Karyn closed her eyes and concentrated.
“What are you do—” I began.
“Shh. I need to concentrate or else it won’t work” she muttered, her voice already shifting, dropping several octaves into something rough and animalistic.
I fell silent, heart thudding. Not knowing what to expect.
At first, nothing. Then the hairs on her arms were thickening, no, growing. Fast. Her skin darkened beneath the spreading fur, a coarse silvery-gray fur. I took an instinctive step back.
Her fingers flexed and stretched, the joints swelling grotesquely. With a sickening crackle, her nails thickened into claws—black, curved, and sharp like obsidian shards. She yanked off her shirt, kicked off her shoes, and wriggled out of her pants just in time for her feet to burst outward into paws, her toes stretching and cracking as they reshaped.
Her body followed, bones shifting and muscles surging beneath her skin, transforming the petite girl into something... else.
Then her face began to change. Cheekbones narrowed. Her nose flattened, then pushed outward as her jaw elongated, reshaping itself into a snout. Teeth grew sharp and uneven, her canines extending visibly even as her lips pulled back in a grimace of concentration. Her ears migrated higher, stretching into points on top of her head, twitching as though adjusting to new inputs.
Her eyes opened, golden wolf’s eyes faintly glowing.
After a few more moments of bones subtly realigned, fur growing and muscle reshaping themselves beneath her fur, the transformation was done. Standing before me, panting lightly, was a seven foottall werewolf. If I didn't see it with my very own eyes, I wouldn't know that beneath this beast was my best friend.
“Rawr,” she said, holding out her clawed hands in a mock scare pose.
It lasted maybe three seconds before she groaned and dropped the act, rolling her eyes. “Ugh. I forgot how hot this fur gets in the middle of the day. And it is SO itchy.” she said, starting to scratch herself like a common housecat with a flea problem.
“Karyn! I... I...” I stammered, eyes wide. “You’re a... I mean... What the hell?!”
She finished scratching behind one pointed ear with her sharp claw, relieaved to have gotten rid of her bothersome itch “Remember that Summer camp I went to three years ago? The one up in Denver?”
I nodded, dazed.
“Well,” she said, shrugging, “Few nights in I got bored, everyone were sound asleep, so me, a super genius, decided to go wandering through the woods unsupervised in the middle of the night. You can probably guess what happened. 15 minutes in I'm completely lost and in the complete darkness some asshole jumped me and started attacking. Bites, scratches, the whole thing. I Probably would have died three times over if it was a real wolf and not a were.”
I blinked. “You mean...?”
“Yup.” She nodded. "After an hour there wasn't a scratch on me and with a newfound night vision I easily found my way back to camp and into my tent, pretending this never happened. Since then, well... this. Every full moon, and whenever I feel like it, obviously. Sorry I never told you. I never really told anyone.”
