Felicity knew the world was ending when her hips began to throb with an unfamiliar pain, not when sirens wailed or flames engulfed the sky.
She had been jogging, half from habit and half from quiet self-loathing. Her shoes struck the pavement in a steady rhythm, breath measured, arms pumping as sunlight glinted off the perspiration between her shoulder blades. It was the kind of day that felt offensively normal. Blue sky. Warm air. Somewhere, people were probably still drinking iced coffee.
The ache started low, deep in her hips.
She slowed, hands bracing on her thighs as she tried to place it. At first, she thought it was that familiar hollow feeling, the one that had lived inside her ever since her boyfriend left. Since he'd packed his things neatly and told her she was wonderful but not right. Since he'd moved in with someone who taught yoga and owned matching linen cushions.
Loneliness had weight.
This did not.
This burned.
Pressure crept beneath her skin, sharp and insistent, spreading outward with terrifying speed. Her pulse stuttered. Her vision swam.
It felt like something inside her was waking up. Then the pain hit.
Her legs gave out. Felicity collapsed to the sidewalk, cheek scraping against pebbled asphalt as a scream tore free before she could stop it. Tears blurred her vision. Her heart slammed wildly against her ribs.
Her shorts ripped at the back.
Something forced its way through her tailbone.
There was a wet snap, a rush of heat and fur, and then the pain vanished so completely it left her gasping.
When she pushed herself upright, the city was gone.
She was crouched on the broken edge of a parking structure, concrete fractured beneath her palms. Jungle vines split the stone, thick and alive, swallowing steel and rebar. The air smelled damp and feral. Rot layered over growth. The sky burned pink and green and bruised, like reality had been mishandled.
How am I not dead.
Her body hummed. Every nerve sang with terror and something warmer.
She caught her reflection in a warped car window and froze.
The face staring back was hers. Softer. Reshaped. Her nose smaller, jaw gentler, lips fuller and parted in disbelief. Golden hair spilled down her back in thick waves, catching the light like honey. Above wide blue eyes, ears twitched.
Foxlike.
She turned, heart pounding, and saw the tail. Huge. Blushing blonde. Heavy enough that she could feel it sway when she moved, curling with an instinct she had never learned.
Her body had changed too. Hips flared where they never had before. Thighs fuller. A shape she'd never owned and didn't recognize.
She should have been horrified. Instead, her breath hitched.
She needed help. Answers. Someone to tell her this was real. She needed, distantly and shamefully, to be held.
The world answered her with howls.
Shapes prowled below. Fur. Scales. Limbs that bent wrong. Things that tore into bodies Felicity refused to look at for too long.
Then she saw her.
Another girl, crouched behind an overturned tram. Compact, athletic. Pale skin, shoulder-length white blonde hair, rounded ears twitching anxiously.
Felicity forced herself forward. "Hey," she whispered. "Are you—"
"Am I dying?" the girl asked.
"…Okay."
The girl snorted weakly. "Bold question. No. You?"
"I think," Felicity whispered, "my tail is real."
The girl flexed her hand. Claws slid free with a soft, horrible sound. "Cool. Mine are knives. I'm Rose."
"Felicity."
Something thundered past nearby. They ducked instinctively.
"That one still thinks," Felicity whispered, pointing. "Not like the others."
Rose squinted. "Great. Thinking zombies."
"They're not all zombies," Felicity said. "Some look like they died and forgot to lie down."
Rose barked a laugh. "Yeah. Decomposition's rude like that."
"We need to move."
They ran.
Felicity's legs shook, but they carried her fast. Her new body moved like it had always known how. Power and vulnerability braided together under her skin.
They burst into a corner store. Rose barricaded the door. Shelves were ransacked. Glass cracked.
"Water. Sugar. Batteries," Rose muttered. "Capitalism died but AAAs lived."
Felicity lingered by the mirror. She'd never thought of herself as pretty.
What stared back now looked sculpted for hunger. Something slammed into the door.
"They found us," Rose said flatly.
The door exploded inward. A scaled lizard beast barreled through, eyes locking onto Felicity.
"Pretties," it crooned.
Rose attacked. The beast struck back, tearing her arm.
Felicity grabbed a bottle and hurled it. Glass shattered. Rose drove rebar through its jaw. It collapsed.
A massive silhouette filled the doorway.
White fur. Cold blue eyes.
"Time's wasting," the bear man growled.
"And you are?" Rose snapped.
"Finch," he said. "Your way out."
They ran again.
By the overpass, Felicity stumbled. Warmth surged inside her, wild and wrong.
"I feel weird," she whispered. Light spilled from her hands.
Gold washed over them. Pain drained. Rose's torn arm knit itself together.
"What the hell," Rose muttered. "That was my dramatic injury."
Finch straightened, breath sharp. "Magic."
Felicity stared at her hands.
She had survived her old life by being small.
Now power lived in her bones.
The city disappeared behind them, swallowed by green.
The world was ending.
And for the first time, she was allowed to want.