Mavis blinked. "Really...?"
Her daughter nodded. "They said it pays more if you become something less human, right? Plus, well..." She squirmed, not quite able to hide her excitement. "...being able to fly would be so cool."
She was hesitant, she had to admit - it was a more extreme change than she'd had in mind (though she had briefly considered going full dragon for the paycheck, herself.) And they'd be that way for years - if their contract got extended, potentially the whole rest of her daughter's childhood would be spent like that. What effect would growing up so far removed from normality have on Jessica - would she even want to become human again? Could she really approve of this...?
But...well, she had said she would, and if they were going to spend the next five or ten years in such a topsy-turvy living situation for the sake of her job, she felt like she owed her daughter as much of a say in it as she could give her. And God help her, her little girl looked so excited at the prospect, even if the thought of seeing her kid flying thousands of feet in the air made her shudder a bit...
"...All right," she said, letting out a deep breath she hadn't realized she was holding. They spent the next hour or so going over a pile of legal paperwork authorizing, releasing, agreeing, waiving, consenting, releasing some more, and so on before it was finally over.
"Now," the interviewer said, "we're fairly flexible on the start date, so if you need some time to get your affairs in order..."
"Oh, Mom," Jessica interrupted, tugging on her sleeve, "can we, um...I mean, uh, we...might as well do it now...?"
Mavis bit her lip, stifling a chuckle. It never failed to make her smile when her daughter thought she could hide her true feelings from her mother; but she was surprised at how gung-ho the kid was for this. After so many years of being hurt, she was usually more reserved going into a new environment; suddenly seeing that look of childlike wonder again just melted her heart. And it wasn't like they had a lot to arrange for; they were already behind on the rent, and they'd been without a car of their own since the Corolla blew a head gasket...
"...or, if you'd prefer," the interviewer said, hardly missing a beat, "we can make the arrangements for you; that was covered under the general release form and the limited-power-of-attorney agreement. We'll retrieve anything you feel you need, and put the rest in storage."
"Uh, I...I guess," she said, surprised at the suddenness of it all, but unable to muster any solid objections. God, she'd come in here to interview for a job, and now she and her child were going to become something that wasn't even fully human...!
Jessica couldn't keep the skip out of her step as they were led from the main office through a maze of corridors to an examination room for a general checkup with a staff doctor, then to a loading-dock kind of area and out of the building entirely, to a secluded clearing with a pond in the middle. It was really happening - they were gonna leave humanity behind! And they'd be able to fly, and...oh, she couldn't wait to see what their new feathers would look like...!
Presently they were met by another doctor, wheeling a cart with a couple of syringes on it. "It's standard practice to do the transformations outdoors," the interviewer explained, "since some of our mythical species are too big to fit in the main offices. But we keep this area well-screened for privacy's sake." He nodded to the doctor, and turned to give the two of them a warm smile. "I'll leave you to it, but if you need any help getting settled in, don't hesitate to ask. I hope you enjoy your time with us."
He left them, and the doctor prepared a couple of alcohol swabs. "You'll want to undress for the transformation," she said. "Normal human clothing isn't well-suited to wings and tailfeathers."
Mavis was a little hesitant, but she couldn't really argue the point. God, she thought, as she took off her jacket, we're really doing this... She hoped they'd have alternative clothing on offer.
When they were ready, the doctor swabbed down a patch on their shoulders and prepped the syringes. "Are you comfortable with getting a shot?" she asked Jessica. The little girl bit her lip, but nodded, and Mavis watched with a mix of pride and trepidation as her daughter took the injection with only a little flinch; then it was her turn.
As the serum - or whatever it was - spread from the injection site through their bodies, they both felt an electric tingling wash over them, followed by a gentle but unsettling warmth. Mavis ran her hands over herself, trying to figure out if it was an actual burning in her skin or just a nerve sensation, but it was Jessica who noticed first. "Mom! Mom!" she cried. "Look, look, our feet!"
Sure enough, their toes were already growing longer and thicker, except for the little toe, which was dwindling to nothing. The skin was darkening, thickening, developing calloused, scaly bands, and the foot itself was growing longer and narrower; and was it her, or did the nails seem chunkier? Mavis gasped, and her daughter lifted a foot and turned it this way and that in fascination.
While Jessica was examining her feet, her mother shifted her hips uneasily at the sensation of her tailbone un-fusing and growing out into a stubby little segment that nestled between her buttocks in a manner unlike anything she'd ever felt. How bizarre...but this was going to be them for the next few years, wasn't it...?
She found she was naturally shifting her stance to stand on the balls of her feet, as her toes began to shift around; the big toe and the fourth ("ring toe?") were moving around to the back of her feet, while the middle two spread out a bit in front. She glanced over at her daughter and noticed that only her big toe was migrating, while the remaining three were pointed forward; and the skin was a deep Prussian blue where hers was simply blue-ish grey. Were they becoming...what, different bird-type harpies, then? Was that a thing?
She felt a sudden uterine twinge as things shifted and rearranged in her abdomen. She clasped her hands to her stomach, but found that these had also changed significantly; the pinky and ring fingers were dwindling away, while the index and middle fingers were substantially longer, but seemed to have lost the last joint, as had the thumb. The proportions of her arms had shifted, too, beginning their transformation into her wings. (God, her wings...!)
Speaking of proportions, she noticed that her hips were broadening out, a little. She'd inherited her mother's build, so it was nothing she wasn't used to, but apparently bizarro mythical bird-people took it a little farther. And her legs were really shifting now, with both thigh and calf shortening and thickening while her still-elongating foot (mostly) made up the difference in height. Her toenails had also started to really grow out into sharp, curved talons...
Now that the major body-plan changes were starting to slow, they felt another wave of electric tingling wash over them; but instead of a steady warmth, this one gave way to a prickling in the skin across the arms, lower torso, and most of their legs. It wasn't painful, but it was supremely weird to feel, as the pores in their skin opened up to admit the growth of countless budding feathers. Jessica watched in fascination as her new pinions grew from pinfeathers until she was literally full-fledged. Omigosh, she thought, a big grin on her face, I'm gonna fly with these...!
Mavis felt a little more comfortable about her modesty as layers of down and contour feathers covered her thighs and pelvic region, but the sensation was too bizarre for her to really feel comfortable. Plus, her tailfeathers just wouldn't stop growing; how long were they going to get!? Her wings were really taking shape, too, but they seemed a little shorter by comparison. And she felt strangely light; were their bones hollow, now?
Jessica went to the still pool in the middle of the clearing. Her gait was strange on her new legs, steppy and bird-like, but she didn't mind; in fact, she kinda liked it. She peered into the water, taking in her new reflection; yes, these were her wings, this was her tail. She held up one foot and flexed her talons, marveling at how strong and flexible they were. Gosh, she thought, these're gonna be my hands from now on, aren't they?
And oh, her feathers! They were a bright, cheery blue, salted and peppered with black stripes and white tips, with white contour feathers on her waist and legs. Jessica often wished she'd inherited her mother's gorgeous jet-black tresses along with everything else she'd gotten from her, but her own warm brown looked so nice against the blue that for once she didn't mind so much. She stretched her wings, twitched her tail, shifted her weight from one foot to the other; then, overcome with excitement, she ruffled her feathers and wrapped herself in a big, soft hug.
Mavis couldn't get over the strangeness of it all. She kept waving her wing around, trying to shake the feeling that her old arm was just sort of hidden under a drape of feathers. This was her arm now; it mapped to the same part of her body as it always had, inside her brain, and she could feel the remaining fingers respond to her commands, articulating the wingtip as they did. The other wing she kept pulled up alongside her, which felt strangely natural as a resting position.
She glanced back behind her; good Lord, her tail had to be fifty percent longer than her entire upper body, and she instinctively cocked it up away from the ground. The feathers weren't as heavy as she'dve guessed by their size, but the leverage from its sheer length was enough that she found herself leaning forward a bit just to compensate. "I-is...is that it?" she wondered, turning to the doctor.
The other woman nodded. "Yes, it looks like you both came out very nicely. I'm no ornithologist, but your little girl's definitely a bluejay; I think you might be a roadrunner."
She looked over her new plumage; the feathers were mostly black (dark brown?) with white fringes, except on her legs and groin, where they were cream-colored. "...Does that matter?"
The doctor shrugged. "Not as much as it does with birds; you're still people first and foremost. But we do see some differences in mythical species' physical attributes that are roughly cognate with their animal counterparts, if less pronounced. Draft-horse centaurs, for example, aren't as big or strong, but they do still stand out. You may find species-characteristic behaviors presenting in the two of you, as well; that's perfectly normal."
She was still boggling over that thought when her daughter finished admiring her new self (for now) and turned to her. "Omigosh, Mom, you turned out so cool! I wonder if you're, like, really fast? Can you still fly okay? Oh, oh! How well can I fly!?" She was so caught up in following this excited chatter that it caught her completely off-guard when Jessica paused for the briefest moment to think over what she was about to attempt, crouched, spread her wings, and sprang into the air with a vivacious flutter that launched her up well above their heads in the first wing-stroke alone.
Mavis felt like she was going to have a heart attack as her little girl wheeled higher and higher above them, shrieking with laughter like she'd never heard before. "Ah, careful, honey!!!" she yelped, dashing after and trying to follow along beneath her, mind running at a million miles an hour. What if she couldn't do it? What if she fell? How high was she right now!? How was she even supposed to catch her with these things in place of her arms? They couldn't possibly be strong enough, could they? If not that, then from above, with these bizarre foot-hands? But to do that, she'd have to-
She blinked in surprise, shook her head, and found to her amazement that she'd already left the ground. The feeling was both astonishing and utterly natural; she was experiencing something that humans had dreamed of for millennia but never truly achieved, and she was doing it almost as instinctively as if it were the proverbial walk in the park. She was a little terrified that she'd think too hard about it and "trip" over her own wings, but her body seemed to know what it was doing even if her conscious mind didn't, and she kept a steady beat, pushing herself higher and higher in pursuit of her child.
The two of them leveled out at what she was sure must've been at least a thousand feet above the clearing; Jessica was positively beaming, but had quieted down as they simply took in the view. The park offices looked like a dollhouse from up here, and the doctor an unusually lifelike figurine. She could see the perimeter of the woods that ringed the clearing and separated the park from the offices and the rest of the world, and the outer edge of the parklands beyond. Was that really where they were going to spend the next several years of their lives...?
They'd slowed to a fairly leisurely airspeed as they wheeled around each other, but Mavis still had to shout to be sure of being heard. "Okay, honey, let's come on down now!!!" To her relief, Jessica nodded in acknowledgement and dipped into a gentle, spiraling descent; she followed as closely as she dared, ready to drop like a rock and snatch her daughter out of the air if need be.
She only realized when they were nearly back at ground level that she didn't actually know how to land. She hadn't known how to fly, either, but now that she was acting on rational thought instead of sheer terrified maternal instinct, it seemed a lot more complicated. So she simply circled, watching as her daughter did it. (How was it that she made it look so easy...?)
Jessica came in low and slow, stretching out her legs from the drawn-up position she'd kept them in during the rest of their flight. After one final turn, she straightened out, tilted her wings up at a sharp angle to act as an airbrake, and dropped to her feet, neatly skittering to a halt not too far from where the doctor was still standing.
Her mother tried to follow suit, and almost managed; but she came in too fast on the final approach, stumbled on feet that were laid out much differently than she was used to, and splashed into the shallow end of the pond, the displacement from her wings kicking up a spray of water across the lawn. Jessica giggled madly and pattered over to meet her as she stepped out, tried to pat herself dry, then gave up and shook herself off, ruffling her feathers and prompting a further shriek of laughter from her daughter.
Despite the raw adrenaline rush that was only just starting to ebb, Mavis found herself laughing, too; she spread her disarrayed wings and pulled her kid into a relieved embrace. "Oh, Mom, Mom, that was amazing!!!" Jessica gushed. "I can't believe we get to do that all the time now...!"
The doctor moseyed over toward them. "Well, we're supposed to take you back in for a post-transformation physical next," she said, grinning, "but it certainly seems like everything checks out."