(M to Clydesdale)

Candace smiled, lost to her own thoughts. She stroked at her horse’s mane, combing her fingers through the long strands which were so much nicer than her husband’s short-cropped hair. Funnily enough, her stallion was just as scruffy, though.

Nicholas nickered softly, bumping his large head against her palms and licking of them. Sure, some people might judge her for having a horse with such a human name, but there was a very good reason for that…

xXx

Candace was a nice woman, who tried to do everything right. She had a regular house with a regular husband, and two regular children. She worked a regular job, getting up early every morning in the dark, and heading home when it was dark as well. It was a tough life, but she made just enough to get by.

It only made it all the more heartbreaking when her office had a ‘restructuring’.

It was phrased as a good thing. They said a corporate merger would help her select a better insurance policy, since the company that had bought them was able to fight for a better policy. Of course, that assumption was based on the belief that humans are intrinsically good.

Sadly, there’s no such thing as a good CEO. After all, anyone who was content with what they had would, at best, own a small business. It took a certain level of greed, a certain thirst for wealth that was never enough, to gain real power in the corporate world.

As a result her insurance had quadrupled overnight. Were she to continue working, she would actually lose more than she earned. It was a strange situation, and one that she was still trying to work her way through.

After all, Candace wasn’t exactly human.

She was born as something better, though she’d done her best to keep her powers a secret. She’d always thought there was no sense in a life where all that was gained had not been earned. Clearly her new boss disagreed.

There was only one thing for her to do, really… And it started by making sure her family was taken off of her insurance plan. She’d start with her husband.

“Hey, Nicholas,” Candace smiled from behind him, toeing the ground. “Remember how when we first met, you thought that I was a total horse girl?”

“Yeah?” He tapped away another few words of poetry, an adorable page for his new book. Really, she’d miss this. Unfortunately, she just couldn’t afford to keep him on her insurance anymore.

Her response was to comb her fingers through his hair, letting her fingertips linger against his ears. She slowly brought her thumbs against their backs, curling her fingers inside them and giving them a warm, pleasurable tug.

“Mnnh, what’s this? Petting me like I’m your stallion?” He saved his document, looking back to her with one of the heartmelting grins he’d used to win her over. He also had no idea whatsoever that his ears had lifted well above his head, and were twitching attentively with each of his thoughts.

“Oh, there’s no ‘like’ about it.” Candace moved her hands to the top of his head, then slowly began to pet down the back of his neck. His hair swept back along his spine, growing longer and silkier in the process.

“I don’t follow.”

“You will with a set of reins,” Candace purred. Then she cupped her hands under his chin, tugging upward in a sharp motion.

Even Nicholas wasn’t able to ignore the sudden, sharp growth of his neck. Unfortunately for him, the motion also twisted his vocal cords. It stretched out his cry of surprise into a loud “HRRREEEIGH” that echoed around his study.

Candace couldn’t help but blush. It had been so long since she used her powers on anyone that being able to release them like this on the father of her children was intoxicating. She pulled him back off his chair, stretching out his torso in the process.

Nicholas panicked, though there was little else he could do besides that. His arms weren’t moving properly anymore, so it wasn’t like he could reach behind himself. Instead, the best he could do was flail them forward like he was trying to swim through the air.

“Hgghnyyyyneeigh!” He struggled to force the sound out, in what was probably a plea for his humanity. Or maybe he was just surprised that his darling wife had the power to reshape anything and everything to her will.

Candace didn’t know, she couldn’t speak horse. But she could certainly feel one.

She strutted around him, straddling his body and squeezing his larger gut between her thighs. “Ooh, I always wanted to ride my own stallion.” She felt him press against her and gasped flirtatiously. “Not like that, though. Sorry to disappoint, but I’ll make sure to find you plenty of pretty mares.”

Nicholas neighed again, his whinny turning into a loud yelp as his chair split beneath him thanks to a newly widened posterior. The sudden impact sent a ripple up his spine, and he shouted again as it stretched longer, stretching his ribs out with a series of loud cracks. The tingling radiated towards his hands and feet, pausing at his wrists and ankles. Thick white fur burst around the sensation, briefly covering his hands and feet with warmth.

Then all sensation vanished from them. Candace had meant it as a mercy, to keep him from feeling his fingers and toes merging into the heavy hooves of a plow animal. Without feeling; however, the cracks of stretching bone and spreading enamel made Nicholas imagine something even worse than the reality.

Something of his panic must have been clear in his eyes, because his wife pressed her hands against his cheeks with an apologetic smile. “Whoops, I guess you could say I’m a little out of practice. I haven’t done this in about thirty years, after all.”

Nicholas tried to figure out what she meant by that, but a numb warmth was spreading between his ears, enveloping his head and swallowing his brain whole. He couldn’t really think of much other than the present, though on the bright side his new hooves no longer bothered him.

Were he able to, he might have reasoned that she’d just taken his capacity to fantasize from him. After all, a good horse had no reason to live anywhere but the present. Then again, the thought of that might just have been too bizarre for a human to understand.

Candace would have asked him if she really cared. But instead, she was too busy daydreaming about what it would be like to finally own her own pet Clydesdale. She trailed her fingers along her changing husband’s long throat, feeling his heavy breathing.

She’d never thought that just the simple act of breathing could have a weight to it before now. But as his lungs grew in his chest, each huff of air sent a pulse against her warm hands, coaxing her to press just a little firmer.

Nicholas barely even noticed the pressure, save for its warmth. His new throat was simply so muscular, so thick, that even if she’d used both arms she couldn’t cut off his windpipe. Instead, his brain raced to focus on why he was panicked.

Clearly, he felt that he was. His heart was hammering, and sweat was dewed across skin that was growing a proper coat of fur. That meant he had to be afraid… But for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why. Worst of all, the hairs on the back of his neck were totally at ease with his wife atop him like this, which told him that despite every other symptom, he really shouldn’t be panicked at all.

Candace saw the change come across his eyes as the concern faded from them. With each pet, he was getting calmer and calmer. She made a mental note of that, in case it would come in handy later. “Ah, that’s what I thought. You want to be my pet, don’t you? My big, strong draft horse…”

Nicholas nodded unsurely. His body felt wrong right now, trapped between two worlds. He couldn’t think of how to fix it, but Candace clearly had some sort of idea to… To…

Her hands pressed against the sides of his head, and his eyes grew larger, rounder. His skull warped like putty, massaged into an equine shape that felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Any unease soon faded as he felt his teeth thicken, letting him grind them to ease any anxiety.

A small pressure at the base of his spine made him arch his back as best he could. It wasn’t exactly easy given how large he was, but it was enough to let his new tail stretch out on the floor, gently whisking back and forth as it came in.

“I’d been meaning to dust under there,” Candace remarked, looking over her shoulder with an idle smile. She moved her hands to her former husband’s chest, pushing off him with a quiet huff. “Though I guess I’ll be changing the house soon enough too. It’s not like there’s a better way to get you downstairs.”

The last changes flickered across his body, sending a warm pulse of pleasure through his changed nerves. It reached his brain and washed his thoughts clean, like waves against writing on the coast. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he knew that now that she was off him, he could clop onto all fours.

His stomach growled loudly; then the brightly lit shape in the room vanished, replaced with a delicious pile of hay. He turned loudly towards it, nickering before taking a chomp of the food with a dimwitted contentment.

Candace watched her new horse eat away at what was once his work, smiling all the while. It was a good start, but now that she’d gotten a taste… Well, she wouldn’t want her husband to be alone on the farm, would she?

xXx

A loud moo interrupted her reverie, and Candace patted Nicholas’s throat. “Ah, but that’s enough reminiscing for now. I’ve got to take care of our daughter, dear.” She gave him another affectionate pat, before turning towards the barn…