That's what is happening. The woman who had given me that ring, in my human life, had bet that my soul would be enslaved forever, but...but what had happened to me? I had been...set free. My mind had been set free.
I realize I could stop my husband any time now, but I don't want to. I find myself loving his beautiful body in the way that men love a woman, since I have imagined it to have been loved like a woman's body and liked it. I realize that he is beautiful, and I am attracted to him.
In my head, I wish that men and women were both somewhere in-between anthro and four-legged animal, so we could both live as we choose, on either two legs or four or switching back and forth. Furthermore, I wish to extend the freedom of choice to everybody, to live in service to others, in exchange for security and simplicity, or as landowners, with risk and responsibility as the trade-offs.
Unlike the last changes, which I was not conscious of at all, I feel our bodies shifting slowly as our lovemaking continues. He is aware of it, too, although he might think it's a fantasy. He starts pumping his hips harder, and I thrust back against him, growling and snarling as we both reach toward release. He props one of my legs over his shoulder and holds up the other as he presses for leverage, fucking me harder as he approaches his climax.
I wish...I wish...as I approach climax, I try to get my final wish out, knowing instinctively that it's important. A wish that will symbolically free me forever from the curse. A wish that would leave me with nothing left to wish for. I wish. I wish...I groan as he starts to cum in me, and I hit my climax at the same time. "I wish I could fly!" I gasp.
And as my husband collapses upon me, with both of us breathing hard in post-orgasmic exhaustion, I see beautiful silver wings growing from his back. Not wings like any known bird: they are softer and cleaner. They don't pretend to be good or evil. They don't pretend to be moral or immoral. They make no announcement of their worth over anything else. They are gentleness itself.
As we lie there in the room snuggled together, I feel the ring fall from the digit on my forepaw, where it has been all of this time, and the gnarled creature that gave it to me walks in. Not saying a word, she collects the ring, and she turns to walk away. We watch her, and she gives just one backward glance; in that glance, there is somewhere between disappointment...and something like respect.
My husband giggles and gets up onto all-fours on the bed, stretching out, and he hops down onto the floor.
"Where are you going, Charles?" I ask sleepily.
He cocks his head over his shoulder mirthfully. "Well, I don't know about you, Matilda," he lilts, "but I'm flying up to the bluff to take a nap." His tail flicks at me as his butt disappears down the hallway. "You can come or not," he calls.
I will, but first, I try getting off of the bed in the two-legged manner, and I stretch out my back as I stand up, stepping over to the mirror. As I examine myself, turning around to look at my butt, I realize that my feet still tend to prefer standing on their tip-toes, but I can rest the heels a little bit on the ground if I want to.
I hear the door downstairs slam, and I rush out to the balcony to see my husband bounding out from the house, flapping his wings to take off. "Wait for me!" I cry out, and with a leap and a flurry of wings, I drop down from the balcony, just barely managing to catch enough wind in my cupped wings in time to keep from hitting the turf below. After some furious flapping to catch up, I manage to pull up beside Charles, and we fly together to our favorite place, the bluff above the lake.