Your eyes widen. The creature...the person...your brain identifies as your mother is, um, a rabbit. Well, sort of. The rabbits you're familiar with don't walk on two legs, and while she's small, she's clearly larger than they are. Her face isn't exactly how you'd expect, either; it's not really a human kind of face, but it's more expressive than anything you can ever remember seeing on an animal. It's framed by long, human-like hair, as well.
The proportions of her body are also nothing like human; she's short and somewhat stocky, with powerful haunches and relatively short legs despite the fact that she's clearly adapted for bipedalism. But she has definite human-like breasts under her fur...and on top of everything else, she's visibly pregnant.
She's also...not carrying pancakes. Funny, you could swear you smell them like they were practically right there...and you can smell her, too, as a distinct scent, there in the room with you.
Your...mother...? glances to the window, and you follow her gaze. As if the situation weren't strange enough, you realize now that the room is much different than the bedroom you're used to. The low ceiling is braced with rough-hewn timber; the walls are earthen, and the window is little more than a hole dug into one, letting in light and a warm breeze and the smell of grass. The floor is covered in a layer of thin wood shavings...and, now that you think about it, the "bed" beneath you feels suspiciously like a pile of soft hay.
She shakes her head, her long ears swaying gently. "I don't know how you can stand being so open to the outside," she says. "But...well, I suppose that's the woodlands in me talking. No wild predator would come so near a city, after all." She glances to the desk in the corner, not far from your bed, and then over to you. "Did you fall asleep in your clothes again? Dear, I know you're interested in this...work...of yours, but you really ought to take better care of yourself."
She comes over to the bed, and something else strikes you funny. She's small - no more than two or three feet tall, depending on whether you count the ears - but the room is scaled to match, and as she approaches you, you begin to realize that - somehow - you aren't really any larger than her.
"Let's get these off you," she says, setting right to unbuttoning your shirt as if this is nothing unusual. "I know it makes the big folk take you more seriously, but there's really no need for them in the warren." She shakes her head and gives you a tsk. "Goodness, your fur's all matted. We'll have to brush you out later."
...Wait, you think. Your fur!?
Your mind races as you try to make sense of it all, but there's no denying what you see when she takes off your shirt and you look down at yourself. Your whole body is covered in fur - dense and light chocolate over most of it, with a downy cream-colored "underbelly" down the front of your torso. Golden-brown hair hangs into your field of vision and brushes your shoulders, considerably longer than you remember it being.
But even more surprising than that is the fact that you have breasts. And as she unfastens the skirt (which you were definitely not wearing when you went to bed) from around your tail (and you realize that you have a tail, now) and slips it off you, you can see clearly down to your pelvic region, which only confirms what you're just now realizing. Not only have you somehow become a rabbit-person like your new mother, you've become a girl.
In a daze, you stand up, finding yourself at eye level with her; it feels strange with your altered legs, and you realize that, like her, you're standing on the balls of your feet, but your body handles it instinctively, as if this were natural for you. You feel your ears twitch and bob above your head; while your mother's stand straight up, your own feel like they fold under their own weight partway up, and hang forward. You have the nagging feeling that they're almost peeking into view, but you can't actually see them.
"There we are!" she says cheerily. "Now come on down to breakfast; your aunt Flopsy's come to visit."
Not knowing what else to do, you go to follow her as she leaves the room - but, almost by reflex, without even thinking about it, you grab and don a pair of pince-nez from off the desk. Everything snaps into focus, resolving a blurriness you hadn't really noticed 'til just now.
As you follow your mother through a narrow tunnel that winds down into what you instinctively recognize as a burrow dug into the side of a hill, you quietly marvel at the sensations of being this creature you've somehow become. Your fur softly rustles as your arms shift against the side of your body; your ears bob and sway more noticeably than hers seem to, and you could swear you almost catch a glimpse of one; your tail twitches idly behind you.
You wonder, with a glance ahead, if your own figure is as defined by your haunches as hers is. Your gait certainly has a bit of sashay to it; whether this is from your broader hips or your shorter legs, you don't know. (Probably both, you realize.) Oddly enough, although your new breasts aren't small proportionate to your frame, at your reduced size they don't weigh that much, and require no support to remain perky and keep from flopping around.
As you go, the scent of breakfast becomes stronger - and so do some others. You know there are people - rabbit-people, that is - in the room ahead long before you actually enter it, and as you do, your brain instinctively connects scent to person. Of course, you can hear them, too, more clearly than you could've as a human; there must be a dozen children of various ages running rampant around the room, and the resulting din is almost a little much to take.
But the figure that most catches your attention is an adult, another rabbit-woman around the same age as your mother. She doesn't smell like her, though; there's a distinctiveness to her scent (and a number of the kids',) and you realize they aren't sisters. You wonder whether she's married to some sibling of your mother's, or related to your new father. (God, you haven't even met him yet...) She's lop-eared; her fur is white, splotched with gray (including her ears and the front of her face,) and she has long dark-gray hair, hanging all the way down to the base of her tail. She's also heavily pregnant, clearly farther along than your own mother.
"Well, look who's up," she says, with a dry smile. "Honestly, Heather, how long do you let this girl sleep? It's seven already; we're halfway through the morning!" She gives you a knowing look. "Up late reading again, weren't you...?"
"There's no helping it," your mother laughs. "This close to the city, it's no surprise that some of us have to live on big-folk time. At least she's working with people who don't begrudge us our siesta."
Your new aunt nods and sits down at the table, sipping at a cup of coffee. "I've heard that some in the big cities are real slave-drivers with our folk."
"Well, those types are like that even with their own kind," your mother replies, motioning you to sit down and sliding over a stack of the pancakes you've been smelling this whole time. "Or so we hear from Digger."
As you tuck into the pancakes, forgetting for the moment the incredible strangeness of all this and just letting yourself savor the taste and the texture, you take a look around the room. It's a large, open living area cut into the earth, with a large post supporting a great central beam and a ceiling of sturdy wooden boards. There's a fireplace at the far end, not currently lit, and a number of grates set into the walls for ventilation. At the near end burns a smaller cooking hearth, where your mother and aunt have been at work making breakfast.
"Ah, little Digger," your aunt chuckles. "How's he doing, these days?"
"Not so little anymore," your mother says, flashing you a knowing smile that you're more than slightly confused by. "He's turned into quite the ambitious young buck; he and my Jack are off trying to talk the councilmen into letting us extend the warrens up into the crawlspaces of some of the houses in town - if the townsfolk are willing, of course. That'd make it easier for us to get around the city without getting underfoot of the big folk. He even has plans to start a delivery service using the tunnels."
"Hmm, seems like just yesterday that we didn't even know what'd become of him," your aunt nods thoughtfully. "It was awful when-" She pauses and glances around, making sure none of the children are paying attention, and leans in, lowering her voice. "-when that cougar got his parents. Ugh! Makes me shudder just to think of it." She straightens up and returns to a normal voice. "Lucky you could make a place for him here."
"Oh, he's been nothing but a help," your mother says, pouring you a cup of coffee. One of the kids - a girl who looks to be maybe four years old and the spitting image of your aunt - abruptly nuzzles under your arm. "Aun' Connie, up!" she lisps.
"She's your cousin, sweetie," your aunt chides, as you absent-mindedly shift the girl up onto your lap, where she begins braiding your hair without provocation or comment. "And you don't have to indulge her," she says to you. "She gets doted on enough by her papa."
"O-oh, uh, I d-don't mind," you say, stumbling over your words as you hear your new voice for the first time. It's logical enough, but it's still strange to realize that you sound a lot like your new mother.
Your aunt smiles. "Well, there's no harm in it, I suppose. Really, though, when're you going to have kits of your own? When I was your age I'd already had my first litter."
Your brain seizes up as you try to process that question; thankfully, your mother jumps in. "Now, Flops, Connie's a grown woman. She can make her own decisions about these things."
"She is a grown woman, that's what I'm saying!" your aunt chuckles. "Well, Nature takes its course all in good time, I guess." She gives your mother a Look. "And I imagine you're going to say she's busy with her work, like you mention in every letter you've sent for the last two years." She cocks an eyebrow and turns an ear toward you. "What is it you do, again...?"
It's no use even trying to think of an answer; you're still stuck on the last question, glancing between your mother and your aunt and boggling over the thought that that is now a possibility for you, too staggered by the realization to even process how you're supposed to feel about it, let alone think about the fact that you apparently have a job or try to remember what it is. Luckily, your mother is ready to assist once more...