Bull and Cow

A couple do a whole toon TF schtick, except their toonselves are the opposite gender. Wild! Explicit.

Anna had a few moments while she pulled her shirt over her head to say, "There's something you should—," but that was as far as she got. Taylor kissed her again, then she wrapped her arms around his bare back and pulled him down onto the bed with her.

Their third date was going well.

They were both still in their socks, fumbling one-handed with their respective jeans, eager and anxious and a little shivery. Taylor rolled onto his side while Anna lifted her ass off the sheets and started kicking off her pants.

Cocking her head toward Taylor, Anna said, "I should tell you before we—mmh." Before she could finish, their lips met again. Anna leaned against Taylor, her hand resting on the middle of his chest, feeling the heat of his body and his quick pulse. With her eyes closed, it was as if there was nothing but the presence of his body, pressed against hers, firm and nervous with energy.

Then she fell on her back again, with Taylor's hands sinking into the bed on either side of her shoulders and his thighs straddling her. Her feet shuffled against the sheets. One of her socks was still on. Taylor lifted his head and gave her a sheepish grin. "Sorry. Just excited," he said.

While the two of them held back for a moment, their bodies weren't interested in waiting. His hips pressed against hers, grinding his boxers against her panties.

With one hand splayed against the bed and her chest heaving lightly, Anna panted, "Same." After a few moments, she had enough breath to add, "Just wanted to tell you, I'm...part cow."

Taylor laughed and leaned back, putting more weight on his knees. "Like a toon?" he asked.

"Yeah. My grandpa was a bull. Is—" She swallowed and arched her hips. "Is that all right?"

The Elixir of Al-Rūn

A College mage tries to steal an elixir of suggestion from his alchemy teacher, but winds up pranking himself pretty hard. Mature.

The evening bells rang out over the blue domes and white walls of the College, calling all its students to dinner in the Great Hall. By rule, only primes or those with special dispensation from a College Master were exempted. Martin was neither of these, but he had come to learn that during dinner, when the halls were nearly empty, was the ideal time to avoid being caught.

The sleeves of his blue fifth-year's gown were rolled up above his elbows and his dark hair was tucked behind his ears. On his desk before him, a sigiled blue flame lapped at the bottom of his glass alembic. A vial underneath the spout collected the thin, milk-white fluid, a distillation of white betony and hyssop petals.

Crouching down, Martin tapped the side of the alembic, coaxing a few more drops to run down into the vial. The betony and hyssop was spent. They had given him less distillate than he'd hoped, but he was sure it would be enough. He only needed to make it to the alchemy laboratory and back.

Within the laboratory, in the personal collection of Isidore, the College's Master of Alchemy, there sat a glass decanter, inlaid with gold and filled with a rose-red elixir. Martin had seen it only once, when Isidore had taken it from his study to show it to a sixth-year. It had been a gift from a friend of his, a Master at the great University of Al-Rūn, the cradle of alchemy itself. As Isidore described it, the elixir was made of camomile, saffron, a lock of hair cut from a slave's head, and the claw of a tame tiger. If drunk, it would render the drinker pliant and suggestible for a time.

This was his aim: to steal a portion of the elixir of suggestion, enough for several doses, and use it for his own ends. First of these would be Nicholas.

Brushstroke

Sure, get your face painted like a tiger at the weird renaissance fair booth. What could go wrong? Explicit.

Stepping into the face-painting tent felt like stepping into another world. Perhaps that should have been a warning sign. The tapestried walls of the tent caught the sun, which illuminated their ornate wheels and intricate knots and meanders in silhouette, and bathed the small tent in bronze light. When the tent flap closed behind me, the noise of the fair became muffled and distant.

Sitting on a stool, behind a podium with 'Face Painting' stencilled on it in blackletter, was a woman in a flowing dress, which might have been purple, but the amber light transformed it into satin black. Her braided hair rolled down her back, to the laces of her leather corset. Leaning on her podium with one elbow, she held between her fingers a small crystal ball. She seemed more interested in it than in me, and she wasn't very interested in it.

"Hi," I said, to break the quiet. "You do face painting?"

Briefly, she glanced at me, then back down. "Hold on," she said, and sat up slightly. With a wave of a finger, a gleaming light flickered into the crystal ball. "Hmm. You came to the fair alone, didn't you?"

I made a shy, shrugging laugh. "Yeah, I guess so."

The glow from her crystal ball lit her arched eyebrows. "You want a more exciting life," she said.

That was fair to say of anyone at a renaissance fair. The way she said it was uneasily accurate, though, like she'd plucked the unrealized thought right from my mind. I nodded quietly.

"And you want me to paint your face...like a fairy," she said, with a lazy wave of her hand meant to be dramatic. "Right?"

A moment's silence passed as I came back to reality. "Um, actually no. I was thinking some kind of animal?"

With a a sigh, an eye-roll, and a snap of her fingers, the crystal ball vanished. "That's a lesson for you. Never buy from fortune tellers." She shook her head, then her eyes focused on me again. She stood from the stool and leaned over the podium. "So. What manner of beast does the fair lady wish to be? I've done panthers, griffins, leucrotta..."

I said, "A tiger would be cool."

Sync

Two strangers become linked during a procedure to transfer their minds into synthetic bodies. Explicit.

Based on a picture drawn by Proxer.

Two days ago, I sold myself off. I should feel worse about going synth. I feel bad that I don't feel worse. I didn't have to. Technically, I had a choice. I could have let myself get evicted, go squat in some alleyway under those sodium piss-lights, and tell myself I wasn't compromising my humanity.

Instead, I tapped a blue checkbox that says 'I have read and agree to the Terms of Transfer' and scheduled an appointment: tonight, at the nearest Adelpha office.

The skyscrapers downtown eat up the amber glow from the night sky. They bounce it back and forth between their windowpanes, speckled with light from the offices of everyone working late. Down on the sidewalks, the street lights pour blue-white glare over me, washed with corporate colors every time I pass a ten-foot illuminated logo.

A helmet-faced, gunmetal gray security synth stops me outside the Adelpha office and runs my credentials. I end up staring into the polyglas door while I wait—it's slicker than water and I can see my reflection in it. I try my best to look tough. If this is the last chance I get to see myself, I want to savor it.

After about half a minute, the synth steps to the side. The door parts and slides open. With a brief gesture, the synth says, "The waiting room is straight down the hall."

The interior of the office is so sleek and rounded that I feel like an intruder. The polished white floor refuses to let my sneakers leave footprints. At the end, the hall opens into a lobby, with white chairs along two adjacent walls and a few tablet readers tastefully arranged on a table between them. There's one other person there. He's about my age, and judging by his worn-down clothes and scuffed shoes, he's in the same boat as me.

The Stream

A livestreamer crowd-sources her own transformation into a cougar anthro. Explicit.

I've streamed like twice before. This time, I'm trying to go big. I've got my desk lamp pitched up as high as it'll go, aimed right at my face. Even though I'm doing the just-rolled-out-of-bed, tee-shirt-and-panties look, I brushed my hair and put on just enough makeup to look like I'm not wearing any.

Last time, I made like sixty bucks in donations. This time, I'm gonna break two hundred.

I open up the streaming client. There's the empty chat room on the side, there's the empty donation log on the bottom, and in the video preview window, there I am. I've got that blank, computer-screen look in my eyes. I tip the webcam up just a little, so it's not cutting off the top of my head, then tuck a stray bit of bangs behind my ear. I mouse over 'start streaming', then click.

Every time you start, there's this pinch, like someone just closed a bag clip against the back of your neck. Still haven't gotten used to that. I reach back and rub that spot. Already there's a couple of viewers on the chat list, though, so I straighten up and smile at the camera.

"Hey, guys."

Each chat message comes in with a tapping sound.

sup

you got a theme for this stream?

I shrug and lean back into my swivel chair. "Nothing much, just relaxing. And yeah, let's make it..." I click the 'theme' dropdown and scroll down till one of them catches my eye. "...Feline."

$20 – Feline pops up in the donation log a couple seconds later.

A shiver runs up the back of my spine. The hair on my neck stands on end, and I can bet that it's thicker, too. The chill feeling dissipates when it hits my scalp, but then I feel it sliding across my ears. When I reach up to touch them, I can feel the fuzz of fur growing along the rims, and the little pointed tips at the top.

"Woah. First time doing species stuff," I say, with a small laugh. There's four people in the chat now, which isn't bad. Last time I topped out at six.

The Girls

Some guy's girlfriend gets turned into a trashy rat girl in the Big Apple. Maybe not quite the Big Apple you're thinking of, but still. Explicit.

Rosa leaned against the railing in front of the windows. The city skyline spilled out on either side of her. She gave me the biggest, toothiest smile she could manage. I held her phone up, leaned back, and tapped the screen. There was a soft shutter-click.

I passed her phone back. "All right. I'm ready to climb back down," I said.

She gave me a confused look, the smile still stuck to her face. "What, you don't want a shot of us together?" she asked.

Before I could tell her she shouldn't be giving her phone to a total stranger, she'd slipped by me and passed it off to a wolf in a track jacket, then jogged back over to me.

Rosa hugged me tight around the waist. The side of her head pressed against my chest. I took a breath, put my arm around her, and tried to smile as big as she did.

***

Standing at the stern of the ferry, Rosa snapped one last picture of the Apple of Liberty, pale green in the afternoon sun. She turned around. The harbor wind pushed back her brown hair, save for a strand or two clinging to the corner of her lips.

"Here," she said, offering me her phone again. "Take a look."

I pressed my shoulder against hers so we could look at her pictures together. There were shots of us underneath the wall of clocks at Times Station. There was one of Rosa pointing up at the impeccably perpendicular corner of the Madison Square Building, and then a matching one of her at the top pointing down. There were shots of the post-modern floral arrangements at the Metropolitan Garden of Art. There were even shots of the hot dogs we'd had for lunch.

I gave her phone back. "That is a lot of photos."

Rosa stuck her phone in her jeans pocket and tugged her flannel shirt tighter against the thick harbor breeze. "We don't get to go on a lot of vacations," she said. "I want to make sure I remember all of this."

I did too. My hand rested on her waist and we leaned together against the wind.

"Hey," she said.

I looked into her eyes.

With a grin, she nodded toward the Apple of Liberty. "I guess that's why they call it the Big Apple, huh?"

I pursed my lips and sighed, which only made Rosa smile brighter.