Scarf the Magic-User

Even though she wasn’t falling through the ground anymore, Gale knew that something was wrong. Everything tingled fiercely, and the hairs on her arms were standing up. A faint light filled the cave that she couldn’t place the source of, until she realized that it was her own body…

Or rather, it was the white fur that grew from her skin.

She sat up with a start as the stuff thickened on her arms. The motion seemed to throw her ears loose, both in placement and form, and they scooted up her head and lengthened, taking on their own dusting of softness as they did so. Gale yelped, and it sounded too loud in her ears, and too high-pitched, like a strained squeak was mixed in.

She immediately thought of her friend Bindi, the zoologist, who sometimes underwent a similar transformation. Her vulpine ears and tail, as well as her red hair, were permanent traits that carried over to her human form, too. Bindi had trouble talking while transformed, and could lean a little more bestial in combat, but was otherwise pretty much completely herself… though apparently she used to struggle with memory loss, waking up to find that she’d destroyed furniture and the like. She always seemed insistent that others should stay away from her when she took on that form, despite never having harmed anyone, and that saddened Gale…

… But that wasn’t the way in which Gale was thinking of her now. Because, in addition to all of this, there was also the fact of Gale’s fascination with Bindi’s transformation. For such a thing to now be happening to her was admittedly frightening but also quite thrilling. Maybe she wasn’t consciously happy about the whole thing, but she could not take her eyes off of herself as the changes progressed.

Said changes were now arriving at her hands, which began to twitch, and pop, and swell within her gloves. Threads snapped, the softly glowing white fur bursting through the gaps. Pads welled up on her fingertips and palms, and Gale gasped (another hint of a squeak!) at the sensitivity of them. Her fur was amazingly soft, albeit quite cramped beneath her armor and accessories. She fumbled with her band of regeneration and found it quite difficult to use her newly pudgy digits for the task. That might be a problem…

The length of her ears wasn’t increasing any longer, though it’d taken them quite some time. The only creature Gale had ever seen with such long ears was…

“A bunny?”

Her front teeth responded by beginning to ache slightly, confirming her suspicions. As they grew, her mouth had no choice but to crack forward, growing into a muzzle with enough room to contain the buckteeth… or at least let them poke out cutely. This part was mildly painful, but Gale had been through far worse, so she got through this with only one adorable squeak escaping her thinning lips at most.

Meanwhile, more softness grew across her body and threatened her outfit. Her scarf began to feel gloriously, wonderfully stuffy as fur sprang from her neck. A puffball tail exploded from the seat of her pants, which were already struggling with her swelling, strengthening thighs. The armor, Gale figured, should be easy enough to repair or even replace. But then she felt her feet press against her boots.

Her Terraspark Boots.

Those were valuable, and complicated to make. She hadn’t even realized how much of her energy had been going into keeping them from shimmering into their constituent parts, how much of it still was. But that realization did hit her now, and it gave her an idea. Her toes bulged, her feet lengthened, wanted to tear free, to let their brand new pads touch the earth, but even with all of the tension building up… Gale simply let go.

There was still shimmer soaked into those boots, so she allowed it to work its magic. It was an odd feeling, and a difficult one to maintain, but she breathed deeply and focused, pulling away her Crafting influence on her footwear. Gradually, it began to pay off. Instead of violently tearing fabric, Gale’s lapine ears were met with a chorus of otherworldly Undoing, as her Terraspark Boots warped like taffy. Shapes began to emerge from them, anklets and aglets and skates and rockets all peeling away from each other, and as they did so, Gale’s feet rubbed past them in their quest to attain the comical proportions of a bunny’s paws. By splitting into multiple kinds of footwear, the boots dislodged themselves from her feet without needing to be torn asunder.

The transformation came to a close, and Gale leaned back against the wall of the cave, a pile of accessories in her lap. She breathed heavily, oddly satisfied with her own quick thinking… or was it this form that she found satisfying? She pushed the thought aside, and, realizing there were few other thoughts left to take its place, promptly fell asleep.

The next day, Gale was stopped by one of the townsfolk, who was concerned about some beast he’d seen the previous night. Something with huge feet and long ears that he’d never seen before (“Nor have I!” she assured him). Apparently it’d been rummaging through the chest that potion ingredients were kept in, though only a few things were found to be missing that morning. Gale calmly told the man that she would keep an eye out for the monster, and that seemed to ease his worries. She made a note to herself to return that potion bottle after cleaning it thoroughly. For now, though, she was on her way to Bindi’s place. She had lots to talk about with her.

“No! You don’t understand! I’m cursed to become a terrible beast when the moon is full like this!”

“I don’t believe you~”

She kept responding that way, with her cutesie, teasing tone. Edward had always been open about his lycanthropy, and he wasn’t a dangerous werewolf, keeping his mind through the transformation, but even so his feelings about the whole ordeal were mixed at best. On the one hand it was thrilling… but it was also quite unbecoming of a noble such as himself. Playing it up as a terrible curse was the only way Edward could get it to make sense in his brain with the rest of the life he’d lived. Plus, he didn’t want to scare his darling Samantha by having her witness his horrible changes!

But why did she not believe him? He’d never heard of any conspiracy theories among the commoners questioning the validity of lycanthropy. There were all kinds of magical phenomena that humanity didn’t understand. Did Samantha not believe in dragons, either? Magnets? Fairies? She didn’t seem like the type!

“No… I-it’s too late… I’m so sorry, Samantha…!” She rolled her eyes and giggled as Edward stood up shakily, a noticeable gray sheen on his chest as the hairs there thickened into fur. With a choked sob, he dramatically grabbed at his shirt, so as to tear it apart and make room for his soon-to-be growing body…

Only for his fingers to squiiiiiiish against his chest.

“H-huh?” His exaggerated terror vanished in an instant as he looked down to his hands, confused as to why they lacked the ability to grab his shirt. His fingers looked appropriately padded and swollen, but… something about them was still off. They almost didn’t look real… and… were those… “Seams…?”

Samantha was clearly delighted, trying her best to not burst out into a fit of giggling. “Those don’t look all that fearsome to me!”

Edward yelped as his hands puffed up, their exaggerated proportions making them difficult, though not impossible, to move. “W-what is the meaning of this!?” he cried, as the seams began to race up the sides of his arms, bringing a wave of swelling and fur in their wake. The changes ran up under his sleeves, which were quickly beginning to strain from his increasing volume… but their pressure also compressed him a great deal. It really didn’t feel so bad… but he was still concerned!

“You told me that you were going to turn into a terrible beast,” Samantha teased, “and I told you that I didn’t believe you! And it looks like I was right~” She gave Edward’s arm a squeeze, and he could definitely tell that there was no bone inside. “In fact, you look more like a child’s plaything than a monster! Teehee~”

Too flabbergasted to get the hint that maybe, just maybe, Samantha knew more than she was letting on, Edward recoiled from her loving touch and promptly fell on his ass, which he noticed was, of course, becoming unusually squishy beneath him. Fluff poured into his thighs instead of the usual muscle mass, and the garments constraining his body finally began to snap apart, the furry fabric underneath bulging through the gaps wherever possible. Without a spine to lengthen, his tail merely inflated into being, bursting through the seat of his pants with very comedic timing. “But h-how is thisth pbossibhhhhghhhhmmmffh!”

“Shhhhhhhh… I’ve been told it feels quite intense, so I’ll wait until it’s done before I explain…” she cooed, fingers brushing over the man’s pudging cheeks and coming to rest on his thinning lips, his noble, beautiful face pushing forward into a muzzle bearing a ridiculous smile. Normally his teeth were the thing he found most disgusting and fearsome about his werewolf form, but now they were merely stitched-on decorations. Edward couldn’t help but calm down thanks to the way Samantha comforted him, and the changes to his head finally caught up to those in his ears (when had those transformed? He hand’t even noticed!), leaving him a 7-foot-tall, animate werewolf plush. One glance in the mirror showed him just how silly he truly looked… and just how little his girlfriend seemed to mind, instead resting against him like she always did, the two of them perfectly vulnerable and perfectly safe…

“Between the two of us… you’re not the only cursed one…” she explained. “Well, maybe cursed isn’t the right word for my case…” Might not be the right word for yours either! she mused. “… but, it’s an affliction I have, and it’s magical in nature.” Edward couldn’t really respond, or comment, or even change his facial expression… but Samantha could tell that he was in a state of most serene listening, even past that goofy smile. “When I was little, my parents arranged for a spell to be put on me. I was only a child, so I didn’t really have the capacity to refuse… but now, thanks to that spell, whenever someone near me transforms via magic, they become a plush-like version of whatever their original target form would’ve been. As long as I’m near you when the moon is full, you’ll become like this instead of a flesh-and-blood werewolf. Would you like that?” She booped his nose and giggled, knowing full well that he couldn’t answer her, though she supposed he could nod or shake his head. He simply gave a small shrug instead. It really wasn’t so bad…

“I think they meant to weaponize me,” Samantha said with a sigh. “Something about my ‘innocence’ made it particularly easy to get this spell to work. But they never ended up making use of it. Guess those druids weren’t nearly as scary as they thought…” That they’d meant to destroy the druids was news to Edward. The story the public knew was that things had resolved peacefully, and with little to no hardship. But to hide a dagger behind your back making such negotiations in case anything went wrong, and for that dagger to be a repurposed little girl… much less your own daughter…! It was simply—

“Oh well. Now I just have this cute curse thing. It’s funny to surprise people with, like I did tonight, and the results are comfy and snuggly… so I try to not get too bent up about it. My parents already give me plenty of other reasons to not like talking to them very much, anyways.” Edward, astonished, pondered this attitude of hers. The principal of her curse, its shameful and disgusting origin, rooted in fear and manipulation and exploitation… Why should it keep her from enjoying the result? She wasn’t the one to blame for her condition, and the condition itself caused no problems, so why should she suffer from the shame or regret of its conception?

His own lycanthropy wasn’t a perfect match, but it was similar enough in some ways. It wasn’t his fault he was a werewolf, and it wasn’t a problem for anyone else that he was a werewolf, so why should the mere connotation of “becoming a terrible beast” bring him shame? One could look at the current state of things as a tragedy, a man cursed to look like a monster and a woman whose own parents made her into a weapon, only to never even use her. How they must huddle together to survive this world that would dehumanize them so!

Or, they could see two lovers snuggling, the odd quirks of their lives granting one of them the squishy, comfortable form of a giant stuffed animal. An odd result, to be sure, but a very welcome one.