A Perfect Fit 2

Fred was afloat in hazy dreamstuff as the world started to recollect around her. She writhed in gentle rapture and let consciousness seep back into her mind. She felt loose fabric beneath her and realized that she must be in her bed. Fred shifted and finally opened her eyes, noticing that the blinds to the bedroom had been pulled to block the morning sun.

"Zoey thinks of everything." She mumbled as she finally sat up, rubbing her eyes and trying to clear the wooziness from her brain. She had drank more than she thought last night and was still feeling the effects. A bit of morning disorientation certainly beat a hangover.

Her hands fell down her chest to check what she was wearing and found the familiar fabric of her wife's dress wrapped around her body. At least that silly bet was over and she could change into something more appropriate. She had to admit that Zoey's dress had definitely fit better than expected, not dragging anywhere near as much as she had feared. Quite the opposite, it had been almost comically tiny, pinching at her waist and shoulders, and barely containing her generous breasts.

Breasts.

Fred's eyes snapped open as the events of the previous day all shuddered into place. She frantically spun across the matress, tangling herself in the bed sheets as she crawled the length of the queen to get a look at the full length-mirror that was on one door of their closet.

Winifred stared into her own reflection, a thoroughly female face looking back at her. It was undoubtedly hers, but also not the same face she had seen in the mirror the day before. She remembered the dress, the pin and what it had done to her body. It seemed as though the entire world had forgotten who she had been before, shaping to suit her new form. It had made her nearly forget in her own right…

"Freddie, is that you?" A familiar voice called from down the hall. "Are you finally awake?"

Fred curled back up in bed, eyes wide. The entire world was one thing, but what about her wife? Did she remember? What would Fred even say? How could she explain her new self? Fred had been so caught up in her sudden discovery she hadn't even considered how to introduce this to Zoey. She had no desire or impulse to change back, but how could she ask someone to accept such a drastic new change to their spouse?

Zoey appeared in the threshold to their bedroom, casting a long shadow across the bed from her place in the more brightly lit hallway. In spite of her mounting panic and the halfhearted explanation Fred was trying to form, she had to pause for a moment and consider how beautiful her wife really was. Tall and dusky, her vividly dark hair was still slightly damp from a morning shower. She had pulled a loose shirt and workout shorts over her slender curves, the kind of lazy wardrobe she usually wore on a day spent lounging about their home. All she had to do was fix Fred with those deep, chocolate-coloured eyes and she suddenly felt a lot calmer.

“Um...well I ah...last night got a little out of control…” Fred mumbled, still trying to modulate her higher, softer voice in the wee hours of early morning consciousness. “I ah…..things...changed.” She dropped the sheet, displaying her new form, still wrapped in unfamiliar clothes.

“Well that’s a relief.” Zoey sighed. “For a second I thought you had ruined my dress.”

Fred was at an even greater loss for words than before.

“I got bacon and eggs, sweetie. All that grease is good for a hangover, so come on down, wouldja?” Zoey turned and left Fred lying in bed, still trying to reassemble her thoughts.

Slowly, dreamlike, Winifred untangled herself and got out of bed. She awkwardly stripped out of the dress that had started all of this and, realizing that she had no idea what women even did with a dress after removing it, left it draped over a nearby chair. She still got shivers looking at her bare body in the mirror. It was her body, and she wondered if it was right to get such a sense of delight looking at it, but she couldn't help the little tingle of pleasure arcing across the surface of her skin as she stared at her long legs, her rounded hips and her generous bust. The dim memory of a soft middle had been washed away by the sight of toned abs and arms that were shaped with subtle but potent musculature. She  gave her chest a little bounce by hopping in place.

As tempting as it was to show up to breakfast naked, Winifred opted to dress herself in some baggy pajama pants and a long-sleeved shirt. As she picked through her side of the closet she shared with her wife, Fred realized that, like her face, her wardrobe was still hers, but much more feminine. She had the same jeans and sweatpants, the same Legend of Zelda shirt and the same casual wear, but everything had been refitted to her new physique. Her sock drawer had been repurposed to house panties and bras, and feminine hose rested on the bottom shelf.  Again, the world had shifted all around her to adapt to what the pin had created.

Finally following the smell of sizzling meat and fresh-cooked eggs brought Winifred into the kitchen, where Zoey was dishing up.

"What's the story, morning glory?" Fred's wife grinned. "You need something for that headache?"

"It's actually not that bad…" Fred admitted. "Just…" she sat and chewed on a piece of bacon. "Do you know what it's like...to have a long, deep dream that feels SO real. And when you finally wake up, you feel like you have to...reassemble your whole personality. Like you have to let the world remind you of who you are…"

Zoey let out a soft rumble of a chuckle. "I get that sometimes, especially ever since I moved to the city." She reached out and lay the back of her hand against Fred's cheek.

"Are you sure you're okay, baby? You do seem...different."

"Yeah...yeah I am." Fred nodded, making up her mind. "This is going to sound crazy but do you...believe in magic? Some things have...changed lately, something-"

"Something you thought you were…" Zoey spoke. Her voice was low and calm, and she had her eyes fixed on Fred again. She had this way of staring right through people, as if she could see the entire path they had taken to lead them to that moment. It made Winifred quiver in her seat.

"There's an echo around you." Zoey continued. "Like ripples when someone throws a rock in a pond. You've left some huge footprint but that's…."

Zoey leaned back for a moment, and Fred was worried that her wife was suddenly scared of her.

"No, you couldn't do something like that...who did you meet yesterday? What did you find?"

Fred had expected to be the one offering explanations to her wife over the breakfast table, but now she was filled with questions.

"Hold on I...before we get into it, you need to know the important part but I…" Fred looked up as Zoey's hand closed around hers. Her wife nodded.

"I wasn't always your wife." Fred explained. "Even after we were married. I was...up until yesterday, I was male." She spilled out. "I don't know why it's so hard to say, it was the truth for so long. But now...this feels so much more real. Like I'm finally waking up from that dream. I want to be your wife, but I don't ever want you to feel like I'm keeping something from you. I'm sorry there's...there's no easy way to say this." She realized that she was staring at her own hands, still wrapped in Zoey's. Winifred looked up into her wife's eyes. They were still warm, happy and everything she had fallen in love with.

"I remember someone." Zoey said at last. "Someone who I loved, but they were a little lost, unsure of themselves. I wanted to help them, but it was something they had to find out for themselves." Her grip tightened as her smile widened. "I am. So. Happy. You finally took the plunge. There's so much I can't wait to show you."

"What, like how to put on a bra?" Fred smirked. "I think I've got the basics down."

"Something like that." Zoey giggled. She began to clear away the breakfast table while Fred got up to pour two cups of coffee.

"Tell me more about how this happened.” Zoey sat back after her task was done, watching her wife work. “Was it a person, or some sort of artifact? It must have been a remarkable enchantment to have affected your surroundings so much. Do you remember where it happened?"

Fred was dropping sugar into Zoey's mug when she answered. "Oh, ah...I was at this little trinket shop, near the parade. I got a…" Fred's eyes widened.

"The pin!" She scampered into the bedroom, returning again with the seemingly innocuous brooch-like clip that started it all. She handed the enchanted artifact over to Zoey.

"Careful" Winifred warned Zoey as she turned the bit of jewelry over in her hand. "When I used it on your dress, it didn't just change me. It's like it rewrote my whole past."

"Sounds like an Anchor of some kind." Zoey nodded, placing the pin on the table. "The fact that you remember the change is good, it makes you a relay point. And I don't think the whole world has been changed, these things usually have a range of...a hundred kilometers or so? Everyone you know has probably been affected, but if you've got any family in Europe, you might have some explaining to do."

"Right.." Fred nodded. Her wife was an avid reader, but she didn't remember ever seeing her flip through a tome on mystical, reality-warping artifacts.

Zoey took a long sip from her coffee cup. "Did you get a good look at the person who gave it to you?"

"Mmhmm." Fred confirmed around a mouthful of her morning java. "She was this little lady. I thought she was old because of her bushy silver hair, but she had-"

"Really big eyes and long, knobby hands?" Zoey interjected. "And a smile like an alligator with a secret?"

"That's...exactly right." Fred nodded warily.

"Pixies." Zoey huffed. "Meddling little troublemakers with more smarts than sense. I haven't met one that didn't have a grudge with humanity and a sick sense of humor. She had no right to get you involved in all this."

Fred really was lost at this point. "Baby, you're talking like you're from Narnia. Do you...know where this pin came from?"

Zoey finished the rest of her coffee in one long swig and sat back down. "Call it an Anchor. It's sort of a cosmic...reference point that can shape small bubbles of your reality to its function. They’re incredibly dangerous in  the wrong hands. I suppose we're all lucky that the pixie gave it to you."

"You keep saying pixie…" Winifred looked at her wife with new, uneasy eyes. Any other day and she'd be concerned that Zoey was talking nonsense, but now she seemed to be speaking knowledgeably about a world Fred had never thought existed.

"Are you talking about like...little glowing fairies flying around on dragonfly wings?"

"You're thinking of sprites." Zoey corrected her spouse. "They're mostly harmless and honestly, a lot of fun. Pixies are larger, cleverer and a lot more dangerous. Mostly vindictive tricksters that like to mess with mortals with their deep collections of enchanted toys." She sighed and leaned back in her chair. "St. Patrick's Day must have put her in a bad mood. You can imagine most fair folk aren't very fond of a day celebrating the man who got them booted from Ireland, especially with all those garish caricatures of their Leprechaun kin."

"Pixie…" Fred nodded, trying to catch up. Her earlier dubiousness was giving way to irritation. "This is all ridiculous, you know that, right? What's even worse is that I think it's all true. Which makes the biggest problem.." She sighed, her breath rattling with emotion. "The fact that I'm just hearing about it now."

Zoey's face was pure sympathy. "I'm sorry babe, really, but there are rules about telling people this sort of thing. If I broke the code of silence, people would know." She reached back to cup her wife's hands. "It's a secret to everybody. I'd trust you with anything, but if someone like ME violated the rules, that would be trouble." She chuckled. "I suppose I'm grateful to that little pixie for spilling the beans and helping you find yourself. I'm tempted to let her get away with it."

Nothing that her wife said really surprised Fred that much. She said it all the same way she would discuss anything at the breakfast table, even if the terminology was completely alien.

"So, you're in on all of this." Fred nodded slowly. "Who ARE you, really?"

"I'm your wife." Zoey smiled sadly. "Always have been, always will be. And I don't think that's what you want to ask.."

"Okay." Winifred steeled herself. "WHAT are you?"

Zoey's face split into a wider grin.

"I can't wait to show you."

After the table was cleared, Zoey waited for Fred to get dressed and met her outside, behind their building. She was leaning against a tree that stood on the edges of the small wooded park that their backyard extended into. Zoey had lived here since Winifred remembered moving in with her, and she seemed capable of deriving an infinite amount of pleasure just from wandering the sparse collection of trees.

She held out her hand. "Come with me Freddie."

Fred had to think for only a second before she took it.

Zoey guided Fred past the treeline until earth and dry twigs crunched underfoot. Fred realized that it had taken only a few seconds of walking for the sounds of the city to fade from hearing. She looked up at the thickening canopy, and then behind herself. The gap in the trees that led back to their home was shrinking, and the woods seemed to just go on and on. She could tell that something very strange was happening, that logically she should be able to see the other end of the little parkette by now. But instead it just grew deeper, extending into a vast forest that became denser, more lush and alive with light and sound with every step.

“There are ways that our people deal with those who share our secrets with humans.” Zoey continued. “Pixies are irritatingly good at flouting authorities, so I’m not going to worry about her….but what is to become of you is more important.”

Fred was half listening to her wife. The hum of insects and twittering of birdsong was all around her, and the forest seemed to glow faintly with subtle light. There was a hazy mist clinging to the trees that made it difficult to see past a certain point, and little glowing points of light were everywhere, softly drifting through the air or flying in lazy patterns of their own accord.

“For the time being, no one but me knows that you’ve been enlightened.” Zoey continued. “But that’s liable to change when the effects of the Anchor become noticed by someone outside of it’s effect. We may have some questions to answer, and arguments to make…” Fred’s wife chuckled to herself. “We may have a convenient loophole, considering that pixie was the one who got you involved in this. And I’d like to see anyone try to stand up to me…”

“Why?” Fred asked, snapping out of the beguiling aura that saturated this alien place. “Are you some sort of...authority? Like an elf or... a witch?”

“No, nothing like that..” Zoey let go of Winifred’s hand as she stepped out into a large clearing. “I’m something older.”

The sun filtering down through the canopy illuminated the space they had entered with soft yellow light. The ground was an even weave of grasses, moss-covered stones and thick roots. Massive trees lined the space on all sides, taller than Winifred had ever seen before, and one section of perimeter was taken up by a clear spring, water trickling into the pond from a gentle fall down a wall of piled rocks.

“It’s magnificent.” Fred remarked, feeling lightheaded again.

“It’s my home.” Zoey sighed happily. “Or at least, a little piece of it that I can access through any decent patch of forest.” She began to stretch her arms as if preparing for a workout. “I don’t recommend leaving here without me. It’s...easy to get lost.”

“Where you go, I go.” Winifred nodded. There was a new crackle in the air as Zoey’s form seemed to ripple slightly. Fred had the strong feeling she was about to see something incredible.

“Ever since we came to your world, some fey folk have always found it easier to pass among humanity than others.” A new, silky reverberation had entered Zoey’s voice, and light seemed to shimmer against her body, blurring her image. “While the rest of us had to take more steps to hide our true selves. Some of us even get acquainted with life among humans. We find places to live, settle down, even marry…”

Fred blinked, trying to parse what she was looking at. Until a second ago she had been staring at her wife, but suddenly a perceptive switch had been turned in her brain and she was gazing at the outline of her wife being formed by something much larger, like an optical illusion that she had finally figured out. She began to notice odd little details about Zoey that she hadn’t really paid attention to before. Like how broad and powerful her arms really were, or how her nails were sharp and thick enough to resemble claws. All of a sudden she felt silly for never noticing that Zoey’s nut-brown skin was actually a deep, shimmering emerald colour, and much closer to smooth scales than flesh.

“Wait, what’s happening?” Fred broke out of her reverie.

“I’m taking down my glamour.” Zoey cooed. “Now I get to show off.”

Zoey’s arms rippled with muscle and bulk, becoming large enough to rest her clawed hands comfortably on the ground. Her shoulders and back realigned themselves, growing and configuring to adopt a more quadrupedal gait as her hips swelled and her legs shifted into a more bestial, digitigrade form.

Zoey swayed her hips, and suddenly there was a tail there to continue the motion, the thick, powerful appendage whisking through the air. Winifred felt as though she were being drawn closer to her wife as the changing woman occupied more and more space in her vision, only to realize that she was growing, filling the small glade with herself.

Zoey’s face changed like a dropped expression, her features morphing into a long, toothy snout and eyes growing large and almond-shaped along either side of her reptilian skull. Her hair was a vibrant green now, cascading across her head and down the back of her neck like a mossy curtain, leaves and flowers growing from it and blossoming with every shake. Then there were horns poking through her mane, huge and branchlike antlers that Fred stared up at like a child planning an ambitious tree climbing session. Now over ten feet tall on all fours, Zoey flexed, and there were wings sprouting from her back, huge, magnificent feathered wings that beat at the ground and kicked up a warm summer breeze with each flap.

Winifred was beyond words, feeling little shivers of excitement and awe race up and down her body. All the world seemed to bend and bow to this titanic creature that had appeared before her, this monstrous beauty that shimmered with power. She was green almost all over, from the bright green of a newly sprouted plant, to the deep liquid green that clung to the surface of a still pond, to the lush, vibrant green of the treetops. Everything but her gaze. Fred stared into the eyes of the incredible beast that had conjured itself before her, and the warm, chocolate brown eyes of her wife stared back.

“Zoey.” Winifred breathed. “This is the real you? Your truth is...beautiful.”

“So is yours.” Zoey spoke softly. Her mouth remained still, but her voice was as clear as a bell, resonating in Winifred’s head.

Winifred drew closer. “I get it now. How do you tell someone that you’re a dragon?”

“A Green Dragon of the Wood, if you want to get technical.” Zoey laughed playfully. “You don’t know how hard it’s been to hide from you Freddie. But now we can both be who we really are to each other.”

Winifred reached out, and Zoey moved her head to find her wife’s hand under her snout. Winifred leaned in and she was suddenly wrapping her hands around Zoey’s head, embracing her huge, draconic wife and planting delicate kisses on her, tasting her loamy, fresh scent.

The dragon hummed in delight beneath her.
“I have so much to show you, Freddie. I can’t wait for you to see everything.”