Lucas loved his easygoing summer life. He left doing nothing all day but lounge around and eat grass. He loved those long ears that flicked around on his head, even if they made him look silly. He liked licking his nostrils because it was getting so much harder to pick his nose. He loved that it was fine with everyone if he was a slob. And yes, he'd even decided that he loved his new tail, even though he knew he wasn't supposed to have one. He didn't know how his life had changed so much for the better in so little time, but who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth?
It was in the hottest part of the afternoon that Lucas noticed that he could barely move his fingers and toes at all anymore. The longer he had been using his hands to stand on, the harder it had been getting to use them for anything else, and now their mobility seemed to have hit rock bottom. Looking down at them, he was stunned to see what had happened to them during his nap.
Two fingers were barely distinguishable from the front view of what Lucas was desperate to try to think of as his hands, and two huge fingernails had basically taken over the part he would expect to be standing on. These weren't hands, and Lucas knew it: he was stuck with a broad, roundish pair of split hooves that didn't belong on a human.
"No, it can't be!" he tried to exclaim, clamoring to four feet, tail and ears flailing. He couldn't really say anything, though. He only managed to let out a loud, deep, bestial bellow from deep inside the wide, gaping mouth of his snout. "I'm not human anymore!" he thought, immediately realizing in hindsight what he should have seen he was turning into. The hooves were like a puzzle piece, fitting right into place with the tail and ears he had grown. All of these were body parts like a cow, or a bull, or a steer!
Wondering, at first, whether his diet of grass was responsible, he soon found himself thinking back before his first round grazing, back before he returned to the house that day. The wheel of purpose said he would "feed the hungry". Looking back at the hundreds of pounds of angus he'd bulked up into, Lucas understood exactly what that meant. He wasn't going to end world hunger in some moment of genius, and he wasn't even going to help out poor people in his neighborhood with a food drive. He was going to eat grass like the hungry bovine he was, get as much meat on his bones as he could muster, and eventually, some hungry human would eat that meat the same way they would eat any random piece of beef, and hungry dog would likely eat whatever was left and maybe chew on his bones if given the chance. Lucas wasn't destined to be some kind of philanthropist. He was destined to be food!
And the worst part was, even knowing this, Lucas found it hard to resist settling back into his new livestock life and trying to enjoy it while it lasts. After all, he wasn't food yet, and he was surrounded by food to fill his own hungry belly. There was almost something satisfying in the knowledge that he now had a single, clearly defined purpose that required almost no effort on his part. Just eat, piss, shit, and try to keep the flies away until the humans finally call on him to pay back their investment in feeding him, protecting him, and letting him do whatever he wants. And yet, what a purpose to have ended up with! Why not prize-winning scientist, or a famous actor, or a star football player. Why not a doctor? Would he even have been capable of those things if he'd remained human? Would he ever have a chance to find out? Lucas gritted his herbivore teeth and dug his snout into a fresh patch of grass, shamelessly comforting himself with food, the kind of food he's destined to eat until he gets eaten. It's not like he has anything else to do.