Damon, the goose that lays golden eggs, could only watch helplessly as the witch debated his fate with his current captors. He knew it was pretty much a one-sided dispute, though, since one party had the power to transform the other. The witch closed her eyes and waved the wand a few times, took a deep breath, opened her eyes again, and returned the wand without saying a word.
"Is that all you got, granny? How about we show you some better tricks?" said Chris mockingly, pounding his fist against his palm threateningly, not wanting to admit he'd felt a strange electric tingle all around him.
The witch yawned and grinned at him, well aware of something Chris was just about to notice. He was naked! And so was John. Their clothes had just dissolved into dust on the floor. John gasped, and Chris had another macho outburst. "Hey, what's the big idea?" he blustered.
"I think a pair of jackals ought to look quite a bit different from you two," she answered teasingly, "and certainly ought to have no need of clothes."
Chris had just about had enough of this women and was about to show her who's boss, but first he reached up to his ears, where an unfamiliar twitching feeling had started. His hands made contact with the bigger, pointer protrusions his ears were becoming. He stopped in his tracks and took some time to just finger his lobes and try to figure out what was happening.
John, meanwhile, was bent over with his hands on his knees, craning his neck around to gawk at the short, twitching nub above his butt. He felt like he'd grown a little finger at the end of his back, and sure enough, he could see a little skin-covered length of bone sticking out back there, pointing around in different angles as he watched. He thought maybe that he should see why Chris went quiet all of a sudden, that he should say something to the witch, or even that he should just run away. He was too stunned to do anything, though. He just stayed still and watched his little nub, and gulped nervously at the idea that it might be still growing.
Chris was not happy that his ears felt hairier, but now he was also feeling his face push forward, and that was even worse. He let go of the tall fleshy triangles and gripped his pointy mouth-nose combo. Brushing the sides with both hands, he discovered a number of long, sensitive hairs that were still growing. He mentally realized he had whiskers. He opened his mouth to demand that the witch stop whatever she was doing, but this time he could only let out a frantic yelping sound. His ears jerked back on instinct.
John heard the yelping, but he was too fixated on his new "finger" to take his eyes off of it. What had been a twitching nub was now a thin chain of vertebrae sticking up behind him. He felt a multitude of joints shifting as it lazily flopped over to one side. He wanted to reach over and touch it, or get some other confirmation that this was really happening, but he was still to stunned to move.
Chris was now holding his hands out in front of him because he had discovered that his fingernails felt weird. He could see thicker, pointier protrusions at the end of his fingertips that looked a whole lot more like claws. His palms felt puffier, and his thumbs were shrinking almost back into his wrist. He whimpered when he saw golden-brown fur sprouting from the back of his hands. He looked over to check on John and finally saw that his partner was changing, too.
John still hadn't budged from his stance of staring out behind himself. He now had a shaggy black-and-gray tail that he could wave around. He finally raised up a little and looked over at Chris, who now had a furry head and a pair of front paws. John finally made eye contact with the woman in front of him.
"You... you really are a w.. w... a wi-"
"A witch, yes. And you're really are a jackal, or at least you will be in a few minutes."
Chris growled at her, but she reached toward her wand again, and he flattened his ears and went silent. John swished his tail some more in amazement and quickly looked back over to Chris.
"I told you she was a witch. I told you she was going to find us. Why didn't you... whoa... ack!"
John was feeling himself stumbling around because his feet would no longer stay on the ground quite right. He fell forward onto his hands and found that his toes had sprouted claws and golden-brown fur. His ankles were sticking out behind him like a jackal's hind legs. He bit his lip as he realized just how far this change was going to go. The fur spread down the rest of Chris's body and up the rest of John's. The fur on their backs was darker, and the fur on their four legs was lighter. John watched his muzzle stretch out in front of him, and Chris got a tail of his own. When it was all said and done, they circled around looking at themselves and then paused to look at each other.
It was then that Chris found a new smell filling his muzzle, and realized what he wanted to do next...