I blinked.
Then blinked again.
Except… my eyes didn't really blink. They kind of… shuttered. Sideways. With a weird little squelch.
I opened my mouth to say "what the actual fuck," but what came out was:
"Meeeehhhhh."
Oh no.
I tried again, louder.
"MEEHHHHHHH—"
That wasn't a scream. That was a goat scream.
I looked down.
Hooves.
Two shiny, cloven, dirt-stained hooves.
Wiggled them. Froze. Wiggled again.
Still hooves.
What.
The.
Living.
Fuck.
My legs—no, not legs—sticks. Twigs. Weird twiggy knees that bent the wrong way. Covered in fur. Beige. Patchy. Dusty. A belly that looked like I'd swallowed a wool sock and then sat in mud.
I tried standing up. I was already standing. Oh gods. Oh gods. I started to panic. I tried to step back—instantly tipped over and fell on my ass. Or. Or tail. Or whatever that stubby twitching thing back there was. Tail felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.
I spun in a circle three times and bleated again.
"MEEEHHH—"
Okay. Okay. Stay calm. Don't lose it.
Pond. Right. There was a pond near the camp.
I scrambled forward—half-hopped, half-spazzed—toward the water's edge, stumbling over my own knees like a newborn idiot. Tripped. Skidded. Slammed snout-first into mud.
Great. Fantastic.
But I made it. Bent over—if that's what this cursed spine did—and looked in.
Goat.
Not metaphorically.
Actual.
Fucking.
Goat.
Matted fur. Dumb blank stare. Tiny horns. Ears like limp pastry.
I tried to scream.
"MEEHHHHHHH—"
Right. Okay. I'm a goat.
Okay. Let's retrace this. Let's find a rational explanation.
Was I cursed?
Drugged?
Bitten by a werelivestock?
Possessed by Gregory? (No. Even he wouldn't stoop this low. I think.)
And then—faintly, from uphill—the unmistakable sound of mild magical chaos.
BOOF.
Splat.
Shriek.
"Maud?! MAUD! I need the goat tonic! The GOOD one!"
Oh gods no.
The wizard.
The hedge wizard.
That deranged, fungal old man with six teeth and a beard like tangled moss. Who brewed experimental wine spells. Who once summoned a nosebleed storm by accident. Who called every woman under forty "Maud" because he forgot names but remembered cleavage.
We'd been camping too close to his crumbling little tower. I told the Dragon it was a bad idea. I told him I smelled loose enchantments on the wind. He told me I was smelling goat piss.
Well guess what, scaly. I was.
And now I am.
A goat.
Me.
Saya of Seebulba.
Whore, thief, seductress, part-time oracle, professional virgin.
Reduced to barnyard bleating.
I dropped to my knees—hooves—whatever—and tried to scream one more time.
A wet raspberry came out.
Somewhere in the hills, another goat answered.
Oh no.
Oh no.
Please tell me I didn't swap bodies with some actual goat.
Please tell me Saya the goat isn't currently up there, in my body, licking things and trying to hump the bedroll.
"MEEEHHHHH—"
...Fuck.
I stumbled uphill with all the grace of a rolling cabbage, legs wobbling like cheap stilts, heart hammering in my tiny goat chest. My hooves clicked against stone and slipped in mud, but I didn't stop. I couldn't. I was powered by one thing and one thing only:
Divine. Fucking. Panic.
Every clumsy step screamed go up the hill. Find the wizard. Find the Dragon. Find anyone with enough magic or brain cells to undo this absolute travesty of a Tuesday.
Then, halfway up—mid-scramble, mid-bleat—I stopped.
Because a branch.
A very interesting branch.
It was crooked, lichen-speckled, dangling just low enough to brush my snout.
And it smelled… divine.
Don't ask me how I knew. I just knew. Like how some people know how to play the harp. Or commit tax fraud. I was born for this moment.
I chomped down.
Crunch. Crackle. Mmmm.
A second later I spat it out in horror.
"PTHH. BLEH."
Girl. Focus.
FOCUS.
You are not a goat. You are not a goat.
You are Saya, daughter of maybe-a-laundress, scourge of honest men, terror of small villages, and part-time cult icon.
This is not your life.
This is not your mouth.
And you just ate bark.
I shook my head, sneezed twigs out of my nose, and resumed climbing.
This was bad. This was beyond bad.
This was existentially fucked.
By the time I staggered up the last rise, my lungs were on fire, my hooves were caked in mud, and my dignity was a speck on the horizon. But I made it.
Our camp.
Our stupid, half-collapsed camp.
Blankets, fire pit, saddle bags, broken wine jug.
And them.
The Dragon stood in the middle of it, tail twitching like a whip, wings slightly flared in that deeply alarmed posture he usually reserved for natural disasters, religious zealots, and poorly seasoned stew.
And in front of him—
Me.
My body.
Saya's body.
Bent slightly at the waist, head tilted, nibbling on a dry bramble like it was a lover's wrist. My hair—my glorious black hair—was tangled with leaves. My tunic was riding dangerously high. My mouth was open and chewing with full gusto.
Then I heard it. The sound that nearly made my tiny goat heart explode:
"Meeeehhhhh."
It wasn't me.
It was her. It.
My body turned to look up at him with glassy, vacant eyes, gave a big, snotty snort, and let out another:
"MEEHHHHHH."
The Dragon recoiled slightly.
He squinted. "...Are you concussed?"
My body blinked.
"Did you—eat something? A mushroom? A rock? A person?"
My body reared slightly. Reared. Like a drunk horse.
"Is this… is this a sex thing? Gods damn it, tell me this isn't a sex thing."
I tried to run forward, bleating desperately—"MEEHHHH!"
The Dragon's head snapped around.
"Oh great. Another goat."
He turned back to me.
"Well? Anything to say for yourself?"
My body pawed at the ground.
My body tried to climb a tree.
Failed.
Fell sideways.
Burped.
The Dragon stepped back like the air itself offended him.
He pointed an accusing claw.
"Maud," he hissed. "This has Maud written all over it."
No.
No.
This wasn't Maud's fault.
This was my fault.
For fetching water.
For walking past the tower.
For ever trusting a hedge wizard with visible lice and a magical hangover.
I bleated again.
He looked at me. The real me. Goat-me.
I locked eyes with him. Willed him to see it. Feel it. Know.
He blinked.
Paused.
Then slowly turned back to Saya-body, who was now trying to eat the corner of a blanket.
He muttered:
"Alright. I'm setting both of you on fire and sorting it out later."
I needed to get his attention.
And not the aw, look, another goat kind of attention.
I needed dragon-level existential panic kind of attention.
So I did what any self-respecting, cosmically wronged, magically displaced former sex-worker turned prophetess turned goat would do.
I jumped.
High.
Then sideways.
Then spun midair like a caffeinated squirrel.
Then slipped and landed face-first in the mud.
The Dragon didn't even blink.
He was too busy watching my body chew on his favorite embroidered blanket. The one he claimed was woven by blind mountain monks using phoenix down and the hair of virgins. The blanket was halfway in my mouth. My idiot goat-possessed mouth.
"Stop that!" he barked. "That's imported. That's heirloom-grade!"
My body let out a delighted "MEEEEHHH," flipped onto its back, and started nibbling its own sleeve.
I had to escalate.
So I backed up. Lined myself up with the nearest tree. And—
THUNK.
Headbutted it.
"MEEHH."
THUNK.
Again.
"Meeeehhh—uhhh—hurghhh—"
Third time was the charm.
I reared back, hit the tree so hard I saw stars, and something came loose.
Not just in my skull. In my throat.
I coughed.
Snorted.
Spat a leaf.
Then—hoarse, scratchy, deeply cursed:
"Draggggghhhhhhh'nn."
I froze.
He froze.
My body froze—mostly because it had gotten tangled in the blanket and fallen over.
The Dragon turned, slowly. Eyes wide. Nostrils flared.
"…What," he said. "What the actual burning fuck was that."
I took a step forward.
Wobbled.
Cleared my throat.
"'S mmmuhhh fault."
Silence.
Even the wind stopped.
He leaned down, very slowly, very carefully, until his giant, scaled, elegant snout was level with my scraggly goat face.
"Did. You. Just. Talk."
"Mmm... I'm... Sssaya."
He blinked.
He reared back.
"Oh gods."
I nodded. Sort of. My neck wobbled dangerously. "Wuh-wizard. Hedge wizard. Boom. Pond. Goat."
He blinked again.
Behind him, Saya's body attempted to eat a rock.
He looked at me.
He looked at her.
He looked at the sky.
Then he sat down very slowly and said:
"I am far too sober for this."
The Dragon stared at me—at goat-me—with growing, twitching horror.
"You're serious," he whispered. "You're actually in there."
I nodded. "Mhm. Goat. Me. Saya."
He made a strangled sound in his throat like he'd just swallowed a hot coal.
"Oh gods."
He stood up, paced three steps, turned, paced again.
"This is bad. This is very bad. This is category ten magical fuckery. This is stray-discharge, unsupervised-hedge-wizard, spontaneous-soul-swap-tier bad."
"You need to fix it," I bleated desperately. "Fix me!"
"Me?! What do you want me to do, breathe fire on you and hope the souls separate?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it. No good answers.
He flailed a wing. "No! Absolutely not. I am not attempting field exorcism on a possessed goat with your soul inside! I've burned enough girls by accident in the old days, thank you."
I just stared. Pathetically. Pathetically goat-ishly.
He raked a claw down his snout.
"Okay. Okay. Don't panic."
He was definitely panicking.
"This is fine. We've dealt with worse. Remember the swamp thing? The mirror hag? The time you accidentally married that cult leader?"
I nodded again. "Wizard," I croaked.
"Yes. Right. Wizard. The wizard did this."
He looked uphill toward the crumbling stone tower.
A faint explosion. Purple sparks. Shouting.
Then a voice—faint, distant, terrified:
"Maud, where's the reversal scroll?! Maud?! Stop eating the scrolls, woman!"
The Dragon groaned.
"Okay. Okay. We get the wizard. We make him undo this."
He flared his wings, then paused, looked down at me again, eyes full of dread.
"But if that goat in your body tries to hump me one more time, I'm throwing both of you in a sack."