“Did you know that people can go without food without dying for like thirty days?”

“Dear ssisster, what makess you believe you are sstill a persson?”

Oh, fuck you very much.

“Come now, I have ssaid I shall leave you be for the night, why not have the rest of thiss conversation face to face?”

Yeah, nah. He was way too insistent on that point and while I might have been able to squeeze more information out of him via context clues if I continued our conversation, I no longer thought it was worth it. I was rapidly approaching an emotional threshold and I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d find on the other side. My emotions and reactions were off, and I genuinely did not know how much of that was my new body and how much was the ridiculously extraordinary circumstances.

The thoughtful hum I tried for came out more of a discontented yowl. “Pass,” I said, curling into a smaller ball and wrapping my tail around my legs so I could clutch it close. I was half worried it would twitch into his reach without my noticing and half fascinated with the texture of my fur.

I have fur.

And a tail.

No cat ears, thank god.

This has already been the weirdest day of my life and its not even over yet.

My ‘brother’ let loose a sigh with a disconcertingly gutteral undertone. “I had hoped you would be reassonable,” he said, and my skin prickled with something like intuition. “I do sso hate the tasste of sscorch.”

There was the sound of a sharp inhale and then purple fire engulfed my refuge.

Three things happened in rapid succession: I dove sideways out of the fire through the thorns, I was tackled to the ground by Snakeface McBatflap, and then something very large and very fast knocked Snakeface off of me and into a tree. I scuttled backwards like a crab until my back was pressed against something solid. My stolen clothes were scorched, a few spots still smoldering, my skin was covered in new scratches and fresh blood from my most recent scramble through the thorns, and I knew to my core that I was in no way safe, but I couldn’t have taken my eyes off of the spectacle before me for love or money.

The… thing on top of my ‘brother’ looked like the lovechild of a komodo dragon, an axolotl, and a Lisa Frank glitter kit. The dark indigo gills? Spikes? Tentacles? Antenna clusters? There were things on its head that writhed in the air as it lowered its snout towards Snakeface. It tilted its head to one side like a curious dog and then – so fast it was a blur to me – lunged down and bit his head off. A quiver went from the tip of its snout all the way down its spine, past all six of its legs and set its tail lashing, and then it made a weird 'blergh' sound and spat the head into the fiery remnants of the bush.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I'm guessing he did not taste like chicken.

It stuck its nose right next to the neck-hole, still gushing red-brown blood, and inhaled. Then it made a weird sort of chirring sound and started inspecting the rest of its kill. I watched with detached fascination as it carefully stretched out each of No-Longer-Snakeface’s (on account of not having a face) wings with its oddly dexterous forepaws. It made an assortment of humming and chittering noises as it nosed its way from the first set of wings down to the spiked tail and back again.

If I had been capable of it, I would have bolted, but I couldn’t feel my legs.

I was 88% sure this was a shock thing moreso than an injury, but it didn’t change the result. I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Now that it was moving around I could see that the new creature had a manelike protrusion of those odd, twisty-looking tentacle things that started roughly where I would have expected to see ears on a human and circled around the back of its neck to the other side. The mass looked oddly like every picture of Albert Einstein’s hair that I had ever seen in the way it curved around the creature’s head, only it was dark purple, and kind of spiky, and each bit moved independently from every other bit.

The creature’s head was komodo-like, but a little softer and flatter. Its face was weirdly mobile, though not necessarily in a human way. The way its silver eyes twitched and its lips curled as it made its vocal exploration of its kill was expressive, though I couldn’t really tell what emotion it was meant to convey.

There were thick muscles obvious in its chest and legs, but the way it curved back on itself to reach every bit of No-Longer-Snakeface in its inspection showed it was agile too. My odds of getting away unscathed were decreasing with every moment, and yet I still couldn’t look away.

The creature was so shiny.

The majority of its scales were a lighter, more reddish purple than the tentacle things, but its entire body was swirled with a symmetrical bronze design that might have been natural or deliberate. Each and every scale was edged in something sparkly that ranged from Sephora glitter-shadow levels of subtle to full-on craft-store style glitter chunks.

It was mesmerizing.

“Wow,” I breathed, and the creature looked directly at me.

Its eyes were silver. Not gray or slate or any other matte shade, no they were a shining silver that seemed almost to glow even in the dim light beneath the trees. Its head-tentacle things writhed, then lowered and straightened out, falling like hair down to its broad shoulders and revealing upright, pointed ears and the stubs of two small black horns.

The ears, which reminded me incongruously of the German Shepherds my uncle trained, twitched in my direction.

“What are you?” I couldn’t help but ask. I had so many questions. Questions about the creature, about this world, about myself, and it was looking less and less like I might live long enough to ask any of them. This was disappointing. Flipside, seeing this marvelous and bizarre and weirdly beautiful creature before I died almost – almost – made it all worth it.

The creature stepped over No-Longer-Snakeface’s body and slowly slipped closer. It was so graceful I could almost forget that I was about to die.

Then it did something I didn’t expect.

It stopped.

It sat back and upright on its hindmost two sets of legs and reached – ever so slowly – for me with its forepaws.