Things to Come

A "Winds of Change" Story

By Brian Eirik Coe

We all just kind of looked at Mano’s car after it pulled into the lot. We couldn’t see our leonine friend behind the wheel because of a glare on the windshield. With the way Michael had been acting all morning, we were more than a little curious.

"What’s with him?" asked Stripes, now back into his center zebra morph, "What’s he waiting for?"

Michael shuffled his feet uncomfortably, then used an aspirin nasal spray for reptile morphs. "Mano asked me not to say," he said with a pained expression, his long awaited hangover was beginning with full force, "and stop shouting. She’ll explain everything soon enough."

I rubbed my leg just above the cast. My Change had reached a point just above the break and it was definitely not comfortable. "What do you mean, she?" I asked.

The car door swung open quickly and Mano… no, that wasn’t Mano, I corrected myself. This beauty could never be mistaken for our friend. She set the car alarm and started walking over toward us, waving. I stared at her as she came over. There was something about femme morphs of the big cats that always looked so right, so perfect. It was probably why they were so often in the centerfolds…

Not that I’d know anything about that, of course.

She didn’t look exactly on that level of beauty, but she seemed pretty damn close. A little make-up and something a little more revealing would make her look exactly like…

"Mano?" breathed Stripes from behind me, breaking my thoughts.

I glanced up at him, "What?"

She stopped a couple of feet in front of me, nodding at Stripes. "Hi guys." She smiled tightly, "Notice anything different?"

We all did a double take, all but Michael that is. Jim was the first one that found his voice. "What happened?"

Mano sighed and looked at Michael. "You know, you could have told them."

He looked pained, "You told me not to do that!"

"Yeah, but I didn’t expect you would actually do it!" she said with more casual smile. She turned her attention back to the rest of us. "I seem to have found a new power. I woke up yesterday like this."

Stripes was the first one to make the connection, "You’re stuck, aren’t you?"

Mano just nodded grimly.

"Permanently?" I asked.

She put her hands on her hips and looked down at me with a wry expression, "You don’t have to sound so hopeful, Todd!" Then her expression changed to one of worry, "What are you doing?"

I stopped rubbing my leg a moment, no even realizing that I’d been doing it. The pain almost started right back up, so I started massaging it again. "My leg’s beginning to hurt. I think that the Change is hitting the break."

"You want me to drive you home?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No, I’m okay," I said. "I’ll just go and…" my voice was cut off in a strangled cry as a sharp, stabbing pain suddenly shot out from my leg and seemed to radiate across my body. I stiffened in the chair, threatening to fall out before Stripes and Jim stopped me.

"What’s wrong?" said Stripes, almost at a yell.

"My… leg…! Ow!" I moaned. The sharp, stabbing pain felt like someone was trying to take my leg off with a rusty hacksaw!

Jim started to turn the wheelchair toward the office, but Mano stopped him. "Forget it, I’m taking him to the hospital. Go tell the secretary to call his parents." Jim nodded and took off.

I gritted my teeth so hard that I felt like they’d shatter from the pressure. Mano and Stripes wheeled the chair to the car and gently lifted me out. To their credit, they only managed to bang my cast a couple of times as they eased me into the backseat, getting me to cry out in agony. If it was possible, the pain seemed to be getting worse. My Change was definitely doing something, and it was doing it in a hurry!

Mano shut the back door and started to open the drivers door when the principle ran up. "What’s going on?" he said quickly, then looked at me grimacing in pain in the backseat of the car. "Damn, your dad said this might happen." He looked at the lioness, "Jacobson, right?" he asked. Obviously, someone had informed him in advance. When she nodded, he held the door open. "Go ahead, take him to the hospital and stay there until his parents get there." He looked pointedly at her. "Then back here, got it?"

Mano nodded quickly and jumped into the car. "You doing okay, Todd?"

Through gritted teeth, I grunted, "No! Let’s get moving!"

The drive to the hospital was quick, it was only a few blocks from the school. It was almost silent, though. Despite my leg, I had a million questions running through my mind for the my friend, but it wasn’t the time or place to start asking them. For her part, I saw her eyes several times flick back toward me in the rearview mirror.

Very beautiful eyes, at that.

Mano had barely pulled into the emergency room bay when the door was pulled open by an orderly. Someone had called ahead obviously and they were waiting with a gurney. They started asking me a lot of questions, but my mind felt fuzzy, their words weren’t making any sense. The world seemed to turn gray, then black…

I woke up feeling good.

Really good.

It was a familiar feeling, one that I knew well. It was the same way I felt after I got out of surgery the last time. I’d been pumped with a pile of painkillers. I felt numb all over, particularly my leg. Looking down, I saw that the cast had been cut away and my now bare leg was rigged into a sling.

"Oh, you’re awake," said a voice from the side. I looked and saw an older woman with vague canine features and dark fur looking over a chart. "You gave us a bit of a scare, Todd."

"What happened?" I asked.

She continued to make notes on her clipboard. "Your Change started remolding the bones in your leg, and it wasn’t doing well with the break. You were in so much pain that you started to go feral on us." She said it like she was talking about the weather.

"Oh God," I whimpered. It wasn’t something that I wanted to hear.

"I wouldn’t worry too much, it happens from time to time." She made a couple more notations, "I’ll go get your parents." She said it quickly and was gone before I could ask a question.

I sat in the room alone for a couple minutes before I heard a knock on the door. I looked up and saw Stripes and Mano poking their heads in. "Todd?" asked Stripes hesitantly, "You in there?"

I smiled. "Come in, guys." I checked myself, suddenly remembering Mano… "Oh, sorry, I…"

She smiled a little, "I’m still one of the guys, Todd. Sorta."

"Jim and Michael were going to come, but Michael was feeling pretty sick, and Jim was meeting Gale. He said he’d bring her by later," said Stripes.

My head was swimming, "Shouldn’t you both be in school?"

Stripes looked at me oddly, "School? It’s almost 4 o’clock."

I blinked. "What? I’ve been out all day?" I said worried.

"You didn’t know?" asked Mano.

I shook my head. "I just woke up." I wasn’t feeling that good all of a sudden, despite all the painkillers. My brain was still a little fuzzy, but I wanted to know what was going on. "Can one of you go find my parents? They’re around here somewhere."

Stripes nodded and headed for the door. "I saw them a few minutes ago, I’ll go find them." He left, leaving me and Mano in the room alone.

She looked at me with concern in her eyes. "How are you feeling?"

I gave her a half smile, "I was going to ask you the same question. How are you holding up?"

She shrugged, "Okay, I guess."

"How did everyone at school take it?"

She smiled, "I don’t know how many of them believe it yet, but so far so good. I already had to put someone in his place, though."

I thought a second, "Pile, right?"

She laughed, "Got it in one."

It wasn’t a hard guess. Derek Pile was the pitcher on the school baseball team, an arctic fox morph that thought he was God’s gift to all things female. "What’d he do?" I paused a second, "And what did you do?"

She grimaced, "He cornered me by my locker and tried to kiss me." She chuckled, "Then I told him who I was."

I burst out laughing, "He didn’t know?"

She shook her head. "Not at all. I think he thought I was a new girl on campus." She shrugged, "Which I am, I guess." That put a lull in the conversation. Mano started to walk to the door, "I’ll try and find what’s

keeping your parents…"

"Wait!" I said quickly, "Don’t go." She stopped looked at me curiously.

"Please don’t go."

Mano cocked her head quizzically, "What’s wrong?"

I struggled with myself, not sure how much to dump on her shoulders. She already had more on her mind that I could possibly imagine. Finally, my fears overcame my hesitation, and I blurted, "I’m scared, Mano."

She cocked her head a little and took a step closer. "Because you almost went feral?" I nodded slowly, "Do you have any idea how scary this is? In a few days or weeks, I could be…"

"Nothing’s going to happen!" she said forcefully. "We’ll do whatever we can…"

"Like what, Mano?" I asked quietly. "It’s nothing we can control. Hell, you can’t even control your own gender!" I stopped abruptly when I realized what I was saying. Her eyes fell to the floor, her face crestfallen. "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything…" My eyes started to tear up, and I could feel it soaking the fur around them. "I don’t know why…" I started sniffling and crying.

I started to wipe tears away with the back of my hand when she stepped forward and wiped them away with a tissue . "It’ll be okay, Todd. We’re all here for you." When I didn’t stop crying, she gently wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me closely. "It’ll be alright, it’ll be alright," she kept repeating as I tried to get a hold of myself. When I finally settled down a little, she slowly stood. "Feeling better?"

Nodding, I looked into her eyes again. There was something different there. Different beyond the obvious. There was a softness and tenderness that I’d never seen before.

Either that, or I was still really high on the painkillers.

"Thanks," I said with a weak smile.

She cocked her head quizzically. "For what?"

I closed my eyes and leaned back on the pillow, feeling her warm hand on my bare shoulder. "For being here."

She didn’t have a chance to ask what I meant before my parents walked in, followed closely by Stripes and Doctor Chin. "Todd! Are you okay?" asked my mother with way to much panic in her voice. She and my father raced across the room and practically shoved Mano out of the way to hug me.

"I’m fine, I think," I said looking at the doctor.

Dr. Chin nodded, but he seemed grim. "I’ve talked with your parents, Todd, and they feel it’s best if I come straight with you. Your leg is in real danger. You’re not going to lose it, but if things keep up like this, it’s going to be deformed."

"What?" I said in a choked voice. "Why?"

He sighed, "Your leg is Changing too smoothly to set right. But you’re in luck. There’s a person with a healing power who is going to be down in San Francisco tomorrow. I’ve talked to her, and she’s willing to stop here on the way to work on your leg. It’s a bit of a risk, though."

My dad interrupted the doctor. "There is a chance that this will accelerate what’s happening."

I looked up at Stripes and Mano, then back at my parents. "So this might all be over, one way or the other, faster?"

All three just nodded. "If we do this tomorrow, then you could be done in a week. Two at the outside."

I sighed and shrugged. I had maybe two months left as a human if my destiny was to be a raccoon, but until I knew it would tear me up inside. "Let’s do it then."

It wasn’t the first time in the last couple of weeks that I’d spent a night in the hospital, but it would hopefully be the last. My parents and I had all wanted me to come home, but the healer would be passing through in the middle of the night, and her schedule was tight. For staying the night here, I could be walking again by morning.

My friends had stayed until the end of visiting hours. Despite all the alterations and changes that had happened to all of us, it was like old times. Mano even seemed to be taking what had happened to her in stride.

Now that it was late, I sat in the bed with a pad and pencil and jotted down notes for a book report I needed to finish by the end of the week. I got to the bottom of the page and flipped it to the next, then stopped. On a whim, I started running the pencil in smooth lines around the page, and slowly a crude image began to emerge. I hadn’t really had a plan when I started, but by the time I was done, it was definitely a rough likeness of the new feminine Mano. Slowly, I circled the drawing with a heart, feeling my own beat a little faster.

What the hell was I doing? This was Mano, for God’s sake! She wasn’t even really a she… Was she?

I looked longingly at the drawing, sighed, then slammed the notebook shut and tried to get some sleep.

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