The Tale of Marian MacSionach

This tale's inspired by the long and detailed Courdeory sketch transformation by Skunkwerks. Even though it's sketchy and incomplete, it's what really turned me on to fox TFs, which are now one of my favorites.

Normally I'd be a little more apprehensive about writing a story (well, almost a fanfic) based on someone else's character, using their character's name. But this artist has been gone for so long that I think the project is officially abandoned. Too bad; I'd give anything to see it inked, colored, and shaded.

...so, in the spirit of having art to go with the story, I commissioned the peerless sabretoothedermine to do a take on it. I think you'll agree that it's pretty sweet: one, two, three, four, five!

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The Tale of Marian MacSionach

Mark arrived after the class was well underway and took a seat in the back, unobtrusively. Dr. Froad's Poetry 101 seminar was well used to people filtering in and out, either TAs or hung-over freshmen who were wavering in their belief that the class was an easy A, so he attracted no notice. The note that Mark had from the Campus Student Advisors just had a name, Marian MacSionach, and a course schedule. No physical description or photo; he resolved to observe unobtrusively until the end of class and grab the student on her way out.

"…which is why the poetry of the Pre-Raphealite Brotherhood and especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti influenced the European symbolists with their 'direct and serious and heartfelt art,'" Froad was saying, apparently winding up a lengthy lecture that Mark, a business major, thought sounded like the street-corner ravings of an asphalt prophet.

The students idly made notes; most (as Mark could see by coming in the rear door) had a cell propped up behind their textbook. During the lull as the professor shifted his papers, Mark moved to the front of the classroom. Froad, who had apparently gotten his e-mail, nodded and otherwise ignored him.

"All right, it's reading time," Froad said. "Now you'll recall that your assignment was to take a happy, positive, and fulfilling emotion, memory, or experience and translate it into a poem that was, as our friend Rossetti liked, direct and serious and heartfelt. The idea here is to share your positive emotion, your happiness, with people who have not--yet--experienced the same."

Mark squirmed at the idea of a poetry reading--as a Campus Student Advisor he'd helped plenty of therapy groups that used them as a vehicle for self-expression. The bored students shuffled their papers, bringing out laser printer pages or laptops with their poems ready.

"Marian, how about you?" said Froad. "Why don't you read us your poem for starters."

The visiting Campus Student Advisor craned his neck, looking for the student that Froad was addressing. She was seated near the back, a slim and demure-looking young lady with long red hair, freckles, and strikingly green eyes. She'd have been very pretty save for her expression which was--for lack of a better term--far too mundane for someone like her. Her dress didn't flatter her body shape; Marian was wearing a turtleneck under overalls--the first and only student Mark had seen in overalls in a good long time--which appeared to be made from a dark corduroy. She was shod in brown out-of-style wafflestompers, with the overalls rolled up just enough to touch the high boots' tops. Mark's first impression was of someone very disassociated, very out of place, from their surroundings.

Marian's poem did little to dissuade him of that notion. She began reading in a whisper, with a meek and monotone voice with only the sibilants audible even a short distance away.

"Louder, please," said Froad. "Truth, directness, heartfeltness, happiness…these are not quiet things to be clutched privately to the breast."

Mark's first thought was of the small, firm breasts suggested by the loose contours of Marian's turtleneck--he was a college-age male, after all--but tried to steer his mind back onto a more professional path.

More audible this time, Marian read:

In the world but not of the world
The dancing dust mote flies through many rooms
Many places, but belongs in none of them
It is borne on the wind but never to its home
It had no home, no life, no love
From birth to death out of phase with its world
In it but not of it, dead and gone but not at rest.

Read in her quiet monotone, the poem sounded incredibly depressing in the manner of the goth poetry that people at Mark's therapy groups often resorted to. His extensive two-week training course didn't detect any sour notes of a suicide or shooting spree in the words, though--there seemed to be genuine feeling, if not genuine hurt, behind them. The girl had some talent, but once again the Campus Student Advisor was struck by the uncanny mundanity of her, as if every ounce of life and vibrancy had been sapped away.

"That…wasn't exactly what I asked for, Marian," said Dr. Froad. "It doesn't seem meant to make us, well, happy."

"Sorry," Marian said, setting her paper down--Mark thought he might see proto-tears shining in her eyes. "It was all I could think to write."

After class, Mark approached Marian before she could gather up her things and leave. "Hey, Marian," he said with a bright smile. "Mark Smith from the Campus Student Advisors. Do you have a minute to talk?"

"Uh, I guess," Marian monotoned. "Is it about my poems?"

"No, no, nothing like that," Mark said. There was a flash of sadness across Marian's otherwise emotionless face when he said this; "Why the long face?"

"Oh, I left some copies of a poem--not this poem, but a poem--around campus," she said. "I was hoping to find someone who felt the same way, and I thought you might have found one."

Mark bit his lip. "No, sorry," he said. "The registrar's office sent me. You're on the verge of academic probation and they thought you might use some help, someone to talk to, before it's too late to do anything."

"Um…well, I have to go right now, but I guess I can talk later if you want to," Marian said. "Maybe around six. "She shuffled through her backpack--a beaten-up and fraying affair the same color as her overalls, the muted colors intensifying the mundane effect that seemed to surround the girl like an aura--and removed a sheet of laser paper from the campus computer lab. The poem she'd just read was on it, as well as her on-campus address in the Allen Hall dorms.

The Campus Student Advisor felt a twinge of pity--mixed with an inappropriate thought about the exact size and contours of the derriere contained in Marian's overalls, as the girl brushed past him. He shook his head--objectifying the poor girl wasn't doing anyone any good, and she clearly needed his services more than the automatic Campus Student Advisor matching in Administration had any idea. Before he left, he approached Dr. Froad about her.

"Marian? Oh, she's definitely got talent, but I'm on the verge of having to fail her," Froad said sadly. "She never completes the assignments properly--like you saw. It's hard to fail a poetry class with that much talent, but the girl has a tin ear for knowing what tone and what verse is appropriate for which time and situation."

Taking notes, Mark busied himself until six--as a senior and a Campus Student Advisor, he had few classes and they were mostly independent study projects. He arrived at the dorm and walked up to Marian's room only to find the door propped open and the desk within occupied by a brunette who was definitely not the girl he was looking for--for one thing, she didn't seem to suck the color out of everything around her, and inflected her voice as she spoke.

"She's gotten bad enough to have a CSA put on her, huh?" the girl, Heather, said. "Marian hasn't been going to most of her classes; I think Dr. Froad's poetry class is the only one she'd gone to--or done any assignments for--in over a month. Instead she just bums around the quad and campus, writing more poems and sometimes printing them. She leaves them here and there or hands them out."

Mark, taking advantage of the situation, asked whether Heather had any idea why a girl with Marian's high test scores and obvious talent (and unassuming beauty) was caught in such a downward spiral.

"Marian's been like that for as long as I've known her, and we went to high school together," Heather said. "Never quite comfortable in her own skin, never quite fitting in. Smart, but distant. Distracted. It's gotten worse, I think, away from her parents even though they were pretty cold from what I remember."

Heather was still talking when Marian arrived, dropping her bag on the couch. "Still want to have that talk?" Mark asked. "Let's walk on the quad for a bit."

It was starting to get dark, but Marian gamely followed Mark to the quad and the "Hedge Maze," and area of campus with a lot of foliage that horny freshmen sometimes used as a makeup point. Mark delivered his usual spiel, his usual offers of assistance, and his usual observations about how Marian had the smarts (and, he couldn't help but slip in there, the looks) to go far if she'd only self-actualize. He had the distinct impression that the girl had heard all of it before, even though she listened quietly and politely; either that, or the mundanity she exuded had drawn the color and passion from Mark's speech.

There was no real reaction of any kind until she saw the girl.

Another redhead, this one in a red dress that was just a little too formal for quad wear with a cheap and tattered hoodie thrown over it. Despite the brisk air, cooling as the sun slipped below the horizon, the girl was barefoot, and she walked on the grass instead of the pavement, stepping deliberately and gracefully around the racing and stressing students as she did so.

And she was holding one of Marian's printed-out poems.

"Who is that little fox over there?" Mark found himself muttering. He thought about what Marian would think of that, but when he turned to gauge her reaction, she wasn't there. When he turned back, they foxy nature child that had been approaching them as gone too. Mark stood alone in the crowd not he quad, confused and feeling that he'd just been cut of Marian's ongoing story.

"I know what you're feeling, Marian," the strange girl said, in a monotone not unlike Marian's, leading her through the brambles and vines of the "Hedge Maze."

"You do?"

"Of course." The girl waved the paper. "It's writ large here. I have written such words before, as have many others. It's one of the signs that you're ready."

Marian regarded the girl. "Ready for what?"

"Ready to be awakened." The girl delicately hopped over a fallen branch. "We believe that in everyone is a part of themselves that yearns for awakening, and we seek out those who are ready. We work for the day when that will be everyone, but until then, we offer the choice to the ready ones."

She handed a paper-wrapped object to Marian, who pulled the covering aside to reveal a small letter opener--or dagger--with a drop of some dried and green liquid around the tip.

"It takes months to prepare, the venom, but only moments to work," the girl said. "If you so choose, prick yourself with the blade just enough to draw blood. You will awaken, with all the joys and sacrifices that entails."

"What…sacrifices…are those?" said Marian quietly.

"Quite simply, you will cease to be what you are and become that which you are meant to be. There will be pain, and you will inexorably begin the process of leaving behind all that which you think you hold dear. You will escape from the human prison."

"I…I'll change? Into something else?" Marian's green eyes burned with silent concern. "Can…can I change back?"

"You can resume your current aspect with concentration, yes," the girl said. "But you will not want to. Once you have been awakened, to be any other way--as I appear before you now, long after my own awakening--is all but unbearable."

"You mean you're…?"

"What you see is what I once was," the girl nodded. "I assume its aspect so you will not be frightened, but I will shed it as soon as I am able. Sadly, only after you have awakened can you understand."

Marian regarded the dagger wordlessly.

"This is a secluded place," the girl said, indicating the small clearing in the "Hedge Maze" into which they'd wandered. "Here I leave you. Prick your hand to awaken, or discard the blade to remain as you are and forever unfulfilled. Either way, the venom will lose its potency by the apogee of the moon tonight."

"I…I have so many questions," Marian whispered. Everything she had been told had the ring of a deep and secret truth to it, but fear welled up inside her at the mention of a change, of an awakening that would alter her opinion of herself to make being human--and she liked being human, so far as she knew--to fundamentally.

There could be no reply; the other girl had faded into the twilight and vanished.

Left on her own, with the dagger glinting in the moonlight and a moon on the rise, there would never be another chance. The lonely poetess held out her hand, hesitated, and plunged the knife into the tip of her finger. The sudden pain made her yelp, and she dropped the dagger, which promptly faded to dust.

"I'm going to change…going to change, somehow…going to awaken…" her voice quavered with apprehension as she spoke.

Marian held out her hand with the index finger still weeping blood. It had started to tremble, and as she gazed at her fingers, rapt, their nails began to change--clear and pale as the rest of her fair Irish skin, they began to lengthen--to sharpen--one by one before shading into a darker part of the spectrum. The trembling soon spread to Marian's other hand, but as the changes began there as well the pain associated with them--as well as a dawning realization that she was on the cusp of a stark and terrifying alteration of the very fabric of her being--set the girl's emerald eyes alight with fear and apprehension.

Her hands continued to shake, but this trembling was also spreading, moving through Marian's torso to her thin legs deep within the corduroy overalls. A queasiness flicked into being in the darkest pit of her stomach too, with the feeling of a deep and dormant power slowly awakening. Suddenly, the muscles in both Marian's legs spasmed wildly, and she watched--stricken with horror--as they began to swell, pressing against the fabric of her overalls as they rapidly ran out of room. She wore the overalls slightly baggy because of childhood locker room taunts about her "stick legs;" within a moment or two, that long-ago insult was put to rest as her legs became longer, finely toned, and delicately muscled.

That was too much for her corduroys to handle, even with a little bagginess to take up the slack; they began to split apart like bursting barrels, first along the inseam and then, when that proved an insufficient release for the pressure, along the lines of the corduroy itself. The lower part of her overalls were torn into strips, while their rolled-up bottoms--tightly wound and tucked into Marian's wafflestompers, remained pooled around her ankles with a few tattered rags hanging limply down over her boots. A light furring followed the change, moving across the freckled skin in waves until all was subsumed by russet orange hair.

"Ahh! It..h-hurts…it hurtsss…" Marian cried out at the pain and suddenness of it all, revealing a set of incisors that were already pricking to sharp points. Long and tapered ears were beginning to form from Marian's soft pink ones; their tips projected from her now unkempt red hair, projecting further out by the moment. Her nose twitched as well, as if eager to jump off her face.

A new and much greater pressure began to build at the seat of her corduroys, where the stitching had held against the transformation of her legs, and Marian's cries intermingled with grunts as the new change struggled with the stronger thread and seams at the midpoint of her ruined overalls and the plain panties beneath. It built in pain and intensity, forming a large and growing lump, until at last the cloth gave way with a tremendous, resounding pop. More hair cascaded out of the breach, first white and then orange, a waterfall of fur spreading and stretching. One of several waterfalls, in fact; almost unnoticed in the face of the painful changes sweeping her body elsewhere, Marian's red hair was becoming longer and shedding its ramrod straightness in favor of bold curves and curls.

Marian looked backward at the growing tail, her mouth hanging open in astonishment. It was unmistakably the tail of a fox, and the orange fur that continued to creep up her arms and the sides of her face bore that out. There was no time to consider the ramifications of this discovery; further changes were afoot. The sleeves of Marian's turtleneck each burst open as her "chicken arms" (another old mockery) grew thick with delicate, ladylike muscle. The twitching of her nose, too, finally resolved itself through the curling of nostrils into a doglike shape and her growing teeth beginning to form the humble beginnings of a fox's bright muzzle. Marian squirmed, trying to feel the tail--to see if she could feel it, if it was really a part of her--a moment of almost calm curiosity amid the whirlwind of change engulfing her form.

The rest of her body began to grow larger and stronger--not so much as to wash away the ladylike contours of Marian's human body but rather to cast them in stronger relief. Her turtleneck splintered under the pressure, and the straps of her overalls pulled taut and snapped one by one, flying over her shoulders to dangle at the back of what remained of her wardrobe. Teeth gritted at the pain, Marian set her boots apart, clenched her fists, and tried to ride the changes out by retreating from the now.

Her boots! Those roomy wafflestompers appeared awfully lumpy and misshapen, and before long Marian was conscious of the same pressure she'd felt before building in them. She flexed her toes experimentally only to hear the sound of ripping alongside the unfamiliar feeling of digits in all the wrong places--and moving further in those directions. The right boot let out a dry hiss as dark claws tore through the front of it; of the long and unpainted toes that Marian had slid into her boot that morning, there was no sign. Only a fox paw, struggling to free itself from a prison that was no longer appropriate.

Stumbling as her stance began to shift from plantigrade to digitigrade, Marian let her weight rest on her right paw, which had the effect of shredding the remaining assorted wafflestomper bits attached to it; the intact sole peeled away after she lightly shook it. Her left foot held onto its human for a moment longer, but the prickling Marian felt a moment later presaged the rending of leather and thread as it too disintegrated under assault from a large and growing paw. Its remains rode up on Marian's new leg for a bit until finally tearing off.

In the midst of the pain and shock that her system was undergoing, something in Marian's mind metamorphosed as well. Looking at the fix emerging from the ruins of the human, it occurred to her--almost calmly--that this was, as the girl had said, the solution to her problems, the reason and cause behind those ridiculous poems and the feeling--since childhood--that she simply didn't belong, to the point that she radiated mundanity. They had all been signs--symptoms--of this powerful and able creature coiled up and sleeping in a weak an inferior form. Marian MacSionach and all her mundane problems…that girl had just been a chrysalis, waiting to burst forth with the true form only just now asserting itself.

It made so much sense, after all. It was the only real answer, and the awakening was--despite the pain of the change, like pulling off a scab--something that "Marian" (for did that dull human name really suit her any longer?) should celebrate. As such, she began to dig her claws into the remaining bits of foolish human clothing that still hid her glorious emerging form. The small breasts that Marian had developed so late in high school that she was being called "2x4" through her junior year had been swelling into a size more consistent with the new and unleashed girl within; claws made short work of the turtleneck and bra trying to hold them back. Even as her muzzle swelled painfully to its full length, Marian cleared the remains of her silly and unnecessary corduroys from about her waist.

The changes--or, perhaps, the fulfillment of "Marian's" potential--slowed and the pain of the emergence from a dull and ordinary cocoon lessened. The last transformation was in her eyes; Marian blinked deeply, and the round irises in her shining emeralds flashed to slits as her vision was expanded. Standing in the clearing, surrounded by the bits of a useless larval stage, Marian took a deep and happy breath, grinning with her new teeth and feeling the wind on her new fur. She had never felt so…right. It was time to seek out that girl--who Marian suspected was not unlike her--to beg a fuller explanation.

A complication presented itself, though: much as the form of a fox, a pure fusion of worlds, suited her, there could be no going forth in it into a world filled with mundane, weak, and suspicious humans. Until she was with her own kind, there could be no real safety in her true form. Marian resolved to test what the girl had said, to experiment. She took a deep breath, concentrated, and--much as it pained her to do so, consciously sought to draw the false and humiliating veil of mundanity around herself once more.

It worked; she rapidly shrank to her old height, with strong legs and vibrant fur giving way to skinny, bony, and pale flesh. Marian grunted as her tail withdrew itself into the small of her back and her marvelous fangs rearranged themselves into repulsive white squares. She tottered as her strong and supple paws were perverted into weak and flat human feet and groaned to see the claws become flat and useless nails. She felt her restored hair, skin, breasts, with human hands and felt only revulsion.

The girl had been right; Marian could return to her old form, but it would never suit her again. Every moment as a human was now agony, and she chafed at the thought of appearing as one of them even for the briefest of time.

Newly imbued with purpose and a vaguely sinister distaste for her former species, "Marian" set out to find more of her kind and her true name.