Elise allowed a smile to pass across her face as she let the empty vial fall from her fingers. It was finally time, time to embrace her inner animal and cast off her humanity for the next twenty-four hours.

The world around her seemed to grow as the magical potion took hold of her body, and she slowly exhaled to calm herself, stilling her racing heart. Her pulse picked up again a second later as her skin crawled, and the brunette looked down with an eager smile to her arms.

Sure enough, her skin looked bumpy; uneven. It was as though she was made of an impure clay that was getting rougher and rougher by the second. Too rough for fur; too flared to be scales. Just what was she becoming?

Her answer came soon as the mottled bumps formed lifted out from her skin, sharpening into quills that soon grew tufts of soft down. Feathers! Her smile broadened on her face, and she played her fingers along her arms.

A gentle coo escaped her lips as her fingers began to fuse together, conjoined to give her the true appearance of wings. Only seconds after she lost all use of what were once her hands did she realize that she had yet to take her clothes off.

"Well... It's not like I was going to be growing out of them." The girl smiled as she felt her body begin to tingle all over, the gentle embrace of shrinking beginning to flood her world. She could feel her clothing getting larger on herself, her shoes in particular feeling singularly uncomfortable.

Elise moaned as she felt her stance shifting, her legs spreading due to both her changing hips and the fact that her shoes were a little too far apart for a bird to wear. Thankfully, this sorted itself out in a matter of moments

Her feet popped out from her shoes as golden enamel covered them; as her toes sharpened into talons. The girl looked down to them with a contented smile that soon faltered, though not from panic. Rather, her smile was wiped from her face by the onset of a beak's growth; of her face becoming something incapable of smiling.

Realizing this filled her only with more glee, and Elise let a contented squawk escape her hardening lips, only to squawk again in surprise at the realization of how her vocal chords had changed.

As the cry echoed around her woods, her every muscle relaxed, and a cool rush swept across her body. Her wings spread; shoulders shifted; body reformed. Just as quickly as the changes had begun, they came to an end.

Elise crooned gently with content, an avian in human clothing. She looked to her wings curiously, finding them to be strong and patterned with brown feathers that matched her old hair. So, she was some sort of hawk; perhaps? No, her beak was too strong for that; her body too muscled...

The bird stepped gingerly from the tangled clothes, nipping at the collar of her old shirt to free her wings from it. Freed at last, she turned towards her pants, tugging out the hand mirror she'd kept in her pocket.

From its silvered surface, an eagle gazed back at her, its eyes widening slightly in surprise. Elise found her heart thumping in her chest with disbelief, the greatest happiness of her life flooding her veins.

This was the greatest gift she'd ever received in her life! She was an eagle, an eagle! Elise would have been content to be a falcon or a hawk; but to become the most noble of avians? She'd never thought such a thing to be possible!

The eagle fluttered her feathers and turned in a small circle, admiring how majestic her plumage was; at how her every muscle was toned and tough. A tittering chuckle trilled in her throat as she looked herself over, loving her new body from her long tail to the beak that constantly hung in her peripheral vision.

All of this staring had left her hungry to discover just what her new body was capable of, and Elise turned her attention skywards, spreading her wings and beating them hard, feeling the air give beneath their span as though it was water; like she could swim through the skies.

Up, up, up she soared-for about three feet, before she fell onto her beak in an ungainly heap. Elise narrowed her eyes and snorted with disdain, her feathers literally ruffled. She grumbled under her breath and got back to her talons once more.

Well, if at first she didn't succeed... Elise beat her wings hard, pushing against the air quickly and repeatedly. Sure enough, she made it much higher into the air than she did before, even though her wings and lungs burned from exertion.

It soon became apparent that brute-forcing this was hardly the solution to flight, and Elise tumbled to the ground once more the second her wings grew tired. At least this time she landed on her talons, though her pride was just as hurt. The avian growled and glared to herself, rubbing her beak with one of her wings in a distinctly human fashion.

Wait... Perhaps that was it. She was thinking about going at this like a human, rather than as a bird. How was it that they flew, anyways? By gliding?

Elise flapped once again, catching the air beneath her as she'd expected. But this time, instead of trying to get higher, she spread her wings wide and allowed herself to drift.

Much to her pleasure, she actually glided on the air, even if she wasn't that high from the ground.

That soon changed. A massive rush of warm air caught her wings from below, and she found her body lifted skyward, a warm current buffeting her from below.

The transformed girl cawed with joy as the ground raced away from her, a scenic view unfolding around herself thanks to her distance from the earth. Her clothes became little more than a speck; the trees looked like miniatures; and Elise finally realize how high up she'd flown.

A plethora of words filled her mind, none of which were suited for civilized company yet all of which were rather appropriate given her setting. She floundered midair and began to plummet groundwards before she forced herself to spread their brown feathers as wide as possible.

Once more she caught the wind on her wings, turning a dramatic fall into a gentle glide. Her heart still hammered in her chest, but at least she was now spared the terror of falling.

To think that she'd be an agoraphobic eagle! She would have laughed at the thought were she not too preoccupied with keeping herself aloft. It was far more work than she'd expected, requiring her entire body to retain a semblance of balance.

While keeping her wings wide was easy enough, she also had to adjust her tail to keep herself gliding in any one direction. Adding that to the fact that her talons and head both affected her steering in subtle ways made flight all the more trying for her.

Which made her all the more eager to learn. Elise was never one to give up on a fight, especially when winning it would mean that her dreams would be so close to being complete. She grit her beak determinedly, a thrumming purr rumbling in her chest as she controlled her glide once more.

This time was even easier than before, and Elise practiced gentle dips and rises in her flight pattern. All of it was heaven, all of it was freedom.

Though she had a lot to learn, her animal self was the one of her dreams.