“And, some of you may know, this totem is cursed. It has the power to grant any wish, any desire the person has… As long as it applies to themselves, of course.” The tour girl smiled, waving towards the artifact. “But there is a cost. The wish must be made within a week… Or the person dies.”

Becky, one of the collegiate attending, raised her hand. “So then… What’s the point of that? I mean, if you get anything you want… Why wouldn’t you make a wish within a week?”

“Well… I wonder?” The woman looked to the idol. “I suppose some things are better left unanswered. I wouldn’t want to be the one to test it, would you?

 

That was how it had begun.

It continued with a simple dare, and now… Now Becky and her best friend Alisha were sitting in the park, looking at their hands. They weren’t the only ones from that group to touch the idol, and all of them had felt the same strange energy after pressing their palms to it.

“So… We’re doing this, yeah?” Alisha looked up with an anxious smile, the sunset bringing out the dark shade of her skin.

“Yeah.” Becky grinned, looking to her friend with a grin. “Though I’d say that you should go first. For obvious reasons, I mean.”

“What, like you mean that in case there’s some sort of monkey’s paw?” Alisha chuckled. “Well, if you’re so obsessed with superstition, then I do bade thee spirits! I wish for an impressive ass!” She spread her arms wide, grinning as she looked down to her posterior.

Then she screamed in shock, watching as it began to swell. Her pert bottom was growing larger and larger with every passing second, until it was practically tearing at the Indian girl’s shorts.

“Oh my God it worked.” Becky said, the words spilling from her mouth numbly. She stared, transfixed, as her friend grew quite the proud posterior… And began to come up with a wish of her own, one for… She didn’t know… Money? Power?

Her thoughts, and Alisha’s, grew to a halt as the two of them noticed something pressing out just above Alisha’s ass. They had time to wonder what it was for a moment before it grew further, tearing a hole in her shorts to expose a grey-furred tail… And a grey-furred rump.

“What the hell!?” Alisha yelped, patting at her backside in a panic. She ran her fingers through the fur, looking helplessly up to Becky. “Help me! Un-wish this, do something!”

“I wish…” Becky began, only to pause. “N-no, wait! Remember what the guide said? I don’t think that I can make a wish for you!”

Alisha whimpered as her hips cracked, and she fell clumsily onto her hands. “Well, you have to try sometHAAAW!” She brayed, her neck stretching out to a distinctly equine size. “Oh God, am I becoming a donkEEEAUWWW!?”

“I-I wish Alisha was human!” Becky tried, taking a step back from her changing friend. As if in response to her words, Alisha’s ears quintupled in length, shooting to the top of her head and flicking at every possible sound.

“See? I told you it wouldn’t work!” Becky shook her head in impotent rage, tears dewing at her eyes as she watched her friend further devolve into an animal.

“HEEAWW! HEE-HAAAWW!” Alisha tried to speak, but all that would come out is the sounds of a mule. Spittle flecked at her lips on her too-human face, and her hands twisted into thick, clumsy hooves. Her feet exploded from her shoes a moment later, and she kicked them in the air as her limbs became those of an ass.

“I want to help, but… Oh God, what if that happens to me? I can’t… I don’t want to be some donkey, or anything like that…” Becky hyperventilated as she watched her friend’s cute face stretch out into an ugly muzzle.

The girl’s perfect teeth yellowed slightly as they broadened, and her nose stretched out into an ungainly snout. She brayed miserably, but there was nothing the girl could do before the changes completed… At least, the physical ones.

Alisha’s mind raced as she struggled to call for help, only to slow as a haze settled over it. The girl didn’t know what it was; how could she? Soon she didn’t know much of anything at all, her mind slipping away more and more by the second.

Becky could see it. She could see the intelligence ebbing from the donkey that was once her friend, plain in the donkey’s glassy eyes. It was enough to fill her heart with dread, and she stammered out a panicked wish. “Please, I… I don’t want to be an animal! I wish I won’t become an animal!”

She screamed in panicked horror, backing away from the beast that was her friend. She moved until she could walk no more, her feet rooting themselves in place. Literally.

The girl tugged her legs to find they couldn’t lift from the grass, and she looked down in horror. Just as she’d dreaded, her feet had burrowed into the ground. Some magic was transforming her just as it had changed Alisha.

“No, that’s impossible! I wished that this couldn’t happen; please don’t!” She pleaded, tugging at her legs even as they began to thicken, merging together. “This can’t be me, I asked not to be an animal!”

Then she felt it: a hard, knobbly substance along her legs. It felt just like wood… Like the bark of a tree.

“N-no!” She exclaimed, pawing at her legs helplessly as they began to broaden. The wood grew up her legs to her belly to her shoulders, moving like an irresistible wave.

Desperately, Becky tried to keep herself from stiffening, but she could only stand more rigid, at attention, growing taller. Tears dripped from her eyes as her arms extended above her head, branching out into dozens of limbs, which branched out into more in turn.

Leaves sprouted from her branches like feathers, and the girl wept freely as she could feel her lithe feminine figure branching out until it was a thick, round trunk. She couldn’t even see this changes thanks to the branches surrounding her face.

Then even that began to change, her head sinking back into the wood that was her trunk. She cried until her body couldn’t produce tears; then she dwindled away to nothingness. Worse, she could feel that same diminishing sensation inside what used to be her head.

‘No! Please, anything but that! I’d rather be an animal than a tree! At least I… could still… think…’

Becky’s thoughts drew to a slow, then to a halt. After all, trees didn’t have thoughts to spare. They simply existed.

The tree that was Becky didn’t even notice as the donkey that was Alisha began to graze nearby, both of them forever lost.

They were the first to change, but they would not be the last. After all, a full class had touched the idol, not just the two of them. Indeed, the town’s transformation troubles had just begun.