The Departure

“This is something I’ve needed to do for a long time,” she says.  Her hair is already growing out, shading to black.   Her voice shifts timbres like a pennywhistle for a moment.  “I would say that it’s not you, but I want to be honest about it.  I can’t…”  She pauses as she adds several inches of height, one foot out the door.  There’s a hint of a mustache for a moment, but it fades. 

“I don’t like who I am when I’m with you,” she says. 

As she walks away, I think I see the first hint of wings.

The Deer-Woman's Husband

He was a lucky deer, he knew. He'd survived to become a twenty-point buck through strength, speed, and, mostly, the assistance of the slim doe with the sad eyes. She'd borne him many fine children, and her uncanny mental prowess had saved them all many times.

He'd seen her, now and then, trying to regain her cloak, but only a tall-antlered buck could reach it in the tree where he'd stashed it. He knew that if she could steal it back, she would resume her other shape, the monkey-shape, and flee. He would never let her go; he loved her.

A World of Rocking Chairs

"Fetch my blade!" cried Prince Sarib.

The weapon clattered to the tiled floor. Sarib hissed and leapt down after it. It spun several times before he managed to hook one paw through the handgrip. He stalked three-legged for the door.

"Perhaps," suggested his majordomo, "a duel is not the ideal solution? In your current condition?"

"I may be an ensorcelled cat," Sarib spat, "but that man is a flea-bitten dog who dares touch my sister. I shall teach him a lesson regardless!"

Sarib stood in place, shedding angrily. "Well?" he said. "Aren't you going to open the door for me?"

Shifter

“The question, of course, then becomes ‘How do we capture his exact likeness?’” said the shifter, smiling genially at the bustling technicians. “After all, someone once had to have done it, and with prehistorical technology, too, or the stories wouldn’t exist.” He grew a pair of donkey’s ears and waggled them.

The light flashed. The shifter smirked. “Too slow,” he said.

One of the technicians, unable to contain himself, violated protocol. “The picture is transmitted through the cable in less than one millionth of a second,” he told the shifter.

The shifter nodded. “Nothing ever stays the same for long.”