Chapter IX
Out from the freshly unsealed refrigerator doors Cecelia tumbled, her anemone-like form of abstract gooey tentacles careening to the tile below and connecting with a ceremonious <CLAP>. Her body then managed to spool itself back to its everyday appearance so she could easier read the oven clock, the ordinary hour of 9:47 shining back at her in white LED accompanied by a small letter ‘A’ above the hours side of the colon. The shapeshifter yawned, but it was more like a groan; nobody was there to witness her obnoxious wake-up roar, or for that matter, her proud nudity.
She resealed the fridge and rested her back against the two rigid, metal handles as she put her mind to work, trying to solve the Delphic mystery of her inability to mimic other human forms. She yawned again moments later, at which point Cecelia made an attempt at achieving the euphoric mental slip that would trigger a transformation. The case however, as cryptic as it may have been, was that Cecelia could in fact experience the same microseconds of mental atomization that proceeded each and every one of her shifts, at least the shifts equally or more drastic as fully disguising as another human. This happened in response to forms of men and women of all shapes and sizes, but she could not mold her body into cooperation.
So, Cecelia steered down route B. Envisioning the African-American she had hoped to impersonate for Kahri just last night, she jotted mental notes of her attributes: Milk chocolate skin tone. 5’7. Chubby gut. Huge ass. Thick thighs. Elevated, curvy waist. D-size breasts. Rounded face. Pouty lips. Wavy raven hair. Kinda fat chin...? the voice in her head would orate. Cecelia closed her eyes after going over the staples of this woman’s body, aiming first to copy her height. First the focus, then the mind mist, finally... no change.
“Okay... maybe I can give myself her torso.” Picturing herself with much larger cups, Cecelia followed the same procedure: Eyes closing, focus zeroing, brain dissolving just a little bit and... no results. Unfastening her eyelids once more, she was met with the sight of a completely unchanged upper half. She huffed in frustration; the initial fear hovering over this ordeal had almost fully subsided. Cecelia sighed hard. “Fuck.”
Ratcheting her arms out in front of her body, she bent over into the floor and hardened herself up in an instant. Her limbs, ribs, butt and collar metallicized almost instantly, squaring into a copper alloy frame in a tint of deep emerald green. Shriveling herself from the neck up, Cecelia retracted her head completely into a tiny pit between her shoulders which filled right back in, leaving no trace of her most identifying features. Her torso then sliced itself in two, molding into a long rectangle only to bend one of the halves upwards and out at a slightly obtuse angle. Finally, her frame caught up to the double-wide torso, tracing along its perimeter as it broke apart into many slats of oakwood within the jade exoskeleton. This left Cecelia as a bona fide park bench.
Her four legs suddenly crippled and folded inward. The bottom half of her seat hit the floor, only for its wooden planks to merge into one rubbery material that only softened and lightened as it swallowed her alloy structure. This effect repeated on the upper half, which nearly closed against the lower, but remained a crack parted. Cecelia then shrank, forcing the abstract polymers left of her bench frame up and through the many pores now present in the halves of her oblong form. They penetrated into plain air with ease, reincarnated as leaves of lettuce, slices of provolone cheese and tomato, as well as strips of bacon and turkey. Five incisions cut across the slightly brittled exterior of her latest disguise which gave her bread the proper appearance. Concluding her downsizing, Cecelia confidently presented as a typical sub sandwich.
Inanimate and rather lonesome on the kitchen tile, she percolated her mind on the pickle she was in, nearly performing an accidental transformation into a pickle as the voice in her head spoke. She was flustered, no doubt, but there was always that inextinguishable fragment of her conscience that loved to solve mysteries. Cecelia began to see the problem on her hands as more of a quest than a grand hindrance, even if it did anger her that she couldn’t inflate her tits or change her race or... have all the fun she could be having with her extraordinary abilities.
Doughy legs stretched from four relatively cornered points on the lower half of Cecelia’s roll. Her ingredients quivered before blending together into a melt puddle between the two slices of bread, dissolving into the natural air bubbles occurring on its internal surface. The halves then merged and densified, first becoming a pale putty followed by a transition into something more claylike. The length of clay darkened in color to a ruddy brown whilst stretching and expanding in a totally cartoonish fashion. Her legs built her shoulders and hips into what was becoming her torso, sculpting feline paws at their wrists and ankles during the process. Patches of hair grew in all over Cecelia, eventually forming her ticked bronze coat. Penultimately, she simultaneously extended her tail and neck from each end of her spine. Her head then whittled its way into shape from the bulbous, hairy mass as it originated, defining Cecelia’s powerful jaw, sharp nose, green eyes, and short ears. Over her top lip and in the upper vicinity of her slitted optics, she produced fine, delicate whiskers to complete her metamorphosis into a jaguarundi.
Satisfied with her conversion Cecelia relaxed, releasing the stress of becoming this intermediately sized cat. She rolled into her side and let her mind drift, a meager chuckle joining the air around her. She half-closed her eyes, her tertiary eyelids sliding over her irises, before cutting off her vision completely and tossing onto her back. Cecelia began to calm down at last.
Δ
Fifteen minutes went by before Cecelia opened her eyes again. Habitual force encouraged her to ascend into her native human form, but she decided against it: I think I like being a jaguarundi, and if nothing else, I put in the effort to get here. The shapeshifter contentedly reoriented herself onto her four paws and stood up, making herself acquainted with the new patterns of mobility demanded of her by her feral body. Into the dining room she hobbled, navigating the maze of chair legs beneath the table. A caught hind paw caused her to trip just as she was closing in on the foyer. “Come on!” Cecelia complained through her acute maw, dragging herself out from beneath the forest of steadfast furniture.
On stable footing in her home’s entryway, she smirked to herself as she meandered over to the obstacle course once again, confident she’d learn to pass it. Gingerly she traversed through, taking great care not to catch a rear leg, as they had proven lengthier than she’d initially deemed.
Soon Cecelia found herself with her right front foot fenced in between two chairs. Never opting to cheat, she pushed her other frontal paw against the leg of the same chair to evacuate her ensnared appendage before scampering through, forward, and out of the labyrinth to take a victory lap around the house. She’d broken into her stride just then; quadrupedal movement felt more like a skill to her than a puzzle.
As she advanced at increasing speed from the front door toward the living room, Cecelia bulged and warped her anatomy into a doe’s, screeching to a halt adjacent to the sliding glass leading to her back porch. A satisfied breath of air escaped her nose as she smiled in satisfaction. She felt so... earthly. She loved it.
Cecelia then rose to her hind legs and reconfigured into her human appearance, happy to touch her own cream-colored flesh again.
Into the outdoors she peered, breeze dancing through the sky and pirouetting on Cecelia’s roof. Beyond that porch lied her fenced yard and her covered pool. At the very back of the yard sat her shed with her pool and lawn supplies, where a robin briefly perched atop and chirped indistinctly to the natural habitat around her. In her neighbor’s yard, the branches of a black walnut tree swayed, jettisoning two of its fruits as a few leaves from a small pile cruised onto Cecelia’s lawn.
She slid outdoors and took a cursory glance about her surroundings, happening to catch the robin fluttering away. Drawing in a deep breath, she performed a single full-circle twirl, relishing how the pure air caressed her nude figure. Her arms and legs lengthened out on their own as Cecelia closed her eyes and widened her grin, a grin that protruded into an undulate’s muzzle. Ahead and onto the grass the humble doe pranced, and there she stood, showering herself in the organic beauty around her.
One could joke that Cecelia must still be drunk if she’s acting this transcendental, but maybe it’s her pride speaking to her, or just her subconscious desire to deepen her connection to nature. Though, in her previous anger toward her inability to emulate other humans’ appearances, she had completely forgotten about the new and monumental skill she had just acquired.