Kismet went on talking, to Thomas's relief. "Not this minute, of course. You're still bewildered by all this. I have a pretty good idea about who you are, but that's only because I have experience in other peoples' heads. You don't know me, and you don't really know yourself at the moment."
Thomas risked a glance downward, barely taking in the curve of her body before snapping her head back up again. She could feel the medallion resting between her... ... Her mind shied away from that direction. It's resting on my chest, that's all. The thought brought Thomas a little comfort, and an idea.
Hardly daring to breathe or even think, Thomas brought her hands up in a lightning movement and tried to wrench the shoelace over her head, but the unexpected protrusion of her new muzzle got in the way, and after a few frantic tugs the shoelace snapped. The medallion rolled onto the carpet. Thomas felt triumphant... "Nice try, but you don't want to lose that amulet. I may be in here with you, but the amulet is holding my power. If you lose it, I think we'll be stuck together and there'll be no hope of getting this sorted out." And then, finally, Thomas sagged, the huge tidal wave of shock crashing down as her quick plan to rid herself of this bizarre change went up in flames. Uncharacteristic tears of self-pity began to moisten the fur under her eyes.
Kismet's barely heard sigh rustled around the room. "Look, I'm sorry it had to be like this. Look on the bright side, at least I didn't eat your soul. I could have done that, you know, and I bet a lot of people whose various pieces of jewelry are waking up after the ice age are about to get very nasty shocks. So cheer up." This not-so-encouraging speech was met with a pitiful whine from Thomas. "Can I have control of the... your... bleh, I suppose it's "our" for now. Can I have control of our body?" There was a short pause, filled by Thomas’s whimpers. "I'll take that for a yes."
Thomas felt herself recede. It was like a gradual zoom out, or falling backwards into a very short well, or perhaps like the addition of the black bars to the top of a wide-screen movie, except these black bars went around reality. The strangeness of it was so much that it had the effect of a well placed slap. Here, in the back of her own mind, things were a lot calmer and didn't seem so awful. She could look at the situation rationally from here.
Her body seemed to be acting on its own. She could tell this from the way she could see everything it saw, feel what it felt, smell what it smelt. It just didn't feel like her body at the moment. She was aware of a bright thread in the pseudo-darkness of her mind. She reached out to touch it, but only in the telepathic sense.
Feeling a little bit better, are we? Good. You sit back there and watch for a bit, get your mind in order. It's too bad you weren't a girl, this would have been a lot easier on you, but I'll try to make the best of the situation.
Thomas leaned back(again, only in sense of her mind), bemused. She felt almost comfortable in the warm darkness, and it took her only a minute to figure out why. She had always been a distant person, back when she had been male, and this was the same attribute taken to extremes. A little glimmer of worry crossed her mind when she paid attention to what the eyes she shared were telling her.
Kismet stretched languorously in front of the mirror, aware of her rider like an itch she couldn't scratch. Her back popped, the knots of hundreds of years of sleep exploding into little fireworks of sharp relief. She looked in the mirror for her rider's benefit - she had control of the eyes and Thomas would be forced to see what she looked at. She looked at herself, in particular the parts Thomas's eyes had jumped away from. Not bad.
Thomas, unable to look away, viewed her body dispassionately. She might have been beautiful – she didn’t know what attributes were particularly becoming in foxwomen. From the human standpoint, she still fell into that peculiar “not tall” designation. Her hair was a straight, rich brown color, and her eyes were the same gray-green, regardless of the face they were in. The frame of the figure in the figure, she noted, was very good. The chest... Finally facing up to the fact that it was her chest, and her breasts, Thomas admitted, as Kismet turned a little, that she was somewhere middling between a B and C cup. When Kismet ran her fingers through the fur on her arms, Thomas felt the silky feel and the surprisingly lithe muscle tone hidden under. If it wasn’t for the non-human features, she might be a very beautiful woman...
Kismet slipped off Thomas’s overshirt and lifted the bottom of the ill-fitting T-shirt she had on, and stopped when she heard Thomas’s inwards squawk of protest. “Try to understand, please. These are uncomfortable. You’ve had a tail for less than half an hour and all of that time it’s been down your pants, so maybe you didn’t notice, but I’ve had one my whole life and it hurts. Oh, don’t be prudish, I’m not suggesting we go around naked, I just want to make some modifications.” She stripped, arched her back happily, and picked up the medallion from the floor and stood in front of the mirror again. “See, kid? This is us, for the time being, and you’re going to have to get used to it because I’m not going to steal your body from you. And if you’ll keep watching closely, I’ll show you a little magic.”
Despite the shock of seeing herself naked for the first time(though Thomas had to admit, thick white fur did a very good job of keeping her body modest), Thomas was interested. Kismet clasped the medallion firmly and pointed at the clothes she had just taken off, and a few eldritch sparkles later they did not look that much different. Kismet receded, and Thomas surfaced.
Brought back into control of her body, Thomas had expected the great rush of self-pity she had left behind to come surging back. It didn’t. She stood there, slightly bewildered, and felt her tail twitch gently behind her. She looked in the mirror. The reflection didn’t seem as threatening as it had just minutes earlier. After a while, aware that she was being watched, she struggled into the clothes. Kismet talked her into and then through getting the bra on, and threading her tail through the holes in underwear and jeans. Everything felt a great deal easier to wear, especially the modified jeans, now tailored to hold the odd sort of reversed knees Thomas now owned.
Inside their shared head, Kismet rubbed her metaphorical hands together. “You’re doing well so far. Now we need to...”