\n\t\t\t\t\tcadmiumteaCiara got up that morning with a strange sensation of wrongness in her body. She didn't exactly feel sick. It was more a sense that her skin didn't fit on her bones the way it should. She'd felt that way sometimes when she was thirteen and had checked every morning for the day she would finally be five feet tall. It was ridiculous for her to feel this way at 34. She groped on the night-stand for her glasses and plodded down the hall to the bathroom.
She put it down to all her trouble sleeping last night. She'd woken at midnight with a fierce hunger gnawing at her belly. She'd left Niamh sleeping and wandered, bleary-eyed, into the kitchen to find something to put in her mouth. Nothing they had left in the pantry suited her. Tomorrow was grocery day, and now all they had was a half a loaf of bread and a bottle of Niamh's vile pickled mushrooms. Ciara had done a lot of things she'd never expected she'd have to do, but no self-respecting vixen would eat mushrooms. She'd taken the bread to the table and sat and poked at it for a while, but she'd never gotten around to actually eating any.
Just when she'd decided to go back to bed, she noticed the vase of flowers sitting in the middle of the table. Niamh always kept some around, when they were in season. The girl enjoyed the way they smelled almost as much as she liked nibbling on them. Ciara still wasn't certain why she'd taken the little rose out of the vase, or why she'd plucked the first petal and put it in her mouth. She liked flowers well enough, but they weren't her idea of snack food. She'd eaten slowly at first and kept one ear cocked in case Niamh woke up. By the time she was finished, she'd stripped every flower in the vase of their petals. Embarrassed, but feeling much better, she'd hidden the vase under the kitchen sink and slipped back into bed with Niamh.
She got the bathroom lantern lit, and pushed her glasses back into place. Even they didn't seem to fit right this morning. She splashed some water in the basin and washed her face, letting the shock of the cold water clear some of the fog from her mind. She wasn't at all surprised when she looked up and saw the rabbit looking back at her. Even after all these years she was still the only fox in Oseille and she'd gotten used to being one of the featured attractions of the town. They didn't usually peek into her bathroom, but she smiled politely. When the rabbit smiled back and pushed her glasses up her nose, Ciara remembered she was looking in the mirror.
Back last February, Decolor held a commission special where you could get your character drawn as a rabbit for a shamefully low price. So I decided to Ciara into the mix. She's married to a rabbit and lives in a town run by rabbits. She's even come to think more like a rabbit than like a fox, and that sort of thing can eventually have an effect on anyone.
Lucky for her, the transformation is only temporary. I like Ciara too much as a fox to ever change her for good. But she does make a rather cute rabbit, I think. The tail she's holding is her own, by the way. It's perfectly fine and there was no blood and no pain when it came free. It's the key to her getting back to normal, if she can only figure out how that works.
Artwork is copyrighted to
\n\t\t\t\t\tcadmiumteaCiara Lohan belongs to me.