(Woman to Donkey)
Min-seo looked up to the wall in front of herself, her mind pausing for a second to translate the words from English to Korean. ‘Aeaea Immigration Services’. It was a three-word title that held nothing but boundless promise… Provided, of course, that Min-seo could demonstrate competency in the language. That was the first obstacle she’d need to surmount if she wanted to enter the country.
It was a paradise, thanks in no small part to its magical security. She knew that the island also claimed its success due to the fact that its inhabitants all spoke the same language, which helped them assimilate into its culture rather than fracture into their own separate towns and boroughs.
The Korean woman didn’t entirely buy into that, but she was more than happy for a chance to move to a place where the people were treated like… Well, people. Once they were properly inspected, that is.
The light in the room flicked on, a pleasant green indicating that she was being recorded for posterity. That would help if her case was something she’d need to appeal later. After all, her humanity was at stake. If she mispronounced too many words, she’d end up as an animal—still accepted into Aeaea, but in a much different sense.
The dark-haired woman cleared her throat, closing her eyes and reciting what she’d practiced from memory. Her daughter, already an Aeaean citizen, had briefed her on what to say. All she had to do was recite it from memory. “Hello. I am Min-seo, and I would be liking to apply for a passport.”
She flinched as the light in the room switched from green to red, a buzzing sound filling the air. It seemed to grow a little louder as her ears tingled, a tugging sensation assailing them as though someone was tugging on her lobes from behind. She reached back and could feel them lengthening, as well as feeling that they were covered in a thin coat of fur.
“W-what? No, please! I was certain my grammar was correct!” Min-sea tried to laugh off the change. Maybe she should have had her daughter’s husband brief her on what to say… Then again, a simple change like this would be worked off after a few years of service on the country. It would help mark her as someone people needed to be patient with when talking to, so at least she didn’t have to worry abou that.
Quietly, she took a moment to collect her thoughts. Then she smiled up to the light. “O-okay. Stutters do not count, do they?” She winced, waiting for the light’s judgement. It remained green, and she let out a small breath of relief. “Okay, good. As I had saying, I am Min-seo, and-nngh!”
Her feet cramped, in time with the light flickering color once more. The sandals on her feet popped and snapped, her provisionary Aeaean garb allowing for changes like this without destruction of her own property. She shifted in place idly, biting her lower lip and watching as her toes clumped together, covered in a dark enamel.
Her legs changed too, ankles stretching and her thighs plumping up with a mixture of fat and muscle. An itching tingling swept across her legs from ankle to hip, covering them in a coarse, gray fur. For a moment, Min-seo wondered whether she was becoming a horse or some sort of pony, and smiled to herself at the thought.
“I suppose I do not need feet that much… I, Min-seo, would like to apply for a culinary job. I have spend many years of my life cooknnngh!” Again, a flash from the light. This time, her belly swelled, becoming a plump and round paunch. She looked past her Aeaean robes with a slight grimace, finding that it too was covered with that gray fur.
So, she was to become a donkey, should she fail. That wasn’t the worst form she could become, at least she wouldn’t end up on the menu. Still, she’d rather work indoors than outdoors. On the bright side, the belly didn’t bother her all that much. She’d been pregnant before, after all, and after nine months of a human inside her womb a little donkey weight was no great deal.
“Please, do not do this. I am a very talented cook, and I can bring much to your country.” Min-seo pressed, looking to the light. She hoped that would be enough to stall the changes at her belly, and such was indeed the case. Her brief demonstration of some competency convinced her unseen immigration agent that she could be allowed a little leeway. “Thank you. My recipes include…”
Her mind went blank. She knew what they were called in Korean, of course, but speaking any foreign language was a sure way to get a permanent transformation. She didn’t want to risk that, and had spent weeks practicing to react only in English.
“Em, one moment. It is very hard to thinking, for some reason.” She knew she’d misspoken without even looking at the light, and this change was her worst yet. Her neck lengthened, and she could feel mucus thickening in her longer throat. “NngHAAW! Hheee-aww!” She brayed loudly, a bit of drool flecking past her lips.
Quickly, the woman wiped the back of her hand across her face, red spreading across her tanned cheeks. She looked to the light with a slightly abashed grin, glad that they at least would not change her for a mispronunciation born of change.
“W-was that me? I hope that this does not affect my taste buds!” She chuckled anxiously, fanning at her face. She brushed her furry legs against one another, then felt her right hoof scuff against her left as she returned her foot to the ground. Apparently her changed feet were a bit bigger than she’d thought… She supposed in that regard, they had a lot in common with her neck.
“As I saying, you do not nnf… need to worry… nnf…” Min-seo breathed heavier through her nose, feeling an ached deeper in her sinuses. She grimaced, grunting as her nostrils began to widen on her face a bit at a time. They only stopped when they were at least triple their previous size. “Snrt-haw! Heeauw!” She snorted loudly. Of course, her nostrils weren’t the only thing that had changed about her nose: her nost itself had broadened from a cute button to a wide, almost snout-like appearance.
That was perhaps the worst change yet, since she couldn’t cover it. Worse, her large nose constantly remained in her peripheral vision, as if to remind her that she’d already transformed this much. The woman shifted from side to side, then let out a quiet sigh, shaking her head. Words were getting harder for her to process, and she suspected that was largely in part to how changed she was.
“It… Is… Harder? Yes, harder. It is harder to think. I… I believe I might want to turn back.” She said at length. Returning to America felt like a defeat, but it was better than transforming fully into an animal. The woman looked to the green light, surrendering. She wouldn’t be changed back, of course, but as long as the transformation wasn’t permanent then a decade or two would sort her form out.
“Haww-HEE! Heeaww!” She brayed instinctively as she waited for the immigration agent’s response. She’d need to get used to doing that in the kitchen, apparently it was her changed body’s equivalent of clearing her throat.
After a few moments that felt like hours, a small tablet lit up on the wall before herself. It was stamped with the official Aeaean seal, and contained what she’d need to say to voluntarily release herself from immigration. The Korean’s hooves clopped faintly on the ground, and she looked to the screen with trepidation. Her daughter hadn’t tried to back out, so she was unable to prepare the woman for this.
Still, it was just reading English. How bad could it be?
“Hngh-haaw.” She cleared her throat as best she could, shaking her head as she brayed again. The motion tossed her floppy ears from side to side, and she made a mental note to avoid doing that around anything she might bump her ears against. “I, Min-seo…”
She stopped. H E R E B Y. That was the word in front of her, and she had no idea how it was supposed to be pronounced. Why couldn’t they have made this simple on her? The woman grimaced, giving it her best shot. “Heraby? GuuhhHAWW!”
Her back, hips, and shoulders popped audibly, as loud as a firecracker. In one fell motion, she was thrown forwards, her hands slapping against the wall as her body found itself no longer suited for standing on two legs.
She knew that there were support groups across America for people trapped in this condition, and Min-seo tried to take comfort in that fact. This posture would make cooking a good deal more difficult, but she was sure nothing was impossible… Provided that she could complete her exit forms, of course.
“HEEeereby! DisAWWWvow myself of immigration intent.” That seemed to be correct, and she snorted through her big donkey nose. Her furry thighs were tense with apprehension, and she tapped the screen to advance it to the next sentence she’d need to read aloud.
“ThEEEAWW! The…” C O N S E Q U E N C E S. Anther unfamiliar word. Worse, the cloud in her mind was getting worse. She tried to tell herself it was because of the transformation, but knew that a large part of it was from her own panic. “Con… Haaw… SekyoowensHAWW!”
Her teeth ached, expanding in her mouth and forcing her into a rictus grin. They grew longer, blocker, and unkempt, something she easily felt with her tongue. This was in part because she was curiously playing her tongue along her changing teeth, and in part because her tongue was puffing up in her mouth.
Drool slipped from the corner of her jaw as her face extended, her visage taking on an asinine appearance. It was long and oafish, no trace of the attractive Asian left behind. Worse, it slid her eyes to the sides of her head, and she was forced to angle her face to get a look at the screen before herself.
“ConsEEEquences? Of my… Huuawwwhee! Of my actions are UAAWWHEEE! HEEE-nnhAWW!” Min-seo was finding it harder and harder not to bray. Her heart was beating so fast in her chest, and she was finding it harder and harder to think in Korean. Ironically, her ability to think in English wasn’t diminished—but then again, she never was very good at English. “Are known and AWWWdressed!”
Her hand reached to advance the screen, but she misjudged the distance. Her hand hit the back button, resetting her progress and returning the screen to its original state. It was an innocent mistake, brought on by the fact that her cheek was turned towards the screen so that her right eye could read what was on it. Unfortunately, that little mistake set her already panicked mind in to a frenzy.
“No! That HAAAW! Mistake made! I mean… I mEEAWWW! Mughhee-AWW!” Her hands were next. She could feel them changing, feel her fingers growing numb. The woman’s nails seemed to melt into the rest of her digits, which clumped up into a useless, thick mass. “HAWW! HEE-aww!”
The changes weren’t done there. As she thumped her hooves against the wall before herself, the woman could feel her tailbone start to stretch out from the rest of her body. Her back arched, pressing her smallish breasts against the wall.
Crick, crick, crick… Joints popped and settled along her new tail, and finally it began to flick agitation. She could feel fur racing to cover it, the same fur that covered the rest of her frame. This was a little thicker at the tip, a long and dark plume dotting her tail neatly. That tickled the backs of her thighs and the underside of her asinine rump, further distracting her.
“It not fair! HAAW!” Her body bloated, and she knew she should stop talking. She couldn’t. It was like a mental filter had fled her mind, forcing her to damn herself with her own inexperience. The robes fell from her expanding form, clasps undoing themselves so as not to be torn by donkey bulk.
Min-seo knew that the camera was watching her, which only added further indignity to her situation. A tingling along her scalp and the back of her neck heralded her hair’s shift from a short bob to more traditional Mohawk cut. To any outsider, she’d doubtless look like an animal. Not even her daughter would recognize the donkey in the room.
But she could still speak, for better or… Well, there was no way it could be better, not now. Now, her gift of speech was exclusively for the worse. “HAAWHEE! MEEE gooAAWW! Good cook! HAAAWW!” Spittle flew from her lips, and her eyes started to dim.
The mind loss from before was nothing compared to what she felt now. Her thoughts were scattering every instant, preventing the woman from focusing on any one thing in particular. It left her dimwitted and scatterbrained, and that was something Min-seo could not accept. She was fine with looking silly, with being clumsy—but actually thinking like a nitwit was something beyond her worst nightmares.
Worse, her memories were stolen from her as well. She hadn’t noticed it at first, but now that she focused her thoughts, it was clear. She could no longer recall anything beyond entering this room. She knew facts—she knew she had a daughter, that she was American, that she was a cook. But she couldn’t remember her child’s face, where specifically she lived, or even what her prided kitchen looked like.
“MEAAW! NAWWWT DAAWM DAWNKHEE! HEEAWW! HUGHEEAWW!” It was the last thing she’d say that was close to a salient thought. The woman kicked her hind legs, choking out bray after sobbed bray as darkness swallowed her mind entirely. She squeezed her eyes shut, parting her thick lips and letting one last bray burst past her unkempt teeth. “HEEE-AAUUWW!”
Then her eyes opened, and there was no light behind them. The donkey in the room chuffed her lips, idly swishing her tail. It was an unfamiliar place, but not one that felt dangerous. She didn’t know why she was so upset, so she set such thoughts out of her mind.
A door at the side of the room opened, and the donkey smelled carrots from beyond the entrance. Slowly, she clopped out towards the scent, hunger growing within her frame. She’d need to eat if she wanted to be a healthy mate, after all.
One Month Later
“So… One of these is Mom, huh?” Ji-min looked to the animals grazing in the field. She struggled to reconcile one of them with the woman who’d raised her, but was unable to find so much of a trace of Korean in any of them.
“According to my buddy at Immigration, yeah.” Marcus, her husband, checked his phone’s camera. One of the animals was marked out by a slight pink outline, and he pointed to it. “I think it should be… That one.”
“You mean, you think ‘she’ should be that one, right? Oh, man… I hope they let her remain a ‘she’.” She chuckled anxiously, turning from the donkeys to the man beside herself. “I mean, can you imagine? She’d haunt us from beyond the grave if she ended up a genderbend.”
The man laughed, tapping on the animal to bring up her profile. “Nah, no worries there. According to the database, she,” he stressed that word with a roll of his eyes, and earned a light punch in the shoulder. “Ow. Haha, she happens to be pregnant.”
Ji-min puffed up her cheeks and blew out a faint sigh, shaking her head. “Well, Mom always said she wanted to give me some siblings. Pity I won’t be able to play with them.”
“You sure? I think the dogs might like a little play-companion. Loud, messy, the kind that poops everywhere…” Marcus laughed as his girlfriend slugged him again, and the two turned from the pasture back to their car.
In the fields, a donkey that was once a woman didn’t so much as bat an eyelash at the humans. Instead, she idly chomped at the grass around herself, enjoying the warm Aeaean sun.