"Shouldn't our bags have been here by now?" Sharon asked rather confused that their luggage hadn't arrived yet.
"Check out the scratching posts. Who was here before must have really loved cats," Julie said observing that indeed there were large
scratching posts in each corner of the room.
"Forget that, check out the size of the beds and chairs, are Africans really that tall?" Derrick said looking at the furniture that looked made
for people who were so tall they'd have to duck down through normal doorways. The door to the hall and the balcony were to scale of the
furniture.
"All the people we saw in the lobby looked Caucasian to me son," John said. "And I think this entire hotel is on a reserve. I wonder what
paper work Jabari had to go through to allow people here."
"I'm use to welcome mints, not welcome beef jerky," Sharon said noticing the dried and salty pieces of meat on the pillow.
"Must be an African thing," Derrick shrugged. He went outside to take in the wild life he was sure she'd be able to see from the tree house
hotel. He swore up a storm.
"DERRICK! LANGUAGE!"
"MOM! DAD! JULIE! There's-there's-oh-man, what the friggin' hades, this ain't, dude!"
"Derrick you're not making any sense." Said Sharon said along with her husband. Julie was more interested in that while the room had a
telephone (looking rather big like everything else) she wasn't able to find the cable TV yet. This place did have TV right?
The mesh windows on the truck that had transported the family from the airport to the hotel hadn't made for easy viewing. And they had
gone straight into the hotel before. Now they were finally seeing outside the tree hotel.
The Anderson couple gasped with their son as they stared in shock and awe at what they saw outside below the balcony.
African animals. But going around on two legs. And with opposable thumbs. But thing things got even more shocking as the family minus
Julie saw what they were doing. Playing kick-ball, drawing in the dirt, sunning themselves, --reading a newspaper!-- Sharon nearly fainted
when she saw a zebra and a gazelle debating the geopolitical situation, while a Hyena said that was not the sort of thing people should
discuss while on vacation.
John blushed and Sharon covered her son's eyes when she realized these animals also had human style hips and maternal material, while
masculine trait was closed around with a sheath by many of the naked animal people outside.
Derrick idly noticed a group of juvenile lions playing a weird form of free for all wrestling.
The family stumbled back inside.
"Julie we're getting out of here now. And I'm going to have a long talk with Jabari!" Said John.
"Say wha-? We just got here. Are there terrorists outside or something?"
"No it's not that it's--" John didn't get to finish as a wave of dizziness hit the entire family at once.
Everything happened at once.
The father John Anderson's cubby frame melted revealing riveting muscles covered in tan fur. He grew several feet ruining his pants and
underwear and his new claws on his feet tore apart his shoes. His feet became digigraded as pads formed on his palms and feet. His balding
hair became dark brown almost black and covered his head completely and circled around his head completely forming a mane.
His eyes turned a golden color and became feline. His face pushed into a muzzle and gained whiskers as his teeth all became sharp. And
couldn't forget the tail with the puff of fur on the end the same color as his mane that grew out of his spine between his rear. He let out a
soft growl that wasn't human.
Sharon also grew taller, to where she would have towered over John if he was still human, she went through many of the changes he did,
through her fur was beige. She let out a cry of dismay and unhappiness as her hair fell out leading her completely bald. Like her husband,
her ears grew more round and moved up on her head. Her eyes took on golden brown color as her figure became VERY muscular yet still
feminine. Her womanhood actually remained the same size, now looking relatively smaller on her new body.
On top of this shock, was how the two felt the years wash away from them, cutting their ages in half until both were twenty year olds
opposed to middle age, this wasn't exactly noticed though among the changes of species and the complete ruination of their clothes leaving
them both completely naked. Sharon had liked that blouse.
Things only got weirder for Derrick and Julie. Their fur was the same color as their parents would with the genders reversed. Both their hair
fell out, leaving them both with fur on their heads and nothing else. They were also getting shorter, smaller, even as their gained muscles
and their bones rearranged themselves. It wasn't long before one seven year old, and one seven and a half year old were standing in a pile of
clothes with only their shirts covering them.
Curiosity overcame modesty as their torn them off, accidentally destroying them as they looked at their bodies in shock and confusion and
looked at each other totally speechless.
"Sharon, Sharon are you alright?" John asked protectively.
"Yes, yes dear I think, I think so," Sharon growled not sounding in blind panic as people would normally be.
"Jobari," John growled menacingly.
Sharon noticed the phone, now perfectly scaled to her, and saw his personal number written next to it. "I'll call me." She said more decisive
than she remembered being and John found himself nodding at her decision.
Sharon picked up the phone, a little clumsy at first, but then dialed in the number.
"Hello?"
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
"Yeaow! No need to roar! What's wrong?"
"WHAT'S WRONG? YOU TURNED MY FAMILY INTO MONSTERS! THAT'S WHAT'S WRONG!"
"Calm down! Was their an accident? We've never had one before! Can you tell me what went wrong? I'll get the emergency team up there at
once!"
"You turned us into animals!"
"You lost your thumbs and balance? I've never heard-"
"Made us animal people!"
"Yes. And?"
"AND HOW COULD YOU?"
"Well it wasn't really me, it was the tree for a big part, my elder brother's work for the next biggest part, though I did have to file the paper
work and-"
"How could you do this your friend! John trusted you!"
"... What's wrong? I thought you said you wanted to be lions for your vacation. When you didn't return information with the package I sent
you but John said yes he'd love to and would bring his family, and when your son told me he wanted to study lions, I thought he meant-, I'm
sorry what species did you want to be?"
"HUMAN YOU SICK FREAK!"
"...You're upset so I'm going to forgive that." Said Jabari icily. "Now look. When I finally scrapped together the money to build this hotel, I
thought of John first, I thought you'd all find it interesting."
"And you didn't think to say anything!"
"It was mentioned in the first sentence of the disclaimer. And Twenty-eight more times after that."
"We . . . we didn't read it."
"And the process was explained, and the details and the species available were also explained in the packet I sent to you. You didn't get it?"
"We... we thought that was an ad for a furry convention that made it into our mail by mistake and threw it out." Sharon rumbled, suddenly
feeling very small.
Jabari on the other end groaned. "Great. Look, I'm very sorry, but unless it's medical emergency I can't make you human again until your
vacation is scheduled to ends. Look, forget any bill regarding your stay. And a free second vacation to be spent any time in the future of your
choice. I deeply apologize. I didn't think you wouldn't read the disclaimers, and I certainly didn't think you wouldn't so much as ready the
first two sentences of the brochure. There's a copy of both in the first drawer of the desk between the beds. I'm very very sorry. This is the
first time something like this has happened, we, we can talk later, I have to work to do that won't wait. I have to go now. Sorry."
"So now what do we do?" The male adult lion asked the lioness, as was natural.