Take Off Your Hat
Prologue
She stretched out her hands, glorifying in the way her arms went out farther and farther, past the point where they had ever gone. She did it slowly – so, so slowly. The liquid way her muscles moved, the way she just went out from herself. Her body had so many more curves now, and she wanted to stretch them all straight, and then to draw them all back in. Four new digits, one on each hand and foot, had grown, and the soft wind touched them gently, pushing at them, caressing and cradling them and their new awareness. Finally her arms reached their end, and she stood balanced on tiptoe, feeling the new, smallest toes splaying out to balance her. She smiled up to the sun, deeply breathing in air which had always been out of her reach. Bigger though she was, the world itself seemed suddenly so much bigger as well, as though she had only ever seen a small part, which of course was true, and now that she found herself above her former limits, space too exploded out. With a snap, all the suddenness her form and nature would allow, she hugged herself, wrapping her arms around to her back, stretching, straining until her fingers met in back. She gave a little jump for joy and threw up a leg. She laughed aloud as she reached down, feeling her body. Her small potbelly had moved up, and somehow split into two parallel humps. The light velvet fuzz was gone from most of her body, leaving only rich pale locks on her head, and the silken purple fur on her torso. She smiled to herself as she felt the lines on her thighs where the hair began. Once again she lifted her hands to the sky, raising them up to take hold of a sun she finally thought she might hold.