Moonstone - Chapter 4
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For the first week that Duncan owned the Moonstone, he did some quiet testing of it.  Monday morning the moon had already set by the time he nerved himself into opening the Moonstone's box, somewhat to his disappointment.  So Tuesday morning was the first actual test.  He started simple, putting a sock on his left hand to see what would happen.  At first he wasn't sure anything at all was happening.  Slowly, though, the shape inside the sock began to change.  Perhaps it was his eagerness, or just the vagaries of memory, but by the end Duncan was pretty sure that this change was much slower than the ones caused by the nursing bra.  Still, in the end, there it was - a foot where his hand had been.  He closed the Moonstone's box and then pulled off his sock.  He chuckled a bit as he wiggled his new toes at himself.  "Hello foot," he whispered softly (so as not to wake his wife sleeping behind him).

After a few tests of the limberness and weight-carrying capacity of his new extremity (and some pondering of the question - is it still a handstand if your hands are feet?), Duncan put his bathrobe on, and re-opened the slats on the Moonstone's box so he could change back.  And then he waited.  And waited.  If the change had been slow before, now it was positively glacial.  Duncan started to worry - had the moon already set?  He squinted at the printed list he'd put beside the box.  Nope, he should have at least another hour.  Had the moonstone already run out of ... whatever it used for power?  It seemed to be glowing still, though quite a bit dimmer than before.  Had he misread the time, or not adjusted for Daylight Savings?

By the time Duncan had answered these questions to his satisfaction, it was pretty clear the changes had stopped.  His hand was very clearly *not* a hand, though it wasn't really a foot either.  He wiggled his digits, then dug a glove out of his dresser drawer.  If he didn't flex his fingers, it only looked a little off...  With a sigh, he started his morning routine, he still had to get to work.

Typing with a half-transformed, gloved hand proved quite frustrating.  The glove got a few curious looks, but nobody actually outright asked him why he was wearing it.  Even so, he spent more than a little time imagining possible explanations.

Sidney, however, was not so circumspect.  As soon as he got home and closed the door behind him with a sigh of relief, she asked about the glove.

Duncan shrugged.  "I... well, I messed my hand up a bit.  Didn't want anyone to see."

Sidney's face showed her concern.  "Does it hurt?"

"No, I just...  Hey!"  Sidney had pulled his glove off and was staring at the hand/foot that was revealed.

"What did you do."  Her voice was quiet, but not (quite) dangerously so.

"I wanted to... test the Moonstone," Duncan admitted, "And the Moon set before I was done."

"I knew that thing was trouble," Sidney groused.  "Are you sure you want to keep it?"

"Yes!"  Duncan grinned.  "It was a pain in some ways, but... it was kind of cool to have made it through the day with a strange little secret."

Sidney rolled her eyes.  "You're going to do that again, aren't you?"

"Um... probably, yeah.  Just not the foot thing.  That made it hard to type."


After dinner and the usual bedtime rituals for their daughter, Courtney, Duncan watched for moonrise.  It came up at exactly the time his notes said it should.

"I don't get it," he muttered to himself.

"Don't get what?" Sidney asked.  Sometimes her hearing was just a bit too good.

"I just watched the Moon rise.  Right on schedule.  But this morning, it was like it set an hour early.  If it wasn't for needing to be at work well before moonset tomorrow I'd watch and test that too."

Sidney shrugged. "You'd have to climb up the hill behind us to see it, though."

Duncan nodded.  "That's true.  Ah well, I'll figure it out someday.  Or at least the correction factor.  For now... leave at least an hour."  He got up from the couch, and soon after returned with his hand restored to normal.  "Well, it works right after moonrise, anyway."


The next morning, Duncan couldn't help but test again.  The mere act of pulling out a pair of socks for the day reminded him of yesterday's trials, and this time there was plenty of time before moonset.  His hand transformed more quickly this time, presumably because the moon wasn't about to set.  He wiggled his toes, a sight which still made him smile, then watched intently as his foot melted back into a hand.  He considered trying to time the transition, but it was hard to say exactly when the change was done.

For the rest of the week, he repeated the test with much the same results.  The speed of change was fairly consistent, if hard to judge exactly.  It took about a minute for his hand to change to a foot, and a little longer to change back if he was just wearing the robe, about the same if he used the glove.  If he stood naked before the Moonstone, his foot-hand didn't change at all.


When Saturday morning rolled around, Duncan slept in a little.  He was still awake well before his wife and daughter, and decided to abandon experiments and just do something for fun.  He peered about in the dim light cast by the Moonstone.  What to try?  His gaze alighted on the nursing bra that had been used for his first Moonstone exposure, dangling half-out of his laundry hamper.  Yes, that would do nicely - he had wondered just what would have happened if Corrie hadn't stopped him.  Still, getting his hand merged to his chest while tangled in the bra-straps did seem unwise...

Duncan watched, bemused, as the bra-cup perched atop his hand sunk slowly down.  He peeked under the 'hat' to find a hand that was already mostly transformed.  He couldn't feel the bones in his hand, and when he tried to wiggle his fingers, the breast just sort of jiggled a bit.  Another minute later, and he couldn't even do that much.  It felt a bit like his hand had gone to sleep.  He gave it a little shake, and the breast at the end of his arm flopped about loosely, knocking off the bra cup.  Kneading the breast with his reamining hand, he couldn't feel any bones inside it - his hand was gone.  He frowned, looking at his arms side by side.  His left forearm was somewhat shorter now, too... his new breast wasn't so much replacing his left hand, as his left wrist.  Would it have changed his entire arm?  He filed that thought away for later as his continued kneading started to feel pretty good...

Duncan left his hand transformed for most of the morning, tucked into his bathrobe pocket to keep it out of his wife's sight.  The Moon didn't set until mid-afternoon, so he had plenty of time.  Of course, trying to eat lunch with only one hand got him a 'look' from Sidney, and he knew the game was up.  It was also hard to play with his daughter while short one hand, so he changed back.


Sunday morning Duncan tried a different experiment with the same bra.  He brought the Moonstone with him into the main bathroom, locking the door behind himself so he wouldn't be disturbed.  He shucked off his bathrobe, leaving it in a crumpled pile on the floor.  "Test number... 6, I guess.  Does the skylight count against 'magic censorship' if nobody is up there to see through it?" he asked himself.  "Let's see."

This time he put both hands into bra-cups, watching them change.  He was aiming for something about halfway between hands and breasts, just to see what it would be like.  "Focus!" he told himself.  He didn't want to let his thoughts wander off, say to what it would be like to be armless, how helpless that would make one.  Why was that idea so appealing?  He'd never even broached the subject of bondage type games with his wife, and armlessness wouldn't exactly be jumping in the shallow end...  "Oh bother."  Duncan looked down at his arms - what was left of them.  He gave them a quick shake to dislodge the bra, and sighed.

His arms ended at the elbow, each one capped with a lovely, round breast.  The worst part was that this put them *just* out of reach of his mouth...  Well, that and picking up and putting on his bathrobe was going to be quite a challenge.

Bending down to pick it up from a standing pose was right out, his arms weren't nearly long enough.  Kneeling seemed promising at first, though it was still difficult to get much traction with his breast-hands.  But just as he thought he was getting somewhere, his legs gave out underneath him, and he tumbled onto the bathrobe with a thud.

"What now?" he asked the floor, then rolled over.  "Oh, that figures.  Kneeling on the bra... nice one, Duncan.  Now all your limbs match."

He spent a while idly wondering what Sidney would do if she found him like this.  Eventually he settled on 'laugh herself silly'.

Then it was time to fix things.  Duncan squirmed and wriggled his way into the robe, and managed to get it wrapped around his body in more or less the right orientation.  Nothing.  He looked up, and realized that while he was on the floor he was out of the line of sight of the Moonstone.  So he squirmed his way to the far wall, and managed to prop himself up far enough that he could see the stone.  Before long, his limbs were back to normal and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Well, there's my exercise for the day." he muttered to no-one in particular.  Then he looked down at the bra.  "I bet I can focus better this time."

Showering with one hand halfway transformed into a breast was quite pleasant, in the end...


Monday morning he had a sock on his hand again, but only for one minute.  It did seem a bit slower.  By Tuesday he was sure of it, the pace of the transformation was noticeably off.  The Moonstone's glow was weaker too, even with the moon up.  The crescent moon was smaller by the day, and its power was waning with it.

Wednesday it was very clear - even after waiting several minutes, his hand wasn't entirely transformed, and it was equally slow changing back.  But that wasn't all... by noon Duncan was feeling odd, sort of... constrained about his chest.  All through the afternoon he hunched over his desk, as his suspicions were gradually confirmed.  His breasts were back.  And they were starting to feel ... full.

Luckily, he didn't leak before it was time to go home.  He rushed to the Moonstone as soon as he was home, but the schedule made it clear... it was too late.  He'd have to wait until Thursday morning, and could only hope that the Moonstone still had enough oomph to change him back.

"I don't get it.  Why are they growing?"

"Why are what growing, dear?"

Duncan sighed, and stripped his shirt off.  "These.  They're back.  I'm guessing something happened at the full moon, and the 'nursing' form is now my default."

"What are you going to do about work?"

Duncan shrugged.  "Change back in the morning, hope it doesn't fade as fast as today... yeah, right."

Sidney rooted around in her jewelry box, and pulled out a long silver chain.  "Use this."

Duncan nodded.  "That will keep me from changing.  And if it's my own form, the mental effects shouldn't be too bad."


Friday after work, Duncan tore the chain off his neck as soon as he came in the door, and dropped it in Sidney's hands.  "I don't *ever* want to do that again."

"What?  Why not?"

"It made me feel... normal."  Duncan shuddered.

"What's wrong with that?"  Sidney looked genuinely puzzled.

"I'm not normal.  I've never *been* normal.  When I was in high school, our catch-phrase was 'normal is boring'.  In particular, I love the idea of changing shape, of being something else.  When I was wearing *that* to hold this form...  All that was gone."