Ch 2: I should probably find some clothes, since I surely shouldn’t try to save the world naked… right?
I was a girl, I was naked, and that damned pink tail was back! I turned after it, chasing it again, trying to find the owner. I’m… embarrassed to say it took me spinning around another two full circles before I realized who the owner was, that I was the owner.
I reached out a hand to it, grabbing it, running my hand over it. Soft, I thought. I then remembered the lack of ears I had felt earlier, as well as the strange twitching from the top of my head. I had heard something when I screamed after all, so I had to have ears somewhere, right? A quick check confirmed my suspicion, that I had a pair of fuzzy ears on the top of my head, sprouting out from my hair.
Hair that was long as well. Only down to my chin or so, with bangs I could feel right around my eyebrows, but still far longer than I’d ever been allowed to have my hair before now. It was a strange color too as I looked at it out of the corner of my eye, that same pastel pink as the tail.
My tail, I had to remind myself, swishing it back and forth as I craned my head, trying to see where it came from. It was sprouting just from the base of my spine, right where my tailbone would be, and it was hard to fully control it, but from what I could tell the skin it was coming from was perfectly normal skin for a human, for a girl.
A girl. I looked back down the front of my new body, hands trembling over it, scared to touch myself. That part was almost more unbelievable than the ears and tail, that it had finally happened. No, I told myself. There had to be some mistake, right? That or a trick, a wild dream in the throes of death. This time felt different than the dreams I’d had about being a girl before though, more real, even with the strange cat-like features I had.
If it was a dream though, I was allowed to indulge myself, right? I let my hands fall, just onto my shoulders at first. They were soft, same as my face, more defined than I expected, but not nearly the level of my old body. I let them fall a bit more down, over my collarbone, over the gentle rise of my breasts. They weren’t enormous, but they were mine, and a chilling tingle ran down my spine as I passed over them, rising to electrifying levels of feeling as I brushed over my nipples, gasping at the sensation, the tenderness, the pressure.
It was real, I finally accepted. It had never felt this way in any dream, never felt so right before. I continued tracing the length of my torso, inching closer to my stomach, my waist, my hips, down towards—
“Fuck you, you high and mighty shithead!” I heard a gruff voice say from behind me, from over the hill at the top of the valley. “If I stick with you, I’ll be dead before month’s end!”
I turned, instinctually covering myself up. God, it is like my dreams, I thought. No time for prayers or curses though, only to find somewhere to hide. I looked around the field of flowers, almost the only thing at the bottom of the valley. There were two options though, a group of trees way off in the distance, far too far away to get to based on how loud that yelling was, how close it sounded.
The other option was a small grouping of bushes, barely three feet tall, maybe six feet wide. I’d much prefer to be in the trees for hiding’s sake, but the bushes were so close, maybe ten feet away, so I made a dash for them.
For the first time moving with my new body, I was surprised at how natural it felt. Despite my lack of muscle, I still felt as strong as I did before, and I still felt like I belonged in the body. If anything, moving was slightly easier, and I was over to the bushes in no time, diving into them, leaves and branches scratching at my body and stinging just a little, but no worse for wear.
I turned around, facing where I thought the voices would be coming from before I remembered I had a couple extra appendages now. I had to crouch down to hide my ears and physically grab my tail to hold it down in front me, the damn thing seeming to have a mind of its own. Honestly, you can’t blame cats and dogs for getting confused and chasing them when their tails are basically just another living creature following them around all the time; it’s scary!
But it wasn’t time to think about that. I could see them coming down, two “people” if you could call them that, a man and a woman, though I wasn’t really in a position to judge since neither of them had tails. I assumed the enormous, muscle-clad man was the source of the gruff voice I’d heard. He was carrying a giant axe slung over his back, wearing hardly anything else, his loincloth and a single strap over his chest consisting of unworked animal hides and furs.
The most striking thing about him though was that he was green. Like, literally Shrek green. He had hair, a tuft of blue sticking up out of the middle of his scalp, and a wide face, with long, droopy ears on the side of his head. At least his were in the right spot.
The woman following him certainly looked more human, almost as tall as the man, though not nearly as muscular, with brown skin, and fairly human like proportions, even though her chest was on the larger side. What stood out on her the most was her hair, snow white in the purest sense of the phrase, her bright, electric blue eyes with irises that seemed to dance, even when she wasn’t moving them, and her long, pointed ears. She had a sword on her side and was wearing what seemed to be a a dark blue military uniform, but it didn’t quite fit, or if it did it was meant to be more like a stripper’s parody of a uniform, with form fitting pants and a shirt that was too small in the bottom and top, exposing both her stomach and a generous amount of cleavage.
The irony didn’t fail to land on me, that I was remarking on how little both of these people were wearing while I was wearing nothing except the leaves that had stuck to my hair, or was it my fur now? Regardless, the choices struck me as odd, precisely cause they were choices, unlike the situation I was in. I wouldn’t have ever chosen to go about naked, obviously…
“Seriously, Kalia, I’m done,” the man said. “Once we’re back to town, I want out.”
“Listen,” the woman said, an obvious irritation in her tone, “I get it, but don’t rush. Let’s make camp for the day, think about it later. Once you break the pact, we can’t—”
“I know! I’m fine with that. It’s not going to work out. I tried, but you’re just— your Job doesn’t work for me, okay? I don’t mind you, but we’re just not compatible as a party.”
The woman, Kalia, seemed dejected as she stopped walking, but she nodded, more to herself than anyone else since the man was looking away. “Okay. Let’s make camp for tonight anyway. We won’t make it back to to town tonight even if we push, but we’ll make it by lunch if we leave at first light.”
“Yeah,” the man said, his tone easing up as he stopped. “Need to make a fire before dark, I guess.”
I was of course interested in whatever they were arguing about, about what they even were, where I was. I knew the words job and party, but they were being used in contexts I wasn’t familiar with. So, so many questions, but the fact that they were supposedly camping for the night, here, only a few feet away from me while I was buck naked in the bushes was the forefront though in my mind. How on earth was I supposed to sneak away while they were so close? And where would I even sneak off too?
Those thoughts were pushed out of my mind as a large sack materialized right in front of me, dropping to the ground with a thud. I nearly screamed, did gasp at the sound, but thankfully wasn’t heard over the sound the bag itself made.
The green man came and picked it up, only inches away from me before he turned and walked away again, pulling out poles and a large cloth, setting up a tent from the materials that, and I really can’t emphasize this enough, were not fucking there just seconds before.
As if that wasn’t enough, a bundle of logs and stones appeared as well, in front of the woman this time, who started arranging them into a campfire. Two items appeared in her hands, a metal rod and a rock, and with one strike of them against each other the logs she’d put inside a circle of rocks burst into flames.
“What the hell is happening,” I whispered. I knew I shouldn’t be making any sound at all, but I was in so much disbelief that I couldn’t keep keep my mouth shut. Still, with the sound of the two of them working, more and more items appearing from thin air, I wasn’t heard.
But this was good. The sack holding the tent equipment was large, large enough for me to fit into, and thrown to the side, near me. They were going to be sleeping eventually, and grabbing it would be easy. I could sneak off, tear holes for my head and arms, and then I’d have a dress!
A dress, I realized. My first dress. I’d imagined that so many times, and the thought of finally having one seemed overwhelming, filled me with a level of joy I didn’t realize was possible, despite it being just a literal sack. I’ll be wearing a lot of dresses, I realized with a smile.
I flirted with those thoughts to pass the time while they continued setting up camp, bringing out sleeping bags, pillows, blankets, and then finally moving onto foodstuff. They had waterskins which were very inviting to be honest, but I could be thirsty for a bit longer to preserve the modesty of my new body.
Eventually though, my mind did begin to wander. The idea of dresses was fun of course, but that was a ways away, and being nude was distracting. If either of them looked just a little closer, came to the bushes looking for berries, or did any number of other things, they’d find me. I’d be there, naked, in a girl’s body, the two of them looking at me, completely bare to the world.
I couldn’t help but feel a rush, my mind obsessing over the idea of being caught as my body began to sweat. I could feel a familiar urge growing in my body, though slightly different than what I’d felt before. It was inside of me this time instead of outside, the call to touch myself, to let go of the instinct to hide, to take my hand, lower it down below my waist, and—
I sniffed. Food, spices, herbs cooking over the fire brought me out of my own head. Blessedly, I realized what I’d been about to do, that my tail had shot up again as I’d let go of it, and I wrangled it back, thankful it hadn’t gone above the top of the bush, hadn’t been seen.
I really almost just masturbated right next to them, I realized. I couldn’t believe the urge had been that strong, that intense. Was it even okay to masturbate in this new body? I felt a tinge of shame even thinking of that. I wasn’t really a girl, after all, even though I was finally in a girl’s body.
Thankfully the smell of food served as a decent enough distraction. I would’ve used the conversation of the two people for that purpose, but there was still an uneasy silence between them, only a few curt words shared as they moved about their makeshift camp that they’d pulled out of nowhere.
“Food’s ready,” Kalia said.
“Thanks,” the not so jolly green giant said, walking over as a bowl and spoon appeared in his hands. He dipped the bowl straight into a pot the woman had suspended over the fire, pulling it out as a thick stew dripped from the side, falling and sputtering on the flames below.
And god that made it worse, the searing of the food on the fire itself causing the aroma to grow even more. It was entrancing, a blend of spices I’d never smelled together. I knew I could down a bowl in a heartbeat as I watched the woman ladle some into her own bowl. If I was lucky, maybe there’d be some left that I could sneak away, but only if I was lucky, and very quiet.
But quiet I was not. As my lips salivated and my hands trembled, my stomach let out a humiliatingly loud growl, louder than my whispers or my gasp from before, and definitely louder than the two people eating in silence only a few feet a way, who were now both turning their heads right in my direction.
“Dreck,” the woman said.
“Yeah, I heard,” the man responded, setting his bowl down and pulling the axe from his back as the woman drew her own sword, and then finally walking over to my bush, weapon raising over his head.