Crystal and Cole had taken no more than twenty steps toward Vanessa's house when they heard a crack, as though it were a sound of thunder. Vanessa's dried husk glowed and burst in the night, turning to a cloud of dust and ash. Crystal and Cole shuddered. Her final remnants of power had been unleashed and scattered into the ether. The pair, being the last to be cursed by the witch, felt a surge of energy course through their bodies.
"Cole, my feet! My legs!" Crystal cried out with joy as her beaky lips shrunk back to normal size. Her feathers dropped off, leaving her with her normal, smooth skin. Her talons shrank back into her feet. No longer white as a sheet, her face puffed back out into human proportions. She admired her flesh toned legs once again, shaking the remaining feathers out of her clothing.
"Cole, we won't be stuck between human and chicken anymore! I can feel it! Vanessa's power is broken, nature is correcting things. Nature itself is going to correct... us!" She flashed a grin, her human teeth once again prominent between two red human lips.
Cole frowned sadly. He showed no signs of returning to his human form. If anything, his tail feathers were growing out longer. His hair was becoming more rubbery before her eyes. "I know, Crystal. I felt the energy too." Crystal stared in shock at her brother as tears welled up in his eyes. "You said it yourself, sis. I'm more chicken than human now. I'm much farther along than you were..." Cole's voice cracked and he opened his mouth wide. His teeth began to shrink into his gums.
"Cryshhulll..." Cole moaned as his teeth sank into his gums. "I can'd turn inno a shikkunn..." His teeth disappeared completely. He could no longer form human words. His yellow lips became stiff and started to stick out. "Cluck! Buck buck buuuck!" A waddle formed beneath his shrinking chin.
Crystal stared in horror. It was too late for Cole. She had failed him. He was going to turn into a chicken completely. Permanently! There would be no humanity left in him... She couldn't think of anything to say, so she just stared through her tears as her brother began his slow, final changes.
Cole's neck stretched out as his yellow nose melted into his lips. A pointy beak took shape. His ears melted into his feathery head completely, leaving no trace. He held his feathery human hands up in front of his face, staring with black circular eyes, as the skin on his fingers fused together to form a pair of flippers. He flexed them and felt his altered face, ran his hands up and down his smooth yellow legs one final time before his white, feathery arms bent on their own, tucking his flippers under his armpits in a fixed wing position.
Crystal held a hand over her mouth and continued to watch, sobbing. Cole's torso compacted and his hips widened, giving him a lower center of gravity. His shoulders melted away and his feathery butt pointed and stuck out to transition into the tail feathers he already had. His yellow human shaped knees swiveled around with a sickening crack. His legs became shorter and his shape puffed out a bit and that was that. Cole lifted an impossibly skinny leg backwards into the air, and took his first awkward steps as a chicken, clucking all the way.
By the time Crystal approached chicken-Cole, he had shrunk down to the size of a rather large hen.
"Cole, are you still in there? Do you still recognize me?" Cole stared at her with a flash of familiarity, but squatted down to lay an egg. He clucked and fussed over it.
Sobbing, Crystal gathered up her chicken brother in her arms and began the long walk back home.