Sheila Shifts 05

Three Quick Changes

It was time for a workout: three transformations in quick succession.

Sheila concentrated, letting go of her human perceptions. She regarded the form in the mirror. It was her, the real her, but only a version. The original and best, worth keeping. But it wasn't all she had to be.

Sheila started with the fur. If nothing else it’d keep her warm, as she stood there shivering in her birthday suit.

It all still felt like something secret, having to take her clothes off, something to lock the bedroom door for. That was a practical consideration – after all, a bear can’t wear a size 14 dress. But it added to the excitement, something that she might not feel later, when all of this had become second nature. Assuming it would ever become that, assuming a time would come when sluicing off your clothes and reshaping yourself into an animal would be as ordinary as swimming or going for a run.

Exercise.

Sheila tautened her muscles, let her skin stretch, bade her soft hairs to thicken, strengthen, grow. She felt her long head of hair, human hair, slowly retreat from her shoulders, until it matched the texture and length of her new fur.

Next, the claws and teeth, the existing bone, chitin and enamel, sharpening and growing.

She flexed her hands.

‘That’s it,’ she thought, feeling the tendons pull her fingers into paws, the claws sliding into place. She stretched open her mouth, yawning to let the fangs fill out, her nose flattening, spreading into a snout. She squinted her eye sockets until they matched, then held it, held it, until the rest of her facial muscles caught up. Her animal eyes could just make out the bear-woman reflected before her, suddenly aware that her fully-furred face was adorned with two human-shaped ears. With roll of the jaw and a shrug of the shoulder and they shifted up her skull, the lobes melting away, the tips narrowing out to a point.

Sheila shivered and the fur that copied her rust-coloured hair darkened to a grizzly black.

She set about altering her still-womanly proportions. A deep breath broadened the chest, expanded the shoulders, bulked up the torso and discarded the last traces of humanity in favour of raw animal power. Legs, thighs, hind, all thickened and with a final stretch the last bones clicked in to place.

Sheila was a bear.

A perfect copy, a wild animal. But a wild animal with an extraordinary ability.

She climbed onto her back legs and stretched her forepaws wide. Sheila tensed the brutish muscles trapped beneath the skin, reordered the fur once again. Hairs split and coarsened further, each strand fanned out, splaying into a flat patch of black.

Feathering.

Mass dropped away from her huge bulk. Trembling joints squeezed the body down, down.

A wrinkle of the snout stretched it, hardened it, curved it over the shrinking mouth from which all her teeth retracted with a snarl. The ears withered away with the reduction of her head, the eyes blinked open and found new places at either side. The black feathers that replaced her fur now lightened to a deep brown as she let out a shrill ‘caw’ with the effort.

Claws were bunched into talons, the flesh of her paws tightened and hardened as she tensed them in turn.

Her forepaws thinned out, each digit elongated and received a close coat of feathers. As the last of them grew into place she spread her new wings, stopping short of testing them in flight.

Sheila was a hawk.

Only for seconds however, as she threw her wings back and stretched her beak skywards. In a second, she was another foot taller, her sprouting frame emerging from behind the dissolving blanket of feathers. Pink flesh became more and more apparent as with each breath she pumped substance into her form.

Beak and avian stare softened as her face became rounder. Pursing lips helped to recapture her feminine mouth and a grin returned a set of human teeth. The bald scalp left by the disappearing feathers was stretched by a wiggle of her slowly sprouting ears and in response the first return of her red locks occurred. A nod and a couple of shakes teased her hair out to its customary length.

Nearly full size once more she beat her featherless wings until the joints realigned into arms, and then elbows, wrists and fingers all fell into place. A flex of the biceps pumped out the muscles to their usual, slightly unfirm, appearance.

As her knees reversed, she bent them, exercising her leg muscles and re-establishing their human limits. A couple of stamps helped the circulation around her newly fleshy feet.

A wiggle of the bottom put paid to the last few tail feathers.

Sheila was herself again.

But that isn’t where she agreed to end this little test. Fixing her stare upon her glassy counterpart she pinned her arms to her sides. Straightening her back, she absorbed her limbs into the mass of her body, withdrawing the bones of her arms as their flesh joined her torso, fusing her legs as her spine extended and her fibulas melted away.

Sheila began to twist beneath her skin, gathering it with little twitches, forming scales.

A stretch of her neck and her head narrowed a little.

Then she tried to coil up, fall into herself, reduce her size.

But, after a gasp, nothing happened.

She closed her eyes in concentration and held her breath, forcing her skull to alter further, her skin to complete the diamond pattern that had begun to form, writhing around as she thought herself smaller, smaller.

After a short while she gave up. She’d exhausted her incredible body and it steadfastly refused to obey her commands to transform. Lying before her mirror, relaxing, allowing her shape to find its original self once more, she took stock of what she’d achieved and what she’d yet to accomplish.

Next time she’d manage it.