“She said she grew wings…”

“Wait, like angel wings?”

“I don’t know, she didn’t say.”

The blood drained from my face as Emily and Zoey talked, trying to figure out what was happening. This is my fault, isn’t it…

 

“Where does she live?” I asked. We had to go and see her, to find out what happened. The dreams that Emily and I saw seemed to be related to our own transformations, so I was curious to see if Elena had seen a similar dream to us.

“Hang on…” Zoey put the phone back to her ear. “Miss Elena, what’s your address? We’re gonna come visit you.”

After Zoey relayed the address that Elena told her, I started panicking, and my whole body began shaking.

“That’s really close to where I live! Does that mean…”

“Flora?”

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

“Flora.”

“Everyone around me is gonna-”

“FLORA!” Emily shouted at me and grabbed my shoulders, her amber eyes filled with a mix of concern and anger.

 

“It’s not your fault, okay? Just calm down and focus on what’s happening now. We’re gonna go visit her, and see how she’s doing, okay?”

“...okay.”    

I still think it’s my fault, somehow… though I still haven't got a clue what’s actually going on.

 

“I’m coming too.” Zoey stepped forward as Emily was holding me.

“Alright. Umm, do you have a bike?”

“No, I usually walk to school.”

Remembering what happened yesterday when I first arrived at Emily’s house after her change, I spoke up.

“Emily, you can just ride on the back of my bike.”

“Huh? Wouldn’t I be too…”

“Have you weighed yourself since you transformed?” I walked over to her, looping my arms around her legs and lifting her easily.

“Hya!”

“You weigh next to nothing now.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll do it. Just put me down! Zoey, you can ride my bike.”

 

Running over to where our bikes were locked up, Zoey called out.

“I don’t have a bike helmet.”

“That’s fine, you can borrow mine.” Emily responded. “...I can’t wear it anyway.”

Rummaging through her school bag, she pulled out her helmet and chucked it towards Zoey as I unlocked my bike.

“Thanks!”

Emily grabbed out her key and unlocked her own bike, where the lock had been tangled together with my own bike lock. I walked my bike away from the stand, and Emily hopped on the back once she had finished. She called out to both Zoey and I.

“Everyone ready?”

“Ready!”

We rode off as quick as we could.

 

As we rode along, I glanced around at the decidedly abnormal amount of birds that I could see. Large groups of crows were all flying the same way, along with many different colourful varieties of birds, who all appeared to be fleeing in every direction as the crows went along. Reaching Elena’s house, we all gasped in shock.

 

Her front yard was filled to the brim with crows.

 

“What is going on…”

 

We walked our bikes into her driveway, out of sight of the road, before wading through the swarms of black birds to Elena’s front door. Ringing the doorbell, a few of them cawed in protest at the noise, and flew away.

“Just a bit…”

Hearing footsteps approaching from inside, we backed away slightly so as to not immediately overcrowd the doorway. The door unlocked, and we were greeted by the sight of Elena, wrapping a blanket around her upper body.

“Come in…” She said, weakly. Her untied hair was dishevelled, and her glasses were absent, allowing us to see that her eyes were red and swollen. After slipping off our shoes, we filed inside her front room.

 

“Now, Elena, what happened? You said that you grew... wings?” Zoey began talking first, being the most familiar with Elena out of the three of us. Elena slowly unwrapped the blanket from around her body.

“Well, see for yourself…”

She was wearing the same dress pants as yesterday, a black pair, along with a navy blue tank top. Folding around most of her upper body were a pair of large black feathered wings, resembling the birds that had gathered outside.

 

“Crow wings…” Emily said, in a small voice.

 

"They're majestic." I commented. Elena looked at me, shocked, her wings spreading out to their full breadth with a whooshing noise. They had an impressive wingspan, spreading as far out as her wrists when extended.

"Do you think you can fly with them?" Zoey asked.

“I don’t know, I haven’t tried yet.” Elena slowly moved to the centre of the room, and we backed away, predicting what she was trying to do. The biggest problem with the idea of a person flying, as far as I knew, was that humans were far too heavy. As I pondered the possibility of Elena soaring through the sky, she tried to flap her wings. Immediately, she lost her balance, screaming “Waaahh!” and falling over backwards.

Wait, I think Emily is much lighter than before, now that she’s a fox girl. Did Elena’s weight change too?

 

“Elena? Do you have somewhere we can weigh ourselves?”

“Y-yeah, there’s a scale in the bathroom.” She responded, fumbling around her wings in an attempt to get up off the floor. I held my hand out to her, easily pulling her upright after she grabbed it.

I thought so! She’s really light too!

“Let’s go and check your weight. If you’re light enough, you might actually be able to fly.”

“Um, okay.”

I started following Elena to her bathroom, taking Emily’s hand and dragging her with me on the way.

“Hey, why me too?!”

“You’re crazy light now, so go check your weight as well.”

 

Reaching the bathroom, Elena wandered over to the scale in the corner of the room, hesitating just in front of it. After taking a few deep breaths, and muttering about how much heavier the large wings might have made her, she stepped onto the scale.

 

“...14.8 kilos.” She said, breathlessly. We all froze in shock. She’s so light! What happened?

“How does that work?!” Zoey screamed. That moment convinced me that some form of magic was at play in our transformations, which in hindsight made me feel like an idiot. Yeah, clearly it’s magic. You don’t just get 20 centimetres shorter and suddenly turn into a girl overnight without some form of magic. My mind wandered back towards the electrical issues I had encountered on the first day. Were those the result of magic too? Was I capable of performing magic?

 

Emily leapt forward, causing Elena to squeak and quickly hop off the scale.

“My turn!” She called out, jumping onto the scale as soon as they were free. She stared at the display, groaning in displeasure.

“...it’s not working.”

Stepping forward to take a closer look, we saw what she was referring to. The scale was rapidly fluctuating between roughly 5 and 20 kilograms.

“Did it break?”

“Let me have a shot.” I moved forward, prompting Emily to back off the scale. However, just before I stepped on it, I had an awkward realisation.

I have no clue how much I'm supposed to weigh!

Resolving myself to be satisfied with whatever result I received from the scale, I took a step forward.

“I weigh… 27.3 kilos?!” That's impossibly underweight! This scale really is broken. I quickly gave my body a once-over inspection, pulling my collar slightly in an attempt to look at my torso before blushing quite badly, as I realised that I was staring fixedly at my chest. M-my ribs aren’t sticking out or anything, so I don’t look underweight. Is it another magic thing?

Zoey stepped forward with an anxious expression.

“Let me try, since I actually know my weight.” She took her turn on the scale, receiving a reading of roughly 60 kilograms.

“Either it only works for me, or you all are ridiculously light.”

“Give me another shot.” Emily hopped forward again, continuing the rotation of all of us learning our new weights. She received the same outcome upon stepping on the scale, a constantly changing result between 5 and 20 kilograms. All of us grew silent, unsure what to make of this new information.

 

After a while, the silence was abruptly broken by me. Or, more specifically, by the loud growling sound that emanated from my stomach.

“...Should I go and make lunch, while everyone’s here?” Elena offered. All of us smiled at her proposal, and we began making our way back to the living room.

“Thanks, I’m starving!” Zoey said, rubbing her stomach.

“I’m… not, oddly enough.” Emily replied. When she was at my house earlier this morning, I offered to make breakfast for her, since she said that she went straight there without eating, but she turned it down. Although, I couldn’t tell whether it was because of some kind of physical phenomenon caused by her transformation, or simply due to stress as a result of it.

 

Reaching the living room, Elena ducked over to the kitchen as we made ourselves comfortable. Emily stopped just before sitting on the couch, taking a moment to adjust her tail out of the way so that she wouldn’t sit on it. Flopping down into an armchair, I began relaying a theory that I had been crafting.

 

“Hey, Emily, do you remember two days ago how that light suddenly died when we went shopping?”

“Yeah?” She perked up slightly as I talked, clearly glad to have a distraction.

“I don’t know if you noticed during that morning, but the lights kept getting dimmer whenever I shouted. And… I realised something when we all weighed ourselves earlier.”

“...go on.”

“Clearly there’s magic- or something similar to it- involved in all our changes. So, if that’s the case, then why did it make both of you… part non-human, and yet it only turned me into a girl?”

My stomach dropped as I spoke. I couldn’t stand saying that Emily and Elena were somehow not human, but there was no other way I could find to describe what happened to them.

“Elena grew wings, Emily grew ears and a tail, and you grew boobs.” Zoey spoke up with a slight smirk, breaking my sour mood somewhat.

“Yeah- whatever. Anyway, if that’s the case, then why do I weigh like, 30 kilos? The only thing I can think of, is…” At that point, the blood began rushing to my face. This is super embarrassing to actually say out loud!

“... that I can perform magic.”

Both Zoey and Emily stared at me, dumbfounded. I pushed through the overwhelming feeling that I was going through an awkward emo phase and continued, my face extremely hot, and probably quite red.

“The lights were clearly responding to me that day, so I’m wondering if I had some effect on the scale too.”

“I don’t think so,” Zoey interjected. “Because my reading was normal. If you were messing with the scale, it would have-”

A loud shattering sound emanated from the kitchen, interrupting her explanation. A few moments later, a very upset groan emerged from the same direction.

“Everything okay?” I called out.

“Yeah, it’s fine. It’s just…” Elena gingerly walked out of the kitchen, carrying two plates full of various kinds of small sandwiches.

“I knocked over a bowl with my wings…”

 

*****

 

“Anyway, as I was saying,” Once I had eaten a few sandwiches, I resumed my explanation.

“If what happened that day was caused by me, then that would mean that I’m capable of doing magic, or something. If that’s the case, then I’d wager that Elena could fly with her wings. Additionally, you might have some cool powers too, Emily.”

Looking over at Emily, she had barely touched her plate of food.

“...You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m just… not all that hungry.”

I tilted my head. Another quirk of being a fox girl?

“Maybe you gather energy from other sources, like the earth.” Zoey chimed in with her own theories. “Never having to eat again? That’d be cool.”

“...I’d rather be able to hide my ears and tail.” Emily’s head was drooping.

“Emily? What’s the matter?” Elena spoke up in a calm and clear voice, the same tone that she used in her job as a counsellor.

 

“I… haven’t told my mum about this. What is she gonna do when she finds out her daughter’s not human anymore?” She brought her knees close to her chest, hugging them in an attempt to comfort herself. I instantly regretted my earlier comment about her not being human.

“And what about my friends? What will they think when they suddenly see me with ears and a tail?! I just…” After realising that she was almost screaming, she suddenly stopped. Taking a deep breath, she continued in a much smaller voice.

“I know I’m being silly, and you both have it just as bad if not worse, but… I keep panicking every time I think about going home.”

“Emily,” I spoke up. “We promised to go and sleep over at your place tonight, remember?”

She raised her face to look at me, a few tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

“We can talk to your mum then. I’ll back you up, and we'll get her to accept you, I’m sure of it.”

“...okay.”

At that point, my phone buzzed. Pulling it out of my pocket and reading the message displayed on the screen, I started panicking.

“I gotta get home, like now.”

“What? What’s going on?”

I leapt up, turning towards the front door as Emily called out.

“My sister’s on her way home. If I’m heading over to your place, I need to go and pack before she arrives.”

“I can give you a lift if you need.” Elena offered.

“...I don’t need to you fly me home.”

“I think she meant by car.”

 

*****

 

Wading through the swarms of crows gathered on Elena’s front lawn, Emily and I walked over to where our bikes were parked. She offered to come with me when I had stopped just before walking out the door.

“What exactly do I need to take to a sleepover?” I had asked. Guys generally didn’t have sleepovers, so it was my first time going to one at all. Plus, I didn’t know what girls needed to bring to those kinds of events.

 

Halfway through the ride, I realised that I had completely forgotten all about my plan to ask whether Elena had a dream the night before. I'll ask her next time I see her. I really wanna know whether she saw the same dream.

 

Reaching my house, Emily rushed inside as soon as the door was unlocked, sprinting towards my room while yelling about a slumber party. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling as she disappeared into the corridors. I’m glad she’s feeling at least a little better.

“Flora! Hurry up!”

“Alright, alright, I’m coming!”

Inside my room, Emily had busied herself unloading all of my drawers and stashes of clothes, searching through them hurriedly.

“Um, why are you-”

“There are no pyjamas!” She yelled. “We forgot to buy you cute pyjamas!”

That’s true, but I like my current pyjamas. They’re comfy.

“Isn’t it fine? I can just wear my old ones.”

“No, you can’t!” She grabbed the frilliest, most cutesy dress she could find from our shopping trip a few days ago, waving it aggressively in my face.

“You have to wear cute pyjamas at a sleepover! It’s an essential part!”

“I don’t have any…”

“I’ll lend you one of my pairs. You’re only a little shorter than me. It’ll be great, we can have a dress up party, and eat sweets, and play games…” Emily went off in her own world as she spoke, leaving me to duck around her and start digging through the mess of clothes she had scattered all around my room.

Please go easy on me!

 

Once I had packed my clothes, along with the required toiletries Emily had listed for me, we headed out with our backpacks. Emily pulled her hoodie up again to hide her fox ears, trying to hide the fact that she was trembling slightly. I placed a hand on her shoulder, causing her to turn a very pale face towards me.

 

“It’ll be fine, alright? I’m here for you.”

She gave me a weak smile, before hopping on her bike and riding off, with me following close behind.