A short story I recently came up with based on some art I saw.
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The young tiger stalked quickly along the pathway. He was dressed for a formal occasion, with a dark black waistcoat buttoned up far enough so that it framed his dark purple scarf in the most socially acceptable fashion. His fine black trousers were immaculately pressed, and his pawwear was the very latest fashion. A gold chain looped down from his chest pocket, into the waistcoat where the watch at the end was kept otherwise hidden. Or it would have been, except that the watch was pulled out again and again by the grumbling gentleman as he realized just how late he was. Even though he was prepared for the occasion in every way, delays had kept him from his destination for far too long. If he wasn't on time, he would lose his opportunity for a good first impression. But, there was no way he could make it there in time now...
Well, that was not entirely true.
He cast his eyes across the old village graveyard. It was specifically called old because no one had been buried there for years. It had been abandoned a dozen years ago, when a troupe of gypsies had come to perform in the town. The paranoid governors had insisted that the graveyard was the only place that the garish performers could stay during their time. It had worked out all right for most of their stay, until one day all of the gypsies mysteriously disappeared, leaving their colorful wagons derelict in the center of the graveyard. Gypsy magic, the denizens had whispered amongst themselves. It was a trap, some sort of curse laid to punish the honest people of the village for some perceived insult.
The governors didn't believe it, but the people were scared. A fence was erected around the perimeter of the gypsy camp to keep people out and protect the citizenry from the possibility of gypsy magic. Since that day, none had walked through the graveyard, even as the town had grown to surround the abandoned field.
And now that field stood between the young man and his destination. The fence forced him to walk the circuitous path, easily twenty minutes around. If he was willing to break tradition, however, he could make it in five.
He snorted. He wasn't paranoid, so the choice was no choice at all. The only matter that remained was to find a route through the fence.
The tiger walked along his way, closer to the fence than most dared. As he moved along, he rapped on the wooden planks that made up the length of the fence. It took him barely a minute before he found a plank of dubious quality. Stopping only long enough to be certain that none of the proper folk of the town noticed, he wrenched the rotten wood from the nails that should have held it and, careful to keep his trappings undamaged, ducked between the slats of the fence. With a brush of his sleeves, the young tiger was off, his orange and black tail bobbing behind him in satisfaction.
Although he was no foolish child, he had to admit that the graveyard did have a certain unsettling atmosphere at this time of evening. The tombstones were no great obstacle; their dull grey stone and serious inscriptions were familiar to anyone who had visited the town’s new graveyard. While it was an unfortunate fact, the young man could count himself among the number who was somewhat familiar with the newer field. Still, it meant that none of the graves frightened him at all.
What put him on edge were the utterly incongruous hulks of the gypsy wagons, arranged still in a vague silhouette of a circle. The wagons had clearly once been colorful; the gay colors of the cloth that had once covered the wagons were still just barely discernable despite the march of time. Most of the cloth had been faded and dirtied by the cycles of rain, wind, and snow. Most of the wagons were stripped to their wooden bones with only fragments of cloth hanging onto their frames. They reminded the young gentleman of the corpses of so many massive creatures against the dark sky, and that was the fact that put him on edge.
He gave the wagons a wide berth as he walked through the graveyard, but he felt an odd chill in the early evening air as he walked. It was midsummer, however, and the coolness was decidedly unnatural. He shook it off for a few moments, but a sudden, airy giggle from behind him.
The tiger turned slowly, eyes narrowed in a predatory glare. He would not be caught off guard by some fool’s stupid prank. He looked about for a few moments and finding no one, turned and started walked again.
The gentleman stopped short when he nearly ran into a cloud of hanging mist that had drifted before him. He grunted and waved a paw at it. As he did, however, he blinked in shock as the mist moved in a decidedly unnatural way. It clung together, moving together as a unit, even as its surface roiled like natural mist. Squinting at the strange fog, he could have sworn that he saw a shape in it. It was an almost ghostlike image of what seemed to be a person. He tried to shake his head to get rid of the image, but it only seemed to gain in clarity the more he stared at it.
He finally came to a conclusion a moment later. Somehow, conveyed through the mist, was the image of a white tigress. He had only enough time to realize the image’s nature before it suddenly swirled into a wide cloud about him. He initially thought that he had imagined it, but suddenly the mist began to pull close about him again. He twisted to see what was happening, but suddenly everything began to feel odd.
As the mist coalesced about him, he felt a tingling shiver running through his body. He tried to move, but the mist seemed to be preventing him from moving of his own accord. He held his hands out before him, staring involuntarily as they were strangely altered before him. In a moment his fingers became longer and more slender, his claws suddenly painted in a variety of lively colors. His orange fur grew white, and that fur continued to alter up the length of thinner arms.
He gasped as he felt a pressure seeming to come from within his chest. In a matter of a few moments, his chest had expanded into what he recognized quickly as a pair of breasts. Surprisingly, his formal clothing began to alter as well. His waistcoat altered quickly, its material growing thinner and mingling with the lower layer of cloth from his shirt, both joining to form the light material of a dress.
He could not believe his eyes, even as his body became more foreign by the second. His stomach became thinner as his waist became more slender and his hips widened. He gasped as the changes moved past his hips, changing her legs even as her trousers altered, the cloth joining with than of her foreign waistcoat. The legs of her trousers joined into one, and they spread into a wide circle of cloth that spun wide around her legs.
She watched in resignation as the changes swept up towards her face. Her Adam’s apple reduced, and as she gasped again she could hear that her voice was higher. Her muzzle became gentler, her jaw less sharp and more feminine. Her fur was now entirely white, but locks of long, dark hair began to cascade down her back. Her ears flicked as the hair tickled them, and then she felt that it was over.
Momentarily, her white and black tail bobbed in shock, and then one final surge shocked her. She blinked several times, confused. Then, she smiled, looking over herself in approval.
“Very nice,” she said in an accent completely different from that of the gentleman that she had possessed. She took the purple scarf, the one item unaltered by her magic, pulling it from her neck and waving it about in a simple dance. “It will be good to dance again.”
She turned to the wagons behind her, frowning a bit. “ганьба. The wagons are a mess. Worry not, мій будинок, music and dance will return to you soon. Our magic will soon bring your master’s back.”
Now revived, the gypsy dancer set out to bring others into the camp. It was time for the gypsy magic to bring life back to their caravan.
