Here it is!
Selden flounced down the sidewalk, Kyle trying to keep up behind him.
“How are you going so fast?” Kyle panted, pounding the pavement in his large black boots.
“How are you not?” Selden replied, grinning. The otter - now a dragon, thanks to a large felt costume - had been running almost nonstop between houses for almost three hours. “It’s Halloween! Free candy! It only happens once a year!”
Kyle shook his head, exasperated. Selden turned his attention back to the sidewalk. He leaped to the side, narrowly missing another pedestrian.
Selden glanced backwards, making sure that Kyle was still there. He was a red fox, taller than him, but not by much. Kyle was dressed up as a vampire, wearing a large, flowing cape over a white shirt and vest and a pair of dress pants. It looked great, but it wasn’t nearly as flexible as Selden’s dragon outfit - which was probably why Kyle was slowing down much faster than him.
Reaching a house, Selden stopped and waited for Kyle, bouncing on his toes. The fox puffed up to him slowly, stopping with a huge gasp.
“Ugh… stop going so fast…” he mumbled, trying to catch his breath. Selden waited impatiently, eager to get as much candy as possible. Once Kyle was breathing at a normal pace, he and Selden walked up to the house’s front door. A large plastic skeleton awaited them, leaning over the porch like half of a bony arch. As they reached the door, Kyle started to perk up. Even he couldn’t resist being happy about free candy.
Selden rang the doorbell and stepped back. The door flung open, revealing a cackling witch, wearing a large hat that obscured her face.
“Hehehe, what do we have here?” she said, rubbing her paws together.
Selden grinned and flung out his arms, pushing his costume wings out to the sides, while Kyle did the same with his cape.
“Trick or treat!”
The witch grinned and flipped her hat off of her head, holding it out to the pair of trick-or-treaters. It was filled to the brim with candy. Now that it wasn’t covering her face, Selden recognized the witch - it was Cecilia, a mouse, and a fellow lover of Halloween.
Selden and Kyle each took a piece of candy, thanking her. Cecilia smiled and tossed the hat into the air, the candy inside somehow staying where it was, and landed it right on top of her head.
“Nice hat tricks!” Selden said, clapping. Kyle nodded in agreement. Cecilia bowed, sweeping her hat off of her head again.
“Why, thank you, sir dragon! You two have fun!” She waved goodbye as the otter and fox turned and started back towards the street. Cecilia took up her position behind her door, ready for the next batch of candy-goers.
Selden immediately unwrapped his candy and popped it into his mouth as they reached the sidewalk. He turned and started off again, this time a little slower so that Kyle could keep up.
“Have you eaten every piece of candy you’ve gotten?” Kyle asked as Selden tucked away his wrapper.
“Nope! Only every third piece. I’m using them as fuel,” he explained. Kyle just sighed, confused.
“So, where to next?” The otter pondered, thinking. He tried to think of somewhere they hadn’t already gone. Somewhere exciting.
“Virmir!” Selden shouted. “Let’s visit his tower!” Virmir was something of a familiar face, being the resident grumpy mage. All most people saw of him was the occasional fire at the top of his tower, accompanied by a voice screaming something about trees.
“I dunno. Virmir and I don’t really get along,” Kyle said, crossing his arms. He looked intimidating in his vampire attire.
“Aw, c’mon, it’ll be fun! We’ll just be quick, there and back!”
Kyle frowned, but uncrossed his arms. “Fine, as long as it’s quick.
Fifteen minutes later, Selden and Kyle stood in front of a huge stone tower. All the windows were dark, except for one - all the way at the top, a blue light lit up the stone around the glass.
“What’s that light?” he asked, pointing. Kyle shrugged, panting from the walk up.
“Probably Virmir doing some late-night drawings,” he suggested, sounding exhausted.
“Yeah, probably. Let’s go!” Selden ran up the dirt path, halting a few feet in front of the door. Based on the size of the tower, Selden expected it to be bigger, but it was smaller than most doors he’d seen. Kyle puffed up beside him, and Selden stepped forward, ringing the doorbell.
A deep, booming voice blasted out from inside. “Go away! I’m working!” It shouted, blowing Selden’s fur back with the force of it. He and Kyle cringed, covering their ears. The otter uncovered his small, shell-like ears once they stopped ringing. Kyle turned to go, but Selden caught his arm. Kyle raised his eyebrows at him, but Selden just grinned.
“Virmir can take a break! It’s Halloween, he has to answer the door,” Selden said, turning his back to the door and covering his ears. He gestured at Kyle to do the same.
Selden figured that Virmir really could use a break. The fox was constantly working, either drawing all day or trying to figure out how magical objects worked. He figured that everyone could use a break, even Virmir. No one could be that productive all the time and not get tired of it, right?
He lifted up his tail and pushed the doorbell again. The same booming voice rang out.
“Go away! I’m working!” Selden stood up straight and held his hands behind his back. After a minute, he looked at Kyle and shrugged.
“Doesn’t look like he’s coming,” Selden grumbled, crossing his arms and swishing his tail back and forth.
“Guess not,” Kyle agreed. “Looks like it’s time to go.”
“I never said we were leaving,” Selden said, smiling wickedly. He got into position again, holding his tail at the ready to hit the doorbell.
Kyle sighed, but covered his ears. “I don’t even like Virmir….” He mumbled. The two foxes didn’t get along very well.
Kyle grumpily gave Selden a thumbs up, then quickly covered his ear again. Selden started to hit the doorbell over and over. The voice rang out every time, playing over itself, quickly becoming unintelligible. All Selden could hear was absolute noise.
The door slammed open, knocking the pair onto the ground. A gray and white fox stood in the doorway. His posture made him look regal and majestic, and he even seemed to be glowing - although, that was probably because of the spotlights he had set up and not because of his perceived majesty. It was certainly intimidating, though.
Virmir glared at them. “What was that about? I said I was blasted working!”
Selden waved at him from the ground, still chipper. “You wouldn’t answer your door!”
“That’s because… argh! Would you two go away? I need to finish this before the end of the night! Trees, some people….” he moved to close the door.
The otter wasn’t giving up so easily. “Wait, wait! We can’t leave yet!”
“Well, why blasted not?”
“You haven’t given us candy yet!”
“I haven’t… what? What does that have to do with anything?” Virmir glanced between Kyle and Selden, confused. They looked back at him, exasperated. Selden sighed and simply gestured at his costume.
Virmir groaned and covered his face with his paws. “Oh, no. Not today. Please not today.…”
Selden poked Kyle and grinned. He counted down from three on one paw, and he and Kyle posed in unison.
“Trick or treat!”
Virmir was not amused.
He paced back and forth in his doorway, mumbling. Selden grinned.
“Are you trying to decide which one to give us?” He joked. Virmir grunted and waved his paw in reply, trying to quiet him. “Aw, c’mon, at least get into the spirit of things! At least we’re in costumes. You’re just a boring old grey fox still!”
Virmir rounded on him with a scowl so stormy, it changed the weather forecast. “I’m too busy for Halloween this year! And it’s ‘gray,’ not ‘grey.’”
“What? You just said the same thing!” Selden exclaimed. Virmir shushed him.
“But I—” Virmir shushed him again. Selden harrumphed.
Virmir pointed at the pair standing on his doorstep. “Will you two leave if I give you something edible?” They nodded eagerly. Virmir rolled his eyes and disappeared inside his tower. Selden gave a quiet victory whoop. Virmir had closed his door, but he could still make out sounds from inside. After a minute of shuffling, foliage-related cursing, and the occasional growl, Virmir slammed open his door again. He was holding a small pewter caldron, and, surprisingly, grinning. Inside, there was about two dozen pieces of unwrapped candy. Selden happily took a handful, stuffing them into a pocket on the side of his costume, while Kyle only took two, shooting Virmir a look that said, “I don’t like you, but I do like your candy.”
“Happy Halloween. Now go away!” Virmir slammed his door, leaving Selden and Kyle standing in the twilight.
“Success!” Selden shouted, almost dancing down the path from Virmir’s tower. Kyle followed after him, grinning and feeling a little less tired.
Selden shoved a paw in his pocket and pulled out his handful of candy. Some of them were shaped like animals. In the gathering gloom, Selden could make out a deer, a bird, and a couple of other, less identifiable animals. He glanced over at Kyle, who had pulled out his candy. His were shaped like a wolf and, oddly, a balloon.
“Do you think we can call it a night?” Kyle asked Selden. “I’m ready to hit the sack.”
Selden nodded. “This seems like a good time to end. Thanks for coming!” He said, then shoved the whole handful of candy into his mouth. Kyle rolled his eyes. Selden started to chew and gasped. His mouth exploded with flavor. He couldn’t pin down any specific tastes, but his whole mouth felt like it was buzzing with flavor. He swallowed enough to be able to talk, turning to Kyle.
“Those are amazing! Try yours, Kyle!” Kyle looked at him uncertainly, then popped his own two pieces into his mouth.
Kyle’s eyes went round as he chewed. “Woah! Who knew Virmir was so good at making candy?”
Selden shrugged, distracted. He had swallowed the rest of the wad of candy, but his mouth hadn’t stopped buzzing. In fact, the feeling had actually spread - his stomach was buzzing, too. He held his hand to his stomach, groaning. It felt like a nest of angry wasps had made his stomach their home.
He felt Kyle’s paw on his back, but it quickly jerked away. Selden turned his head and saw Kyle staggering backwards, hands to his mouth. He looked just like Selden felt - ready to hurl. What had been in those candies?
Selden slid to the ground as his legs gave out underneath him, suddenly weak. He let out a small grunt, cushioning his fall with one paw, the other still held firmly over his stomach. Selden sat still for a moment, breathing deeply, letting the odd nausea pass. He flipped over onto his knees and tried to push himself back to his feet.
His legs, however, had a different idea. They stayed firmly against the ground. Selden stared at them for a second, then tried again, this time heaving himself up with all his might. With a strange slurping, tearing noise, the otter’s legs tore off the ground, and he nearly flipped over backwards. He windmilled frantically, trying to stay upright. A strange, gooey substance was stretched between his legs and where they had been pressed against the ground. Selden reached down and grabbed one of the stands, pulling on it. It snapped off the ground, and he gave it a closer inspection. It was a dark brown, with a slightly grainy texture. Almost like…
Selden hesitantly stuck out his tongue and licked the strand. It was entirely made of up caramelized sugar. It was starting to coat his legs, and it got all over his hands as he tried to wipe it off. He tried rubbing his candy bag on his leg, but all that succeeded in doing was getting caramel on that, too.
“Uh, Kyle? A little help?” Selden said shakily, looking around in the twilight, trying to find the fox. He spotted a shape in the semi-darkness and hobbled towards it, his feet sticking to the ground every time he set them down. He almost fell over multiple times. As he approached, the indistinct blob solidified into a person. Er, almost solidified. The person didn’t seem too solid, themselves.
Kyle was laying on the ground, staring at his arms in shock. The fur there had turned a pure white, and they had taken on a shiny rubbery cast. It was creeping up his body slowly, and Selden could hear a faint whistling as his paws started to inflate.
Well, great. With Kyle changing too, Selden didn’t have any help. He tried to back away from Kyle, but he leg was stuck in place AGAIN. He looked at his legs and quickly found the issue. They had stuck to each other, the sugar strands binding them together. Selden tried to wiggle his toes, but he couldn’t even do that. As his legs became one solid mass of sugar, he toppled to the ground a second time.
By this point, the sugar had crept up across his back, and now it wrapped around him completely, covering him in a mass of bubbling caramel. It shifted and swirled around him, making shapes and then losing form over and over.
Selden could feel his body shifting with it. He stretched like taffy, changing from one thing to another - growing horns, scales, fur, then melting back into itself. Selden the otter had disappeared, and in his place was a huge, amorphous blob.
After a couple minutes of continuous swirling, Selden felt something change. The consistency of the caramel became slightly thicker, and its movements were more lethargic. It began sculpting itself into shapes, color bleeding through the uniform brown as it hardened. His legs reformed from the blob, stretching long and thick, becoming a lengthy tail that undulated behind him. A shiver went down his back and throughout the whole tail as a cold feeling washed through it. The last bit of sugar crawled up his tail and stopped at his hips, widening them. If his face hadn’t been covered, Selden would have blushed at the change to his body shape.
The caramel on his face hardened around his snout, lengthening it and changing its shape, now more akin to a deer than an otter. Two of his teeth pulled down out of his mouth, forming into large fangs. The extra sugar on his face began to crystalize. It formed small lumps that crept up to his forehead, stacking on top of each other and making two huge antlers that weighed down his head. At the same time, a huge plume of fur burst forth from his neck, his head looking just like a blooming flower. The fur was red and white, like a fluffy candy cane.
Selden felt his back rippling. He twisted at the waist, trying to see what was happening over his shoulder. Two wrinkles had appeared at his shoulder blades, and he felt the sugar on his back being drawn towards them. It formed two huge lumps, one on the back of each shoulder. Selden stared at them, confused.
Suddenly, the lumps tore open, and two huge wings unfurled. The force of it nearly knocked him over. They looked like a cross between a bird and a dragon, feathers nearly obscuring scales from view. They were huge, too - his new wingspan was probably around a dozen feet. The wings didn’t seem to want to stay still; like his tail, they were constantly moving, flapping, swaying, folding, and unfolding themselves. Selden tried to force them to rest against his back, but the moment he stopped concentrating, they sprang up again.
Selden panted, absolutely exhausted. This was taking forever. Fortunately, the transformation seemed to be almost complete. The only area still covered in melted sugar was his upper body. He sat impatiently, waiting for it to harden. He wanted to march - er, slither - straight back to Virmir and get him to reverse this.
After a minute of indecisive swirling, the sugar on Selden’s chest and arms finally began to take form. Now that his whole body wasn’t shifting, he could actually watch it happen. The caramelized sugar flowed into place like a tiny river, building up in some places and pulling away from others. Colors occasionally rose to the surface, but they didn’t stay for long where it was still flowing.
Selden’s chest took form, light gray and reddish-brown fur emerging. The fur color was split down the middle. Selden’s hands finally took shape beneath their layer of goo, and he flexed his fingers happily - at least, he flexed the fingers on one side. His hands had turned out different. The hand on the side with gray fur was a regular paw, albeit with larger than average claws, while the hand on the side with brown fur had become an odd-looking hoof. Right above it, on his wrist, a small claw poked out.
Selden sighed. With his hands solidified, the transformation had completely finished. He looked over his body, noting all the changes. He didn’t seem to have any otter left in him. His lower half was entirely a giant snake - Does that make me a naga? He thought, curious - but the upper half was less clear-cut. He seemed to be something caught halfway between a bunch of different animals. While his chest seemed to be half fox and half deer, it was up in the air what his paws were. Add in his wings, which were both feathered and scaled, and all Selden could determine for sure was that he was a hybrid. Any more specific and he was lost as to what all the pieces were.
At least it wasn’t too bad; many odd things tend to happen with transformation. Turning into rubber, gaining limbs, losing limbs, finding yourself the opposite gender, or no gender at all… Selden was lucky that he still had a mostly full range of motion. Despite his hips being much fuller than usual, he was still male, and the new body shape fit nicely with the tail.
Kyle, however, wasn’t so lucky.
Looking around, Selden noticed him on the ground, right where he had left him. The fox’s plight had worsened: the inflation had snuck up his arms and throughout his body, filling him up more and more. He had fallen onto his back, unable to stay up straight. Along with it, he had been transformed into a pure white wolf. It was hard to tell, though, due to him being a puffed-up parade-style balloon with a barely discernible shape. The only thing left was his tail. It lay limp on the ground, slowly filling up with air, a high-pitched whistling coming from it. Kyle flailed his arms and legs uselessly, pumping them up and down, trying to flip back onto his stomach.
Selden carefully slithered over to him. He wasn’t quite used to having the lower half of a snake, and he didn’t want to fall flat on his face. Luckily, movement wasn’t too hard; the snake part of him knew what to do.
Reaching Kyle, he grabbed one of his paws, careful not to stab into the stretchy material with his claws, and flipped Kyle over. He was so light that Selden was surprised he hadn’t already been blown away.
“Are you okay?” he asked as Kyle’s face swung towards him. Selden never got a response, however. In place of the usual slight scowl, Kyle had a happy, cartoonish face painted on. Selden let out an involuntary chuckle. Despite the seriousness of the situation, it really was a funny face.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Selden said, steadying the now-fully-inflated balloon. With a start, Selden realized that his dragon costume was gone. There’s no way it survived the transformation, he thought, running his eyes across the ground. Sure enough, it was in tatters, mangled beyond recognition. Kyle’s vampire costume lay next to him, just as beat up.
Selden was fuming. Virmir had a lot to answer to.
He needed some way to get them both back up the hill. If he had still been an otter, Selden would have had no problem with carrying Kyle, but he was much too big to hold with just one paw. Selden needed some way to drag him along behind.
An idea flashed in his mind, and Selden grinned. He reached behind himself and grabbed the end of his tail. It was quite long, and by the time it got to the end, it was long and thin, almost like a whip. Selden looped it around one of Kyle’s feet, then wiggled it back and forth until it was secure. He sat back as well as he could and admired his work, hands on hips. By lifting his tail slightly, he could keep Kyle away from the ground and anything potentially sharp enough to pop him.
Selden turned and slithered back towards Virmir’s tower, Kyle in tow. He wasn’t about to spend the rest of Halloween night as a hodgepodge of different animals, and only Virmir would know how to fix this. The events of the night ran through his head as he went. All things considered, it hadn’t been the worst night. Trick-or-treating was always fun, and a little transformation didn’t hurt.
Selden just wished he still had feet. It’s much easier to give a certain gray fox a much-deserved kick in the rear when you’ve got feet.
