[[Category:Author]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leasara}}

User:Leasara

2008-11-25T00:33:10Z

Leasara: Creating a new page for a story

=Leasara: Shannon Robertson=
==About Me==
I wrote quite a lot for six or seven years starting at age sixteen. By the time I was twenty, I had some 32-35 screenplays and a few sundry short stories and essays. Then some ''Big Dark Things ™'' happened and I gave up on writing, destroying all of that work. Then in the Spring of 2006, the bug got me again and I wrote ''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]'' for [http://foxx.furvect.com/ Foxx's site] where it's listed as ''Exam'' since that's the name of [http://foxx.furvect.com/phase10/Exam.html the picture] it's based on and attributed to ''Lady Amalthea'', since that's my email address. A bit more time passed and in December of 2006 I started writing for the first short story archive I found, [http://doc.furvect.com/ Doc's Lab]. I didn't realize that it was a fetish site at first, but I decided to see if I could write erotica, so most of the stuff I wrote in 2007 has some sort of sexual overtones if it's not just out and out blatant sex. Starting with ''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]'' I have been moving away from the erotic aspect, and am a happier author for it. I think I might still write erotica if it's requested or commissioned, but it's no longer on the menu for my usual stuff.

My style is probably a little rough, but I don't have any real education in regards to writing. I barely graduated high school. Even so, I'm currently working on the first book of what I plan to be a Sci-fi/Fantasy trilogy, the scripts for two web comics I'd like to start, and I usually have no less than four short stories going. My writing style is mostly stream-of-consciousness, I think it lends a nice flow to my writing that seems a bit organic to me, but it also seems to get me stuck for ages if I get interrupted or lose the thread of where the story was going. The novel is the first thing I've ever really planned out, and it's going very slowly. I hope to make a crossover and be a mainstream unicorn.

'''''I welcome all comments and criticisms, and I'm usually available on AIM, MSN, or YIM, though I prefer emails''''' (lady.amalthea@gmail.com) '''''or introductions first.'''''

==Stories==
<div class="floatright">
{| class="toc" width="300px"
|-
!Legend
|-
|
*[[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - Explicit Sexual Content
*[[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - Illustrated
*[[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] - Work In Progress
|}
</div>
These are arranged in roughly the order I've written them, with the oldest stories at the bottom. For an alphabetical listing you can go to my Category by following the link at the bottom of the page.

===2008===
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Natural Thing|The Natural Thing]]''' September 30, 2008
:A unicorn discovers something new about herself and is forever changed by the experience.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whims of Fortune|Whims of Fortune]]''' August 1, 2008
:Frank loves the sea and its beaches, but when he is given a gift from them, things start to change.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Drawing Conclusions|Drawing Conclusions]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] April 4, 2008
:John is an artist that has a pretty lose style, tonight he's getting more involved in his illustration than ever before.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Sacagawea's Journal|Sacagawea's Journal]]''' March 15, 2008
:A man embarks on a quest to verify the authenticity of an heirloom, what he finds will change everything.
===2007===
*'''[[User:Leasara/What You Eat|What You Eat]]''' December 30, 2007
:Samantha loves to bake, despite the many and varied warnings she has received from the fire department. She really should have known the cookies didn't come out as perfect as they seemed.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Hope Awakening|Hope Awakening]]''' December 28, 2007
:The nearness of a loved one sparks a momentary inspiration that fades much too soon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Awakening|Awakening]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] December 24, 2007
:Eventually everyone needs a little support from their friends, but it's the little surprises from those that know you best that can really make a person happy.
*'''[[User:Leasara/They're Coming|They're Coming]]''' December 20, 2007
:A man finally breaks down after his dog runs away, but subsequent investigations may turn up a story much more sinister.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Refraction|Refraction]]''' December 11, 2007
:An Xmas Xchange 2007 story that stresses the importance of knowing oneself.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Three-Fourths|Three-Fourths]]''' November 18, 2007
:Rose, Shelly and Temeka have nothing in common, but a school trip allows them to discover just how close they can be.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Change of Flightplan|Change of Flightplan]]''' Autumn 2007
:A man waiting for a taxi gets the impetus to make a last minute change in his travel plans.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal|Whiner's Dismissal]]''' Autumn 2007
:Sometimes those that complain have a point that should be listened to.
*'''Pursuit''' [[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] July 13, 2007 (Story taken offline while I work on it)
:Aithne and Caradoc had grown up together in the bourg of Eilginn. When Caradoc is suddenly swept away, Aithne can't help but go after him.
*'''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] June 2007
:1870 had the entire world being powered by steam or electricity, but Charles wanted to be a botanist. He could get lost in books that simply related the allure of nature in even the most abstract fashion. Perhaps it was fate that lead him off his path.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Dark Horizons|Dark Horizons]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] Spring 2007
:Allusions of war are lost on a pair of lovers as they are used to display the effects of an ultimate weapon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/As Subtle as Sphinx|As Subtle as Sphinx]]''' May 2007
:Rose has had a hard time since she was left to the cold Chicago streets, but with a little help from a stranger she might be able to make something of herself after all.
===2006===
*'''[[User:Leasara/Corruption|Corruption]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] December 2006
:A visitor from the near future paints a bleak picture of what is to come as she assaults her former self. Can the past version of her possibly avert the suffering that should never happen?
*'''[[User:Leasara/180 Meters|180 Meters]]''' December 2006
:After years of papers and theories coupled with a contract from the Navy, Jim has finally managed to find a way to let Lysette swim again. Of course, most scientific advances are not without their setbacks.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Chain Reaction|Chain Reaction]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] December 2006
:Jake was on his way to hang out with his friend Jason, but the girl in the lobby of Jason's building seems to be in some sort of trouble.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Bodies Entwine|Bodies Entwine]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] December 2006
:Simone has sacrificed her entire adult life to save up $10,000, but with the passing of an unknown uncle her situation improves drastically. The question is, how might the inheritance change her?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Look Before You Leopard|Look Before You Leopard]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] December 2006
:It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance run. Get in, gather evidence, get out. However, neither the ex-agent nor the agency that hired him had any idea what exactly they were investigating.
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Dream Dreams the Dreamer|The Dream Dreams the Dreamer]]''' December 2006
:Can a dream change the world?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Free Solo Dragon|Free Solo Dragon]]''' December 2006
:Alone with a sheer rock face and her music, Erin is about to find the ultimate thrill.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Slow Change|Slow Change]]''' December 2006
:An unnamed apartment dweller keeps a journal detailing several strange changes over the course of two weeks in April 2005
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]''' Spring 2006
:Pete woke up late for his exam. Still he managed to slip into his seat before the test began, thinking that if he could just get through the hour he would have the entire summer break to rest, relax, and recuperate. Little did he know how badly he would need some R&R by the time the hour was out.

[[Category:Author]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leasara}}

User talk:Leasara/Change of Flightplan

2008-11-13T06:29:37Z

Leasara:

<noinclude>Comments on [[User:Leasara/Change of Flightplan]]
<comments />
----- __NOEDITSECTION__</noinclude>

== HairyMan said ... ==

<div class='commentBlock'>
Not bad... Not bad.

--HairyMan 19:50, 11 November 2008 (EST)

:Thanks much :D
:-- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 01:29, 13 November 2008 (EST)
</div>

User talk:Leasara/What You Eat

2008-11-04T01:56:30Z

Leasara:

This story is good.
== Mario said ... ==

<div class='commentBlock'>
Quite a tail of metamorphosis.

--Mario 19:43, 3 November 2008 (EST)
</div>

Glad you both liked it :D
: -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 20:56, 3 November 2008 (EST)

Talk:Best of Shifti

2008-10-29T03:15:51Z

Leasara: Just figured out I had to post here to request a complimentary copy of the book, not post here to refuse the complimentary copy.

User:Leasara/Hope Awakening

2008-10-09T21:45:35Z

Leasara:

User:Leasara/Awakening

2008-10-09T21:45:02Z

Leasara:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Awakening}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Leasara]] [[Category:Illustrated stories]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This was a quick story done on December 23, 2007, while I was packing for a trip the next day. It was a collaboration with Tincrash as a gift for our mutual friend, Rebecca Rabbit/Renegade Rabbit. Tincrash gave me permission to use Fairy Tina and Nikon gave me permission to use her as well. Tincrash illustrated the story for his part of the collaboration.}}

{{title
|name=Awakening
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

It's a long way from Chicago to Boise, even further when you're only three inches tall. Fortunately in her three inch form, the Fairy Tina had access to some pretty potent magic. This would be her first try at any long jumps, so she split the trip into three segments, with a stopover to pick up a friend and photographer along the way. Nikon wasn't certain about the idea of teleportation, but the thought of flying fifteen hundred miles made her little wings ache in protest. Pausing only to double check that her camera bag was stocked, she closed her eyes and held her breath then suddenly found herself in a field of Nebraska grass. She only had a moment to enjoy the sweet scent of the March melt before the world turned an electric blue and they suddenly stood on a street in Idaho.

Tina, in her fairy form, was practically giddy. Half from the lightheadedness that comes from rigorous magical exertion and half from the thought of what they were going to help along today. Nikon looked a little unsteady from the rapid jumps, but Tina took her hand for one last little hop and they were in the the kitchen of their friend's house. Taking a pair of clips from her hair, the Fae raccoon tried another spell she had been working on, then shared one with Nikon. The spell would allow her friend line of sight teleportation and the pair of clips would work as simple walkie-talkies, plus they were quite fashionable with little roses made from ribbons on their ends. Together, Tina and her dracoon friend set about getting the kitchen ready for a very special breakfast.

Rebbecca was drowsing in her bed, wrapped around her largest stuffed bunny with a slight smile on her face as she slowly returned to the waking world. She loved it when she woke clutching her plush rabbit, but with a stretch and a glance at her alarm clock, she decided she had lazed about enough for her day off. Rolling out of bed, she did a couple quick simple stretches before turning her laptop on and heading to the restroom.

It had almost been a month since she had started hormones, and the image in the mirror held the promise of the woman she would be in another year or so. Her soft brown hair had grown out with a little wave at the ends, and was trimmed in a cute bob that fell just below here eye level. A simple diet had returned a softer version of the physique she had lost a year before while driving a truck, but the hormones were already making it difficult to keep her thighs and rear slim. Still she had managed to keep a rather impressive bust for a transgendered woman, and her reflection was starting to allow her to see what her sister had maintained all along. She was going to be a real knockout before she was thirty. The episode introduction from Chobits let her know her computer was almost done booting, so she finished up in the restroom and ran upstairs to get her standard breakfast before going online to check in with everyone.

[[Image:Awakening1.jpg|280px|left]]It was a warm evening for Idaho, but Becca was still wearing her winter pajamas, a pair of bright orange flannel pants with a bunny printed in a pattern on them and an over-sized t-shirt. Turning the corner in to the kitchen, she was surprised to find it empty. She would have sworn she had heard her room mate in there as she had approached. Shrugging it off, she went about gathering her usual breakfast. The granola, however, didn't seem to be where she had left it. Double checking the cupboard, she found that Slade, her room mate, must have moved it to the very back of the top shelf. In fact, it looked like the box would have to be half way inside the wall to be as far back on the shelf as it was. She decided she must still be half asleep and placing one hand on the counter to steady herself, she went up on her tiptoes to reach the cereal. Seeing her first opening, Tina went to work. She flitted from her hiding spot in the space under the floor cabinets and hit both feet with a ball of dust before banking upward and taking position behind the cookie jar.

[[Image:Awakening2.jpg|120px|right]]Masked by her motion, Rebbecca didn't seem to notice anything as she reached for the granola. Even so, her feet almost tripled in length as Nikon snapped a few shots from the other side of the room. Her new feet gave her the loft she needed to reach the box, but the box itself didn't seem to want to move. She pulled harder on the stubborn cereal package, leaning back in her efforts, and Tina took the opportunity to adjust Becca's calves. The spell ate away at the orange flannel, replacing it with a soft coat of light gray fur as it altered her legs to a more lapin proportion. Finally the box came loose, and Rebbecca fell to the floor from it's sudden release. Getting up proved to be strangely difficult, but as provided by another aspect of the mischievous magic, she couldn't exactly place why so long as the form she was attaining was consistent with her image of her alternate self. Tina was elated with how well it was working, and Nikon had to stifle her giggles as she cautiously moved to get a better angle.

[[Image:Awakening3.jpg|280px|left]]The yogurt, Becca found, was almost gone and had been moved to the very back of the very bottom shelf. In fact, in the process of moving the yogurt, Tina had seen to it that all but one of the cups were on a three hour delay. They would show up on their own once the three hours were up. Still, their new position had Becca hunched over in the refrigerator, which was the perfect setup for Tina's strafing run on her posterior before taking cover on top of the refrigerator. The flash from the dusting reflected in a bottle of water and caught her eye, sending a shocked Rebbecca sprawling into the center of the kitchen to watch as her her favorite pajama bottoms retreated before a wave of advancing fur. Below the fur, her thighs were getting thinner in some ways and thicker in others, and as realization dawned on her a silly grin spread across her face. Seeing that the game was up, Tina dropped from her perch on the fridge, landing lightly on her friend's changed knee as the fur and it's changes slowed about her waistline.

[[Image:Awakening4.jpg|280px|right]]"How's the fit?" Tina asked.

"Perfect!" Becca so overjoyed she was nearly in tears, "You know you've saved me a lot of trouble and even more money. Thank you so much!"

"We're only half done," came a voice from the ceiling. Looking up, Rebbecca found another of her friends, Nikon the dracoon, behind her camera busily snapping shots. "You may as well get on with it, Tina," she grinned, moving in for a few closer shots.

Tina grinned and leaped into the air doing a lazy spiral around the bunny taking shape on the kitchen floor. As she did, the fur resumed it's pace, climbing her torso under the large t-shirt which was spared by Nikon's attentions. She had replaced the card in her camera and set it to auto, leaving it to zip about and capture the final images of their combined efforts. While Nikon focused on making the shirt into something more appropriate for the be-bunnied girl wearing it, Tina began the final phase on Rebecca's head. Her hair was brought down in a gentle wave to just below her shoulder blades as her ears matched that length in the other direction. As her bangs were tamed, the gray fur began flowing down her face, lending a refined arch to her brow and thickening her lashes. Meanwhile, the tide was rising from her neck, having completed everything below that. It reshaped her jawline as it joined her hair at the back of her neck and moved forward towards her nose. She delighted in the feeling of her canine teeth simply melting away as her molars were reshaped while the fur overtook her cheeks. It all ended at the tip of her nose which began to wiggle and wriggle on it's own as she worked her altering jaw beneath it.

When everything was finished, she just sat there taking it all in. Tina alighted back on her friend's knee while Nikon went to capture her camera. "Well, I think that does it," said Tina, rubbing her hands.

"Oh! If you were bigger I'd give you such a hug!" It was all Becca could do to keep her self still.

[[Image:Awakening5.jpg|280px|left]]"If we were bigger?" Nikon questioned over her shoulder with a glint in her eye. Tina knew the note in Nikon's voice and retreated to a safe distance as the new bunny began to shrink. It might have taken an entire second for her to drop to an full eight inches tall. "Bunnies should be cute little things anyways!" she smiled. From their holder on the counter she took six toothpicks, then with another quick spell had a serviceable tripod which she deftly attached to her camera. Auto shoot was a very nice feature, but a well composed shot took a little time to set up. Nikon set the camera to take the last two shots on the card before joining the pair in front of the lens.
[[Image:Awakening6.jpg|280px|center]]

User:Leasara/They're Coming

2008-10-09T21:44:36Z

Leasara:

User:Leasara/Refraction

2008-10-09T21:44:05Z

Leasara:

User:Leasara/Three-Fourths

2008-10-09T21:41:39Z

Leasara:

User:Leasara/Change of Flightplan

2008-10-09T21:33:26Z

Leasara:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Change of Flightplan}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Leasara]] [[Category:Avian]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This is a *POOF* transformation done for a friend. It just happened that he wanted a bird TF right after I finished [[User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal|Whiner's Dismissal]], so I think the actual transformations are rather similar.}}

{{title
|name=Change of Flightplan
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

He looked at his ticket again, then back up at the clock. His neighbor would be here soon to take him to the airport. Turning off his computer for the first time in weeks, he looked around the small apartment that barely held his desk and bed, marveling at how much quieter it was with all the appliances off. The refrigerator broke his revere as it came on, reminding him that not everything was unplugged. He smiled and picked up his bag, hoping he would be returning home in a few days, once he'd straightened out the problem with his passport and gotten a new visa. Turning out the light he left his little room with the thought of crossing the street to the bakery on the other side for one more pastry before the trip.

He had been dreading this trip for some time, but last month added a new worry when he awoke and found himself completely unable to move. For two days he was stranded in bed before he was able to summon help, then he learned that some muscular infection had rendered him immobile. He was put on an experimental serum that seemed to be helping, but it had to be administered daily. Not knowing what would happen without his daily injection had become his major concern. The doctor had painted a bleak picture, but that was a worst case scenario.

The bakery had his usual, so with a pastry and a pint of milk he headed back to his yard to await the neighbor. A tingling ache had already begun in his hand from carrying the luggage, and he supposed it would have been a better idea to leave it at home for the trip to the bakery. No use in worrying about that now, he set his bags down and started to think of what he would need to do once he made it to his home country. The pain in his arm persisted, in spite of his efforts to keep it out of his mind, and he soon found himself rubbing his sore hand, something the doctor had warned him against.

To keep his good hand occupied, he returned to his snack, but the pain only got worse. His injured hand, he found, could barely move. This was much too early for symptoms to be returning, but the doctor had also warned him about the effects of stress on his condition. He stared at the offending appendage as if he could numb the pain by sheer force of will. Suddenly his little finger fused with his ring finger. It happened so quickly that the thought of what he had just witnessed took a moment to register. When it did, he shot up from his seat, spilling his confection and throwing the half empty carton of milk into the air.

The altered fingers began to push forward, pulling a mass of flesh out of his hand behind them that rapidly consumed the rest of his digits as it expanded. It seemed that his heart had stopped, or that his mind was racing so fast that he could compose a sonnet between it's beats if his attention so focused elsewhere. His forearm was changing now, ripping the seams of his shirt as it became more muscular and assumed a shape like a knife. His wrist had turned back on itself so that the meaty thing that had replaced his hand was almost parallel to his new forearm. He tried to run to the house to call the doctor, but couldn't move. Tried to scream, but found he had no breath. Then he noticed his milk carton hanging strangely in the air, it's contents beginning to spill.

His arm continued to change, and was starting to look like the largest chicken wing ever on record. Quills were beginning to push through the skin at the tip of the wing, and he began to understand that his mind was somehow moving faster than his beaten nerves could carry their signals. More likely the system was just overloaded and not able to report what looked like a painful process. Either way, for once he was thankful for his illness and injuries. A sudden shock over his scalp alerted him to the fact that the change had progressed beyond his arm.

Finally he felt some motion as his neck began to elongate. With some concentration he managed to crane his lengthening neck so that he was facing the rest of his body. Suspended in the air and starting to fall around his shoulders was his hair, still in roughly the configuration he had put it in this morning. From his new vantage point he could see his entire body as it was slowly being carried upward by his initial leap. It was more than a little strange, and a morbid fascination overtook him since he was apparently unable to act.

As dusty black feathers gave way to brown and tan along his wing, the left shoulder of his shirt finally gave way as his shoulder was being pulled forward by his changing chest. At the center of his chest, his sternum was leading his ribs away from his spine, all the while getting thicker and pulling his skin taut just ahead of the muscle that filled in behind it. His shoes and socks fell off of his feet as his right sleeve was being pushed down his arm in front of it's expansion, but his first clue that his head was changing was an acute awareness of the surrounding weather.

Leaving his shoes to a slow spin in mid air, his feet retreated up the legs of his pants, and the feathers were quickly claiming his torso, white on the chest, tan across his back. Information continued to flood his senses, a low pressure system was coming in from the Northwest, but he still had plenty of time to dodge the rain by flying Southwest. The milk was entering his field of view again, and seemed to be falling faster. Time was catching up with him.

Fir a moment his pants started to pull into his shirt, then they began to follow his shoes to the ground. Sensation was returning to his limbs, and he could feel his head changing as his eyes started to migrate to the side of his head. He wished for the numbness of that timeless moment as his lips merged with his teeth, and his nostrils slid down into his lip. Compared to the alterations his sinuses and eyes were undergoing, the beak was a minor annoyance. Gravity finally regained it's hold on him and he beat his wings instinctively, throwing the tatters of his shirt to the ground on top of where his milk had landed. With an awkward loop and a worse landing, he returned to his yard.

With his supple new neck, he gave himself a quick look and found that he made a somewhat large but otherwise perfect Canadian Goose. The mechanics of his new form came to him rather quickly, then he remembered his pastry and thought it would be the perfect fuel for the first leg of his journey across the Atlantic. Once it was gone, he took wing and headed Southwest into France to stay out of the storm, then North to skirt the lands near the Arctic Circle and finally South into the US, and the bureaucrats in his home country be damned.

----

<comments />

User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal

2008-10-09T21:32:47Z

Leasara:

User talk:Leasara/What You Eat

2008-10-09T21:29:09Z

Leasara:

This story is good.

User talk:Leasara/What You Eat

2008-10-09T21:28:30Z

Leasara:

This story is good.

Thanks much :)
-- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 17:28, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

User:Leasara/What You Eat

2008-10-09T15:32:19Z

Leasara:

{{DEFAULTSORT:What You Eat}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Transgender]] [[Category:Animal]] [[Category:Ambiguous]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note| This was done in about three hours on the last day of a contest held at the Lab for the winter holidays. I'm not a big fan of the winter holidays, so the closest I connected with it was the cookies. I still love the trigger on this story.}}

{{title
|name=What You Eat
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Samantha wasn't very good at baking, in the same way stones aren't very good at swimming, but every now and then the urge took her to very strange and dark places. This holiday season her casualties included no less than five tubes of various premade cookie doughs, two trays of brownies, and something that theoretically should have resulted in a large pumpkin pie. However, she didn't let these glorious failures get her down, and once the smoke had cleared and she was reasonably sure the fire was out, she went back to the supermarket to prowl it's aisles for her next victim. This time she thought she might try a mix. Something simple, like a cake or some lemon bars.

The grocery store was disappointingly bare, however. They did have some eight inch round pans for the cake, but the mixes themselves were missing. The naked shelves made her think it was as if they knew she was coming. She went to put the cake pans back and met a courtesy clerk doing returns. In front of his basket, slightly crushed under the weight of a frozen turkey, was a red box with bright gold lettering declaring it's contents to be Genderbread Cake and Cookie Mix. She puzzled at the typo for a moment, then helped herself to the contents of the cart.

"Can I help you?" the boy offered.

"No thanks, I just want this gingerbread mix at the front here." she replied without looking up.

"Oh, that has to go back, it's not in the system. In fact, we don't even carry it at all."

Finding her prize at last she wasn't going to give it up so easily. "Well, this looks like the last box in the store, and I really wanted to take something to work tomorrow before the break."

"Yeah, the snow keeps closing down the interstate, so most of the shops around here are getting low on their stock, but we can't sell you something that's not in the system. We're returning it to our distribution center for them to sort out." At least the desert mixes hadn't retreated. It took all of five minutes talking to the store manager to liberate the wayward box, but they didn't have any Gingerbread Man cookie cutters left. She would have to make due with the Animal Shapes set, since the Halloween set would seem a little too out of place.

Back home, she carefully measured the water according to the directions for cookie dough. She folded in the egg after removing all of the stray shell fragments. She rolled to dough to a uniform thickness of about a quarter inch as the box instructed. She carefully laid out her cookie cutters to get thirteen cookies and placed them on a greased sheet, then rolled out the dough again and made another three cookies. One for everyone at the office. Since it contained raw egg, she threw out the rest of the dough, having learned about the dangers of salmonella poisoning the hard way, twice. Double checking the oven temperature, she set three kitchen timers plus the timer on the microwave and put the baking sheet in the oven. Certain that everything would go well this time, she set about cleaning up the workspace wondering how she had managed to get flour on the ceiling again.

Samantha beamed as she walked into work carrying the foil covered plate. She returned her coworkers' looks of apprehension and astonishment with a giggle and a nod as she strode triumphantly to her desk. Placing her purse in its usual drawer, she retrieved a sign she had prepared on an index card and posted it above the plate before removing its cover. In her best script the sign read, "One Each, Please. Happy Holidays." The cookies certainly smelled edible, and the rest of the staff began to find excuses to walk by her desk for a closer inspection. When they began their second passes, she finally took the top cookie, broke off it's forelimbs and popped them into her mouth. Everyone stopped and stared intently. When she took a second bite the office manager, Rob, was the first one to her desk.

"Plain gingerbread?" he asked as he took his share.

"I didn't want to press my luck with decorating them," Samantha admitted.

"Why the bunny?" was his next question, holding up his earless cookie.

"All they had left were animal shaped cutters. Are they OK?" she wondered.

There was a nervous laugh in his answer, "They're great!" he announced more to the rest of the office than to the woman in front of him. A moment later, after a few muttered thank yous and congratulations, her plate was empty and everyone was munching a morning snack. Samantha, having accomplished one of her life's goals, merrily returned to setting up her cubicle for the day's work. It seemed like the joy of her accomplishment would burst from her chest at any moment, and she had to restrain herself from singing aloud as she typed in her password to log into her workstation, but the keyboard felt strange. While her workspace loaded, she inspected the keys for the source of the velvety feeling, but was met with the same hard black keys she had become accustomed to.

Another distraction popped up as the swelling pride in her chest gave way to an itching heat on the surface of her skin that slowly sank into her stomach. Scratching at her sternum, she felt that same velvet sensation and checked her left hand to find it had a light dusting of black hair growing along the back while the palm side was turning a black leathery texture. Her right hand had taken its explorations down to her moderate bust which seemed to be the source of the irritant. Fear gripped her as she watched her breasts rapidly deflate leaving fairly toned pectoral muscles and shriveling nipples plainly visible in the cups of her bra. The weird warmth was nearing her crotch and she remembered the strange typo on the box. Just then a woman screamed in Rob's office.

Rob flew out of his office, panic as apparent on his face as the two giant orbs of flesh that bounded on his chest as he ran, their nipples threatening to shred his shirt. Even more disturbing to Samantha were the points of a pair of ears poking through his lengthening hair. The rest of the office was on their feet, but she sank to the floor looking at her hands. Trying to ignore the very wrong way her slacks no longer fit, she began to think. She had eaten the forelegs of her cookie first, Rob had eaten the ears. Her hands were quite black, and their backs were covered in fur, but otherwise they were unchanged. Everyone had rushed to Rob's aid, and she peeked around the end of her cubicle to see what was going on.

His pants had ripped along the seams to make room for his hips, and the only people that would mistake him for a man were those present in this room. Among the rest of the employees, she could see a fox tail, a horse tail, and what she hoped was a chameleon tail. Most everyone had become more concerned about themselves and their ridiculous proportions and changing hides. Everyone had an obvious problem in their pants, and most of the former guys were struggling with their new additions up top. Sam slunk back into her cubicle before anyone caught her spying.

The fur that had claimed her hands had turned a brownish gray on her upper arms, and she deftly retrieved the powder compact from her purse. In it's mirror she confirmed that her cookie was not, in fact, a dog with a fat tail as dark circles formed around her eyes, trailing down her cheek to form a mask in her fur. She wanted to cry at the thought of what she had done to her friends, even as she told herself that she had no way of knowing this would happen. A menagerie of semi-human noises assaulted her ears as they twitched higher on her head and the last of her hair was absorbed by her fur. She decided to stop blaming herself as she took stock of her body again.

The tail was coming in at the base of her spine with the telltale heat. It was making her slacks even more uncomfortable, and she undid the clasp and slid them down her legs. Waiting between her legs was a sight that might have gotten her quite excited if it weren't on her body. In fact, as the fur moved to claim her new appendage, she was only slightly surprised to find that her preferences in that department seemed to be as malleable as the rest of her in the grip of whatever was happening. Hazarding another peek, she found that most of the rest of the room had quieted down and was probably in a similar contemplation. It was only natural given the situation, Sam decided.

He took off the blouse and bra that he had worn to work and left them in a pile with his slacks. The fur had begun it's march down his legs, taking care of what little modesty concerns he had left, and he rose to find that he could barely see over the three foot wall on the back of his cubicle. He had a sort of waddle to his walk as his hips were still warm, indicating that they were probably still settling in. Rob was almost all bunny now, having lost that impossible chest. Sam wondered what might have happened if the store wasn't out of the gingerbread men cutter. The image of him bouncing around behind his chest suddenly had very different implications than it had when he rushed out of his office twenty minutes ago.

Everyone was watching Sam while he hurried along as fast as his shortening legs would carry him. His goal was the office door, which was the only real barrier between them and freedom that would require hands. John, who would make a nice painted filly once her face finished coming in, fell in behind Sam since it was unlikely, she reasoned, he would be able to hold the door open himself. The pair got the door open, then Sam got a desk calendar and jammed it into the doorway over the bottom hinge to prop it open without blocking passage. Their procession startled the mail carrier as he made the morning rounds, but such a diverse group of animals walking quietly down the hall would have had most anyone questioning their sanity. The carrier finally decided not to report the incident when they called the elevator, filed in one after the other and pressed the button for the parking garage level one. Who would believe the raccoon had smiled and waved at him?

----

<comments />

Talk:Best of Shifti

2008-10-04T20:04:26Z

Leasara:

No, no, NO! Not that one! ANYTHING but that one!

Yea, sure, you can use it.

--Michael Bard, Oct 1/2008

Yes. I give full permission to use my story 'Gaia's Rain' in your Anthology.

Felix Sagittarius

Aka James Wolf
10/1 2008

Thank you both! ^^

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 17:51, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Meh. Feel free, so long as the publication process doesn't screw up the formatting.
--[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 20:47, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Go for it. [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] 01:07, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

I hereby give permission to use my story in exchange for a contributor copy of the anthology.
--[[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]] 14:50, 2 October 2008 (PDT)

Hiya! I'd be happy to see Hoof Beat in print - for my part, since this is a fund raiser, a courtesy copy (or two, :grin:) of the book would be all the payment I would look for. Hope it works out! --[[User:Posti|Bob Stein]] 16:30, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

Huh. No objections to using 501st, but I think I've written better ones more recently. Maybe the Perils of Voice Acting. I'll see if I can draw something related and scan it. --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 22:16, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

You have permission to use "Public Domain" for this collection. However, if I can sell it elsewhere, I reserve the right. I probably won't, mind you. But...
Phil Geusz

Sure, you can use "Sisters Three" as long as Jon approves; he's ''in'' the story so he should have some say. CGM
:I don't mind the story getting included if we make some changes to the names of the characters. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 22:03, 3 October 2008 (EDT)

You may use my story "A Long Forgotten Madness" in your Best of Shifti book. I'm honored that you would so ask. --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 21:40, 3 October 2008 (EDT)

I have no problem with you using "Swift of Foot and Hoof", though someone might want to give it a quick edit first. I'm sure that I ran into the occasional "pronoun trouble" as Sylvester used to say.--[[User:Eirik|Eirik]] 10:51, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

I'd be honored to have my story, ''"What You Eat"'', included in your fund-raising book. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help this along, I can be reached at lady(dot]amalthea[at)gmail(dot]com -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 16:04, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

Talk:Best of Shifti

2008-10-04T19:59:26Z

Leasara:

No, no, NO! Not that one! ANYTHING but that one!

Yea, sure, you can use it.

--Michael Bard, Oct 1/2008

Yes. I give full permission to use my story 'Gaia's Rain' in your Anthology.

Felix Sagittarius

Aka James Wolf
10/1 2008

Thank you both! ^^

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 17:51, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Meh. Feel free, so long as the publication process doesn't screw up the formatting.
--[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 20:47, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Go for it. [[User:Cubist|Cubist]] 01:07, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

I hereby give permission to use my story in exchange for a contributor copy of the anthology.
--[[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]] 14:50, 2 October 2008 (PDT)

Hiya! I'd be happy to see Hoof Beat in print - for my part, since this is a fund raiser, a courtesy copy (or two, :grin:) of the book would be all the payment I would look for. Hope it works out! --[[User:Posti|Bob Stein]] 16:30, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

Huh. No objections to using 501st, but I think I've written better ones more recently. Maybe the Perils of Voice Acting. I'll see if I can draw something related and scan it. --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 22:16, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

You have permission to use "Public Domain" for this collection. However, if I can sell it elsewhere, I reserve the right. I probably won't, mind you. But...
Phil Geusz

Sure, you can use "Sisters Three" as long as Jon approves; he's ''in'' the story so he should have some say. CGM
:I don't mind the story getting included if we make some changes to the names of the characters. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 22:03, 3 October 2008 (EDT)

You may use my story "A Long Forgotten Madness" in your Best of Shifti book. I'm honored that you would so ask. --[[User:MatthiasRat|MatthiasRat]] 21:40, 3 October 2008 (EDT)

I have no problem with you using "Swift of Foot and Hoof", though someone might want to give it a quick edit first. I'm sure that I ran into the occasional "pronoun trouble" as Sylvester used to say.--[[User:Eirik|Eirik]] 10:51, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

I'd be honored to have my story, [i]What You Eat[/i], included in your fund-raising book. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help this along, I can be reached at lady(dot]amalthea[at)gmail(dot]com

User:Leasara/Whims of Fortune

2008-08-15T19:06:32Z

Leasara:

User:Leasara/Whims of Fortune

2008-08-08T21:06:50Z

Leasara:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Whims of Fate}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Aquatic]] [[Category:Ambiguous]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note|This was done for another contest on The Lab, and once again I wrote it right up to the last possible moment.
Completed August 1, 2008}}

{{title
|name=Whims of Fate
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Frank O'Sullivan had always loved the ocean. After some thirty years, he could still remember the first time he had seen its blue expanse when his parents had taken him to the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Of course, time had tempered those memories with the knowledge that they were more interested in the casinos that lined the side opposite the ocean, but to him it was a treasured memory from his early childhood. The effects of that single family trip had taken him to the beaches of dozens of tropical islands and the coastlines of various countries. As nice as they all were, however, they couldn't compare to that first evening leaning on the rail, looking out to sea as the sun dropped below the horizon behind him and the night's chill set into the air.

His mother had squirreled away whatever she could of her husband's winnings, and by the time he was old enough she sent her boy to an Ivy League school. That memory kept him warm all the way through the long New Hampshire winters at Dartmouth College and the Tuck School of Business. The singular memory had served him through the tedious times saving up the funds to launch his own business in real estate development, though he was slowly adding scenes from the many more luxurious locations he visited to his treasure. By the time O'Sullivan Holdings was starting to find itself in direct competition with The Trump Organization and the Rockefeller Group, Frank had seen most of the loudest and quietest coasts of the world. It really shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did when he finally returned to the boardwalk along that New Jersey shore to find the stark reality that lay at the foundation of his fondest memory.

It was almost as if someone was playing a prank. The lights were too garish, the sounds of the slot machines battered their way out of open casino doors to intrude on the evening air. He was wandering the walk considering how different everything seemed from the way he remembered it, and wondering how well their proposed hotel would actually fit in with its surroundings. Suddenly he recognised the stretch of beach beyond the rail where he had come to rest, and turning around confirmed that he was almost in the exact spot where he had first laid eyes on that impossibly blue horizon. Here the clattering and clamouring of the casinos was dampened. Their cacophony was still audible, but seemingly held back by a thick concrete wall or the like. He could hear the sound of the surf again.

Turning back to his first crush, he watched her waves play over the sand like the lace hem of a lover's skirts in the breeze. Their rhythm was hypnotic, almost lyrical to his ears. It seemed to be calling him to walk along the wet sand at the tide's edge. The tide had been going out for some time now, leaving a broad band of sand with a surface as even as glass. He was nearly at the bottom of the steps leading to the beach before the thought occurred to him to doff his shoes and socks. The sea breeze had already claimed its victory over the afternoon's heat, so the cool of the wet sand felt even colder against his bare feet. It was refreshing and soothing, rousing him from the unpleasantness of the contrast borne between the dream that had replaced his memory of the boardwalk and the reality he had found himself in. On the beach, the casinos had all but disappeared.

He lost track of how long he walked in that soothing sand, carrying his Italian shoes, going from one pier to the next. Before too long, however, he began to hear singing. It was distinct from the lulling and retreating waves, but it sounded like it almost used them as a harmony to its wafting melody. Soon the song held so much of his attention, he could have been walking along a bullet train and not have been distracted from the delicate music. The source of the ballad must have been drawing closer, but Frank couldn't tell weather it was coming from the beach or the boardwalk, or maybe the sea itself. He began peering into the darkness under the boardwalk, into the far horizon, anywhere and everywhere looking for the fountainhead of the fantastic notes, but couldn't find their origin.

His search grew more fevered, almost picnicked, the longer he was unable to find a focus for the music. Suddenly he stumbled over a concrete footing for one of the boardwalk's supports. Turning to curse the impediment he found that, in fact, none of the supports appeared to have concrete footings. Instead his stumble had uncovered a very improbable shell. It was almost double the size of the largest conch shells he had seen used through the South Pacific. He couldn't imagine what such a thing was doing buried on a New Jersey beach, but stranger still was the sound emanating from the shell.

It was a wholly unnatural sound for a piece of nature to be making. Something like a soft french horn made from porcelain. The tone was rising and falling in a syncopated rhythm that was just out of sync with the the rolling of the waves. Picking it up changed the tone very slightly sharp, but it was still just as beautiful. He had no idea how a shell this large might have become buried under the sand this far north off the Atlantic, but that mattered very little as he toted it back to the hotel.

He couldn't find any way way to stifle the sound of the shell's music, as the whole thing seemed to be reverberating with its tune. Feeling a little embarrassed, he walked into the lobby carrying the thing stuffed with his socks and shoes and wrapped in his coat, but the clerk at the desk didn't pay him much more attention than courtesy required. The rest of the lobby was mostly empty, save for the screeching of the slot machines and their players just out of sight around the corner. The couple that rode up in the elevator with him didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary either.

That night, with the seashell singing softly on the nightstand, he dreamed of the ocean. The strange song was there as well, or maybe it was the cause of the dream. He could not see himself, but he was bobbing in the water as a storm approached and there was no land in sight. Strangely calm, he could feel the waves that passed around him gaining height and coming more frequently. The storm moved terribly fast, and the deafening thunder and rain from his time above the waves was counterpointed by the relative silence from below them. Still the song kept him company, changing it's tune and timbre with his time in the air or under water until eventually he left the maelstrom in favor of the cool calm of the depths.

O'Sullivan Holdings did not win the contract for the resort, but it did wind up going to another smaller company. His friends and investors noticed he was strangely unmoved by the loss, but most took it as a positive sign that he had his sights set on a bigger, more profitable prize down the line. No one knew of the effect his souvenir had on him. In fact, he found, none of them could hear the music at all. He felt a sort of pity for his friends once he realized this, then set about to figure out why it was.

The shell was subjected to every test he could imagine, and when he heard of tests he hadn't imagined, it underwent those as well. None of them ever concluded the shell was anything more than it appeared. He ran as many of the same tests as he could on himself and his housekeeper, but no demonstrable difference was found in either of them that might explain a difference in audible perception. When he finally started to get into the more destructive tests, she finally quit. It came as a minor shock to him to have her leave after a happy twelve years, but she had become more obstinate as of late. He never noticed the concern she expressed for him.

After the minor setback, the tests continued, this time with various vagrants to provide the baseline for comparison. Still nothing would turn up to show why he might be able to hear something other people couldn't. The more demanding the test, the more he wound up paying the technician to run it, though there were always more doctors that were all too happy to pour over the results. The sale of O'Sullivan Holdings left him with more money than he thought he would spend in a lifetime as well as all the free time he would ever need. There wasn't that much left to test when his accountant for the past twenty years left him as well.

He was still well off by most standards, he still had enough to live fairly comfortably if he moved out of the city and made a couple investments that would need to turn out more lucky than wise. However, if he continued the way he had over the two years since he found that haunting music, he might make it another three months before he joined the vagabonds he had been employing. It was a startling way to wake up to the remains of a life that had such promise. The social columns as well as the tabloids rang with the rumors of how far he had fallen, and he had to admit they didn't quite hit the mark as to how bad it really was.

After some hard thought, all he could see was that the shell had consumed his life the way his memory of the sea had bolstered it. Packing the thing in the mahogany box that had been built to protect it, he took a drive back down to Atlantic City, and the ephemeral melody became served as a homing device, becoming more urgent as they neared the place they had first met. It had come from the sea, and it was his intention to return the shell to its original owner. It was after midnight when he made it to the beach, and the tide was coming back in.

Freeing the shell from its case, he carried it down the few steps to the sand, cradling it as he had so often since their return to New York. Its tune returned to the same joyous melody he had heard that first night, and for the first time he wondered at the way the song kept changing. Over the short time they had been together it had always sung to him of the sea and its glory. He could recall now how frequently its tune had brought back memories of the various beaches he had visited, but not once from that day to this had he actually gone back to the shore.

The feel of the air carried on the back of every wave that crested and crashed on the sand seemed to rejuvenate him. Now he even blamed the shell for having taken this away from him. He was suddenly disgusted by the thing held so gently in his arm, and after only a moment's thought he heaved the shell toward the ocean. Everything he had loved about the shell coursed through his mind as it sailed through the air, and everything he'd offered to it followed as it hit the sand barely fifteen feet away and a good ways short of the waxing tide. For a while he stood there considering what he had just done, balancing it against what he had given to feed his obsession.

He still had enough money, it wouldn't be too difficult to start over. This time he already had a pretty strong network to help him back to the heights he had achieved before. Maybe now that he was aware of the shell's effect on him, he could temper that too. If he only listened to it when he needed to relax, perhaps things wouldn't go so badly this time. As he was beginning to see how things could work out, he found himself a little further down the beach with the shell back in the crook of his arm, and he finally knew he wouldn't be able to take the shell back with him if he was going to have any chance of regaining what he had given up for it. Still, he was torn.

The shell was just a thing, just a souvenir of a trip he'd rather not remember anyway. True, it was the most unique thing he had ever possessed, but no one else could share in its value. If he took it back, he would likely lose everything else, but no one would want his shell. For the first time he thought he knew why he would have to get rid of it, but he couldn't bring himself to take even one step towards the water's edge. The sky over the ocean began to turn lighter before he moved again. Behind him the boardwalk echoed with the foot falls of a morning jogger still a ways away, but drawing nearer. Something in him told him that he would have to make up his mind before whoever that was saw him.

The song from the shell seemed to grow nervous as they stood there together while the jogger drew closer in a steady rhythm. He managed to take three strides between the crash of every wave, and the shell's song became the saddest waltz Frank thought he would ever hear. Finally the moment of his decision was upon him, and he closed his eyes before taking three quick steps of his own ending with the hurling of the shell. It managed an even shorter distance this time, as Frank's blind aim caused it to shatter against a support moments after leaving his hand.

The noise of the shell breaking startled him almost as much as the sudden absence of its music. His hand still felt heavy from the weight of the shell he had held for so long. Absently he started rubbing it as he watched the tide claim the remnants of the shell continue to break down until all that was left of it was a pinkish hue in the sand. In the same moment Frank felt enormous freedom as well as unbearable loss. It knocked him off his feet and he sat hard in the strangely shaded sand clutching the hand that had held the shell. He felt numb all over as his emotions jockeyed for prominence in his mind, but his right hand was particularly empty of sensation.

While he sat trying to take in what had happened, he started humming one of the tunes the shell had sung to him. Before long, he could almost hear the shell's answer to his song. He looked around again for the source of the sound, but this time was more surprised than the last when he found it. His right hand had a glassy quality to the skin, and between the fingers was a fine film with a familiar fluted edge. It was as if his hand was becoming the shell that had so often been its occupant over the last two years.

Frank's every sound was echoed in his changing hand, and he began to doubt the stability of his mind. It had been a difficult choice to let the shell go, and the result of his decision had had the worst outcome he could have imagined, but he didn't think the strain of it all was enough to cause this obvious hallucination. His thumb was sticking straight ought from his altered hand, as if it was determined to be the spire the shell wound around. The jogger was almost there now, and to hide his hand from being seen, he stuck the hand under his knees and rested his chin on them. He almost immediately regretted the decision since there couldn't really be anything wrong with his hand in the first place, and so far as the jogger would be concerned, he was just out to watch the sunrise.

The jogger in question seemed to be taking much longer to pass the scene than Frank would have liked. Soon he found another reason to regret putting his hand under his knees. He tried to shift his position and found that his knees were stuck together, and furthermore his chin seemed perfectly happy where it was as well. His back, on the other hand, was starting to complain quite loudly about being hunched over for so long. To take his mind off of it and calm some of his panic during this strange episode, he resumed humming the song from the shell. The power of the tune was such that he didn't notice when the heal of his right hand began to encircle his back, though at its touch the aches faded. Once it started moving, the whole process went rather quickly as his hand moved to overtake the rest of his form, leaving a very large shell indeed. He wasn't certain at what point he knew what was happening or when he had accepted it, but now he would never need more than the shell that let him sing his love for the sea.

----

<comments />

User:Leasara/Whims of Fortune

2008-08-02T00:47:55Z

Leasara: New page: {{DEFAULTSORT:Whims of Fate}} Category:Story Category:Aquatic Category:Ambiguous Category:Leasara {{Comment tag}} {{author's note|This was done for another contest on The ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Whims of Fate}} [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Aquatic]] [[Category:Ambiguous]] [[Category:Leasara]] {{Comment tag}}

{{author's note|This was done for another contest on The Lab, and once again I wrote it right up to the last possible moment.
Completed August 1, 2008}}

{{title
|name=Whims of Fate
|author=Shannon Robertson
|user=Leasara}}

Frank O'Sullivan had always loved the ocean. After some thirty years, he could still remember the first time he had seen its blue expanse when his parents had taken him to the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Of course, time had tempered those memories with the knowledge that they were more interested in the casinos that lined the side opposite the ocean, but to him it was a treasured memory from his early childhood. The effects of that single family trip had taken him to the beaches of dozens of tropical islands and the coastlines of various countries. As nice as they all were, however, they couldn't compare to that first evening leaning on the rail, looking out to sea as the sun dropped below the horizon behind him and the night's chill set into the air.

His mother had squirreled away whatever she could of her husband's winnings, and by the time he was old enough she sent her boy to an Ivy League school. That memory kept him warm all the way through the long New Hampshire winters at Dartmouth College and the Tuck School of Business. The singular memory had served him through the tedious times saving up the funds to launch his own business in real estate development, though he was slowly adding scenes from the many more luxurious locations he visited to his treasure. By the time O'Sullivan Holdings was starting to find itself in direct competition with The Trump Organization and the Rockefeller Group, Frank had seen most of the loudest and quietest coasts of the world. It really shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did when he finally returned to the boardwalk along that New Jersey shore to find the stark reality that lay at the foundation of his fondest memory.

It was almost as if someone was playing a prank. The lights were too garish, the sounds of the slot machines battered their way out of open casino doors to intrude on the evening air. He was wandering the walk considering how different everything seemed from the way he remembered it, and wondering how well their proposed hotel would actually fit in with its surroundings. Suddenly he recognised the stretch of beach beyond the rail where he had come to rest, and turning around confirmed that he was almost in the exact spot where he had first laid eyes on that impossibly blue horizon. Here the clattering and clamouring of the casinos was dampened. Their cacophony was still audible, but seemingly held back by a thick concrete wall or the like. He could hear the sound of the surf again.

Turning back to his first crush, he watched her waves play over the sand like the lace hem of a lover's skirts in the breeze. Their rhythm was hypnotic, almost lyrical to his ears. It seemed to be calling him to walk along the wet sand at the tide's edge. The tide had been going out for some time now, leaving a broad band of sand with a surface as even as glass. He was nearly at the bottom of the steps leading to the beach before the thought occurred to him to doff his shoes and socks. The sea breeze had already claimed its victory over the afternoon's heat, so the cool of the wet sand felt even colder against his bare feet. It was refreshing and soothing, waking him from the unpleasantness of waking his dream of a memory against the reality he had found himself in. On the beach, the casinos had all but disappeared.

He lost track of how long he walked in that soothing sand, carrying his Italian shoes, going from one pier to the next. Before too long, however, he began to hear singing. It was distinct from the lulling and retreating waves, but it sounded like it almost used them as a harmony to its wafting melody. Soon the song held so much of his attention, he could have been walking along a bullet train and not have been distracted from the delicate music. The source of the ballad must have been drawing closer, but Frank couldn't tell weather it was coming from the beach or the boardwalk, or maybe the sea itself. He began peering into the darkness under the boardwalk, into the far horizon, anywhere and everywhere looking for the fountainhead of the fantastic notes, but couldn't find their origin.

His search grew more fevered, almost picnicked, the longer he was unable to find a focus for the music. Suddenly he stumbled over a concrete footing for one of the boardwalk's supports. Turning to curse the impediment he found that, in fact, none of the supports appeared to have concrete footings. Instead his stumble had uncovered a very improbable shell. It was almost double the size of the largest conch shells he had seen used through the South Pacific. He couldn't imagine what such a thing was doing buried on a New Jersey beach, but stranger still was the sound emanating from the shell.

It was a wholly unnatural sound for a piece of nature to be making. Something like a soft french horn made from porcelain. The tone was rising and falling in a syncopated rhythm that was just out of sync with the the rolling of the waves. Picking it up changed the tone very slightly sharp, but it was still just as beautiful. He had no idea how a shell this large might have become buried under the sand this far north off the Atlantic, but that mattered very little as he toted it back to the hotel.

He couldn't find any way way to stifle the sound of the shell's music, as the whole thing seemed to be reverberating with its tune. Feeling a little embarrassed, he walked into the lobby carrying the thing stuffed with his socks and shoes and wrapped in his coat, but the clerk at the desk didn't pay him much more attention than courtesy required. The rest of the lobby was mostly empty, save for the screeching of the slot machines and their players just out of sight around the corner. The couple that rode up in the elevator with him didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary either.

That night, with the seashell singing softly on the nightstand, he dreamed of the ocean. The strange song was there as well, or maybe it was the cause of the dream. He could not see himself, but he was bobbing in the water as a storm approached and there was no land in sight. Strangely calm, he could feel the waves that passed around him gaining height and coming more frequently. The storm moved terribly fast, and the deafening thunder and rain from his time above the waves was counterpointed by the relative silence from below them. Still the song kept him company, changing it's tune and timbre with his time in the air or under water until eventually he left the maelstrom in favor of the cool calm of the depths.

O'Sullivan Holdings did not win the contract for the resort, but it did wind up going to another smaller company. His friends and investors noticed he was strangely unmoved by the loss, but most took it as a positive sign that he had his sights set on a bigger, more profitable prize down the line. No one knew of the effect his souvenir had on him. In fact, he found, none of them could hear the music at all. He felt a sort of pity for his friends once he realized this, then set about to figure out why it was.

The shell was subjected to every test he could imagine, and when he heard of tests he hadn't imagined, it underwent those as well. None of them ever concluded the shell was anything more than it appeared. He ran as many of the same tests as he could on himself and his housekeeper, but no demonstrable difference was found in either of them that might explain a difference in audible perception. When he finally started to get into the more destructive tests, she finally quit. It came as a minor shock to him to have her leave after a happy twelve years, but she had become more obstinate as of late. He never noticed the concern she expressed for him.

After the minor setback, the tests continued, this time with various vagrants to provide the baseline for comparison. Still nothing would turn up to show why he might be able to hear something other people couldn't. The more demanding the test, the more he wound up paying the technician to run it, though there were always more doctors that were all too happy to pour over the results. The sale of O'Sullivan Holdings left him with more money than he thought he would spend in a lifetime as well as all the free time he would ever need. There wasn't that much left to test when his accountant for the past twenty years left him as well.

He was still well off by most standards, he still had enough to live fairly comfortably if he moved out of the city and made a couple investments that would need to turn out more lucky than wise. However, if he continued the way he had over the two years since he found that haunting music, he might make it another three months before he joined the vagabonds he had been employing. It was a startling way to wake up to the remains of a life that had such promise. The social columns as well as the tabloids rang with the rumors of how far he had fallen, and he had to admit they didn't quite hit the mark as to how bad it really was.

After some hard thought, all he could see was that the shell had consumed his life the way his memory of the sea had bolstered it. Packing the thing in the mahogany box that had been built to protect it, he took a drive back down to Atlantic City, and the ephemeral melody became served as a homing device, becoming more urgent as they neared the place they had first met. It had come from the sea, and it was his intention to return the shell to its original owner. It was after midnight when he made it to the beach, and the tide was coming back in.

Freeing the shell from its case, he carried it down the few steps to the sand, cradling it as he had so often since their return to New York. Its tune returned to the same joyous melody he had heard that first night, and for the first time he wondered at the way the song kept changing. Over the short time they had been together it had always sung to him of the sea and its glory. He could recall now how frequently its tune had brought back memories of the various beaches he had visited, but not once from that day to this had he actually gone back to the shore.

The feel of the air carried on the back of every wave that crested and crashed on the sand seemed to rejuvenate him. Now he even blamed the shell for having taken this away from him. He was suddenly disgusted by the thing held so gently in his arm, and after only a moment's thought he heaved the shell toward the ocean. Everything he had loved about the shell coursed through his mind as it sailed through the air, and everything he'd offered to it followed as it hit the sand barely fifteen feet away and a good ways short of the waxing tide. For a while he stood there considering what he had just done, balancing it against what he had given to feed his obsession.

He still had enough money, it wouldn't be too difficult to start over. This time he already had a pretty strong network to help him back to the heights he had achieved before. Maybe now that he was aware of the shell's effect on him, he could temper that too. If he only listened to it when he needed to relax, perhaps things wouldn't go so badly this time. As he was beginning to see how things could work out, he found himself a little further down the beach with the shell back in the crook of his arm, and he finally knew he wouldn't be able to take the shell back with him if he was going to have any chance of regaining what he had given up for it. Still, he was torn.

The shell was just a thing, just a souvenir of a trip he'd rather not remember anyway. True, it was the most unique thing he had ever possessed, but no one else could share in its value. If he took it back, he would likely lose everything else, but no one would want his shell. For the first time he thought he knew why he would have to get rid of it, but he couldn't bring himself to take even one step towards the water's edge. The sky over the ocean began to turn lighter before he moved again. Behind him the boardwalk echoed with the foot falls of a morning jogger still a ways away, but drawing nearer. Something in him told him that he would have to make up his mind before whoever that was saw him.

The song from the shell seemed to grow nervous as they stood there together while the jogger drew closer in a steady rhythm. He managed to take three strides between the crash of every wave, and the shell's song became the saddest waltz Frank thought he would ever hear. Finally the moment of his decision was upon him, and he closed his eyes before taking three quick steps of his own ending with the hurling of the shell. It managed an even shorter distance this time, as Frank's blind aim caused it to shatter against a support moments after leaving his hand.

The noise of the shell breaking startled him almost as much as the sudden absence of its music. His hand still felt heavy from the weight of the shell he had held for so long. Absently he started rubbing it as he watched the tide claim the remnants of the shell continue to break down until all that was left of it was a pinkish hue in the sand. In the same moment Frank felt enormous freedom as well as unbearable loss. It knocked him off his feet and he sat hard in the strangely shaded sand clutching the hand that had held the shell. He felt numb all over as his emotions jockeyed for prominence in his mind, but his right hand was particularly empty of sensation.

While he sat trying to take in what had happened, he started humming one of the tunes the shell had sung to him. Before long, he could almost hear the shell's answer to his song. He looked around again for the source of the sound, but this time was more surprised than the last when he found it. His right hand had a glassy quality to the skin, and between the fingers was a fine film with a familiar fluted edge. It was as if his hand was becoming the shell that had so often been its occupant over the last two years.

Frank's every sound was echoed in his changing hand, and he began to doubt the stability of his mind. It had been a difficult choice to let the shell go, and the result of his decision had had the worst outcome he could have imagined, but he didn't think the strain of it all was enough to cause this obvious hallucination. His thumb was sticking straight ought from his altered hand, as if it was determined to be the spire the shell wound around. The jogger was almost there now, and to hide his hand from being seen, he stuck the hand under his knees and rested his chin on them. He almost immediately regretted the decision since there couldn't really be anything wrong with his hand in the first place, and so far as the jogger would be concerned, he was just out to watch the sunrise.

The jogger in question seemed to be taking much longer to pass the scene than Frank would have liked. Soon he found another reason to regret putting his hand under his knees. He tried to shift his position and found that his knees were stuck together, and furthermore his chin seemed perfectly happy where it was as well. His back, on the other hand, was starting to complain quite loudly about being hunched over for so long. To take his mind off of it and calm some of his panic during this strange episode, he resumed humming the song from the shell. The power of the tune was such that he didn't notice when the heal of his right hand began to encircle his back, though at its touch the aches faded. Once it started moving, the whole process went rather quickly as his hand moved to overtake the rest of his form, leaving a very large shell indeed. He wasn't certain at what point he knew what was happening or when he had accepted it, but now he would never need more than the shell that let him sing his love for the sea.

----

<comments />

User:Leasara

2008-08-02T00:45:45Z

Leasara:

=Leasara: Shannon Robertson=
==About Me==
I wrote quite a lot for six or seven years starting at age sixteen. By the time I was twenty, I had some 32-35 screenplays and a few sundry short stories and essays. Then some ''Big Dark Things ™'' happened and I gave up on writing, destroying all of that work. Then in the Spring of 2006, the bug got me again and I wrote ''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]'' for [http://foxx.furvect.com/ Foxx's site] where it's listed as ''Exam'' since that's the name of [http://foxx.furvect.com/phase10/Exam.html the picture] it's based on and attributed to ''Lady Amalthea'', since that's my email address. A bit more time passed and in December of 2006 I started writing for the first short story archive I found, [http://doc.furvect.com/ Doc's Lab]. I didn't realize that it was a fetish site at first, but I decided to see if I could write erotica, so most of the stuff I wrote in 2007 has some sort of sexual overtones if it's not just out and out blatant sex. Starting with ''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]'' I have been moving away from the erotic aspect, and am a happier author for it. I think I might still write erotica if it's requested or commissioned, but it's no longer on the menu for my usual stuff.

My style is probably a little rough, but I don't have any real education in regards to writing. I barely graduated high school. Even so, I'm currently working on the first book of what I plan to be a Sci-fi/Fantasy trilogy, the scripts for two web comics I'd like to start, and I usually have no less than four short stories going. My writing style is mostly stream-of-consciousness, I think it lends a nice flow to my writing that seems a bit organic to me, but it also seems to get me stuck for ages if I get interrupted or lose the thread of where the story was going. The novel is the first thing I've ever really planned out, and it's going very slowly. I hope to make a crossover and be a mainstream unicorn.

'''''I welcome all comments and criticisms, and I'm usually available on AIM, MSN, or YIM, though I prefer emails''''' (lady.amalthea@gmail.com) '''''or introductions first.'''''

==Stories==
<div class="floatright">
{| class="toc" width="300px"
|-
!Legend
|-
|
*[[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] - Explicit Sexual Content
*[[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] - Illustrated
*[[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] - Work In Progress
|}
</div>
These are arranged in roughly the order I've written them, with the oldest stories at the bottom. For an alphabetical listing you can go to my Category by following the link at the bottom of the page.

===2008===
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whims of Fortune|Whims of Fortune]]''' August 1, 2008
:Frank loves the sea and its beaches, but when he is given a gift from them, things start to change.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Drawing Conclusions|Drawing Conclusions]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] April 4, 2008
:John is an artist that has a pretty lose style, tonight he's getting more involved in his illustration than ever before.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Sacagawea's Journal|Sacagawea's Journal]]''' March 15, 2008
:A man embarks on a quest to verify the authenticity of an heirloom, what he finds will change everything.
===2007===
*'''[[User:Leasara/What You Eat|What You Eat]]''' December 30, 2007
:Samantha loves to bake, despite the many and varied warnings she has received from the fire department. She really should have known the cookies didn't come out as perfect as they seemed.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Hope Awakening|Hope Awakening]]''' December 28, 2007
:The nearness of a loved one sparks a momentary inspiration that fades much too soon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Awakening|Awakening]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] December 24, 2007
:Eventually everyone needs a little support from their friends, but it's the little surprises from those that know you best that can really make a person happy.
*'''[[User:Leasara/They're Coming|They're Coming]]''' December 20, 2007
:A man finally breaks down after his dog runs away, but subsequent investigations may turn up a story much more sinister.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Refraction|Refraction]]''' December 11, 2007
:An Xmas Xchange 2007 story that stresses the importance of knowing oneself.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Three-Fourths|Three-Fourths]]''' November 18, 2007
:Rose, Shelly and Temeka have nothing in common, but a school trip allows them to discover just how close they can be.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Change of Flightplan|Change of Flightplan]]''' Autumn 2007
:A man waiting for a taxi gets the impetus to make a last minute change in his travel plans.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal|Whiner's Dismissal]]''' Autumn 2007
:Sometimes those that complain have a point that should be listened to.
*'''Pursuit''' [[Image:Work_in_progress.png|25px]] July 13, 2007 (Story taken offline while I work on it)
:Aithne and Caradoc had grown up together in the bourg of Eilginn. When Caradoc is suddenly swept away, Aithne can't help but go after him.
*'''[[User:Leasara/An Early Spring Night's Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]''' [[Image:Image_icon.png|25px]] June 2007
:1870 had the entire world being powered by steam or electricity, but Charles wanted to be a botanist. He could get lost in books that simply related the allure of nature in even the most abstract fashion. Perhaps it was fate that lead him off his path.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Dark Horizons|Dark Horizons]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] Spring 2007
:Allusions of war are lost on a pair of lovers as they are used to display the effects of an ultimate weapon.
*'''[[User:Leasara/As Subtle as Sphinx|As Subtle as Sphinx]]''' May 2007
:Rose has had a hard time since she was left to the cold Chicago streets, but with a little help from a stranger she might be able to make something of herself after all.
===2006===
*'''[[User:Leasara/Corruption|Corruption]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] December 2006
:A visitor from the near future paints a bleak picture of what is to come as she assaults her former self. Can the past version of her possibly avert the suffering that should never happen?
*'''[[User:Leasara/180 Meters|180 Meters]]''' December 2006
:After years of papers and theories coupled with a contract from the Navy, Jim has finally managed to find a way to let Lysette swim again. Of course, most scientific advances are not without their setbacks.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Chain Reaction|Chain Reaction]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] December 2006
:Jake was on his way to hang out with his friend Jason, but the girl in the lobby of Jason's building seems to be in some sort of trouble.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Bodies Entwine|Bodies Entwine]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] December 2006
:Simone has sacrificed her entire adult life to save up $10,000, but with the passing of an unknown uncle her situation improves drastically. The question is, how might the inheritance change her?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Look Before You Leopard|Look Before You Leopard]]''' [[Image:Triple_X.png|25px]] December 2006
:It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance run. Get in, gather evidence, get out. However, neither the ex-agent nor the agency that hired him had any idea what exactly they were investigating.
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Dream Dreams the Dreamer|The Dream Dreams the Dreamer]]''' December 2006
:Can a dream change the world?
*'''[[User:Leasara/Free Solo Dragon|Free Solo Dragon]]''' December 2006
:Alone with a sheer rock face and her music, Erin is about to find the ultimate thrill.
*'''[[User:Leasara/Slow Change|Slow Change]]''' December 2006
:An unnamed apartment dweller keeps a journal detailing several strange changes over the course of two weeks in April 2005
*'''[[User:Leasara/The Transformed|The Transformed]]''' Spring 2006
:Pete woke up late for his exam. Still he managed to slip into his seat before the test began, thinking that if he could just get through the hour he would have the entire summer break to rest, relax, and recuperate. Little did he know how badly he would need some R&R by the time the hour was out.

[[Category:Author]]
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