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Dain looked back at his mother momentarily as he walked out the door, tugging uncomfortably at the formal clothes that absolutely refused to settle comfortably into place for more than a minute or two - while the fit of some of his newer clothes were already giving indications that he was outgrowing them, the formal clothes were older and their constricting fit was all too obvious. Normally, it would only be an annoyance, but in combination with his nerves the feeling was escalating to a chafing aggravation.

He watched his mother smile as she waved him on his way, an unmistakable look of pride emblazoned across her face. He knew that to her, the situation he was in was somewhere between amazing and the best thing ever, but from his perspective, the last couple of weeks had been a confused whirlwind of events that he was still trying to wrap his mind around. He knew, even now, that the craziness was far from over. After all, today he was a boy, sent off to be with a girl undergoing her first trial heat; yesterday, though, he'd been the girl going through it, lying back on her bed and thrilling at a boy's touch as tendrils of wild emotion soared through her. The sensations were still fresh in his mind, amazing feelings that were strangely out of touch, feelings meant for parts of his body that were no longer there, and which his mind could no longer properly place.

If his feet had mirrored his mind, he imagined that he would have been spinning rapidly in circles, or stumbling dazedly about in utter confusion. His pace, though, was luckily divorced from his confusion, and when he raised his head back up, Dain realized he was already at the first intersection, where he would turn at an angle away from the workshop and walk the remaining blocks to reach Caure's house. Not the longest of walks, but one that was pleasant enough despite the uncomfortable clothes, and it at least gave him a few moments to make yet another attempt at gathering his thoughts.

It was hard to concentrate, though, with the uncomfortable clothes tugging at his fur with every step. All throughout the prior week, he had wondered at the strange nod to formality throughout. After all, it wasn't as though the clothes had stayed on for very long anyway, and they certainly were not what Dain, in her heat-infused state, had been all that focused on in any case. Perhaps, Dain wondered, the clothes had some significance in the more structured mating rituals that they were all supposed to learn about later on, but while the female clothing had at least seemed to serve some useful purposes during heat, Dain couldn't think of any reason for wearing what the boys were required to. Surely, something more comfortable or easier to take off would make more sense? Sensical or not, though, he knew that this was what boys were required to wear for this particular occasion - at least, judging from the ones he had seen - and had therefore resigned himself to wearing them without protest.

Even so, dressed or not, Dain was still only partly able to wrap his mind around what was happening. Of course, he knew what his role would be, having watched the performances of many others over the past week, but he could still barely believe it. Before, after all, he hadn't even concerned himself with any of it, as he'd thought that he was just a regular boy without any features that might have led to him being picked. He certainly hadn't expected that he would experience a full trial heat, not just with one partner but with over a dozen, and as a female... and now this?

Dain shook his head, trying to clear away the confusion, even as he realized that what he - or rather, she - had gone through wasn't even the half of it. After all, Dain realized, this wasn't an invitation from some random girl. This was an invitation from Caure, the girl that had dragged him into the woods that first time, the girl that had learned Dain's secret, even before he knew it himself. Dain couldn't help but think back to that first, strange situation, the first time he'd shifted without even really knowing it just from being in her presence...

Dain shivered momentarily as the obvious thought came to him. If Caure could have that effect... what would happen if he showed up for her heat, with all that was apparently expected of him, and then shifted when they came face to face? Dain had no idea what would happen at that point, although if one of the boys attending to Dain during her heat had been a girl, and had left her to deal with that frustration... Dain couldn't imagine exactly what would happen, but given what had happened when she'd lost control at the beginning of her first trial heat, it probably wouldn't be pretty. Or what would happen, even, if he shifted while they were going at it, or when they were tied together?

The situation wasn't helped when he heard a male voice yelling a greeting, and he looked up to see Eiako waving at him from across the street. They were walking in opposite directions, and so only had time to exchange a few inconsequential words, but it was enough time for Dain to see a look of puzzlement flash across Eiako's face, probably as he realized that Dain now had noticeable ear-tufts and a typically direct male gait. It was also enough time, however, for Dain's memories of the afternoon spent intimately entwined with Eiako to push up to the front of his mind unbidden, and he could suddenly almost feel his gentle touch as it had slid along Dain's fur, how electric it had felt, how she had felt with his weight gently on top of her, the insistent pressure between her legs and the relief when he had slid her panties away and gently pushed... inside... something that was no longer there, and Dain felt a strange sort of glitch in his head as his mind tried to send signals to a part of his body that was, for the moment, essentially nonexistent. He felt a slight twinge in his belly instead, and he wondered if the thoughts had caused him to shift then and there, but he quickly realized that his arousal at the memory was instead being redirected when instead he could feel his penis begin to stir atop its sheath, threatening to poke out into his underwear and tent his stiff formal pants. Dain quickly tried to push away the vivid thoughts before he focused too keenly on them, before they provided him with even more unpredictable results.

His clothes now even more uncomfortably tight, Dain realized he was feeling more awkward by the moment, but throught it all his feet had continued to move resolutely forward; somehow, he had walked most of the distance while lost in thought. Caure's house was now only a few steps away, the door already open and her mother gesturing for Dain to hurry inside.

Dain stepped into the entryway, dipping his ears in greeting to Caure's mother, and she responded in kind. Dain had only encountered her on occasion, on the rare occasions when she came to retrieve Caure early from the studio. Despite her conservative dress, she had a kind face, albeit one that was now tinged slightly with aggravation. Dain soon understood why: the distinctive scent of heat tickled at his nostrils the moment he entered the house, but as he processed the complex scent, he realized that he was smelling far more than just one. Dain could feel himself blushing under his fur, looking over at Caure's mom and hoping that one of the scents was not hers - if it was, he had know idea what he was going to do.

Luckily, she didn't seem to be showing any of the other attendant behaviors, and didn't seem particularly interested in Dain's presence, other than to guide him through the house. They made their way through a common area, where Dain could see a few young children sitting on a sofa next to one of their fathers, watching a viewscreen on the opposite wall, while another pair were rolling around on the floor, doing some sort of make-believe play. Even as they walked, another, slightly older child ran across their path, yipping happily, while one of their other fathers chased playfully after him, making monster noises. Caure had mentioned once that she came from a large family, and Dain was now beginning to realize just how big it actually was.

It was certainly a far cry from his own family, which for as long as he could remember consisted primarily of his mother and himself, aside from the incredibly rare visits to a handful of peripheral relatives. While it was true that Dain, despite his recent experiences, didn't really know that much about reproduction, one fact that was obvious was that the amount, and frequency, of births apparently varied considerably from woman to woman. The sorting of mates that girls went through, he knew, had something to do with finding the right genetic matches, so that each heat had the greatest possibility of resulting in babies, but even with all of that things were quite variable. Caure's mom was probably on the high end of things, while Dain's mom was on the low end - although, come to think of it, being an only child was generally quite rare, and he couldn't even think of a time when he'd ever noticed his mom going through heat at all. Did it have something to do with him being a shifter? Dain had no idea, and any further thoughts on the matter were quickly shoved aside when a sound coming from off to the side suddenly made his ears perk up.

It was a sound that Dain was already intimately familiar with, as it was very similar to the ones that Dain herself had been making regularly during the past week, usually as a result of a pleasantly deep thrust... In his current form, though, the sound seemed to cut instantly through the clutter in his mind, clawing its way directly to the front of his awareness. The sound alone sent a pleasant thrill running down his spine, and he could feel his tail begin to twitch as he automatically swiveled his gaze across the room to see where the sound was coming from.

Off to his right, a doorway to an adjacent room was closed off by a sliding door, although it wasn't actually all the way closed - looking over, Dain could see a small vertical sliver of room between the door and the frame. From what he could see, the interior of the room was some sort of den, a sliver of an abstract painting visible on the beige wall. Directly below it, Dain could see a portion of a black leather couch, one which was definitely occupied; he could see a girl around Caure's age leaning her head against the plush armrest, her muzzle open and her tongue panting out. Just below, at the very edge of what Dain could see, he could make out a male head nuzzled between the curves of the girl's breasts, rocking forward along her chest a moment before the girl did...

Dain could feel his face heat up as his blush intensified, and he quickly turned away, trying to put what he had seen out of his head before it conjured up any other memories... memories that, he worried, might make his body do something unexpected. The moans continued, though, and when he looked over at Caure's mom, he knew that she wasn't all that comfortable with the situation either. Just the quick glimpse had caused something to stir in his pants, and he hoped that whatever was happening there was the normal male response. He'd seen what that entailed, quite recently in fact, but it wasn't something he'd really experienced much himself - despite his age, it wasn't a desire he'd even thought about, let alone done anything about - at least, not before his body had taken over and asserted its sexuality in a way Dain could never have anticipated.

The two of them walked quickly past the closed-off room and around a corner, making their way along a wide hallway with several doors on each side. Dain quickly realized that they were all bedrooms, each one probably shared by more than one kid, given how many were in the family. Some of the doors were open, revealing bedrooms about the same size as Dain's, but with at least two beds, in some cases bunk beds in addition to a crib. Most were empty, although a couple had somewhat older kids inside, two in one room playing a board game on the carpeted floor, while in another a boy was reading what looked like an equipment manual at his desk. Dain thought he recognized him, a boy a few years younger than he was, that he'd seen around a few times but couldn't recall speaking to. Three of the doors were closed, though, and behind the two that they passed, Dain could faintly hear the combined rhythmic thumping and moans that clearly indicated activities similar to what he'd glimpsed in the den.

Caure's mom sighed as they passed the second door. "You know, Dain, your mother's lucky she just has you to deal with. Being a boy, I doubt you'd understand it, but having so many girls being of age, with overlapping heats, it's... something else, to be sure. You should be glad your life is simple!" Dain thought of speaking up in response, but given his nervousness he decided to keep his mouth shut. Somehow, she didn't seem to know what Dain had just gone through, although he was sure that Caure herself did. Knowing what his experience had been, though, Dain could well understand why Caure's mom was looking so frazzled - having not one, but four, impossibly aroused girls to deal with was probably quite a challenge, not to mention the rest of the kids running around underfoot. At least, he figured, she wasn't doing it alone - along with the multitude of kids certainly came a multitude of fathers, and there would always be some rotating through to help take care of them and prepare them for the adult world.

The only currently quiet room, of course, was Caure's. As soon as they reached it, Caure's mother quickly opened the door and ushered him inside, giving Dain a flustered glance when he looked back hesitantly, and flashing him a "good luck" gesture with her hands before closing the door firmly behind him. For a moment, Dain had the sudden impulse to grab the door handle, fling it open, and run off until he could gather his thoughts - the intense smell of heat was having a different effect on him now, one that seemed to be making his muscles tense and adrenaline pump, and the anxiety he'd tried to suppress on the walk over was suddenly welling up unbidden. He felt his hand coming up, moving towards the handle, but he suddenly froze in place as he heard Caure's voice ring out behind him.

"Dain! You showed up after all! I thought you might've chickened out or something when you saw the invitation, but somehow I just knew you wouldn't be able to resist..."

"Well, I, uh... You said you were going to, so I..." Dain turned around as he replied, only to freeze again when Caure herself came into view.

In all honesty, despite the experiences they had already had together, Dain had never really thought about Caure in an "adult" sort of way. Even when they had been together out in the woods, almost completely naked, Dain had been too focused on the confusion of his sudden change to take much notice of Caure's attributes. Caure had also never been one to flaunt her femininity in the way some of the other girls had begun to, and while her clothes had often featured the pastel colors associated more with girls' dress, they had remained similar to what she'd always worn. Some of the other girls had shifted to a different style, one that involved the display of more fur than before, something that hadn't impressed Dain in the least - instead, he'd considered Caure's choice to be smarter, as the reduced coverage seemed to negate... whatever the other benefits of it were, especially in a workshop where a layer of clothing could stand between easily singed fur and an open flame. As a result, though, while he had at least subconsciously begun to take more careful notice of the other girls, he hadn't really given much thought to what Caure looked like underneath her clothing... which was, in part, why he momentarily froze when he saw Caure lying on the bed in her full heat ensemble.

With the subtle camouflage of clothing no longer standing between them, the first thing Dain noted was just how feminine Caure looked. Unlike Dain's own body, which looked only slightly different regardless of which gender he currently was, Caure's body had developed in a much more traditional fashion. Dain realized that her breasts, while smaller than some of the other girls, were already well-formed, and the bra that she was wearing only served to draw attention directly to them. The gold-edged, cream-colored fabric contrasted just enough to stand out against her subtly striped, light brown fur, and curved away towards the center to amply display her cleavage. For a moment, Dain's eyes seemed to fixate on the breasts involuntarily, before he quickly blinked and let his eyes play across the rest of her body.

Caure was lying on her side atop a bed with lavender sheets, an intrigued smile on her face as she looked him over with equal intensity. Dain's gaze followed the soft lines of her body, noticing the bright pink dots of her auxiliary nipples running down along her chest, and the feminine way the profile of her body curved ever so slightly inward towards her waist before flaring out into nicely-rounded hips and tapered legs. The sight of her curves sent a surge through Dain's body, a vibrant, intense feeling that he guessed was the male version of arousal, although at the same time another part of him couldn't help but feel just a hint of jealousy - while the boys Dain had been with before had seemed more than happy with her body, Dain couldn't help but compare Caure's figure to the one she'd seen in the mirror a week before, a comparison that Dain knew could hardly go in her favor, especially when it came to her chest. Before that feeling could take hold, though, Dain's eyes were drawn to a complementary part of Caure's ensemble, and the odd feeling of jealousy was quickly overtaken by more immediate emotions.

The panties Caure wore were cut somewhat differently from the ones Dain was familiar with - the leg openings seemed to tilt up at a much sharper angle, leaving the fabric in between looking less like a rounded triangle and more like a gold-edged arrow pointing directly down between her legs. The waistband itself was embroidered in an intricate, decorative pattern stitched in shimmering gold-colored thread, while the cream-colored fabric seemed to darken as it went further down, which he quickly realized was due to the fact that the fabric was constructed in such a way that it became sheerer and more translucent as it dipped downward. It culminated between her legs, where the darker color immediately gave way to a bulge of intense pink, the fabric stretching tightly around contours that had swollen outward to become clearly visible against the sheer material. Dain knew from experience what that meant, and couldn't help but flash momentarily on the memory of how she had felt in a similar position only a day before, that warm, comfortable readiness tinged with a hint of desperation, her panties both tantalizingly arousing and squirmingly tight, every part of her thrumming with anticipation directed at the boy quickly disrobing just a few scant feet away...

In this case, though, Dain suddenly realized that he was the boy in question, and he quickly shook his head back and forth in a desperate attempt to free his mind from the intense, unbidden recollection. He feared, of course, that if it had continued, his body might had followed suit and reverted to being female, and he really didn't want to contemplate what an aggressive and frustratingly aroused Caure would do if Dain's anatomy was suddenly unable to provide the expected male attention. Whether it was the pervasive scent of Caure's heat, though, or some other unknown reaction, Dain realized that the intensely erotic memory appeared to have had a dramatically different effect - instead of the subtle feeling of shifting, Dain could feel the not-so-subtle sensation of his penis straining against his underwear, his dress pants noticeably tenting as the feeling told him he had emerged fully from his abbreviated sheath faster than he had thought was even possible. For a moment, Dain's hands moved to cover himself, as he would react to such a situation at any other time, but Dain quickly overrode that impulse and kept his hands at his sides. After all, he could still clearly remember his own experience, and how intriguing the sight of male arousal had been - in fact, this was probably the one and only situation where having his arousal on display was completely appropriate. Indeed, Caure did seem appreciative, her gaze instantly darting down towards his crotch and staying fixated there for several moments, before she in turn shook her head before looking back up at him.

"Dain, Dain, Dain... you really are something else." She smiled, and then, oddly enough actually began to giggle.

"Uh, Caure..."

"Oh, Dain, I'm sorry! I just can't help it! Seeing you here, like this, bulging out of your pants and everything, and how you must have looked the day before, it's just so... so... I don't even know what! So... you, I guess?"

Dain couldn't figure out how to respond to that, or even if he was supposed to respond, so he stayed silent for a moment as Caure slid her legs down over the side of the bed and tilted her body up to a sitting position, patting a spot on the bed just beside her. Dain couldn't help but flash momentarily on just how similar things seemed to be to the first encounter she had experienced with Teiya, from the momentary stunned silence, to the giggling awkwardness, to Caure's unspoken invitation to join her, and the revelation made the moment seem almost surreal. It was so similar to what Dain had already gone through, only from the completely opposite perspective, and once again Dain wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel at all. Luckily, though, his body seemed to be able to take care of that on its own, and the fabric was suddenly even tighter around his crotch as a wild, tingling energy began to work its way slowly along his extremities even as something similar pulsed in the center of his chest, the sound of his own heartbeat beginning to thud faintly in his ears. Dain gulped, his breath momentarily catching in his throat, and when he looked back up he realized that Caure was staring intensely into his eyes.

"Dain? Do I, uh, really have to say it out loud?" Again, Caure patted the space on the bed beside her.

"Uh, yeah, right! Er, do you want me to..." Dain trailed off, gesturing with his hands along the contours of his dress clothes. Caure's expression quirked slightly in response. "What do you think?" she replied, and thinking back to what he knew, Dain realized just how stupid of a question it was. In his defense, though, given how muddled his mind was becoming under the influence of adrenaline and conflicting emotions, it seemed a small miracle that he was able to function at all.

The only real advantage to the annoying, loose-fitting dress clothes were that they were at least relatively easy to take off, and in only a few short moments they were lying in a heap on the ground near the door. Unlike how Dain had felt during her heat, in his current form Dain felt oddly exposed to be standing in the middle of the room in only his underwear. Perhaps it was the fact that the complex ensemble had seemed like a more complete, if abbreviated set of clothing, as opposed to the single pair of trunks that were now Dain's only item of clothing, but the strange feeling of exposure sent an unbidden cold shiver rattling down his spine. How was it that something that had seemed so easy and natural during her heat was so uncomfortable and nerve-wracking in the form that should be much more familiar for him? At least, he realized, he now had some insight into the awkwardness that the boys had experienced during her own trial heat. Of course, he had reason for trepidation that went a bit beyond first-time jitters... but at the same time, he realized, he did have one thing that the other boys did not. He had, after all, gone through trial heat as a girl, and as a result, he had a fairly good idea of what he needed to do in this role to satisfy the desires of heat. He also realized, immediately after that, that the most annoying thing he could do to a girl in heat was to stand several feet away, hemming and hawing while her frustration continued to grow...

He could feel his face reddening with guilt, and although there was no frustration immediately evident on Caure's face, he hastened to take the few steps over to the bed and sat down gently beside her. Looking over towards her, he noticed that she had already turned around to look at him, her face displaying a look of grinning anticipation, although not exactly in the aroused way he'd imagined.

"So, Dain..."

"Y-yeah?"

Caure suddenly darted her face close in to his, grinning excitedly.

"How was it?"

"How, how was-"

"Your heat, Dain! Your first trial heat! I heard from Teiya and Eiako a little, but they wouldn't talk about it much no matter how much I asked them. C'mon, tell me - how did it feel? Was it different, with the way your body is? Was it bad? Was it good? I want to know everything!"

Despite Caure's suddenly tempting closeness, Dain was momentarily taken aback - her sudden inquiry was the last thing Dain had been expecting given the circumstances. He realized, though, that it was hardly uncharacteristic for Caure. Her curiosity about and fascination with him ever since the incident was considerable, although it was impressive that this desire seemed able to override the demands of heat - Dain knew for sure that, were the positions reversed, she knew that the two of them would already be in an intense embrace, and quickly progressing to even more intimate activities. At the same time, though, Dain also knew how important it was during heat to let the female set the pace, and so he did his best to ignore the constriction of his underwear while he tried to focus enough to process Caure's questioning. The memories were more than fresh, he knew, and would be quite easy to describe, even easier to relive in his mind... although if he did, despite his earlier success, there was still the worry that trying to recollect those kind of feelings in a body without the attendant parts could quickly turn Dain into a girl again, with potentially disastrous results - Dain also could vividly recall what happened when her heated arousal became too much for her untrained body to contain!

"Well, I, it was... I'm just, uh... I can try to tell you, but if I do, well, it's hard to tell it as a girl without being one, and I might, kinda, change of I tell it, which is obviously a problem..." Dain trailed off, as Caure's face took on a look that was almost predatory.

"Dain, that's not gonna happen. And if it does, well..." Caure's tongue flicked across her muzzle, only adding to the intensity of the expression. "I'm sure we'll find a way to make it work no matter what. So come on, already! Tell me all about it! Especially the parts with Teiya - even though he wouldn't talk to me much about it, the look on his face tells me that you had an especially fun time with him..."

Dain gulped again at the look, but after a moment, he began to haltingly recall his experience. It got easier as he got into telling the story of it, though, and soon his words were running quickly together as he recalled the amazingly intense feelings and experiences of the previous week. Caure listened intently, not saying a word as she took in the story. By the time he was relating the final encounter of the first trial heat, he was picturing the scene intently, and was hardly even aware of the room around him, the recollection so intense that he could almost feel the caressing touches on his fur, the impossible closeness, and the bizarre sensation of stimulation being applied to parts that he didn't currently have. The latter made his hips squirm around on the bed as he tried to parse the suddenly incomprehensible sensations, but when his recollection was complete, he could still quite clearly feel the fabric of his underwear strained uncomfortably tight around his bulge. There was another feeling, though, one that was more than just a part of his lingering recollection - he quickly realized that while he had been telling the story, lost in the emotions of its retelling, Caure had moved closer and rested her muzzle lightly against his shoulder. She had also managed to slide one of her arms down along his waist, her fingers resting lightly against the fur on his lower back. Her whole body, he realized, was nuzzled up closely against his side, and he could feel her warmth through the trunks as her upper thigh rubbed up against his hip. Caure nuzzled against him as he finished his recollection, and what he could see of her expression looked softer and considerably more aroused - something that his nose confirmed when he breathed in and found her heated scent hanging even more intensely in the air. He soon realized why, as he noticed that her other hand was pressed firmly between her tightly clenched thighs, her wrist gently flexing and relaxing in a steady, rhythmic motion. Apparently her curiosity had given way to other emotions when he had gotten to the particularly... descriptive parts of the story, although after a moment of shared silence she looked up at him with mild disappointment.

"Oh, is that it?"

"Uh, yeah, that's basically everything... the next day it was all back to, uh, normal, male normal I mean, although I guess actually when I said the next day I actually mean today..."

"Aw, too bad. I was just getting into it t- wait a minute. You mean that yesterday, literally yesterday, you were in heat and... doing it with boys? And today you're here?"

"Yeah, pretty much..."

"Wow! No wonder you looked so flustered! I mean, that's gotta be just crazy, just yesterday you're a girl, with a guy up against you, and you're doing like the most female thing possible outside of having babies, and today you're a... man..." Caure quickly trailed off, her muzzle pulling back and tilting downward along with her gaze, as she once again took notice of the unmistakable bulge that continued to strain against the fabric of his trunks. Her hand suddenly darted out from between her legs to gently squeeze at the bulge, the feeling of her fingers intense against the tip of his cock, even as he could feel the warm, heated moisture that had spread to her fingers begin to permeate through the thin layer of cloth between them. He moaned slightly at the touch, and the fabric felt immediately more constricting. Caure kept squeezing even as her head tilted up to look back at him, her body rubbing gently against his fur as her own hips gave an experimental couple of rocking motions back down against the sheets.

"Dain?"

"Yes?"

"I have a question for you..."

"Uh, go ahead..." Dain replied, noting that Caure's voice had quickly shifted in tone.

"Why, exactly, isn't this pressed between my legs right now?"

"Uhh, because you-" Caure shushed him before he could finish.

"You're not supposed to answer that question. Not with words, anyway. What you're supposed to do-" she said, simultaneously reaching over to tuck her fingers under the waistband of his trunks, "-is take these off, and get that knot where it needs to go as quickly as possible."

"Y-you know about the, the knot?"

Caure smiled at that. "I'm an actual girl, remember? Unlike you, they told me about all this stuff, what to expect, but after what you told me, I think it's gonna be even more fun that what they hinted at. Especially you, for my very first... it's perfect... As fascinating as it is, though, just being with you, hearing all about everything, this feeling, the frustration is... well, you know what it feels like, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, then, you know exactly what I want to do now..."

"Y-yeah." Even as he said it, he could feel Caure pulling down on his underwear. She didn't quite seem to understand how the fabric was wrapped around his anatomy, though, and Dain felt his penis pulling down along with it, bending over to the point where he felt a momentary jolt of pain before the elastic finally snapped off around the tip. That action, though, caused him to wince anew as the waistband proceeded to snap back into place with a stinging impact just above his balls. The pain faded quickly, though, and it was compensated by the fact that he was finally free of the constricting fabric.

Even though everything seemed to be going smoothly, Dain couldn't help but look down just to make sure. What he saw was at once reassuring, and a but surprising, even to him. Even after seeing it happen with many, many other guys over the past week, it still seemed surreal to see it happening with his own body. He was certainly erect, but even more so - while he'd had some form of erection before from time to time, his penis now seemed to have pushed forward at least an extra inch or two out of its sheath. It pointed up and out, the flared tip throbbing an even deeper red than normal, and the thick knot was already forming at the base, preventing it from retreating back into its sheath even if he'd wanted it to. However the shifting actually worked, Dain was relatively certain that there was no way for him to shift with his anatomy locked into this particular state - at least, he hoped that was the case.

Dain looked back up, only to notice that Caure seemed momentarily frozen in place, her hands just barely resting on his thighs, staring down at his penis with an unwavering gaze and a halfway-shocked expression on her face.

"Uh, Dain? Are you, um... particularly big, compared to...?"

Dain looked down again. "Well, from what I've seen, I think they all look just about like this. I think it's just the knot, that makes it look bigger or something, I mean, mine's never looked like this before, so..."

Caure looked at it again uncertainly. "Wow. That's just... you're saying that in your own heat, all the guys looked like that naked?"

"Yeah, pretty much..."

"And you just... and they just... they just went in, just like that? And it worked, and everything fit right, and it didn't, y'know... hurt? Like, a lot?"

Dain thought briefly back to his own experience, how it had felt the first time, how there hadn't really been any pain, just a nice stretching sensation as the skin had spread out and hugged Teiya's shaft as it had gone in, that exquisite stroking sensation that went deeper and deeper... Dain blinked, taking him back to the present, but not before something just behind his balls throbbed uncontrollably for a moment, and a couple of drops of warm liquid oozed out from the tip of his penis and slowly began to drip along the shaft. Dain responded as clearly as he could, trying to ignore the feeling of the moisture and his own tumultuous emotions.

"Well, I mean, all I know is how it worked with me, but it didn't hurt at all, it just felt really, really good, you know? Even at the doctor's, with that weird prosthesis thing, it didn't really feel bad, just kind of like a relief. I don't know if this is really big or not, I don't think it is, but in my female form everything just sort of stretched and it just felt better and better after that..."

Caure's gaze seemed to focus intently on the beads of moisture as they dripped slowly down, even as her own hips pressed back down against the bed, squirming around and causing a noticeable shiver to run through her body. It was powerful enough that Dain could actually feel her body shivering against him, the reaction quickly working its way up her body. As it ran up along her neck she nuzzled in close against the fur on his chest, giving off a cute, soft moan that reminded Dain just how wonderfully feminine she felt against him. Another couple of drips oozed from his tip unbidden, even as Caure continued to squirm around on the bed next to him, her delightful-sounding moan quickly turning into a high-pitched growl of frustration.

"Arrgh, I can't stand this! Too big or not, this is going to happen. Now." Caure snarled again, her hips squirming violently as she shoved back against the bed, obviously not getting the relief she was looking for. Suddenly, she released Dain and bounced over onto the main part of the bed, flopping onto her back even as her thighs squirmed and pressed tightly together as her hips thrust. Dain caught a glimpse of her panties, the lower fabric darker and glisteningly damp with her moisture, the pink of her crotch clearly showing through the strip of fabric plastered against it before she reached down and tugged it away. Her legs tilted briefly upward as she slid the panties over them, a foot darting up momentarily to kick them away, the panties flying by his head and giving his nose another blast of her scent before landing with a soft thud somewhere behind him. His eyes briefly flicked away to follow the panties through his peripheral vision, but by the time they snapped back, Caure's legs were already spread out to either side, her knees in the air and her feet resting gently on the edges of the bed. As he watched, her hands moved down, one of them resting on her belly while the other one brushed against the tuft of fur just above her pink mound.

"Mmh, that feels much better," she said, looking up at him with a soft smile, the arousal obvious on her face. "You know, Dain, I guess I still owe you a look, and more, from that time in the forest. I don't think you can get a better look than this, and as for everything else, well... I'm ready. I'm, like, super ready. I'm here, and I'm yours, and you can play with my body however you want." She looked at him, her grin expanding, into a half-predatory one that Dain was more used to. "Especially with, you know..." she continued, her gaze making it abundantly clear what she was referring to.

Dain looked down at her again, realizing that while his own arousal had left his brain transfixed by her offer and her inviting position, his body had already decided that he needed to be closer. Somehow, without really noticing, he found himself on his hands and knees on the bed just a bit below her, his trunks kicked off somewhere in the midst of it. Just in front of him on the bed, a tantalizing foot or two away, Caure's pussy was on very clear display, the swollen pink mound between her legs already partly spread from the combination of the heat and her posture. It was, in fact, the first time he had really seen one clearly up close, even his own, and he couldn't help but take a moment to look. It looked for the most part like he had anticipated it would, the mound of soft skin separated in the middle by two bright pink ridges, pulled slightly apart now into a narrow teardrop shape. At the top, just before the ridges met, her button poked out prominently, almost seeming to glow bright red. Below, the lips spread apart to show a patch of softer, lighter skin in between them, which turned into a jumble of intricate, delicate-looking pink folds, the place where he knew his penis was supposed to go shortly. Even though his heart was now thudding in his chest, his penis seeming to almost pulse in time with it. Looking down, though, he still had a strangely disconcerting feeling, his memories in direct conflict with his current position. For a moment, everything just felt wrong, like he was in the wrong place and that their positions should be reversed; just like yesterday, Dain, lying on the bed, and a plausibly male Caure hovering over him...

Even as the thought flashed across his mind, though, a flush of warmth surged through him, and it suddenly felt like both sides of him, male and female, were screaming in unison with an impossibly strong shared desire - that the two of them needed to be as close together as possible, as soon as possible. Dain could feel his body moving forward, closer in to her, and his penis throbbed as he bent down and moved in between her thighs, one hand drifting down to grab his shaft and guide it to the place where he could drive it firmly in. In a moment, he heard Caure gasp, and simultaneously he felt the intense warmth of her against his skin as his tip brushed gently against her mound. The tip quickly found her ridges, and Dain's instincts wanted him to push down along them, down and in. At the same time, though, he flashed upon a similar experience in his female form, and realized that there was something else that Caure might want even more, at least to start. Tilting his penis slightly upward with his hand, he ran it gently up along the ridge, until it nudged up against the intensely warm dot of Caure's button. Then, ever so gently he pressed in against it...

Caure moaned, her body suddenly seeming to vibrate against him, and her thighs were suddenly pressing in tightly against his hips as the most wonderful moan sounded close against his ear. The encouraging sound caused him to repeat the motion a few times more, until the ridges beneath began to twitch rhythmically against his tip, and as soon as they stopped Dain pressed in again, rubbing firmly against her until she shuddered even more intensely, her ridges twitching much more noticeably as Caure wrapped her arms around his back, her eyes closed and tongue panting happily in a look of pure bliss.

Satisfied that Caure was now completely into it, Dain moved his tip downwards, feeling the ridges spreading easily around it to either side, their moist warmth comfortable against him as his hips prepared to rock forward. Soon, he could feel the delicate folds of flesh nestling around his tip, easing gently around it, and spreading out to pull snugly around him as his body gave over to instinct and began the thrust that pushed him steadily inside.

All of a sudden, the world felt incredible. Even as the first layer of delicate folds expanded to rub down along his shaft, the tip seemed to encounter another layer of them, and another, and another... before he knew it, her outer ridges were rubbing warmly against his knot, and his entire shaft was surrounded by a soft, tight warmth that for a moment felt like the most amazing thing in the world. He gasped at the intense sensation playing along his shaft, his whole body pushing down to hug tightly against Caure, who moaned happily in his ear. Dain would have been happy to have simply stayed there, motionless, with their bodies intertwined and his cock surrounded by Caure's warmth, but his hips, driven by ancient instinct, were already pulling subtly back. The feeling suddenly intensified, each of the inner folds gently pulling and stroking along his shaft, and after a moment the feeling was so intense that he moaned himself and slammed his hips back down. Caure, in response, shrieked momentarily in surprise, as Dain could feel the knot landed heavily against her mound and gave it an exploratory stretch. Dain took a moment to revel in the warmth before his body let him know that it was time for another thrust, then another, and another, faster and faster as both his arousal and impatience grew.

The feeling intensifying quickly, the arousal and sensation combining incredibly, but it quickly pushed to a plateau - everything felt amazing, but somehow it wasn't quite enough, as though he was on the edge of orgasm but not quite going over. Dain's body knew what it needed even before he did consciously, and he felt his body pressing down even closer to hers, somehow making sure she stayed pinned even as each motion forward thudded even more intensely against her hips. Dain could feel his muscles straining after each one, his own hips pushing down and in with all the strength he could muster. Caure yowled in his ear as the thrusts intensified, her fingers scratching against his back as the outer ridge of her pussy stretched and strained against his knot.

Dain thrust in again even harder, and this time, the ridges strained against his knot as they slid up further and further. He felt them catch for a moment as they rubbed with amazing intensity against the thickest part of the knot, and then his hips suddenly lurched forward, the ridges pulling around his knot and gripping tightly against the base of his shaft. Her folds seemed to wrap impossibly tightly around the knot which now bulged inside her, even as he felt his tip push against something soft and pliant even deeper inside, feeling whatever it was yield to the pressure of his tip and conforming comfortably before suddenly spasming intensely against him. Simultaneously, he could feel Caure's whole body tense under him, as she gave out a high-pitched moan that abruptly turned into a strangely intense, deep-throated tremolo as her entire pussy seemed to squeeze in tightly against him, the flesh giving a strange, vibrating flutter all around him before it suddenly relaxed, only to quickly return in a rhythmic motion that seemed to roll along the length of the shaft. The part pressed against his tip seemed to rub against it in time, the motions feeling more and more intense until he felt his own body shudder against her, an incredible warmth flowing through him as all the adrenaline seemed to crest in a wave that flashed white-hot across his mind. Even as the intense energy began to sublimate into a feeling of pure pleasure that blotted out most everything else, it was accompanied by a pleasant thrumming between his legs that quickly turned into a steady, ecstatic pulsing. He felt his cum spurt inside her, its warmth splashing back and squeezing into whatever space was left between them within.

Dain's mind went momentarily blank, his awareness faltering as his eyes pulled tightly shut and strange bursts of color seemed to dance momentarily across his mind, accompanied by an intense surge of relaxing warmth. As his eyes opened again, he could feel his arms faltering from the wave of relaxation, and he quickly slumped forward, pressed close against Caure's body by her still-straining embrace. Due to their positioning, his face was almost up against hers, and he was happy to take in the overwhelmingly blissful look on her face, her eyes still shut and her muzzle slightly open. Dain could feel her body still clutching and trembling against him as she alternated between quick, labored panting and short, tremulous moans, each moan coinciding with her walls giving another fluttering spasm around his cock before returning anew to their rhythmic pulsing. Dain's arousal, though, already seemed oddly spent, and he simply relaxed and snuggled in closer to return her embrace, enjoying the feeling of closeness and the still-pleasurable sensations of being inside her as she climaxed around him.

After a couple more minutes held tightly against Caure's shuddering body, enjoying the way her breasts pressed against his fur and feeling the intense warmth of her nipples as they rubbed through to the skin beneath, Dain could feel the grip of Caure's arms and legs beginning to gradually relax, even as the rhythmic contractions against his penis became fainter and fainter until the inner walls rested lightly against him, still comfortably snug against his knot. A moment later, Caure opened her eyes halfway and looked up at him, the cute mixture of relief and satiated happiness in her expression sufficiently moving that Dain could feel himself tensing and pulsing a few more times in involuntary response. Caure's eyes seemed to lock onto his, her expression almost hypnotic as she started to speak.

"Haah... Hhhh... Hhholy shit, Dain, that was... haahhh... the best thing, ever..."

"Hanh... it, ah... hhnh... it was?"

"You can't tell from just... hahhh... looking at my face?" Caure was right, of course - Dain had never seen a cuter expression in his life, at once happy and relaxed and somehow almost vulnerable, something so unlike Caure's normal personality that Dain couldn't help being moved by it. After a moment, though, her brows seemed to dart up with concern. "I mean, it was good for... you enjoyed it too, right?"

"Yeah, I did, a lot... hnhhh... It was really great, I just..."

"But if you did, how come you didn't think I was enjoying it too?"

'Well, I..." Dain paused, trying to figure out how to put what he had felt into words. "It's just... it's so different, you know? When I was in heat, as a, haah, girl, it was... I don't know how to explain it. Everything just... worked, somehow. You're in heat, and everything just feels good, your body just feels right, every touch just makes you feel better and better, and that warmth inside you and the knot and everything just explodes in pleasure... it's just so easy, you know? I mean, sometimes you have to coax the guy, but generally you just get them close and they do what you need and it just works..." Dain trailed off when he saw the hint of a friendly smirk on Caure's face, and could feel himself flushing as he thought back to just how much coaxing he had needed to even approach Caure's bed, even knowing how agonizing the wait could be from the other side...

"Um, er... What I mean to say is, as a girl, it just... happens for the most part, it works out no matter what you do really, as it's more about what's being done to you, er, unless you knock the guy out and pounce on him first-" He clammed up as he realized what he was saying; knowing Caure, he'd left that particular encounter out of his recollections; the intrigued and halfway-predatory glance that she gave in response reminding him why he had done so. "Ahh! Uh, anyway, um, it's like, as a girl, there's nothing you can do wrong, 'cause whatever you do, once you get to a certain point things just happen and all of a sudden everything seems perfect. As a guy, though, I mean, you're still horny and stuff, but all of a sudden it's like everything's on you, like you have to know what to do, and even though I was with all those guys and saw what they did, when I saw you, I- I froze up just like most of them. It's just... all of a sudden, it's like I wanted to do everything perfectly right, because you're so beautiful, and so awesome, and I just wanted to make you happy, but then you looked kinda annoyed and I got nervous and froze up even more..." Dain paused, gasping for breath amidst his rapid-fire speech. "I never really realized it, I mean I didn't think I'd even be called to anyone's heat, so I didn't really think about or learn about any of it, what a guy is supposed to do. With a girl, it's like it just comes naturally, but as a guy, it's like you always think you're doing it wrong, until it goes inside and then it's like you can't even think at all. And with me, well... I know it sounds kinda silly when I say it out loud, but I really thought I was gonna freak out and turn into a girl or something right in the middle of it, especially telling you about my heat, and I just... there was all this stuff going on in my head that I couldn't really tell how you were feeling, I mean up until we were really together at least. Really, though, being with you, I... it was awesome. It, uh, still is awesome, actually..."

Caure smiled back up at him, her face tantalizingly close - and then suddenly even closer, as she hugged her arms tight around his shoulders and pulled him down slightly, planting a short, soft kiss on his muzzle. Then, after a moment of thought, she hugged him even more tightly and brought them together for a kiss that lasted considerably longer, one that ultimately resulted in a lingering moment where her tongue curled sensuously around his - and one that coincided with her soft inner walls pulsing gently around his knot and causing him to spurt a couple of extra times inside her.

"Mmmm..." Caure said, finally breaking the kiss. She let him back up, but kept her arms around his back, running her hands lazily through his fur. "I guess the really awesome part is done, but it still feels really good. You're all nice and warm and snuggly, and you still feel so warm inside. I almost feel like I could stay like this forever! Although, um... how long does it stay in there, exactly?"

"Well, when I was on the other end of it, I guess it took... about an hour, or so? That's about how long it takes for the knot to go most of the way down, and before that if you tried to take it out, it just... you just can't do it."

"Yeah, I know, I did learn you get locked together but no one really said for how long." Caure looked up at Dain inquisitively. "So, ah, if it takes that long, what did you actually do with guys for all that time?"

"Uh, actually... just talking, mostly. I mean, together like this, there's not a lot else you can do, you can either talk, or just cuddle and sleep, but the one guy who did that I thought was kinda rude..."

"Heh, that would be rude! Having all that fun, and then just falling asleep... although I kinda get it. Dunno how it is for guys, but after... mating, you know, you just feel so relaxed, relieved, like you really could just drift off to sleep, all comfy and snuggly in the arms of someone you... love..." Caure seemed to trail off on the last word, her expression looking halfway shocked. "I-, I'm not sure why I said that, but I... I guess it's kinda true. Every since we first met, back when we were making mud pies, and you were making mud cities out in the rain... there's always been something there, you know? Even before that day in the woods, before I learned how fascinating you really are, for some reason I was always drawn to you. And you were always so nice, through everything, even on that day when I was so insensitive and you just took it in stride... With the heat, and mating, and everything, I know it's not supposed to be about love, not really. It's supposed to be about genetics and compatibility and height and fur color and all sorts of other widgy details, but I know one thing. I know we're supposed to invite a lot of different boys, but you're coming to my next trial heat, and the next one, and the real ones too. Can you imagine what it'll be like? Like we are now, but better, with my arms around you and your hand on my belly, knowing that inside a new life is beginning, a new life we made together..."

Although Dain hadn't really thought about it that way himself, hearing that Caure had those kinds of feelings for him, he realized, wasn't all that much of a surprise. After all, she'd made little effort to hide her interest, especially recently, and he was sure that their current intimate embrace could only be amplifying those sentiments. In fact, feeling Caure against him, knowing what they'd just been through, and everything they'd gone through together so far, he realized that in certain ways, he felt the same... but at the same time, the particularway that Caure had expressed them sent a disconcerting chill down his spine. Caure's tone was so... certain, and while she seemed immensely happy at the idea, but thinking about that kind of future, Caure having children - Dain having children, for that matter - it was more than he could bear to contemplate, much less discuss, at the moment. He flailed around to change the subject, when a certain related thought flashed in his mind, something someone had said about heats...

"Um, well... that's an... interesting idea, but what if we, uh, intersect? I mean, you know that sometimes I'm a girl, and when I go into heat I'm a girl all the time. The actual time between heats changes though, doesn't it? We're so close already that if it shifts just a little, we might both be in heat at the same time. Or if my heat comes first, and it's areal heat, afterwards I'd still be a girl because..." Dain trailed off, again unwilling to consider such a possibility in the current situation. Caure, though, seemed to know what he meant.

"Oh, Dain, you're right! I didn't think of that at all! I was listening to you talk about your heat that entire time, and I never really thought about what that could mean, because you showed up afterwards and it all worked out... but you're right. It does change, and there's a different gap between what season you're in. My mom said something about having to do a check at the medical clinic a few days after my heat ends, to figure out when the next one will be, so that I can schedule my heat along with all the other girls. Er, I guess you'll probably do the same, right? We won't know until the results come back, but we're already so close... Oh, I hope you're not right, I really wanted my first real heat to be with you!"

Dain cringed at the sadness and disappointment in Caure's voice, but after apparently considering the situation for a few silent moments, an unexpected mischievous grin returned to her face.

"Actually, you know, that could be interesting too..."

"Uh, really? How?"

"I was just thinking, if we do get our heats at the same time... why not go through it together?"

"Huh?"

"You know... side by side! Actually, that would be kinda awesome now that I think about it. Listening to your stories about your heat, how much fun it was, I couldn't help but picture it in my mind, picture how your face would look as you climaxed, the way your body would arch and shiver with a boy on top of you, imagine the cute little overwhelmed sound you must have made when the knot pushed inside you... Mmm, just thinking of it now is so crazy, given how you're inside me and really, really male right now. I don't know why, though, but thinking of you that way, as a girl, it's so weird but at the same time it's soooo hot, to think of you going through it all! And the both of us together, in heat, being mated, feeling everything while being able to watch and listen to each other's reactions while it happens, that's like, the most arousing thing ever..."

"It, uh, it is?" When Dain thought about it, though, he realized that in a certain way, she had a point. To combine that impossible, incredible look on Caure's face as she came, with the experiences Dain had had during heat... it could be interesting, or more likely, it could be completely overwhelming, but the idea was intriguing enough that he didn't bother to negate it.

"Of course it is, silly! And I bet we could totally make it work, too! I'm sure I could talk your mother and my mother into having you come over, and since mine is already used to having a bunch of girls in heat at once, she can certainly deal with one more, and we can obviously take care of ourselves anyway. Plus, the couch in the den folds out into a nice bed, and it could totally handle the two of us, side by side. That would be so amazing, right next to each other, so close we could actually touch, right when it was happening..." Caure's eyes drifted away, apparently imagining the scenario intensely, and Dain could immediately feel her insides throbbing around him in response.

"Aaaahn... yes, so good..." Caure's eyes suddenly snapped back, looking into his intently. "Yes, that'll be perfect! If yours comes after mine, of course, we can mate just like we planned, and if your heat is before mine, well... hmm, that could be nice too! I can just invite myself over, snuggle up on the bed next to you, and watch up close with whoever you bring in to mate with you! I mean, it's not like a boy would complain about having another beautiful girl in the room, right? Hmm, of course I can't just be sitting there fully clothed, but I don't want to distract too much... Oh! Now that I think of it, I have just the right set of lingerie for the occasion! Cute and sexy, but not too sexy, something just right. That would work, wouldn't it?"

"Uhh..."

"Hm? Is something wrong, Dain? I know I'm kinda talking a lot all of a sudden, but partly that's because you're being awfully quiet..."

"Well, uh... that is to say... uh, do I get a say in all this?"

Caure looked oddly puzzled by his words. "What do you mean? You're not actually going to say that this doesn't sound interesting, are you? 'Cause I've been looking at your face the whole time, and ever since I started off on this I can practically see you blushing through your fur..."

"Well, I mean... er..." Dain couldn't really think of an argument against it. It was way too much, way too sudden, and while he didn't really know what to do about it, they were still tied together and there was no way to avoid it now that Caure had brought it up. At the same time though, he was so thoroughly befuddled by that point that he simply let his words trail off, gulping as Caure nodded in response.

"Okay, then, it's settled! No matter what, no matter how our heats sync up, we'll find some way to make it work. See? I knew you'd come through! And here we are together, as close as we can be..." Caure hugged him close again. "This day has been absolutely perfect. Dain, I'm so happy I could kiss you right now!" And then she did, and the confusion quickly vanished from Dain's mind as he kissed her back. He didn't know what the future would bring, or if any of the fantasies that Caure had voiced would come true, but somehow he had to agree with her: as strange and crazy and overwhelming this day had been, being there in her arms, as close as any two people could be, really did somehow feel just right, just... perfect.

The spend the next while kissing, nuzzling and cuddling each other, enjoying a closeness that was now enhanced by their intimate connection instead of overwhelmed by it. That wasn't to say that they weren't aware of its presence, as Dain was quite certain that his desire to stay close was significantly influenced by the way that Caure's passage conformed around him. The way she surrounded him, so snug and comfortable and warm, he could easily imagine staying close together like this even without the knot - and the squeeze that she gave him every time a kiss or a nuzzle got particularly intense only added to that desire. Given the way Caure was eagerly reciprocating every kiss, and the way her legs remained tightly locked around his hips, Dain was sure that she was feeling the same way. While talking had certainly sufficed, it was nice to realize that there were even more pleasant ways for mated partners to spend their time tied together. Of course, that assumed that Dain could find partners that wouldn't simply collapse into her arms after the mating was completed - most of the boys Dain had been with had seemed quite depleted afterwards, but Dain still felt reasonably awake and energetic despite it all.

After a while, though, Caure began to look slightly exasperated. "Mmm... Dain, can we, um, take a break for a second? I'm feeling kinda cuddled out..."

"Sure," Dain replied, propping himself up on his elbows to provide a little distance between them. It certainly did feel like they had been there long enough, but when Dain tried gently to pull out, the knot was still big enough that Caure's body didn't want to let it go. All he managed to do was make Caure's hips squirm beneath him, and her legs tighten around his waist and pull him back down.

"Um, I think we're still..."

"Uh-huh," Caure replied, looking slightly uncomfortable. "I think it wants to stay there some more, yeah... I just think we kinda should be done by now..." Dain watched Caure turn her head and glance over at something on the other side of the bed. Dain followed her gaze and found a small alarm clock, its digital display glowing in the noticeably dimmer room. Dain realized that the sun had been close to setting when he had arrived, and by now it was probably close to dinnertime - somehow, though, he didn't seem to be hungry at all.

"Oh, it's only been forty-five minutes," Caure sighed. "You said it was... about an hour? I think that sounds right. It's so long, though, when you're just sitting here, even if it is with you..." Caure pulled him back down for another hug, but as she did so, her eyes seemed to light up.

"Hey, wait a second! Dain, you can change gender! Can't you just, like, shift to being a girl, and then not have us be tied together like this?"

"Um, I, I don't think so..."

"Well, you can try, right?"

"Uh, sure..." How, though? Dain knew that he could change, certainly, but it hardly seemed to be something that he could do at will - every time he'd changed so far, it had just seemed to happen without any clear reason for doing so, and certainly not because he'd asked or willed it to happen. Nonetheless, he decided to try, although he had no idea what, if anything, would work. Dain closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on what he could remember - how it felt to be female, the experience of her trial heat, anything Dain could bring to mind. None of it seemed to have any effect, though - once he had gone through everything he could think of, his penis was still definitely there.

"Sorry... I don't think it works right now." Or ever, when I consciously try to, he didn't say. Although, even if he had been able to, he wondered if it would even be possible in the current situation. "I think it's like... well, like what happened when I was in my own trial heat, when I was a girl all the time and didn't change back at all because of that. I think it was like that because things wouldn't work right otherwise, and I think it's the same here, that I have to be male until we're, y'know... done..."

Caure, at least, didn't look all that disappointed. "Yeah, I get it. I guess we just... wait, then." She sighed. "I mean, it's not like I don't enjoy being here with you - that part of it's great. It's more that for a while it felt awesome, and then really good and calm and everything, but it's like most of those feelings have faded and I'm just lying here, and, well, you're getting a little heavy on top of me and I think my butt's going numb..."

"Oh, uh, sorry..." Dain replied, trying to figure out what he could do. He was already propped up to take his weight off of Caure's chest, but the knot meant that he couldn't do much about anything lower down. Of course, he realized, that didn't mean they had to stay in that particular position. "Er... could you unhook your legs for a second?" Caure looked slightly puzzled, but complied. Dain leaned back down, tucking his arms under her and hugging her close to him. Surprised, Caure started to say something, but by that time Dain was already in motion, rolling over and taking Caure with him. In a moment, their positions were reversed, with Dain lying on his back and Caure on top of him, her legs slightly splayed to either side. Dain looked back up at her as he adjusted to her weight pressing down on him.

"That feel better?"

Caure still looked slightly stunned from the sudden motion, but after a moment she regained her composure, tucking her arms under her chest and resting her hands on Dain's shoulders. "Yeah... definitely. We should have thought of that sooner..."

Dain found the new position reasonably comfortable, with the weight distributed better, and he certainly couldn't complain about how the new arrangement made it easy to glance down and admire Caure's breasts hanging down in full display. Even after everything else, it was a thrill to see them, in part because they were the one remaining feminine thing that Dain did not possess in his other form - although at the same time, there was a part of him that still couldn't shake that involuntary pang of jealousy. Everything else still felt more than good, though, and he was able to shake it off, looking back up at Caure as they waited for their physical connection to wane.

Although Dain wouldn't have minded, Caure seemed decidedly uninterested in any more kissing or cuddling, so they talked more instead. Dain decided that he didn't want the conversation to drift back towards the previous one, as he was hard-pressed to consider Caure's earlier pledges without risking her adding any more, so the conversation turned to more mundane matters: the upcoming winter weather, curiosity about the upcoming schooling, the next sculpture projects they wanted to work on. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, Dain suddenly realized what Caure had been talking about - as though a switch had been flipped inside him, the remaining afterglow quickly ebbed, and it was just the two of them in bed... comfortable enough, but no longer magical. It did make him feel increasingly restless under her, though, but before it became a problem, he could feel his erection beginning to slip as the tightness around the base of his penis began to loosen considerably. In their new position, gravity seemed to make the process proceed more rapidly, and with the slightest popping sound the base slipped free from Caure's passage, quickly followed by the rest of him.

"Finally!" Caure said above him, and while her voice had a hint of exasperation in it, the first thing she did was to give Dain a quick, playful kiss on the nose, bringing her body back down for one more brief snuggle before rolling off of him. Dain watched as she pulled herself up to a sitting position on the side of the bed, swinging her legs over the edge. Dain, for his part, scooted back and pulled himself up into a more relaxed position, leaning back against the headboard.

Now that they were separated, Dain realized that the sense of exhaustion from their exertions was catching up to him. For the moment, he was content to sit on the bed and watch Caure as she stood up and went to retrieve some new clothes. Dain couldn't help but admire her backside, which he realized had filled out quite nicely, and the gentle sway in her hips when she walked kept his gaze focused. While he hadn't really consciously thought about it before, all of a sudden he was beginning to realize just how beautiful Caure was, at least to him. Growing up, his opinion of her seemed to have regularly alternated between cute and vaguely annoying, and after that day in the woods, he hadn't known what to think. Now, though, he could easily admire her beauty. He knew that it wasn't an illusion from the effect her heat had provided, either - since the end of their time tied together, the attendant feelings seemed to have completely faded, and Dain realized that he actually felt remarkably clear-headed. Even so, when Caure bent over to reach into a drawer and flashed him a momentary glimpse of pink, he still felt an involuntary thrill shiver through him.

Caure came back up with a neat stack of clothing, and in a matter of moments her most interesting features were both covered and accentuated by a matching pale lavender bra and panties. She twirled around as though modeling them, throwing Dain a sly grin as she turned. Dain nodded appreciatively, although once again, a part of him felt a twinge of jealousy rather than appreciation when he noticed just how much the bra emphasized Caure's breasts. It was bizarre trying to hold the two competing feelings simultaneously in his mind, and in his befuddlement he was even less prepared for Caure to suddenly turn, leap, and land in a crouch that just barely straddled his ankles. He looked up at her in surprise, noticing her enthusiastic and slightly mischievous grin.

"So, Dain, now that we're all done... can I see it?"

"Huh? See what?"

"Oh, come on, Dain, you know what! Change! I wanna see what it looks like when you change from one to the other!"

Dain just stared back at her, not quite knowing what to say. He hadn't even seen what the change looked like, and sitting there, naked, with Caure on top of him, he didn't have the slightest idea how to proceed. If there had been performance anxiety before...

Caure seemed to notice his trepidation. "Don't worry, Dain, it'll be fun! Think about what we just went through - that worked out okay, right? It won't be like that one time, I promise! Plus, if you let me watch, I'll show you this thing I figured out that's really cool and feels really good even if you're not in heat..."

"Uh, er, I-" Dain stammered, trailing off as he felt a wave of panic run through him. Despite Caure's promise, he couldn't help thinking back to that day, and the thought of suddenly being a girl again, and probably being prodded intimately by Caure, on top of everything else that he/she had just been though, was far more than Dain was prepared to handle. Plus, he knew, he probably couldn't shift on demand even if he really wanted to. Dain tried desperately to think of a good excuse.

"C'mon, what are you waiting for?" Caure asked. "It'll be fun, really! Here, I won't even touch..." She crossed her arms along her chest, a motion that displayed her breasts above them even more prominently. Dain's eyes locked on to them, and he could feel the slight shift as his penis nudged forward again in its sheath. If anything, rather than changing, having Caure this close was keeping him in his current form as compellingly as possible. Dain tried to focus enough to find his nerve and put forward even a vaguely plausible excuse, and breathed a silent sigh of relief when there was an emphatic knock on the door a few seconds later.

"Hey, honey, are you, erhmm... done in there?" an adult male voice asked through the door.

Caure gave Dain one more glance before turning her head towards the doorway. "Yeah, Pa, we're just getting dressed now..."

"Okay, then. Your mother wanted me to tell you that since you're ready, it's time to come down and get some dinner. Given your current condition, you know how important it is to keep your strength up."

"All right, I hear you. We'll be down in a minute."

"Okay, hon. See you downstairs. We're having yummy-yummy meatloaf!"

Caure sighed as she turned back. "That's Jauk. He's... kind of way too enthusiastic about random stuff, but as far as dads go, he's pretty decent." She looked over at Dain, her disappointment evident. "I... guess we'll just have to try that some other time. Maybe you're just too worn out to change right now..." Dain was happy to nod vaguely in agreement, and happier still when Caure climbed back off of him and went to pull on a shirt. "You should get dressed, too. I'm pretty sure you're invited to dinner..."

Dain got up, tracking down his underwear and pulling it on, before retrieving his dress clothes. In a few moments, he was fully dressed again, the clothing making him feel both less and more comfortable. It was less awkward than being naked, but he quickly realized that even the stuffy scent of starch and detergent wasn't enough to mask Caure's distinctive scent, a scent that now seemed to permeate every inch of his exposed fur.

Dain tried to ignore it, even as his underwear again started to feel ever so slightly too tight. He looked over to see that Caure was dressed as well, in a pale pink shirt and a pair of white cloth pants that he realized conformed subtly but quite nicely to her figure. Dressed as she normally was, she looked more like the Caure that Dain was familiar with, but even though the appearance muted the more intense feelings from before, they still lingered on the periphery of his mind.

They made their way back down the hallway and through a set of doors Dain hadn't noticed before, entering an expansive dining room with two tables - a large, traditional one, and a lower, smaller one off to the side. The latter was occupied by Caure's younger siblings, clustered around it in chairs appropriate for their size. The larger table was occupied by Caure's mom, several of her dads, and the other three girls who were of age, sitting on one side of the table alongside their most recent mating partners. One of the boys Dain recognized from his neighborhood, but he couldn't immediately place the others; while he'd seen Caure's sisters on occasion, he wasn't all that familiar with them either. Even now, though, he could smell the lingering, intermingling scent of their heats, although in his current state the scents seemed to lose most of their allure.

Dain took one of the empty seats next to one of Caure's sisters, and Caure sat down in the other, scooting her own chair close to him. As they sat down, Caure's mother looked over.

"Feeling much better now?" she asked.

"Mmm-hmm!" Caure responded, momentarily snuggling up against Dain's side and giving his neck a light nuzzle for emphasis. Dain felt his face flush, but luckily there was no further interrogation for either of them, and Caure was content to leave him alone and instead dig eagerly into the meal in front of them. It was meatloaf, as advertised, although one far tastier than Dain could ever recall having eaten. The meal passed mostly in silence, as everyone, especially the pairs along Dain's side of the table, seemed quite eager to fill up after their exertions. As the meal wound down, there was a little conversation, although nothing significant, mostly relating to the varying levels of interest people had in the schooling that was coming up in less than a month. After dinner, the dads rounded up the little ones for an after-dinner story, while Caure's mom gently shepherded the four couples over to the entryway to say their goodbyes for the evening. As Dain walked over towards the door, he glanced back at the fathers sitting on the couch with a variety of colorful picture books, the kids snuggled around them to either side. It was an idyllic picture, and Dain couldn't help but feel a pang of longing looking at it. Growing up, of course, it had been just his somewhat distant mother and him at home, and while he certainly had friends, looking at Caure's lively home made him wonder how it would have been to grow up here. He almost felt himself sigh as he walked to the door, although as he got to it, another thought occurred to him. Hopefully, someone had seen about cleaning that couch before dinner...

At the doorway, Caure kissed him on the cheek, and he returned it in similar fashion. "It's too bad you can't stay over," she said, "but there's some kinda rule about it, and I couldn't convince my mom to break it. I tried to explain, but she still seems to think you're a boy and that's that. It would have been fun, though, and we could have picked up where we left off. Another time, maybe?" She glanced over at her mom, waiting for her head to turn. When it did, Caure gave Dain another quick kiss, this time squarely on his muzzle, and winked at him as she pulled back. "We probably can't hang out again until my heat's over, but I'll see you soon. And remember what I said, the next time your heat comes around..."

Then she and the other girls stepped back inside, the door closing quietly behind them and leaving Dain and the three other boys on the porch. They all glanced quickly at each other, but as they were near-strangers they didn't really have anything to say. Instead, the other boys simply strode forward and headed back to wherever their homes were. Dain paused for a second, glancing back at the door and the light streaming out from the nearby windows, before starting his short walk back home.

The night air was crisp and cool, although Dain's fur and the bulky dress clothes kept him more than adequately warm. Dain walked along, enjoying the quiet, thankful that somehow everything had gone reasonably smoothly. Dain still wasn't really ready to think about most of what Caure had said, and instead distracted himself by looking upward, watching the stars glitter in the clear night sky. It was a pretty panorama, marred only by a disk of blackness low on the horizon that blotted away all the stars behind it. Dain tried to ignore it, but his eyes kept drifting back to it, for some reason drawn to its inky, impenetrable bleakness. In the daytime, there was nothing visible there at all, but at night... Dain felt a shiver run down his spine, and knew it wasn't from the cold. He still didn't know what the thing was, and no one seemed to want to talk about it, although the few whispers he'd heard seemed to have something to do with the cataclysm. Perhaps, he wondered, someone might talk about it in the classes that were soon to begin, perhaps providing a nice logical explanation that could put to rest the sense of uneasiness he felt every time he saw it.

Dain glanced back down, realizing that even though his mind had been on the sky, his legs had guided him back to his own street, the shape of his house visible a few blocks down. When he got back, the door swung open even before he had walked halfway up the front path, his mom silhouetted in the doorway.

Eloa stood aside as Dain walked in, closing the door quietly behind him. Dain turned to face her just in time to see her arms reaching out, and a moment later she had enveloped Dain in a motherly hug. Even as she did so, though, Dain could hear her sniffing at the fur around his neck, certainly detecting the scent of Caure that still permeated it. Dain half-expected her to make some sort of vaguely embarrassing comment about it, but instead she released him from the hug and rested her hands on his shoulders.

"Dain, I know I said this before, but... I'm very proud of you. I know this has been a lot to deal with, back to back, and I'm proud of how you've taken it all in stride. I know that it was a wild enough ride back when I was your age, and I only had to deal with it one way. Going through that time as both, well... I was worried at first, but here you are, getting through it all even better than I could have expected. I'm glad to see you growing up to be a good, mature, responsible person who can handle things the way that they need to be. Unlike your father-" she said, before suddenly clamping her muzzle shut. "You... don't need to concern yourself with that last part," she interjected after a moment of awkward silence.

"Anyway," Eloa said, releasing Dain's shoulders, "I'm glad everything went well. I can assume from the time that you ate at Caure's house?"

"Yeah, um... we had meatloaf?" The succinct answer seemed to satisfy Eloa, even though to Dain it felt awkward, an abbreviated response that avoided the questions he couldn't quite formulate. Despite what had happened recently, he was still getting used to having a mom that was now willing to talk with him in a more than perfunctory manner, and he still wasn't quite sure what the limits on that were. He was well aware, though, that inquiring about her comment now would be a bad idea. Instead, he remained silent, and Eloa quickly took over the rest of the conversation.

"Hmm, I haven't made that in ages. Wonder if I have a recipe around somewhere..." She trailed off for a moment, looking away for a moment before her eyes flicked back at Dain. "Anyway, it's getting on in the evening, so you should shower up and get ready for bed. Remember, classes will be starting up soon, and you'll want to get lots of rest for them. Oh, and before I forget, I should remind you that you have a quick check-up at the doctor's in a few days..."

She let him go, wandering off in the direction of the kitchen as Dain headed upstairs. He was glad enough to be able to strip off the formal clothes, leaving them in a heap on the bathroom floor.

He turned on the shower and let the warm water trace down in rivulets across his fur, his hands going through the motions of washing as his mind drifted back to the craziness of the past week. Now that it was over, Dain realized that it felt almost surreal to suddenly jump back into the life that he was used to. Even the shower itself was surprisingly normal, with the body that he was most accustomed to, and nothing unusual happening to it. Even the seemingly unavoidable scent of Caure was slowly fading away under the onslaught of soap and water. Surreal or not, though, Dain realized that it was definitely a relief. In fact, he realized that he somehow had the feelings in reverse - it was, in fact, the previous week that was actually the surreal departure from the thoroughly normal trajectory of his life up until that point.

What was normal now, though? For the moment, at least, everything seemed back to the way it was, but the memories of heat, and sex, still lingered in his mind. He could perhaps fool himself into maintaining an illusion of normalcy for a couple of days, but if the upcoming "check-up" was anything like the previous one, things would get even more surreal. And beyond that, surreal or not, one thing he was certain of was that things would soon get even more complicated.

It was a lot to wrap his head around, and the more he thought about it, the more complex things seemed to get. Beforehand, before shifting and everything else, it had all been relatively simple: Grow up. Attend classes. Not even worry about heat because as an obscure sculptor with average looks, he'd probably have nothing to do with it. Find a position in the world, probably something to do with the ceramics at which he excelled, become an adult, perform his assigned function in society and achieve whatever else he might eventually want to accomplish.

Now, though, everything would be different. He flashed back on what the doctor from before had said: that his unique situation meant that under the law, somehow, he was actually a girl; a notion that seemed momentarily absurd, given that it only took a quick glance down to belie it. Of course, he was well aware that such a state was not immutable for him, something that the events of the past week had made abundantly clear. And, thinking back on it, he realized that the heat itself was probably the easy part. His description to Caure had been accurate - actually going into heat and being with people was abundantly easy, something that Dain's body probably could have figured out without any conscious input on her part at all. It was all the rest of it that would be difficult - the planning, the screening, the coordination, all the responsibilities of making the right decisions and making the most of things when the heat transitioned into the real thing. And beyond that, the notion of what going through heat as a woman would mean: pregnancy, the production of a new life that would grow somehow inside her. It was such an alien notion, something that Dain could barely even conceptualize. Living most of his life as a boy, none of that had seemed important at all, part of a female domain that would never be his concern - except all of a sudden it was, and he had no idea whatsoever how he was going to cope with it. Perhaps, he hoped, some of the schooling that was coming up would be devoted to it, or at least someone might be on hand who could explain things. Otherwise, he wasn't sure how he was supposed to manage it all, especially if he was supposed to attend other girls' heats, as a boy, in the midst of everything else.

Dain finished his shower, his thoughts only slightly more clear from his contemplations. He dried off quickly, and having nothing else of import to do, headed back to his bedroom to make an attempt at sleep. He had a hard time keeping his mind from churning, though, as it continued its vain attempt to wade through the emergent complications that would soon invade his life. In the end, though, he knew that he simply had more questions than the amount of answers his current knowledge could dredge up, and he was finally able to shunt the thoughts aside and drift closer to sleep. For a moment, he almost felt envious of Caure - she would surely have had no trouble sleeping that night.

Dain finally slept, and when he awoke the next morning, things still seemed surprisingly normal by contrast. The next couple of days were, in fact, almost surprisingly normal, and he went about his usual routine of sculpting in the workshop and doing everything else he normally did. The only main differences were that Caure was absent - and that Teiya, and for that matter the other handful of boys who regularly attended, snuck glances at him whenever they thought he wasn't looking. He wasn't quite sure why, beyond the fact that Teiya had certainly told them about Dain's heat - and, in his male form at least, he realized that he didn't really care much about the glances either way. As a result, he largely ignored it and focused more on the process of sculpting, one of the things in his life that had remained comfortably and mercifully constant.

On the third day, though, Eloa came to the workshop early to take him to his doctor's appointment. She looked pointedly at Dain's prominent ear tufts for a moment, but otherwise didn't say a word, and they made the journey over to the medical center in silence.

Being in the medical center this time was a much different experience. Instead of the waiting room being a confused blur, with the men in the room standing out against the background as though edged in neon lights, now the room was nothing more than a standard waiting room. Beige walls were broken up with abstract, largely monochrome paintings by a local artist, set between groups of padded chairs upholstered with an easy-to-clean vinyl fabric. The sign above the waiting room bore the word "Gynecology," and although Dain wasn't quite sure what it meant, judging by the composition of the other people in the room it clearly had something to do with women. In fact, most of the women seemed to assume that the appointment was for his mom, and that he was just tagging along - at least, that seemed to have been the assumption given the muffled gasps when the nurse called him back, quickly gesturing for him to enter the hallway that stretched behind the reception desk into the back rooms.

The nurse measured Dain's height and weight, checking off entries on the tablet she carried, before leading Dain into an examination room. She gave him an odd look for a moment, but then turned around and left, mentioning on the way out that the doctor would be in shortly, and that he should disrobe to his underwear.

Dain did as directed, sitting on the exam table and swinging his legs over the edge as he looked around the room. This one didn't look quite as involved as the previous one - there was a computer terminal on a swing-arm attached to the wall, and a small mobile lab had been wheeled into a corner, but there wasn't the bulk of other equipment. In fact, aside from a cabinet, a sink, and a chair for the doctor to sit on, the room was otherwise bare. In fact, if would have looked exactly like a normal doctor's office, were it not for the stirrups jutting out to either side from the end of the exam table.

Dain was glancing around the blank walls of the office, looking for anything else of interest, when the door opened and a doctor Dain hadn't met before entered the room. She was a little shorter than his mom, with fur that was almost golden in color, and a fluffy, well-brushed tail that she kept tucked up professionally behind her. Upon seeing Dain sitting on the table, she greeted him with a warm smile.

"Hey there, hon! My name's Koarel, and I'm gonna be doing your checkup today. Araune wanted to be here for it, but she was called away earlier, so I'll be handling it all. Before I get started, do you have any questions?"

"Um..." Dain replied, caught off guard. "All of them?"

Koarel chuckled at that. "Looking at your chart, I'm well aware of why that should be! You had quite the little ordeal when you showed up before, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I guess..." Dain thought back to what had happened the last time, including what had been done, and gulped. "Um, are you gonna, y'know, stick anything...?"

Koarel looked back at him blankly for a moment before glancing back to the file she had open on her tablet. "Oh, that's right! No, hon, that was a very special tool for a very special circumstance. There'll be none of that today - everything we'll be doing will just be on the outside." Koarel continued to look at him, her eyes flicking lower before returning to his face. "Yes, you're a special case, to be sure... although that brings us to the next thing. I'm not sure just how to ask this, but for what we need to do, I'm gonna need you to, well, become female for me."

"Um, okay, but... how?"

"How? You mean you can't change at will?"

"Uh, no... I mean, I don't think so. When it's happened before, it just happens, I don't think for any particular reason. Well, aside from heat, but that's different..."

"Hmm... that does present an issue, doesn't it? I was talking with Araune about shifters before, and she seemed to think that you could just change as you needed to. Although, maybe she meant that the body can change if it needs to, rather than being something that you can just up and decide to do..." Koarel trailed off for a moment, tapping something into her tablet. "There might be some medical thing you could do that would pick one or the other, but if there is, I don't know it. The only thing I can think of is, just close your eyes and try to recall what it feels like to be female. Perhaps if you convince your body enough that it is, maybe it'll get the message and shift you into that state proper."

Dain closed his eyes, although for some reason he immediately flashed back to the incident with Caure in the forest. It was the first time he'd changed, but even more than that, he realized that it was also the first time he'd ever given any thought to what girls were actually like. Before he'd changed, back in the woods, from the moment Caure had made her suggestion he'd been anticipating, consciously or not, what she would look like, how she would react. And then, immediately afterward, he'd changed... With what the doctor had just said lingering in his mind, he couldn't help but wonder if that might have been what set everything off. Of course, if Caure hadn't made that offer, he probably would have been completely clueless up until the point of going into heat, which would made the whole ordeal even crazier...

Dain tried to think about the incident, about what was going through his head, but nothing seemed to be changing. Of course, he quickly realized that there was a far more vivid experience that he could recall. His mind easily clicked over to the complex mix of sensation and emotion that had made up Dain's experience with heat. The feeling of warmth, of uncontainable excitement, the way that all guys had suddenly looked impossibly attractive, how comfortable they had felt against her, how wonderful it had felt when they went between her legs and pushed inside with ecstatic, satiating thrusts...

Dain heard a coughing sound in front of her that quickly broke through the remembered reverie. Her eyes blinked open, and she looked up to see Koarel glancing down at her with an expression she couldn't quite read. Somehow, during the past few moments, Dain had managed to recline back on the exam table, and she glanced down to see that the technique that Koarel had suggested, at least with sufficiently vivid memories, had apparently worked. The pouch of Dain's underwear now lay flat on her abdomen, and she could feel the fabric beneath against her newly shifted pubic mound - held there, Dain realized to her chagrin, by the hand that she had somehow tucked firmly between her legs during her recollections. She quickly moved her hand away, feeling her face flush with embarrassment beneath her fur, even as she felt something give a faintly pleasant twitch inside her.

Koarel saw the look on Dain's face and quickly sought to reassure her. "Oh, hon, don't worry about that. I'm probably to blame for suggesting something abruptly like that. I should've taken some more time to talk to Araune about this before. If that's what it took to get you into the right form, I'm sure it's just fine. Trust me, as a doctor, something like that just doesn't even rate on the scale of things I've had to deal with."

"I, uh, still, I didn't mean to-"

"Really, hon, you don't need to concern yourself with it. Like I said, it's nothing I haven't seen before." She turned back to the tablet, before apparently thinking of something. "Oh, just to be clear... you do know what masturbation is, yes?"

"Er... no?"

Koarel looked at Dain slightly incredulously. "You know... touching yourself? Even as a boy? Kinda like what you were just doing?"

Dain answered her question with a puzzled stare. "I've never, uh, done that before, at least not intentionally..."

"Oh! Well, I'm sure someone will explain it to you, at some point, but that person probably shouldn't be me. Maybe your mom, or when you go into classes... Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it for now. Regardless of how it happened, you're in the right form now, so what do you say we get this check-up out of the way?"

Dain nodded her assent, attempting to sit back up, but Koarel placed a hand on Dain's chest and pressed her gently back down onto the exam table. "Actually, you'll need to lie down for this part anyway."

Koarel walked over to the portable lab, retrieving a flat, narrow wand from it and connecting it to the terminal with a small fiber-optic cable. Walking back over to Dain, she used a hand to smooth down the fur on Dain's abdomen. Before the fur had a chance to spring back up, she placed the wand down on top of it, pressed close enough that Dain could feel hints of the wand's cold metallic surface against the skin beneath.

Out of the corner of her eye, Dain could see something pop up on the terminal display, but she couldn't quite crane her neck around enough to clearly make out what it was, and when she did Koarel gently admonished her for moving around and encouraged her to stay still. Dain complied, the wand gradually beginning to warm up as Koarel moved it slowly around to different parts of her abdomen. As she did, the vague, barely visible shapes on the screen moved and shifted about, the terminal beeping on occasion just before the wand moved to a different spot. This procedure, at least, seemed largely innocuous, the only side effect a slight feeling of lingering warmth just below her fur once the wand moved across it.

After a few minutes, the terminal sounded three long tones, and Koarel removed the wand and tucked it back away into the portable lab. Dain watched as she popped open a panel adjacent to it and extracted what looked like an autoinjector, only the ampoule protruding from the handle of this one appeared empty. "We're just going to do a quick blood draw now. You'll hardly feel a pinch," Koarel said, pressing the device to Dain's arm in time with her words. The device hissed, a tiny dart of pain against her bicep, followed by a dot of ice as the injector's anesthetic coating dulled any sensation of the needle's presence. Dain watched as the ampoule quickly filled with her dark blue blood, and as soon as the ampoule was topped off, the injector hissed again and came away cleanly. Koarel quickly had the ampoule out, and slotted it into the proper input on the portable lab. The device began an odd series of clicks and hums as it processed, while Koarel turned back to Dain, pulling a portable headlamp around her ears to seat properly in place just above her eyes.

"All right, hon, just one more thing. If you could go ahead and take those shorts off, I'm gonna take a quick look while the lab finishes processing."

The thought of being naked in front of the doctor made Dain a little nervous. When she thought about it, though, she'd been naked - and a lot more - with boys that she barely knew. Of course, the difference was that she had been in heat, something that seemed to make the emotions of anxiety and embarrassment irrelevant. Sitting there, on an exam table in a doctor's office, Dain felt much more self-conscious, and a part of her wondered what, exactly, the doctor wanted to do that she had to be naked for.

Koarel looked like she was about to say something, noting Dain's hesitation, but before she could Dain managed to put her thoughts aside and comply, bringing her knees up closer to her chest so that she could pull her underwear off in a single motion. After placing them on the table off to her side, Dain lowered her legs back down, looking nervously at the stirrups - and the straps attached to them.

"Um, do I have to-" Dain asked, nodding her head in their direction.

"Oh, heavens no! We're not doing anything that would need that. Just spread your feet apart a bit, so they're towards either side of the table, and bring your legs along with them."

Dain did as she asked, feeling uncomfortably exposed - looking down along her body, she could see the slightest hint of pink beyond the fur between her legs, and knew that the doctor could see considerably more. Dain could feel her body tensing, as she wasn't quite sure what the doctor still had in store.

Koarel turned on the headlamp and crouched down, looking intently as the light illuminated Dain's crotch. To Dain's mild surprise, though, that was all Koarel did, making a few vaguely approving noises as she tilted her head slightly from side to side. Then she leaned back up, made a few additional notations on the tablet, and turned back to Dain as the lab behind her let loose with a series of high-pitched beeps.

"All right, hon, that's it! Nice and easy, wouldn't you say?"

"Um... actually, yeah."

"Great! You can go ahead and get dressed now. After that, we'll talk for a bit, and then you'll be good to go."

Dain pulled back on her shorts, then swung her legs back over the side of the table and jumped down to retrieve the rest of her clothes. When she was dressed, Koarel was seated in the doctor's chair, holding a sheaf of printouts from the portable lab. Dain climbed back up onto the exam table and sat cross-legged facing her.

"So, according to everything I can see, your female form, at least, is perfectly healthy and developing just as it should. Just to check, though; did your first heat go okay? Any pain, discomfort, or other problems?"

Dain thought back to her experiences again, trying her best to avoid any prurient details that could lead to further embarrassing actions. All in all, actually, apart from the very first part, everything had pretty much gone okay. Except...

"Well, there was this one time I kinda jumped on a guy, and everything went in really quickly, including the... the knot part, and that kinda hurt for a while but I guess it eventually worked..."

Koarel nodded. "Yes, that's one of the risks when you get too excited during heat. I sure think it would make more sense to teach more about it, and have classes start before it actually crops up, but apparently someone thinks learning on your feet, or from halfway-clueless relatives, is somehow better. I assume the pain didn't stick around?"

"No... it went away pretty quickly and there wasn't any more pain that day, or any of the days after."

"Good. Sometimes with heat, you can get impatient and things can happen abruptly, but the other side of heat is that your body is sufficiently prepared and can handle what it needs to. If it was still hurting it might be a problem, but I think you'll be fine. The scans also look good, and everything inside and outside looks nice and healthy. You might want to be a little gentler the next time if you can help it, though."

Koarel looked over at the printout. "These are the results of the scans and the blood tests, and between the rate of zygote production and the hormone levels in your blood, we can predict to within a day when your next heat is gonna happen. According to this, your next trial heat will happen in... ninety-three days, and will last for seven, so you'll need to make a minimum of fourteen selections before then. Once you've gone through that, we'll do another assessment, and after that we'll probably have enough info to plot out your heat cycle's permanent intervals, and even how many more trial heats you'll have before the real thing."

Koarel handed a copy of the printout to Dain, laying out all of the relevant details. "The part at the bottom of the form is what you'll submit along with your selection request, and the code at the bottom left there is what you'll type in to the scheduling site to sync up your schedule with the other girls in town. Given what happened the last time, I suppose it's understandable that your previous trial heat was just a teensy bit unorganized, going with whoever was available at the time. This time, though, you should make sure to do it properly. Your mom should know how it all works if you have questions about that part of it."

Koarel stood, her gestures indicating to Dain that she could do the same. "And that should wrap it up until after your next heat! Before we go, do you have any other questions?"

In fact, Dain realized, she did have one.

"Um... are you sure you can't tell me what masturbation is?"

Koarel gave him a slightly exasperated look in response. "Are you sure there's no one else you could ask about that?"

Dain thought about it for a second - and, for some reason, his thoughts flashed over to when he was with Caure, after they'd finished, when she was trying to get him to shift forms. Something she said, something she'd figured out by herself that didn't involve heat... Dain couldn't help but wonder if it was the same sort of thing that the doctor had been alluding to.

"Well, actually, there might be someone..."

"All right, then. If you have any other... medical... questions, your mom should have my number." She led Dain to the door, and one of the nurses standing nearby lead Dain back out into the waiting room.

Dain's mother was in one of the chairs, waiting for her, and the two of them were soon meandering slowly back towards home.

"So, everything went okay, I take it?" Eloa asked, and Dain nodded in assent.

"Yeah, she said that everything was fine, and that I was healthy. Although..." Dain trailed off, looking down at the printout.

"Was there something wrong?"

"No, nothing wrong, just... she said I have to arrange things for my heat next time, and I..."

"You don't know what to do. Well, of course you don't, dear. After all, no one's ever explained it to you, given that you've only officially been a girl for a couple of weeks. When we get home, I can show you how to get started - aside from working out the scheduling with everyone else, it's not too complicated. Choosing... can get interesting, though. Aside from the boys you were with before, are there any others that you're interested in?"

All Dain could do was shrug in response. While she was in heat, all of the boys that had been put before her had done quite nicely for what she had wanted. Outside of heat, though, it wasn't something that Dain had ever really thought about. As a boy, he hadn't ever had to think about boys in that way before, and only peripherally about girls. Now, though, it was a different story, and Dain wasn't even really sure what she was supposed to be looking for in them. Maybe, Dain wondered, if she stayed as a girl long enough something would stand out, but as a boy, none of the others seemed to merit a second glance.

Eloa finally shrugged as well, acknowledging that the silence was the only response she would get. "Well, you should have ample time to decide, in any case. Actually, how much time do you have?"

Dain glanced back down at the printout. "Ninety-three days."

"Hmm, a little short, but not the shortest I've ever heard of. The time between trial heats can fluctuate a lot, but once it stabilizes it's rare to have it more than a couple of times a year, maybe three... Still, three months is plenty of time to work with, and you can worry about it later. Right now, though... what do you say we take a little detour and see if we can't find something nice for you?"

Dain wasn't sure quite what his mom had in mind, but was glad for something to take her mind away from contemplating all the confusing things surrounding the preparation for her next heat.

They took a right through the town square, and walked over to the commercial district. Unlike the town square, which was always bustling with people and interactions, the commercial district was sparsely populated, with few other people visible on the street. Nevertheless, various wares gleamed in the windows of multi-story, capacious storefronts, the buildings well-lit and well-maintained despite the apparent absence of people. The only moderate crowd was the group of people coming and going from the food warehouse on the edge of the commercial district - in the others, only a handful of people, if any, were present.

They walked past a towering store that advertised itself as an automotive retailer. In the windows, sleek-lined wheeled vehicles rested placidly atop their pedestals, buffed and polished to a showroom finish. Dain couldn't help but admire the way that they looked, sparkling paint and shining chrome advertising their capabilities. As beautiful as they were, though, no people wandered around between them to examine their features. Years ago, Dain had wandered into a similar place, and asked the lone caretaker why the vehicles never left their pedestals, and had soon discovered why: beneath their gleaming exteriors lay scorched circuit boards and shorted electronics, all the controlling machinery that spun the wheels and made the dashboard instruments glow. As they were now, the vehicles were little more than aesthetically pleasing sculptures, nice to admire on a walk by, but little use for anything else. Even so, Dain couldn't help but imagine what it would have been like to sit behind the wheel of one of the magnificent things, zooming down a road at many times walking speed, even though he knew the likelihood of such a dream coming true was remote. The only vehicles that used the roads now were the occasional ambulance or wheeled fire-suppression bot - seeing anything besides that was beyond rare.

Dain looked back for a lingering moment before they passed by the store, following after her mother as they walked further down. They passed a handful of other brightly-lit but mostly vacant storefronts, before turning in toward the entrance to one of the stores, one with a barely pronounceable name emblazoned over the doorway. The name made little sense to Dain - at some point, it had apparently signaled something important, but whatever meaning it had previously signified had apparently been lost in the aftermath of the cataclysm. Now, the sign meant far less than the items displayed in the front window: in this case, a variety of clothing draped across the worn, almost feltlike faux-fur linings atop the vaguely unsettling headless mannequins.

The automatic double doors whooshed aside as they walked up to them, their footfalls quickly silenced by the plush carpeting that covered the floor. Within the building, racks of clothing splayed out in all directions around the pillars in the center. Enclosed within the pillars, a set of automatic stairways hummed along smoothly, making only the occasional mechanical clank as they led a nonexistent throng up to another similar level. Like the other stores, this one seemed mostly deserted - a handful of other people browsed randomly around the racks, and the only other noticeable activity was the small, squat robot leaving a faint trail of vapor as it steam-cleaned a section of carpet off to the side.

The racks of clothing had signs over them listing the general audience for all of the various types. Eloa ignored all the ones on the ground floor, though, instead leading Dain up one of the automatic stairways to the next level. It was much the same as the first, albeit with different categories of clothing, and a small alcove off to the side that led to an unstaffed customer service desk and a series of fitting rooms. This floor was also mostly empty, with the exception of a woman and her two small children picking though one of the racks near the outlet from the stairs.

Dain's mother led her over to an area with a sign that read "Eligible". The racks beneath it were filled with primarily pastel-colored clothing, of a fashion that Dain guessed was supposed to be in style. Somehow, though, the clothing didn't look quite like what she was used to.

"Um... why does it say Eligible for these ones?" A valid question, but not quite the one she wanted to ask - the more relevant one was why they were here, but Dain could already figure that one out - apparently her idea of getting "something nice" was not quite the same as her mother's. It was a little disappointing, but at the same time it was nice to have a mother that was now willing to do anything with her at all - and, for that matter, the dubious fit of some of her current clothing did seem to suggest that it was time for some replacements.

"Oh, that? It's just a fashion term, really. 'Eligible' just means that it's for girls around your age, heading into your formal education and maturity. It's mostly just an in-between size, that comes when you're done with kid's sizes but aren't quite ready for clothes designed for a full-grown woman." Eloa sized Dain up before continuing. "Although, given your particular figure, it's possible these might be appropriate for you longer than that."

Dain's eyes played across the racks of clothing, and the differences quickly fell into place, confirmed when Dain noticed the shelves running along the back of the section. They contained neatly laid-out rows of panties in a variety of colors and designs, and brassieres arrayed on hooks above them.

"But, but I'm not a..." Dain trailed off, knowing that completing the statement would be a lie. At the moment, at least, she was most definitely a girl. For that matter, it wasn't even as though girls' clothing was completely alien to her: after all, she'd worn panties regularly in her female form, and during her heat had exclusively worn the most feminine clothing possible. In a way, though, that had been different, in that it had been only things worn underneath other clothing, or behind closed doors. What Eloa seemed to be proposing, though, were outfits that went beyond that - things for Dain to wear in public, things that would identify her as a girl for the whole world to see. Before, dressing as a boy, things had seemed reasonably appropriate no matter what state Dain was in, and she had no real desire to use clothing to show off either way. Wearing girls' clothing, though, seemed so alien to what Dain was used to, and just thinking about it sent an odd, nervous shiver down her spine. If she dressed that way... would people think of her differently? How were people supposed to think about her now, anyway? Of course, given that the boys during her heat would talk to other boys, and they would talk to still others, the clothing probably wouldn't matter - by now, people's perceptions of her were surely already changing, a notion confirmed by the glanced Dain had received when he had returned to the workshop, even in his ostensibly male form.

Eloa looked back with a slightly concerned expression, but seemed to take it in stride. "Dain, I know it's not that simple for you. But what you have to understand is, right now, it's the female part of you that's the most important, and it's a part of you that, like it or not, you will need to emphasize. You'll be going into your formal schooling starting next week, and when you do, you'll want to put your best face forward. That's why I thought it would be nice to get you some new outfits for you to wear, something that can make you stand out."

"I get that, it's just... I'm not always a girl, you know? I was a boy first, and I think that's how I am most of the time, I mean, aside from heat and stuff. I'm just saying, maybe we should look at boy clothing too."

Eloa shrugged. "The colors and styles are a little different, but there's not that much difference between them." She reached over and pulled out a pair of white pants from one of the racks. "See? Not that different at all. Plus, with the way your figure is developing, they're certain to be more comfortable than boys' clothing." Looking at the pants, Dain could see that she was probably right - the pants, at least, generally didn't look enormously different from what she had on. There were a few changes, though: the legs looked more tapered, the fabric seemed stretchier and had a more obvious sheen to it, and the zippered fly she was used to was replaced with a series of small buttons that ran down along the front. That being said, the pants Eloa was holding, at least, didn't seem too bad.

"Those look okay, I guess..." Dain replied with a dubious tone, although Eloa didn't seem to notice.

"Go and try them on, then. Here, try this on too," she said, reaching over to grab a pastel-purple shirt and throwing both items of clothing over to Dain. "While you're doing that, I'll look around and see what other things could work for you."

Dain took the clothes over to one of the fitting rooms, closing the door to come face-to-face with her reflection in a full-length mirror mounted on its side. In her regular clothes, Dain still thought she looked more like a guy than a girl, especially above the waist - although she did have to admit that her mother was right about the fit of the clothes. While they didn't feel all that uncomfortable, the pants did seem to hang oddly off of her hips, looking not quite right on her.

Setting the other clothes aside, Dain stripped back down to her underwear, the boys' boxer briefs an odd contrast to the rows of pink nipples just barely noticeable where they poked up slightly against her fur. In his boy form, Dain knew that such a view would certainly pique his interest, but at the moment all she could think about was the way that Caure managed to fill out her bra. Of course, thinking about Caure led to thoughts of her attributes, and of other experiences, which momentarily flashed unbidden through Dain's head. The thoughts, of course, would have generated quite a stir in his male form, and for a moment Dain almost wondered if she was about to switch back. After a moment of trying to stimulate a structure that wasn't there, though, Dain almost felt her mind sort of revert, the thoughts remaining sexy but only in a peripheral way, in a way, perhaps, that a girl would consider an account of another's heat. Of course, such a description had provoked a more... direct reaction from Caure, but then again, heat had a way of provoking such things.

The thoughts quickly passed, with no obvious reaction other than an odd, slightly heavy feeling low in her abdomen. It wasn't all that troublesome, though, so Dain ignored it, reaching for the new clothes and hoping that she hadn't stood there, spaced out and wearing nothing but underwear, for too long.

The shirt pulled on easily, and apart from the color, didn't seem much different at all from the ones she usually wore. It did hang down a little more in the front, though, the fabric draping oddly along her chest, and Dain quickly realized why - there were no breasts out in front to take up the extra fabric. Still, it seemed to fit reasonably well enough, and would make her mother happy, so Dain was willing to accept it, color and all.

Dain pulled on the pants next, feeling them snug up a bit more against her fur. Their style was definitely a bit different now that they were on - unlike her other pants, these ones seemed to end at mid-calf, although that seemed to be by design, as the pants didn't feel small anywhere else. In fact, Dain realized, they seemed to fit quite a bit better than the others, the fit feeling almost tailored to her figure and the fabric conforming comfortably around her body. Of course, that conforming also meant that they were tighter, and Dain could feel the fabric more clearly against her, especially where it snugged in against her crotch - something that was reasonably comfortable in her current form, although Dain wondered how it would feel if she shifted while wearing them. She had to admit, they also looked good in the mirror, although maybe too good - the conforming fabric seemed to emphasize the gentle curves of her hips and thighs. From the front, and upon closer inspection even more from the back, anyone observing her wearing these would recognize her immediately as a girl. On the other hand, they were quite comfortable; far more so, she realized, than her previous pair, at least in her current form.

Just to check something, she put one of her hands down the front of the pants, pressing outward along the row of buttons, and the pants stretched outward quite reasonably. So, in Dain's other form, they would probably still work, although they might feel a little odd... and were that to happen, unless a long enough shirt was untucked in front of it, Dain's sheath would probably be at least somewhat visible as it pressed forward against the fabric.

Dain quickly removed her hand as footsteps approached, and a moment later the mirror tilted to the side as the door swung open to reveal Eloa, both of her arms draped with a collection of variously colored clothing. She looked over at Dain and nodded approvingly.

"See? I told you it would work just fine. Not that different, is it?"

"It's okay, I guess..." In all honesty, Dain wasn't quite sure how she felt about it, but not troubled enough by it to push back against her mother's apparent campaign to restock her wardrobe. After all, the clothes did work, better than Dain had anticipated - as for what they might telegraph, given that both her mother and probably all of her classmates would expect her to show up as female, it probably wouldn't be that big of a deal. Really, when it came down to it, Dain wasn't usually all that interested in clothing either way, so as long as things fit and didn't look too overwhelmingly girly, they would be good enough.

Dain picked through the piles of clothing her mother had brought in, trying on all except for the things that seemed too overwhelmingly feminine (anything with sparkles or edging that looked like doilies were out). Looking through the shirts, especially, she noted that her mother had also realized the problem with some of them - there were none designed to expose nonexistent cleavage, and in fact a good handful of them appears to have come from the equivalent boys' department, judging from their styles.

Eloa was apparently a good judge of fit and size, as nearly everything Dain tried on had a reasonably comfortable fit. As Dain had not particularly considered style before, generally throwing on whatever happened to be at the top of the dresser drawer, she didn't consider it much here either. Instead, she focused primarily on whether things fit and whether she would feel comfortable wearing them, both physically and socially. Apparently, there were other considerations, as she could see Eloa trying to cover up the occasional wince when Dain showed off certain clothing combinations. Overall, though, the shopping trip seemed to be a success, and after a succession of outfits taken on and off, Dain was finally able to leave the fitting room with what she, at least, considered to be more than enough clothing.

Eloa walked back over to the racks, taking the clothes and folding them back against themselves to form a neat, compact package. As she did, she gestured for Dain to look along the shelves by the clothing racks, rattling off a specific number.

"I'm sure you need some new undies along with all of this, so grab whatever you like. Anything with that number on the waistband should fit you just fine."

Dain looked along the shelves, dazzled by the array of different styles and patterns. They seemed a far cry from the basic ones she'd worn before, and some of them seemed nearly as stylized and ornate as the ensembles she'd worn during her heat. A good number of them, she noticed, even seemed to have far too little fabric to be of proper use. Dain pored over them, trying to make sense of their various differences, before deciding to ignore most of them for now and just get some more of what she was familiar with, resulting in an assortment of generally normal-looking panties. While looking through them, though, she also found a few that didn't look hugely dissimilar to regular boys' trunks, although with legs so short as to be almost entirely abbreviated, and without the fly in front. She grabbed those up too, and brought the small pile of underwear over to her mother, who stacked it atop the other package of clothing.

As they walked away, Dain saw something out of the corner of her eye, and looked over to see another robot walking towards the racks they had just vacated. It looked similar to the native arachnids she occasionally saw from time to time, clacking along on spindly mechanical legs and trailing a thick metal abdomen behind it. The robot clacked its way over to the racks, flashing a quick beam of light along the shelves, before a panel slid open on its back. Dain watched, momentarily fascinated, as the robot rested on four of its legs, the others bending upward to reach into the container on its back and extract several new stacks of panties, which it then arranged and straightened alongside those that Dain had looked through, its arms moving with surprising speed and precision. The device was far more agile than the few other robots that Dain had previously encountered, and was far more impressive than the machines of the lowly carpet-scrubbing variety. She would have raptly watched it work for quite some time, but after a a few more seconds Eloa was gently nudging at Dain's shoulder, encouraging her to follow back down the automatic stairway.

As was typical for this type of store, there were no lines, no checkout counters, no cashiers - no one had bothered to invent robots to take their place, and Dain had heard that such jobs were now considered too unimportant to assign to people. Instead, as they walked towards the exit, a beam of light flashed over the two of them from head to foot, the light intense enough to leave Dain blinking at the dazzling afterimages sparkling across her vision. At the same time, a beeping sound emanated from Eloa's handbag, signaling the completion of the transaction. However much the clothes had cost had been taken from Eloa's account. The cost didn't seem to concern Eloa, though, or if it did, she didn't show it. Despite their unusual living situation, Dain had never really wanted for anything - and, come to think of it, neither did anyone he knew. While Dain was only vaguely familiar with how the economy worked, however it did, it apparently worked well.

They walked back towards the town square in silence for a while, each of them apparently lost in their own thoughts. Dain was the first to speak up, as a question that had lingered for some time in the back of her mind somehow shoved its way to the forefront as the result of her previous thoughts. While Dain had never wanted for material things, there was one distinct difference this time...

"Mom?"

"Yes, Dain?"

"I was just wondering... how come we never did anything like this before? Before I started... shifting, I mean?"

Eloa looked back, her expression unreadable. "I thought we'd already covered this to your satisfaction."

"Well, I just, it's just... I know that I was, I guess, ordinary back then, and now I'm important or special or something, but... wasn't I still special back then? At least to you?"

Eloa stopped walking entirely and looked intently back at Dain. When she spoke again, her voice had an edge to it.

"Dain... you're almost an adult now. Old enough to decide about something like this. Do you want the kind of answer a good mother would give to you, or do you want the truth?"

Dain could feel herself cowering away from the glare. Somehow, though, she managed to set aside her sudden trepidation and answer. "The t-truth."

Dain tensed herself for an even more hostile response from Eloa, but instead her mother just sighed, gesturing her over to a nearby bench.

When they were both seated, Eloa began to speak.

"Before, back when you were going into heat, I told you... part of the truth. I'm not sure how much you remember - I was overcome with emotion and wasn't all that coherent." In truth, Eloa was now much more like what Dain was used to - dispassionate, direct, and not quite cold.

"I remember... something about my being your last child, and how a small litter was supposed to have girls, but I was a boy instead..." Well, apparently a boy, at any rate.

"Right. Which is part of the truth. The rest of it being that you were my last child... and also my first."

Eloa turned slightly more towards Dain, reaching over to place a hand on her knee. "You see, in the world before, it wouldn't have mattered. Things would have worked out anyway. But in the world that we live in, the one after the cataclysm... I know you don't know much about it, yet, but the truth of it is, it wasn't just about all the people who died all at once. Even the people who survived, they were still... changed, in various ways. Mostly nothing that unusual, but among the women who survived, their ability to have children varied widely. Some could still produce healthy litters, time and again, while others could produce few, or one, or none at all. The only silver lining was that for those who produced few offspring, most were usually female. But girl children were still less common than boys, which meant that their importance only grew."

Eloa paused for a moment, her eyes glistening with moisture. "When I first went into a real heat, in my hometown, your father was my first real mate. There would have been others, but... a day or so into my heat, the powerplant nearby had a malfunction, threatening to overload and take much of the village with it. The men were seen as more expendable, and were sent there to try and sort things out, while everyone else was evacuated to the outskirts of the village. It was a miserable time, trying to get through heat on my own with no relief, and worrying about the fate of most of the people I knew..."

"They finally got the situation under control, and aside from a few people who were burned so bad their fur came off, everyone survived without much permanent damage. By the time they got back, though, my heat was over - I had conceived in that first mating, and that meant that my heat was foreshortened as my body transitioned to becoming pregnant. When they found out I was carrying only you, I was elated, even when they discovered that you were a boy - either way, I was still fertile and could try again. After I gave birth to you, though, I felt... something... happen inside me, and after my next scan, a doctor came into a room and told me I was sterile. Some of the important equipment inside was... damaged, corrupted somehow. I would never again go into heat, never again have another child. You were all I would have."

Eloa turned slightly to look directly into Dain's eyes, as she watched her mother's own eyes furiously blinking back tears, even as her voice somehow remained mostly devoid of emotion. "You have to understand, it wasn't that I didn't love you. You were still my child, and I would fulfill my obligations to you. But at the same time... you were a boy, one that didn't appear to have any remarkable features. I didn't feel bad that you existed, it's just that I... felt bad for myself, really. I felt that, in the first and foremost responsibility in my life as a woman, that I had failed. I'd only had one child, one who could not produce more, and in a society where women need to have as many children as they can just so that we can survive, it felt like the most abject failure of all. Under my control or not, I felt betrayed by my own body - and that, in turn, I had betrayed society."

"When your father heard that I was sterile, he... well, he couldn't handle it, really. Somehow, he thought that it was all his fault, and that I hated him for what the pregnancy had wrought upon me. He went away for a while, unable to live with what he thought he had done to me, and I hated him for leaving. Then one day, he came back, begging for forgiveness with a terrified look on his face. You probably don't remember it, you were so young... He cried for hours, and finally went to sleep in my arms. The next morning, he was gone, gone for good, gone before I could even properly forgive him..."

Eloa's voice had begun to choke up as she finished speaking. A tear trickled down from her mother's eye, matting down the short fur beneath it, followed by another, and another. Dain gulped, feeling a hollowness in the pit of her stomach; she couldn't help but feel a little guilty for bringing up what was obviously a painful subject. After a moment, though, Eloa managed to pull herself back together and continue in the same mostly dispassionate voice as before.

"With him gone, I was left alone with my own sense of failure - and with you, of course. I didn't know why, at least not at the time, but despite my being unable to produce any more offspring, the government for some reason deemed my reproduction to be a success, keeping us amply funded even though I didn't have a job at the time. So, we survived, of course, but at the same time... I loved you, somewhere deep down I did, but every time I looked at you, all I could see was a reflection of my own self, of my own failure. So, after a while, I just... didn't look, didn't speak to you unless I had to. And once people started snooping around, when we had to move again, and then again, it all just got so crazy. After a while, I just couldn't bear to deal with you much any more, as I could barely deal with myself. I did what was needed to make sure that you survived, and beyond that... I just couldn't. All I could feel was shame. I couldn't even look at myself, let alone you. Luckily, somehow, you made it through anyway, finding friends who could give you what I couldn't."

"Now, of course, everything is different. Now that you're a shifter, that you can do the things that I was unable to... Through you, suddenly I'm a success again, but I'm still ashamed. Ashamed that I didn't have more faith in you, in your potential. I'm sure I said it before, but... I'm sorry. I'm ashamed by my behavior and I'm sorry for the way it made you feel, the way it... hurt you. There's nothing I can do to fix the past, but we're here now, the both of us, and... I just want to do better. For both our sakes. That's why."

Dain looked back up into her mother's eyes, still glistening around the edges with unspilled tears. Dain didn't really know what to do, or say, but somehow, inexplicably, her body knew what to do. Without saying another word, Dain simply leaned forward, opening her arms wide, and despite the intensity of what her mother had just said, found a way to spread a gentle smile across her muzzle. Eloa responded with a look of momentary shock, followed by a smile of her own, and an emphatic motherly hug that quickly drew Dain into her tight embrace.

Dain returned the hug, and despite the smile she'd seen on her mother's face, she could still feel her mother's sharp intakes of breath as she quietly sobbed against her. All Dain could do was try to hug her tighter and hope that it would somehow be comforting enough. After a few minutes, though, the sobbing abated, and she could feel her mother's embrace slackening. Before she could pull away, though, Eloa pulled her back in close for a moment to whisper in her ear.

"Thank you," she said, just two simple words, but with an unquestionable weight of emotion behind them.

As Dain withdrew, she could see that Eloa was smiling again, just a small hint of one, but a smile nonetheless. After a moment, she gathered up the package of clothing again, stood up, and began walking home. Dain trailed after her, wondering if she should say anything more, but couldn't really figure out what - once again, in her unusual way, as soon as the emotions faded Eloa seemed to consider the matter settled. As a result, the pair of them walked back in silence, as Dain turned her mind towards trying to parse what had just happened. Being so used to having a mother that was one way, and then suddenly having her oscillate between cool efficiency and emotional extremes, was at once both unsettling and oddly comforting. Whatever else she might have been, ever since Dain's own change, Eloa had seemed... more genuine, somehow. More like a real mother, at least the type of mothers that Dain had seen other people have. While it was certainly something that would take a lot of getting used to, probably for both of them, on the whole it seemed far better than the alternative.

As for everything else... Dain had gathered, recently, that being a woman was important, and having children even more important, but it was a concept she was only just beginning to wrap her head around as it applied to her. Growing up all your life as a girl, then a woman, with the weight of those responsibilities on your shoulders above all else, and then to have it all fail through no fault of your own yet be blamed for it anyway...

Despite her actions, Dain had never felt any anger or hatred towards her mother, and what she had said didn't really change Dain's opinion much. If anything, Dain felt more sorry for the suffering that her mother had endured, and there was a part of her that wished she had known about changing and exhibited it earlier on, so that the relationship with her mother could have changed far earlier. What Eloa had said was right, though - the past was already written, and there was no way for either of them to change what had come before. Perhaps, Dain thought, she was also right in the idea that they could both somehow make up for that lost time. Looking over at her mother walking forward determinedly, Dain decided that if her mother wanted to form a better relationship between them, Dain would try her best to do the same.

For the moment, though, it seemed like her mother needed to think as much as she did, and as soon as they got home Eloa set about busying herself in the kitchen gathering fixings for dinner. Dain took the package of clothing and walked it down into the basement, loosening the tightly-packed clothing and placing it gently into the hopper atop the automated laundry. The device activated with a low mechanical rumble, the clothes slowly feeding in until they were no longer visible above the top of the hopper. Although there was nothing much to see as the machine operated, Dain sat on a nearby stool and listened to the noise, hoping that the rumble would soothe a mind plagued by thoughts and emotions that only seemed to work themselves into a tighter and more complex tangle. So many new things, so many new responsibilities, a brand new type of education somehow less than a week away... and, of course, the most relevant thing, the thing which Dain knew she could no longer avoid.

Dain walked back into the house and up the stairs to her room, although even as he did so he felt his stomach lurch slightly as the constriction of his underwear changed, subtly at first and then more clearly. Apparently, his body was done being female for the time being. The change did little for his tumultuous mind, though. Such tumult, he realized, would be hard to avoid - male at the moment or not, what he was about to do was undeniably female.

Entering his room, Dain sat down at the small desk in the corner and retrieved his tablet from one of the drawers. Waving his fingers gently in the air above the surface brought the device to life, the screen glowing brightly as it brought up the main interface. Digging through his pockets, Dain found the documents from the exam folded neatly in one of them, though he could hardly remember even putting them there in the first place. Nevertheless, the numbers were there, staring him in the face. Ninety-three days. Ninety-three days until his - her - body went slightly crazy again, albeit in the most wonderful way. Ninety-three days to figure it all out, and sort out a group of boys to... mate with. In his current form, regardless of everything else that had happened, it still felt at least slightly absurd, still hard to wrap his mind around. That didn't change the fact that it was real, though, laid out in neat rows of print on the paper before him. Ultimately, regardless of what he thought, Dain now knew - thanks to his mother, quite clearly - just how important this responsibility was, and Dain certainly wasn't going to let his mother or anyone else down.

Dain didn't really want to bug his mother at the moment, and the printout at least gave basic instructions. The function for putting in a mate selection request, like most anything else official, was done by nudging the air above an icon in the lower left corner of the screen, bringing up the application through which all government business was conducted. From there, it was only a matter of selecting the right option from the dozen or so displayed, and punching in the relevant information on the form when the application then asked for it. The initial process seemed simple enough, at least, and within a few minutes another icon spun in a lazy circle on the middle of the screen as the tablet synchronized with the government's own computers in preparation for the next step.

Instead of a screen with potential mates, or genetics, or whatever else could have been expected, the only thing that popped up was an error window, with considerably more text than most:

"ALERT. The following user is currently under restricted status. Identifier: DAIN. Reason for status: Unknown hold affirmed by authorized operator, number 275.10593. This restriction cannot be reset automatically. For further instructions or if you believe this restriction has been committed in error, please contact your authorized operator, number 275.10593."

Dain couldn't make heads or tails of what the error message was really supposed to mean, other than that he was apparently supposed to contact whoever it was the number represented. He had no idea how to do so, though, and after everything else that had transpired in the day, he was less than willing to try to figure out what he was supposed to do next. Maybe the application could somehow detect whether he was a boy or a girl? In any case, it wasn't something that had to be dealt with immediately, so Dain put the tablet away and headed back downstairs to check on dinner.

When he arrived, dinner was apparently ready, and for the most part the two of them ate in silence. Eloa eventually started up a conversation, mainly just small talk about a limited handful of topics, all of them careful to steer far away from what they had discussed before. Eloa was definitely back to her old self, at least for the moment, and Dain was happy enough to deal with that level of interaction instead of another emotional torrent.

After dinner, Dain went down to check on the clothes, which the machine had already folded neatly on its output shelf. Dain carted the lot of them back up to his room, shifting aside some of the old clothing to make room for them. He kept several pairs of his older clothing along beside them, though, just in case they didn't work out well in his male form.

After his shower, though, Dain was curious enough about how they would work that he grabbed a small selection of them and brought them back into the bathroom to try on. The panties, of course, didn't work out all that well - they felt weirdly constricting, and looked odd in conjunction with his obvious maleness filling out the front. The ones that looked like abbreviated shorts, however, seemed to work much better, and while they were a little tight around the crotch and the truncated sheath, they made a lot more sense to wear for someone capable of changing at any time.

The fit of the shirts, of course, was unchanged, and surprisingly enough, the same was largely true of the pants. True, they did make his bulge in front a little more visible than it would otherwise be (although the buttons down the front actually did a fairly decent job to disguise it), but in most every other respect their fit was identical to how they had been earlier.

Dain stripped them off, looking at himself closely in the mirror as he ascertained the reason why. While he hadn't really noticed it much before, and probably hadn't paid any attention to it at all until the first trial heat, Dain realized that while certain aspects of him changed when he shifted others apparently did not. Even in his current and obviously male form, there was a certain gentle curvature visible in his hips and thighs, lines that weren't quite as blatant as those Caure possessed, but clearly feminine. Although Dain had only really noticed it when she'd bothered to look, in her ensemble just before the first real mating of her heat, the new body shape was here to stay, and apparently shared between both of his forms. After a moment of contemplation, though, he realized that it made sense. However it was that shifting worked, he was certainly aware that the female form contained far more complex things within it than the male one did, especially on the inside; therefore, it would be logical for the static parts of his body to maintain a shape that could accommodate all of the myriad female parts within. Despite that logic, though, it was a little unsettling. Dain was already trying to get used to somehow being both a boy and a girl, and now his body, which had always seemed to lean heavily towards being a boy, was not-so-subtly trending in the other direction. The feeling was only amplified when Dain looked more closely at the mirror, and noticed that instead of the usual male pair of vestigial nipples adorning his upper chest, both entire rows were now present on his chest and stomach, just barely visible but still detectable beneath his fur. Of course, he had probably felt their presence while taking his shower, and probably just ignored them - somehow, it hadn't just clicked until now.

This last fact was precisely one more than Dain wanted to deal with, though, and instead of dwelling on it he simply turned away from the mirror, tucked the clothes back away where they belonged, and pulled on a set of nice, light, loose pajamas that hid all of the new and slightly unsettling features he'd noticed from view. There would be plenty of time to deal with that, and everything else, later. At that moment, all he wanted to do was to get a good night's sleep, and hope that somehow, contrary to his recent experience, things would make more sense when he awoke and went about a hopefully normal day.

When he opened his eyes the next morning, though, to find Caure's surprisingly alert and eager face staring back down at him, he couldn't help feeling more confused than ever.