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Enzymes in the body are more cleverly conceived than most furs realise. You see dear reader, the inside of an enzyme molecule is made up of complicated folds which makes it soft and squidgy, and some types are prone to slipping on the inside and assuming two very different shapes. They are, you might say, switchable. In one shape they fit with a given protein and this catalyses some effect on the animal body. This is fine and normal, the way you were built and the way things should be.

But what happens when the enzyme switches to its other shape? What proteins might fit with it then, and what effect might that have on a body?

So was the precarious state of affairs in which Rikes the German Shepherd Dog spent her life, although she couldn't possibly have known about it. Her enzymes, you see, were mutated. We will never know why they one day switched. Perhaps it was recent prolonged exposure on a hot, sunny day. Perhaps it was something she ate. But one enzyme switched, and then another, and then another...

Proteins began to cling to them. And once they did

that, they unlocked something rather shocking in her body's potential.

Just as well her body, unused as it was to all of this, only changed relatively gently.

The first time, in any case.

xXx

Rikes smoothed the fourth of five white shirts over the surface of the ironing board, easy with the feeling of weekend relaxation and boring Sunday chores. As she prepared it, she looked over to where the rest of her uniform hung. She'd always felt great pride in her job as a police dog. Sometimes the work was less than glamorous and often enough, dangerous. But she'd trained hard and on her days off, she played hard too.

It was a life lived to the full.

A dainty little buzz infused her body, which she assumed was pride. Smiling to herself and the almost gauche feeling she still had over her job (How does anyfur get jaded in this life? There's so much good if you work hard for it.) she went to pick up the iron, sweeping her tail out behind her to counter the minor weight of the appliance.

She noticed something and flinched: her forearm and hand, which had always been the soft black shade of a classic GSD, had sprouted grey hairs. Such pale grey they were practically white. She brought it up to her face for closer inspection. How- when? her mind stuttered, disbelieving. I know they say old age comes on quickly, but I could swear I didn't notice going grey this morning!

The buzz in her body intensified and somewhere at the back of her mind, she began to suspect she might be coming down with something. Although... the idea didn't seem quite right, like a piece of jigsaw a fur might try to push into the wrong space. No illness Rikes had ever heard of turned fur grey.

The feeling turned from a buzz into something more like a rattle and Rikes stepped away from the ironing board, sure that she wouldn't be able to handle the iron safely any more. She wobbled her way on unstable legs to the settee and sat down. Why do I feel so strange? She took a deep breath to exhale slowly. Although when she took her lungful in, she felt a tightness around her chest.

She touched at it, afraid of what it might mean. It was as if she'd swollen up underneath her clothing, which now felt too small. What's happening to me? Am I going to stop breathing? her mind wailed, quickly rising into panic.

The rattle hardened and she slid her legs up onto the seat of the settee to curl up. But her training shook her out of it. No, come on Rikes! her mind rallied, a bugle of clarity among the rapidly-growing chaos of her body. You're police! Now, what are you going to do? You're not going to panic, that won't help you or anyfur. So breathe. Sit up, sit straight, and breathe.

She sat up, trembling badly yet feeling unexpected strength in her supporting arm. She felt bigger, somehow, almost as if she was taller. Plus she felt slightly dizzy, and her knees felt very odd. The shepherd didn't really dare look down at her knees because she was afraid of what she might see, so instead she shifted a little to try and put the strange feelings right - how had the experience of sitting upright changed so quickly? - and breathed in. Just a few breaths. Just a few to get you to think clearl-

Her shirt ripped, the buttons popping off at the widest section of her breasts. They held, just about, closer to her throat.

She clutched at her lapels and looked down in shock. At the same time she realised that the back of her neck felt odd - as if she had more fur than she was used to - and she put a hand back there just as she took in the sight of her breasts.

She did have more fur, a fairly short, but dense ridge of hackles.

Her breasts were bigger too. And as she noticed this, a tide of relief swept over her through all of the strange feelings. So it's not to do with my lungs or heart? she asked herself. I'm safer than I thought.

She started to feel angry.

Angry? Why angry?

The rattling seemed to switch somehow and beyond her rage - a dark, smouldering feeling not far different to a particularly bad bout of PMT - she wondered: Is all of this something to do with hormones?

Nothing else happened. The rattling seemed to remain as a kind of hum in the sinews of her body and her inexplicable anger remained but to Rikes' immense relief, no other changes seemed to happen.

She was definitely taller. She tried to stand and toppled, flopping onto the carpet with the shocked realisation that her knees had changed.

"AARRGH!" she screamed, swiping the coffee table out of the way in her fury. Three things happened all at once. Firstly, she realised her voice was gravelly and feral, a sharp and hard scream she wouldn't have expected even if she'd meant to lose her temper. Secondly... I just smashed the coffee table against the wall, she thought, shock and guilt peeping through her anger as she looked at the mess of splinters, bare wood and chipped mahogany at the edge of the floor. How did I get so strong?

Thirdly, Rikes had rolled onto her back to swat at the table and that had given her a view of her legs. Her sleek black trousers had been ripped badly, and the reason was that her leg joints had changed. She wiggled the toes of her right foot and stretched what felt roughly like her heel forward. My feet are longer than they were! She experimentally straightened her knee - it seemed to want to revert to a naturally bent position. Her thighs felt powerful and the whole arrangement of her legs felt... sprung.

A feral's legs.

That wasn't all: the claws of her feet had grown. Lengthened, like talons. What's happened to me if my keratin grows more quickly? They weren't growing any more, so she guessed her immediate instinct was right: that the change had stopped.

She stood up carefully, her hands on the seat of the settee, and levered herself up onto her strange legs. To her surprise she found herself naturally standing on the balls of her feet. Gently and slowly, and watching her feet as she did, she tried to lower her heels to the carpet.

It felt like a strain, one that made her abdominals tense with the effort. She stood again and bounced on her new legs.

Yes: they definitely sprang.

Can I walk? She straightened up and found that, although her legs were feral, her hips didn't seem to be. Something in the new shape of her body made her want to hunch a bit, but she could stand. She took a step, swaying a little and waving her arms for balance from the difficulty of walking only on the balls of her feet. She took another. Her thighs had all the power, her strangely elongated ankles had spring.

Rikes looked down at her talonned, cruel feet. Her curiosity evaporated and she felt raw fear in its place. What if I'm stuck like this? Oh, bollocks! She nearly put her hands to her face but saw an array of talons coming towards her eyes and startled. My god. Claws!

And my forearms,

she realised and began to grow almost weary with the huge inventory of changes. Before, they'd been salt-and-pepper, but now? Pure white, all the way up to the place she would have expected the junction where gentle black gave way to wheat gold. She could almost have expected she was looking at a negative of herself: her forearms were white, and her gold? There she'd turned a rich, bluish slate.

Suddenly she couldn't bear not to know how she looked, and stalked with powerful strides through to the bedroom.

She prowled up to her full-length mirror and gasped. In front of her stood an image of a monster.

A monster with thick and dense fur, white and a slate colour so rich it could be called a muted blue. The points where these colours met were striped. Her tail seemed not to have grown and flicked in and out of sight behind her big thighs as she struggled to keep balance in her odd new body. Her breasts were as round and large as canonballs. Tentatively she touched them, expecting them to be tender. But no: while they were unexpectedly hard, there was nothing painful in touching them.

But the monster's face almost undermined all of it. A white muzzle full of savage teeth, heavy white brow-marks and thick-pelted ears. Thick cheek hair. All pulled into an almost comical look of fear and horror.

'Almost' because it would have been funny if it hadn't been happening to her. Probably.

Why? she thought breathlessly. The fear made her hyperventilate slightly and the monster in the mirror panted. It placed its hands to either side of the mirror and looked darkly, desperately at her. Its breath steamed the surface.

Without warning she felt a hollow lurch in her stomach and limbs, the kind a fur felt in a lift travelling downwards. She staggered back, and when the feeling disappeared she looked in the mirror again to see she'd changed: weaker thighs, shorter feet. Her white lower legs and forearms speckled with black and her blue turned muddy with gold. Humbler breasts and a face more recognisable as her own.

Another lurch - she squealed and slewed sideways. She crawled, four-legged, to the mirror again and looked. She could have cried with relief: most of her old colouration was back. Her heels felt stretchier. She no longer felt the urge to hunch.

One more, small lurch. This time, better-supported on her hands and knees, she managed to keep her eyes on the mirror image of herself.

And she saw - actually saw - herself return to normal.

She waited, not daring to cry, for another lurch. Or a return to her blue and white state. But it never came. After what she judged was long enough, she dared to believe the ordeal was over, and twisted around to sit on her heels.

Her clothes were ruined and she took off the remains of her shirt. Torn beyond repair, she realised numbly. A cursory check of her trousers showed the same thing. Rikes began to shake badly as the horror of what had just happened to her took hold, not understanding what it had been.

She started to cry and put her shirt to her eyes to mop the tears, but found that once it was there, she couldn't dare take it away for some time in case she saw in the mirror that her monstrosity had returned.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Story © Palantean Writer Rikes © Rikes