I rapidly rifle through the linen cupboard looking for something that can sort of, maybe, in part fit. I find a truly ancient T-shirt from my high school days (which still fits like a tent) and… I’ll probably need to stick to the pinned shorts for now. As long as people don’t see me from the back the tail should be ignorable. In the absence of anything better, I grab a town and wrap it around my head to hide my ears.
I just hope whoever drops off the food doesn’t think to look down. My legs aren’t human.
Five minutes later, the security buzzer sounds and I let in the delivery person. Shortly thereafter, there’s a knock on my door. Normally I’d have it open in advance, but the less time people have to look at me the better, at the moment. I open the door, grab the food, say a quick thank-you, then close it again. I send a silent word of apology to the delivery guy.
I wait a few minutes for the coast to clear then duck into the stairwell. Racing down to the ground floor, I grab the package with my name on it then shoot back up the stairs, past a young woman whose eyebrows pop up like jacks-in-the-box as I slip past with a murmured apology.
Slipping back into my unit, I set the deadlock then toss the package aside for later perusal. It seems like some sort of book. For now, I skipped lunch; I’m hungry and there’s tofu to be had!
My excitement is new – I’ve never much liked tofu before today – but I recognise the source. I don’t know whether it’s an instinctive thing, or just my sketch background of Japanese mythology that’s triggering me. Regardless, the fried tofu has me drooling.
There’s a few sets of chopsticks in one of the kitchen drawers which would work well for this. I’m pretty sure my new claws won’t get in the way of good chopstick technique. Pulling out a pair, I dig in.
Ambrosia.
This isn’t tofu. It’s diced heaven. The texture has just that right level of firm chewiness and soft pliability. The flavour is… incomparable. It’s rainbow, it’s fireworks, it’s every delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, with a rich yet mellow aftertaste.
I keep stuffing my face until I can’t eat any more. It happens all too quickly. It used to be that I couldn’t eat because of a bariatric operation a few years back. Not it’s just because my stomach is so small.
I don’t really mind all that much. My mouth was now much smaller, so every bit lasted just a little longer. And now I could save some for later! This would be a distinct advantage as my opportunities to go out over the next few days would be limited. There’s other food as well, but it can’t possibly compare with the fried tofu.
As my meal winds down I put the leftovers into the fridge and finally have a bit of thinking time. That package can wait a few minutes while I sort myself out.
I’ve spent the whole day since I woke up thinking, focusing, and more importantly avoiding doing either of those things where certain key facts of life are concerned. Now is time to think.
What am I going to do?
Who am I now? Am I really the same person? Is this s Ship of Theseus thing where I’ve been pulled apart and reassembled, or am I really the same person with a new paint job?
I get the feeling it’s a bit of both.
Clearly my rapid acceptance of my new and (to my mind) undoubtedly improved chassis indicates that some level of inherent transgenderism has come into play. I’m not really surprised. You don’t spend a lifetime subtly disgusted with your own body without recognising there’s a disconnect somewhere.
So, this is me, and on the whole I’m happy about it. Trials ahead, obviously. I now look like and definitely sound like a kid; updating my photo ID is going to be a real problem.
Next issue.
My name.
I’m now a girl (frisson of joy at the thought) and Reggie is not a girl’s name. Honestly, I was always a bit uncomfortable with it anyway. If some things fit like a glove, it always fit like a sock. Like a sock on your hand. Not very well.
I could spend a while coming up with the ideal name, but honestly I already had a female name I was comfortable with. It’s a name I’d been using in my RPGs and MMORPGs for years, in all my innumerable and consistently female avatars.
Geona. Geo as in Geology, na as in… nah.
I could say it’s a name that resonates with my soul, but that’s not really true. It’s a name, it’s one I’m familiar with, it’s female, and it’s mine. I could make up another name, but it would be a bit uncomfortable.
My pronouns would now be female. Not as if anyone would mistake me as a male in any case.
But I’d need some way of at least marginally slotting into my … old identity. If this had happened over a course of years, I could maybe convince some people I’d had an operation, rather than the extraordinary true alternative. No such luck.
There were a few people I would need to tell. My sister for one. My older brother, probably; I got the feeling he’d roll with it. My parents… would probably have to wait. Living on the mid north coast, I doubt they would believe me, and discovering one of their sons to now be a daughter would shake them. Let alone a daughter with cute fluffy ears and a tail.
Fortunately I don’t need photo ID often, but that will be a problem eventually.
For work… I’d have to tell Bob eventually, and probably a couple more of my colleagues. I think Bob could cope. The others too, eventually; it’s not as if my professional competencies had changed, if anything I felt a bit sharper – probably aside effect of dropping from a physical age of fifty-plus to whatever I was now.
Filling in HR was going to cause some major, major headaches. Not to mention what’s going to happen with my pension and superannuation in twenty years when I come due to retire; I have a feeling that convincing anyone that I’m at retirement age would be difficult.
Eh, problems for future me.
For now I need to figure out how to pass for human. I can hide the ears and tail with the clothes coming in tomorrow. And I’ll take it from there.
Which reminds me of that mysterious package. What’s in there?
I slit open the packaging and out pops a thin book. There’s also a swatch of fabric with a cherry blossom motif and a broad… ribbon? I’ll get to that later.
The text of the book appears to be in Japanese, but somebody has scrawled across the title page “Kitsune 101.”
At the bottom of the cover of the book, in a slightly neater hand, is “for Geona.”
I freeze for a moment. It’s a name I had decided on literal minutes earlier. Whoever put this together didn’t just have an inside track on what had happened to me; they had an inside track on my thoughts, my soul if you like.
I nervously open the book, only to be confronted with a wall of kanji and hiragana. Unfortunately while I know a couple of dozen Japanese words, I never got a handle on the syllabaries or the Kanji.
Fortunately this is the twentieth century. Machine translation is a thing. Bad machine translation, but it’s a heck of a lot more accessible than it once was.
I fire up G**gle Lens and point it at the page.
The first page answers some fundamental questions. It’s basically a welcome page. One of the things it answers is… why me?
Turns out it’s part selection process, part cosmic joke.
My trip to Japan a few years ago, and visit to the Fushimi Inari temple, was part of it. Apparently one in every million visitors is selected… tentatively.
Of those million, anyone under forty-five years old is excluded. Anyone who fails to pray at the shrine is excluded. Anyone without a sense of mischief… is excluded. And anyone with a deep commitment to any other deity is likewise excluded.
Anyone who the magic detects will be unhappy after the transformation is also spared, the decision mad via a bastardised mix of divination and psychotherapy.
They don’t select on nationality, or gender. Apparently it’s a better joke that way.
Blasted kitsune sense of humour. Although… I have to admit I like the joke. If nothing else, it’s given me a unique opportunity.
Some of the reasons have a pretty clear justification. The forty-five year thing, it turns out, is more or less an act of mercy.
Kitsune age slowly and, eventually, stop aging altogether. My current form is, apparently, that of a kitsune of my actual age – fifty three. That also means, unfortunately, that my new form is going to be fairly stable for quite a while. Put another way, I won’t be looking like an adult until I’m actually about seventy. I’ll be in puberty, or the kitsune equivalent, for the next fifteen years or so.
Considering human puberty has the effects on mood stability that it does, I can only imagine what it will do for somebody with a racial predisposition to mischief.
I don’t really mind. I’ve always been a bit of a prankster at heart, restraining myself because it’s so hard for a decent prank to avoid hurting people. The possibilities opened by illusion magic for harmless fun are opening before me. I’m mentally rubbing my hands, and my tail is swishing energetically. Or trying to – it’s not getting much opportunity while I sit to read.