As they walked away from the bench where people gathered, Jonathan found himself unable to resist taking deep breaths through his elongated snout. The flood of new smells and the information they carried gave him a euphoric feeling to which he was quickly becoming addicted. Unbeknownst to him, his head had almost completely reshaped into that of a bloodhound: his large muzzle sloped back into a rounded skull, his forehead almost non-existent above his eyes, around which his skin had loosened and sagged into fuzzy wrinkles. His ears hung almost to his shoulders, which still remained humanoid, as did most of the rest of his body. Other than the tail, fur, clawed fingertips and a fuzzy sheath around his ... ahem *privates,* Jon looked like a fuzzy teenager with a dog's head on his body.
Benji was thinking hard about how he could ease Jon into accepting more changes, and when they approached a large field next to the baseball diamond, he pulled out the ball he'd stuffed into his pocket on his way out of the house.
"Wanna play catch to take your mind off things, bud?" he tossed the ball into the air and was delighted to see Jon's gaze snap to follow the motion. Unclipping the leash, he gave the ball a few more tosses as he watched Jon's internal struggle play out in his expressive, droopy eyes.
Nodding his head, which caused his ears to flap and wobble, Jon agreed. He backed up a bit and waited for his brother to throw him the ball. Benjamin drew back his arm, but instead of lobbing it into Jon's hands, he wound up and threw the ball off to his right, way past his brother and almost into the trees at the edge of the field! "Oops! Got away from me there!" he chuckled. But Jon was already running after the ball, his gait somewhat jerky.
When he reached the treeline and reached down to scoop up the ball, his hips suddenly gave a strange jerk and caused him to tumble into a heap in the grass. Rolling over, he looked down his body, shocked into stillness by the changes he saw in his feet. His toes, tipped in dark claws like his fingers, seemed to have rearranged themselves into a more paw-like structure: his big toe had disappeared, and the middle two of the four that remained were now the largest, with the two on either side slightly shorter and retracted. Grasping one foot in his hands, he turned it over to reveal toughened pads under each toe, with a large one under the ball of his feet. His arches too had changed, with his heels stretching back and elongating, causing his lower legs to resemble nothing so much as the huge hind-paws of a dog!
Jon released his foot and stared blankly at his lower limbs, the ball forgotten in the grass beside him.