On your arms, shaggy fur is growing. Some of it is black, some of it is white, and some of it is a beautiful light tan color. You scratch at it, amazed that you can feel your fingers brushing it, and try to pull some of it out, only to discover how much it hurts to try to do that. At the ends of your fingers, claws are sprouting, and paw-like pads have grown out.
"I have fur now? Why is it so many different colors?" you ask, stupefied by the strange and intricate pattern spreading onto your shoulders and chest.
"Have you ever had the pleasure of seeing a wild dog, dear human?" the elephant asks a gleam of recognition in his eyes.
"What, you mean like a stray? Or a coyote or a wolf?"
"Um, no, not exactly."
The fur keeps spreading, forming streaks and strangely shaped patches of contrasting colors all over you. You have to admit that it's beautiful, but what is it worth if you've lost your humanity to be stuck as these talking zoo animals' prisoner for the rest of your existence?
An odd puffiness overtakes both of your ears, and you reach up to feel them swelling. The folds of your earlobes start to flatten out as the skin itself thins around the edges, but you are stunned by how wide and round they have seemingly become. Each ear is like a giant bowl, funneling the sounds of the night into your canal. You can't but just stand there for a moment, aiming you ears around and taking in the sounds of the zoo from every angle. Then you shake your head and try to come back to your senses. Your ears flatten against your skull and you fall to your knees in front of the elephant.
"Please, I already told them I wouldn't tell. Just let me go back to my old life! No one will be the wiser. I'm just on vacation! I'll go back far away from here, and you can keep on doing ... whatever it is you do here."
The elephant sighs knowingly. "That is not your choice, or really even mine. Clearly you were destined to come here, and to become what you were obviously meant to be. Your old life is not your true life. 'Whatever we do here' is."
You want to say something else, to try to argue your case, but a pressure in your face stops you. You can feel something starting to bulge out from within your skull. Whatever it is, it's big enough to fit your nose and most of your lips on it. Your mouth seems to be lengthening to accommodate it. Your tongue flattens and stretches, filling some of the space that will become its new home. You run your changing tongue along your sharpening teeth, realizing you now have the natural cutlery of a meat-eating beast. Has some cosmic consciousness really planned this savage form be the real you all along?
A hard spasm yanks the end of your spine, making you shudder. It happens again, and this time you can feel something sticking out behind you at least a little bit. A tightening strain intensifies all along the length of it, and it stretches out farther until you can feel something long and flexible reaching behind you. The pangs of growth morph into a new sense of mobility in the farthest reaches of your spine. You can feel yourself almost irresistibly starting to experiment with new forms of motion back there, trying out what your new appendage is capable of. Twisting back to look behind you, your huge ears perk up in interest, and you catch your first glimpse of the tail that will be yours to live with from now on. Its surprisingly pleasant-looking; it's not nearly as colorful as the rest of you but that only makes it stand out more. Your black and tan pattern continues down the first third of it, but the rest of your tail is a very fluffy solid white.
You realize everyone here can see you sporting the huge ears and puffy tail of some inhuman creature, and you flatten your ears again. Sure, they're all animals, of a sort, but you aren't. Are you? Well, surely you aren't supposed to be. You're just a tourist, right? You curl your new tail inward between your legs, but there's no hiding that white flag that forever signals the defeat of your humanity to whoever will see you.
You stretch your arms out to try to keep your balance, because a strange feeling in your feet threatens to topple you over! You've felt the paw pads growing on your toes and the balls of your feet, but now you can feel the rest of your feet thinning out, and its hard to stay balanced on them. Eventually, you raise your ankles and settle into a new posture right on your newly formed rear paws. It looks like you're wearing white socks, because of the color of the fur that's grown below your ankles. You think it's over, and you're going to be left on all fours like the beast you are, but ... you aren't. You can still stand upright, albeit on hind paws rather than human feet, and you can flex around the "dewclaws" on your hand sort of like thumbs. Whatever the animals have done to you, they've left you as whatever human-like sort of hybrid that they are. A strange but admittedly beautiful mix of beast and man.
"You know," says the elephant, "wild dogs are also called painted wolves, since their marvelous coats are like works of art. You must have a beautiful soul to have been honored with such a form by the creative forces beyond. In any case, welcome to your new life among our kind here at the zoo."