The festival is loud and busy. Across the park it’s set up in, colorful stalls selling sweet drinks and fried food line up to form a labyrinth. The air is a storm of laughter, cheers, and sales pitches.
Your guide told you to stick to the outermost ring of shops but you lost her ten minutes ago. She thought she saw one of her other friends and ran ahead and you couldn’t keep up. At first you were going to just stand still and wait for her to get back, but the people behind you kept moving and you felt like a rock in a river being worn down and down until nothing was left. So you picked yourself up and let the current carry you onward.
Since then, you’ve been going window shopping. Fantasizing about buying various funnel cakes fried in front of you and baked treats brought from home. Watch a mess of red scales, green skin, and fluffy orange ears, almost all featuring tusks or antlers or horns. It’s your first time going and it’s a feast for all the senses.
Eventually, you find yourself reaching the end of the row. The line terminates, the stalls you’re watching trail off, and you find yourself suddenly stumbling around a fish out of water. There’s a half circle of stalls forming a loop of sorts, potentially re-routing you back into a length into the maze. But before you can turn around and walk back the way you came, one of the stalls gets your attention.
Where most every other stall you’ve passed has had a long line, this one is devoid of customers. The crowd parts around it. Under its canopy, you see a demonic woman with long curling horns wrapped in colorful ribbons standing behind a table and watching you. Of course, with no one in the way, you walk up to her.
“Hello, dear human,” she says. She’s smiling a big grin that shows off her teeth. “What brings you here today?”
“I’m here to see the festival, of course,” you say. In the shadow the booth casts, you’re the furthest you’ve been from another person in the time you’ve been here.
“Well, dear human. Here at my shop, I stock all kinds of things that could enhance your experience,” she says, the words dripping off her tongue like honey.
“Like what?” you say. Your friend told you the festival would stock all kinds of enchanted items. She smiled teasingly as she did and laughed in place of an answer when you asked for more details.
“Like this silver ring. I’ve seen you wandering here at the outskirts. I’m sure your friend warned you the interior wasn’t safe for humans.”
“She said something like that, though she didn’t quite tell me why. But how could just a ring help me?”
“Well, try it on and see. It’s a disguise. A quick enchantment that works for just the day, drawing in the energy and excitement in the air to fuel itself.”
You watch her closely. Eye how she’s standing. Slyly look around her. The ring is one of at least a dozen laid out on a dark green cloth, next to a clear mirror angled towards you, and various other rings and necklaces. The price is within your range. Your hand fingers the coins in your pocket.
“I’ll take one,” you say, handing her the money. She smiles and hands you the coin.
Putting it on, you watch your reflection as, between blinks, your face shifts. It’s subtle, features rearrange and you look unrecognizable. Your eyes change color, and a short pair of dark, stubby horns appear where they weren’t before. They look unlike your friends’ in both texture and length. Imp horns, you think.
Immediately, you reach up to feel them, but your hands pass right through like they’re not even there.
“Of course, it’s only an illusion,” she says, still smiling.
She seems friendly, you think, still watching your reflection in the mirror. Turn and twist and angle and watch how the horns follow as if attached to you. They look real when you don’t touch them. You nod towards her, thanking her, and head to the new line of stalls, deeper into the festival.
At first you’re just following the row of stalls you started upon. Canopies that are greens and reds and yellows speckled with unique patterns.
Gradually, you notice a shift as the number of humans seems to gradually decrease. See tall women with thick, scaled tails locking elaborate horns against each other over mats as watchers clink jugs of beer and cheer them on. The tone becomes more convivial, you hear less questioning voices and more cheering and excitement.
Caught up in it, you take turn after turn traveling in deeper and deeper. Something about the crowds seems to shift. You find yourself bumping into strangers more and more. The current that was propelling you has ended but you keep wanting to see more and go deeper.
Until suddenly you hear a familiar voice.
She stands taller than usual. The pale horns on either side of her head twist twice over before pointing upward, hugging against the sides of her skull. Strewn with yellow and blue ribbons, they stand out here in a way they rarely did back home, with hair tied neatly beneath. Her blue dress you rarely see worn here has patches of mud along the bottom, but she doesn’t seem to particularly care.
“I just really didn’t expect to see you here,” your friend says.
At first you worry she’s talking about you, but she can’t see you. Opposing her and facing you is a girl you don’t recognize. An older girl red scales speckling her cheeks whose eyes dart with mischief.
“I didn’t expect to be here, either, and I certainly didn’t expect to see you,” she says. But then she makes eye contact with you. “Hey, isn’t that—”
You run, of course. Darting off further into the festival.
Your friend told you not to buy anything without her, and you certainly don’t want to be seen to not have listened. Hurrying, you bump into a few strangers along the way, feeling the clink of horn against horn and finding it easier than you might expect to shove past, but you think nothing of it.
You find yourself flowing through the arteries of the festival. Excitement drawing you in deeper.
Alleyways of pop up shops and tents cramp against each other. You squeeze between and around strangers, some of which seem surprised to see you but you pay them no mind. Giggling with excitement at all you can see.
Some stalls are empty. Stocks long since depleted, their owners having abandoned them to participate in the festivities. Still others have signs promising they’ll set up properly tomorrow. The festival continues here for three days, though only the first day is the traditional holiday.
You have to be mindful to keep your tail from catching on strangers’ legs as they pass. Drawn as if by magnets. So you keep it twisted around your own leg to be sure, which feels stuffy but you’ll let it free to play later.
You feel like you can hear a voice in the distance calling your name, but instead of turning around you find yourself ducking in your head and rushing in faster.
At the deepest point, the festival is a light show.
Magic is in the air. Artifacts set up along roofs of tents displaying lights in the air. Drawing out the shape of the horns of the late demon queen in remembrance. You almost mouth her name in awe before thinking better of it.
Above other tents countless other sets of horns are drawn out. Like gemstones floating in the air, like stars in the night sky, like the clearest river water you’ve ever seen. It’s still daytime, but it seems darker, as if the sun itself is looking away in a show of respect.
Here, finally, you slow down, to take it all in.
“You’re really not supposed to be here. Especially not without me,” your friend says. You knew she’d catch up eventually. She has a sense for you. “And you really shouldn’t have bought that cursed ring, either.”
You look at her curiously, unsure what she’s talking about. She looks taller than usual. Her dress is stained with even more mud, presumably from rushing after you. Imagining her navigating through all those stalls is enough to make you giggle.
“What are you talking about?” you finally ask.
She hands you a small mirror, and you take it, curious. Looking in, you see nothing out of the ordinary. A short, little imp girl. Cute pixie cut, dark eyes, pointed ears. Little horns peaking out from your forehead as if still growing. Your tail darts back and forth behind you as if also trying to peek.
“Yes, I look just as cute as usual,” you say, projecting enough confidence into your voice to annoy her. “Your point?”
You reach to hand the mirror back to her and she sighs, resting her face in her hand.
The older dragongirl you saw earlier arrives. Then, with odd speed, she reaches towards your hand holding the mirror. You don’t see a reason to stop her, until she takes away not just the mirror but a ring you don’t recognize that had been on one of your fingers.
You blink several times in surprise. Then several more times, realizing what’s happened.
You look down at your hands, first. They’re much smaller than you remember them being. And ending with short black claws in place of fingernails.
Looking down, you’re wearing the same white dress top and pants you were before, too, but they seem resized to fit the new you. They fit better, too, the enchantment clearly doing more work than your tailor did. Behind you, you see a thin, black spaded tail. When you go to grab it, it darts away from your hands mischievously.
Reaching to touch your face, you find little fangs in your mouth and short horns sprouting from your forehead. They’re sensitive to your touch, somehow, like an open wound. You flinch away from your own touch, and restrain the urge to make a noise in response.
“Why am I so tiny?” you say. “Why am I an imp? What happened to me?”
“It shouldn’t last longer than a few days before shattering. Not unless someone finished the working. The enchantment isn’t that strong,” says the dragongirl. “It’s a classic trick. The disguise feeds on the magic of the crowds, and here at the festival, the deeper you go, the stronger it gets. Weaving a deeper disguise, as well as hiding you from yourself.”
“Oh. Ohhhh. That makes sense. I think,” you say. “If it’s just temporary, is it really a worry?”
“The enchantment draws greedily from everyone around you. To passersby used to the feeling of strangers, instead you feel just like them,” she says. “So, they parse you as having no personal space, like their own bodies. Usually the victim ends up touched and felt up by dozens of strangers, especially their new horns. It’s two way, too, so you won’t think anything of it at the time. That’s why it’s a classic.”
“Oh. I don’t think I would have liked that.”
“It’s not over yet, either,” your friend says. “She told me it won’t progress further, but you’ll still be like this for those few days, so we should keep you close and keep an eye on you.”
Suddenly self conscious, you step closer to her away from any strangers. Even paying attention now, it’s still hard to think that it’s that unusual to press your body against her. Isn’t that the best way to stay close?
She wraps her arms around you, hugging you and pressing you into her even more. Your face is at the exact right height of her breasts, now, which makes it a distinctly unusual feeling.
“We can stay here at the locus for a while. There’s food and drink and it’s less crowded. We’ll leave later as it clears out,” says the dragongirl. “Sound like a plan?”
“Works for me,” you friend says, and you nod against her.
She’s stroking your hair now. Running fingers through it and occasionally touching your new ears. She touches your horns, causing you to make some uncomfortable noises and her hands to dart away. Thinking on it, you decide that this is much better than being out in the crowd of strangers.
Above you, the magic pulses and shifts. There’s a sound like sparking and a roar as the images rotate and shift into a new set. Thin and thicker lines form, drawing out patterns. A hand reaching out and a flame appearing above it, a group of horned figured placing hands together, towers and castles. A pictographic history carved into the sky, and you have front row seats to see it.
Pressed into her arms, it’ll be a long weekend you’ll think about for years and years.
On days that aren't Saturday, I write short things for my patreon. Somewhere between 'exploratory kink writing' and 'working on getting better at writing'. Then each Saturday I select one of the pieces from the week to share on tumblr. This is that. Hope you liked it!
For Friday I wrote this as a kind of 'warm up'. 'getting in the mood for horns day'. Ended up as one of the only piece of tf writing I've written in a long while and one of my longer patreon pieces. I'm quite happy with it. I think it's a fun send off to horns day, too. Trying to capture all my ideas with it in one place.
