When the water went off, the transformation receded the same way it had come. It felt like a warm bath, this time receding. Jon adjusted his grip on the handle, his restored height making the angle different.
His breathing slowed as the panic receded. It worked perfectly. The wish had worked exactly how he said it would. Step in, become the girl. Turn it off, and the transformation rolls back. It was easy, painless. There was no problem. No problem at all. In fact, he could turn the shower back on at any time. It would take just a second, which is why it wasn't important to have turned it on just yet. It was fine. Things were fine. There wasn't a problem.
Okay, there was a problem. But it wasn't an insurmountable problem. He just needed to give the adrenaline in his system a second to cool its jets, and he could go for another round. Maybe some cool water? Probably helpful.
Jon let go of the shower handle and walked over to the sink. He wiped the fog off the mirror and saw-
Himself. Just himself. Anything else was just his imagination. He turned on the tap and let the water get cold as he tried to put his finger on exactly what his problem was. This was his fantasy, right? How many showers had he taken, thinking about this scenario? Why was he suddenly so skittish, now that it was happening?
He filled the white cup on the sink. (The black one was Zoe's, of course) and took a cool refreshing drink.
It was Karyn. That was what was different. Not that it was her fault, but her change, being accidental and permanent. Her life was different forever in a single slip up. That's what he was reacting to. That was where the panic came from.
Well. Jon wasn't any sort of psychologist, but he'd seen enough afterschool TV to know what was probably going to work. He needed to face his fear and transform again.
He imagined April again. This time as a blonde with short messy hair in some sort of style that he could never find the name of. Not a pixie cut, but some other short hair cut. And speaking of pixies, this April was not short. She was a bit taller than his regular height, in fact. The idea of being too short to turn the shower off was a minor paranoia he was doing his best to not think of.
He gave her a Skyrim tattoo as well, why not? He liked the game, had a poster on his bedroom wall. And seeing if he could do tattoos with this was an important test. He faced the shower again. It took a few breathes this time before he turned the water on, but he did it. We won't talk about the thirty seconds he spent steeling up his nerve to actually enter the water. But he did it.
And, like before, the sensation hit as quickly as the water. Like slipping into a warm bath, he felt the changes. They were a little less intense than before. Was that because he'd felt it once? Or had he imagined less sensation for the change? A prickle in his arm made him look down, as the Seal of Akatosh appeared, the lines appearing like a timelapse animation, the outline appearing as if traced, and then the area being filled in with black line by line, as if he was watching a tattoo artist fill it in as he watched.
It worked. It was fine. The handle was a bit lower than expected, like he had planned. He wasn't sure how much taller she was. Ah. Pronoun trouble. Jon would have to work on that. But with another test done, figuring out how pronouns worked with this power was probably going to be the biggest trouble he, sorry, she, was going to have.
