It's an almost indescribable feeling as the numbness spreads throughout your body, flowing from the splotches where you touched the strange substance. It doesn't hurt; as a matter of fact, you aren't sure you are capable of feeling pain anymore. As the sensation flows, your whole body goes rigid, then starts to deflate. All your insides - your organs and blood and all of that - feels like water, draining away with a cool sensation, and leaving you flat for a moment. Until you fill up again, your empty body stuffed with cotton. Puffed back up, you stand on your feet on the counter, looking out though plastic eyes at the two standing over you. No, looking isn't the right word, because you can see in all directions. But... you can only see the girls, really. Their shapes are all you can make out. It's the most bizarre sensation, because you can't really see their clothes, but you can see them... does being inanimate mean you can only see living things? You try to scream, to move, to jump, anything! But... you can't. All you can do is stand their stupidly and smile as one of them reach down and picks you up. You’re helpless as they talk, passing you back and forth and talking. Time is a blur to you like this... suddenly it's light outside, and you're on a shelf, watching life go by as the girls and others pass you with whatever it is they're doing. You try to call out to them, but nothing happens. One day is exactly as the next, and you can't even count exactly how many go by. You want to protest, you do! To insist they change you back as they promised, but rarely do they even so much as look at you again. It feels like only days have passed, but you have seen light and dark so many times you tell yourself it must be much more than that.
This is your life - for how long you can't tell; standing on the shelf and watching the world go by. But it does not persist forever. One night you're alone, as always, drifting into that trancelike state you are always in when there aren't any people around, and there is nothing at all in the world but you. You feel something grab hold of you with sharp teeth, which you can only tell are sharp with your sight because you can't really feel them. The shape is familiar, as it's very much like you- It's Tommy! You recognize that shape anywhere, and not just because he looks so much like you. Tommy says something you can't understand, then pushes you down off the edge of the shelf onto the floor, where you bounce a few times and skid to a halt. A few moments later he's there with you, dragging you along by his teeth. You must be getting filthy, but you don‘t care. After all this time, somebody came for you! You had half-expected somebody would find you eventually. Didn't Marisa want her apprentice back?
Tommy darts through the halls, seeming to know where he's going, until he arrives at a couch. It's a challenge for him to lift you up onto it towards the open window, but he manages, holding you in his teeth and darting up by aid of his claws. Then out into the night you go, flung into the dark. The fall doesn't bother you, or the dirty landing in the garden- Tommy knows what he's doing, and you trust him to get you out. He grabs onto you again a few seconds later, and drags you somewhere through the night- it's impossible for you to tell where. But soon enough you get there, and it goes from dark to light again. For the first time in as long as you can remember, you start to feel cold. A numb, pins-and-needles feeling starts in your paws, and spreads throughout your body as the world seems to shrink around you. Until, with a cough and a splutter, you spit out a mouthful of cotton, and you can breathe again. You're wearing that same green dress you were all that time ago, and your tail and ears have remained like Tommy's, along with your feet, but otherwise you're human again, soaking wetland filthy. You feel a pair of big arms embrace you, and you take hold without thinking, crying into Marisa's warm, dry form. "David... you're safe now. Don't worry... the twins won't get you again."
You don‘t resist as Marisa stands, and lifts you up with her. It's not difficult for her - you weren't a big girl /before/ wearing the dress, and with it you're practically skin and bones, tall and stretched in ways humans usually aren't. But with one eye open, you can see Marisa is taking you to...