Piper heard the noise from two blocks away.
"Caesar, are you okay? I heard a very loud noise."
Nothing. Just the hum of the city above and the distant flicker of a neon sign.
She slowed, scanning the space. Caesar wasn't here. But something was. A book lying face-up on the ground, pages open like it had been dropped mid-read.
Piper crouched and picked it up.
A manga. Pink cover, sparkly font, cartoon cats making heart shapes at each other.
"...Did she put her book down and left?"
She stared at it for a moment. Then, against every instinct she had, flipped to the first page.
"Huh? Why is the book glowing?"
Before she could drop the book, a strange, weighty sensation settled over her. Soft, fluffy ears began to push their way through the top of her hair. She reached a hand up, her expression turning to one of mild confusion.
"My head feels... heavier,"
She reached up to find the reason. Her fingers found something that was not her bun but something long. Pointed. Covered in soft dense fur that twitched when she touched it.
Her hand froze.
Very slowly, she looked upward with just her eyes, as if moving her whole head might confirm what she was feeling.
A wolf ear looked back down at her from the top of her own skull.
Changes doesn't stop there and Piper notices.
"Wait, my skin! Did I hit a sunbead?"
Her arms were darker. Not dramatically — just warmer, richer, like she'd spent three weeks at the beach instead of three minutes in an alley. The tan spreading visibly, a wave of gold-brown rolling down from her shoulders to her fingertips.
Her yellow gloves were gone. She couldn't remember them leaving.
Her crop top was changing. The torn black fabric softening, lightening, reshaping itself into something crisp and white and buttoned, a red bow forming neatly at the collar like it had always been there.
She looked down at herself with an expression that was trying very hard to be alarmed and kept sliding into something else.
She stared at herself in sheer disbelief. cascading down past her shoulders in a rush — and it wasn't blonde anymore. It was icy blue, and it kept going, kept growing, settling around her in soft waves like it had always been exactly this length.
She looked down at herself.
"What is—"
And then her back moved.
Piper blinked, her vision finally clear. She looked back over her shoulder, her sleepy eyes wide in confusion at the massive appendage.
"What?" Piper asked, her tail swishing with a life of its own. "My body! It's like something just... popped?! What is happening to me?!"
Her memories of herself, her friends, and of the book began to blur, replaced by an overwhelming sense of instinctual contentment.
With a final breath, she let out a long, melodious sound that surprised her more than anyone else: "Awooo!"
She was thinking about something. Something important. A name. Someone she'd come here to look.
The name slipped. She could feel the shape of it, the weight of caring about it, but the letters kept rearranging into something softer, something sweeter—
Nyaesa.
She blinked.
Her phone buzzed in a pocket she didn't remember having. She pulled it out and looked at the screen.
One message. A name she recognized immediately, warmly, completely.
Nyaesa: Meet me on the rooftop.
She smiled wide and easy and warm, the kind of smile that had nothing behind it except genuine uncomplicated happiness. Her tail swept a slow arc behind her. Her wolf ears tilted forward.
"Awoo, she's so cute~! Better not keep her waiting."
She stood, smoothed her skirt, tucked a strand of silver-blue hair behind one wolf ear, and smiled the easy smile of someone who had nowhere to be except exactly where she was going.
She glanced at her reflection in a classroom window as she passed.
Blue hair. Green eyes. Deep warm tan. Wolf ears and a tail that wouldn't quit wagging.
She looked like herself.
She couldn't imagine ever having looked any other way.