=:= Stacey =:=

The light show only lasted two or three seconds, then it faded away. She was still sitting there on her sofa, and it took a few moments to recognize things felt different. She blinked as she took in a deep breath.

"Holy fuck Jesus Christ!" Rob gasped, staring. "Stacey is that you?!"

Stacey felt something twitch underneath her and she giggled, "Oh my God it worked! Of course it's me, Rob!"

She stood up, glancing at her friend. He was staring slack-jawed at her, eyes wide. Stacey giggled again then leaned over and pulled her track-pants down and off, kicking the sandals off at the same time. Behind her, a big bushy red tail with a white tip popped free of the pants and started swishing back and forth.

"Stacey what the absolute fuck?!" Rob looked like he was still having trouble comprehending what he was seeing.

Stacey ran a hand over her her head, and felt her two fuzzy pointed ears up there. She giggled again. "I have to see this!"

She ran barefoot past her friend and into the bathroom, flipping on the light. Staring back at her in the mirror was a cute young fox-girl.

She looked twenty years old at most, and she'd lost at least half a foot in height. Her hair was now long, wavy and red, hanging several inches past her shoulders. On top of her head were two red fuzzy pointed ears, with black fur on the tips. And swishing back and forth behind her was that big bushy red tail, with a white fuzzy tip. Her bushy red tail!

Stacey continued staring at herself in the mirror for a few minutes. She was smiling wide as she studied herself. Her eyes had been blue-grey before. Now they were brown with flecks of green and gold. Her grin was wide enough that her fangs were just visible, peeking out under her lips.

She giggled again. She had fangs!

Finally she turned away from the mirror, and saw Rob standing in the bathroom door, still staring at her. The look of shock on his face was priceless.

"I told you it was real!" She stuck out her tongue at him, and smirked.

He shook his head slowly, "Stacey you can't just... This is... What the hell are you going to do? You can't show up for work like this tomorrow!"

"Why not?" she tilted her head to the side as she watched him. Then before he could reply she ducked past him out of the bathroom and went back to her laptop. She stopped the recording, made sure it was fully saved to disk, then she started making a backup of the file onto a USB drive.

Behind her, Rob sputtered "Why not?! Stacey you... You're... You've got a tail for fuck sake! You look like a college student! Nobody's gonna recognize you!"

"You will," she grinned at him. "You'll vouch for me. And I have a video of the transformation, to prove I'm me."

"Oh my God Stace, they're gonna flip! How do you know you won't be locked up, examined, whatever?"

Stacey sighed and looked at him. She let her giddy mood go for now, and in a serious tone she said "I won't be the only one, Rob. That video I showed you, with Heather? That went viral three weeks ago. Almost half a million people saw that before the new moon. A half million people could have downloaded those same instructions. Even if only one percent of them tried it, that's still what? Five thousand people who've just discovered magic is real."

She watched as his eyes widened and his face went slightly more pale.

"Holy fuck..."

Stacey nodded slowly, "Yeah. And how many of those people who did this today are going to upload their own videos? How many more will try it next month? This thing is just going to grow. Five thousand today. Maybe a half million next month. Five million the month after?"

He slowly shook his head and asked, "Can you ever change back? Or is this forever?"

She shrugged, "I'm pretty sure you can use the spell over and over. It sort of says so in the instructions, if you don't like the result you can try again next month. So yeah, I could probably change back. Why would I want to, though?"

She grinned and wiggled her behind, making her tail swish back and forth. That in turn led to another happy giggle, and her giddiness was back.

"Anyways, give me a few minutes to figure out what I can wear, then we'll grab some breakfast." She skipped into her bedroom adding "I'm starving!"

Behind her, Rob protested "You're going to go out looking like that?!"

Stacey laughed, "Of course I am! I didn't do this just to stay hidden in my apartment forever."

It took longer than she'd hoped, fussing with her clothes. She'd been looking online at how to alter clothes for tails. There was a lot of information already out there for cosplayers. She would have had something ready but she didn't really know what her size would wind up as, so she decided to wait. Now she sort of regretted it.

Finally she ended up wearing a pair of low-cut panties, and some low-cut leggings. The leggings kind of bunched up under her tail though and felt bad, but it was the best she could do for now. She had sneakers on her feet. They'd been too tight on her before, now they were two sizes too big. She put on a sports-bra which fit ok. Her boobs hadn't really changed size but they were perky again and the rest of her frame was smaller, which made them look a little bigger. Finally she put on a long loose top, which was longer and looser than it had been before.

She grabbed her purse and emerged from the bedroom. "This will have to do. The leggings feel weird as hell tucked under my tail. I'll be spending most of my free time altering clothes for the next few weeks I think."

Rob stared at her. In a deadpan voice he said, "Your leggings feel weird. You have a tail, but it's the leggings that are weird."

Stacey giggled. "I've been researching clothes for tails, there's a lot of ideas and instructions out there. I just haven't started working on things yet, because I didn't know what my size would end up as. Anyways, c'mon. I owe you breakfast! I'm starving!"

Rob just nodded slowly and headed for the door.

Before joining him, Stacey dashed back into the living-room. She verified the file had finished copying, and ejected the USB drive then turned off the laptop. Then she turned and crouched by the sofa and picked up the piece of paper with the spell. She'd dropped it when the transformation started.

She smiled down at the page. Stuck in the corner was the picture she'd printed out. It was an anime fox-girl she'd found online. With a quiet giggle, she folded the paper up and tucked it into her purse, along with the USB drive.

Then she followed Rob out the door, her tail once again swishing happily behind her.

• • • • •

It was mid-afternoon when Stacey got back to her apartment. She dumped the various shopping bags on the floor next to her coffee table then slumped onto the sofa with a tired sigh.

It wasn't even three in the afternoon yet and it already felt like it'd been a long day.

Breakfast had started out ok, she thought. Rob drove, they went to a local diner that they'd eaten at a dozen times before.

There were a few little hurdles of course. She had to figure out what to do with her tail in the car, then in a booth at the restaurant. In both cases she ended up wrapping it around her waist, over her right hip and leaving it on her lap.

And of course there were the stares. She knew that would happen, it would have been foolish not to expect people to gawk at her.

Unfortunately Rob wasn't comfortable with so much attention. He was just barely keeping it together as it was. Stacey was pretty sure the actual point where he lost it was when they overheard a comment that suggested she was his daughter.

He barely spoke after that. When they were finished eating he drove her home and curtly thanked her for breakfast, but told her he wouldn't be taking her up on dinner after all. After she got out of his car, he drove off without another word.

She'd also had a few unexpected surprises of her own during the meal. She discovered she couldn't tolerate coffee or orange juice. The coffee was either too harsh and bitter, or too cloying and sweet, depending how she prepared it. And the juice was too acidic. She wound up drinking water.

The food was ok as long as she didn't add pepper and kept the salt to a minimum. She enjoyed the eggs and bacon, as long as the latter wasn't too crisp.

That was when it finally dawned on her that her transformation was more than just external. The realization that it had changed her tastebuds was a surprise, but ontop of that she couldn't help wonder what else may have changed. How much of her physiology was different now? She had no idea what fox biology was like, but if it was similar to dogs she might have to avoid chocolate and alcohol, and who-knows-what else.

Stacey wasn't regretting her decision, but by the time breakfast was over her mood was certainly a lot less giddy.

She put off the introspection and biology lessons for later, and instead drove herself over to the Pen Centre so she could start putting together a new wardrobe. There were plenty more stares there of course, and she didn't have her friend with her for moral support so she had to deal with that alone.

Nothing bad happened, but it was draining. She'd been planning on spending the rest of the afternoon and evening doing alterations to her new clothes, but right now what she really wanted was a nap.

After a few minutes, she dug her phone out of her purse. She'd taken a few selfies this morning before her mood had started to dip, and she looked through them before picking her favourite.

She also had a selfie she'd taken first thing in the morning, and she posted the 'before' and 'after' pictures to her social media, along with the #ChangeTheWorld hashtag. She also texted the before and after pictures to Cindy, along with a brief note. She doubted she'd get a reply. The small sorceress would probably be completely swamped for the next few days or weeks, with feedback or whatever.

Stacey checked social media and sure enough there were over a hundred thousand posts under that hashtag already. Most were re-posts or reaction posts though, so she had no idea how many were from people like her who'd actually done it.

Finally she started up her laptop and opened the video file, and sat quietly watching her own transformation. She smiled as she replayed it again. After the third viewing, she opened the file in a video editor and trimmed off most of the lead-in and the dead space from after she ran out of view. She waffled a bit on whether or not to delete the shot of her whipping off her track-pants, but finally decided to keep that. It was the important tail-reveal and it made her happy.

The edited video was about five minutes long, and included enough 'before' and 'after' that she was confident it proved who she was. Rob was there at the start of the video, he used her name, and his voice was there off-camera at the end, with his colourful reactions.

She uploaded the video, then at long last she curled up on the sofa for a nap.

About an hour later she woke to the sound of her phone ringing, and something fuzzy tickling her face. She grinned at the realization that she'd been hugging her tail in her sleep. Then she reached out, and fumbled for her phone.

Even half-asleep she knew her ears were in the wrong place now for normal phone use, so she put it on speakerphone and said "Hello?"

"Stacey!" It was her sister's voice and she sounded uptight. "What the hell?!"

Stacey sat up and stretched, "Ugh... What's up Katie? Everything ok?" Her sister was a professor at UBC in Vancouver, they talked regularly but hadn't seen each other in a couple years. She glanced at the clock. Four in the afternoon here, so one o'clock out in BC.

Katie demanded "Stacey what the fuck did you do to yourself? I saw your 'before and after' pictures, and just watched the video! Even your voice sounds different now! Tell me you didn't really do that?!"

"Uh... Yeah sis. I really did it. It's real and it's magic." Stacey was grinning now. Katie was three years younger than herself, except Stacey knew she looked young enough now to be Katie's daughter.

After a few seconds of silence, her sister stated "I'm hanging up and calling right back on video."

The line went dead and Stacey sighed, stretching again. Sure enough her phone started beeping with the incoming video call. She answered, holding the phone out a bit so her red hair and fox-ears were on full display.

"Hey sis. Check it out." she grinned.

Katie looked a lot like Stacey had when she woke up this morning. Her sister's hair was a little longer, but it was the same greying blonde. There were crows' feet in the corners of her eyes and laugh lines on her face.

"Oh. My. Fucking. God. Why?!" Katie gaped at her.

Stacey giggled, "Look at this!" She angled the phone down and pulled her tail around into view, making sure her sister had a good look at it. Then she looked at the screen again and asked, "Hey, I just realized you're asking me why, but you aren't asking how. Or trying to tell me it's not real."

Katie sighed "I've already been told about the 'how'. One of my students had to explain him-... I mean, herself this morning. So you can imagine my shock when I saw your post with that same hashtag. And you still haven't answered my question. Why, Stace? Why did you do this? I didn't even know you were into that stuff. Furry, fox, whatever."

"Short answer is, I realized my life was already mostly over and I'd missed it. Wasted it. Given it away to a job I wasn't happy with." Stacey explained. "I wanted a do-over. The fox stuff... I dunno. It looked cute, I thought if I was going to do this, why not try something a little different?"

"So this wasn't some life-long dream?" her sister asked, frowning.

Stacey shrugged, "Nah. I didn't pick what I was going to change into till four days ago. I knew I was going to change, I knew I was going to try and make myself younger. I came across a real live catgirl on a case a while back, and that sort of got me thinking outside the 'human' box. So I looked for inspiration, and found it in a Kitsune anime."

"Jesus Christ, Stacey." Katie shook her head. "Only my sister would give herself animal ears and a tail on a last-minute whim."

She giggled, "I sincerely doubt I'm the only one, sis. I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more fox-girls, cat-girls, and who-knows-what else over the next few full moons. You should think about it too. It's an amazing experience."

Before her sister could reply, she added, "Anyways I have to go. I really need to get started altering some clothes, so I have something to wear tomorrow for work. Talk to you later, Katie!"

PurpleCatGirl

If you're enjoying our work and you'd like to support us, please consider joining our patreon & get early access to new chapters!
https://www.patreon.com/purplecatgirl