Christine sighed deeply. She knew she wasn't likely to get a better chance at returning to her normal life than this. "Okay," she said reluctantly. "What's your plan? Do you know how to fix..." She tried to broadly gesture at her body with a paw, but quickly realized she couldn't move it as freely as a hand. "... this?"
"Not exactly," the other leopard replied. The displeased, predatory look Christine gave to that was enough to make Bronwyn take a step backward and start stammering. "I-I mean, I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm sure I can. I just need to go back to the shop where I bought the zipper. If nothing else, they'll be able to find some other sort of magic that will counteract this."
Christine really didn't want to be left here with a bunch of dumb leopards any longer. "What about me?", she asked pointedly. "What am I supposed to do in the meantime?"
"I was just g-getting to that," Bronwyn said. "I could take you with me, but I'd have to unzip you again..." She heard a low, involuntary hissing from Christine in response. "Okay, okay, how about this? I'll put the zipper on myself and you can wear my human body, at least for long enough to get out of here. Of course, I won't be able to tell you anything while I'm like that, so you'll have to let me out at some point. But then we could try to figure this out together, in private."
Christine didn't really want to be "in private" with this girl, especially after learning that it apparently wasn't the first time. Nor - no offense - did she particularly want to be her. But she was pleasantly surprised by how far Bronwyn was willing to go to make this right. Trusting Christine to take over her body, her whole life - well, it would make them even in a certain way, but it was still a serious leap of faith to take with a stranger. Maybe she'd been too quick to judge the girl at first.
Bronwyn retreated to a secluded corner of the enclosure, close to the door the zookeepers went through and just out of sight of the crowds above, and Christine followed. Then the leopard's body burst open in an instant, and suddenly a human being was stepping out of a lifeless leopard-skin. Bronwyn quickly zipped the leopard back up and removed the zipper from its back. The other leopard ran away as soon as it was restored, not liking the look of this two-legged creature too much. That left Bronwyn and Christine alone, with no witnesses to what was about to happen next.
Bronwyn was clearly more than a little hesitant to surrender her body like this, but she wasted no time sticking the golden zipper onto her own back. "Remember," she told Christine, "I'll be completely unconscious until you take me off again. So if there's anything you need to know about how to, uh, be me, it'll have to wait." The leopard, no longer able to reply to her in words, nodded impatiently.
Bronwyn took that as her cue. She closed her eyes and yanked the pull of the zipper down. Instantly, a rubbery sheet resembling her appeared in the girl's place, and it fluttered to the ground at Christine's feet - well, her front paws.