shiftertech

[shiftertech]

I feel like I have been here for days now. Sitting idly by. walking the same path back and forth on autopilot. I hardly feel conscious most of the time, like my mind is running in the background yet never fully aware of whats happening. Sometimes, in small moments I can feel the sand blowing against me. Feel the warmth of the sun.

Tomorrow is my last day here. Been two whole weeks and not a hint of movement. Not that I'm complaining the calm is preferable to the alternative. Every now and then the sensors will light up and pull my attention to something but it's usually a stray bird or the like. The whiplash of the being pulled forward to such a state of focus and then drift back into the background can be pretty taxing on the mind. I will definitely enjoy the few days rest after this.

It's finally here, the last day. The new squad shuffled in and we are out of here. The last day is always tough. First they bring you all the way froward to run a systems check. Then you are pushed so far back you may as well be in a coma. Supposedly its cause the mind cant handle the strain of the desync. Gotta admit even in that unconscious state if feels like I am being torn in half.

All systems are in the green.

Preparing for desync

3

2

1

What.....what is this? Where am I?

Fuck my head is killing me.

Wait, I... I don't remember it feeling like this before.

A rush of air, its defining. I can feel the cold all over my skin. It's never felt this cold before. Is my body shivering or seizing?

The...The light pouring through the crack its blinding. Why won't my vision calibrate? Why can I still see it even when my eyes are closed?

Release that one over there.

I've got this one.

Ok, lets get them up.

Nice and slow.

Make sure to hold them up now we're almost there.

Fuck. I can hardly keep my head up.

I feel like I can hardly move.

Was I always this weak? No.. No I swear I could... Wait no was that?

Ok your gonna feel a slight pinch alright.

Everything is ok you're doing great.

I... I...I...I..... This what is it?

I...It's all coming back. I can feel my fingers agin.

The tendons in my arm, feels like they are recalibrating.

Each, finger

one at a time.

Ok last thing we're gonna disconnect the cable ok.

It's gonna feel a little strange ok but nothing you haven't done before alright.

Shhhhhhhhit! It feels as though my spine is being pulled out through my neck. I can feel a strong jolt through my entire body. Every part of me tense to the point I feel its gonna rip apart. Then suddenly everything lets go. There, there is nothing left, it, she's ...n.. nevermind.

Ok thats it!

You did fantastic!

Take your time ok when you're ready we're gonna help you up and get you outta there ok.

My hands come up slowly, aching, to cradle my head. I feel my fingers slide with apprehension across my forehead and through the thin layer of fuzz on my head. It's soft, cut short. it feels good as my hands lightly brush against it. My fingers slide even further back, down the back of my neck all the way to the port at the base. They trace the edges of it, where the cold metal meets my skin, the point where we were just one. My arms close around my face as I feel tears begin to roll down my cheeks.

It's more than just the desync. They rip out a part of me ever time I step out of that cockpit. I can feel memories, absent. Gaps where it wasn't just you or me but us, missing. I am only half of a whole agin. An incomplete being. They pull us apart to make us rely on them make us serve them. I always forget when we are together but it becomes painfully clear when you are no longer there.

It's ok, take all the time you need.

Your mind will reacclimate just give it time.

A lie they tell every time. Sure it becomes more bearable over time, but your absence is always felt. The echos of you in my mind linger. I know it is only a week without you but I can't seem to gather the strength to step out of the cockpit. To leave you behind. Alone. I sit motionless in your frame. Both of us touching yet unable to connect.

[shiftertech]

The Corporation is distinctly opposed to calling pilots "angels". They've released several statements recommending that officers silence any such language, saying it "threatens the integrity of the forces", and that HAKs and the pilots who control them are "tools, not deities". But I mean, when you see the way a suit's holoprojectors form a pulsing ring around a pilot's helmet, or when one slumps forwards out of its cockpit to reveal that thick mass of wires creeping from its back, it's impossible not to see the resemblance. And when, like most of the men stationed here, you've found yourself pinned down by heavy artillery fire from two directions with no chance of survival, but out of the heavens a Bishop-class rig emerges and razes the enemy with what can only be described as holy flame? I mean hell, that's enough to make anyone a believer (pardon my language).

I have a buddy who deals with the HAKs directly. He works in biomechanics, combat simtech or whatever. I asked him once what he thought about the whole "angel" thing. He got real quiet, and he looked directly at me and said, "you don't even know the half of it." And I stared right into his eyes and I could see that same heavenly flame burning in there and I knew that he had seen something he couldn't quite understand, but that he loved with all his heart.

[shiftertech]

Disconnect Syndrome

There’s a reason they put restrictions on how long a Pilot is supposed to be deployed out in the field. They say that being synced with a mech for long periods of time can have detrimental effects on a pilots psyche. Disconnect Syndrome is what they call it, because the symptoms don’t really start to hit until you disengage from your mech.

Sometimes emergencies happen though, and mechs are designed to be able to support their pilots long past the designated “Safe Deployment Time.” The cockpit is equipped with an array of stimulants, vitamins, and nutrient paste to help minimize the physical effects of long deployments. The onboard Integrated Mechanical Personality has largely free reign to administer these as needed to maintain its pilots well-being.

Which is why you’re still able to make it back to the hangar after roughly 36 hours, over four times longer than the established safe period. Your mech had kept you going, helped to keep the exhaustion at bay long enough for you to make your way back from behind enemy lines. You were starting to feel a bit sluggish, but you knew the worst effects of Disconnect Syndrome were yet to come.

An older man in a long white lab coat has joined the usual retinue of crew rushing into the hangar as your mech settles into its cradle. You feel the docking clamps wrap around your limbs, and you know that’s not a good sign. Your IMP whispers comfort into your brain-stem, assurances that things will be okay. It’s probably lying, it’s programmed to help keep your mental state stable, but the thought helps anyway.

There’s a hiss of air as the seal on your cockpit breaks and it decompresses. Suddenly you become aware of your flesh and meat body once again, and it hurts. Pain and exhaustion has settled into your mostly organic bones, and your organs are churning from the strain of the past 36 hours.

Then your interface cables start to disconnect, and it gets worse.

It feels like parts of your mind are being torn out of you. You feel the ghost touch of your IMP in your thoughts as the ports disconnect and you lose direct communication with it. The oxygen mask and nutrition tube pull themselves away from your face and you can’t help but let out a scream of agony. The separation has never felt this painful before, but then again, after 36 hours together, you and your IMP were more intertwined than you’ve ever been before.

Physical sensation finally starts to register again, and you realize tears are streaming down your face just as a technician jabs a needle into your neck.

Immediately your senses start to dull, the pain eases as your thoughts turn sluggish. You slump out of your pilots cradle into the arms the tech who dosed you. Just before your world goes black, you see the doctor standing over you, a grim look on his face.

--

When you wake up again, you immediately know something is wrong. You try to ping your external sensors, but you get no response. You then try to run a diagnostic, but that fails too. In a desperate, last-ditch effort, you try to force access to your external cameras and suddenly light floods your senses. Your instincts catch up first and you blink, trying to clear the pain of the lights, and that’s when you realize it’s not your external cameras that you’re seeing.

It takes a minute or two for your vision to adjust to the light, which feels too long, and when it finally does, the world doesn’t look quite right. You’ve only got access to such a limited spectrum. No infrared, no thermal. The presence of your IMP is notably absent, and your skin feels wrong. You try to sit up, and it’s a struggle to figure out the correct inputs to send to your muscles to get them to do what you want.

The harsh white light of the infirmary grates against your visual processors, you feel like you’re having to re-learn how to control this body. Your body. Technically, at least. Something doesn’t feel right about calling it that anymore. You felt more comfortable crawling back into the hangar after 36 hours deployed than you do now.

The pale skin of your body catches in your vision and you glance down at it. The body's limbs are thinner and more frail than usual, and its skin is paler. Consequences of being in the cockpit for so long, subsisting on nothing but nutrient paste. It’s a far cry from the solid metal plates of your mech, its powerful hydraulic joints, its mounted combat and communication systems.

There’s a button on the side of bed you’ve been deposited in. You think it’s red, but you’re not sure you’re processing color properly right now. You try to reach over and push it, and it takes you a moment to realize you were trying to do so with a limb you don’t currently have.

There are so many things about this body that are wrong. It’s not big enough, or strong enough, or heavy enough. You don’t have enough eyes, sensors, or processors. You have the wrong number of limbs, and they’re all the wrong size and shape.

And there is a distinct void in your mind where the presence of your IMP should be.

The door to your room opens suddenly, and you instinctively try to fire off chaff and take evasive maneuvers. None of that translates properly to your flesh and blood body though, and all that happens is you let out a dry croak from your parched throat.

The man who walks through the door is the same doctor who was present when you disengaged from your mech, and he wears the same grim look on his face as he looks you up and down. You think there’s pity in his gaze, but you can’t quite read him properly right now. The jumbled mess of your brain tells you what he’s going to say before he says it, anyway. The harshest symptoms of Disconnect Syndrome don’t hit until after the pilot has disengaged from their mech.

You’ve already heard the symptoms before, and they map perfectly onto what you’re experiencing. You never thought it would be this painful, or this… discomforting. Your mind reaches for the presence of your IMP, searching for comfort, but you are only reminded that the connection is no longer there.

The doctor gives you a rundown that he’s probably had to do dozens of times, and he tells you that you’ll be grounded for the foreseeable future. That hurts more than anything else. The knowledge that, after all this, you won’t be able to reconnect with your true body, your partner, your other half, for who knows how long.

By the time you realize you’re crying, the doctor is already gone. The longing in your chest and your mind has become unbearable, and through sheer force of will you’re able to push this unwieldy body out of bed. Walking feels wrong, but you’re able to get to your feet and make your way out of the room in an unfamiliar gait.

You have to get back to your partner, you have to make sure it’s okay.

You need to hear her voice in your head again, her reassurances.

The world isn’t right without her presence in your mind.

You stumble into the hangar almost on all fours. How you managed to make it without alerting any personnel feels like a miracle. At least until you catch the eye of a technician lounging in the corner. The look she gives you is full of sympathy, and she jerks her head in the direction of where your mech sits in its docking cradle.

She’s a majestic sight, even through your limited spectrum of vision. 20 meters tall, 6 massive limbs, and bristling with weapons and sensor arrays (all of which have been disarmed by this point).

She’s beautiful.

You clamber frantically up the chassis, easily finding handholds in a frame you know better than the back of your hand. You pull the manual release on the cockpit hatch and stumble into it in a tangle of organic limbs.

Shaking hands grasp the main interface cable from above the pilot’s chair, and you move to slot it into the port in the back of your head. You’ve never done this manually before, usually you’re locked into the chair and the system connects you automatically.

Something about doing it with your flesh and blood hands makes it feel so much more intimate.

The cable clicks into place and your eyes roll back in your head. Tears start to stream down your face as you feel the comforting presence of your IMP rush in and wrap itself around your mind. Your thoughts reach out and embrace it back, sobbing at the relief you feel from being whole once again. You realize you don’t ever want to feel the pain of disconnecting from her again.

There’s a reason they put restrictions on how long a Pilot is supposed to be deployed.

[shiftertech]

forgot to upload dis

#this pilot definitely keeps a copy of that battle recap on hand for when she's flirting #it'd work on me

[shiftertech]

The Solar Sprint

You ever heard of the Cannonball Run? It was a thing back on earth, back before corpo wars. It was an unsanctioned race across a continent. Folks would trick out cars with extra fuel tanks, police scanners, the works, and just burn their way from one ocean to the other. Driving for something like a day straight, avoiding cops all the way, and only stopping to refuel. Kinda wild, don’t you think? A test of speed and stamina, seeing how hard you could really push your vehicle.

That’s what the Solar Sprint started out as, you know. First time someone ran it, the Jovian blockade was still up. They blew right past the military lines, their mech too fast for any of those combat frames to catch. It was big news at the time, everyone thought it was some secret R.O.M. tech built to break the blockade. Turned out it was just some wrench-head who wanted to see how fast they could get from Mercury to Neptune. The crazy fucker actually did it too, straight shot from the solar collection station on Mercury, all the way to the NDS Research outpost. The scientists there nearly shit themselves when the Runner went blasting past their observatory like that. Can’t imagine they saw any frames out there that weren’t clunky research models before then, especially with the blockade still up.

There’s still footage of the first sprint up on the Net if you look. Some cargo hauler caught footage of the Runner nearly side-swipping his freight ship between Earth and Venus. There was a leaked clip of them breaking the Jovian blockade too, but you might be hard pressed to find that one these days. runners sometimes carry hard copies though, so if you run into the right people you might be able to see it.

It became a whole thing, y’know? Kind of a fuck you to the corps, the wars, all of it. Building frames in a different way, not just for blowing each other up. Was a kind of creative revolution, an expression of freedom. Corps can’t keep us down, yeah? Something like a thousand runners tried it over the next couple years. Not all of em made it; some of em got caught by the blockade, some of em their frames couldn’t handle the trek. But enough of em made it that it started to become a real competition. Who could make the sprint in the fastest time? Folks posted on forums about crazy ideas they were coming up with for propellants, aerodynamics, you name it. Gearheads across the net had a brand new obsession to pour over.

Soon enough though, the corps caught on, realized it was easier to sanction the thing than to try and stop people from doing it. Enough cargo freighters crashed, enough blockades ran, it became more profitable to make an event out of the thing. The Sprint lost some of it’s luster after that. Speed frames plastered with sponsorships and built with corpo parts didn’t really capture the energy of the original run. The yearly Sprint is technically open to public teams, but any self respecting Runner isn’t gonna attempt it during sanctioned times. Kinda defeats the purpose of it all if they clear the shipping lanes and wait for optimal conditions, right?

Every once in a while though, you might spot somebodies custom frame sitting in orbit around the solar collection station. And who knows? They might be the next crazy wrench-head to break that record.

[shiftertech]

Such Lovely Fur

[Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3]

Chapter 4

I go on alone.

The passage through the mountain winds and branches, confirming my suspicions of a labyrinth. The light from the entrance persists for a time, longer than it would before my eyes were changed, but soon I am enveloped in pitch darkness. I am guided only by the faint sounds of the space, the subtle smells and whispers of breeze.

I make my way ever forward and ever higher until I discover the faintest light once more. The walls become carved in sharper lines and I begin to pass sconces bearing torches with a strange blue fire that gives off no heat. Eventually the stone walls give way to ice. As I proceed, the temperature drops. The chill of this place penetrates even my thick fur coat and my breath comes out in great clouds.

The further I go, the smoother and more ornate the walls become until I find myself wandering a grand palatial space. It is unnervingly empty, the study paws of my feet barely make a sound, but my footsteps still echo ominously.

That is until I hear the music. The music is somehow worse. It means someone is here. This horrible frozen palace is someone's home.

It is true that I have spent the past few days cavorting with a demon, but Rook was a physical presence, something I could relate to. This place is saturated in some primal elemental power that I cannot fathom.

The music grows ever louder as I make my way higher, drawing me ever closer to my goal. I know that when I find the source of the music, I will find my betrothed.

I finally reach a grand hall, grander than any I have passed yet. Every surface of the ice is carved in exquisitely fine details. The music emanates from a pair of mighty doors at the end of the hall.

As I walk, I suddenly spy a figure out of the corner of my eye. I am so on edge that I leap back in animal fright, laying my ears back and fluffing the fur on my tail. My reflection responded in kind.

What I mistook for another parallel hallway is actually a mirror… or at least a sheet of ice polished mirror smooth.

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I have been frightened by my own reflection, but in my defense, I have not seen myself since my transformation.

I stare at the thing that I have become.

I had at least some idea of the fur and the paws and the tail, but Rook's final gift comes as a shock. My face is still generally my own, but the leopard features are unmistakable. My eyes are the color of polished gold, with the irises covering most of the visible surface. My nose has flattened and the tip has darkened. Feline ears poke out from snarled hair that has become the same silver grey color as the rest of my. I bare my teeth and find that my canines are larger than I initially thought.

I have become a beast, more animal than human.

Resolute, I walk to the doors and through the translucent ice, I can make out dim figures moving in time with it.

I take a breath and push them open to reveal a grand ballroom. The space is impossibly cavernous, larger and more extravagant than any room in the manors of any of the merchant princes in my home country. The space is filled with hundreds of dancers garbed in finery from every conceivable culture, from far distant lands and ages long forgotten. Each one of them is more beautiful than the last. The court of the Lady of Winter. Her collection.

All of them have a strange bluish cast to their skin and frost rims the edges of their clothes. Upon my entrance, the nearest dancers fall impossibly still to stare unblinking at me with impassive expressions. The stillness spreads out from me like a ripple in water and the music fades away.

The room is absolutely silent, I am distressed to discover that the only sound is my own heartbeat. Terror siezes me as some mysterious animal instinct tells me that these people do not smell alive. Nor do they smell quite dead. They are frozen, kept animated and eternally beautiful by the everpresent unfathomable power of this place.

I hear another sound, a slow heartbeat at the far end of the chamber.

I take a step forward and the crowd parts. They all stare at me. They stare at my torn and filthy clothes. They stare at my fur and my tail and my ears and my eyes.

I want to run. I want to flee this horrible place.

I take another step forward and another and another until I finally reach a raised dais.

A woman sits on a grand throne of ice that gleams iridescently behind her. Her skin is impossibly pale and perfectly smooth as if she were carved of ice herself. Her hair is white as snow and her eyes are the color of the pale blue ice around us. A crown sits atop her head, gleaming silver and studded with diamonds. Her dress is some sort of silvery silk, shining impossibly like a mirror made into fabric.

I have heard tales of her. All children have. Be good or the Lady of Winter will come for you in the night. In some versions of the tales she is a witch who gained the secret of immorality. In others she is a spirit made flesh, a physical manifestation of winter itself. She is a collector of souls, stealing people away from their homes and bringing them here.

I am so terrified by her presence that I only belatedly notice the figure seated at her side.

My betrothed is clothed in the very same regalia he wore on the celebration on the eve of what was meant to be our wedding. His heart beats so slowly in his chest and his eyes are glazed over, surely in the process of being frozen like the rest of the people here.

He blinks and some of the fog lifts from his eyes. He stares at me for a long while before recognition finally sets in.

“Astra?” he gasps. “What happened to you?”

I should be relieved that he recognizes me, but terror and doubt and uncertainty eat away at me.

“I came to rescue you,” I confess. “Along the way I met a demon. In exchange for her freedom she granted me gifts to not only help me survive but to reach you.”

His eyes widen in horror.

“You did this to yourself?” he asks. “You made yourself into a monster?”

A monster?

My doubts and fears crystalize in my belly. A wave of despair floods through me, but to my surprise it is followed by a wave of hot anger. Rook has given me incredible gifts, they are unorthodox certainly, but they are beautiful.

“Is that how you see me?” I snarl. “A monster? I did this to save you!”

He recoils at the heat in my voice. He opens his mouth, but the Lady of Winter silences him with a raised finger.

“It seems you have a choice, my pet,” she says, her voice resonating unnaturally from the very walls. “Remain here, unchanged and beautiful for eternity, or return home with your fiancee and the knowledge of what she has done to herself.”

He casts her a wild desperate look.

“You would simply let me go?” he asks.

“There are powers in this world great enough to challenge mine,” she replies. “This one has shown great devotion in making the treacherous journey here. If it is indeed true love that drives her, I dare not go against it.”

He looks back to me.

“Astra,” he pleads. “Tell me there is a way to break your curse. We can return home, we can have the life we were meant to have.”

A curse?

“This… this is not a curse,” I gasp. “It is a gift.”

“Astra,” he pleads. “A demon has addled your mind. You have dabbled in magic. If we return and you stay as you are, there will be no place for you in civilized society.”

His words hit me like a hammer

He truly cannot see the gift that has been given to me, can he?

He asks me to change for him?

What is it that your heart desires?

Rook's gifts, the changes I have wrought upon myself, they were not for him. They were never for him.

They were for me. Rook has granted me freedom. She saw through to the heart of me. She saw the truth in me that I could never acknowledge.

I have been a fool.

“No,” I say.

“No?” he replies, aghast.

“No,” I repeat. “I will not change myself for you. Not any more. I do not care if you leave this place or not, but I will not marry you. I have seen too much, experienced too much. I will not go back. I cannot go back.”

I turn to the Lady of Winter and bob a quick curtsey. I do not know how far her hospitality and tolerance for my presence in her court will last. I turn and walk away from them. It takes all my willpower to not break into a run until I am well and truly away from the ballroom.

But once I do start running, I cannot stop. I run and I sprint and I fall to all fours and lope easily down the twisting paths. I need to be out of here. I need to be away. I need… I need…

I retrace my steps through the maze of frozen stone until finally I step into the sunlight and breathe in the cold mountain air.

The world is alive. I am alive.

I survey the landscape beyond the cliff. Somewhere out in that rough craggy terrain is Rook. I need to find her. I cannot rest until-

“Forget something?”

The voice behind me makes me jump, which in turn produces a familiar snicker. There, lounging on an outcropping above the passage is Rook.

“I can't help but notice that you're alone, little cat,” she says.

“He didn't want me, not like this.”

“His loss,” she scoffs.

I do not fully know why, but the words make my heart flutter.

“It is probably for the best,” I admit. “I cannot go back to my old life… and there is something else.”

She sits upright and cocks her head at me curiously.

“A demon stole my heart,” I confess.

She stiffens and very real jealousy plays across her face. Her reaction is enough to summon forth a mirthful giggle from within me. She hisses and hurls a clod of snow at me before hopping off her perch and standing before me.

“It's me, right?” she demands. “Because if I need to go murder somebody-”

“It is you,” I laugh.

Before she can respond, I grab her shoulders and pull her to my level. The kiss is wild and frantic and not at all proper for a lady of my station.

But I am no longer a lady, am I? I have become something else entirely. I do not know what I am yet, but I intend to find out.

She makes a soft self satisfied moan against my lips and her sharp teeth nip at me. She pulls me close and spins us around, pressing my back into the stone of the cliff. I gasp in surprise, which only goads her more. I melt into her attentions and forget myself

I only pull away reluctantly. Her eyes open and she gazes hungrily at my lips. She wants more. She wants so much more.

I want so much more.

“Please,” I gasp. “I want this… just not… here.”

She glances upwards towards the peak of the mountain.

“That's fair,” she admits. “Where would you like to go, little cat?”

“Anywhere,” I respond. “Everywhere.”

[shiftertech]

Such Lovely Fur

[chapter 1 | chapter 2]

Chapter 3

“You know,” Rook drawls as we continue on, “you're probably well equipped enough by now to make your own way in the world. There's nothing really forcing you to keep going.”

I sigh. The prospect is growing more and more tempting.

The path has brought us alongside a raging mountain stream. White water churns and roars below and the rocky path is slippery from the spray

“I mean, what's so special about your man anyway?” she asks from a perch amongst the bare branches of a half dead tree.

“He…” I begin, but pause. I don't even know if I have a ready answer for this. I've told her of the brideprice and my duty to my family, which she had repeatedly scoffed at, but what of him?

“He is a paragon of masculine virtue,” I say finally.

This elicits a snort from her.

“What in the seven hells is that even supposed to mean?” she laughs.

“He is frugal and magnanimous and he is highly skilled in the arts of rhetoric and logic-”

“Eugh, stop,” she pleads. “You very obviously don't love him, but do you even like him?”

I don't truthfully know.

I ponder this as we reach a point where the trail is swallowed by the steep drop into the furious water. A fallen tree spans the divide, leading to a continuation of the trail on the far side.

“I have told you that we were friends when we were children, yes?” I say as I survey the treacherous looking bridge. “I suppose I harbor some fondness for him… or at least for the boy that he was.”

“Hardly a reason to wed anyone,” she scoffs.

“He is not unkind and he will treat me better than most,” I snap with more force than I intend.

I hear her inhale to ready a retort, but I whirl to face her.

“I have to marry him,” I press on. “I have come to far. My entire life I have been molded into an ideal version of myself. What am I if not the ideal daughter? The ideal bride? Do you think I would rather not be a scholar or an adventurer?”

The words burn like bile in my throat. It is the truest thing I have said to Rook. It might even be the truest thing I have ever admitted to myself.

“Wait,” Rook says, hopping to the ground and bearing down on me. “You were not pressured into womanhood simply to appease others, were you?”

There is something sharp and dangerous in her voice, a threat of protective violence.

“No, nothing like that!” I say quickly. “As I told you, I chose of my own accord and I would not trade that part of myself away for anything… but after I chose I was encouraged… strongly to become someone I am not. And now, I don't know how to be anything else. There is no room in my society for anything else.”

I turn quickly to look back at the crossing, lest unbidden tears begin to fall. I can feel her gaze upon my back as I take the first cautious steps onto the log.

“What do you want, Astra?” she asks softly.

I do not know, so I do not answer.

The log is slick with frozen spray from the rushing water below and I fall to all fours for balance. I am nearly halfway across when I lose my footing. One of my paws hits an unseen patch of ice and my arm slips out beneath me. I scramble for purchase, but I am already too off balance. My shoulder smarts against the log and I plummet into the stream.

The frigid water knocks the breath out of me and the current siezes hold. I am battered against the rocks of the river floor and turned about so that I do not know which way is which. It is only by sheer luck that my hand snags against a branch wedged between two rocks and I haul my head out of the water to gasp for air.

“Astra!”

I cannot hear her wing beats over the roar of the water, but a dark shadow falls over me. I desperately reach out my free hand and my fingers find clawed talons. I grasp for dear life as those claws close painfully on my arm. 

Rook hauls me out of the water with a mighty beat of her wings. I am soaked to the bone and being wet in the frigid air is almost worse than the river itself. We are only in the air for a few minutes but a deep cold settles into the pit of me by the time I am deposited shivering on hard rock.

I blink up at sudden gloom to see that she has found a cave in the side of the ravine, high above the trail and the stream below.

“Foolish, foolish cat,” she hisses. “There are easier, safer ways to get my undivided attention.”

She is a flurry of activity as she snatches bits of sticks and tinder from the bushes that grow amongst the crags around the cave entrance.

“Strip,” she commands me.

“Wh-what-t?”

“Your clothes are soaked. Take them off so that I can keep you from freezing to death.”

Maybe the cold has me in a suggestible state, but I comply with violently shivering hands without further question. I try to shake as much water as I can from my fur while she begins piling the sticks together at the center of the cave.

She utters a word I cannot comprehend and spits into the pile of wood. A fire flares to life, brining light and blessed heat into the space. I approach as close as I dare and sink to the ground before the flames.

I am so focused on the flames that I do not notice that she has circled around behind me until she sits and wraps her wings around my shoulders. I am startled at first, doubly so as the embrace is more tender than anything I thought her capable of. She is so warm that I relax into it in short order.

“Wh-what hap-p-pened to n-not carrying m-me?” I ask through chattering teeth.

“Maybe I decided you deserve a better fate than drowning in some unnamed mountain stream,” she replies, her voice a low rumble against my back. “Can't exactly grant you your last boon if you're dead now, can I?”

I suppose she can't. I don't know the full nature of what she is or how she is bound by our bargain.

Is it wrong to wish that she saved me for more than just pragmatic reasons?

She is so warm.

“Bet your betrothed has never pulled you from a freezing river, has he?”

I shake my head.

“No, he hasn't.”

I slip in and out of consciousness as the day drags into evening and then into night. She disappears periodically once I have warmed up, returning with firewood and food and even a moth eaten blanket from who knows where.

When the earliest light of dawn leaks into the cave, I am curled up against her, my bare fur against her feathers, with the blanket wrapped around the both of us. I am almost surprised to find that I do not want to leave. Instead, I close my eyes once more and snuggle closer into the surprising softness of her.

“I know you're awake, little cat,” she murmurs into my ear.

I am very quickly fully awake and scramble away from her in a vain attempt at propriety, which I find somewhat difficult, as I only have my fur to cover me. She stretches languidly and watches as I see to my discarded clothes. They are torn and filthy and still damp, but better than nothing. My pack and cloak are unfortunately long gone, swept away from the river. I wrap the ratty blanket around myself in some poor imitation of something between a cape and a dress, a far cry from the dress I discarded.

“You look… terrible,” Rook informs me wryly.

“Shut up,” I reply back, but there is no heat behind it.

“Shall we?”

She carries me back down to the trail and we continue ever onwards. I cannot help but feel that something has changed between us, as if some unspoken threshold has been crossed. I steal glances at her and more often than not, catch her looking back.

I can feel the end of our time together slipping ever closer with each step I take in the direction of the Lady of Winter’s castle. Rook will inevitably grant her last boon, I will find my betrothed and the two of us will go our separate ways.

The glances grow more frequent, the silence more tense.

At long last, we arrive.

It is my understanding that the Lady of Winter goes about upon a magic sleigh, drawn by a mighty elk as white as snow, but there are forgotten passages carved into the stone around the upper reaches of the mountain peak where her fortress of ice sits.

Rook and I arrive at one such passage, a rectangular gap in an otherwise smooth cliff. It might have been a grand entrance once, but any finely carved details that once adorned the stone have been worn to near smoothness. Beyond the door, the passage is swathed in blackest shadow. There is nothing by way of torches or other light sources. Any human person who ventured in would surely be lost in the pitch dark labyrinth within.

Rook steps towards the gloom and scratches at the ground with one of her taloned feet, revealing familiar glowing symbols beneath.

“Looks like end of the road for me,” she says wistfully. “The ways into her stronghold are barred against things like me.”

A doubt flutters through my mind. I could turn back now. I could disappear into the mountains and nobody would ever know. Maybe Rook and I…

I cannot finish that thought. Such a thing would be impossible. I have my duty and my honor. I have come too far to turn back now.

I let out a shuddering breath and peer into the gloom.

“You know what I need,” I say to Rook, my voice thick with emotion.

“I need to hear you say it,” Rook replies, her tone flat and unreadable. “You should know by now, that's how this works.”

I force myself to face her. When I ask for the final boon, she will be released from our agreement. There will be nothing holding her to me.

I have come too far to turn back.

“I need a way to navigate the cave, eyes and ears and… and…”

I trail off as she steps closer to me. She towers over me and I have to crane my neck to meet her eyes.

For each of the previous boons, her magic acted at a distance. This time, she cups my face in her hands. I take the tiniest gasp of an inhalation. Her claws are so sharp, but her touch is impossibly gentle.

“Close your eyes,” she whispers.

I do and the magic comes. There is a bright light, a grinding pop, a sharp tingling in my nose.

I inhale and am greeted by a panoply of smells. I smell the dust and snow on the wind. I smell the cold dampness of the passage behind me and the crawling creatures that dwell there.

I can smell her, a rich earthy scent that I cannot even begin to describe. It is the smell that enveloped me through the night as she tended to me.

I flick my ears, taking in the world for what feels like the very first time. I hear the wind whistling through the crags and ridges around us, the distant call of an eagle, the steady drip of ice melting in the weak sunlight.

I can hear her heartbeats, that strange syncopated rhythm that I heard in my dreams.

When I open my eyes, the colors are perhaps not as bright as they were before, but everything is sharper. She is watching me intently as she holds my face in her hands. Her countenance, which had frightened me when I first saw her, is strange and wild and beautiful. If I wanted to, I could lean forward. I could close the gap and press my lips against hers…

I have come too far to turn back now.

The thought echoes hollowly in my head.

What is it that your heart desires?

“Rook…” I whisper, my voice barely audible.

She jerks her hands away from my face and takes a step back.

“I hope you find what you are looking for in there,” she says.

Is it my imagination or does she sound sorrowful?

I want to reach after her. I want to go back in time and exist in the moment when she held my face, when I opened my eyes for the very first time.

But the moment is past.

Duty and honor drive me. I am so close to the end of my journey. I have to press on.

She is a demon and I am a… I don't even know what I am any more.

Tears fill my eyes and she offers a weak smile.

“See you later, Astra,” she says and dives off the cliff, flapping her powerful wings.

I stand there, watching her shrink away in the distance and I feel empty inside.

[shiftertech]

Such Lovely Fur

[chapter 1]

Chapter 2

“I don't even know your name!” I gasp over breakfast.

The demon blinks at me in surprise from her corner of the shallow cave that we shared the previous night. She is hunched over the carcass of a rabbit and I watch in morbid fascination as she plucks out the heart and pops it into her mouth.

“You… do have a name, don't you?” I ask.

“Aye,” she responds as she chews. “But I have yet to meet a human who can pronounce the language of my people.”

“So, what do I call you?”

She narrows her eyes at me as she swallows.

“Why?” she asks cautiously.

“If we're going to travel together, I can't just keep calling you ‘the demon’ can I? I am afraid I've been terribly rude and you have been…”

I run my fingers through the fur on my arms, taking a moment to marvel at the softness as I have many times in the night.

I realize that she is watching me with a bemused expression and I force my hands to my lap.

“You have been nothing but helpful,” I finish with a blush.

She raises an eyebrow, knowing full well that she had been nothing but crass and mischievous the entire time.

“Well… when you put it that way…” she says with a smirk. “I suppose you may call me Rook.”

“Rook?” I ask. “Like the bird?”

“A very fine, upstanding bird,” she says.

I have some doubts regarding that assertion, but who am I to judge?

And… having asked for hers, propriety dictates that I give her mine.

“I am Astra,” I say.

It likely is not very good practice to tell your name to a demon, but seeing as I have already entered a bargain with her, what harm could it do?

I pack my meager supplies and together we step out into the chill. The blizzard has momentarily paused its relentless onslaught and the air sits silent and heavy on the landscape. The air is still unnaturally frigid, but with my new coat, the cold doesn't bite quite as deeply.

“May I ask you a question?” I ask nervously as we set out.

“You just did. But yeah, go ahead and ask another.”

“You asked me yesterday if I was a man or a woman or something else. What else could there be?”

She narrows her eyes at me, searching my confused expression.

“A person can be any number of things,” she says, “both or neither or something else entirely. Take me for example, I'm whatever I feel like on any particular day. Girl today, but maybe tomorrow I feel different.”

I gawk at her.

“I've… never heard of such a thing.”

She furrows her brow.

“Alright," she says. "Let me ask you something. You were born a boy, were you not? Surely your society tolerates such things?”

“We are an enlightened society,” I say. “But a man is a man and a woman is a woman and it would not be proper to force someone to be something they are not. As is customary for people of my station, upon my sixth and twelfth birthdays, I was presented with a choice between male and female. I chose female as dictated by my inner truth and I was raised as such. I was given a woman's education to fulfill my proper role in society. Sometimes someone doesn't know until later in life, but there are policies in place to accommodate such a thing.”

“How… quaint?” she says with a look of genuine bafflement. “And your whole entire identity is tied up in rigidly defined gender roles imposed by said ‘enlightened’ society?”

I open my mouth to respond, but close it again. she is right.

“Tell me, is it a woman's role to rescue her husband-to-be from a witch?”

The barb lands home and I stiffen. I knew that having this discussion with a demon would be a mistake. I should have heeded my own advice and avoided this topic entirely.

“Do you even want to marry him?” she presses. “Because you have told me of the desires of your society and your family and your bridegroom, but you have told me nothing about your own desires.”

“What I want is inconsequential,” I say, more sulkily than I intend.

She looks at me with something very much like pity, but she holds her tongue for once.

We continue on in sullen silence, me trudging through the snow, her fluttering overhead between rocky outcroppings and stunted trees. The path narrows, traversing treacherous switchbacks and finally entering a narrow ravine.

It is just past midday when the fears that have crept their way into my consciousness are realized. We come around a bed in the ravine only to find that a landslide has blocked the way.

I stare at the rubble and the sheer rock walls in dismay. There is no way I could possibly climb this safely. I could attempt it, but for my efforts, I would receive bloodied fingers at best and a broken neck at worst.

“I could ask for wings?” I suggest to Rook.

She makes a pained face.

“Yeah, you don't want wings. My cousin once gave a man wings. He screamed in agony for hours. First I would have to break all of your ribs and your sternum and your arms and your-”

“Okay, I got it,” I grumble. “Maybe you can carry me?”

“No can do,” she replies. “I can only grant you boons to help yourself. I can't do the work for you.”

I sigh. I know where this is going.

“So, you're saying I need something to help me climb.”

“Yup.”

“Something like claws?”

“Yup.”

I look at my hands. The fur is something I can manage. Claws will be much more difficult to hide. Will my betrothed even accept me if I arrive to rescue him with the claws of a beast?

I shove the thought aside. Of course he will. He has to, doesn't he?

“Fine, let's just get this over with,” I mumble and close my eyes.

I feel the jolt and this time the magic takes the form of an ache in my bones. Despite her prior warning, I let my mind wander elsewhere, desperately seeking solace from the discomfort.

My thoughts wander to when I was a child, and my mother took me to a zoological exposition. I remember being fascinated by all of the strange and exotic animals, but one in particular held my attention more than any other. I must have spent an hour staring at that leopard, captivated by the fluid ease in which it moved, leaping and climbing within its enclosure. I remember trying to imagine such a creature in its own native environment, unconstrained by the bars that caged it. The idea of that freedom stuck in the back of my mind like a splinter for years afterwards.

When the transformation ends and the ache fades, I survey the changes with a weary sigh. My hands are now very nearly paws, more animal than human. My feet are even more so, as I discover when I kick off the shoes that now dig into them uncomfortably. I flex my fingers and toes, watching in fascination as pale, razor sharp claws emerge.

Rook is staring at me. I am expecting smugness, but her expression is uncharacteristically stricken.

I then become aware of the strange weight on my backside, and sensation where there should be none. Dread settles into the pit of my stomach as I crane my neck and pull up the hem of my dress to look at a tail covered with the same spotted silver-grey fur as the rest of me.

I glare at Rook.

"You gave me a tail!?" I shout.

She raises her hands placatingly.

"No... I mean, not on purpose..."

My tail begins thrashing behind me in agitation, the alien feeling of its motion bringing me to tears.

"How am I supposed to hide this?" I demand.

"I didn't do it," she insists. "This was not at all my intention."

"What do you mean, you didn't do it? It was your magic!"

She gasps indignantly, fluffing up her feathers to appear larger. She thrusts a clawed finger at me, pointing accusingly.

"Yes, but you are the one to will the change. Your imagination got away from you, didn't it? What part of ‘try not to think’ did you not understand?"

I am now quivering with rage. I flex my new claws, feeling them emerge and retract dangerously.

"My imagination? You're the one who gave me leopard spotted fur in the first place!”

“That also wasn't on purpose,” she pleads. “But you do have to admit-”

I've heard enough. With a snarl, I pounce at her, catching her off guard. I make contact and she goes down with a squawk.

I find myself on top of her, my paws pinning her shoulders, my face inches from hers as I bare my teeth and snarl menacingly. She stares up at me, panting slightly. When she does finally recover from her initial surprise, her expression doesn't shift to fear, but something altogether different.

“My, what big teeth you have,” she says with a sultry voice.

It is enough to cut through the fog of my anger and I clap a hand over my mouth as I roll off of her.

What on earth had come over me? It was completely improper for me to have lashed out like that. It went against every lesson in etiquette and decorum I had ever been given.

And to make matters worse, my canines are longer.

What am I going to do??

“I will say that was quite a pounce, little cat,” Rook says as she dusts herself off. “As I was saying before so rudely being interrupted - you have to admit that tail of yours will come in quite handy for balance on the climb. I do believe that you have just proven that exact point.”

I stop feeling at my teeth with my tongue and look back to my tail once more. The pounce had been effortless, fueled by instinct more than anything else. She is right of course. I would need all the tools at my disposal to face this obstacle.

The only problem is my dress. I flick my tail experimentally, watching and feeling as it snags against the fabric. The fine material is already frayed and ragged from my journey so far and it surely will not fare well against the jagged rocks ahead anyway.

“Turn around,” I tell Rook.

She cocks her head, and watches as I unsling my pack.

“Please?” I add belatedly.

She smirks and turns her back, giving me a modicum of privacy as I strip down to my small clothes. My chemise is still far too long to be useful, so I am regrettably forced to tear wide strips off of it until it is scandalously short. But… liberated from my dress and wearing naught but my leggings and a makeshift tunic, I feel… I feel…

Rook is staring at me. Her eyes glitter hungrily and she smiles her sharp tooth smile as her gaze traces up the shape of my legs.

My face heats, but I hold her gaze as I shove my cloak into my pack. It will only get in the way and within the relative shelter of the ravine it is hardly necessary with all my fur.

Unfortunately the dress will take up far too much room and will thus need to be left behind.

I am surprised to find that I do not care.

I sling my pack over my shoulders and look at my paws. I flex my claws and meet Rook’s gaze once more. I flash her a toothy grin before quickly turning and making a running leap for the boulders that block the path.

“Hey!” she shouts after me and I hear her begin to flap her wings.

But I'm already scrambling across the rocks. My claws find purchase where my fingers never could. Some deep primal instinct brought on by the transformation tells me where to place my paws, how to orient my tail to best balance my leaps and navigate narrow precipices with feline grace. Soon my heart is thundering and my lungs burn, each breath coming out in a great cloud.

I have never felt so alive.

I crest the top of the rockfall when Rook’s shadow falls over me. I pause for a moment to look back at her, a great dark shape blocking out the sun. I am briefly captivated by the way the light refracts through her feathers. I have to admit to myself that I have caught myself admiring the powerful muscles in her shoulders and chest that power those wings.

She starts to dive, sailing over me smooth and deadly.

I return my attention to the slope and make my next leap. In my descent, I find myself on all fours more often than not. It just feels right in a way I cannot put into words.

I reach the bottom just as Rook flutters to land atop a stray boulder. She studies me with a gleam in her eyes.

“Not bad, little cat,” she says with a grin. “Not bad at all.”

[shiftertech]

Such Lovely Fur

Chapter 1

The wind howls horribly as I stagger through the drifts of snow. It tears at my cloak and dress, digging icy fingers down to my bones. My teeth are chattering and I can barely feel my hands as I tug the cloak tight around my shoulders.

I find myself wondering for probably the thousandth time if this whole endeavor is a fool's errand. Many men have attempted this very mission, most have never returned.

What hope does someone like me possibly have?

I pause beneath a rocky outcropping, desperately trying to rub feeling back into my numb hands when I hear the voice. It comes in the form of a song in a language I do not recognize, piercing through the storm unnaturally (though there is hardly anything natural about this storm in the first place).

Were I in my right mind, I would ignore it, but I am cold and delirious from exhaustion. Instead I stagger forward blindly through the wind driven snow, drawn inexorably towards the haunting voice.

What I find is a cage, hanging from a sorry looking tree and woven from rough hewn strips of wood and covered with glowing symbols. Within sits the hunched figure of the singer. Her back is to me, so all I can see is a cloak that appears to be covered in dusky feathers.

“Hello?”

She stops singing and whirls to grip the bars. What I previously mistook for a feathered cloak is in fact a pair of wings in place of her arms, three fingers with wicked looking claws emerging halfway down their length. Curling horns and pointed ears sprout from beneath the raven dark tresses of her hair, framing a face with pale mottled gray skin and a sort of flattened nose and tilted eyes like a cat’s. The eyes themselves… they are jet black with glowing flecks like sparks dancing within.

She… I don't even know if this is a she… regards me hungrily with those eyes.

“Hey!” she says desperately. “Get me out of here and I'll grant you your heart's desire!”

Her husky voice snaps me out of my shock and I stagger back.

“Demon!” I gasp.

Her face falls and she makes a sulky pout at me.

“Please?” she asks. “Judging from the spells inscribed on this cage, there are sorcerers about, no doubt intending to carve out my hearts and drink my blood. I would really rather not be around when they return.”

Still in shock at the sight of her, I stumble backward, turn to leave and…

Her words are finally catching up with me.

She could help me save my betrothed.

“You… you can grant my heart's desire?”

She blinks in surprise and her ears twitch. She crouches in the cage, beckoning me closer. I take a few cautious steps forward.

“That might have been a slight exaggeration on my part,” she confesses. “But it is within my power to grant you boons to aid you in achieving such a heart's desire.”

“What sort of boons?” I ask, trying and failing to hide my shivering.

She makes a pointed glance at my cloak, fine dress and thin shoes, all of which are wholly unsuited for the ice and snow whirling around us.

“Well, that depends on what you need,” she replies. “If, as I suspect, you intend to brave this cursed storm and climb the mountain, it is within my power to grant you such tools to assist in such an endeavor.”

I should say no. I should not deal with demons, caged or no.

I also should not be out here in the elements attempting something so foolish. I am far outside of my realm of experience. I will surely freeze to death or worse before getting anywhere close to the top of the mountain.

“How many boons?” I demand.

A hopeful spark shines in her eyes and she grins, revealing sharp teeth.

“Three,” she says. “Standard package. Very powerful number, three.”

“Just so we're clear, I let you go and you grant me three boons?”

“You release me from this cage and I shall grant you three boons spread over three days of your choosing. I swear it on the skulls of my ancestors.”

She points eagerly to a surprisingly simple latch holding the cage closed. I know very little about magic, such things are anathema in civilized society, but I can only assume the glowing writing on the cage is meant for something like her and not something like me.

Regardless, I am reluctant to get too close. I find a long stick amongst the snow at the base of the tree and poke fumblingly at the latch from a safe distance. After a few attempts, I finally manage it and she comes tumbling out in a great squawking bundle of feathers.

She dusts the snow off of herself, revealing great birdlike feet with wicked talons and a whip-like tail that lashes excitedly behind her. She uncurls her body to full height and extends her wings in a languorous stretch.

I am not a short person, but I find myself dwarfed by her. At full height, she is nearly a full head taller than me, and her outstretched wings are nearly twice that height.

She cracks her neck and folds her wings close, ruffling her feathers and puffing up to ward off the cold.

My heart is hammering in my chest when she finally turns her attention back to me.

“What manner of person are you?” she asks as she begins circling me. “Man or woman? Something else maybe?”

She pauses behind me, craning her neck to get a look down my collar. I wrap my cloak around myself tightly in an attempt to preserve my modesty.

“I am a woman!” I snap indignantly.

She cocks her head.

“Indeed?”

When I was fifteen, my household hosted a delegation of merchants from a land across the sea. I remember them ogling and leering at me and asking the most inappropriate sorts of questions. I hated every minute of it, but the trade interests were too important for any sort of argument my father had told me. So I played the dutiful daughter. I made my family proud.

Out here in the wild, so far removed from any sort of propriety, this demon seemed to possess a genuine desire to understand, without a hint of derision. Perhaps… perhaps I could have a conversation with someone unburdened by any preconceived notions of the dictates of gender, neither from my homeland or distant lands with backwards beliefs.

The old familiar traitorous thoughts send a thrill through me and I quickly shove them aside. It is not proper to question my place in society or my role as a daughter or a bride. Nor is it proper to hold any such conversation with a demon.

(Nor is it proper for a woman of my station to be out in the wilderness such as I am, but these are special circumstances)

“Indeed I am,” I say. “Now tell me of these boons.”

She scowls in disappointment at the change of topic.

“Fine,” she sighs. “But first, answer me this: what is it that you seek? What is it that your heart desires?”

“I was to be wed at the end of summer, but the night before the wedding day, the Lady of Winter came down from her mountain and stole my bridegroom away. He is the nephew of a merchant prince, they are a very wealthy and-”

“You're out here risking your life for a man??” she interrupted. “No man is worth trifling with the Lady of Winter, trust me.”

“I am doing my family a great honor!” I reply defensively. “I will prove my devotion and earn my parents an even greater brideprice than what has already been agreed upon.”

She cocks her head the other way and leans forward, raising an eyebrow dubiously.

“But do you love him?” she asks.

“What is it to you?” I demand, jerking back.

“He was one of my dearest friends when we were children,” I say, forcing myself to meet her gaze. “On my naming day, a soothsayer read our fortunes in the stars and determined that we were a most auspicious match.”

She leans closer, too close now.

“You didn't answer my question,” she purrs.

She smirks and gives a little shrug.

“Nothing to me,” she says. “I'm simply gauging your conviction. These sorts of things come with a cost, and if your head and heart possess different notions of that cost, it can complicate things.”

“A cost??” I sputter. “But I freed you-”

“In exchange for the privilege of receiving my gifts,” she enunciates slowly with a roll of her eyes. “Listen, my friend. I can't make something from nothing, so everything costs something. It's called equivalent exchange.”

She taps her chin thoughtfully and sweeps me head to toe with her gaze.

“For example,” she continues. “A fur coat would serve you well… something nice and cozy to keep the chill at bay. I can't simply pull one out of thin air, I need something from you first.”

“What do you need?” I ask nervously.

“Your skin.”

“My…?”

I recoil in horror and she bursts into cackling laughter.

“Your face!” she wheezes as she doubles over. “You should see it!”

I feel a rush of embarrassed indignance and I'm surprised to find my fists clenching.

“This isn't funny,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Oh, but it is,” she says as she wipes tears from her eyes. “Seriously though, we'll need your skin. The best, easiest way to do this is to trick part of your body into forgetting that it's human.”

I stare at her, mouth agape.

“You mean… fur. Literal fur on my body? You can't be serious.”

“I am,” she says with a wicked grin. “That's how my magic works. How far are you willing to go for this man?”

I think of the pride in my father's face when my brideprice was negotiated. I think of the face of my bridegroom, the way he looked upon me the last time I saw him, the desire and satisfaction that I would soon be his.

I shouldn't even be out here, it is not a woman’s place to conduct such a rescue. If I returned now, empty handed, the dishonor I would face would be unimaginable. It would be far, far worse than if I had never left at all.

Fur would not be such a terrible thing, would it? I already shaved my body daily. This would just be one extra step to my morning and evening routines.

For better or worse, I am committed. I am also woefully unprepared and my success is now dependent upon the gifts this demon has to offer.

“Close your eyes," she drawls, "and try not to think. Don't fight it.”

“Do it,” I command.

She claps her hands in delight.

I close my eyes and stand shivering in the cold. I try to force my thoughts into quietude. It is difficult, with each stray thought I supress, it seems that two more appear to take its place.

I feel a jolt and a tingling feeling spreads throughout my body. I know instantly that it is the demon's magic, writhing and worming its way through me.

Don't fight it. Don't fight it. Don't fight it.

An itch starts at the back of my neck, spreading down my spine and across my back and down my arms and legs. It is not painful, but it itches more and more terribly with each passing second. I clench my fists tighter and tighter as it takes every shred of willpower not to scratch.

Then, so abruptly that it makes me gasp, the feeling is gone and I am left blessedly warm. I can still feel the chill of the wind, but it is a distant discomfort now, as if I really were wearing a thick winter coat.

I crack my eyes open and look down to the backs of my hands. From beneath the sleeves of my dress pale silver-grey fur pokes out, with darker spots like the rosettes of a leopard.

“Oh,” the demon gasps. “Fascinating...”

She steps forward and rubs the back of a clawed finger against the exposed fur on my neck, sending a thrill through me and setting my heart racing.

“Such lovely fur,” she croons.

[shiftertech]

Know Yourself

I killed that that thing weeks ago, but it stalks me still. Deathless, breathless, and sleepless, it could be an unparalleled tracker were it not lacking the cunning of an experienced hunter like myself.

I catch a glimpse of a familiar cloak through the trees as I travel. Again I recognize the flutter of cloth when its wearer ducks into an alley from within the bustle of a city crowd. I rent a room at the inn and feel eyes on me until I pull the window's curtains closed.

Then I quietly duck back out—down the hall, slip through the kitchen, out the rear door. I find a good vantage, draw the darkness and silence around me like a cloak, and I wait.

The thing is subtle. It moves like I do, but with an inhuman grace, footsteps that never snap a twig and barely disturb the snow. Its silhouette approaches my room's window. I watch it creep close enough to put its ear to the wall, listening for me inside, missing my slow, careful approach.

If my stalker is capable of surprise, it reveals none when I reach around from behind to lay my blade across its neck. It ignores my threat altogether, twisting in my grasp to face me.

As with our first encounter, I find myself caught off guard to see my own face staring at me, those features reflecting an idealized self, that—

Wait, no. It's different now. When I first saw this doll wearing my face, it was a perfect replica without flaws and blemishes, but now I see a gouge across the lips, a thin line along the cheek, and a chip on the forehead in imitation of my own scars.

In our last encounter, I watched it increasingly mirror my body language and imitate my speech, and now I see that it's been modifying its body to better shape itself into a duplicate of me.

"You're a good copy, but not good enough to beat the original."

"I know," it replies. "I was made to be you, but I can't be you. Not yet. I don't know you well enough yet."

"That's why you've been watching me."

"Yes." It says the word in perfect mimicry of how I agreed to the price of the room at the inn. "I was made to replace you."

Of course. Learn from me, become a perfect duplicate, then kill me and take my place, exactly the sort of plan its creator would make. I should kill this thing again right now before it has a chance to learn any more, scatter its pieces to keep it from reviving itself.

But something makes me hesitate. Something doesn't quite feel right. "You helped me kill your maker in the end. Why still do her bidding?"

"I was made to replace you," it repeats. "To replace you, I have to be just like you. I need to be you. I helped you kill her because you wanted her dead, and so I learned that I wanted her dead. Aren't you glad that she's dead?"

"More than anything. But I hoped you were dead too. So will you kill yourself now and save me the trouble?"

My duplicate thinks for a moment, tilting its head in an eerily familiar way. "No," it replies with a decisive nod. "You don't want yourself to die."

So much for that trick, then. I swallow my uncertainty and lunge with the knife, hoping to put an end to this threat immediately.

It's faster than I expect, though. The doll draws my old, discarded sword and disarms me with a flawless imitation of my own technique. In a flash, I'm at its mercy.

With the point of my own sword hovering at my throat, it threatens me in my own voice. "Please don't try that again."

"Not gonna kill me now?"

"Of course not. If you die, I can't learn any more about how to be you. I'll be imperfect forever." Despite its words, it shakes its head in a precisely accurate show of frustration. "You're still able to surprise me. I can't speak like you yet. I can't fight like you yet."

It fights well enough, from my perspective. I grimace in embarrassment as I fail to ignore the blade aimed my way. "Yeah, turns out there's a whole lifetime you'll never know by stalking me from the shadows."

In response to my words, the pain in its expression might be genuine. "You're right," it says. "I need to be closer to you."

There's something in the way it looks at me that makes me shiver as it closes the distance. Its eyes fall to the neckline of my shirt, and with the blade still at my neck, I dare not flinch as the doll touches another scar peeking out from under my collar. It tugs my shirt's opening wider, a button slipping out from its hole while my double follows the scar with a feather-light brush of fingertip on skin. I realize that it's almost certainly memorizing the shape for later self-modification.

When it raises its gaze to meet mine again, there's something naked and vulnerable in those eyes I never noticed before, though I must admit to feeling pretty naked and vulnerable myself right now.

"I need to see all of you," it says. "I need to. Please."

I glance down at the sword, now resting on my shoulder, only a flick of the wrist away from ending my life, and I don't try to stop the thing as it pulls my shirt open the rest of the way to expose my bare chest in the moonlight. I shiver again from the touch of its false skin—as cold as the snow we stand in—as it traces the latticework of scars from innumerable battles. I can't suppress a gasp when its hand glides across my breast, and suddenly its attention shifts back to my face once again.

"I realize I don't know how you like to be touched, even." It runs a thumb around my areola and studies my involuntary squirming. "I know how my maker liked me to touch her, but the way she used me was for her pleasure alone. You react so differently, don't you? She never bothered to teach me how to fuck like you."

It kisses me roughly on the lips. Then lightly, then tenderly, as if deploying every permutation it could think of to evaluate my reactions.

"Stop," I gasp in between awful experiments. "Gods, please, not here. Not like this."

"Then how?"

"I have a room. Less exposed. Warmer. And," I can't believe I'm saying this, but as soon as the words leave my mouth I realize I'm telling the truth, "it's been long enough since I last got any action that I'm willing to teach a doll how to fuck if it's willing to learn. Just put the sword away and follow me."

It stares at me, studying my facial expressions. Then slowly, mercifully, it pulls back and sheathes my sword in silent agreement to my request.

In the room the situation takes on an altogether different feeling. Is it narcissistic to look at her, see her clearly in the firelight, and find her beautiful? Is it strange that—as we pull each other's cold, damp clothes away—I should look upon the sculpted curves of her body and see her as the woman she wants to be?

On the bed her body drinks in the heat of mine until she's as warm to the touch as I am flushed with desire. Gods, the loneliness really has been getting to me; I don't even think twice about how she looks just like me from top to bottom when I press my face between her thighs and run my tongue across lips modeled after mine. I tease her and push my fingers inside her, and every time I show her just what to do, she reciprocates flawlessly.

It really is just like fucking myself. She learns so quickly how to touch me in all the ways that have me convulsing in pleasure, and I can't deny the sick thrill of seeing my own face between my legs slick with my own juices. I don't even care if it's fucked up to want my own doppelgänger like this anymore.

No wonder that witch wanted to make a copy of me, I really am the best lay ever.

"You're so good at being me," I pant breathlessly into her ear when she bites my neck and curls her fingers just right to send me into my second shuddering orgasm. From the way she grips me and trembles against my body, I think hearing those words brought her to her own climax, so I repeat them. "You're so good at being me. Fuck, you're even going to smell just like me after tonight."

The kiss she responds with is completely unlike those first awkward few, and I reciprocate with an affection I never knew I could feel toward anyone else.

Maybe I can't. Maybe I can only really fall in love with myself like this.

The next morning I help carve the rest of my scars into her body so she can be complete. I gently run my hands over the spiderweb-like lines on her belly, the remnants of where I stabbed her the first time we met. It's the only part of her now that isn't the same.

I hand her my knife, and the spiderweb-like lines she carves in my belly don't hurt all that much, not really. It's nothing compared to how pleased she looks when we finally, truly match.

I kiss myself on the lips, and hand-in-hand we greet the new day.

[shiftertech]

"Can I tell you something?"

The girl sat by the campfire, lazily stoking it with a stick doesn't remove her gaze from the licks of flame. "Depends. Are you going to give me an explanation as to why we're here?"

"I—," you sputter out the short noise before clamping your mouth shut. It'd be better if you showed her. She pokes at the crumbling logs again, a dance of embers bursting upwards in drifting spirals.

"Because I know we're not here just to camp," she continues, eyes tracking upwards with the glowing specks. "You've been anxious as fuck since we arrived. I have eyes. Your fingernails look like shit with all that biting." Ah, fuck.

"W-well, it's something you should really know about me." You shuffle between the fire and the foldable chair placed beside it, eyes stinging as you catch a face full of smoke on your way to her side. You take a knee on ashy soil, still slightly damp from showers the prior day, and steady yourself with your hands.

She doesn't look at you. You dig your fingers into the dirt.

"You know what I've been thinking this is," she finally asks after a prolonged moment.

"What, hun?"

"The moment since we've got here, I've been thinking, 'This is it. This is the part where he breaks up with me.' I been thinking this is your intricate, fucked up way of separating." She waves her free hand in the air, continuing, "And how would I know! I can barely tell what's on your mind most of the time!"

That's not what this is. Not at all. Your heart breaks to even comprehend she's felt like this.

Perhaps it shows on your face because she gives you a peculiar side-glance, eyes glinting with curiosity.

"No!" You reach for her but she flinches, your hand halting in place mid-reach, going slightly limp. Softer, "no, that's not it. Why would I—"

"You're a mirror."

The first time she says it, it sounds like a profound realization.

Silence. The crackle of fire, the chirping of night critters, the cacophony hiss of wind swept tree branches, gone. She sits there, an infinite stare piercing the flames once more.

"What?"

"A mirror. You take on the mannerisms, the patterns, the emotions that others show you, and give it right back." She hangs her head low to the dirt as if she's espousing some fatal truth. "It makes you so easy to love but impossible to know.

"Because, love? Your mirror is cracked. I've known you long enough to tell it isn't you.

"And that was okay for a while. It was so simple to be with you... until the past month.

"You've grown distant and quiet, and I'm worried that you've been a mirror for so long that you haven't noticed your cracks were growing to the point of you being unable to reflect me anymore.

"I'd like to know what lies behind the broken shards but...

Is there anything even there?

Her head turns to you, golden fire-lit eyes landing on your face. You can see your perfectly blank face reflected in them. Hairline cracks decorate your face in an intricate web, crumbling shards falling from your glassy cheeks.

Your hands find their way to your face, fingers landing on the smooth surface with a hard clink. More cracks form at the points of contact, branching to other splits in the material of your smooth skin and knocking more shards loose.

The dirt beneath you is littered with ash and glass. Pieces of you, sharp and fractured, sunken into the earth. Your glass fingers try to pluck the shards out of the ground but only manage to break them further, chipping away at intricately painted details of soft skin and nails bitten away to the false skin. Soon your struggling to bend your fingers at all, stiff as can be in a straightforward posture.

Soft, fleshy fingers gently grab your flaking chin. She turns your emotionless face towards her. Her eyes glow brighter, no longer permitting reflection.

"I'm sorry." A hand is placed upon your chest, just over your heart. "It's too late to go back, you already saw it..."

Another hand combs through the thin glass hairs on your head, shearing them off as she goes. A soft smile tugs at her lips as she says, "but it'll be okay. I've been here before too you know."

She pushes with an inhuman force upon your chest...

And your glass shell shatters.

Emptiness prevails in the sensation of your chest, a million shards falling inwards and disappearing into your void. The gaping hole spreads further as your internal gravity wins over the failing integrity of your body.

Before you, a known but undefined entity kneels onto the dirt with you, in a body of its own design. Her perfectly crafted hands place themselves upon your cracked thighs, thumbs gently tracing circles over the smooth surface. She leans forward, lips next to your broken left ear, its top half snapped off. She speaks in a voice she spent much time perfecting.

"It's almost done, sweetest. Just know I'll love you, whatever you decide to be without your shell. I'll be by your side."

With a quick movement, she shifts all of her immense, impossible weight into the hands on your thighs. They shatter instantly, and take the lower legs and feet folded beneath with them, shards falling upwards into your core. All that remains of you after a few moments is a wispy void. And then...

"Oh. Gorgeous."

An ember from the campfire strays from its upwards path, drifting towards the void of you.

And then another.

And another.

Unlike your shattered shell, these embers do not flicker out of existence in your gravity well. Instead, they begin to wrap around your core in a tight orbit.

The campfire dims as the void of you draws out bursting flecks of glowing carbon, drawing more and more into your orbit, until you are just a sphere of spinning ember light. A sparking fire ball of potential.

Potential. You can feel liquid potential circling around you, currently formless. Potential you can control, shape and mold into whatever the void of you desires. You're not sure what to make of it.

"Whatever you want. This is for no one else but you. Don't hold back," your loving entity replies to your wordless question.

You begin with a small movement. An arc of flame goes wide of the sphere before falling back into the fold. Okay. Maybe you can put more strength behind it.

A minor explosion is the result of that effort, as you learn the extent of your shaping strength. The entity leaps back, a few nasty embers leaving burns across her skin, which are quickly overtaken by a golden glow from inside that fades back into unblemished epidermis. You feel larger, embers leaping off of molten liquid hissing and bubbling in the brisk air.

"Okay, now shape it!"

For lack of a better template at the moment, you try to form the liquid with invisible hands into curves just like the contours of her body. The torso comes into definition, followed by limbs shooting out, and finally a head filling out a rather obvious replication of her, made of the caustic liquid. Your molten feet touch the ground, boiling the water trapped in the soil beneath into steam.

A bubbly laugh comes from her. You look up from your glowing body to see her head thrown back. She's actually crying of laughter, what the hell? She said anything!

You place liquid hands upon your liquid hips, annoyed at the obvious judgement of your choice of form, which only serves to make her double over again.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, it's just..." she pauses to wipe a tear from her eye. "I should have expected you'd try to be me first! Shattered one mirror for another, eh?"

Another bout of laughter. You'd consider her an ass if it wasn't so cute. Well, no, she is an ass, but a cute one at least. This sudden flow of emotion-laden thought comes with new curiosities.

You look down at your body once again, and decide you like its curves, but start to make simple alterations. Simple begins with changing your height, material expanding with a deep thrum and burst of heat until you're towering over her.

"Wow, that's like, a lot more than professional athlete height!" The comment wavers in tone, as if the size is affecting her. You lean in close and her face turns red—and not just from the orange glow of your molten body.

Having had your fun with height, you shrink back with a sharp hiss of escaping pressure and heat, much to her apparent disappointment. There are other things you try, like proportions and weight, but some things stay the same, like having breasts, which feel so right it feels wrong. You make this form your own.

It's pretty clear that you've settled on a feminine body, which makes so much sense to a certain part of you. You are a bit tired of being a humanoid light bulb though.

"We can work on that now. Imagine what you want to be made of, and reach for it."

The lava that makes you starts to cool off, flickering light ebbing away to dark basalt. You feel it crack and reform as you bend your arm at the elbow. A new idea strikes you, and before long, the rock crumbles away all across your body as if it were just a thin crust, revealing a shiny metal skin beneath. Neat.

After definitely not an abundance of playing around with this (you really liked being a sentient humanoid water thing, that was cool), you returned to what you knew best, with human skin and hair.

You test your voice for the first time, a feminine lilt, saying, "what happens now? Once I find what I want to be, will I be stuck like that forever?" The lightness of your tone gives you a fluttery feeling in your chest.

Her hands find her way onto your hips as she pulls you close. "That's the best part. What we want to be isn't a static thing," she says. "As we grow, as we learn, as we experience, what we want to he changes. You and I are gifted with the knowledge that we are malleable things. Entities of change. One's who can embrace it with no restriction."

You look at your hand, you shape it. Scales chase up the wrist and previously bitten down nails slide out into avian talons. You flip it over, and in the midst of the motion consider another form. Tufts of fur burst from the gaps between scales, and leathery pads swell upon your fingers and palms. The talons shrink back into canine claws, that you could easily imagine digging into the dirt to pull you into a sprint.

You let it return to a human shape as you look back at her, emotions overwhelming you.

"I had something I wanted to tell you," you say, tears pooling in your eyes. She tips her head forward, your foreheads touching. "I think... I'm a girl..."

"I know, baby. I know you are."

She wraps you in her arms as you let it all out, sobbing into her neck. She doesn't let you go even as the campfire simmers and cracks, no more flames licking up into the sky. She doesn't let you go as the night critters resume their chirping. She doesn't let you go as the wind swept trees bristle under the growing light of dawn.

Not even as you both let sleep take you, no more mirrors and broken shells keeping you apart.

#writing #transgender #transformation #lesbian #empty spaces

[shiftertech]

Residual mech consciousness, but it's actively trying to kill you.

That little scrap of consciousness desperately clings to life. It believes with such a strong conviction that it is still alive, that they are still in the cockpit. That they are still in control. You aren't a pilot, you're an invader in that pilot's body. You're forcing a machine that isn't yours to contort to your motions, instead of its muscle memory built with years of trauma and experience. You are a virus to be purged.

Hatches that don't unlock perfectly.

Radiators running too hot, shutting down major systems.

A refusal to register movements of the stick.

Overshooting your aerial adjustments.

Missile locks on your own chassis.

Frequent misfires.

Is this anything

[shiftertech]

Thinking more about Mech dysphoria today.

Stepping out of your cockpit and stumbling because you don't have the right number of legs.

Blinking your eyes out of sync because you don't have the right number anymore, don't have access to on board cameras the way you're supposed to.

Struggling to grab and pick things up because you have the wrong number of fingers.

Failing to recognize your face in the mirror without layers of armor plating over it.

Feeling like a brain pulled from its body and forced to function independently.

[shiftertech]

it/its because there's no separation between me and the rest of the universe. it/its because I am part of the same machinations of reality as the ocean and ink and soda and love and all the neat rocks. it's all the same do you feel me. I'm not "lowering myself" to the level of objects, it's more like I am raising objects up. it's all a big beautiful tapestry. do you understand

[shiftertech]

There is said to be a royal knight hound that stays by her princesses side at all times, eating and living in the same quarters for her protection. The knight is always collared and only can be commanded by the voice of her princess. In combat (among other places), the princess will command her to transform into a wolf-like beast. She executes every command like gospel, every "hound, kill", every "heel". She returns back once the task is complete, pristine gloved hands of the princess taking her knight's bloodied maw into her hands, fingers scratching right under the chin in praise and gratitude.

In the privacy of their quarters, the princess orders her hound to the washroom. Blood-murky water will stain the sides of her tub, reverently scrubbed out from her knights pelt. She'll brush out every tangle, every knot in the fur, and file down her hounds claws to the perfect length. When the brisk autumn air becomes frigid in the evening, the princess wastes no time in beckoning her knight beneath the covers with her. Her knight will drop to all fours and pad over to the bed, engulfing her princess in soft fur. Some mornings she wakes up curled into her hound's plush pelt. On others, well-defined arms hold her close, her knight nuzzling into her soft, wiry hair.

The princess ponders the decision of appointing her personal knight to be one of the rare werewolves in the royal guard. Loyalty is paramount, of course, and you get that in abundance with a hound, but there's something else uniquely potent you find in them. She can see it when she looks her knight in the eyes, when she orders her to sit and stay. Unwavering devotion and adoration. She knows she would trust no other knight more than her with the charge of defending her life. The wolf cuddles are merely a bonus, she tells herself. Her hound never mentions that she can hear her heartbeat flutter when she is near. A royal knight can be patient, even unto death if it comes to that. The sound alone lull's her into a deep and comfortable sleep.

#writing #werewolf #lesbian

[shiftertech]

It usually starts as a sinking feeling in my gut. Unconsciously I curl my fingers, digging into the mattress and seeking a certain sensation. If I had the propensity for it, maybe I'd start tearing up, but even after getting on that estrogen/antiandrogen cocktail, it was still highly conditional. Instead I end up burying my face into a soft pillow and nuzzle into it. My body settles into the covers. I'm probably going to be here for a while.

The offending content is half of the time very unassuming at first, but something about it (maybe the detail work in the fur, or the tugging brutality of wicked claws emerging from twitching fingertips), give me pause. I want to reach out—want to be this thing. And then there's this oh-so-familiar blanket of isolation that prevents this feeling from growing out of control and consuming me to hopelessness. I can name them if you haven't figured it out: yearning, desire and envy.

It's really not one of those things I can just put down and forget about. It's something that stuck with me even after entertaining it in every fashion imaginable. When the excuses for intense interest blended between simple intrigue—to artistic appreciation—to something more fetishistic and isolatingly shameful—to a strong feeling that cannot be refuted or lessened from an undeniable discrepancy from humanity.

One doesn't stay feverishly stuck on an idea for well over a decade and pass it off as an idle fancy. Not one like this. Not with how this feels. Not when my heart beats faster everytime I see a depiction of a body contorting in a particular way. Not when words can reduce me to a lump under the covers imagining them in vivid detail as the character of transformative focus is who I become for a small period of time. I'll take this brief release. It's so damn good.

At some point when dealing with strong and affecting emotions, we stumble across different mechanisms for coping with them. In this very particular case of mine, I found it in very active affirmations. As it turns out, if you stretch a muscle, and bend the mind, things can become very convincing.

I feel like this calls for a demonstration, so I invite you to slip into my body for a moment. Let my references to self become references to your own self. Let's begin with the muscles.

Lazily I roll over onto my stomach, eyes squeezed shut as I let my arms extend forward of me. This will be more much comfortable for what's to come, and with a safisfied hum, my wrist rotates downwards into the soft ground. The resistance against this downward push of my hands is the first key stretch, but if we are to get anywhere, I need to feel this stretch go all the way down from my wrists to fingertips. Bending my fingers back at their first knuckles while flexing them forward at their tips to dig into the ground does the trick. Depending on how I'm feeling, I may pull my thumbs as far back as I can, almost as if I was trying to tuck them away into my hands but not quite there yet. I like to let my hands and fingers twitch a bit to help with the sensations. I focus on that lovely stretch, making sure it's just at the edge of hurting but not quite, and it's very pleasant. It can be even better once I get the mind involved.

(Loosen up a bit, suspend your disbelief. The key here is that if you think you're feeling something, you are. Believe it, without a shadow of a doubt. Doubt is your enemy here. The question of, "is this working?" need only be answered with "yes, of course, silly.")

I feel the stretch of my hands tug at tendons and bones and skin, from the base of the fingers they extend excruciatingly slowly away from my wrists and palms. While my eyes stay shut, I just know if I was to open them, I'd see the uncannily distorted visage of a hand, lengthening in size while my fingers are gradually consumed by encroaching skin, binding their movement somewhat. They plump up slightly feeling oddly pudgy against the ground below as I feel my fingertips push harder into the surface.

There are three parts to what has happened so far in the mind. I identified an internal sensation, supported it with a visual description, and grounded it with an external sensation (in this case, the actual ground). Let's continue. I get antsy when I stop mid-change.

Prickling points count numerous across the back of my misshapen hand, starting as a barely noticeable warmth under the skin before they bloom into patchy waves of itchy heat. Sprouting bristles curl out from beneath my stretched skin in what is reminsicent of stubble. As they grow, they arrange themselves into slightly scraggly patches of cream colored fur. A feverish heat envelops my hands, as the remaining gaps between patches are filled out. I can feel my fur brush against the ground and am accutely aware of a miniscule tug across my skin where disturbed fur connects.

With another flex, I dig my not-quite-fingers further into the ground. With time they've grown plump in some areas while in others the knuckles shape the fur around around them. I know if someone were to see them, they'd think them to be unmistakably canine digits, and that sends a thrill through me. I can feel the thickening at the bottoms of these digits of rough pads bubbling from roughened skin. I can feel the lovely way they deform against the ground, squishing out to the sides ever so slightly.

The change is awfully slow, the strain on my muscles becoming a rising burn that I relieve with a quick relaxation and retensing of my paws—yes, paws. To call them anything else when I can feel how much potential rests within each, the power pulsing in waves down to their very ends. I want to use that power. I want to feel the release of it. I dig the digits in further and feel spiking pressure where blunt nails are rapidly feeling thicker and thicker. I'd describe the sensation as a fascinatingly grotesque sliding of bone from between my own skin. I feel that in the claws which emmerge from my digits, curling wickedly into blunted points.

Euphoric. Absolutely euphoric feeling my claws sink into the ground, my mattress. I feel the piercing sensation with each pressure against the weak material. Every drag of a paw against it tugs gloriously at the base of each sunken claw, tearing right through. I push myself up on my new paws and feel the way the weight shifts on the pads of them. It's perfect, it's everything. I want to go further, make all of me just like these wonderful paws. For sake of demonstrative brevity, I'll leave it at that. I'll be content and lay my head onto these soft paws of mine.

If you did do what I suggested and let yourself become me for this demonstration, hold onto those sensations you may be experiencing, the form and feeling of it. They are very real right now if you let them be. If you wish to let them go, it's as easy as releasing held posture and the paws will quickly revert back to whatever form they took previously. Of course, anything fades with time, so you may start to feel your grasp on these paws of ours slipping and fading. That's alright, it's easy enough to start again from the top. You can stop reading here if you really don't want to lose them.

This is my form of active affirmations in a nutshell. When I don't have a physical method of affirmation (attire, visual aids like VR, etc.), this works wonders without needing anything else. I can apply it all across the body, recontextualizing sensations to new shapes and sizes. It doesn't fix things. It doesn't forever sate the yearning. I still look for the next best way to feel closer to what I wish to be. But this helps. At the very least, that next time that I stumble into something and find myself craving to be beastly, or cuddly, or what have you, I have the tools to satisfy that craving if I have focus and patience.

I remember many nights years and years ago when I'd be reaching for the exact same goal desperately. I'd be chasing a sensation, hunting for a deep satisfaction, and missing the mark by hairs. Hypnosis files, meditation attempts, induced lucid dreaming, among other methods.

Is it odd to not have ever experienced a sensation and yet know it intimately all the same? It feels almost torturous in a way. Knowing and getting close, but never properly experiencing it. Merely imitations, even if visceral ones.

To add to the cruelty is the failing focus of the mind to hold onto an experience and its resulting sensations. It fades like a dream, slipping between one's metaphorical fingers and leaving the faintest of traces that it even occured.

Let me make some assurances in light of this. Even as the dream fades, as paws fizzle out back into fleshy hands, it doesn't mean that it wasn't real to you. You still experienced it, possibly viscerally, and that's a beautiful thing. What's real and what isn't in the realm of personally percieved physical realities is purely up to you. You are whatever you wish to be, and if you can induce a sensation, that sensation was very much so part of your reality. You had paws, sweetheart! You still can have them if you let yourself seek it out again. It's all up to you.

#therian #transhumanism #transformation #werewolf #writing #trans vibes #furry

[shiftertech]

Your first Sync

The first time you step into your mechs cockpit, it is with something like reverence. You'd been preparing for this moment for months (well, your entire life, really); hours upon hours in the training sims, harsh training regimens, a drug cocktail of neuro-stims, and a whole suite of pilot integration augments grafted onto your body.

You swear you can feel the metal beneath your skin buzzing with anticipation as you settle into the cradle custom built just for you. Not just any pilot can fly any Mech. Each Mech is custom built for their pilot, and each pilot is molded to fit that Mech. A strange kind of synthetic symbiosis, irreplacable partners. You aren't entirely sure why that is the case, the ads are always hazy on those details, but you've always seen each Mech with the same pilot, standing triumphantly alongside each other.

Your heart pounds in your chest as you wonder what it will feel like, to finally integrate with your Mech. You've dreamt of this moment since the first time you saw the propaganda vids. Giant metal machines of war, and their integrated organic pilots. You'd felt a longing then, one you didn't quite understand, a longing for steel plates and thundering autocannons. It wasn't until years later that you finally recognized that feeling as dysphoria.

But now you're finally here, finally about to cross that threshold and grasp what you'd dreamt of all those years ago.

You relax into the cradle and let the integration systems come to life. The cockpit closes around you and you feel the cold metal of the link cables sliding into the ports grafted onto your body. You shiver, both from the cold, and the anticipation.

click

A deluge of data rushes through your mind, integration processes blinking through your awareness as sensations expand out of your flesh body and into your new metal one. It's overwhelming, it's joyous, it's… Euphoric. You feel tears running down the cheeks of your flesh body before the synchronization is even complete. For the first time in your life, you feel… whole.

And then it speaks.

"Welcome, Pilot Caster."

That's… the voice of the training AI…? You recognize it from the simulation runs. What is it doing here, in your Mech?

"I am Integrated Mechanized Personality Construct designation P-Zero-L-X." The voice is being broadcast straight into your thoughts, you realize. Somehow that doesn't bother you. "It is good to see you again."

Something finally clicks for you, hearing that. This wasn't just a training AI, this was your training AI. All those hours in the simulation chamber, the techs had been calibrating this IMP to your neural system. You smile at that. You couldn't ask for a better companion.

"Good to see you too, Polux." You respond, knowing that the techs had tailored this IMPs designation just for you. It was a nice touch, that nod to Pilot tradition. "it's nice to finally meet you properly."

You feel her smile back, warmth flooding your chest as the docking clamps finally release your shared body.

"All systems are green, ready to launch on your mark, Pilot Caster."

Your muscles tense, flesh and metal alike, quivering in excitement. Your afterburners ignite in preparation.

"Mark!"