"...dog: a creature much like myself, but bound much more closely to the human world. It's obvious now, looking into just the right section of your soul."
A dog, eh? That really does sound kind of fun. But still, to be one forever... Oh well, maybe it won't happen anyway. Just because she can talk doesn't mean she's telling the truth. Then again, if a fox can talk, what else might she be able to do?
My anxious train of thought leaked out into a nervous twitch above my butt. My eyes widened, but before I could say anything, a crushing tightness made me loosen my belt to let a firm, lengthy mass flop out over the back of the jeans. The saggy denim fell to the floor as both of my hands went back to grab the bony, mobile extension of my spinal column. I gasped and steered it around toward my side just a bit so I could get a better look at what grew out of me. It's long, pointy, and richly coated in short brown-and-black-peppered fur. I looked back at Yuna and stammered.
"You... you... you..."
"... gave you the tail you were lacking?" she finished my sentence for me. "That's not all you're getting."
A stretchy feeling overtook my ears until it faded into a loose, bendy tautness over the sides of my face. I let go of the tail and got a grip on my freshly changed earlobes, which turned out to be velvety curtains of thin skin and fine fur. I accidentally pinched one a little to tightly with one hand and tugged a little too hard with the other, but still I couldn't resist fingering the flat fleshy flaps I now had up there. My inner ear popped, and all at once I heard the chirping of birds, the rustling of fur, the slight breeze through the trees, and even my and Yuna's own heartbeats. "Whoa," I said, and my voice sounded like a foghorn.
"It's nice to be able to actually hear now, isn't it?" said Yuna, as if she were talking through a high-powered speaker as my new canine hearing would take some getting used to. A tingle in my hands emerged and I glanced down to see what was happening to those. Copper-brown fur was sprouting over them and my nails were thickening up into claws. My hands were physically stretching and thinning, but my thumbs got left behind and shrank into irrelevance on my wrists. In moments, I no longer had ten fingers but eight toes, with rough pads coalescing underneath. Dog's paws! My tail drooped a bit as I realized I wasn't going to be doing coordinated handiwork anymore. Soon my feet were in agony as they too began to stretch out, but with absolutely no room to do so in my shoes. I let out an eerie, doggish-sounding whine before Yuna focused her magic and transforms my shoes and all of my other clothing into dust.
"You have no need of such human-like fetters in your new life," she commented.
With that wave of relief, I was free to watch my feet taking on the same fur and thinness of my hands. It was getting awkward to stand in my current position, and I discovered that I had to stand tiptoed, letting my rear pads take your weight while my ankle stuck up at a steep angle toward the back. My legs straightened, my haunches thickened, and I wobbled for a moment before tumbling over onto all four paws. It still felt a little achy to stand even like this until some shifting and cracking in my torso finished the job and sealed me into my new quadrupedal stance. My insides gurgled and the fur growth washed over my body leaving a saddle-like black patch all over my back and most of my sides. I wondered if the change was ever going to end when I finally felt a pressure in my face.
The brown fur covered my cheeks and the skin on my nose and lips changes before my skull and jawbone started creaking. It sounded like it should be painful, but it really wasn't, although it did feel insanely bizarre. My lower face swelled forward to become a long, blocky, slightly pointed projection to house not only my sharp teeth and long tongue but also my expanded nasal cavities. A soft breath through my new nostrils turned into a tapestry of odors and multifaceted aromas that I could never fully describe in human language. My ears perked up and that my new tail stiffened curiously as I sniffed up another sample of the new sensory world I'd be living in from then on. I found myself swinging my tail to the right pleasantly as the playful mischievousness of the fox found my nostrils. A final emergence of fur covered my snout and a set of clear whiskers emerged from the sides. It was done.
"Well, former human," she said softly. "Welcome to your new life as a dog."