>>
V
Sara hadn't expected it to be so tough finding a place to set down without being seen. She circled high above the city, looking for an empty patch of green, but the parks would be filled with people this time of day, and approaching the roofs of buildings would also mean gliding close over busy streets. But just as she was about to swallow her pride and go for a splashdown in the bay, she noticed a clumpy swath of trees to the north.
Of course. The zoo.
The place was almost deserted this early on a weekday. She came down as quick as she dared, cupping her wings to brake as she descended over a thickly wooded area dotted with net-covered bird enclosures. She drifted over a sandy watering hole, catching the bored attention of a pair of elephants. A few flaps to halt her descent, and she was on the ground, her folded wings filling up a bendy section of one of the zoo's winding paths.
"Um, Sara.." Embel's voice whispered.
"Get rid of these things," Sara said under her breath, looking left and right for people who could have seen her. As the wings melted back into her body, she realized that she was still naked. Suddenly that seemed a bit weird. "And, uh, I need clothes. For now."
But as her light summer clothes coalesced again, she noticed a small movement in the bushes. Sara froze, her heart leaping to her throat. It was a small, portly girl, probably about six, wearing a bright school blazer, which didn't seem to have kept her from escaping the notice of her chaperones. The girl stepped slowly out into the clearing, her tight-lipped, wide-eyed face bright with trepidation and amazement. She had obviously seen the whole descent. For a moment Sara was at a loss. But as the girl's mouth opened, Sara was quick-witted enough to bring a finger to her lips, flashing a quick smile: "Shhh."
The girl's eyes opened even wider and her mouth snapped shut. She gave a quick nod and ran off.
Sara's breath was still coming in short gulps. An older couple walked around the corner, followed by a woman pushing a twin stroller coming from the other direction. Nobody gave her a second glance. Just like that, she was anonymous again, one among a crowd. Had she really just gone streaking above the city for an hour? It made her giddy.
"That was exciting," Embel said. "I tried to warn you about the kid."
"It's strange, you know?" Sara said quietly, finding a handrail and leaning back against it. "I'm still not sure how much it even matters if somebody sees me. Like I feel as if I should be rushing off like Superman to change in a phone booth. But at the same time, you can turn me into whoever I can -- no: whoever, or whatever, I can think of in a couple seconds. It's not like anybody could figure out anything about me... track me home, or anything."
"Exactly," said Embel. "So for me the main problem is the people who see you. You've got to ask, how does what you do affect them? And how much do you care?"
Sara thought for a moment. "Like that girl. If I saw what she just saw when I was a kid, I'd remember it for the rest of my life."
"Right, and you know she's going to think back on it some day twenty years later and wonder, Wait, was that real?" Somehow Embel's light-hearted smirk was audible. "Personally I like messing with people. Life is better with a bit of magic in it. I like to always leave them guessing."
"Like.. did I really just see a naked girl with wings fly by my bedroom window." Sara chuckled quietly at the thought.
"Yeah, like that.. Or, like yesterday... did that girl in the yellow dress really just uncontrollably spray breastmilk all over me as I was ringing her up... is that even possible?"
"You're ridiculous," said Sara, a huge smile on her face. She sat down on a bench across from the elephant enclosure, still in her fresh-faced Scandinavian skin, unremarkable and unrecognizable. People strolled by on the path now and then. An old elephant sow blinked at her, then turned its attention back to soaking in the muddy water.
The noonday sun was high in the sky, and Sara knew that she could do anything she fucking wanted.
***
The tapir sways from side to side as it ambles slowly about the enclosure. It's so much bigger than Martin had expected, nearly eight feet long and shaped like a huge armadillo, its hog-bristly skin dappled in wide splashes of black and white. The salient feature of the tapir is its long snout, which moves on its own to snuffle in the dirt and pick up stray pieces of hay, almost like a squat little elephant trunk. The creature doesn't pay much attention to the kid on the other side of the glass, sketchpad in hand, as he begins to rough out its outline, trying to convey a sense of the animal's sturdy bulk.
Footsteps approach from up the trail. Unlike those of most of the passers-by, these footsteps crunch right up the gravel path to Martin and stop right beside him. After a couple awkward seconds he tears his eyes up and away from his pad to see who's there.
She stands there smiling at him. Red hair frames a button-cute face, frizzing out from her tight ponytail. He quirks the corner of his mouth in a friendly fashion and a polite word has almost slipped out when the double-take hits him, the flush of adrenaline coming to his face before he even consciously fully realizes: The girl's breasts are preposterous. They are gigantic, bigger than her head, and fill out every corner of her khaki docent's shirt, which contains them tightly, neatly, as if it was tailored for her. Her sizeable nipples force low, wide tents in the fabric, mounding obscenely right under the bottom edge of her shirt pockets. Her nametag, pinned to the upper slope of her heavy bosom, reads "FIONA." Martin forces his eyes back up to her gently smiling face, his easy composure broken, heart pounding.
"Wh-"
"Are you enjoying your visit today?" Fiona asks, interrupting him right as he's about to speak. Martin's head is already swimming and her timing throws him off-kilter.
"Uhh.. I... I'm just.." he gulps, words jostling in his mouth. His face feels warm, his heartbeat in his skin.
"It's ok, I'm on my break," she says with a little grin, maybe trying to put him at ease. "Oh, is that a sketchbook?" She steps closer and leans down to look at the pad in Martin's hands, her heavy breasts barely shifting at all inside the thick fabric of her shirt.
"Um... yeah, I'm doing a project for class.." Martin mumbles as he hands her the book.
"Oh, awesome!" Her face lights up with genuine interest. "Hey, could you hold this.." She puts something in Martin's hand in the same motion as she takes his sketch from him. Fiona chuckles appreciatively, examining the roughed-out gestural drawing with critical eyes. "This.. is pretty good! Are you going to school for art?"
"N.. no, I'm actually studying biology... The art class is just for humanities credit.." The object thrust into Martin's hand is a small metal box with a big red button on it.
"It's cool how you just use light and dark to get a sense of the animal... It looks really alive. Like.. an impression that you might get if you saw it out of the corner of your eye." She stands close to Martin as she looks at his sketch, almost brushing against him.
"Yeah, I'm.. I'm just trying to capture the broad shape of it, then i'll go back and fill in details..." Talking with her like this while her improbable body nonchalantly looms before him... the blatant dissonance keeps Martin entirely off-balance, unable to process what's happening, a small part of his brain conversing normally while the rest reels in shock. He nervously fiddles with the little box in his hand while he talks, turning it around, too distracted to really even notice it.
"I love tapirs," Fiona confesses. "Most people end up spending all their time at the big exhibits: elephants, or gorillas, or the big cats... We only have a couple of these guys, and most of the people who pass by here are already on their way somewhere else. So I come down here a lot for my break. Usually there's nobody here... or just a couple people."
"Yeah.. they're really interesting," Martin stammers lamely, "I.. I don't really know much about them, but I thought they would be fun to draw... they have great coloring and a really... unique shape..." As his voice trails away his eyes slide again to Fiona's bust, gaze drawn down to her nipples. They almost seem to be growing, under her shirt... no, they're definitely getting taller, making little folds in her shirt as they tent it more sharply. Fiona shifts on her feet slightly and her chest drifts heavily from side to side, the motion shocking Martin out of his reverie. He looks back up at her with a big, embarrassed blush. She beams back at him, smiling wide and generously, either not noticing or not minding his flustered preoccupation.
"Well," Fiona says, gathering herself up for an explanation, "there are actually three different species of tapir still extant, but two of them are from South America... South american tapirs are little brown creatures, but these big, black and white guys are Malaysian tapirs. All three species are endangered. Especially the Malaysian tapir, whose habitat has been totally fragmented by deforestation..."
As he listens to her, Martin finds himself fiddling nervously with the little box. Now that he's not part of the conversation, he has time to actually think and run through the events of the past few minutes. The box just doesn't make sense. Why would she be carrying something like that, and why would she just hand it to him? And... what's with the red button. It looks like something from an arcade booth.
Fiona continues blithely: "...They're foragers, and they use their little trunk to root through the leaves and brush on the forest floor. You wouldn't think it to look at them, but they're actually closely related to..."
He presses the button.
Suddenly Fiona isn't talking anymore. Suddenly she has crossed the gap between them and her body is pressing against his, her hips and legs gently brushing by him, her arms pulling his head and shoulders close, her huge breasts pooling softly and fluidly as they smoosh up to his chest, and she's kissing him, her lips quickly meeting his mouth and moving tenderly, hungrily against him. Her hair has come unbound from her ponytail and surrounds her freckled face like a halo. Martin is reeling, unable to react, his body stiff and motionless, with his lips shut tight against her seeking kiss.
A breathless moment passes and the shock of Fiona's sudden advance rushes through Martin's body. Full realization assembles itself within him. "What are you..!" he gasps and is interrupted by the girl's sweet, lithe tongue darting into his mouth, slippery and agile, her tongue's tip touching his as her lips assiduously caress his mouth. His face totally red, he can't help responding, his lips relaxing, reaching to meet hers, their faces pushing together... and Martin's hand squeezes the little box, pressing the button again.
In a split second Fiona is back standing next to him just as she was. Her hair is back in her tight ponytail and everything about her is unruffled and well-contained.
"...Closely related to horses, like hippopotamuses and elephants. It's just amazing how creatures that are genetic cousins can be so morphologically diverse... I think it really speaks to how quickly life can adapt when it encounters diverse ecological niches..."
Martin is left struggling for breath, almost falling forward as she abruptly is no longer kissing him. His heart beats frenetically. He can't pay attention to what she's saying.
"What.. the FUCK just happened?" Martin interrupts, hoarsely, barely able to talk.
"Hmm? I don't... what?" She turns to him with genuine concern. "Are you ok?"
"No! I.. you... You were just.." He can't even say it. Even though it just happened. So.. "This thing! You gave this thing to me!" He shoves the device at her.
"I don't know what that is? I didn't..." She shrugs at him apologetically.
It's too much for him to take. Looking right at her he jams the button hard with his thumb. It slams home hard, and something crunches inside the box. One moment she's looking at him in gentle confusion, and without seeming to cross the intervening space, the next moment she's grinding hard on his body, her hands grabbing his hair and pulling his face tight against hers. His arms are open for her and he catches her, holds her, closing his eyes and meeting her passion with exuberance as he falls into the kiss.
Something inside the box is broken. The button feels loose and pressing it does nothing. Martin lets the box fall to the ground: there are more important things to worry about. While their lips fervently meet and part he reaches down and takes Fiona's rear in his hands. His fingers sink slightly into her cheeks through her taut khaki pants. He casts aside his caution and roughly, sharply _squeezes_ her behind, making her take a quick breath - he can feel her lips open against his as she gasps - her body shuddering and her fingers digging in to his neck and shoulders. She sighs elatedly, lost in pleasure, her spine making an arch and twisting, wiggling her behind further into his hungry grip. Her breasts press into his chest and pool firmly against him, her hard nipples poking urgently against his ribs, and as she writhes in delight her breastflesh rolls resiliently between them like tight, well-kneaded dough. She obviously covets his lust for her, and at that realization a wave of drunken abandon washes over him. He suddenly knows that he can do whatever he wants to her... no: she _wants_ him to do whatever he wants to her.
Martin pulls back from the kiss - she looks back at him with intelligent, clear eyes, her face full of lust - and roughly spins Fiona around, facing her away from him. She sighs in anticipation and grabs his hands before he can begin to move them, bringing them up from their place on her hips to sink into her giant breasts. Her hands rest on top of his and help him to squeeze and explore her chest, while she slowly grinds her butt on his body, making circles against his crotch. Her eyes are closed and she sighs softly with every breath, voicing a breathy moan every so often as Martin incredulously manipulates her.
Possessed by a sudden urge, Martin grabs her shirt and viciously rips it open. It parts with a series of sharp pops as the metal snaps down the front come undone, and she leans back against him, enthusiastically shoving her braless breasts out into the open air. They shift slightly to either side with a heavy wobble, no longer confined but still roundly defying gravity, the two sides of her shirt hanging loose around her. Nobody is coming down the path, but the knowledge that someone might round the corner any moment makes Martin's heart pound. He sinks his hands deep into her naked, yielding breastflesh. Her texture is so smooth and elastic that it almost feels unreal, if it weren't for her living warmth and the fine, slightly sweaty feeling of her skin. He squeezes and kneads, taking handfuls of flesh, shaking her around - up and down, apart and together, moving each breast in a different circle and feeling her flesh ripple and jiggle all the while. Her nipples, exposed and in plain sight, are clearly-preposterous pink tumescences, over an inch both wide and tall... he grabs them greedily, rolling them and pinching them, cupping them and feeling them hard against his palm... then moving his flat palms in circles to feel them circle around beneath, their hardness contrasting delightfully with the freely flowing flesh surrounding them. Her face is bright with intense focus, her lower lip between her teeth, and Martin can hear her breath rushing sharply in and feel her back arching against him whenever he gives her a particularly firm pinch, her body reacting splendidly to his ministrations.
Martin finds Fiona's hands resting again on top of his own, firmly guiding his grip deeper into her malleable globes as she breathes out a guttural groan. He lets her fingers manipulate his as she guides him to *squeeeeze* her as hard as he can, feeling his hands pinching and twisting great handfuls of her silky flesh. She moans from some place deep inside her, her body shivering, her hips rolling against him as he digs his tight, squeezing grasp deeper. He is giddy, his heart in his throat, knowing that what he's doing - what she's guiding him to do - should be utterly painful, should make her just want to curl up and cry, but somehow instead the absurdly impossible situation has come about that his passionate mauling of her ridiculously proportioned breasts is giving her so much intense pleasure that she is reduced to moaning, growling, grinding against him. He coasts along the unreality of the situation, abandoning himself to it, drunk on her unbelievable body.
The moment he loosens his grasp she takes his hands and guides them down to her hips, and turns around to face him again. She has a fire in her eyes and a lustful smile as she pushes him down to his knees with surprising strength and hugs him close. Her head-sized breasts, red and swollen from his rough treatment, press against and envelop his face. She puts her weight on him and he finds himself rolling back onto his rear in a corner of the dirt path, falling back onto a bed of dry leaves under the waist-high branches of a rhododendron. He flails his arms behind him to support the two of them, and bumps a hand inadvertently into the discarded, broken little box, which skitters across the ground. Her breast is hanging right in front of his face, her nipple staring him in the eyes, and he looks up at her flushed, smiling face.
She nods.
He closes his eyes and moves in slowly to wrap his mouth around her pink, firm nipple. It fits tight in his mouth and presses tenderly against his tongue, as if it was made for him. He sucks softly on it and she gasps. His heart beats faster as he rolls it around between his lips, feeling her rough, bumpy texture. The seconds that pass seem to last for golden hours as he plays with her. Her breath catches and she sighs softly, reacting to everything he does.
Suddenly his palate tickles. He feels her nub begin to flow with something creamy, thick, and honey-sweet. A muffled "Mmff~" of surprise and his arms slip out from behind him. He falls backward. She giggles and follows him down to the ground as his legs swing into the air. Her softly jiggling breast presses heavily on his face, and his mouth fills with her hot, delicious milk. He savors it, swallows, and lets his feet come back to the ground, his legs on either side of her as she lies atop him.
His right foot hits the ground with a grinding CRUNCH.
A gust of wind. Martin is alone, lying on his back under a bush by the path next to the tapir exhibit. Fiona peers in from outside, as if she just turned around to notice him down there. Everything about her tidy is again, her uniform neat and ironed. She looks concerned.
"Umm.. is everything alright?"
Martin lies his head on the ground and sighs, surrendering to absurdity. "Y.. yeah.. I'm fine."
She helps him to his feet with a brisk smile, "Sorry.. I didn't see what happened.. did you fall?"
"Something like that.." Martin can still taste her slightly nutmeg-scented milk. His heartbeat is still racing and he can feel the memory of the warm, heavy body that was in his arms. As he orients himself, he swallows and blinks at her. "Now.. now come on..." he stutters, starting in on one last attempt to make sense of the situation.
But her eyes are on her watch and she doesn't seem to hear him. "Oh, crap, my lunch has been over for forever." She looks up at him, smiling. "It was great.. talking.. with you, Martin.. I hope you come back soon!"
"Yeah.. see you later," he says lamely, waving at her as she walks down the path. She looks back at him one last time and pauses, smiling, and calls back,
"I really did have fun... See you sometime!"
She turns and runs around the corner.
He sighs and sits down, nursing an aching hardon. At his feet is the wreckage of the little button box. He picks up his sketchbook and finds it turned to the page after his drawing of the tapir. The page is filled with a lovingly shaded pencil drawing of a girl who has to be Fiona. In the picture, she sits on a rock, smiling out of the page. Her shirt hangs open on either side of her gigantic breasts, which she is pushing slightly out and forward with her posture, her hands on her knees. The picture is signed "To Martin <3"
Martin closes the book and lays it on his lap. He looks up. The tapir meets his gaze impassively.
***
"AAAAAAAAAAAUUUUGGGHHH!!"
The deep, forceful shout came echoing round the bend from the tapir exhibit as Sara raced away. She was already back in her own skin, just Sara Pinter on a trip to the zoo, dressed in light summer clothes. She paused and looked back, and her heart ached for a second as Martin's helpless, bewildered yell filled the air.
"I hate leaving him like that..." she murmured, thinking of his sweet confusion, the mix of emotions in the expression on his face at the moment he pressed the button. He was really pretty adorable. And a good artist...
Embel giggled lightly in her ear. "Mmnnnn, don't feel too bad," she laughed, "He just needs to let off some steam." Sara started to say something, but Embel kept on, "He really will be fine. You know, you made a bigger impression than you would have if you had let him finish. He'll be making up the ending to that scene every night for years."
"Yeah.. you're right." Sara smiled to herself, feeling light as air. Being with Martin had been amazing. The red button had been her idea, and they had planned out together the rule of breaking character whenever he pressed it. It would have been impossible to play it so straight if Embel hadn't been helping at every moment: suggesting things for her to say, making sure her body reacted in the way they had planned, telling her things about him she hadn't noticed, even taking over when she had to move extremely quickly or when she needed to be able to interrupt him at a precise moment to keep the scene seeming natural.
It was totally different than having sex as herself. It was like creating a myth: a heightened experience, stronger and more significant than everyday life, at the same time as being removed from it. Through the whole thing, she felt like she was immersed in a legend while simultaneously watching it play out from a removed position.
Her blood thrilled with exaltation. It was pure power and magic, as much for her as for Martin.
"You hungry?" asked Embel.
VI
"I didn't think you needed food?" Embel had materialized as the wiry 10-year-old girl she had been when they had met, and Sara felt almost like a babysitter, walking hand in hand with the girl down the concrete path. Embel bounced along cheerily as families and school groups walked by. Sara could see now that Embel was something qualitatively different from the other children on the path. Her gaze, her attention, her attitude all spoke of a deep mind revealing only flashes of itself.
"Oh, I have to eat like anybody else. But the difference is, I can eat almost anything." The girl's face flashed with a scary smile. "Even yoooooouu!"
Embel was being endearingly silly, and Sara laughed and tousled the girl's hair. "Should... should I be scared?" she asked. After all, she really didn't know anything about what kind of creature Embel was.
"Nah, don't worry. I've been doing fine till now off of dust and dirt and sweat. But flying and fucking uses a lot of energy, and I'm running on empty."
The two of them strolled up to a concession stand which stood under the shade of an overhanging cedar. Sara leaned down to the girl. "So anything here will do fine? What do you want?"
A mad glint twinkled in the girl's eye. "Ice cream!"
Sara paid with a ten dollar bill that she mysteriously found in her pocket, and they sat at a table in the shade across the path, Sara with a bowl of chowder and Embel with a rather tall cone of soft serve.
"Wanna see how it works?" asked the girl.
"Sure."
Embel held her finger in the air above a paper cup on the table. A thin stream of clear liquid poured from her into the cup, filling it halfway. She swished it around; it flowed like water.
"Now watch." She took a dollop of ice cream and dropped it into the cup. It fizzed for a few seconds, then stopped. The liquid in the cup was still clear, the ice cream totally vanished. "Looks like water, right? Well actually, even though I can change into almost anything, I can't make myself into water. Or any clear fluid. No, this.. is something else." She plucked a few leaves from a rhododendron bush by the table, dropping them in one by one. They fizzed and disappeared, leaving a small black silt at the bottom of the cup. "It's an extremely powerful solvent, and it can dissolve almost anything."
Sara leaned over to look in the cup. "What's that left over?" she asked.
"The part I can't use. Leaves aren't as easy to digest as ice cream. Of course, it doesn't matter to me - I just throw the rest away."
"So why isn't the cup dissolving?"
The girl raised an eyebrow. Oh, of course, Sara thought. Like always, when in doubt, it's part of her. She felt silly.
Embel giggled, acknowledging the subterfuge. She put a finger in the cup and the liquid drained out back into her. "This is different from the other things I can make from myself. I can flip it back into my own substance if I'm actually touching it, but it's a fundamental chemical change. I don't have any control over it."
"So... I guess it's pretty dangerous."
"You could say. You're safe because you've got a thick protective coating of me." The girl took a big messy slurp of her ice cream, getting it all over her lips. "Mmm-mmmm! Regular eating is a lot more fun, anyway. I like to be able to taste things." She took another lick. "Oh! Look at this. You know what else I can do with it? Etching." Embel grabbed a rock from the ground and held it tight in her hands for a couple seconds, then handed it to Sara. "See?"
The rock was engraved very neatly with her name, inscribed in a swooshy heart. Sara found herself blushing crimson, remembering the same symbol on the small of the girl's back the previous night. Sara turned the stone over a few times.
"That's.. really neat."
"I'm an artist." The girl laughed and threw the stone over her shoulder into the bushes. She swung her feet back and forth beneath her seat. "Soo... what's your favorite thing we've done so far together?"
Sara smiled. "Umm... The coolest thing so far was definitely flying this morning. But... the hottest thing has to be what we just did with that kid..." Sara's blush spread to her neck and Embel didn't hide it. "It... it's just so cool that we can do this kind of thing whenever we want. Or, not do it, or whatever." She shrugged, laughing.
"You have a crush on him, don't you~" Embel purred, now brushing her feet against each other as she swung them. She obviously enjoyed putting Sara on the spot.
"Well, ok!" Sara blurted, soon quieting down again, "Yeah, he's cute. And he was so flustered, it was great. But maybe he's just the first one we've been with like this..."
"I got his address," said the girl devilishly. A driver's license appeared abruptly in her fingers. Sara started, jumping back in her seat a little bit.
"Aah! OK.. ok.. just hold on. He's nice, but he's someone we just met an hour ago. I don't know... hold on to it for a while."
"All right."
The two of them sat quietly at the table for a while, eating their ill-gotten treats.
"Sara.." and now Embel was speaking without affect, plainly and honestly, "One of the things about being a shapeshifter is... I never got close to anyone. Not really. I mean, I turned myself into people's ultimate fantasy, or like, into a kid's imaginary friend, but I never _got to know_ anyone like that." She looked away, down at her feet. "Sara... every moment with you is great, and I want _you_ to think of cool things for us to do together, I just..."
Sara nodded. "I... I get it. And... I just haven't thought about anything like that yet. I think... I feel like right now is about us. You and me. I just met you and already I feel like you're part of me... I can't keep from grinning like a maniac when I think of all the things we can do together. And I want to get to know you so much better. I want.." She took Embel's hands in hers. "I want you to stay with me for a long time."
Embel smiled, moist-eyed, squeezing Sara's hands back. A soft constriction traveled from Sara's toes to her hair, a tender touch all over her body. "I love you, Sara..." Embel said from inside Sara's ear, the girl remaining silent.
"I love you too, Embel," Sara murmured, and the girl ran into her arms.
]
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cake /
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]