The next morning, you know even without opening your eyes that something felt very different. The night before, you had fallen asleep on your back with your blankets pulled up over yourself, but this morning everything felt off.
“Let’s just get this over with…” you sigh, opening one eye to see what had changed this morning. You can immediately tell that your bed was much different; instead of a mattress covered in blankets and pillows, you instead find yourself curled up on a large cushion, almost like a dog bed, but sized up for a human being. And by ‘curled up’, you quite literally mean that. Your entire body is curled up tightly like a sleeping dog or cat might, with your pawed legs and arms folded up beneath you and your tail resting right in front of your nose. You’d never been especially flexible before you’d begun transforming into a fox, but apparently a flexible spine and other joints came with the territory.
You easily unfold yourself from your sleeping position and let out a yawn, your tongue lolling out more than usual as you unconsciously scratch behind your ear with your back paw. Then, you spot your reflection in the mirror and realize what you look like.
The night before, your fur had only covered your legs, arms, and the top of your head, leaving your chest, neck, and face looking mostly normal. But now, bright red fur had grown completely over your chest, with a spot of soft, creamy-white fur down the middle of your chest. The fur rises up to your neck, giving you a collar of fur that makes you look like some sort of mascot character that forgot to put on their headpiece. You’d had a feeling that this was coming, but seeing almost every bit of skin on your body coated in soft, fluffy fox fur really makes it sink in that you’re barely even human anymore. A pathetic whine rises up in your throat, making you sound less like a terrified human and more like a cornered animal, and your tail begins to whip back and forth nervously.
First things first; you need to get dressed. Just because you’ve got a pelt of fur doesn’t mean you need to look like an animal, right? However, as your eyes dart around the room, you see that something is missing besides your usual bed. Your dresser is gone, along with every scrap of clothing you’ve ever owned in your lifetime. Just yesterday you had been trying to make the best of things, bragging and joking about not having to wear pants or shoes as a fox, but now karma had come to pay you back.
“Animals don’t wear clothes… only humans do,” you whimper to yourself, realizing that despite having a human-looking face, it was almost impossible to even think of yourself as a human being anymore. Animal paws tipped your legs and arms, a big, fluffy animal tail was waving behind you, and a thick, luxurious coat of animal fur covered almost every inch of your skin. You were still thinking like a human, but who knows how long that would last? Maybe it would be merciful if you just woke up the next morning as a feral fox, never remembering you were a human, instead of living the rest of your life in the woods as a fox with the mind of a human…
Your depressing thoughts are interrupted by a knocking on your bedroom door, and you hear your mother saying, “Honey, what’s taking so long? You’re going to be late for school!”
Well, at least you’re still human enough to need to go to school. You nervously head to the door, naked as the day you were born, and cautiously open the door.
“Good morning! I thought you’d never wake up!” your mother says cheerfully. She reaches over and playfully rubs the fur on your belly, which you’re amazed to find feels amazingly good. “What’s the matter, sweetie? Were you chasing chickens in your dreams?”
You laugh nervously at the joke, a bit worried at how your mother was treating you. She was mostly talking to you like you were human, but scratching your belly like you were some sort of family pet. You feel the claws on your paws tapping against the wood floors as you head toward the front door next to your mom, and you decide to probe for a little more information.
“Umm… Mom? Do I have any clothes I could wear? It might be a little cold outside…”
You mother stops and looks at you strangely, like you’d just asked if you could go jump off a skyscraper.
“Clothes? Honey, you’ve never worn clothes before in your life! You always say they’d make you overheat, and the last thing I want to do is wash fox musk out of some clothes. And unless it’s suddenly gotten a hundred degrees colder than it was yesterday, I think your fur will be warm enough to handle it, okay?”
You knew it was coming, but hearing it still sort of shook you. Foxes don’t wear clothes, and you’re just a fox. Maybe you’re sort of a weird-looking fox that lived with some human beings, but you’re just a fox nonetheless. You hear a little voice in the back of your head, teasing you and tempting you into just giving in and stop pretending you’d ever been a human. What was the point, after all? In a few days, you’d be living in the woods, eating squirrels and rabbits and sleeping in the bushes. You could be the happiest, smartest fox in the world or a miserable human being, if only you’d just stop fighting it…