It was, at the time, impossible to explain what was happening to her. You should’ve been terrified when the changes began. For a moment, when she opened her mouth and revealed her sharpening canines, you were.
But then, you heard her voice, and something inside you clicked.
It was something about the specific flavor of fear in her quiet whimpers. Something that screamed “I need to be comforted.” So, you did exactly that, and pulled her closer to you instead of running away. Other options, like pelting her with questions or calling the hospital, faded away as you dismissed them like it was the most obvious thing in the world. You could inherently just tell that the stress those choices would bring weren’t what she needed now, and besides, she was clearly just as confused as you were.
As the two of you lay there, the transformation began to get a little more drastic. Her clothes got slightly looser as she shrank, but then grew tight again when fur started to burst from her body. Her digits were fattening against you, and when they shortened you could feel the texture had changed too, as the action made her new pads drag ever so gently across your skin. Her ears poked through her hair, and she yelped as an entirely new appendage brushed over your legs.
She was trying to speak, but the sheer panic made it hard. Something like “Don’t look at me.” Her transformed eyes stared at you with a pleading expression. But you told her it’s okay, you told her she’s beautiful, and that expression eased up a little. You dug your fingers into the fur on her neck, holding her ever closer, and the two of you were so incredibly vulnerable and yet so incredibly safe.
You were surprised (though you didn’t show it) when drawing her closer to you did not make it any easier to feel her body changing. No additional insight into the shortenings and lengthenings, the pops and crackles. You realized it was because the changes were slowing down. Her breathing was calmer, too. You wanted to look at her, but were paralyzed by the fear that doing so would ruin the moment.
The changes had stopped. She wiggles in your arms, to get more comfortable. She fell asleep…? You finally looked, and she really was beautiful, wasn’t she, even like that, even with her body halfway between human and something else, the transformation having frozen in an asymmetrical state, rendering her both useless and helpless, no doubt, but it didn’t matter, what mattered is that this creature, this beautiful being, would get some rest, some comfort, right here, in your embrace.
