(Inspired by all of the Therian HRT comics and specifically AyvieArt's dragon HRT over on Twitter!)
Day 0, Week 0, Month 0: Initial Appointment
Having to wait for a doctor’s appointment always set us on edge, and this one was no different. Even with a whole half a year of preparation - dramatically reduced compared to what we were initially told - it didn’t make it any easier. The smell of disinfectant hung heavy in the mostly empty lobby, the smell scorching the hairs of our nose. We must’ve walked in right after they cleaned the place - and with no one but us and the receptionist in here, it felt weird to complain about it.
The receptionist paid us no mind. She knew we’d be arriving today, of course - the incessant phone calls we made in the week beforehand made sure of that. And, besides, we doubted that she wanted to stare at someone constantly fidgeting and squirming in a chair. Not that she’d realize it was all four of us being equally nervous.
God, Rose, I mean people are going to know eventually what’s going on with us given…y’know…
I took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly. I was doing our best to calm us down but it was hard. Staring at the floor wouldn’t help, so I closed our eyes for a moment. A brief reprieve from the outside world, but not totally. I had to make sure to pay attention to when our name got called. The darkness on the inside of my eyelids gave way swiftly to a familiar location - the same living room the four of us usually hung out in.
Right.
An explanation.
My name is Rose Styla, and I share a body with three other people. Most people would hear that and say I’m irreparably mentally ill and detrimentally so, and as such that’s something we keep on the down-low. I wasn’t usually the one who piloted our shared body, but it just happened to fall on me on this specific day. And when we got stressed out…well, turning inwards to talk to everyone sometimes helped.
I glanced down at my hands - different from the ones in reality. All four of us shared that disconnect in common, a total division between what we knew we should look like versus our body. The only place we got to properly be each of our real selves was in here, and I was no different. I flexed my hands - watched my fingers curled, appreciated the pitch-black fur and red claws that adorned each of my fingers, pressed by blood-red pawpads together and sighed. A fox of some kind - that’s what I was. Black and red, still on two legs despite how little I felt I shared with humans.
I heard - or felt, more like, for how things were experienced in headspace - someone cough next to me. My right ear flicked at that sound. I didn’t even need to look to know exactly who it was.
“Yes, Xena?”
Another member of the system shifted to my right. She was the one who normally handled the body, and considered herself our “host”, though that term meant little to us with how often us four swapped. Regardless, she usually was the one handling the outside world more often than not. And I could feel just how antsy she was. Her fidgeting was making the entire ratty couch the two of us were sitting on shake a bit.
“C’mon,” Xena groaned, “you can at least look at me!”
I rolled my eyes and turned my head to look at the dragon I shared a body with. Well, dragon wasn’t quite correct in this instance - she was too small and furry right now for that. A little ratlike creature of some sort stared back at me, stark-white fur marked with a smattering of lavender scales here and there across her whole body. She had a small fur-lined vest and a pair of short shorts on, which was about what I expected. And, of course, she looked both anxious and annoyed at the same time. That’s usually how she looked when she wasn’t fronting and wasn’t in her usual full dragon shape.
I smiled a bit, feeling my lips pull back from my muzzle ever-so-slightly. A very human expression, sure, but given how we were all socialized as such it still didn’t feel that odd. “Sorry, Xena,” I said.
She just crossed her arms and huffed, “I hate this. The doctor’s a fucking dick.”
My smile dropped. Last time we were here, she was the one that had to talk to the doctor rather than me, and it was less than pleasant according to her. Something about an overwhelming urge to slap his bald head after he said it’d take four years to get approved. She refused to say how she managed to get that cut down to six months, and for once it wasn’t a memory we shared. Though judging from the smile she flashed when saying she did that, I had a pretty good feeling it did, in fact, involve satisfying that urge of hers.
“I know, Xena,” I sighed, “but he’s literally the only person prescribing this anywhere near us.”
She simply grunted and flung herself off the couch, her tail trailing behind her as she did so. The sheer aura of grumpiness emanating off of her was starting to rub off on me, even, but I did my best to shake it off. Out of all of us, she was the least happy about how we were going about this process. Not because she wanted to remain human - far from it - but because she wished for a different treatment. Even with how grumpy she was, though, I could tell she was happier we were doing this than staying human. She wouldn’t get to be the ice dragon she usually saw herself as, but this was the next best thing for us. I watched her plop herself down on the floor and pout about it, and stifled a bit of a laugh. Always a drama queen.
The other two of us - Penny and Willow - probably were busy pacing up in their own shared bedroom out of anxiety. This wasn’t a great day for us to talk with how anxious we were, but I was sure that they’d come down eventually. Probably once we got our treatment confirmed and secured, I figured. I almost wanted to go up and check on them-
“Miss Krau? The doctor will see you now.”
Our eyes snapped open and I glanced upwards. I could feel our heart race now as the receptionist finally said our name. Our eyes drifted to the clock - it had only been about five minutes, but it felt far longer than that. Anxiety tended to do that. We stood, straightened the simple graphic t-shirt we had on (it had some cute foxes on it, because of course I want to wear our cute fox shirt), and we made our way to the indicated door. The roar of our heartbeat in our ears was loud, sure, but not loud enough to keep us from hearing where to go. Two doors down, on the right.
We walked that way, our black shoes squeaking slightly against the tiles on the floor. I was still a little surprised that it was tile back here, carpet felt like it’d have been more appropriate and easier for both paws and hooves to walk on…but whatever. We stopped in front of the doctor’s office, sucked in a breath, and opened the door.
The doctor sat behind his desk, hands steepled in anticipation for our arrival. Had I not known any better, I would’ve assumed he intentionally wanted to look as abjectly evil as possible. The fact it looked like he literally just polished his bald head didn’t help. I had half a mind to ask him about his skincare routine, but decided against antagonizing the only person who could help us deal with the whole “being stuck in a human body” problem. His small round glasses glinted in the sterile light of his office, and he unsteepled his hands just long enough to gesture to the chair in front of him. We obliged, pulling it out and plopping ourselves down.
“Greetings, Miss Krau,” the doctor started, “I trust you are doing well today?”
I gave him a very shaky smile and nodded our head. “Just…a little nervous, doc, but the happy kind. So the treatment we discussed in our last meeting…?”
The doctor nodded at us, and reached into his desk. He pulled out a sheet of paper and passed it over to our side of the desk. “Yes, about that…” he started.
Our heart sank for a brief moment. Was he going to say that it wasn’t possible? He had told us it would be complicated for sure, but if it was impossible…
I glanced down at the paper. It was the specification sheet Xena gave him last time - the body all four of us had fully agreed upon. There were some red lines and notes scribbled across it in a few particular spots, but it looked mostly unaltered. I scanned it briefly, reading over each note. I knew what the body looked like - a white-furred dragon-fox hybrid with deer hooves. Hybrid treatments were difficult to get, but possible, and it was always a gamble if we would successfully get this particular body. We were banking on the body being mostly fox making it far easier to work with. Adding wings to our back, giving us hooves, and changing the tail to be a bit more draconic felt fairly feasible for treatment in our eyes. There were backups, of course, but we knew this would make us happiest collectively. One of the notes we added - a note about how we wanted a few of the fur patches on the body as well as our pawpads, scales, wings, hooves, and one streak of hair to change color - had a star next to it. The hooves also had a star next to them. And, of course, a small star next to the hands.
“Now, as we discussed before your ideal body is…difficult to do,” he said, “and I was unable to ensure you would get everything you requested. Chromatophore additions in every requested area were impossible to accomplish, namely in the hooves. The other requested locations were doable, however. Additionally, I highly advise against losing a finger if you intend to go no further along in your thereotypic treatment…”
I blinked and looked up at the doctor. “Oh, sorry, that’s my bad,” I muttered sheepishly, “the missing finger on each hand was a mistake on my part.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Fair enough,” he said. “I also wanted to double check with the…physical build of your treatment as well. You are currently on feminizing hormones, yes?”
I nodded, and crossed my arms over my chest. It hadn’t been too long since we started taking normal human HRT - only about three years. But it worked well enough for us as a stopgap solution. I glanced back down at the paper and said, “Yes, that’s correct.”
“And you are certain that you want this body to appear more gender neutral rather than feminine? No breast tissue?”
I nodded again. That was a concession that we made as a group - Willow and Penny both preferred our body being more gender neutral to alleviate their dysphoria, and Willow especially insisted on that. Xena and I didn’t mind giving up on our breasts too much if it meant no longer being human. And, besides, it wasn’t like we were going back to being masculine.
The doctor let out a hum, before pulling the paper back to himself and stowing it away. “I just wanted to confirm that. It is rather uncommon for a request like that to come through, and I wanted to ensure it also was not a mistake like the digit count.”
“No, doctor, not a mistake. Personal reasons that w-” I started, before covering my mouth. I almost said we to someone who didn’t know our situation. Accidentally outing ourselves now at this juncture was the last thing I wanted to do, so I feigned a cough. He tilted his head at me slightly, but seemed none the wiser.
“...Sorry. Personal reasons that I don’t want to get into,” I said.
Smooth, Rose.
I let Xena’s comment slide by me. The doctor simply took out another sheet of paper and a pen and slid it over my way.
“In that case, miss Krau, all you need to do is sign this waiver stating we have thoroughly gone over all the side effects and potential complications from your treatment. We already discussed them last time, but to review-”
I held up a hand. “No need, doctor. I understand. Pain, dizziness, alterations in hearing, inability to walk while hooves come in, tooth loss and regrowth, and it being irreversible…I’ve been prepping everything for this for a bit.”
The doctor nodded. “Good.”
I picked up the pen and set it down on the paper. All I had to do was sign it, and this would mark the beginning of the rest of our lives. Everyone else we knew who went through this theriotypic treatment told us how viscerally unpleasant some days were, but all of them were just as eager to tell us how happy it made them. We knew we’d be just as happy as everyone else once the treatment finished, even if the journey would be a bit of a grisly nightmare at points. One of our friends, a deer, painted the rather unpleasant picture we expected in terms of what hooves coming in would feel like. That wasn’t going to be fun. But…god, it was going to be worth it for us.
I could feel the doctor’s piercing gaze burrow into the top of my head as I stared at the paper. It felt like an eternity had passed while we thought about this, but it probably was only a second or two. I took one last breath. The pen slid across the paper with ease, and I signed our agreed upon name on the dotted line. Zee Krau. My hands shaky with anxiety and joy, I slid the consent form back over to the doctor. He took it, and handed me another slip of paper. I knew what this one was though.
A prescription.
“Take this to the specialist pharmacy, they should have it in stock now,” he said. “And good luck, miss Krau. You’ll need it.”
I bit our tongue slightly to keep Xena from snapping back with a comment on not needing luck. Even when she wasn’t up front and piloting our body she loved to comment like that. Instead, I simply smiled and thanked him while taking the prescription. It was only a sheet of paper, but it felt heavier than lead in our hands. Maybe that was just how light we felt from finally being through with this.
The first step on our journey away from humanity. It hardly felt real, but it was. We finally would have a body that, at the very least, reflected our inhuman nature in some way. It might not be perfect for all four of us, but it was something at least. There was no looking back and no doubt in our heart that this was the right move for all of us.
Even if Xena really wanted to take dragon HRT instead.
