The next morning, Aziza and Tom managed to squeeze in a quickie before Tom had to go to work. Aziza asked him the directions to Kat's house. Tom warned her "Kat's mother is super-protective. It's hard for anyone to get to see Kat, let alone a complete stranger."
Aziza laughed. "I can be very persuasive."
++++++++++++
Kat's mother lived up to expectations. "Go away. No one can help my son."
"I can" Aziza responded, and there was something in her quiet certainty that found Kat's mom opening the door almost in spite of herself.
"Honey" Kat's mom called out "There's someone here to see you."
"Mrow" answered Kat.
Aziza wasn't particularly shocked at Kat's physical appearance--she had seen far stranger entities on remote planes--but shifting her perceptions to the spiritual plane gave her a whole new appreciation of the refined cruelty of the entity she was coming to think of as "Evil Kylie." "Oh, you poor thing." She turned to Kat's mom. "You'll have to give us some privacy now" and something in Aziza's tone brooked no dissent. Kat's mom left the two of them alone, although if you asked her why she trusted this strange Middle Eastern woman with her son she couldn't have told you why.
Aziza petted Kat, and as she petted Kylie's victim the yellow fur came away to reveal the dark skin beneath. "Do you want to be feline, human or in-between?" "Human."
"Hold still." Kat's body, now devoid of fur, lost its tail and supernumerary breasts. Her ears lost their points.
"Do you want to be female, male or in-between?"
"Female." That was the twist. Ken had always been spiritually female, longing for a body that matched her soul, and taking out her frustration by bullying. Kylie had given her the greatest blessing she could imagine and turned it into a curse, making it hurt ten times as much as if she had left her victim male.
Aziza held Kat in her arms, mentally reassuring her as to how pretty she was and how feminine and how human. "Thank you" gasped Kat "Thank you." She laughed. "I don't think I ever want to eat fish again."
"Are you ready to see your Mom?"
"Yes."
"Do you have a name?"
"Not anything that sounds like a cat! Nora, that works." It was the name Ken had applied to her true self in her fantasies.
"Could you come in please, Mrs. Nolan?" asked Aziza.
Mrs. Nolan was clearly overjoyed but puzzled by the fact that her child was now human but not the son she remembered.
"Mrs. Nolan, this is your daughter Nora."
Nora rushed into her mother's arms. Aziza smiled. Clearly Mrs. Nolan was taken aback, but Aziza was confident that her love for her child would triumph.