"I've never really done this before, but it would be fascinating to turn you into an ant colony!"
Derrick frowned. "An ant? You want to turn me into an insect?"
Circle chuckled and shook her head. "Not AN insect. The whole colony! Queen, aphids, larva, workers, everything. Three hundred thousand individual ants, all taking a tiny bit of your awareness, your soul. Oh, yes! This is very interesting."
"That doesn't make any sense. I can't be..." Derricks voice trailed off as a wave of disorientation swept over him, like he was... drifting apart? Looking down, he had time for one horrified gasp as he saw his body breaking up and collapsing into thousands of dark, multi-legged bugs. Ants! Then even his eyes joined the mass of insects and the boy that had been Derrick crawled off en masse, following the largest part of his awareness in the form of the colony Queen.
Sentient thought was lost, reduced to only basic existence. The colony found a magically-created home in the ground just past her patio and trooped down without thinking. Some of the workers split off to find food, while others began caring for newly-created larva and pupa. The Queen moved to a central chamber and began producing eggs. The endless teeming, action, movement continued through several dark and light periods outside before the colony suddenly had a desire, a need to move back to the hard ground where they had first found themselves.
Derrick came awake slowly, laying on the patio with Circe watching him intently. Vision cleared, but it took a while before he could raise his head. His eyes widened when he saw mounds of ants where his body should be, then watched the crawling insects merge into solid flesh as his body reconstituted. When the last swirl of insects had become his right big toe, he sat up. There was not much memory of being the any colony, yet he had awareness of being many places at once, many things at once. It was very hard to grasp.
Circe grinned as he sat up and then stood, looking around in confusion. "That was amazing! I watched the colony for two days." She motioned to a glass vase filled with dirt, and in it Derrick could see ants crawling through tunnels. "A very small part of your colony. The queen, maybe a few hundred workers, and some aphids and larva. I decided to keep them as a memento."
"But..." Derrick stared at the enclosed ants. "Aren't they part of me?"
She nodded. "Very astute. Yes, they represent a very small part of your awareness. If you concentrate very hard, you could probably sense the queen and the workers. Though that could also trigger a return to the colony that might be permanent, so be content to be 99.8 percent you again."
"How long was I... like that?" Derrick suddenly remembered his family and hoped they had not been worried.
"Almost three days." She raised a hand. "But your family never asked about you. Your father is currently a pregnant sow at the hog farm, your mother is a dryad exploring the forest trees, and your sister is an octopus."
Derrick tried to process all of that - it seemed impossible at first, but he had just spent days as many thousands of ants. "So, what now?" He looked down at his crotch and saw the male bear's equipment. "I can be anything?" At her nod, he looked around and said "OK, I want to be a...