Brad sighs as he looks at his appearance in the standing mirror, staring at the male body he considers a curse. His reflection has an average face, slightly pale skin, and a small beard, brown almost to the point of being black. He also has light blue eyes, perhaps the only good thing about himself, and short hair the color of his beard.. As he looks further down, seeing the broad figure of a man, and feeling the object between his legs, he recognizes the start of another depression cycle. 

Not for the first time, he imagines what he feels he should have looked like. A beautiful woman with a small nose, full lips seemingly unnaturally red like a ruby, white eyes that seem to see everything, a small chest, just large enough for a bra, and long legs. Her hair would have been white as the purest snow, tipped crimson at the ends. However, the most important thing is something that he does his best to not imagine, knowing that it is impossible, yet will cause him to spiral further into depression.

Stepping away from the mirror, Brad sighs once more, as he goes to grab something to eat before considering what to do for the day given it’s a day off for him. He’ll probably read something online, since that’s typically how he spends his time while at home.

As he heads upstairs after eating, he gets a call. As he sees that it’s his mom, he smiles faintly before sighing once more and answering the phone. “Hello mom, how’re you today? Hopefully you’re not too busy.”

“Oh I’m doing well hun, thanks for always caring.. Feel like coming over and going for a walk? I know we didn’t schedule it, but the weather is perfect despite it being winter.”

Brad sighs while holding his phone away from his ear so it hopefully won’t pick up “Sure, I’ll be there. Just give me a few minutes, I wasn’t prepared for this and need to get ready.”

His mom  notices the resigned sigh, and slightly urgent with worry, she asks, “Did I interrupt anything hun? That was a pretty big sigh you know and you normally only sigh like that when you’re not feeling well.”

Brad chuckles slightly before responding, “No you didn’t interrupt. I just planned to read today, and yeah one of the cycles seems to be starting”

“If you’re sure you’re not being interrupted, I’ll see you in a few minutes then? We don’t need to walk, I’m just worried about you.”

“Sure, see you in a few” Brad answers before saying the traditional goodbyes and sighing, not wanting to go into public given how he feels trapped in the wrong body. He gets dressed in some warmer clothes given that it is Winter before heading out, locking the door behind him and pocketing the key. He takes a deep breath of the wonderful, clean air before heading over. It takes two minutes to make it to his mom’s place.

Knocking on the door, Brad doesn’t get an answer. Frowning, he decides to call her, getting a response when she answers that she had to rush a friend to the hospital, and that she is sorry for the sudden change. 

Sighing once more, frustrated yet understanding how much his mom values others, he decides to walk to the park anyway, since he’s already outside and the fresh air is intoxicating. Much cleaner than it normally is.

 It doesn’t take long to reach the gate to the park, only a minute or so from his mom’s house, and after waving to the nearby park ranger, he cringes internally from the social interaction.

Minutes later, he manages to find a quiet part of the forest, even the birds seem to be holding their song in today. There is a bench nearby that he sits down on, ruminates on his thoughts and inner most desires before becoming incredibly dizzy. 

Nearly vomiting from the nausea caused by the dizziness, Brad slips from the bench, landing on his knees as the ground starts to shake. A crack starts to form a few feet away, accompanied by a wild rush of fresh air. It then starts to spread towards Brad. As the shaking continues, the crack expands faster, causing Brad, who is still stuck on his knees fighting to keep his stomach from emptying, to fall into the crevice. 

However, instead of falling to his death in the newly revealed cavern, he ends up floating slowly to the ground, passing through a brilliant sphere of light as electricity seems to course through his mind, knocking him unconscious, while wrapping him in a sphere of energy as the bundle of it drains.

An unknown amount of time later.

Brad comes to with a groan, before frantically reaching for his throat as his voice sounds much more melodic, and a bit higher. His hands rush to his throat, not quite believing what’s happening. 

As they rush upwards, they are stopped at a soft barrier that his hands plunge into, causing an exclamation mixed between pain and something else that he can’t quite place as a tingling feeling fills his body He jerks back from the sensation and feels pain from his spine, but puts that off for now, he looks down to see what he hit, and sees to his delight that there are breasts attached to him that are kept from moving too much by a ruby red dress, which seems to be glimmering with energy. 

Trembling, he reaches behind himself to check what the sudden pain from his spine was. Confused since it was further down and simply much more than it should be. Reaching behind himself and feeling fluff, he gets unbelievably excited, desperately pinching his side, hoping for pain so that he won’t believe it’s a dream. Wincing with pain from the pinch, he hardly notices, ecstatic that he seems to finally be in the body he had always longed for, the lack of which causing most of his depression. 

Feeling something twitching on  the top of his head causes him to grin widely. He can hear the sounds of nature far above, each chirp of a bird accompanied by a twitch of the object on his head.

Something seems to be odd with his vision as he looks more than a few inches past himself, his vision is doubled. One of the two sights is normal, if not sharper details and the like, while the other shows everything as a dense mesh of threads. The threads are woven and mixed with each other forming a fabric that extends all around, denser where objects are, but present even while looking at the air.

 Shifting around and pulling one of the pieces of fluff from behind himself, he shouts in excitement when he sees the tail he saw only in his deepest desires. Long, white pure as snow with the tip seemingly dipped in red paint while halfway down the length there is a hollow crimson circle. 

Struggling to believe everything, he reaches down to confirm that a certain piece was missing. The only thing that would ruin the image of what he had always imagined himself as.

Upon feeling a void where there used to be something, Brad starts crying with joy, not wanting to ever wake up if this was a dream. 

He, now she in her body as well as her mind and soul, stops crying only due to feeling the ears on top of her head flick because of a noise from nearby and below. The sound of something striking hard earth and shifting it aside.

 She unsteadily gets to her feet in case the ground collapses again, but not before falling a couple of times due at first to needing to get untangled from her new tails, and then because she isn’t used to the weight of them. . After the first fall from the weight of her tails, something in her brain seems to click in place, and she is able to stand up much easier, her brain getting used to her body, and forgetting the old one. 

Once she is standing, she sees a blur where the dense fabric that seems to make up everything gets split while at the same time seeing the rocky ground part as a mole the size of a horse with metallic claws, and ruby eyes emerges. When the mole is fully out of the ground, it’s head is at a height that makes Brad have to look up..

The mole sniffs for a moment before locking onto the changed Brad. It’s ruby eyes glowing unnaturally as it begins shuffling towards her.

Seeing this, though barely as she struggles to comprehend the double vision, Brad backs away. Upon registering the danger that she is in, a flame so hot it’s cold, while simultaneously being so cold it’s hot, sparks to life within her chest before quickly becoming a blaze..

Panic floods her causing her to start patting her chest, thinking that she’s about to combust. The thought seems to make something click as the icy flame within her surges out and covers her body. Not hurting, but certainly not pleasant since it now feels like a constant itch upon her new skin. She starts flailing, sending the fire all over, though it doesn’t seem to separate from her as it seems to replenish from within. Where the fire hits, scorch marks surrounded by frost are all that’s left after the fire dies.

The mole gets closer, and in the fabric-like double vision, Brad sees the mole swing its left forepaw at her, causing her to stumble back quickly, only maintaining balance as her tails press against the ground to keep her standing. However, in her normal vision layer, the mole was still approaching her, having only just lifted up its left forepaw to swing at her. 

The mole, seeing its prey dodge, lowers its head and begins to charge at her, which Brad first observes in her fabric like sight and then in her normal sight.

Half a second later, when the mole is nearly upon her, she decides she has nothing to lose, she yells as she moves her arm as if she is throwing something while continuing to back away. A torrent of pale blue flame erupts from her arm that takes the flames covering her and sprays it wildly at the mole, causing it to groan as it starts to be covered in frost while also consumed by fire.

Despite this, the mole-like creature keeps moving towards Brad, slowly losing its sight as its eyeballs both sizzle and solidify, and it’s body, while durable, begins to slow down as the cold creeps into its muscles. However, it is still trying to reach the once thought as easy, now a bit of a challenge, prey that is full of energy. Enough energy that its dim intelligence wants it without considering the consequences.

Backing up further, Brad trips, but catches herself once more with her tails, hitting the side of the cavern soon after. She takes a deep breath to calm herself, concentrating on narrowing but intensifying the spray of fire out of her arm, which causes the fire to eagerly respond to her mental command, charring a hole into the skull of the mole as it becomes more like a laser than a gout of fire. The mole collapses as its brain is charred beyond recognition where the fire hit, while where the fire didn’t touch, being frozen solid.

After the adrenaline wears off once the mole-like creature hadn’t moved for ten minutes, Brad had frozen from a mix of exhaustion and fear of what would have happened if that gamble hadn’t worked. Her head is swimming, and a massive headache is on the edge of forming.

 Speculating on what she feels, whatever changed her must have filled her past the brim with whatever the new energy is, but that concentrated fire seems to have emptied the excess and most of whatever the new reserve she feels is.

Once more taking a deep breath, she feels warmth flowing into her from all around, flowing into her tails, then from there back to her body, cycling into all parts before flowing into her head, causing the headache that was on the brink of forming to dissipate. 

A strange mist, visible only in her fabric sight, then seems to come off of the mole once its body fully shuts down, flowing quickly towards her and causing the warmth that cycles through her on each breath to multiply several times over.

Brad stands up, her tails extending to maintain her balance automatically as she goes away from the mole, marveling while being surprised with how automatic the extending of her tails felt.

Soon after, she tries to settle the double vision next by concentrating only on the normal field of vision so that she can search for her old belongings. After a few seconds of concentrating, she finds, to her surprise, that it works.

Looking down, she gasps, as she can finally see herself in all her glory. She takes a closer look at the dress she’s in, finding it to end just above the middle of her thigh, and feeling it move every time her tails twitch.

 Remembering her goal, she looks around for her former clothes, and spots scraps all over the place before her focus fades and the double vision is back.

“Gah, that’s annoying. I wonder why my vision is distorted like this?” Upon hearing her voice as she says that in frustration, her tails wave like crazy, stirring the air in the cavern as she is giddy about the changes that seem to have been wrought upon her.

“Well no time like the present I suppose, but first I should make sure to grab my house key and phone. It wouldn’t do to be locked out” she mutters before she starts looking at the scraps of cloths from where they seem to have exploded from her body, focusing intently on her vision being normal.

Despite her vision being in normal mode she hasn’t realized she really shouldn’t be able to see down here, given that the sun seems to have gone down while she was unconscious. 

Minutes of searching through each scrap later, her key and phone are in her possession. However, the phone is just a useless brick at this point, because the components are exposed after the back popped off, everything within charred and components popped. 

 Once the search is over, she finds that ability to filter her vision seems to fade as both become more comfortable. However, she still stumbles occasionally, because she focuses on one more than the other and misses a step. Despite this, she decides it’s time to leave this cavern and begins to follow the right wall.

Walking for long enough to cause her legs to twinge, she notices the ground ramping up, almost as if purposefully changed to ease the entrance and exit from whatever this cavern is. About ten feet up, in the middle of the ramp there’s another mole, though it is asleep.

As Brad’s breath catches, she remembers something that Kitsune, the being she had always pictured herself as, were known for, and focuses on the strange energy in her that flowed to her head. She concentrates on being silent and sneaky. To an outside observer her presence diminishes slightly and her steps, once she starts trying to walk past the mole to her left given she’s hugging the right wall, are silent.

A few nervous minutes of sneaking later, her head starts to swim again, so she stops focusing on that change, rubbing her head from the required concentration. 

After taking a moment to breathe she advances a bit more to see the sky. It is clearly night due to the stars she sees, though much brighter, and perhaps a bit more numerous than she remembers. 

Running the last few feet of the ramp to make it back into the forest, she intakes a large breath of air. The quality feels like it is cleansing her with how pure it is, only affected by notes of smoke, iron/copper and an unpleasant smell that sends her heart racing in anxiety.

Looking back to the cavern below, the crevice that had formed from the quake seems to cover over half of what used to be forest, the trees having fallen after being unable to withstand the quakes.

“What even happened here? What were those strange mole-like creatures… and what is this energy that’s in the air even now?”