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This vignette was written for Catprog. It contains post-transformation slice of life content involving a consenting adult. :3

[center][b][u]A Harpy's Life[/u][/b][/center]

For the first twenty three years of her life, Kelly was a pretty average woman. Then the change happened. Then she [i]shifted[/i]. Everyone knew about it by that point, and everyone had on some level thought about what they'd do if they shifted into one of the various mythological beings which had started to spring up around the world, transformed from once perfectly normal people just like Kelly. But, when Kelly woke up one morning to find herself with wings instead of arms, taloned claws instead of feet, and the body not of a human woman but of a harpy, she had to admit that it turned out she really hadn't thought about it nearly enough.

Her first problem, that very first morning after she'd spent fifteen minutes staring at the mirror in a mixture of tearful shock, horror, and awe, was how to get dressed. After all, she had no hands. No fingers. She still had fine motor control over her limbs, in fact she found before long that she could control incredibly precise motions to tilt and angle the feathers on her wings in a way that felt far more sensitive and skilful than anything her human body had been capable of. But, none of that really helped when it came to the fact that she slept nude, and thus had to find a way to put a shirt and pants on without arms to assist her.

That first day, it took her no fewer than forty five minutes to get dressed by squirming and wiggling and biting down on fabric to hold it in place as she laid out a t-shirt and her most stretchy pair of sweat-pants on the bed and tried to caterpillar her way into them. She might have had more trouble just trying to navigate her home since she couldn't turn the handle of her bedroom door with her wings, but it became rapidly clear to Kelly that her feet were far more nimble and dextrous than they had once been, and with a few flaps of her wings to hold her suddenly magically light body airborne even in the still air of her bedroom, she was easily able to twist the handle open with one talon.

For the rest of that first day, she spent her time queuing up with minotaurs and fauns and dryads and a couple of chupacabra at her local city hall, waiting to be seen and assigned an '[i]assistance packet[/i]' with information and numbers to call to help her adjust to her new life, and her new form. Thankfully the harpy was in the top ten of most common transformations, just below centaur, so there was already a fair amount of information and prep available to her. Thus by the end of the day Kelly had already organised a local joinery firm to come and install a special clothing rack in her home upon which she could hang t-shirts and non-buttoning trousers or skirts, allowing her to hook them up with her feet then simply slide and scoot into them. Most of the rest of the day was spent reading and practising various household tasks that apparently she could now perform with her feet in place of her hands. She found it rather challenging to sit on the kitchen counter and chop vegetables for dinner with her feet holding both the vegetable and knife, but managed not to cut herself and was confident that it would come with practice. Washing dishes was a bit easier, but writing was almost impossible, and Kelly soon found herself online ordering some special pencil and pen sleeves through which she could hook a claw rather than having to try and awkwardly grip a regular pen or pencil between her talons.

By the evening, Kelly was exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to slip on a pair of headphones and take a nice, long walk around her local park. After a couple of blocks though, as she passed by a human male holding onto a kid about four or five years old, the child in question bearing shimmering blue skin and fairy-like wings protruding from his back as he flitted around in the air upon a harness, the harpy realised something. She watched the pair pass by, the dad smiling warmly at her and the kid waving in delight as he floated past with a gleeful cry.

"[i]I can flyyyyyyyyyyyyy![/i]"

And sure enough, though thus far she had only really done so around the house and to manoeuvre herself past doors and other obstacles that her lack of hands wouldn't allow her to bypass otherwise, Kelly realised that she could too. She had skipped over that part of her reading because it had seemed like more of a luxury than a necessity at the time, but now that it was this late in the day Kelly really wasn't interested in doing any more [i]work[/i] to make her new life functional. She wanted relaxation. She wanted entertainment, the podcast ringing in her ears already helping in that regard, and really, she wanted to know that even in her new body, she could still have fun.

She looked down at her wings. She looked down at her body, the t-shirt and sweat-pants she was wearing still rather crumpled and not entirely a perfect fit for her new form, and sighed as she realised that tonight she'd have to find a way to get them off again, not to mention go through the hassle of putting them on again tomorrow unless she wanted to call up the helpline and get the city council to send someone out to assist her. These wings were trouble, and definitely not relaxing in her current experience with them. But maybe, just maybe, they could redeem themselves in her eyes.

She flapped them, and giggled as a moment later she lifted off the ground with impossible, magical ease and so very little effort. She flapped them again, and rose higher. Again and again she beat her wings without that much force or exertion, and each time she rose about a metre off the ground, a more gently flapping all that was required to keep her there bobbing and hovering. Over the sound of her podcast playing, she heard a giddy squeal, and jerked her head to tease one earbud out just in time to hear that kid from a little way down the world crying out joyously to his father.

"[i]Look daddy, look! She's flying too! That's so coooooool![/i]"

Kelly's cheeks flushed, and she grinned as she flapped her wings a few more times, enough to lift her over the roofs of the buildings around her. She looked around at the neighbourhood. At the streets, the gardens, and the park off in the distance, though not nearly as far if she could just fly across the streets rather than having to walk along them and around.

Tilting herself ever so slightly forward, Kelly thrust her wings out behind her, and squealed in shock and laughter as she surged forward at surprisingly high speed. She settled and came to a hover once again, then repeated the action, and kept on doing so as she cut through the air like an Olympic swimmer parting the water before them. The harpy beamed, and looked back to where she could still see that kid and his dad standing below on the ground now some distance away, her newly sharpened vision meaning they were far clearer to her than she probably was to them. In fact, she could see them so well she could actually read the kid's lips as he turned with wide eyed wonder to his father.

"[i]One day daddy, I wanna fly just like her! She's amazing![/i]"

Kelly blushed. She giggled, and fluffed up her wing-feathers with pride as she took off once more, performing a spontaneous little pirouette in mid-air just for the little fairy's delight before heading onward to the park, and an evening of fresh air and all the space, all the freedom to relax and enjoy herself that she could have hoped for.

The kid was right. That was cool. [b]She[/b] was so, so cool in her new form. And whatever other struggles or frustrations came with it, so long as she could soar into the air at the end of a day just like this, Kelly couldn't wait to live out the rest of her life in this new, wondrous body.

By Jeeves

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