An hour later:
"That was, wild," Sarah said, her furry face in an awkward smile, me and Sarah cuddling, facing each other in my bed. Then she licked my face, getting me to purr and then follow and lick her back, and then we just kissed, our tails entwining within the bed sheets.
"You're shaking the whole bed with your purring," Sarah remarked. "And I can't purr at all. I guess I should have wished to be able to make cat sounds and human sounds. I was mostly worrying that I wouldn't be able to talk, and then I wouldn't be able to use the rock and we'd be stuck like this."
You can't use the stone to change us back for not just one but two reasons, and you're totally clueless about both of them, I would have said.
"So how did you like it, Jon?" Sarah asked, her face close. I licked her face with my scratchy tongue again. We were beyond pretending I was in any way horrified by this. It was one hell of a way to lose my virginity. Being turned into a catgirl, and doing crazy stuff with another one, who wasn't supposed to be a lesbian. But still, it left me with a major problem, and a problem I'm stuck with for the rest of my life.
"I guess you probably want me to see whatever was on that paper," Sarah said.
It's not really important now, I thought. It won't make a lick of difference. Here's your licks of difference, I thought, as I licked her face some more.
"He he he, I love you licking me. I love licking you too. I also love that I totally forgot to ask for our pawpads to remain furless, and now our paws are just completely covered in fur, unlike normal cats, that's what that painting guy would call, a happy accident!" She said this as she held up a forepaw, its unbroken tabby pattern making it hard to even tell if it was the top of her paw, or the bottom, where the pink pawpad would normally be visible. "But as much as I love this, I guess it's time to change back," Sarah said with longing disappointment.
Aren't you in for a surprise, I thought. At least you love it. It'll make this next part a lot easier for you.
Sarah got out of bed, and at first I watched her now naked, but furry body lope in that direction, before I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable panicked reaction. I could almost count it down in my head. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...
"Jon, I, I can't touch the rock!" Sarah said in panic.
Well duh, you wished for it, I thought at her.
"Why can't, I, it's almost as if, there's some sort of... force field, that stops me from getting closer than... an inch... no...." understanding finally dawned on Sarah.
"Meow," I said, uselessly. A killer insult occurred to me. Between the two of us, both of us are dumb, but only one of us can't talk. A pity I couldn't say it.
"You knew?!" Sarah asked.
I nodded.
"Because, I wished you couldn't get within an inch of it, and then I wished for everything I did to you to happen to me..."
Except for the catspeak, I thought. Of course you couldn't change back even if you could touch it.
"But I only meant all the cat stuff I wished on you!" Sarah whined.
I shrugged. You expect it to grant what you thought you wished for instead of what you actually wished for?
"This is a problem, Jon!" Sarah said, for the first time showing signs of fear.
Actually it's a solution to a problem, the one of you being able to use the stone but without knowing wishes are permanent, that was an apocalyptic level problem, and this solves it, neutralizes the danger entirely, I thought at her.
"I can't change us back if I can't touch it!" Sarah said, her voice a little more under control.
You couldn't change us back even if you could touch it, I thought back. This was quite a one-sided conversation.
"Is that paper important?"
Not to you, it isn't, I thought at her. It doesn't matter if there's a rule that wishes can't be undone if you can't use it at all. So I didn't visibly react to her statement at all this time.
"Well this cat is curious," Sarah said, only getting up so far as to stand on all four legs. She walked to my desk on all fours, her tail swishing as she did (she totally was enjoying this a bit anyway), and then stood up all the way and fiddled at the box for a while. She tried picking at its edges with an extended claw. At last, she actually got it open. With meticulous difficulty, she carefully unfolded the paper, and read the letter from my grandfather.
"Wishes are permanent," Sarah said, flatly.
"Meow," I said back.
"So even if I could touch it..." she continued. She looked down at her furry body.
"Meow," I said back.
"Why didn't you warn me!"
"Meow," I said back.
Sarah gasped, no doubt as she ran over the course of events, and the context of my actions against what she now knew. "Oh god. Because, taking away your ability to talk was literally the first thing I did, I didn't give you time to say anything... and all those times, I was just telling you to calm down, not to overreact, to just enjoy it, and I just thought you were just trying to complain, while you were frantically meowing and waving your paws around, and even when you tried to write something down, you were actually trying to... desperately get me to understand, something so important, in the face of my oblivious, cruel, evil, my fetishes!... and you can't communicate, can't even write, trapped as an animal forever... oh god, Jon, I'm, sorry..." Sarah said, now crying uncontrollably, painfully, losing control of her breathing.
So she really did have sympathy for others after all, I thought. I always suspected. It was always only Karyn that was saying bitch this, bitch that about Sarah. Almost everything I knew about Sarah, had been through a filter of Karyn's descriptions. The only negative things about Sarah actually came from Karyn herself. It wasn't me who thought of her a bitch on my own. It was only Karyn. It's not an objective truth that Sarah is what Karyn says of her. I'm inclined to think Karyn is the problem here. Karyn certainly has her own big flaws. Her jealousy, her sexism against men. She says horribly sexist things, contemptful things about men straight to my face, to her male friend, as if it's just supposed to mean nothing to me. Why did she even have me as a friend, I wondered. She wasn't always that way, that was only in the last few years she became bitter and jealous. So I hadn't really even had very strong opinions about Sarah, other than somewhat taking Karyn's opinion as reliable by default. But just being the popular cheerleader in school who doesn't interact with Karyn, doesn't make her a bitch like Karyn would like to think. And it seems that characterization was very wrong. Sarah wasn't without her problems, her desire for conquest of me, the one male who wasn't interested in her, was a sign of some sort of conceited entitlement, but how seriously did she take it? She was after all trying to win me over with good-natured social interaction. She could have altered my mind with the stone, but she didn't. All she ever did was playfully try to win me over by pushing me to use this amazing supernatural wonder that I had been too fearful to really utilize on my own.
I got out of bed and lumbered over to her on four legs, and then stood up and hugged around her furry body from behind and purred, my soft furry front legs wrapped around her chest and my my big paws gripping into her shoulders, both of us naked unless you counted our fur.
"You can't forgive me!" she cried, still bawling hard.
Don't tell me what I can't do. I purred harder. There's nothing to forgive anyway. I would have thanked her instead, if I could.
She cried and cried. I moved to the other side of her to face her and I purred and hugged around her some more, and licked her face, and wrapped my tail around hers, and then our furry kitty muzzles slipping around each other in an awkward angle, we kissed. There was no good angle, but it was wonderful anyway. We just stood there, tightly embracing, kissing, our scratchy tongues playing a very careful, sensitive wrestling game together, our big furry breasts squished together, our forepaws wrapped around each other, our tails twisting together like a bagtie.
After what we've been doing for the last hour, how could I possibly not love the new me, especially if it comes with us being lovers. Whatever I've lost, I've gained so much more. But actually, I wouldn't even want to change back, if it meant you would still be my girlfriend. You were right the whole time about one thing, being like this isn't horrifying, it's fun, and it was easy to come to love it. I just had to stop being such a sourpuss. Well, there was also the whole, defusing the existential threat part. It's a pity, I'm sure you could have been trusted to use the stone much more responsibly if you just knew the rules, and now you can't ever use it at all. But this outcome isn't anything to regret.
You came here for two things. One was get the stone, which didn't quite go as you intended. The other was to win me. You did it, Sarah, you won me. I'm your girlfriend now. Oh, did you want yet another boyfriend? But maybe what you needed, was a furry anthro cat girlfriend. As you said, it's one of those Bob Ross happy accidents.
Sarah and I held each other like that, until finally she stopped crying. And then I even got her to smile her pretty kitty smile, and laugh a little.
"I'll never abandon you Jon," Sarah said, her voice serious. "I love you." I licked her face at that, and purred extra loud. Maybe this could be a night of changes for the better, I hoped. I certainly couldn't have imagined I would be in anything close to this situation just 2 hours ago.
We needed Karyn to come over here, though. Unless we wanted to let yet another in on the secret of the stone. She's the solution to the only problems we can actually solve, like my magic talking collar idea, and any other problems we may face in dealing with the rest of the world, but here's the really preposterous part. Karyn is going to remember me and Sarah as always having been furry catgirls, as will everyone else. She's going to be completely unaware there's even any sort of problem at all.
Briefly I wondered, what that actually will mean for Karyn's first careless wish. She wished for long, blonde hair and big breasts. Ok, Sarah as a catgirl is still well endowed in that second part, but it stands to reason Karyn wouldn't have wished for long blonde hair like Sarah's, if to her, Sarah had been covered in relatively short tabby fur all over her kitty body and long tabby fur on top of her head for her whole life. Would she have wished for long tabby hair instead of blonde? Fur all over her body and a head of tabby hair? Or something completely else? I guessed the question came down to, did the stone actually change history, or just change the present including everyone's memories of the past? If it actually changes the past, then it could actually change what Karyn's wish was. And maybe she wouldn't have wished for it. Maybe this was an indirect path to undoing wishes, to change history in such a way that the wish would have never happened? Or maybe the wish will still have happened, it will just be different in some way that's consistent with the new reality where Sarah and I have been furry catgirls all our lives?
