Kyle stared morosely into his glass, weighing the risks and benefits of another Manhattan. On the one hand, it might help him get through this without slitting his wrists; on the other, he might get utterly plastered and say something impolitic to someone in management. On the other other hand, maybe if he got fired, he could go home.
There was absolutely no good reason for him to even be here, anyway. The company New Year's party was "all-hands," per management, nominally to foster good relations between departments and camaraderie between front-line employees and the C-suite crowd (and "crowd" was an apt term, for a workplace as devoted to managers-managing-managers as his employer.) But this was obvious bullshit; the likelihood of productive interaction between a mid-tier developer and any of the executives was absolutely nil.
(He had to keep a firm mental hand on the part of himself which insisted that "strangled and stuffed in a closet" counted as a "productive interaction.")
No, the real reason it was definitely-not-mandatory was to validate the executives. Hobnobbing with a dozen or two of their own kind might make them feel elite, but they already saw themselves as elite to begin with; having close to a hundred other people in attendance made them feel like Captains of Industry. And so here he was, wasting a perfectly good evening at a party he didn't want to be at, with people he either didn't have any particular affection for or actively disliked, trying to regulate his alcohol intake and desperately wondering why he didn't just quit on the spot, walk out the door, and...he didn't know, go anywhere else...
He meandered listlessly down to the rec room of the over-priced, over-dressed ski-lodge management had booked for the event - yet another move intended solely to gratify someone's ego, partly because it cost a huge pile of money and partly because it was affiliated with some vice-president-of-something-or-other's personal sporting club or some damn thing. Which, of course, meant adding a two-hour drive up into the mountains to the time this was already debiting from his precious lifespan, as well as a drive back down winding mountain roads in the wee hours of the morning, after multiple cocktails - or, as they'd cheerily been reminded, the resort would be happy to offer rooms at only $OBSCENE/night, magnanimously waiving the additional booking fees since they were guests at an event.
It was pretty dead; nearly everyone was upstairs in the main hall, practicing their social climbing. The only other person in the room was a woman he didn't quite recognize, but got a vague sense of familiarity upon seeing. He ran across her in the break room, occasionally, was that it...? Or did he just see her in the hall, running reports from one executive's office to another...? Someone from Accounting, maybe...? She was nibbling at a cupcake - there was a whole table of the things, adorned with little sugar-frosted icons of a baby, so everyone could ring in the New Year with a little light androphagy - in about the same disaffected manner as he'd been nursing his drink.
"Some party, huh," Kyle said. He didn't know how much of a kindred spirit she truly was, but he hadn't expected to encounter anyone else who wasn't desperately trying to mask the fact that they didn't really want to be there; it was honestly a little refreshing.
She chuckled dryly. "Truly inspiring. Makes me want to update my CV right here and now."
He smiled in spite of himself. "Upward and onward, to greener pastures?"
She nodded to the wall. "Hell, I'd settle for a bare rock outcrop, at this point."
He followed her gaze. A painting hung there, sandwiched awkwardly between two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves full of "inspirational" management handbooks written by people who would doubtless self-describe as "thought leaders." The way they framed the canvas had a deeply weird effect on his perception of it; it felt like peering through the mouth of a tunnel, into the landscape beyond. It almost made him feel drawn into it...
He shook his head. The painting did indeed depict a rocky mountain landscape, bare and rugged yet somehow beautiful, with a clear springwater pool that looked so crisp and cold he could almost taste it. A flock of birds gathered around it, splashing, bathing, drinking, quarreling, and socialising... No, wait. He blinked and peered closer; the figures weren't birds at all, but harpies - human figures with wings for arms, bird-like legs and talons, and tailfeathers jutting from the end of the spine.
While classical mythology depicted them as ugly, shrieking monsters, the characters here varied greatly, from a sagacious, craggy-faced old woman with the wings of a great black vulture to a cherubic little girl depicted as a dove. All the faces he could see were female - though he wasn't sure about some of the figures seen from the back - and all were unclothed.
"Kind of an odd choice," he mused, trying to shake off the strange feeling inside himself, something he couldn't quite define...
"I think they picked it because it was a mountain scene, and didn't even think about the rest," she laughed. "Whoever built this place has more money than taste. Believe me, I've seen the bill."
He glanced back to her. "Oh, I thought you were from Accounting."
She nodded, transferred the cupcake to her other hand, and offered a handshake. "Sasha Borowitz. I've seen you around, uh...?"
"Kyle Jurgens," he said, returning it; then, after a moment, "Still, it's a nice picture." His attention kept wandering back to it...
She turned to face it. "Y'know, I don't usually go in for that stuff, but it kinda is..."
They stood there in silence, for a moment. That feeling the bookshelves gave of emerging from a tunnel into the scene itself impressed itself on him so strongly that he gave his empty glass a brief glance, wondering if he hadn't drunk more than he thought. He could just about get lost in the scene and forget the frame, the bookshelves, the room itself; he could almost feel the cold mountain breeze on his skin...
Kyle blinked. He could feel it, in fact - a sudden gust of cool air caressing his face, clearing his head, sharpening his senses. He shook his head and glanced around, finding to his astonishment that he was no longer in the room, but standing on that very outcrop.
He turned to Sasha - yes, she was there, too, looking around in amazement herself, having just polished off the last of her cupcake. "You're...you're seeing this, right?" she said warily.
He nodded in a daze. This couldn't possibly be happening, could it? But if she saw it too...
For a minute, they just looked around, taking in the scene. It really was beautiful, in a rugged kind of way; the late-afternoon light illuminated a sea of trees below them, which would probably just come ablaze at sunset, and wispy clouds threaded across the sky. Then Sasha turned to look behind them and gasped; Kyle followed suit. He'd almost expected to find the picture-frame and the bookshelves forming a tunnel to the rec room, but there was nothing but mountain, sky, and forest.
It took a moment for the implication to settle in. "Oh my God," Sasha said quietly, "there's no way back, is there?"
He swallowed hard. "I-if..." he said, and trailed off briefly; "liquid courage" was failing him. "If there is, it, uh...isn't here, I guess..."
She stared at the scenery around them, shoulders sagging, and chuckled ruefully. "I, um...I was hoping to leave my job before tax season rolled around again, but not like this..."
"N-no, no," Kyle said, shifting his grip on the cocktail glass; his fingers felt a little funny, but he was too staggered by their situation to think about it. "There's...look, there's gotta be a way back, if we can just find it. I mean, if there was a way for us to get here in the first place..."
Sasha gave him a Look, and was about to retort that they were clearly dealing with something far beyond the ordinary and there was no guarantee it was a two-way street, but her attention was drawn to something else, and she stared wide-eyed. "Your...your hand!" she gasped - before putting her own hand to her face, and then yanking it back in surprise.
Kyle looked at his hand, and dropped his glass out of shock; it shattered, but he was too stunned to notice. His hand was changing - the fingers were all out of proportion. His thumb and middle finger had shrunk somewhat, while the index finger was longer than normal; meanwhile, the ring finger and pinky were dwindling away to nothing. There was a prickling sensation under the skin, too. He stared. "What...what the...!?"
"Oh god..." Sasha hissed, watching the same thing happen to herself. The proportions on her arms were shifting as well, the upper arm shortening and the forearm lengthening; the bones of each seemed to be thinning, lightening. "Oh God...oh SHIT," she said, in a moment of sudden clarity. "Listen, we...we need to get our clothes off, now."
He blinked and stared at her in confusion; she was already shucking off her dress. "Wh-what...?"
She shot him another Look. "I'm serious! Get that shirt off, while you still can!"
His liquor buzz was wearing off in a hurry, but it didn't help make much sense of things; still, she sounded too serious for him to ignore, and there was nothing in her attitude to suggest that this was actually some kind of weird office prank. Besides, the changes to his hands gave him an inkling of what she might be getting at. He practically ripped his shirt off, and fumbled with his slacks; it was already a challenge to unbutton the fly with his atrophied thumbs, and he gave silent thanks that he hadn't worn a belt.
"Shoes and socks, too," Sasha said, kicking at her nylons as she slipped her panties down her thighs. "If this is what I think it is, we won't have any use for them before too long..." She fumbled with the clasp on her bra, but it was no use; her hands were already too far gone. "Shit! Can, uh, can you get this? I don't want to take any chances..."
For a moment, Kyle was too struck by the weirdness of the situation to respond; he wasn't given to imagining scenarios where he'd be getting nude with a coworker in any case, but this was definitely not how he'dve pictured it. But the situation was too baffling and stressful to seem sexy, and she sounded legitimately worried. He came around back of her and fumbled with it a bit himself, but his fingers were completely useless for gripping by now, and a forest of little pinprick goosebumps had raised themselves all across the surface of his hands and arms, to boot. In desparation, he bent down and caught the clasp in his teeth, gnawing at it this way and that until he finally managed to work it loose.
Sasha managed to work her bra off as he was busy doffing his boxers, and they stood there for a moment, completely naked and completely beyond caring about it. It wasn't just their arms that'd been changing; both their upper and lower legs were shortening, more of those goosebumps had covered their whole lower body from waist to ankle, and very strange things were happening to their feet.
As they watched, the body of each foot elongated and the heel and ankle lifted further and further off the ground, drawing them into a strange crouching stance; meanwhile, the little toes were dwindling away, while all the others grew much thicker and longer. Their big toes gradually twisted 'round to point backwards; the fourth toe on Kyle's feet did, too, leaving the other two splayed out in front to form an X, while all three of Sasha's others fanned out in front.
Kyle stared, dumbfounded. "What...what's happening to us!?" he yelped, his voice cracking momentarily in an awkward adolescent squawk.
Sasha shook her head in amazement. "Think about it - the picture. I, uh...I think we're turning into harpies."
Kyle held up his deformed hand in disbelief. "This...no, this can't be...!"
Sasha eyed him curiously; his voice had cracked again, and the pitch seemed to be climbing. His hips seemed broader, too, but so did hers; were his shoulders narrower? She was about to say something, but as if on cue, the goosebumps on their skin blossomed into a forest of tiny pinfeathers. On their lower bodies and the upper surfaces of their shoulders and arms, these quickly grew into short, densely-layered coverts, with a patch of thick, soft down covering their pelvic region - while, on the other side of the arm and splayed out from the hand, long, stiff flight feathers formed, and the shorter feathers of the alula grew out from their thumbs.
A fan of tailfeathers grew out from their respective rumps, as well, and they realized that, while they were focused on everything else, the ends of their spines had unfurled into a stubby but properly mobile tailbone. Kyle's tail was long and narrow, while Sasha's was somewhat shorter, but fanned out more broadly; both had to cock their tails upward to keep them from dragging on the ground.
Sasha's plumage was a glossy, iridescent black on the wings and tail, banded with white at the shoulders and on the inner surface of the primaries, and a soft white on the lower body that turned to black at the knees; she recognized it in the back of her mind as the pattern of a magpie. Meanwhile, Kyle's was predominantly a rich scarlet, which his auburn hair had changed color to match, with bands of yellow and deep blue on the upper coverts and flight feathers, and a lighter blue on the rump and tail coverts.
Their toenails had grown out into proper claws, as well, and the skin on their feet had been getting coarser and thicker, with visible banding developing all down the front; Sasha's had turned black, while Kyle's was blue-gray. Kyle extended a wingtip, turning it this way and that, flexing the remnants of his fingers and watching how the feathers responded. "A-are...are we done...?" he said quietly.
But the tone of his voice had changed even further, and Sasha shook her head. "I, uh, I think I'm done," she said, nodding toward his chest.
He blinked in confusion and glanced down at himself. It'd been lost on them in the middle of everything else, but the flesh beneath his nipples had swollen substantially, and his penis had shrunk far enough that it was already almost lost in the down that covered his crotch. "Wha-!? NO!" he yelped, his voice notably higher. "Why do I have to be a woman on top of...everything else!?"
She gave him a Look. "Geez, you don't need to make it sound like such a friggin' curse," she said. "But...well, I guess it probably is a shock for you."
As they watched, his breasts continued to develop, growing larger and heavier until they surpassed even Sasha's modest bust; yet both of their breasts remained perky. Sasha prodded at hers with a wingtip; it almost felt like there was some kind of built-in support layer, under the skin, which she supposed would come in handy during flight.
Meanwhile, Kyle's face had softened noticeably, and his penis, already reduced to a nubbin and looking more like the clitoris it was becoming, finally disappeared beneath the down. He grimaced as things finished rearranging themselves downstairs. "I, um...think I'm done," she said glumly.
Sasha hopped over with a weird, steppy gait that seemed to suit her altered legs, and put a wing around Kyle, pulling her into a hug. "If it's any consolation," she said, "you did turn out very pretty."
Kyle, already feeling weird and emotional thanks to an influx of new hormones, and additionally weirded out by the feeling of their breasts squashing against each other, promptly burst into tears. Sasha held her as tight as her wings would allow, gently shushing and soothing her. Finally, when she'd calmed down a bit, they were left to wonder:
Now what...?