Escape
"No! No!" You try to say, thinking perhaps if you just say something then they'd understand how overwhelmed you are too, but your voice comes out graveled and deep with an aura of power about it. The words seemed to garble, and you lose the train of thought. Instead, a sudden remembrance of old riddles fills your mind. You suddenly have knowledge of the responses to every famous line or every bar room game you've played. Your head pounds harder, a headache brewing.
What walks on four legs in the morning, two all day, and three in the evening?
"I have to get of here" you think, trying to pinpoint the door in the mess of people. You lurch towards it, finding a strange rhythm between the disjointed legs and your long arms to move towards the door in the front of the building, but then you remember, "The necklace!" Without that, you have no idea how to change back!
You look for it again on the floor. The dust you kicked up changing has seemed to resettle, and you can't find the necklace anywhere! But, with the pounding in your head, you can barely focus enough to look for it.
With your headache brewing, at the same time, something inside of you is churning with this new found knowledge. Your mind is trying to digest it before you've escape this current predicament.
Man, man is the answer.
Plus, on all sides, every patron has started to rise. The angry barman stands directly in front of you, chest heaving with his uproar as he thrusts a fist in the air. "Let's rid ourselves of it!" You turn, knowing escape is the only way to survive long enough to change back! Your legs tremor underneath you and the breasts on your chest bounce oddly to you, but you find yourself falling forward onto your front feet before repeating the awkward lunge until the door is before you. However, the knob suddenly seems a challenge all its own!
The more you take the more you leave behind.
Your paw clumsily slams into the door, claws raking at the wood without success before with a guttural cry you slam your shoulder into it, feeling a shudder shoot through your lion portion. But, the door swung open, and you tumble into the night air. The people of the bar are hurrying after you though, so you race forward into the night. Somehow, the people from the bar seem to have doubled in numbers and obtained rattling pitchforks clinked and clanked together with every one of their lumber advances. Throughout their jumbled ranks, someone supplied lanterns from the bar, but from your distance they could be the torches of old- lit to chase down devils.
Blindly, you lope awkwardly towards the cover of the trees across the dirt path and pause within the cover of the thick foliage. There, chest heaving, you finally sit down. The men from the bar quickly lost their steam and headed back to the stools and mugs, but you are now left sitting outside in a strange form without the necklace for your disguise.
Footsteps.
Your eyes tip back down to inspect yourself. Your vision has balanced now, not completely colorless, though the colors are faded and dulled as though feline and human vision melded into one. Your chest is covered in a very thin layer of fur, barely velvet down the swell of large breasts, each topped with a perky, hard nipple. From there, your body becomes more animal with thick paws replacing your feets and the squatted, powerful legs of a lion. A long, slender tail sways behind your seat. Then, folded in against your back, are the wings. You focus on lifting them, finding that they spread out to have multiple layers and colors. White rims the edge but leads into a portion of brilliant turquoise down to a dusty orange. For a long second, you just stare down at the form. Everything feels alien. Your form has changed. You gender has changed, and you don't know how to change back.
But perhaps, perhaps you can use this fear and this knowledge to your advantage. Your head is brimming with timeless riddles, all those of legend and current culture. Your chest puffs out, feeling both of the new breasts jostle against you. You have to find some familiarity in your form and use it, with some leverage, you should be able to find the amulet easily enough.
But first, what is it that you remember about Sphinxes?
You rack your brain, remembering the ancient stories of a Sphinx demanding a riddle for entrance to a city, otherwise she'd devour those who couldn't respond, but how would that get the amulet back?
In short, you knew it wouldn't. The only option was the retrieve it. Unless, that wasn't the only option. The Sphinxes of old had great power, demanded great respect- perhaps, instead of changing back you could take advantage of this new form and step into that role again. However, that'd be a dramatically new path, perhaps retrieving the amulet and changing back is smarter.
What will you do?
Written by Picklessauce69 on 18 July 2015
