Thought that the picture that Virmir just posted of me turning into a mer-collie deserved a story, so here it is. A bit of a vignette more than a story, but it does have an abbreviated plot arc. Hope you all enjoy!
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The silvery gleam of the ocean surface smiled down at the young wolf as he slipped ever deeper beneath the waves. His feeble attempts at doggie-paddling back to the open air had ended moments before, and he now drifted silently towards the ocean floor. He might have sighed in resignation had he not been holding his last breath. It was already beginning to burn in his chest, and he began to wonder how long he would last before he took a gasp of salt water instead.
His macabre thoughts were interrupted when suddenly he heard a sound like singing. Whales, he thought. He turned his body to see if he might chance a last glimpse of them before the end, only to stop as he came face to face with a lovely mer-vixen. He had thought mermaids mere myth, but here was one before him in his last passing moments.
Her red-brown fur floated in the crystal waters, and her muzzle moved with the sweet sounds of the ancient song she was singing. She looked him in the eyes, and without stopping the song, held forth a small clam shell in the pad of her paw. Her sea-green eyes stared into his own icy-blues, transfixing him in the placid waters.
"I can save you," her voice echoed in his cloudy mind, her song never faltering. "But for your life to be saved it must also be changed."
The shell was lifted before his muzzle, and he understood that he had only to take it to accept her offer. The price was given only a brief consideration as he reached out and took it in a weak grip.
The mer-vixen smiled to him briefly, and then she gave a strong stroke of her fishlike tail and was gone, leaving only the shell and a trail of bubbles.
The wolf continued to sink, but he held the shell before him. The two halves were clasped together naturally, but his claws allowed him to pry them apart. Inside was a nascent pearl, its gemlike surface sparkling even in the quickly fading light of the far away sun. The wolf smiled and held it close, not noticing as a curious blue aura emerged from its surface,
The glow hung about the sinking wolf like ink in the water, passing through his clothing and brushing his fur, slowly but surely settling about his legs and tail. Through half-lidded eyes, the wolf began to see wisps of seaweed passing. He was close to the bottom of the ocean now.
Or so he thought until he realized that what he called seaweed was following his downward track. With a concentrated effort, the wolf opened his eyes completely to see that it was the color of his fur. Lazily, his paw traced it back to its source, with a soft tug revealing that it was rooted to his head. Presented with this new mystery his slowing mind revived, and he realized that it could only be his hair.
The question of how it had grown so quickly was abandoned a moment later as he glanced down (or up, as his descent had ruined his sense of direction) to see that his shirt was a ragged ruin of its former self. He tugged softly at a corner, only to have the cloth tear like wet tissue in his paw. It had barely enough strength to pull tight across his chest for a brief moment, and then it tore open in the back from his neckline to his waist. The decaying cloth was tugged upwards by his sinking form, and it was soon ripped completely free, leaving his chest uncovered but for his fur.
His shirt's demise revealed what had been pulling it tight moments before. His chest had distended into a pair of modest white-furred breasts where before it has been flat and masculine, if perhaps not chiseled. Compared to the minor afterthought the sudden growth of his hair had presented, this sudden and radical change of his body was enough to make him gasp in surprise. By the time he realized what he had done, he had already inhaled quite a bit of water. Wincing, he tried to fight back the futile choking coughs that would try in vain to exchange sea water for absent air.
They never came.
Shocked, the wolf realized that the gasp of water had soothed the burning in his lungs. He knew he stood no chance of surviving short of a miracle, so he took the risky decision to hope in that miracle. Bracing himself, he took another breath.
The water was a soothing balm, and his gasping breaths came faster and faster as he discovered that it satisfied his desire for air. Soon his lungs were satisfied, and the revitalized wolf began to look himself up and down with renewed vigor. None of the strange occurrences seemed to have been hallucinations, and least not apparent enough as to be shattered by the invigorating effect of the air that he could now draw from the sea.
He looked down, past his chest and the most recent of his evident changes. Finally, his eyes caught sight of the aura that surrounded his legs. Its color was almost lost in the background of the ocean waters, but it carried an inner iridescence that set it apart. He watched in wonder as the gleaming azure halo trimmed his waist and broadened his hips as it spun in whirling eddies about his lower body. His pants seemed to be going the way of his shirt, but in a moment the fragmenting pieces began to catch in the current of the radiant glow, reforming into glistening strips that wound about his legs in lazy spirals.
The texture of the cloth shifted until it was no longer like any sort of cloth the wolf had ever seen, changing from ragged denim to a sturdy, interlaced set of what he could only call scales. Those scales then wound tightly about his legs, pulling them closer together until the distinction between the two was difficult to detect. His tail was caught in those spiraling bands as well, pinned to his legs one moment, and impossible to identify apart from them the next.
The nature of the limb which remained when the scales finished their dance was clear even before the flippers appeared at its end. It was a fish tail, only much larger and with its fins spread horizontally like a dolphin's rather than vertically. Smaller fins emerged at the sides of the tail as stabilizers, and another pair of similar fins grew from among the fur on his arms.
Its work finished, the aqua blue dimmed and began to fade, but stopped long enough to lift the shell from the wolf's paws. It gently closed the halves of the curious heirloom, and with a final flicker of blue, bound it about the wolf's neck so that it fell to rest upon his chest
Her chest.
The similarity between her new form and that of her rescuer was not lost on the new mermaid. As she began to examine her changed body, she realized that the incantation had also changed her species. Her muzzle was longer and narrower, and her once peaked ears flopped at the tips. A collie, she realized. She was a mer-collie. Everything below her waist was now combined into a powerful blue fishtail, and her upper body was covered by the long, luxurious fur of a collie.
She glanced to the shell that now hung about her throat. Curiously, she opened it once more, and saw that the pearl had grown in size. As she examined it, she began to see images dancing on its surface. With a start, she realized that they were scenes from her life. She thought perhaps that this might be a way for her to return, but something in her mind told her that the change could only occur in one direction. Her life has been saved, but it was also changed. The images in the pearl were only reminders at the beginning of a new era.
Briefly she wondered what she should do, and then she heard the cries of a drowning sailor. With several strokes of her powerful tail, she was on her way towards him. The mermaid would save however many she could from death in the cruel waters, and when another came who was far beyond hope she would offer them the gift that she herself had been given. It was not only a new life, but a chance to save others from the fate that had once befallen an unfortunate wolf.
