Fire! Everything is on fire!

I scrambled as the entire area was engulfed in flames, rushing forward on all fours out of this new room that just had its doors blown off by the blast of flame, darting past a duo of panicked, burning people. I felt the heat on my back, burning and crackling as my hair burned. Water! I need water! OUTSIDE! WAIT! A PIER! WATER!

I rushed out of the building, seeing myself lighting the ground around me like a torch as i dived head first off the wooden pier.

*Splash*

Finally... Sweet, sweet saltwater, extinguishing the burning pain... Wait... Im sinking...

I try swimming upwards, first methodically... Then in panic, as my body seemed to sink like a rock. Holding my breath as i dropped like an anchor to the seaweed-covered bottom, i tried swimming. I tried jumping. I flailed in panic as air ran out, kicking up the bottom muck of the sea, before on instinct my mouth opened, and i inhaled a lungful of painful salt water.

...

(...)

...

I... am still alive...

My lungs burn as the water crushes them. It hurts to breathe in or out the water. But... I am alive. At the sea-floor, half-submerged in bottom muck and seaweeds.... Maybe this is a dream... Maybe if i just hold my breath, my body will wake up...

...

I have held my breath at the bottom of this dark sea for what feels like an hour already. I dont seem to need to breathe. But i cant swim, since my body seems incapable of buoyancy. But... I am calm now. Looking around, i find gigantic posts of wood illuminated by moonlight from the surface, sticking out from the seafloor near me, leading straight up. The piers support beams, i presume. I walk along the sea floor toward the nearest one, and try to wrap around and. As i hold my hand toward it, i see claws, sticking out of a stump where my fingers were... No... Not a stump... A paw...

Shaking my head, i use the clawed hands to scale, and with surprising ease i claw myself up, out of the water, and drag my soggy body to the wooden planks of the pier. The moment i reach the surface, i cough up a lungful of water, before feeling the soft weightlessness of air once more inflate my lungs. And... I stared at my hands... paws... with claws, attracting and retracting as i try to curl my now imaginary fingers. And a tail, wet and dark-gray, nearly the length of my body. And my body, singed on my back to a crisp, but with tuffs of gray, thick hairs, sticking out of places i never should have any. And how can my neck twist enough to look at my own back. And as i looked in worry at the burn that seemed to have reached my spine, wondering how i could heal it... The exposed flesh squirmed sickeningly under my gaze, and... stretched over the burn-wound, sticking on top of it as suddenly gray hairs sprouted, and grew me a new coat.

...

I am insane. I have went insane...

(...)

An armored man walked along the pier, a lantern on one hand and a mace hanging from his belt, as he was returning home. The warehouse fire was finally contained. The owners, many of them worryingly singed, had ushered the night-guards away the moment the flames were contained enough not to light the neighboring warehouses on fire, both with pulling noble rank on them, and with some gratitude "gifts" of , in the form of a bag of foreign ducats. With a tired smile, the well-compensated night-guard headed home. 

Something moved, drawing the guards attention toward the seemingly empty pier. With one hand reaching down toward his mace, the guard looked, and found... A gray cat? 

The little thing was soaked, shivering on the pier. Did someone try to get rid of a litter? No, there hasn't been a cat in this town for a generation. Fell off a boat then?

With the bribe in his pocket making him feel a bit generous, the man smiled, and approached the cat. Once he got closer, the felines head jerked up and stared with wide amber eyes at him, but didn't run. It just stood in place, staring wide-eyed and shivering as the guard crouched and picked it up without resistance.

The guard grunted as he held the wet cat in his arm. Heavier than it looks... Or maybe just the tiredness of the night had sapped him enough to even make carrying a cat a tiresome chore. Regardless, with a tired smile, the nightguard set off toward his home just as the sun was starting to peek over the horizon. 

(...)

"tʜɘɿɘ γoυ ϱo"

I sat, stupefied as a giant of a man placed me down from his hand on the wooden floor, and yawned as he went to another room in this gigantic house. Or. No, not gigantic, i was just minuscule. As i stared at my own hands... now paws... As i flexed them and felt the claws extend and retract into it again... As i brought the paw over my head and felt soft, leathery protrusions from the top of my head... I was probably a cat now.

Or something akin to a cat, that doesn't need to breathe, that can heal burns by "wiggling" its flesh... What the hell am-.

"Hɘɿɘ, tʜiƨ ƨʜoυld ϱɘt γoυ ƨɘttlɘd"

The giant returned, mumbled quietly in a language i couldn't even recognize, as he placed a wooden bowl with a dried fish in it before me. Looking up, i saw the giant give a wide, tired smile, yawn, and walked lazily away to some other room.

I sat, staring at the fish.

(...)

"Oʜ? ⅃ooʞ Aʜʞɘ! ⅃ooʞ! A ɔɒt!""

Hours had passed as i contemplated the dried food, as a woman with a toddler in her arms walked in from the same room the giant had retired from before, pointing at me. The child stared wide-eyed at me and babbled, as i gave an identical stare back.

""Ɔɒt. Ɔɒɒɒt. Ɔɒt."

The mother corrected gently her childs exited prattling, slowly pronouncing as she pointed at me. Is... "Ɔɒt" their word for me? Or is it my name given?

"Ɔɒt" 

"Ɔɒ-Ɔɒ!"

"Ɔɒt"

Yes, it probably means "cat"... I hope. My first word learned of this... situation. And as the mother set her toddler to the ground, it excitedly crawled toward me. As the kid came close, the difference in our sizes became more pronounced... This toddler dwarfs me twice. And with a glint of childlike joy in its eyes, it grabbed my tail and bit it.

In shock of pain on a body part i hadnt gotten used to, i startled, grabbed the dried fish with my mouth, and darted off, with a giggling behemoth crawling behind me. With instincts i didn't know i had, i darted behind a nearby wooden coffer.

(...)

I sat in my hideout for most of the day, as the kid chirped happily and tried to stick his little(relatively) hand into the crevice to reach me. Mercifully, the bity toddler seemed to get bored in a while, and left me in this dust filled space between a wall and a coffer to contemplate my fish once more.

I didnt feel hungry, but... It be a waste to leave something offered in this dusty corner. And as i took a cautious nibble of the dried fish, a wonderful taste of salty flesh accompanied every bite of the offer. And before i knew it, it was devoured, bones and all. With surprising ease my jaws cracked through the fishes skeleton, with no irritation or scratching of the sharp ribs of it felt in my throat.

But... what am i? I once more looked at my paw, extending and retracting the claws of my hand. And when i thought to see how much out i could extend a single claw, i... felt it.

Something in me, something heavy, reacted to my attempt, and attached to the base of my claw inside my paw. An alien feeling of my own flesh, shifting in my body into my paw, responded to my thought, and started to "grow" the curved claw. And the claw grew, with the speed of an oil drip its curved form extended, pushing out of my paw at first... and then curving around back into my paw, almost self-piercing the soft pads under my "hand". 

I sat, mezmerized at the nail-ring i had generated in my hand. This... This requires experimentation.