Hormone Resnakement Therapy

by MsJuniper

 

Flora Baker has always considered herself a furry, even before her transition. But now, with Morphic Furry HRT available, she has the chance to transition once more, if only she decides she wants to... but her roommate and friend, Jen, might pose an issue. God, she hopes not.

Contains: gradual transformation (woman to anthro snake), transhumanism, allegories to transphobic rhetoric and transphobic rejection, the freedom of shedding one's humanity to become someone new and beautiful.

 

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Joining a new community poses great risk, and Flora rarely lets herself try. Meeting new people, becoming a part of a new space, they all change a person.

And change? That is the real danger. Death is change, loss is change, and becoming unrecognizable is change. She should not allow herself to change, for all of those things could come of this.

But it’s too late. She already clicked the link.

Welcome to the Morphic Club! Check the rules channel and pinned post for details, message a mod for pronouns and roles., the intro bit for the discord server says.

Flora stretches her hands, her boring, human hands. They don’t bother her in a gender dysphoria way, thankfully, but the way they do bother her is perhaps worse. How does she explain to people that she finds her human shape inadequate?

Hi :), says a user named ‘Noneagator’, welcome to the server!

Hello, Flora says.

A user by the name of ‘sqrlgrl’ adds, Hey there, slitherflower, welcome! How are you?

How ‘is’ Flora? A question that sears at her hands, peels at her skin. She feels so human, in the way people say ‘only human’. It’s a feeling like everything about her is incorrect, like each part of her down to her species is wrong! And she feels like a complete freak when she thinks about it!

Okay. I’m interested in meeting some other furries and talking about, you know. Morphic stuff, Flora replies.

You’ve come to the right place, then! A good chunk of us here are on MHRT or somewhere in the process of getting it. If you have literally any question at all, ask it. It’s rough sailing out there so let us know if we can help, sqrlgrl says.

That’s nice of them to say. Flora isn’t sure she believes that, but it’s nice to hear regardless.

Cool, she says, cool. I guess I’m undecided on going on it or not, tbh, so maybe chatting about it will help clarify it.

Noneagator (None-a-gator? Nonea-gator?) puts in, yeah, cool! What species are you hoping it’d make you?

Wait. What? MHRT doesn’t let you choose which?

You don’t choose which? I thought… I thought you got to pick, Flora says.

:/ nah, it’s up to… chance? The ineffable whims of the greater cosmos? It’s magic, who the hell knows. I never would have guessed ‘Seven and a half foot tall alligator woman’ as mine, but hell, it suits me!

Kind of like normal hrt, then. Up to chance, Flora says.

‘Normal’ HRT, huh? Noneagator asks

Oh, shit. Gender HRT, I guess? Human HRT?

I’m just messing with you :P it’s cool.

* * *

The resource links are daunting, and so Flora only clicks on the first one. It brings her to a website washed in a hard-on-the-eyes magenta color, so harsh it’s probably visible from space. Glittering text proclaims without a hint of shame, “! ! ! FURRY ZONE ! ! !”

How old is this website? Isn’t MHRT new? Perhaps the administrator for the site’s tastes never left geocities. Regardless, it’s a slice of the past in the year of twenty twenty four.

“Hey!”

Flora jumps in her seat, and closes out of the tab. The voice of her roommate right behind her was a shock to the system.

“Hi, Jen,” Flora says, out loud, “What’s up?”

“I saw the weirdest thing on the way home today,” Jen says, “and I wanted to tell you about it.”

“Do we have to talk about it in my room?”

Jen shakes her head, and her earrings jingle. Today, they’re little glass oranges that catch the light wonderfully.

“You and your privacy, I swear. Come on.”

Flora allows herself to be dragged out of her room. 

“So, what happened?”

“Guess.”

“Ugh. No. Tell me.”

“Guess! Come on. Guess what I saw?”
“A unicorn.”

“No! Come on. A real guess. Try again.”

“Fine. Your bus crashed into a streetlight.”

“You’re so morbid! Fine,” Jen says, “I’ll tell you. Spoilsport.”

There’s a special pleasure in spoiling Jen’s little games. It’s her own game she plays, one that has been going on since middle school: Jen tries to make her play a game, Flora finds a way to ruin it, Jen changes the rules and makes another game of it.

“So, I was on the bus, you know? And, you see some weirdos on the bus, whatever, right? But like. Man. I saw one of those, uh, morfs? Those furry people. Like, a seven foot tall crocodile or something!”

She says it so exuberantly, but Flora… doesn’t get it? Is that it? She doesn’t say anything, in case there’s more to the story.

“I mean! Scales and all! On the bus!! I mean, she had to hunch down to fit through the door. Do they really let people do that?”

“Do what?”

“Turn into animal people. I…”

And then, Flora tunes out.

Okay, no. She doesn’t tune out. The anxious rush of blood to her eardrums is so loud that she cannot hear Jen carry on. Snippets of words make it through, ‘weirdos’ and ‘in public’ in particular. None of it connects into coherent ideas.

“Flora? Earth to Flora? Human being to human being? Hello?”

“Yeah. Hi. I’m here. Spaced for a sec. What happened with the alligator person?”

“Oh, nothing. She got off the bus. But, like, weird, right?” Jen asks.

“Weird? I don’t know. Sounds like she minded her business.”

Jen sighs.

“I know you like teasing, but come on, Flora. Come on. It’s okay to be a furry online or whatever, but there’s a line. You know?”

“I…”

Flora’s heart is sinking into the floorboards. There’s a line? A line that Flora would like to cross? It’s weird and, well, bad, to change her body? HRT was fine, growing tits is fine, but fur or scales…

That’s too much, so says Jen.

“Sure. Yeah. I know.”

Maybe Flora should leave that discord server. You know. Just in case.

* * *

Hi, Flora says, so, I guess I ought to let you all know that I need to leave this server.

I think I’d like to go for MHRT, but, I can’t. My roommate… my best friend… she wouldn’t be okay with me becoming something else. Sorry to waste your time and kindness, everyone. Have a good one.

Before she can dig through the menus to leave, though, some of the people who she spoke to before reply. Flora sighs and tries to ignore them, but…

hey, that’s cool, Noneagator says, you don’t have to go on MHRT if it’s not in the cards rn. That said, though you don’t need to leave either way.

If she stays, Flora will be tempted. There’s no mystery about that, no question. Even just seeing a stray MHRT timeline is enough to stir in an unreal jealous; god, why can’t that be me? Why can’t she take to the potters’ wheel of her flesh? Others can, so what’s stopping her?

It’s a question that contains its own answer. Others are stopping her, that’s who. Her roommate, her parents, she would disappoint them if she went for it. Messing with gender is barely acceptable to people, and that’s without abandoning one’s humanity.

I’ll stay and hang, I guess, Flora says, what’s the harm?

that’s the spirit :D, says Noneagator.

* * *

It’s easy, at first, to let the dream stay dead. Flora manages to stay away from the ‘resources’ channel in the discord server for a week. It passes as most weeks do: hour by hour, then a day here and there, work and school and riding public transit.

But the desire comes back after that week. It always does. She thinks about her body changing when she bakes cookies at home. Thoughts of scales and fur, fang and claw, they come to her as she rides the city bus home from university. The margins of her notebooks fill with patterns of geometric patterns, the kind that could easily be feathers or scutes.

She avoids the links for another few days. Her dreams are filled with gnashing teeth, her gnashing teeth, and her waking moments are pale and false. In line at the pharmacy, she catches herself before her fancy takes flight. What would Jen say, if she knew Flora was sprouting wings in her dreams? Nothing kind, that’s for sure.

“Next customer!”

The days slip by like the wait in line. Slow, painfully slow, and then so quick she’s not sure what happened.

And then, one night, or…

One very early morning, she clicks the first link in the resources channel. The ! ! ! Furry Zone ! ! ! flashes hot pink and white at her, and in a fit of panic, she closes the link. What the hell is she doing? She already gave up on this dream!

But the dream hasn’t given up on her, has it?

Fine. Flora will at least look at it.

Hi there! Welcome to the Furry Zone!, reads the welcome text, interspersed with sparkling GIFs, I’ve kept this website active since 2001, as a place to discuss the furry identity, and share my favorite art! Of course, back then, being a furry was Online Only, and then at a Convention. Now, though?

Tall purple text reads, MORPHIC HRT IS HERE!

Flora hovers her mouse over it, and this reveals the text to be a link. Some part of her worries this is a virus link; this part of her speaks too late, for she has already clicked the link.

But, instead of downloading anything, it takes her to another website.

It’s not just any website, though. It’s a store page.

“What…” she says, aloud.

Apparently, through this website, 100 MG of MHRT is 15 dollars, plus international shipping fees and potential customs costs.

Hey all, she says to the Morphic Club, is this store page legit?

Sqrlgirl replies, right away, Yes! It’s where I get mine. Nobody in Denmark prescribes it without “real life experience”, so I just DIY and then order blood tests and checkups etc as necessary. There’s not a whole lot of ways of getting ‘real life experience’ as an anthro squirrel.

Fursuiting doesn’t count?

I don’t have ‘fursuit’ money, and I especially don’t have ‘well-ventilated fursuit’ money. Plus, it’s not the same, Sqrlgirl says.

True. Plus, how could it count as ‘real life experience’ if you can’t predict what you’ll become, anyways?

Noneagator speaks up, us here in the US are lucky enough to have some level of informed consent, but tbh, doctors underdose :/.

That’s true pretty much everywhere, Sqrlgrl says, most doctors think wanting MHRT makes your judgement compromised.

Sounds familiar, Flora says.

She returns to the store page. Fifteen for the stuff, plus shipping and customs? She could spare that…

But no. She can’t. Flora Baker must remain human, for all the people in her life.

That said, she bookmarks the store page before she goes to sleep. You know. Just in case.

* * *

It’s so late it’s early. Flora has been known to be up this late, to her own detriment, but she can’t help it. Her social life, like the music she makes, is stored on her computer.

Working on a music project can eat up a whole day; the going record for most hours spent on one is ten hours. Or, no, eleven and a half. Twelve? No, eleven and a half. She can’t help it! The work consumes her.

It’s the drums that really take up the hours. The heart of any piece of music is groove, and she has to make hers just right. Is that hi-hat sound right? Should it be offset from the beat? She tries it one way, listens, and then adjusts.

Flora finds the exercise meditative. There are no thoughts of dissatisfaction or dysphoria when there is something to focus on. Her brain, for once, shuts the fuck up and lets her just be.

She’s grateful she found electronic music. Well, as a vocation. Electronic music has been with her through the dregs of puberty (the first one), the struggle of finding and forging a self, puberty (the second one, with estrogen this time), and post-university malaise.

But, now, as she stares at the screen, her hands bother her. This dysphoria, it itches. Humanity is an imposition upon her. Being a proper human is to behave, to sit still, to shut up and do as you’re told.

Ugh. This is probably just hunger messing with her head. Plus, she’s pretty sure she hasn’t stood up or stretched in…

Is it really four in the morning? Good god. Alright. Flora needs to eat and go the hell to bed.

She slithers and slinks her way through the apartment, from her room to the kitchen. It’s more of a short, blunt corridor than the sort of kitchen that shows up in a magazine, but it does the job. It has cereal and ramen. What more could she want out of a place?

Crunchy berry cereal sings against the bowl, ringing as it falls into place in piles. The light is dim and hums in concert with the spoon as it rattles through a mountain of dried berry and wheat.

And when it reaches Flora’s mouth, it tastes like too much sugar.

“Blegh. Pfoo. Ugh. When did…”

When did she last eat this? A week ago, a month? It tasted so good before…

But, then again, she is thirty-one this year. Perhaps the time when she can get away with protein and carbs (and maybe some fruit juice) as a diet is past. Her body is changing, beyond the hormones she takes, beyond progesterone and anti-androgens.

Alright.

Whatever.

She grabs some leftover pasta, from the fridge, and retreats to the rock she calls her room. The pasta is cold, the room is cold, and it’s past four AM.

The music project window closes with some whining, as it always does. Flora is about ready to turn in and--

The MHRT store page is there. It was hiding the whole time under the audio workstation program, singing a song to an oblivious audience. But Flora can hear it now, and she wants to tap her feet to the tune.

She ought to close the window and call it there. It’d be easy to.

But, if she bought some, it doesn’t mean she’d have to take it. Her body is already changing; her cereal, the same she’s eaten for years, decades, no longer tastes good. The reigns of who and what she becomes are not fully in her hands.

Unless she grabs them.

* * *

When can I expect it to show up? Flora asks the Morphic Club.

Noneagator says, you ordered it last week, yeah?

Yeah…

Well, it has to leave the pharmaceutical lab in Sweden, get moved to a distributor in Norway, and reach the rich furry lady in Belarus who then ships it out to you, says a user named Caninehowl, so it will take a second. Ask me how I know.

Flora laughs, mostly at herself. The webpage says it will take time! But, she’s still shaking in anticipation. She won’t even take the stuff, but she still wants to have it. You know, she might run into someone who needs it.

Maybe Jess talks a big game about how weird furries are because she secretly is one herself? A furry egg? She knows better than to think that seriously, but alas. It would be nice if it were true.

How do you know? Flora asks.

Well, I can’t actually take it (family reasons) but I do order it. I have a stockpile for the day my inlaws can’t hold stuff over me. Probably once my kids move out I’ll start.

Your inlaws?

Caninehowl says, ‘Our son in law is choosing to be a woman and corrupting our grandkids’ is already an issue. ‘Our son in law is turning into a dog woman’ would make it even worse. Assuming it makes me a dog woman, of course. Hope it does.

Huh. Well, I hope that all works out, and that you turn into the dog woman you always dreamed of being.

Thanks, Slitherflower. Have you put any thought into what you might become?

Flora has not. What would she even…

There’s no point to getting hopes up, is there? It’s not up to her. She won’t find out, even, because she won’t take any. It’ll be nightstand decoration, along with knit stuffed animals and a bunch of papers.

No, I don’t know.

* * *

“Hey, are you busy today?” Jen asks. They always eat together in the afternoon, though for Flora this is breakfast. Being awake before one is an impossible challenge!

“No,” Flora says, “why?”

It takes Jen a second to answer; she plays with her fork, and stares at her plate.

“My dad… he’s moving out of his apartment. I was gonna drive over and help him out. We could use one more. I think his neighbor is also gonna help, but, you know.”

She says it very slowly, measured out as she might count the days until the end of the world. That tone of voice is a portent of doom, of terrifying change. Flora feels the dread off of her tone, secondhand.

“Yeah, I can go. Sure.”

“Great! You know, I appreciate it. He’s getting on in years, you know. The help is…”

Jen says nothing more. The conversations burns out and sputters.

* * *

It’s a trip across town to the apartment complex, half an hour of driving, and a deathly terror radiates off Jen the entire time. No words of comfort can break through that wedding veil around her eyes, part that cloud of dread around her.

The car stops. They’ve arrived.

“You go on ahead,” Jen says, “I need a second.”

“Alright. Which apartment?”

“705. Seventh floor, left side. Orange welcome mat.”

Flora says, “Alright. What’s the passcode for the front gate?”

Jen tells her, and then Flora is off. The keypad takes a couple of tries to work, but it does, and she’s through to the elevator. It’s a smooth ride all the way up to floor seven.

It’s down the hall for Flora until she reaches the apartment; the welcome mat is bright orange, with psychedelic patterns that look like they move if she stares at it long enough. She wipes her boots on it, shuffles in a silly little dance.

And then, she knocks. There are two voices behind the door, and they both draw closer.

“Ah,” says the man that must be Jess’ dad, “hello hello! Come on in, you must be Flora!”

“Yeah, hello, uh, Mr. Schumacher.”

“Please! Call me Roy. ‘Mister’ makes me sound old.”

Roy lets her in. The floor is soft carpet, the ceiling is popcorn, the walls are stucco plaster. She would get a closer look at the place, but ---

There is another person here. She is covered head to toe in dark green scales and wearing the cutest outfit Flora has ever seen. Her skirt gives plenty of room for her wide tail to droop, and her long alligator snout bears a smile.

“Hiya,” she says, “Mallory. Or Mal. I’m the neighbor, here to help the old guy out.”

“Flora! Nice to meet you.”

It’s at this moment that Jen comes in, takes one look at Mallory, and her expression shifts.

“You’re here to help?”

“Yeah,” says Mal, “sure am!”

“You take the bus?”

Mal shifts her eyes (deep brown, nearly black) around, in search of something. Perhaps the thing she seeks is an explanation for the blunt question.

“I… yes? Why?”

“Huh,” Jen says.

Mal does not shrink upon Jen’ scrutiny. She cracks a sharp grin, and returns the scrutiny right back. This seems to be enough to get Jen off her back; thank goodness. Flora would have had to intervene if not.

There is very little time to chat after that, though. There is furniture to move.

They start small; wooden chairs, light enough for one person to carry them, small enough to fit in the elevator. They go onto the bed of Mal’s truck with no issue.

Next go appliances. Blender, microwave, and coffee machine all go into a cardboard box. Jess snaps at Flora when she tries to help, apologizes, and then snaps at her again a minute later.

“Go help with the living room.”

“Okay, I—”

“Flora. Go.”

She goes.

The living room is looking bare. Not bare as in naked, though, bare as in ‘stripped to the bone’. It is as if a flock of vultures have come by and eaten all the wall decorations. There are discolorations in the walls where paintings and framed photographs hung; a discontinuity between the present and a preserved past. This room, this apartment, it is on the path of becoming.

But right now, all it is becoming is empty.

“Hey there, Flora! How do you feel about carrying a couch down seven flights of stairs?” Mal asks.

“I’m game.”

“Great, you take that end, yeah? Cool.”

* * *

The first flight of stairs down is, more than anything, awkward. Fitting a couch through the doors was a work of physical sorcery, and it’s not a feat Flora is looking forward to repeating. She’s on the bottom half of the operation, which means she has no idea where she’s going. All there is to do is to hold on to her end and trust Mal.

“Okay, we’re coming to the first landing. Start turning now,” she says.

The turn is tight, and for a second Flora worries that the two of them will end up lodging the couch in the landing. It’s highly improbable, impossible even, but she worries all the same. Something as silly and insipid as ‘physics’ and ‘reality’ have no bearing on her anxiety.

The second flight isn’t so bad. There’s a rhythm to it, that once Flora has gotten started, the discomfort is manageable.

Flight number three goes by pretty quickly. Flight four is not so lucky; she has to stop halfway down and adjust her arms so she isn’t crushed by fifty pounds of wood and multicolored fabric.

“Over halfway,” Mallory says, with a bit of a grunt.

“Yippee.”

The afternoon is growing old by the time they get the couch to the truck. Thankfully, it slides into place on the pickup bed without much trouble.

Flora slumps against the passenger door, all weight on her midsection. She draws in air and lets it out, winded as a windmill. Mal joins her, back to the truck and tail settled next to Flora’s boots.

“You wanna know something funny?” Mal says.

“Sure.”
“After all that exertion, if I was still human, I’d be pulling out my vape right about now.” She chuckles.

“Yeah?” Flora asks.

“Yeah. Always told myself I was gonna quit. Never did, not till I was turning into a reptile and the damned thing didn’t do anything for me anymore.”

The sky is a shade of blue that Flora has only seen before in her dreams. There is not a cloud in sight. Beneath her feet, the planet turns, in a perpetual transformation; it is not what it was yesterday, nor will it be what it is now tomorrow.

“So, you did quit,” Flora says.

“Did I?”

“Yeah.”

Mallory laughs. It’s a fluttery sound. Or is the fluttering inside Flora?

“Guess I did,” she laughs, “thanks for being cool. About me and… this. You know.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Roy’s daughter sure as fuck isn’t. She a friend of yours?”

All Flora can manage is a shrug and a reply, “Roommate since university. You know the kind of thing where you enter each other’s lives and…”

She meshes her fingers together, weaves them into each other, and then tugs; they do not come apart.

“Yeah. Mostly online friends, though.” Mal says.

“Mmm. Me too, I think. I joined this discord recently and… yeah. Nice folks there.”

“Good. It can be a real crapshoot.”

Mallory shivers.

“You alright?”

“Comes with the territory. I’m cold blooded, now. Not great as we head into winter, but shit. You should see me in the summer. The tradeoff is so worth it.”

* * *

The apartment ends up looking quite haunted, when the last of the boxes reaches the truck. The space which once held a couch only leaves an imprint of dust. The wood of it is a different color than the rest of the floor; sunlight and footfalls have been merciful on these sections of floor.

But that mercy is over. The last light of a setting sun falls on the floorboards.

Jen stands in the doorway, the threshold between the empty rooms and the hallway, and stares into the decay of the sun’s azimuth. Flora joins her in staring.

“I grew up in here,” Jen says, empty voice, “that couch was there before I was born. Now it’s going somewhere else.

“Flora. This is fucked. Why would dad do this?”
“Maybe he needs a change,” Flora replies.

All Jen does is scoff at that. Shades of magenta and pink mix into the deep blues of the sky.

“What good would that do? The only kind of change is losing something.”

“Maybe he wants to lose something,” Flora says.

“Don’t we lose enough in life, without inviting any more chaos in?”
Flora shrugs. Soft pinks are fading, magenta into purple, purple into blue, blue into black.

“Flora. Flora. Promise me something,” Jen says.

“What am I promising?”

Jen looks her deep in the eyes, so deeply it hurts, and says, “Promise me you’ll stay the same as you are now. Please, god, just… don’t change. For me. For yourself. You’re my rock, Flora. Please.”

A cough lodges in Flora’s throat. Her entire self is caught in a single hitched breath, of a defensive measure. How the hell is she supposed to promise that? What is she supposed to do? Is Flora meant to pin herself like a dead butterfly, arms spread out, so Jen can look at her be the same for the rest of time? What, is she meant to be twenty-five forever?

There’s an email from the US postal service. Your package has been delivered!

Her MHRT is waiting for her at home, and Jen is asking Flora to never change again for any reason.

“Flora?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you promise?”