Jon could barely hold it together. Maybe if it wasn’t for the pain, she wouldn’t be able to hold it together. She wanted to give in and mate with Karyn with every fiber of her being. She wanted Karyn to start a litter of baby fox kits in her, she wanted to give birth to them, and nurse them, it was somehow a strange desire yet so natural, like though this wasn’t how she was originally, it wasn’t horrifying that she was feeling these things now, and they didn’t overstep what it meant to be Jon as he in his original body may have thought. At first she was distraught that she had been turned into a female fox by Sarah, and then surprisingly, Sarah had by all appearances shown her kindness, had cuddled with her that night. She seemed actually intent on keeping Jon as a pet, but one doesn’t normally torture their pets, one normally loves their pets. Jon wasn’t very receptive to the insulting idea at first, Sarah couldn’t expect Jon to love her or even like her after what she had done to him! Soon though, Jon found herself having fun as Sarah’s fox, and regretted biting her and peeing on her carpet and actually in embarrassment had done some of the work in helping to clean it up, as much as she could help with her fox paws with limited dexterity, until Sarah remembered she could just wish the mess away. It had hurt her to see how things had gone, both that Sarah would raise her ambitions to include Karyn in that and that Karyn had gone to such lengths. Maybe they could have gone along with her and then Sarah would have come to love both of them and regretted her choices and done some things to help them and they could all have been friends at the end. And as for her physical form itself, Jon didn’t want to give in as a matter of pride, but by golly she was starting to really like being a girl fox. And Karyn was a guy fox now! How perfect was that! Well, a guy fox with 8 furry boobs and long shaggy golden fur. But this suited her fine. That appealed just a little to the part of Jon that was not so active in her mind, but was still there, the human male part of Jon. But the pain and the glass shards in her kept her able to not be completely overcome by lust. And one other reason.
The other reason being that Jon had paid close attention to Sarah’s exact words. The first part was “no tricks, or you'll join Jon as a male fox, I'll voice the wish so that if you mate you'll be stuck like that forever, and then wish you both into heat. Understood? Just kidding.” And then followed by “Oh, and did you really think i could think of something like that on the spot” and then followed by “I would, I wish that my previous statement was a wish.” It had really been something of a surprise that such a clumsy pile of words had been interpreted the way Sarah expected them to be. The previous statement was “Oh, and did you really think i could think of something like that on the spot”. And before that was “Just kidding.” And before that was “Understood?” So it skipped several statements in order to turn Karyn into a fox. Perhaps it wasn’t what you said, but what you were thinking and what you thought the words meant? After all, the stone shouldn’t be activated by the English words “I wish” when it’s an ancient stone from South America in the first place. But it wasn’t granting Jon’s desires right now, so maybe it just requires some spoken language. But at any rate, the thing Jon had noticed about Sarah’s statement, was that it seemed to only be designating Karyn as being permanently made a fox if they mated. It used the pronoun you to clearly refer to specifically Karyn, because Jon wasn’t the one being turned into a male fox, and then it switched to “you both” only when speaking of making them go into heat. Then again, males don’t go into heat, they go into rut, a response to females being in heat. It was such sloppy language that the stone had taken uncertain discretion on, but it seemed to Jon that if she gave into her lust and enticed Karyn into having sex with her, that it was quite possible, and in fact likely, that Karyn’s, and only Karyn’s, foxy transformation would be made permanent, and Jon would possibly return to the male gender and then become human all on his own, leaving only Karyn stuck like this. And that was an unthinkable and awful thing to do to Karyn. Well, Jon could become a fox again, in solidarity, if Karyn was stuck that way? A bittersweet romantic ending? No, Karyn probably wouldn’t be happy with that either.
No, Jon decided, she must absolutely not give in no matter what! God but she hurt though. Owwww, she cried in her head, and then almost making Jon think he could read her mind to reflect Jon’s own thoughts, Karyn whined out loud.
Jon turned around, and Karyn pointed at his face and then at Jon’s, and whined again. Karyn had apparently been thinking about Jon’s injuries too. But then Karyn pointed to the side.
“Marawa?” Jon chattered in her high female fox voice, it not coming out as “what is it?” like she had intended.
They were almost to the edge of the woodlands where Jon thought they should hide out for now, but Karyn pointed emphatically to a house. It was tough, with neither of them able to talk, but kind of also fun, a little bit, in a way. And then Jon noticed something. The front door of the house Karyn was pointing to had a pet door. A cat flap. Karyn nodded when he saw that Jon saw it, and pointed at his own bloody face.
That Karyn, looking out for me, Jon thought. He didn’t want Jon’s deep glass cuts to get infected. Or at least that’s what Jon suspected he was trying to tell her. In that house would be a bathroom and that meant soap and running clean water. But it posed the same risks as returning to her own house did. Well, Jon knew for certain that her family was home in her own house, but maybe the resident of this house wasn’t, or was asleep. It was getting late now, almost 10 pm by Jon’s guess. That wasn’t really late enough to expect someone would probably have gone to bed yet though. But they could always ding-dong-ditch to test that. Ring the doorbell, if no one answers, sneak in and use the bathroom? No that was a stupid idea, they would almost be certain to be home, and if they weren’t already asleep, that would wake them up.
They crept up to the front door. And Jon carefully slipped in through the pet door. It was alarmingly easy, but then, she knew she was the right size for it now. Karyn started to enter as well, and Jon furiously shook her head at him and held a paw up to her long fox mouth, trying to hold up one single paw finger in a “quiet” gesture and failing at it. She didn’t want Karyn to be in there with her. There was no sense in Karyn risking himself as well when although Karyn had Sarah’s blood on his face, it wasn’t crucial he wash it off, and it was only important Jon disinfect her injuries with soap and water. Apparently Karyn got the message.
Jon quietly crept further into the residence, looking around for something that looked like a bathroom, and to her immense relief, that is exactly what she quickly found. She pawed quietly like a cat into the bathroom and with great difficulty due to her shortness in height and quadrupedal body, closed the door almost all the way. She stood up on her back legs and stayed balanced with her front paws on the bathroom sink’s counter, only to find that she was just too short, being a little under 3 feet tall when standing on two legs. She wasn’t going to be able to use the sink while standing on the floor. She did manage to jump up briefly high enough to flip on the light switch. She could see better than as a human in the near total darkness in the bathroom at night with the light off but that only meant barely being able to see a few things. Fortunately between the lightswitch and the switch for the bathroom’s fan, she had by luck flipped the right one. She didn’t want to be making any more noise than necessary. But she was too short and wasn’t sure about safely jumping up onto the counter, so she then carefully lowered the toilet seat lid down and stood on that, and then from there, jumped up onto the counter. Jon finally got to look at herself in the mirror. She was speechless. Obviously, since she couldn’t talk.
This is me now, she wanted to say, as she held up her right forepaw to the mirror. She was a fox. She knew that already. But just seeing herself. Damn, but she was actually really cute! But no time for that, she was also injured.
With the help of the mirror, and with not as much difficulty as she was expecting with her new paws, she first got the glass shards out of her face. The tough part was her right eye. She had very nearly punctured her eye with one of the shards! The shard was in her eye, and getting it out without causing damage was very precarious. But she managed to do it. She washed herself with soap and water and was really starting to feel even better about her new body. The dexterity of her paws really wasn’t as bad as she thought, once she knew how to use them. Sure, she didn’t have thumbs like before, and her paws had limited grasping capabilities, but, they weren’t really as useless as she had at first feared. Being like this was, kind of actually pretty cool.
Anyway, her little soap and water burglary escapade done with, it was time to make her exit and escape the way she came.
Jon turned off the light and opened the bathroom door, which she was glad she hadn’t closed until the bolt had clicked closed, as twisting a doorknob that was a bit high off the ground was a two-pawed operation and she wasn’t that good at standing just on her back legs, and was greeted by a deep growl.
“Rrrrrrrrrrrrr....” It was clearly a cat in the darkness. Her presence had apparently not yet been revealed to any human residents of the house, but where there’s a cat door, there probably lives a cat, or possibly a little annoying anklebiter dog. Jon was glad this was a cat. At least the cat’s soft irate growl wasn’t a wake-the-neighborhood sound, it was just a “you shall not pass” sound.
Jon stood there wondering what she should, or could, do. She wasn’t going to fight the cat. This was the cat’s home snd the cat had every right to defend it, for one thing. So Jon lay down on the floor, on her back, and exposed her belly to the cat, and purred. Jon didn’t even know she could do that! Red foxes can purr? Good to know, especially if she was going to be like this for any real amount of time.
Jon didn’t know if her message of peace was getting through to the cat until he slowly approached and touched noses with Jon. Jon wanted to say “good kitty”, but instead licked the cat, and stroked the cat with a paw as best as she could, while continuing purring. And the cat started purring back. A good kitty indeed. Jon started wagging her tail and more emphatically licked the kitty, who started purring a little louder. Jon cuddled and purred together and shared licks together with the cat for a good 5 minutes before finally saying her goodbyes and sneaking back out through the cat door, feeling really good about herself. She had been feeling like her world had been coming to an end before, but now she was feeling pretty good about herself, even that maybe she actually wanted to stay in this body. And the last thing she had been expecting was to make a friend! She met with Karyn and rubbed her face against his and purred. Karyn was clearly surprised by this, until he started purring too, and was elated that he was purring too! Soon they realized they were also wagging their tails and that realization too had some wonder. Certainly not everything about their new bodies was negative, as Karyn was starting to consider as well. That wasn’t enough to make them excited about abandoning their former lives and embracing a 10 year lifespan as foxes living in the wild, but it was enough for them to not be dragged into negative thoughts for the moment at least.
The two of them loped into the woods.
They didn’t know what they were going to do about food. Neither one of them really thought they were up to hunting and killing and eating small animals like natural foxes would do. That was another thing in the very negative aspects about staying as foxes long term. But they didn’t need to eat right then. Karyn had already eaten dinner as a human, and Sarah for her part had kept Jon well-fed. For now, having found a nice soft grassy area, they drifted off to sleep, huddled together.
When Jon went to sleep, she found herself in a very strange and realistic dream. Even in her dream, she was still a girl fox, a vixen, as if it was truly what was natural to her, what she truly was to the foundation of her being now. Even in her dream, she also still couldn’t talk. But for now, it wasn’t just about what she was, but where she was, and who else was there, as she walked on all fours in her new fox body through a white featureless expanse.
Jon loped toward the only object to be seen in this place, as an infinity of white void surrounded her everywhere else. As she got close, it was revealed to be two people sitting at a table. And as she got close enough, she saw one of them was Sarah McMillan, and she and an unidentified elderly man were playing chess.
Sarah looked over at Jon. “Jon!? Is that you? oh, did you die too?”
Jon whined in consternation, or confusion.
“Greetings, and welcome to the stone,” the man said. “A fox. That’s interesting. I take it you weren’t always a fox, or at least that you could talk at some point. Allow me to introduce you to the hell that is inside the stone. All those who make wishes upon the stone, surrender their souls to it. And when they die, they end up here. In this place for all eternity.
“Yoouuwwaaa waaaa!!” Jon whined, still unable to speak. But if that was true, did that mean she was dead? Also, did that mean her grandpa was here? Of course, if he didn’t really die, he wouldn’t be, now would he?
“I’m, sorry, Jon,” Sarah said, looking a bit away from her. “All these years I’ve been stuck in here, I’ve been thinking about it, how I was a real shit. I’m sorry. Damn, that means Karyn is still alive. A pity it couldn’t be her that, I mean, well, not that I want her company instead of yours. Well, I’ll try to make your afterlife here fun, maybe it won’t be so bad with both of us here! Jon? Jon??!” Jon’s vision tunneled as if she was pulled away backwards at the speed of light, as she awoke from her dream.
Years?
Karyn, clinging against her, gave Jon some affectionate licks, and purred, leading Jon to purr together with him. Jon realized she wasn’t dead after all. That white place, it must have been all a dream. Or was it? After all, Jon had swallowed the stone. It was inside her body, even right now. Maybe when one is merely touching it, one can make wishes with it, but if one has it enveloped inside their body, they can do more, like visiting that other place, where the souls of the stone’s deceased previous users were trapped? Or was that just a dream after all?
