Sheila Shifts 07

Tail; Feather

There were fins and a tail to come, but Sheila wanted to start with the hair. She grabbed handful after handful of the foamy surf that lapped at her bare feet and splashed her head with it. Her short, brown cut flattened against her scalp as it dampened. Being wet didn’t make this easier, but it certainly made it more pleasurable.

Sheila closed her eyes and tensed her shoulders ever-so-slightly and a couple of those damp strands began to writhe. She gently tilted her neck and the movement spread, more of her hair coming to life, dancing to an unheard song. And lengthening, stretching out almost like shoots seeking the sun.

She waded into the water, alone in that small secluded bay warmed by the afternoon sun. The narrow shingle beach quickly dropped away beneath the breaking waves and Sheila’s shoulders were soon submerged. By now, her hair was long enough to reach the water having transformed into a brown/green undulating mass that could have been an anemone or other sea creature. Sheila twitched her scalp a final time and her hair stopped growing. She took a deep breath and plunged under the water, her hair splaying out in every direction.

She’d only ever done this once before, swallowing with a closed mouth and sustaining a pressure on her epiglottis. She felt her ears pop, but more importantly, she welcomed the sensation of her gills forming. She swallowed again, this time with her mouth open, and inhaled deeply through her nose, her head buzzing for a second as the rush of oxygen hit her brain directly from its new source at her neck. She was still walking on the sloping sea floor and as she acclimatised to the new environment, she prepared herself for what she needed to dive deeper and further into this world.

She’d hidden her swimsuit under a rock on the beach, so there was nothing impeding the transformation as her legs began to fuse together. Lifting her feet from the floor, she kept the spent air in her inoperative lungs for buoyancy and floated.

The sense of what happened next oddly put her in mind of a cafetière or French press. As her legs melted away, she pushed down with her spine, causing it to elongate, propelling and reshaping her pelvis into the single mass of flesh and muscle that was becoming her new tail. A fish tail, as with a subtle squeeze of brand new muscles, delicate, opalescent scales formed across its surface. A slowly-grown belt of colour at her waist suddenly spread downward as the scales rapidly increased in number. By the time they had reached where her feet had once been, her tail fin had already begun to form. Sheila imagined bunching her toes and in response the fin unfurled. With the first experimental flick of her now-completed tail she found that not only her body had been transformed. Her entire relationship with the sea was redefined and it took only the merest thought to propel herself through it at astonishing speed

Sheila was a mermaid.

Further from shore and deeper still. It was intoxicating, knowing you had complete mastery of the environment. Almost without realising, Sheila had altered her eyes too. As she swooped, her improved sight took in her undersea neighbours: disturbing a shoal of sea bream; racing a pod of porpoises and coming to rest among curious seahorses. She’d broken the surface while playing with the porpoises, arcing a good distance above the water before plunging back below. It was fun, but it was also a test for the next phase of her exercise this morning.

She’d gotten a sense of the power and speed she’d need to reach her goal. With this in mind she concentrated her efforts on her tail once again. The air trapped in her lungs escaped in a sigh as she bunched her muscles, causing them to grow and in turn increase the size of her impressive tail. Without buoyancy, she began to sink, before a casual flick of her tail sped her toward the surface. Skimming just below, she accelerated, far outpacing any other creature that might try to follow her. In preparation for what she was about to attempt, she reformed her arms, flinging them back and flattening them with a flex of her shoulders so they became more fin-like. But not completely – this was not the final shape she intended for them.

Now confident she was ready, she plummeted down into the darkness, mind on the task ahead, but still marvelling at the incredible freedom of her movement. Then, satisfied she had gone far enough, she turned back around and powered toward the surface.

The speed was incredible – faster than she had been before, faster than anything she’d ever seen before. In seconds the sea around her had disappeared and she was in the air.

Simultaneous with the last push of her tail, launching her from the water, she contracted every muscle in her arms/fins. Yelling with the effort, she reshaped them again as she soared on her upward trajectory. Instantly, they curved into new shapes. A dark swathe of what at first looked like thick fur swept across them, reaching as far as her shoulders and the top of her spine. This ‘fur’ quickly resolved itself into a pennaceous mass of feathers, completely covering what were now clearly a pair of huge wings. Their rapid growth halted as Sheila’s cry died away. That wasn’t the only energy expended. Sheila’s ascent had come to its end and she began to fall back toward the waiting sea below. Except… She didn’t.

Quickly adjusting to a different sort of current beneath her, she spread her newborn wings and glided through air, close enough to water to flap her tail against it. Several beats gained her some height, and it wasn’t long before she was revelling in a different freedom from that she had felt underwater. She had been a bird before, but this chimera was different. The sensation of sheer strength her muscular, almost monstrous, body gave her was a consequence of the alterations she had made to herself for this exercise, but it hadn’t been the goal in itself. Still, she delighted in it, laughing at her shadow against the waves. She turned back toward land, her long sea-coloured hair trailing behind her. Her wings expertly cut their way through the clear sky and her tail unconsciously swayed in sympathy.

Sheila was in flight.