"Sure," Susan replied. "How's six o'clock?"
"Sounds good," Mary said. "See you then."
She started to lift the phone back up to the hook, but figured it was best to leave it where she could reach it. It was cordless, fortunately. She pressed the button to hang up and set it down on a chair. She looked at the clock. It was ten after four.
"I've been asleep over two hours," she thought, looking over her ever-changing body to see what had happened while she slept.
Her entire chest was nearly covered by fur. It had grown up in between her breasts and on her shoulders. Her forearms were also growing fur now, and her fingers had thinned down and looked rather bony. Her claws looked sharper as well.
Her legs had widened more, and her feet were drastically different. Her toes formed perfect paws and her feet had stretched to where her ankle was very high off the ground. She was standing digitigrade on hind legs that looked very much like a mouse's.
Her tail was longer, having grown all the way down her legs and ending with a few inches dragging on the floor. Her hair, once past her butt, was now receeding to her shoulder blades and had completely grayed out to match her fur.
She went back to her height scale and discovered she was a scant 3' 9" now. Pretty soon she would start having trouble reaching table tops.
Mary set about positioning chairs around her apartment where she would most likely need to reach high places. There was one left by the table so she could get to the vials, one in the kitchen cooking area, another one by the kitchen counter, and one by the door.
After that, she was feeling hungry again. She climbed a chair to look through her cupboards and scrounged up the ingredients to make a salad, maccaroni and cheese, and some pie to share with Susan.
After her dinner, she pulled the pie out of the oven. It seemed like quite a large one to her, but knew it was the same size she usually made. She figured Susan would get a large portion of it, seeing as Mary's stomach had shrunk along with her.
There were five minutes until six o'clock. While she waited for her friend to arrive, Mary measured herself once more. She had slipped down to 2' 6", but that was a much taller height than she predicted when she measured herself fifteen minutes ago and got 2' 8". Her shrinking was slowing down. Maybe her changes were almost complete? She hadn't taken all of the vial, after all, so she expected to retain some human qualities, though barely any were left at this point.
She was still standing on two feet...or paws, and still had thumbs. She retained her breasts, though they had shrunk in proportion to her own body, and her hair was only growing down to her chin. The rest of her body was very mouse-like. Her tail was even longer than she was tall, with over half of it sprawled on the ground behind her. Her head had stretched out and she couldn't manage to fit her large front teeth inside her mouth anymore. Long white whiskers grew from her cheeks and her ears were as large as ever. Her eyes turned almost completely black and fur had covered her body, including her face.
"I wonder how loud she'll shriek when she sees me," Mary thought, remembering how the phone ring had almost deafened her. "Maybe I should remain out of sight until I tell her what to expect."
A knock on the door and a muffled "It's me" told Mary the time had come.