Christine felt her leopard body tumbling uncontrollably as Bronwyn zipped up the bag around her. She squeezed her eyes shut, not making much of a difference in the darkness, and waited for the change to wash over her, not knowing what to expect when she eventually opened them again. She knew by now that switching from one body to another didn’t feel like anything at all, so there was no sensation to cue her into opening her eyes. After a few seconds and with plenty of trepidation, she peeled her eyes open and saw...
... what was, by now, a familiar face. Except it nearly filled her entire vision. Hanging in the “sky” above her, incredibly magnified, was a giant Bronwyn, whose enormous features looked just as dismayed as Christine herself felt. Looking down - trying to look any direction that was away from that all-encompassing gaze - she found herself lying on her back, cupped gently in a huge pair of hands. When she realized what she was laying on, she squirmed anxiously against the rolling landscape of warm flesh underneath her, which only made it feel weirder.
Christine immediately knew, of course, that Bronwyn had not suddenly grown. She had been not just conformed into the shape of the figurine, but reduced to its tiny size as well! She brought a hand up to her chest in surprise, and heard the sharp, loud clack of plastic against plastic. She could even feel the tap of her fingers reverberate through her body. She wasn’t just the size of a figurine - she actually was the figurine!
Before it could fully begin, Christine’s cautious self-examination was interrupted by a booming voice from above, one that now sounded like a god - or goddess - was speaking to her. “Oh, no,” Bronwyn muttered under her breath, though even a light whisper from her sounded like a rumbling clap of thunder to Christine right now. Without thinking, Bronwyn shrieked, “I’m so sorry!”, and it was practically deafening. Thankfully, Christine no longer had eardrums in her current plastic form - if she did, they might be in danger of rupturing. Still, she instinctively cowered from the sheer intensity of the noise, only to find the giant palms underneath her losing their grip while she squirmed. “Wait!”, Christine cried out in an unusually high-pitched voice, but it was too late.
Bronwyn, distraught over screwing things up even further, unconsciously let the tiny Christine slip through her hands and plummet to the surface of the bed - which thankfully was not far below. For Christine, it was over before she knew why she was falling, landing on top of the duvet cover with a soft pfff.
As the enormous hands that had been holding her just a moment ago reached up to cover a gigantic sobbing face, Christine watched from far below, starting to think that this girl was not the most helpful partner in the challenge of getting her back to normal. Still, it was hard to look away from such an imposing figure. It was impossible to ignore any movement she made, when each one carried enough force behind it to send Christine flying across the room, and when each one changed the look of her whole surroundings so drastically. Watching Bronwyn cover her face with her hands was like watching the sun recede behind a blanket of clouds.
Christine shook herself to snap out of that thought. As much as the girl might be physically dominating their shared space right now, Christine couldn’t rely on her for everything. She needed to figure out the best course of action for herself. While Bronwyn seemed to be safely distracted, Christine started to examine her own body again. At least the shape of it was familiar, unlike the animal she’d been stuck in before. She soon realized that the black-and-white maid-like outfit that the figurine was “dressed” in was not really her clothing, but a part of her new body. Touching it felt just like touching her skin - well, given that her skin was also made of a hard, unbending plastic.
Exploring her body quickly led her to the thing that had put her in here, because it was still firmly attached to her side - the zipper. Although it was only a few inches long, that meant its row of jagged metal teeth ran along most of the length of Christine’s body, starting all the way down at her shin and running up her leg, past her chest, and up to the armpit, where the gleaming golden pull-tab stuck out from just beside her shoulder. To her, the tab now seemed to be a large metal handle the size of a dinner plate. One tug on that thing, Christine thought, and she’d be a leopard again.
And that brought her mind back to the most important question at hand. Was it better to stay in this supposedly “human” form or just go back to being an animal? Would she rather sacrifice her voice or her size? Whatever she chose, Christine felt awfully helpless right now, but she still had to make a decision.