The strange feeling subsides, and you are left panting and disoriented. What was that all about? It wasn't some kind a medical emergency, was it? Your insides do feel a bit funny, like some of them might be shrunken or swollen or sitting in different places, which is unnerving. At least, you don't feel like you're in any pain, you can breathe, and your heart is beating. Maybe you're going to be okay? Maybe you had a really weird seizure? You decide it's time to get ou of here and head home. You put the book back on the shelf, not feeling up to any more research. If anything actually is wrong with you, you don't want to have some kind of even worse episode in a library.
You start feeling quite warm on your way home; perhaps you shouldn't have worn heavy denim jeans and a long-sleeve shirt this late in the spring. You carry your sweater in your arms, clearly not needing to put it on. You get a few slightly odd looks on the way home, but you figure it's nothing. At one point you take a deep breath through your mouth and notice how refreshing that is, moreso than usual. Soon you're panting again, almost without thinking about it, not because you're exhausted or on edge, but just to keep a cool flow of air coming in out. You hope that doesn't mean you're out of breath--you're very much in shape usually, so your strange episode could have been the start of a lung problem. By the time you get home, though, you decide you probably just psyched yourself out. Maybe you should have let the doctor put you on those anxiety meds after all.
Getting back home, the first thing you do is toss your keys to the side and turn on the air conditioner, sucking the cool air in and out of your mouth gleefully. You're very surprised that your thermometer--it felt way hotter than it turned to be. You're body temperature isn't out of whack, is it? Surely what happened at the library wasn't a heat stroke, was it? The weather is too mild for that! It most definitely didn't feel mild when you left the library, though. Maybe your problem really is just the clothes. You go into your bedroom, open your closet, and assemble a (hopefully flattering) summer outfit.
Before you take off your clothes to put on what you've picked out, you glimpse yourself in your bedroom mirror and do a double-take. You run your fingers through your hair, surprised by its altered texture. Well, this explains the strange looks, at least. Your hair has shortened(!) and darkened to jet black, except for a very thin, white stripe down the middle. Surprisingly, your eyebrows have changed color, too, but they aren't just one color anymore. They're pure black off to the sides but copper-brown near the bridge of your nose. Maybe something really did happen to you at the library. But what in the world could this be a symptom of?
Getting undressed makes it clear that something very drastic has indeed happened. It's isn't just you're head hair that has changed. Your body hair is entirely different, and there is much more of it. Soon you're turning yourself around in front of the mirror, trying to see every part of yourself. You can't even see your bare skin anymore on your torso or along most of your arms and legs. Your short but thick hair is a jumbled up mess of different shades. For the most part, it's an even, indistinct mix of white, black, and gray hair of different levels of lightness or darkness, to the point that it almost looks bluish! There are, however, some solid black regions, most prominently a large, saddle-like area on your back and sides, plus another one on and around your butt. There's even some more brownish hair in some places, especially on your upper chest near your shoulders and on part of your arms. It's all so short and thick that you eventually have to admit to yourself that it looks exactly like some kinds of dog fur.
That's when you remember the page you were looking at when the paw print started to glow. It was part of the chapter about dogs, and it wasn't just any part of that chapter, either. You were looking right at the section on blue-tick coonhounds! Your splotchy, inconsistent coat of multicolored fur almost looks like part of a costume to dress up as one.
"Could the book have done this to me?" you ask yourself out loud, trembling. Who's ever heard of getting turned into a hound just by reading about them?
The hand that you touched the paw print with starts to glow again, and you moan. The strange feelings around your body are starting up again.