FRIDAY

It was a quiet night in Muriel’s house. Everyone else was out – gone to the theatre, or maybe the cinema, or somesuch – and she had been happy in front of the telly, cuddled up in the big armchair that was reserved for serious viewing. You had to book it if you had an evening’s binge-watching planned or you were catching a live match. It was rare for it to be unreserved like tonight. But now the telly was off. It had only really been a time filler while Muriel waited for the lounge’s open fire to get going. Logs piled high, it was now ablaze and the room was toasty warm. Warm enough to be able to take your clothes off…

Muriel lay there naked on the floor in front of the hearth. Her body was unrestricted by clothes and her powers meant it was unrestricted by shape too. She wanted to change, to enjoy the sensual flood that came with urging her physical being to alter.

What should she become?

A flex of back muscles almost brought scales, but no. Feathers started to sprout on outstretched arms that could be wings, but again, this wasn’t quite what she was after.

It was going to be fur.

With a shrug of her shoulders a coat, soft, light and brown, enveloped her whole body.

Time to get on all fours.

Oh, it felt good, tugging the bones of her back and ribcage into shape.

Now her weight was evenly distributed on four thin yet muscled legs. Her hooves had formed almost immediately. A shiver went through her as her neck and shoulders obeyed her mental commands and clicked into place. Elongating her face came almost naturally from this process, Muriel literally pulling it until snout, eyes and ears all felt right. Finally, the small female horns that she would have as a mature specimen.

And that was it.

She was a deer, a woodland creature inside this angular, domestic setting. She’d have a bit of a potter about before turning back. She should have plenty of time before her housemates returned.

SATURDAY

Muriel still thrilled to the fact that she’d only just changed back in time last night. When she heard footsteps on the gravel path outside, she immediately began to swiftly force her body back to its natural form. She had never done it so quickly, and even then she had had to get dressed. When the door opened she had sat there panting, something she had passed off as having a nightmare after the warmth of the fire had encouraged her to drop off to sleep. She hadn’t convinced anyone, she was sure of that, but at least they hadn’t learned the truth.

She ached in all the places that she would usually push to make her changes, her ‘scrunch muscles’ as she called them after the technique used by the shape changer who had taught her how to transform. This concerned her. Had she overdone it with her rapid changing?

To find the answer, she had come out to a quiet corner of the beach at the edge of town to test herself. In this secluded part of the bay, she’d see if she was still in control of her appearance.

This summer morning was warm enough for her to strip off again. She could sometimes incorporate what she was wearing into her changes, but it was easier without and she didn’t want to aggravate any injuries she might have sustained. So, she squatted down in the shade and formed a picture in her mind of what she wanted to become. Then, tentatively at first, but with more confidence when she experienced no more than a dull ache, she pushed with her unique muscles and initiated the change.

Her face and torso began to fatten up and her arms and legs became less defined. Skin toughened and darkened, the soft pink of her light complexion gradually being replaced by a cold grey-brown. Whiskers sprung from another animal snout as she twitched her nose. Then that darkened too and was soon complemented with a pair of shiny black jewels for her new eyes. Nearly there, she tensed and held the pressure for a sustained period, her guttural animal voice grunting all the while. The transformation completed as her limbs fully resolved themselves into flippers. Her impression was finished.

She waddled across the sand, seeking the waves and freedom. As soon as the ground fell away beneath her, she became a much more graceful thing. She quickly learned the powers of her new form, spinning and gliding through the cold, clear water. She clapped, mimicking the seals she had seen at the sea life reserve further along the beach. It was a joy to let loose like this and forget the stresses of the everyday world. But she had to return eventually and soon she hauled herself up the sand to the spot where she had left her clothes.

Time to change back.

She pushed.

Nothing happened.

She pushed again, straining and letting out a bark of effort.

Not even a quiver.

Her muscles still ached, but they did not respond. A low fear struck her heart. Was she going to remain a seal? Who could she call for help? She couldn’t contact her housemates – she couldn’t even get back to the house.

Panic started to overcome her and she found it harder and harder to breathe with unfamiliar lungs. Dizziness swept over her and she began to lose consciousness. The last thing she was aware of before passing out was the slap-slap of her flipper on the wet sand.

When she came to, cold in the grey dusk that had crept in, she was human again. Disoriented, a jumble of thoughts fought to achieve some sort of order.

She had been a seal – but how?

Then she remembered – she had changed into a seal – that had been real. She had the power to turn into anything.

Only she didn’t.

She had been stuck in seal shape. Now, somehow, she had become herself again. She could feel the parts within her that allowed her to change as certainly as she could feel her arms and legs. When she tested those muscles, gently, they hurt. They hurt like something broken.

Gathering her clothes and towelling herself off, Muriel contemplated a life without shapeshifting.

SUNDAY

Muriel had spent the day locked in her room feeling sorry for herself. Her friends and housemates had tried to rouse her from her fug. She had politely, firmly, told them she wanted to be alone and they had respected her wishes. Everybody has their off day.

Muriel was trying to get her head around the very real possibility of a life with nothing but off days.

Oh, she could have been anyone, anything. If only she had respected her gift instead of overtaxing it, wanting more and more. She was once one of the most amazing people in the world and now she was, well, ordinary. That might be ok for everybody else, but not for her.

She had a close look at herself in the mirror on her dresser. She was so used to studying other faces, memorising the details she would need in order to assume the appearance of another, that she had only a vague idea of what she looked like herself. She found herself smiling.

There was a fresh look about the ordinary face that regarded her back. Her eyes were bluer than she remembered and her skin, though pale and slightly blotchy in its unmade-up state, was smooth and youthful. Her pale blonde hair was a bit straggly, dangling across her eyes and cheeks. It was all very… uncomplicated.

Muriel started to consider the stress she put herself under mentally as well as physically by twisting herself into all manner of shapes nonstop. Maybe giving the old body a rest (possibly permanently) was no bad thing.

The hair was a bit of a let-down, mind. It would be good if she could make that bright copper-red – something to add a bit of colour to her pale looks. As Muriel thought this, without any other cue from her, her hair turned a fierce, fiery red. Muriel flinched as the new reflection jumped out at her. She’d made changes like that before – that was no surprise. But she hadn’t made any effort here. It had changed with only a thought.

Could it be?

She imagined herself with dark hair and just as quickly as before it turned a rich, chocolate brown. Similarly, she found she could make her eyes just as brown, or green, or black or violet, merely by thinking about it.

Colour changes had never required much effort anyway, but this had taken none at all. She couldn’t possibly be able to do this with the rest of her body.

Could she?

She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, a completely different person was looking back at her.

She had felt a flutter while she had been concentrating, like a second-long dose of butterflies, but it bore no resemblance to the stretching and straining that had always accompanied her metamorphoses. Yet here was a woman the same size and age as her, but with a darker complexion, longer hair and wider, wilder eyes. Not Muriel, but unrecognisable, utterly anonymous. A face plucked out of nowhere, created by a stray thought that Muriel wasn’t even aware of.

Excited thoughts suddenly tumbled into one another. What was the extent of these effortless transformations? Could she become animals without any exertions? Or even hybrids, something she’d never previously been able to get the hang of?

She would find out later, but for now she held this mysterious human form.

Who was she, and how had she set Muriel free?