Erste
Tim felt weird. It was a shade of weird he'd never felt before, and he wasn't sure whether he liked it or not. Feeling strange was part and parcel of life for him, and it had been for the longest time. Wolf had come into his life and brought all this with him, and though this feeling was familiar, it was in its exact nature alien.
Something had hit him in his gut at the beginning of the day, just after waking up, and it had only grown stronger over time. At breakfast, he passed it off as being nothing more than hunger sensations; at lunchtime, he thought he might be coming down with something like a stomach flu. But by nightfall, it had developed and was hitting him all over his body. It was hard to explain it exactly, but if it had a meaning--the way that a piercing pain in your stomach makes it likely that you're going to throw up--it was elusively that his body was alive with energy. He could only hope it was why he thought it was.
He hoped and he hoped harder. Wolf was silent in him, or at least was holding still enough to seem silent. The most he could get was a nod and a wink. He was still confused, and feeling positively eerie.
He got home and locked his door behind him. His hands were shivering as if he'd nearly been run down on the way home. His being seemed very excited and shaken about something he didn't know about. He wondered if it was his night to change. Everyone had a night to change, he'd surmised, and maybe this was his. In anticipation, he sighed, but it came out jittery. He'd been left standing at the shapeshifting altar enough to be wary of anything Wolf promised him, or didn't. Again, he questioned, and again, the nod and the wink in reply.
If it was really his night, what was the deal? What was he meant to do? Someone had said to him that people are never conscious when their shift comes--it's always while they're asleep, or blacked out, or whatever, that it happens. There was so much he'd heard.. and little of it was really worth believing.
In hopelessness, he had no idea how to sort the bullshit from the truth, so he nearly gave up looking. And now the truth and the bullshit was a soup of thought on puree in the blender of his mind. It was going crazy up there.
His skin was chillish, yet warm, as he sat down in front of his heater to throw some of the winter cold. The gentle sound of rain outside and the intermittent going-by of traffic painted a typical Sydney night to him. He got up to get a drink, turning the television on in boredom, though it seemed to him more a ritual to appease some dark, artificial recess of his mind, as if the hypersonic squeal of the TV was a security blanket of sorts.
But this time, that security blanket was only a loud and electronic ear-cutter, like audible ozone in a closed room. His hearing was wolfing out. Nothing new there, he thought. Lots of werewolves he knows have that same problem. He turned the television off, and sighed. Would it be another night of disappointment for him? Would Wolf pass him over for his gift again?
He depressed himself to tears in that very chair thinking about it. Within a minute, the rush of air through his stinging throat and the smell of his tears only confirmed the blood in him, but the horrible skin and the stupid backside he sat on were painful reminders of his outward shell. He wished he could just tear himself open and leap out, but he knew in reality it would be fatal. He doubted his pathetic nails could even draw blood, let alone tear the flesh from his hateful bones.
He rose out of the chair, trying to stifle his crying, and went into his bedroom, turning lights off as he went. In pitch-blackness, he drifted into another tortured night's sleep. He absently cursed Wolf for getting his fucking hopes up another night running. Wolf sighed and seemed to lay a paw on his shoulder as he lost awareness.
Then Tim couldn't tell what time it was. It was that characterless period of the night in which the hours blur into one another without moon or star to guide you. The clouds were thick over them all. There were no clocks in his room to tell him what time it was, and ringing up to listen to the recorded message on 1194 was beyond a point. It didn't matter what time it was. He had to have a good, long piss, and afterwards, he'd be back in bed. That was the all of it.
He stumbled through his home to the toilet and turned the light on, then sunk a stream of water into the toilet. His eyes were still gluggy, and he couldn't see straight, but he could hit the bowl regardless.
With that business over, he wandered back into his room, and lay in his bed. He brought his covers over his head, feeling Wolf's features shifting over his face, as they did given time to wake up enough. He smiled a little, knowing Wolf was still there for him, even if he wasn't exactly growing fur yet. He sighed, knowing it didn't matter so much, and flicked his phantom tail some in his bed.
Daytime again. Tim arose in the sunbeams of the late afterdawn and suddenly furrowed his brow. He'd had a dream last night, something that seemed important. He made a mental note to tell someone about it as soon as he could get to the Internet. Dressing, getting ready, and breakfast over with, he was nearly out the door when suddenly an intense wave of fear overcame him. Was there something he knew outside, something bad? Was there a big spider on the door? He looked. No, there was no spider, nothing to be afraid of. Was there something else? He looked at his hand. It looked darker at the nails.
Holy shit, he thought, it did too. He turned his hand over. It looked as though someone had painted parts of his hand with something that had darkened it a shade or two. He looked at his other hand. The same.
His pulse went through the roof. Trick of the light or not, this was still very, very exciting for him! He went into the bathroom and looked at himself. He did sort of look a little more lupine today, even by his own admission. But it was still subtle enough that it looked like some illusion the light was playing on his mind. He checked his teeth--his canine teeth did look a little longer today, and his lips were a little bit darker.
He smiled, and got ready to walk out the door again when he felt that fear like a net stopping him from going any further. He shivered. Something was keeping him in today. But he had to work tonight, and he couldn't miss a night of work... well, for this? He could. But how would he explain it to his boss? He sat back down on his couch and sighed, wondering if this was such a good wish to make. Wolf put a paw on his shoulder supportively, and a rush of lupine energy lit up in his blood. He felt his hands start to curl and even held one up to watch in strange fascination. Minor changes in colour and form at first, then a pause. He looked at his other hand. The same changes. He wondered, running back to his bathroom. His face seemed to be thinner, though his nose was larger. He wondered if he wasn't just seeing things until he opened his mouth, and yelped. His teeth had grown. Considerably. And a quick check of his ears confirmed that his hands and teeth were not the only affected parts of his body--they'd risen up to soft points, and lost some of their inner curvature.
Tim was beside himself and lost for words. Wolf smiled at him. Tim forgot about going outside for the moment, and wondered what else was changing about him. His clothes were off in a short instant, down to his underwear. He turned his heater on as he sat down in his couch and explored himself.
More or less invisible fur was pushing out of his skin, which had turned dark around his neck but lighter around his throat. At present it could be passed off for body-hair, he thought, but if these changes went further--which he knew they would--he'd have to take steps. At least he wouldn't have to rug up quite so much in future for winters.
That thought having crossed his mind, his body lit up with Wolf energy again and this time remained so. Tim's world started to slow, and bend, and compress. All at once, his body started to tingle, as if every cell in his body were vibrating at one steadily intensifying frequency. His pulse rose up and hit double its normal speed. His head was awash with thought and sensation but through it all, he tried to remain lucid to his senses.
His palms were starting to grow and thicken; he turned his left hand/paw over, back and forth, to watch his fingers shrink more into his hand, and fleshy pawpads grew out. He looked at his other hand, which was slower than the other one. Short, black claws were forming at the tips of his pawfingers. He stared, jaw practically agape in excitement, then noticed his feet were starting to stretch and shift as well. He looked down and watched as his feet telescoped outwards, while his ankles shrank back to match the length, and his thighs shrank even further. This made it hard to sit, so he got off the couch and onto the floor in front of the heater. He could already hear the steady hum of the appliance, and he liked the heat of it. His hips swivelled up on his body, and he could feel the sensation of his rumpfat slinking along his body, out of his fleshy cheeks, which was altogether quite creepy. He wriggled in discomfort a bit as his sphincter, used to being hidden inside two cheeks, was pulled out; a small, muscular nub poked out over it.
Tim's ribs started to melt and stretch out under his chin, stretching with it his lungs and heart. He lost his breath for a second, and then felt his heart pumping his blood around his body with steady, loud thumps that echoed over his brain. He'd known that feeling from the phantom shifts, he noted, and could never have hoped to feel it for real. He let out a yip of joy, only to be momentarily disappointed when he heard his own voice, very much unchanged. He walked, as best he could, to his room, where there was a full-length mirror. He had to see.
As he walked, or rather, crawled, he felt the pawpads hit his carpet, and couldn't help but rub back and forth a little as he crawled.
Once he got to his room, he saw himself in the mirror, and couldn't help but gasp in amazement. It was like a furless, half-himself/half-wolf. He moved closer, as he did bowing his head and turning a little to see what was going on, even though he could feel it all very clearly. His chest had barrelled out to wolf proportions, and his hindquarters were still only half-way through. He wondered if he could stand, and found that he could, as long as he leaned on something for support. It looked very unnatural in the mirror for him to be standing, as it would a normal wolf, but inside it still felt reasonably natural. He smiled and blushed a little to himself, noticing his penis had become very stiff indeed and was aligned up his belly, but he supposed it was only his os-bone setting in. His os-bone, the bone that keeps the wolf's penis straight, even when it's not out for use. He had one now. He could hardly believe it himself. His paw drifted down and touched it - there was enough sensation left in his paws to feel a bone in the centre of his penis's shaft. His mind reeled, and he smiled from ear to ear, exposing much sharper and longer teeth than he'd previously seen.
He found it a little hard getting used to standing on heelless feet, so he dropped onto the ground again, keeping his eye on the mirror. He felt his testicles suddenly suck up under his anus hard, and his foreskin start to thicken and come away from his shaft, which was a little painful--almost like having the skin peeled off, only without the sting. It still hurt enough for him to wince.
The fur was starting to grow now, starting at his tail. His eyes travelled in the mirror back to his rump, which was tickling and itching. His tail pushed out further and fluffed out to a thick brush of fur, while his rump and tight scrotum were itching and tingling out wispy strands of hair at first, which turned to dense fur swiftly. The fur shot quickly up his spine, hitting the nape of his neck before it had even had a chance to spill over his sides over his chest.
With a few pulling muscles, Tim's back-half was all but complete, though his front half was still very much on its way. He sat down in front of the mirror to watch, casting a look down to his belly, and blinking reflexively. He was shocked to see a second set of eyelids slip under his outer lids either side of the blink, and then fixed on his face's reflection in the mirror. His eyes were slowly shifting their colour and form, rounding and turning black at the fleshy edges.
His chest was now shaggy with fur, and it seemed as if the transformation was leaving his head for last. Already a crude, toothy muzzle had formed, but Tim knew there was a long way to go before it was finished. Then his reflection gently echoed the wash of feelings across his head to him, and he watched his nose as it turned black at its tip, and he watched his ears point, fill with hair and slide to the top of his head, and he watched his jaw muscles thicken and flex, and he opened his mouth to see his face pull out into a muzzle, and whiskers sprout from under his nose.
As if they had never been, the feelings of tingling subsided, like lights going out in a storm, and there was the wind and rain left. The wind blew over his freshly-grown fur, and the rain was the thick, rich things he could sense by wolven ear and wolven snout. He'd known them as faint ghosts, those things, but never, ever like this.
The moment seemed eternal, as he sat there and felt.