Window of Opportunity

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By JonBuck

It never failed that the moment I cracked open my eyes and looked at the view, that the first glimpse of my own cleavage would send my body rubber-banding back to four legs. But this was one of the most basic skills the magically talented had to master. Telekinesis was fine for some things, but in order to do any detail work one needed real hands. Inside of the so-called Tardis Tree there were several workspaces for mages-in-training to practice and the more experienced to concoct brand new spells. As powerful as Brian-the-raccoon swore I was, I couldn't even shed my fur yet.

My spur-of-the-moment decision had come back to haunt me. Being a doe I could handle. I really didn't know anything about being another species, and the spirit-token had provided all the instincts I needed. Being a female deer just added another layer of abstraction. But since I had helped my own transgendered friend get through her own spontaneous change into a human woman, I knew exactly what was ahead of me once we achieved victory and threw the aliens off our planet.

I flinched.

"Come on, Jacie. You can do it," Lucy said. She had golden fur, and at the level of humanity she normally chose in the Tree, hair as well. "Let me show you again. Nothing to it at all. Just don't look with your mundane eyes. Try and just sense what I'm doing. Watch with your inner eyes. Or nose, if you want."

Lucy was a master at this, she flowed from almost-human to animal again with great ease and very little mana-flash. In her pretty anthro form, she jumped neatly off her bench, pawpads smacking on the wood-grained floor. As I activated my second sight (one of a number of terms for it, since nothing had stuck yet) she began to glow.

There were two of her, woman and vixen, seemingly overlapping one another. Her flesh moved smoothly between the two, evolution a million times faster than would 'naturally' happen if humans had come from vulpines. She went from an aesthetically pleasing mix of fox and human, all the way down to a small golden vixen, then right back again. "See how easy it is?"

I'm watching, but I can't quite... I snorted. In this confined space, her vulpine reek was quite sharp. I just can't...

"Face that fact that you have tits and ass?" my other transgendered classmate bluntly added for me. Donna was another doe, and along with Lucy, had several more months experience at this than I did. And they had also chosen their fates, though in their cases the only spirit-tokens available had been female. It was either get ovaries along with paws or hooves, or get killed.

I swallowed, ears drooping. Well, yes. Jesus. Deep sigh. I'll try again. I swear, I'll look at myself in the boobs if it's the last thing I do!

"That's the spirit," Donna said. "Then once you're on two legs, we'll go shopping!" She giggled girlishly. But from the glint in her eyes, she was joking.

Lucy just rolled her blue, slit-pupil eyes. "Oh, please, Donna. I mean, that's totally not cool." she said in her best Valley Girl impression.

Ladies, please, our observer-teacher said. The lanky cougaress raised her tawny head and glared at us. Stereotypes aren't funny. Especially when you do them.

"Oh, don't be such a stick in the mud. Humor helps break the tension, Sandy," Donna pointed out, tapping her hoof on the floor. "Try again, Jackie."

Jason, I corrected. After two weeks, the other Resistance members were always trying to feminize my name. That wasn't a line I was prepared to cross yet, though my comrades had already. I'm just... one step at a time, okay?

But now I had to envision myself as a human woman. There was a sliding scale between what I liked to call "poles", on a scale of zero to eleven. But since we were "bonded" or whatever with the animal in the spirit-token, a zero was impossible. There would always be something physically nonhuman about us: ears, hands, feet, a little fur, and especially a tail. On the other end of the slider was fully animal--without a fleck of human intelligence. Unfortunately going "all the way to eleven" wasn't that uncommon. Especially if the rescued person didn't have any innate magic talent.

More casualties of war.

I shut my eyes tightly and envisioned that scale. For a moment I could almost feel two of me--a curvaceous redhead on one end, and a large whitetail doe at the other. I had to put my vision somewhere on that scale, and... The change felt like being submerged in club soda. My skin tingled, muscles squirming as bones creaked and shifted. Then I was on my hands and knees, female anatomy dangling. The sensation was almost enough for yet another spring back, but I clamped down on the urge to flee back to four hooves. I still felt a comforting tail-flick.

Sitting down on my well-padded behind, with my legs carefully together, I opened my eyes and had a look in the mirror on the opposite side of the room.

"Sandy, are we okay here? There's no risk of detection?" Donna asked nervously.

We're fine, hon, the cat reassured, not opening her eyes. As long as she stays in the Tree. Wow. She smells pretty human.

I cupped my sizable breasts in my small hands, then jiggled them a little. Then groped for the words. I hadn't actually spoken for two weeks. Saying words rather than thinking them took a little doing. After a while, Donna came and put her hand on my shoulder. My own hands were much like hers: Four fingers, black nails, though not quite so thick and hoof-like. I stared up at her, then back at my own reflection. "This is absolutely surreal!" I said, the sound of my own voice adding even more to the feeling.

"More surreal than being a doe?" Donna said incredulously, one ear folded back. The older doe shrugged. "I suppose it is. Fortunately you won't be called on to use it, at least outside. Anything under a four on the scale risks detection in less than ten minutes," she said. "If you were out in the open like that, they'd snatch you up even faster."

"Ugh," I said. My ears flicked. They were still cervine. But I still felt deaf and without a sense of smell. Though the depth perception was nice. My feet were rather strange, like a plantigrade cloven hoof. But my fair skin was quite bare otherwise. The air inside the Tree was perpetually hot and humid. It reeked of a few dozen dirty mammals, though with a human nose it was less like a stab in the nostrils-- nobody spent more time in the Tree than absolutely necessary. Mages tried keeping it clean with magic, but couldn't quite manage air circulation. I stared at my curves and wanted my fur back. "How long do you want me to hold this?"

"As long as you can, but at least ten minutes," Donna said. "Tomorrow, twenty. We're going to push it ten minutes more every day until you hit three hours. That's enough time for most chores around here, and outside you'll hold at about a six, where I am right now. You're going to be on scavenging detail with me come Thursday."

There were no doors in the Tree, and little semblance of privacy. But only fifteen of the "animals" inside actually had any magic talent. The rest spent their time on four legs, though they had been given a crude form of telepathy. The she-bear who ambled up to the camber's entrance paused to look at me, tilting her head left and right. Meeting. Everyone auditorium. Mandatory, she broadcast before ambling on.

"Oh, good!" I said. A patina of russet fur started growing, but Donna's hand tightened on my shoulder. "What?"

"It hasn't been ten minutes. Come on, let me help you up." She extended her hoof-hand. "Don't be shy. You've been walking around in the nude for two weeks, Jacie. Besides, I'm sure you're a little curious about what it feels like to be a human woman, just a little bit?" She flared her nostrils, obviously smelling something from me. I had to admit that I was curious, despite myself. "See how the other half lives?"

"For ten minutes," I grumbled, pulling the fur back in. "No more."

"I doubt anybody's going to notice," Lucy said. Then she barked a chuckle. "Yeah, right. Let's get some clothes on you."

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The three of us stood by ourselves in the back of the Auditorium, which was the largest open space inside the Tardis Tree. There were a few other transgendered folks--two female-to-male and another new girl who only had a few more days on me. But they were rather less well adjusted than we three, weren't mages, and not present in the Auditorium. All told, there were nearly fifty of us former-humans, fifteen of which possessed some level of magic talent. The rest were "just" animals, and if they wanted any anthro time, had to ask one of the mages.

There were only a half dozen birds as well, two of which whose change predated the alien arrival. They roosted on perches near the stage, the barn owl busily cleaning his wing feathers. Get on with it, Barry! he said, emphasizing with a hoot. Some of us are nocturnal!

There were few predators in the Resistance, a handful compared to the plurality of deer and elk, and nothing smaller than a raccoon. The rest were a scattering of North American species, except for a very odd man out. Some kind of oryx with cream-colored fur and long, curving horns. He was really quite a handsome specimen, but he didn't even know his exact species. He also rarely left the Tree and wasn't a mage. Perhaps it was that charismatic uniqueness that made him the de-facto leader of the Resistance. He was rarely out of anthro form. "Settle down, everyone!" Barry bleated, gesticulating. "Settle down!"

I stood with my back against the wall, arms folded under my breasts, wearing a loose, threadbare men's shirt that had seen better days. Wearing clothes also meant doing laundry, but manually, and nobody really had the time to do that. The shirt was stained and saturated with musk from half a dozen deer-people. But it covered me down to below my hips. Lucy and Donna stood, their hips almost touching mine. We were practically joined at the hip as it was.

Nobody else could quite understand what we were going through. And the fact that all three of us were mages made us important.

"Before we begin, a few introductions," Barry said, long ears perked forwards. "We haven't had a good meeting for some time, so I wanted to spotlight a few newcomers."

Shit, I thought, trying to make myself smaller. I felt fur begin to grow in over my skin, but slowly. He's not going to...

"Way in the back with Lucy and Donna is... uh... Jean Tuturo. Say hello to the new doe."

"It's Ja..." I was about to correct him, but Lucy elbowed me in the ribs. I glared at the anthro golden vixen, who shook her head. What are you doing?

Just don't, okay? This isn't about our comfort. It's more about theirs, she replied seriously. You think I picked 'Lucy' for myself? Besides, it's not like everybody doesn't know. He's just trying to grease the wheels so people accept us as females faster. So say hello to everyone, Jean.

So I smiled weakly and waved, then the cream-colored oryx moved on. "Who has the minutes from the last meeting? Can someone put up the agenda? Brian?"

Fine, fine. I'll take care of it, the tired raccoon-mage said. He was the most skilled mage of the lot of us. He created the animal spirit-token medallions that had saved so many lives, though they certainly weren't comfortable lives by any means. The overlarge raccoon ambled down to the stage, then swelled up to anthro form. Then with a wave of his paw-hand, hologram-like projection appeared on the wall behind the oryx.

It was a rousing speech of the "rah rah go team!" variety you'd hear from a Little League coach, and the oryx-man spoke with great gusto, though precious little substance. Yet he held most of his audience at rapt attention, at least for a while. That meeting felt like it lasted about five hours, though with the way time and space were balled up inside the Tree, I couldn't be sure.

Maybe Barry had been in middle management somewhere before, but if it hadn't been for his obvious charisma and rather powerful voice, one of the cats would have pounced on him and torn his throat out. It was just really strange that nobody said anything. It was like magic, almost. I really couldn't understand why nobody spoke up, and just let him ramble.

But there was an iron hard certainty in his voice: We would win this fight, we would push the aliens off our homeworld, and we would be human again. Though exactly how he clearly hadn't a clue. I had to wonder if anyone really noticed that. But I had only been in this very loose-knit group for a couple weeks, let alone getting used to my own new status as an "animal" and a woman. It was simply too much to absorb at once.

Of course I was back on four legs long before it ended. After nearly an hour of having breasts, I welcomed the return of my unswollen udder. Unfortunately the shirt actually tore in pieces when I changed, but it was on its last legs anyway.

We were the first out of the Auditorium as the meeting finally broke up, long after the last item on the nonsense agenda was supposed to be done with. Did anyone else think that was an utter waste of time? I thought to my friends. All he did was talk! About nothing! The agenda was complete crap, though Brian provided a lot of pretty lights. I mean, Jesus! I haven't been in a more unproductive meeting since... well...

Before the Weirdness started? Lucy said, walking by my side. He's our very own PHB. Pointy-Horned Boss, she grumped.

I don't know about you, but I'm starving. Let's go find some forage, Donna said, slipping onto four legs at the Tardis Tree's front entrance and nosing me on the shoulder.

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