Coolwater

The time had come. The Ridgeback looked down at the little scroll nestled in her talons, spines rattling in anxiety. Coolwater hated feeling so nervous, especially when the experience shouldn't be too unfamiliar. She'd used a scroll like this before, when she changed the smoky swirls covering her body into a more refined pattern of glowing runes. But that had just been markings, an aesthetic change like a tattoo. This would change her entire appearance, how her body moved and, hopefully, the inherent bane of her natural breed.

Arashi pressed himself against her leg, smiling reassuringly up at her. Coolwater looked down, smiling back. This would also diminish her size significantly. She'd finally be able to feel her mate's embrace around all of her, not just an arm or ankle. He wouldn't admit it, but she knew he longed for that too. She was doing this for both of them. Taking a deep breath, she broke the seal and carefully unfurled the scroll with her oversized talons. Glancing over the words written inside, she lightly touched the page with one claw. It began to glow.

She felt the changes immediately. Coolwater's long spines quickly shrank down, disappearing beneath her scales only to resurface as sprouting fur. Her thick scales smoothed themselves until she thought they would disappear as well, but they stopped at a thin delicacy that reminded her of a fish. Her horn moved up her skull, sliding away from her snout and arching up in an elegant curve. And through it all she grew smaller, her limbs getting slimmer and her whole height diminishing. When the changes slowed and eventually stopped, her shaking talons dropped the scroll on the dark grass. As its glow faded it crumpled itself up into a ball, smoothing itself over before a pale sheen spread across it, and suddenly a pearl sat before her. The spell was completed.

Coolwater habitually looked to the ground at her left, searching out the familiar blue Skydancer, but she was only met with a pair of talons. Nervously, her eyes followed them up. The short fur they were coated with grew almost imperceptibly longer as it reached the chest, then shortened again as it went into the neck. She continued, finally meeting a pair of eyes resting slightly above her own. Arashi's feather-lined face was lit up with joy, looking her up and down.

"Water," he breathed. "You're beautiful!"

He rose up on his hind legs, wrapping his arms and wings around her. Coolwater eagerly spread her own around him, startled but delighted when her talons couldn't reach all the way behind him. She could feel a slow, deep purr start in his throat as he nuzzled her, and she pulled herself closer to him as she relished the warmth of his soft fur against her.