Cathy walked out into the woods, marveling at the new sensations his body was giving him. There were, of course, the obvious changes - he no longer had breasts bouncing around on his chest (not that they had done much bouncing in recent years anyway,) and there were things dangling between his legs. (Surprisingly, his new penis was hanging free in the human fashion, rather than being encased in a sheath as on a normal panther; this was probably for the best, he supposed, as having a sheath would make it tricky to relieve himself from a bipedal position.) But there was something more; a sense of restrained power, "potential energy" as the physicists called it. He wasn't just powerful, he felt powerful too.
"So," said a voice, "are you an experimenter, or a bad roller?"
Cathy turned. Standing there was a busty anthropomorphic doe, totally naked. Cathy was surprised to find himself turned on, though he knew he really should've been expecting it. He wasn't too distracted, though, just a little tingly downstairs; maybe it was because she was a different species. "I beg your pardon?" he asked, still surprised by his new low tenor.
"What I mean is," she said, "are you male because you wanted to see what it was like, or because you hit the 'random' button on the machine?"
"Oh," Cathy said. "I guess I'm an experimenter then...is it that obvious?"
The doe nodded. "You still walk like a woman. That's a habit you'll want to squelch pretty quick if you're going to be here for any length of time. People handle women acting masculine fine, for the most part, but they don't take well to guys acting feminine."
Cathy had always been under the impression that men pretty much did what they wanted, but now that he stopped to think about it, the doe was right. Men were free to do whatever they wanted in life...except the things that women did. "You...you sound like you know a lot about this," she offered.
The doe laughed. "First-hand and second-hand," she said. "I run an informal support group for sex-changed guests. You're welcome to attend if you like."
"Support group?" Cathy was intrigued.
She nodded. "There's more of us than you might think, although we're still a minority among the park's population. It's that 'random' button that gets most. Needless to say, that leaves most of our new members more than a little traumatized, so most of what we do is just helping them come to terms with their new bodies. Most of 'em go right back to what they were before, but we at least keep 'em out of depression during their stay."
Cathy's ears perked up. "Most of them? You mean some don't change back?"
"Some are planning not to. The courts are still hashing that one out, so they're staying in the park until it's decided. And a few have gone back to being human but kept their new gender, which is being treated just like a sex-change operation, except that they're potent-slash-fertile. But yeah, most just go back to their old lives afterwards."
"I don't mean to pry," said Cathy, "but...what about you?"
"What about me?" the doe replied. "Well, I go by Hannah, although my name is actually Harry. I was a bad roller. 'Random' sounds good when you're excited to get into the park, don't know what you want to be, and aren't patient enough to sit through the design process, so that's what I chose. And this is how I wound up: a beautiful deer-woman. I was pretty traumatized, especially since I was one of the park's first guests and the first one to accidently wind up the wrong gender, so I didn't have anyone to help me through it. It was rough at first, but I pulled through. And about the time I got over my issues, the park got its next few accidentally transgendered guests. Out of the whole park population, I was the only one who knew what they were going through, so I decided I ought to help them, and I've been doing that ever since...what month is it?"
Cathy thought. "September."
A look of surprise came over Hannah's face. "Wow, six months now," she said. "You kind of lose track of time in here, at least beyond the day or week level. I've still got another six months on my stay, but I think I'm going to ask the park to take me on as some sort of official sex-change counselor. I don't think I'll be going by Harry again anytime soon."
"But," Cathy said, "you could do that as a man, couldn't you? Why would you want to stay a woman? ...it's not the sex, is it? They're always saying that we girls have it so much better in sex. Is that true?"
Hannah laughed. "I wish I could say," she said. "But I'm still trying to find a stag who wants a relationship instead of just random sex and isn't freaked out by the fact that I used to be a man. So far, I can find one or the other. Anyway, I never got laid as a guy, so I couldn't say. And besides, shouldn't you know?"
Cathy shook her head. "I've been a spinster all my life. I never even got to second base with anyone."
"Sorry to hear it," Hannah said. "As to why I'd stay a woman, it helps when I'm trying to comfort men-turned-women, and I don't have a compelling reason to be male again. Besides, I've gotten used to this body. I really like it, in fact." Her ears perked up suddenly. "Look," she said. "I gotta go, someone's calling me. It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr..?"
"Cathy," Cathy said. It was more than a little odc being referred to as "mister."
"We'll call you Keith," Hannah smiled. "No, no protest, I reserve the right to rename those in need of it." She laughed. "Now, Keith," she said, "there's a big huge rock along the fenceline. We meet there nightly, so drop by if you want. And a word of advice: don't be so quick to assume that the grass is greener on the other side. Sure, there are great things about manhood and sucky things about womanhood, but I think you'll find it evens oyt in the long run."
And with that, she bounded off.