The afternoon sun felt as warm and comforting upon Adam as it always had, even while it painted him with strange, shifting hues. If he hadn't known about this, he wouldn't have felt nervous at all. As it was, his heart was racing even before he could feel the change begin. The first thing that he thought of was a "duh!" moment where he realized he should have undressed prior - what if parts of him no longer fit them? He didn't want to ruin perfectly good clothes, and anyway there was the possibility he could get stuck.
Luckily, the property was nice and private, being just on the edge of the town proper, and there was nobody around to object as he pulled his pants and underwear down and stepped out of them. It was odd, his shirt seemed to be hanging farther below his waist than usual...he bent forward, pulling it off over his head, and was quite surprised when a mass of long black hair fell through the collar. Adam snapped back upright and realized that the shirt wasn't longer, he was shorter.
He felt a tingling in his chest and looked down to see the area behind his nipples just beginning to puff out a bit. His stomach knotted as he realized what this meant, but before he could focus too long on that, his arms began to feel funny. He looked one over, holding it up in front of him, and gasped as he realized that his fingers were extending out into long bony structures, even as his thumb was shrinking away. The skin of his hand began to stretch out between them, and he felt a prickling sensation as little bumps popped into being all across it, before suddenly bursting into feathers.
He looked down at himself again to find his feet had been changing in the meantime; two of his toes were gone, while others had sprouted back from the balls of his feet, the nails had been growing out, and the skin was changing; they were halfway into talons now. His breasts had continued to fill out, as well, and he could see the obvious change beginning to take his genitals. He gasped, and it was no longer a man's voice that came out of his mouth.
All told, the change was over in a minute. Adam stood in her yard, looking over her new body in disbelief. She was a harpy, like a couple others she'd seen in the skies since the sun's change. She was a woman, too, in her mid-twenties as she'd been before, short and slender, with smallish but still noticeable breasts. Her plumage seemed to be that of a swallow, blue wings and tail with white feathers on her lower body, and her black hair and rosy skin seemed to go well with it.
Why had this happened? She...she hadn't expected something like this! Was it a thematic thing? Because she owned...because she wielded this air-bubble thing, did that mean she became a creature of the air? But what about the rest of this? Why a woman? Why...but she supposed it made sense. She had wanted to truly understand what other people went through, and now she did. She had been stripped of her humanity, of her gender, and she'd even lost her hands into the bargain. Now she would know completely what this life was like for them...
The afternoon wore on into early evening with Samuel and Erica sitting by the fire, not saying anything, in that awkward state of not being comfortable with the situation but not wanting to appear too eager to leave. At long last Samuel rose to his feet. "It's, uh, it's gettin' a bit late," he said. "Since I guess we can't go into town, I s'pose we'll have to find something out here for supper..."
Erica nodded. "I suppose so...I guess...I'll find some firewood, I don't really know much about what's good to eat out here. Nikki knows more about it, though..." She went over to the sleeping girl and gently shook her awake. "Nikki, nap's over," she said. "Do you think you can find us something for supper?"
Nikki rubbed her eyes and yawned. "Uh, I guess so," she said. "But, uh...Mr. Samuel's got his gun...?"
The deputy shrugged. "I do," he said, "but it's not much use at long range. I was figuring on finding some berries or something."
The little skunk-girl nodded. "'kay. I'll try an' find us a rabbit then..."
Samuel left to forage, and Nikki turned to Erica. "M-mom," she asked, "are...are you okay? You look sad...is it 'cause...'cause you told him?"
Erica winced. "Y-you heard that?"
Nikki nodded, and she sighed. "It's...I should have told him earlier, or later...or not at all, I don't know...he probably hates me now, thinks I'm a freak...I mean, I'm already a freak, but with this..."
The little girl shook her head. "He doesn't hate you!" she said, emphatically. "Maybe he's confused a little, but...he doesn't hate you, Mom."
Erica still found it odd that Nikki insisted on calling her "Mom" when she had made it clear she wasn't, but somehow it didn't really bother her. Indeed, to some extent it felt weirdly right and appropriate, even though she knew better...but right now it re-emphasized the nature of this problem, that...that she had the body of a girl, but she was not really a girl...
...was she?
It was too complicated to think about right now. She sighed. "I...I just need to think about this, Nikki," she said. "I'm gonna try to find some more firewood; if you could just...?"
The little skunk-girl nodded, and set off to try and track down dinner.
Erica began to scrounge around for suitable brush; she wasn't nearly as knowledgeable as Sam or Nikki about this, but she did know that dry wood would be better, and dead wood was a lot drier. Trying not to focus on the situation with Sam, she found herself thinking about nothing in particular. She wondered idly why she felt so odd today...she felt a little warm and flushed, a little tingly, a little antsy...why was that? She shrugged it off; must be that she was still warm from the fire or something.
Samuel's mind was still a blur, as he tried to think and re-think and re-re-think and understand what he knew about Erica in this new context. If she had been a man, but was now a woman...did that mean that she wasn't really a woman? It was a question that had quite simply never crossed his mind before, on account of nothing in his life ever suggesting the possibility. Indeed, he still couldn't really believe it...if he didn't trust her, if she hadn't clearly been serious, he would have laughed. But he did, and she was...
...so what then? Where did this new revelation fit in with his feelings, with his plans? It...it wasn't like this had diminished...any of the stuff on the outside of her that he fancied. She was still a pretty young lady in a strange, exotic shape, she still moved with the same wild grace, even if she was new to this body. And the ways she'd acted, the person animating that body, the personality that made the whole thing greater than the sum of its parts...it wasn't like he hadn't seen that. Was it fake? But how could it be? It was so real...she was so real...
...so if it was real, if she was indistinguishable from a born woman, what was the difference? He liked the way she looked, he liked her mannerisms, he liked the person that showed through her actions...what else was there? He could just move on, take his chance with her...but did she still really think of herself as a man? Would she hate him if he...if he treated her like a woman? But she was okay with him calling her Erica, she was okay with the little girl calling her "Mom" even when she said that Nikki wasn't really her daughter...
Samuel thought back to the last thing Ironhide had told him...he'd been cautious before when it came to love, but where had it gotten him? The one girl he'd really taken a fancy to had been snatched away by some rich city boy, because he hadn't worked up the nerve to ask her...he tried not to be bitter about it, sounded like she was happy enough, but he had had plenty of time to berate himself for never making a move.
And Erica...she wasn't just any girl, she was something different. He knew she didn't think much of her form, but...truth be told, he thought it was one of her prettier qualities. (Not that she was lacking in those, where he was concerned.) The striking contrast with the black and white, which he'd seen in full when she'd undressed before the attack, the way her enormous tail, as big as her torso, loomed behind her petite body...
No. No, he couldn't let her slip through his fingers, at least not by his own inaction. He would tell her, tell her how he felt about her, ask her to be his girl...maybe not right this very minute, but as soon as it seemed like a good time. As soon as possible. He wouldn't push her, he'd try not to make her uncomfortable, but...he had to tell her.
