Sophia stared in shock at her reflection in the mirror, her mind struggling to comprehend what it was seeing. She was flushed and sweat shone on her skin, but that wasn't what caught her attention. What had frozen her in horror were the eyes being reflected on the smooth glass that weren't hers. The irises of these eyes had expanded to the point that the eyes had little white visible and were now a deep golden color rather than the hazel they should have been. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, barely breathing, then reopened them. The strange eyes remained in her reflection, staring back at her. It shouldn't have been possible, but the inhuman eyes were indeed hers.
That wasn't all that was different. As she gaped at the mirror, she saw that her front-most premolars had grown nearly twice as long and ended in points. Next to them, her canines were also noticeably longer and had more of a point. A tickling sensation brought her attention to her neck, where short, dark hairs sparsely covered the sides of her neck, although they grew denser as they wrapped around to the back.
Scarcely believing what she was seeing and feeling, she slowly brought her right hand up to her mouth and touched the changed teeth. Her probing confirmed they were indeed longer than they had been just a few hours before. They were also a bit sharper, she discovered as she pushed lightly on their tips. Next, she cautiously brought a shaking hand to the back of her neck. Her blood went cold as she brushed what were unmistakably stiff hairs. A jolt of pain as she tugged a few confirmed they were indeed growing from her skin. As she moved her hand back down, she felt her shirt rubbing against something unfamiliar on the skin of her back.
Slowly, still watching her reflection, she grabbed both sides of her shirt, but stopped as she felt an odd tingling sensation in her fingers and toes. Letting go of her shirt, she brought her right hand up to her face and looked at her fingers. The palm side of her hand looked normal, but when she turned her hand around, she gasped - the nails had darkened to almost black. A sharp pain started in her fingers as the nails started reforming in their beds, causing her to gasp. As her fingernails changed in front of her eyes, a matching pain started in her toes. Looking down, she realized she was still wearing her shoes, and it felt like the ends of her toes had snagged on something. Quickly, she sat on the side of her bed and bent to remove her shoes. She had managed to untie her right shoe when she was interrupted by an unpleasant twisting feeling inside her abdomen.
Next thing she knew, she was on the floor, clutching her stomach in pain and moaning as she felt something-or many somethings-shifting around inside. After what felt like hours, but had really been less than a minute, the pain and twisting feeling subsided.
Panting, she sat up and leaned against her bed before quickly hiking up her shirt to look at her stomach. To her shock, she found white hairs starting as a line just below her belly button and continuing down to form a rounded triangle that disappeared beneath the top of her pants. She ran her hand over the hairs; it felt a lot like soft… fur. Besides the fur-like hair on her stomach, she saw no sign of anything that could have caused the pain. She did notice her nails had grown out a bit and seemed to have become narrower.
Remembering her feet, she finished removing her right shoe and immediately saw that her toenails were poking out of her sock. They had the same almost-black coloration and shape of her fingernails. She anxiously took off her sock, groaning at the five thin holes at the ends. Her foot otherwise looked unchanged. After tossing the sock aside, she took off her other shoe and was unsurprised to see the same thing on her left foot.
“What is happening to me?” she whispered, setting her foot down and resting her head against the side of the bed.
The tingling throughout her body was subsiding, which cleared the way for her to notice something else - her room smelled a lot. That wasn’t quite right, she realized as she concentrated on what her nose was perceiving. It was more that there were a lot of smells, some strong and some faint. Meanwhile, her brain struggled to make sense of the sheer amount of new information it was receiving. She could recognize some of the aromas, but she realized she was perceiving them not as a single smell, but specific combinations of smells. Maddeningly, when she tried to analyze the component smells individually, she found she couldn’t make any sense of them. It was like a language that lay just beyond her ability to read.
The shampoo she had used that morning was particularly strong, and it too was made up of an ensemble of aromas she frustratingly couldn’t quite make sense of individually. Then there was her deodorant, the fainter, but ubiquitous scent of the detergent used for her laundry, and many others she couldn’t begin to recognize. Yet, there was a set of smells that pervaded the room more than all the others. They weren’t the same, yet they had an odd commonality to them. She contemplated these smells, furrowing her brow. There was something familiar about them…
Her eyes widened. These smells are from me, and they’re coming from everywhere!
She could smell her own sweat, pick out the smell from her own armpits even through the deodorant, there was the faint smell of urine, the slightly stronger scent of her own vaginal secretions, and some she didn’t know even existed. All different smells, but each had a similar quality she somehow understood and identified as uniquely hers. At the same time, there was something slightly different about her scent diffusing the room than the scent emanating from her at that moment.
In fact, there was a rather large concentration of the altered scent over… there. Curious, Sophia crawled over to the source of both her distinct lingering odors and a large number of fainter odors. An especially strong concentration of several different kinds of her own smells drew her attention, and she leaned in to get a stronger whiff. It was definitely hers, but there was something not quite right about it. Bringing her nose down even further, she tried to figure out what it was.
Her nose brushed fabric, and she suddenly realized she had her nose practically buried in her own dirty underwear. The source of all of the strange scents had been the dirty clothes pile in the corner by her dresser. Recoiling in shock, disgust, and horror, she stood up so quickly she felt lightheaded from the sudden shift in blood pressure.
“Ewww!” Sophia exclaimed in disgust, sitting on her bed.
I can’t believe I just put my nose in my own underwear! She covered her nose with one hand. What is happening to me? Am I going to lose my mind and act like an animal for the rest of my life?Okay, panicking isn’t going to help me; I need to think this through.
Taking calming breaths, she closed her eyes and tried to get a hold of herself. It was tough as part of her wanted to curl up into a ball and never move again. At the same time, she felt as though she was trapped and needed to escape the unnatural confines of the house. Pushing both urges down, she went over what could have caused her strange predicament. She certainly had never heard of an illness that caused what she was experiencing.
Opening her eyes, she looked over at the mirror, examining herself. Her face had returned to its normal color, and sweat no longer glistened on her skin. Looking at her ‘fangs’, she experimentally closed her mouth, bringing her teeth together. Surprisingly, the changed teeth were actually offset slightly, allowing them to slide together quite naturally. She opened and closed her mouth as though she was chewing. It thankfully appeared as though the teeth wouldn’t prevent her from using her other teeth as she had feared. As she fought down her fear, curiosity replaced it, and she got off her bed and went back over to her mirror.
That’s… actually kind of cool, she watched her mouth open and shut several times. I wonder if anything else is different.
Opening her mouth, she examined the rest of her teeth. The molars looked unchanged, as did her incisors. Next, she looked at her eyes. Her Irises looked like they had doubled in size, and she could only see a bit of the sclera on the sides.
There’s no way anyone would miss how gold my eyes are, she thought. Come to think of it, the color looks familiar. Sort of like the color of a wolf’s eyes.
She looked at the wolf on the large poster above her bed. In fact, the teeth also remind me of a wolf’s...
“No way,” Sophia whispered in disbelief as that realization grew. “This can’t be possible.”
Yet, it all fit - the enhanced sense of smell, the eyes, and the fur-like hair on her neck. It really shouldn’t have been possible, but here she was. She had no idea what had caused it or what to do about it, but her body had indeed taken on some wolfish features.
That wasn’t all she had gained, as the unfamiliar instincts and ideas tugging at her consciousness made clear. Fighting the urge to investigate other scents in the room, she removed her shirt and undershirt. To her shock, she discovered a dense patch of white fur that started at the top of her sternum and tapered to a thin line between her breasts and ran to her navel before gradually expanding into a triangular patch that disappeared under the top of her pants. Removing her bra, she examined her small breasts. They didn’t appear any different and, to her relief, the fur didn’t extend onto them.
Turning to the side, she looked at her back. The dark hairs on her neck extended down onto her back and across to her shoulders. The hair was thickest just below her neck and thinned until it reached the tops of her shoulders and midway down her back, forming a rough V-shape. She could still easily see her skin as the hairs weren’t as long or as dense as a real wolf’s, nor was there an undercoat. Still, it would be a huge pain to try to shave it off if it came to that.
Bringing her hands to either side of her hips, she pulled off her jeans. Now down to just her underwear, she examined her legs and groaned. Hairs like those on her back and neck covered her legs, making them look like they belonged more to a teenage guy than a girl. With that unpleasant discovery, she took a breath and then took off her panties, leaving her completely naked.
Unsurprisingly, her pubic hair had been replaced by the soft white fur that was between her breasts. A quick examination revealed her feminine bits remained otherwise unchanged, although they were a bit moist, reflecting her odd horniness. Finally, she checked her butt, confirming it too had been spared any changes.
Her examination finished, she sat back on the bed and considered her options. It had been about an hour since she had gotten home, and her dad never came home until the early hours of the morning. She strongly doubted a doctor would have been able to do anything for her, and she suspected she would become a bit of a spectacle if she did call for medical attention. If she went outside, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to control her new urges anyway. Candice wouldn’t know how to help either…
Wait, Candice! Her eyes widened as she thought of her friend. The Halloween party! Why didn’t I think of that before? There was that tribal legend about people acting like wolves during the full moon, and I played with that pelt. Was that legend true?!? I don’t know how it could be real, but it had to be! Maybe the other girls also changed tonight!
Quickly, Sophia went over to her backpack and found her flip phone.
“Hey! How r u tonight?” she typed out and hit send.
She waited impatiently, fighting the sudden urge to bury her nose in her backpack. It only took a few minutes to get a text back.
“Fine, playing a family game. U?” Candice’s reply read.
Sophia’s heart sank as she read it. Candice and her sister evidently weren’t experiencing anything out of the ordinary.
If they’re not changing, then why am I? She wondered, distraught. We all played with the wolf skin. Maybe it was something else..?
“Ok bored,” she sent a reply back and shut her phone, not in the mood to continue the conversation.
Wishing she knew the other girls’ numbers right then, Sophia went over to her desk and sat in her chair. The shock of the cold wood pressing on her butt and thighs reminded her she was still naked, but she was alone in the house, and the thought of putting clothes back on prompted an odd wave of anxiety inside of her, insisting she was trapped. Instead, she pulled her chair in.
Opening her laptop, she hit the power button and waited. The strong scent of electronics and plastic heating up hit her nose, and the spinning of the computer’s hard drive was surprisingly loud in her ears. Both were decidedly unpleasant and made her seriously consider giving in to the compulsion to get away from the unnatural scents and sounds. Instead, she logged in and pulled up her browser.
This was certainly a time she was glad she split paying for the internet with her father, she thought as she typed “wolf Indian legend eastern Idaho” into the search bar. A second later, the search engine’s response to the query appeared in the browser’s tab. The first page of results wasn’t particularly helpful and was either about the Shoshone tribe’s legends or about the efforts to return wolves to the western United States. The second page was similarly frustratingly unhelpful.
She was starting to doubt the existence of the legend when she found a link to an obscure blog midway down the third page of results. The blog had been dedicated to collecting obscure legends and tales from around the world and seemed to have been quite active in its day. Unfortunately, it looked like it had been long abandoned, with the last post from over a decade before. Yet, the title of the linked post piqued her interest: The Weird Werewolf Legend of a Small Idahoan Tribe.
She leaned in and read the short post:
The descendants of one Idahoan tribe that used to live in the western foothills of the Teton Range have a curious legend about their ancestors. They say their ancestors once performed a ritual using wolfskins when the moon was at its most visible to channel the spirits of wolves for a night. While many native peoples had rituals calling upon wolf spirits to confer blessings or spirits that could take the forms of both humans and wolves, this particular legend insists those who knew a specific ritual took on the features of a wolf for the night.
The stories say this was difficult to perform correctly for most and only lasted for the night of the ritual or faded after one or two subsequent full moons. However, they also say that some individuals possessed the spirits of wolves and it would come forth every full moon after for them. The individual who relayed this to me, also mentioned these stories warned those individuals risked losing themselves to the wolf forever, but did not seem to know what that meant.
Sophia sat back after finishing, a flurry of emotions running through her.
It's only supposed to last until morning, that's good, she thought in relief. What if it doesn't, though? I can shave the fur, but how would I hide the eyes or teeth? What about the ears? I'd be a freak! No guy would invite an actual wolf-girl to a school dance!
She stood and started anxiously pacing around her room, ignoring the urge to investigate the strong scents coming from her trash can. Idly, she wondered if she had the spirit of a wolf and what the story meant about such individuals losing themselves forever. If she just spent the night in her room, then surely all of the changes would disappear in the morning, right? Did she really want them to? A growing pressure in her bladder interrupted her ruminations and, with her conscious mind still preoccupied with her current state, she instinctively went to a spot in front of her dresser and got to all fours. Thankfully, her brain caught up to what she was doing before she started urinating.
"What the hell!" She swore loudly.
Horrified, she got to her feet and opened the door to the hall with a shaking hand. Immediately, the scents that the closed door had muted hit her with full force, and she actually took a step back. There were her scents, of course, and her brain was still telling her something was wrong with them. Outside her room, however, there was another set of scents that were just as strong as hers.
Inclining her neck, she sniffed the air curiously. They were different, yet had a strange commonality to them. There was also something about them that the new and unfamiliar part of her found alarming. This part of her demanded she keep her distance from whatever made it until she knew what it was and if it was edible. Though whatever made it also didn’t seem to be nearby right then, at least.
After confirming the origin of the strange scents wasn’t an immediate threat, the new, lupine side of her seemed to turn its attention to the other smells permeating the house. They were unfamiliar, and that side pushed her to investigate them. However, Sophia pushed back against these suggestions and looked towards the bathroom.
Remembering she was still naked and determined not to let the lupine instincts get the better of her, she grabbed her light blue cotton bathrobe from next to the door. The other part of her protested against this strange outer fur, but she ignored it and tied the robe around herself. The robe felt odd against her fur, but it brought a renewed sense of confidence. She made her way down the hall to the bathroom and undid her robe before sitting on the toilet.
The smells of the bathroom were particularly strong, and she did everything she could to avoid losing herself in them. The wolf part of her was prodding her to replace her wrong-smelling scents with correct ones, as well as more fully investigate those from this unknown entity. The strong scent of her own urine being emptied into the toilet nearly made her give in to that side, and she actually had to plug her nose to overcome it. She didn’t dare unplug it until the toilet finished flushing.
Quickly, she washed and dried her hands before replugging her nose. It was quickly becoming clear she had to do something to avoid being overpowered by her nose and the attendant lupine instincts. After making it into the hallway, an idea struck her, and she made her way to the laundry room. To her surprise, she had to fight the impulse to get away from the strong scents of the various laundry detergents and other cleaning supplies rather than investigate them. It took holding her breath to conduct her search, but at last she found a clothespin and clipped it on her nose. Immediately, the scents stopped threatening to overpower her, and she sighed. Her nose now hurt, but at least she could think. With an aching nose, she made her way back to her bedroom and plopped down on her bed, facing the mirror.
At the same time, the sheer strangeness and uncertainty of it terrified her. She had no idea what would happen if she followed the new instincts or if it truly was temporary. What would happen if she did follow her urges to leave the house and go outside? Would she find herself changing back and lost in the middle of the forest somewhere? Maybe she’d be caught and end up as a scientific curiosity, stuck in a secret government lab for the rest of her life?
But would remaining like this really be so bad? A voice deep within her whispered. Isn’t this what I’ve secretly always wanted? What if this is only for one night and never again?
Horrified, she tried to dismiss this voice, insisting it wasn’t what she wanted. She was a human! There was no room in her life for being a werewolf; it would be for the best if it never happened again! Yet, as hard as the rational side of her tried to banish that voice, it couldn’t. It was true, some part of her really did want to indulge this new side of her and enjoy the experience. Becoming a wolf, even a little bit and temporarily, was a dream come true.
If she kept fighting the changes, she may forever regret it. She opened her mouth and ran her tongue over her fangs thoughtfully. Part of her very much wanted to hunt with those fangs, and it wasn’t simply the new lupine part either. Unfortunately, it was far too dangerous to leave the house when she didn’t know anything about how long the changes would last or how to control them. On the other hand, her dad would also be home in a couple of hours, which made staying in the house risky.
What if she stayed in her room and let herself go a little bit? She’d keep a firm leash on the wolf currently sharing her body the whole time. That way, she wouldn’t be putting herself or anyone else at risk. If this was her one and only chance, well, she’d have it to remember for the rest of her life. However, if they were permanent or recurred on the next full moon as the legend suggested, well, she’d deal with that when it happened.
I really am a wolf-girl now, she thought soberly. I hope I’m not making a mistake.
Emotions warring within, she warily got off the bed, closed and locked the door.