Is she trying to keep us busy and out of mischief, Des wondered, or trying to get as much work out of us as possible before we all end up unable to do it? Or both?

It doesn't matter, I suppose.

Well, I don't feel any particular desire to get wet—if anything, I'd rather not—so I guess I'm probably not a water fae. I wonder whether they'd put two water fae together, or separate us anyway?

She deposited the plastic pail on the ground next to the stepladder used for picking apples—a staple food, here, but then, the trees produced fruit in lush abundance in the controlled environment. The central core was absolutely stable and had only brief rainshowers just before dawn. Outside, along with the slowly rotating passage of seasons, there was also a cycle of heavier overnight rain or snow, as appropriate, but the length of the day-night cycle remained constant regardless. Apparently something about that, or the soil, or something, made many plants flourish.

That meant that the trees and gardens that were ready to harvest progressed in a slow cycle as well, but there was always food available.

If you can call this stuff food, she thought disdainfully. Bunny food. The stuff food eats.

It was better than nothing, though. At least, probably it was. There were bantam poultry, but stealing eggs would mean eating them raw, and she hadn't quite run out of tolerance for vegetable matter to that extent yet.

She looked at the ladder, and looked at the next tree full of ripe apples.

Screw it. I don't need the ladder. I can climb that, I bet.

Not that climbing trees to pick apples really fit with her mental image of herself as Desirée. That was the kind of thing that kept making it hard for her to just switch to that mindset and stay there to minimize the dissonance between a male self-identity and a female body.

On the other hand, her self-image as Desirée was changing with every day that passed, making it easier to just not think about the whole subject. It was too exhausting emotionally anyway, when there was so much else to be afraid of.

She eyed the nearest tree, then the one behind it. That one had a branch low enough that she was sure she could get up onto it, barely chest-height.

She circled around the nearer tree, caught hold of the branch, and heaved herself upwards.

To her satisfaction, she managed to swing a leg up and hook it over the branch, and from there, it was just a matter of getting the rest of her up onto it. She stood up, one hand on the trunk for balance, and looked around.

This was nice, but higher would be better.

Des twisted herself around a branch that was in the way and got one foot up onto a better one, large and strong enough to hold her. With half a jump and half a pull, she was up onto it, and then there was another branch that didn't even have any obstructions between her and it.

I forgot the pail, she realized abruptly, a couple of branches higher up.

Oh well. Who cares?

She scratched absently at her hips, where they itched, and looked down in some surprise when her hands encountered sleek fur instead of clingy fabric.

When had her clothes altered from her now-familiar golden-yellow top and pants to a sarong of the same yellow but with honey-brown leopard spots on it, of a very different, much lighter material, tied at the front over her breasts in a dress of sorts?

And where had the fur come from?

And why did the skin of her arms look more grey than before, with even darker stripes on it?

Not just her arms, for that matter; she untied the sarong to look at herself, and found that similar stripes now covered most of her skin, wrapping around her from the back and tapering into nothing on her belly and chest, just as they narrowed into nothing along the inside of her arms and legs.

Tabby stripes. Those are tabby markings like Ryu's. But on a darker background.

The fur on her hips, however, was glossy midnight-black, covering the outer third of each leg down to almost her knees, and it extended around behind her to cover much of her bottom. The same fur covered the backs of her hands and lower arms, fading out below her elbows. Her nails were longer but a trifle narrower... no, they were curved, barely perceptibly towards the ends with their suggestion of points, although more strikingly from side to side, very much like a cat's claws even if they weren't retractile.

I wish I had a mirror.

Well, go find one. There's one in the ground-floor bathroom in the house.

Dangerous?

Who was going to stop her, really?

Des tied the sarong back into place, and climbed back down to the branch nearest the ground, pausing there to scratch a more intense itch at the base of her spine.

Okay, now that feels seriously weird.

She twisted in place, trying to look, and found a rapidly growing bump that appeared to be an extension of her spine—covered in black fur. Within heartbeats, it was as long as her hand, and then as long as her forearm, and still growing longer.

I have a tail?

Huh. I have a tail. And black-on-black tabby stripes. And some fur.

And how am I in a position where I can see my own backside, anyway?

I'm a cat. Holy crap. I'm a cat.

She definitely needed a mirror.

She was supposed to be picking apples, though.

Boring. Pointless. Isabel can pick her own apples.

She jumped down off the branch, and landed in a neat crouch with her hands on the ground.

That feels odd, too.

She sat down on the ground, careful of her tail, so she could reach both feet at once to scratch at them. It felt weirdly like someone had grabbed her toes in one hand, her heel in the other, and was stretching them.

Her hands felt something flexing and changing beneath them, then there was only fur. She looked at her own feet in bemusement. While her legs were still quite human, apart from the fur on her hips, her feet no longer were. The ball and toes had become a wide black feline paw; her heel was now a quadruped's hock, maybe half again as far from her toes as her heel had been before. Unfortunately, she still couldn't get the cuffs to slide off. Cautiously, she got up, and took a few steps. It reminded her of walking in high heels, except that no shoes were ever this high. Yet her balance was better than even in bare human feet, no unsteadiness at all. She tried flexing her toes, and discovered that it made sharp claws extend.

If they're scaled-up versions of Ramses and Ryu's, I could gut someone with those.

Better still, no one will ever hear me.

Pleased, she prowled off in the direction of the house.

She saw Isabel checking on Suzi, who was on her knees digging around in the dirt for more food-that-food-should-eat, and made a detour that took her behind a bank of raspberry brambles; they were only shoulder-high, but she dropped to all fours, feet and hands, for the few feet necessary. Past the end, there was a gap of a few feet between there and the trellis that supported beans; she straightened and sauntered across the gap, somehow certain that Isabel wouldn't notice her.

She made it to the house without anyone paying any attention at all.

That changed when she opened the kitchen door, but it was only Erica and Zach who spun to look at her, eyes widening in astonishment.

Des held a finger to her lips, and went through the kitchen to the main hall so she could reach the bathroom under the stairs.

Golden-yellow lips curved in a delighted smile at her reflection.

No more golden colouring over her eyelids, but warm gold outlined her eyes still, even more pronounced, and it now extended out into mascara lines from the outer corners and down into tear-stripes from the inner ones. The eyes thus emphasized had no white at all, were yellow from lid to lid, with pupils that were definitely longer vertically than horizontally.

Her hair had changed, from thick loose curls to a rather layered and spiky look, thinning out to nothing just past shoulder-length—very 80s rocker-esque, really. Peeking through it, higher than human ears but not as high as an adult cat's, were black feline ears. She wondered whether she could move them, discovered that she couldn't, but then, she couldn't deliberately move her tail either. She decided both were something to work on. That explained, at least in part, how acute her hearing was.

Her teeth were different too, the canines longer, the incisors smaller and very even; she ran her tongue along her back teeth, observed both that her hindmost teeth felt more like a cat's scissor-like carnassials and that her tongue had changed as well. It would be interesting to find out, at some point, what that would do to her ability to speak.

She untied the sarong and gathered it into one hand, then turned in place so she could see her back. The palm-wide black stripe running all the way down her spine, the other stripes extending out from it, didn't come as much of a surprise, though the realization that the spine stripe wasn't just skin colour, it was black fur that merged into the fur on her behind and tail, was less expected.

If I had to be something, well, can it get any better than being a cat?

Mark Twain said, If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

He was right.

But I do still have opposable thumbs. The envy of all other cats.

She wrapped the sarong back around and tied it snugly above her breasts, and strolled back out of the bathroom. She caught Lloyd's scent farther down the hall, and barely glanced in his direction to make sure he wasn't getting any ideas; when he took a step towards her, she hissed at him, felt her tail lash around her hips and an odd sensation that must be her ears flattening, and he halted in his tracks.

I'm hungry. And I'm not eating bunny food.

She opened the fridge and investigated the contents. Breadish stuff, vegetable stuff, more vegetable stuff... milk? She wasn't sure, after a lifetime of lactose intolerance, whether she'd be able to digest that properly now, and besides, it was in a bag, which would be annoying to deal with. There, chicken probably intended for them once drugged. She tore off the plastic covering the plate, and picked up one of the boneless thighs to sniff at it.

Instinct said it was clean and safe, so she gathered up all seven into a fold of her sarong, tossed the plate on the counter, and closed the fridge door with one hip.

With a quick wave to her startled friends, she wandered off to explore and find a place where she could eat her catch in peace.