"A momentary pause. Don't worry. This sort of thing happens all the time." The vendor casually reassured, as he began fiddling with the air tank and compressor. "Give it a moment and everything will be..."
"Fine? Don't worry?!? You turned my husband into a woman you-" Carrie snapped angrily at the vendor.
"Ma'am I assure you, I have no control over what form your husband has made thus far. Just as I have no control over what the remainder of their transformation will be. And the whole process is reversible. Just think of it more as a wonderful experiment! Or perhaps a vacation from one’s self, filled with hilarious and delightfully fun surprises!" The vendor chirruped cheerfully, "Speaking of! It looks like your husband's next surprise is beginning!"
Carrie looked back up at John as the hissing of the air tanks began in full again. Air surged into John once more, as the gentle rounded curves of her balloon body began to flow like waves along her shape. Each gust of fresh air being blown into John's torso sent ripples of change across her cartoon-smooth rubber skin. It soon became obvious that this further inflation wasn't filling out John's body evenly. It was as if John was being stretched out longer and longer, all the while still maintaining her curvaceous shape! Her torso, head, and neck (what little was already left of it) seemed to be swelling and coalescing into one new shape, held taught with the air flowing into her.
"What now!? What's happening to him?" Carrie yelled at the vendor in a fit of fear.
"All part of the process ma'am." He said dismissively. "Don't worry."
Carrie looked up again as her eyes followed her changing partner's body, and was astounded. John's overall size had doubled, maybe even tripled! And it didn't look like he was stopping any time soon. It became painfully clear to Carrie what exactly was happening to her husband. "Oh my god, he looks like..."
Meanwhile, John's feet begin to take a new form. They had already become cartoonish stumps thanks to the earlier inflation, but now were flattening out at the sides of her calves and looking more like a set of fins... or... were they rudders? They truly looked like small inflated winglettes at the end of each ankle. The gap between John's bulbous legs began to close up on itself as her thighs and beyond fused with the geometry of John's elliptical torso. Then with two sudden 'pops' another pair of small wings formed at the base of John's 'tail', these two perpendicular to her 'feet'. Her arms shared a similar fate, as they too ceased being proper limbs and instead found their mass absorbed into her aerodynamic body-turned-fuselage.
With each moment John became less and less recognizable as the man Carrie had married. The balloon John had grown to a point where she dwarfed the trees of the park, and she was still growing! Her skin and clothes too weren't spared from the transformation as John's cartoon color palette began swirling, diluting, and changing to a vibrant mix of white with accents of sky-blue.
From John's perspective, nothing seemed all that different. Her body had been sufficiently numbed by the air flowing into her that she hadn't yet picked up on the fact that she WAS changing so drastically in the first place. In fact, the only sensory information available to John was her sight, still locked directly ahead, unable to see anything outside her current vantage point. She had gone up in altitude. Gotten higher. That much was known. But she was unable to crane her head around and actually look at her own transformation. So there John floated, alone with her thoughts. Just how would she react once her transformation was complete, once she was a fully fledged blimp?
"... where did that blimp thought come from?", John thought. It had popped in her mind, without second thought, so... naturally. As if the mere idea of her transforming into a blimp was indeed what was happening. "But it's not... is it?" John thought. She had no conclusive evidence to suggest that. All the more reason for it to be an incredibly odd thought to have.
John buried that notion, even as her shoulders melted away, flattening out to the contour of her smooth and supple airbody, sufficiently merging her head with her, now non-existent, torso. She didn't notice as her face spread out across this new shape, warping it into an alluring, smiling visage that was all together toonish in appearance. Her face had a very happy, if naive, look, and the proportions were decidedly exaggerated. To onlookers, including Carrie, John's animated eyes and mouth now sat appropriately apart from a new "nose", the tip of his inflated dirigible. John's hair, which long ago had become its own cartoon-rubarized-and inflated version of itself, was now morphing atop his "head" into a fittingly inflatable flight attendant cap, with a short inflatable bob of golden blonde hair underneath. And John still had no concrete idea that her body was morphing into an airship of such stunning proportion and design. Not to mention that she was decidedly a 'she' now. Or as 'she' as a cartoon zeppelin can be.
The she-zeppelin's breasts were now the only part of her body unaffected by the change. Sandwiched between the two of them quickly grew her cabin, with portholes and windows popping into existence. An entire lower deck began to form underneath, consisting of a promenade, passenger lounge, cargo areas, kitchen, cockpit and of course; two large inflatable rubber turbines in the aft. The whole structure measured over the length of two buses, and was still dwarfed by the enormity of John's gas bag.
And as if to wrap a nice little bow on the whole ordeal; on the side of the new ship's skin was painted the words "Cerulean Squeak: Paradise of the Skies Cruise" in stylized balloon-y font.
John herself had still only been a passenger in this change, being powerless, tied down, unable to move, or really comprehend any of what had happened. So, she still had no idea that she was now a toon. Or a girl. Or a zeppelin! She had also only been able to listen to some muffled shouting while the changes had been going on, and still hadn't seen Carrie or the vendor since her transformation began. Her first inclination wasn't that her body had turned into a cruise-liner, nor a female. Balloon? Maybe. But there again was that nagging... 'blimp-y' feeling. Something deep in the pit of her gas bag, that was telling John what she now was.
And as the hose came disconnected from John's body with a soft 'pop', the realization of what had happened to her seemed to immediately take root.
Carrie stared up, craning her neck, as the hose fell downwards and curled like a snake next to her. The vendor smiled with pride at John, marveling at his work, before quickly picking up the hose and began working on putting away his tools.
"Wait wait hold on! You can't just leave him like that!" Carrie reached towards the vendor, trying to stop him from taking his things.
"Ma'am, it is extremely rude for me to deprive a customer of an experience once completed. The least you could do is give her the opportunity to see if she likes it on her own!" He gestured with an open hand to the large white and blue zeppelin resting a scant few hundred feet above.
"Her!? Seriously!? No no no, you change him back RIGHT NOW!" Carrie demanded.
"Lady, I haven't given out a refund... well, ever. And I'm not going to start today!" The vendor huffed, as he slammed shut the case full of his equipment, "She will change back soon enough! Everything here is a toonswitch, don't you know? Now, come back tomorrow and if you're a good gal, I might return your blimp back to 'normal'. Until then, too-da-loo!" And, in a wink and flash he was gone, taking his gear and his magic gas with him.
Left alone in the park, Carrie stared up at the great zeppelin who she used to know as her husband.
"John! Are you okay!?" Carrie called up to the towering airship. The immense ship rocked lightly with movement, then, after a minute,
her eyes darted left and right before landing right on Carrie.
John zoomed down closer to the ground, traveling in a spiral of impossible speeds for what SHOULD be a slow blimp. Yet, in only a handful of heartbeats, she was face-to-face with her human wife.
"Hi there Carrie! The names' Ms. Blimp! Wanna go for a ride!?" John said in an uncanny part-artificial, part-cartoony, part-metallic, part-squeaky, and VERY-feminine voice. There was even a hint of some kind of accent to it, though where it was from exactly, no one could say.
"Um... what." Was all Carrie was able to muster.