Back in his room Lucas looked at his masterpiece and smiled. His brother looked silly with a hyena nose, but there was more he could do. Hyenas were such silly animals to begin with, with their wide smiling muzzles and big, round ears swiveling in all directions. Ever since he'd seen them on part of a nature documentary he'd caught while flipping through the channels looking for cartoons he'd thought they were such neat animals and seeing them in that one Disney movie had been a real laugh. Maybe when mom and dad got home he could ask them about going to a zoo to see real hyenas, but until then he could always draw pictures of them.
And thinking of that, there was more he could do with his brother's picture. Picking up the same brown crayon he'd used for the muzzle he got to work.
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Staring at my reflection, unable to believe what I was seeing, a blunt, grey-brown furred muzzle sticking out from my face. Turning my head this way and that I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. It was too long to belong to a cat, but it didn't look like a dog's either. The teeth were way too big for starters and the jaws, my jaws, were way too powerful. Yet it was vaguely familiar, like something I'd seen before.
I didn't have long to think about that though, because the tingling was back again, this time in my ears. Fearfully I brought my hands up and covered them as though that might protect them from whatever was about to happen.
It didn't, of course. I could feel them growing larger, moving higher on my head. They twitched when they touched my hands and I let them go, watching as they migrated up my head, growing larger and rounder with a light taper at the top. They certainly weren't dog ears, at least not ears like any breed of dog I'd seen. Brownish hairs started growing on them quickly covering them in the same sort of fur that was on my muzzle, except thicker and slightly longer. The hair on my head tickled against them and they swiveled around, in the process picking up sounds all around me.
Much like with my muzzle and sense of smell, the sounds that came with my new ears was overwhelming. I could hear cars on the road in front of the house, birds and squirrels in the trees in the woods behind the house, kids playing in one of the houses next door and Lucas laughing up in his room.
Watching my ears in the mirror my muzzle fell open in a gasp of amazement, long tongue lolling out.
Almost on their own my ears swayed back to listen to the noises in the woods. For some reason they were fascinating to me, especially the noises the animals in the woods were making. I sniffed loudly, taking in the faint scent of the outdoors, so much nicer than the stuff, oppressive smells of inside. It smelled so strongly of people in here, my family, but still people, and I found it suddenly unpleasant.
Panting anxiously I staggered out of the bathroom, again catching scent of the leftover hamburger meat from yesterday.
My stomach growled loudly at the smell and I licked my lips, tongue darting across my teeth, feeling how big and sharp they were. Whatever my muzzle and ears belonged to, it was clearly something that ate meat and wasn't a terribly picky eater. Leftover meatloaf had never smelled so good to me.
I wiped a string of drool hanging from my muzzle with the back of my hand and made my way to the kitchen.
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"Perfect!" Lucas laughed at the sight of his brother with a hyena nose and ears. It was probably one of the best pictures he'd ever done, but it wasn't quite finished. Looking at his box of crayons, marveling at all the colors, he tried to decide what to do next.