Shifter HRT, part 7 – Tipping Point (9 Months)
Things are finally going – or should I say goo-ing. It’s like I’ve been pushing a boulder uphill, and now I’ve reached the top and it’s rolling down on its own. My body is finally catching up with my mind. Just existing isn’t a struggle anymore. I’m a weird gooey mess, and, yes, there’s plenty that’s uncomfortable, but I’m doing good. It’s way too long since I’ve been able to say that.
I ache all over. Parts of me have changed completely, mostly skin and muscles. My organs are still mostly untouched – but even there the filaments of fluid are everywhere, and they’re getting denser all the time. My whole body is equally sensitive to touch now. Before, my hands and face were the most sensitive, as usual, but now it’s all the same. I can feel the same amount of detail wherever.
And the parts that changed? That’s where things get interesting.
When I’m not paying attention, they stay as a sort of smooth shiny version of human skin, and underneath have the same texture as human flesh. At a glance, you might not notice the difference, not with human senses. My shifter body is defaulting to human form, which I suppose makes sense since it needs to keep the human parts of me alive until everything is converted. Wouldn’t want it all falling apart half way through.
When I do pay attention, I can make things change. I relax – but it’s not my muscles I’m relaxing, it’s my form. There’s no other word for it. The parts of me that changed get softer and more flexible. Let go completely, and they turn completely fluid.
And now for the goo-d part!
To my hands (which are still human), the fluid feels viscous, but not wet or oily or sticky – there’s no residue. When completely relaxed, it’s almost as thick as syrup. It’s cooler to the touch than normal human body temperature, but that feels fine. Right now it’s always slightly paler than my skin – I haven’t figured out how to change colour yet. I can push my fingers – or other things – all the way into the fluid, and the pressure is comfortable. Squeeze it between my fingers, and it’ll slowly mould into shape against them.
Except this is part of me. I don’t just have to squish passively around things – I can change shape on purpose, and resist external forces. Right now my hands are stronger than the fluid – I can mess up any form I’m trying to hold just by squeezing it with my fingers – but I’ve got the feeling that’s going to change. I can feel everything I touch, in more detail than I could with my human fingers before all this started.
When I tense up fully – not really the right word, but it’s the best I’ve found – it all becomes solid again. I’m back in my usual human form. I’m aware that I’m actively holding this form now – it’s no longer just a passive default. For this form, it’s almost effortless. Other forms are harder. That’s going to take practice.
I lie down on the sofa. I relax, and let go of my form. All the parts of me that can be fluid, are. I focus on one part, and stretch it out over the nearby skin. My human parts can only move how the muscles and joints allow, but the fluid is completely flexible, and I can move or shape it in any direction. There is no difference between moving and shaping – they’re the same thing.
I stretch out further to form a little tentacle, curling out from my side, and lift it up to poke at other parts of my body – which I’m fully aware of because of my sense of form. I feel my way over the sofa to a little table. Occasionally I can taste what I’m touching – which my brain still insists is coming from my mouth, just to confuse things. The table is wooden, which tastes weird – though not bad, like I imagine it would if I tried to bite it. There’s a lamp there, and closer to the lamp, I can tell it’s lighter – eventually that’ll become sight. I try to push my way into a join in the wood, but can’t. I’m limited to big blobby shapes for now – fine control will come later.
But the biggest limit is that I’m working with a fixed amount of fluid. Shifters can get much bigger or much smaller, so that’ll change eventually – and don’t even ask how the physics of that works – but for the moment, anything I move into one place has to come from somewhere else. If I want a bigger tentacle, say, something like the length of my arm, I’ll need a whole bunch more goo than I’ve got in any one place.
So I stretch my tentacle towards another patch of goo, and stretch out that patch till they’re touching. Now there’s an arch of goo between two parts of my body. Then I let go at the bottom of the second patch, and it all merges together into one longer limb. And that’s fine – goo is goo, it doesn’t belong in one place or another – though now there’s a big gap in my side where I took it all from, right down to the level that’s still human. A thin layer of fluid that I can’t move holds the human parts in, and the network of tendrils spreads out from there through the inside of my body. Not that I’m bothered by the gap – the shifter part of me already doesn’t have a fixed form, and as long as the human parts aren’t disturbed, I feel comfortable however.
But one thing I noticed pretty quickly – all the parts of me that have changed, whether fluid or solid, have to stay connected to each other. Still-human patches of skin, like my hands, don’t count as connected, which is why I have to move the fluid around the way I do. I can’t disconnect any of it completely from the rest of me. I’ll be able to do that eventually, but right now even thinking about that feels like a really bad idea, at a deep level I’m not going to mess with. That’ll come later.
So I repeat the process all over my body, till: tentacle complete! And now for phase two:
I reach over to the table, wrap my tentacle around a glass, carefully pick it up, and take a sip. It’s taken me days to get this far without spilling things everywhere. I put the glass down – and can’t help giggling. It worked! Callie the tentacle monster!
I know exactly what I want to try next. I manage to split the end of my tentacle in two. Because what’s an arm but a tentacle with fingers, after all?
I form the rough shape of a hand. Five fingers is too much to focus on all at once, so four will have to do. Bones would be helpful here, too. I know how bones feel, because I know how everything in me feels. I tense up to make the middle of each section more solid – though the fingers are so small that’s really pushing the limits of what I can do. Then I manage to solidify the outside into shiny smooth ‘skin’.
However hard I try, I can’t do fine details yet, so it ends up looking more like a cartoon arm than a human one. But it’s unmistakably an arm.
I move it slowly, making sure to hold the form as I do, and close the fingers around one of my other arms.
And if three arms, why not more? Collect more goo, repeat, and:
I’ve got four arms! Oh my god I’ve got four arms! And it wasn’t even that hard – since I already know what an arm feels like, and this is just… more of them. And it feels great! My mind has no problem at all adapting, as long as I remember to hold the form. I get up and walk around, slightly giddy. I grin at myself in the mirror. I pick things up, shake my own hands crosswise, hug myself – and I’d hug someone else, too, if there was anyone around. I take a few photos – though I use my old hands for that; wouldn’t have the dexterity yet in my new ones – and guess who’s got transition photos, at last!
After a few minutes I’m exhausted, and let everything go. I’m aching all over again. My arms turn fluid, and I slowly pull it all back to my body. I slump on the sofa, goo hanging out all over the place. Yeah, I’m a mess. There are gaps all over my body where I’ve taken the fluid from. But I’m grinning, and can barely believe I actually did it.
Now that I’m not holding a form, the fluid is balancing out, slowly moving through the filaments inside my body till all the gaps are filled and I look human again. Back to the default, for now. But even though I’m limited, even though I can’t do much yet, there’s a huge difference between ‘fixed form’ and ‘default form’, and I’m already so much more comfortable. Now just to wait for the rest!
When the urge to absorb things comes on, well, I still can’t, but now at least I can go half way. I can flow around things, hold them inside my body, squeeze them as tightly as I can, until I’ve fitted myself to all the details down to the limits of what I can feel. I think that’s all the detail I could handle right now. And it helps. The dysphoria isn’t as bad, and at least I can do part of what my body wants. Things with complex shapes and lots of little holes are best. I can sit there for hours just doing that. I’m easily entertained.
I’ve told more of my friends, and even hinted to some of my family. As for work, fortunately I’ve been working from home since my job went remote during lockdown, so once again it’s put on a safe face for the camera while absolutely anything could be going on off screen, just like in my first transition – and oh boy, if only they knew! How many arms or legs have I got today? They don’t need to know! Or pretending to be all serious with my boss while twisting and flowing through half a dozen gratings I picked up somewhere – they have no idea! No idea at all.
And as for the rest – I’m tired now. Shapeshifting takes a lot out of me when I’ve never done it before, who’d have guessed. But I’m definitely not human anymore – and now no one can deny it.
It's back! I won't be posting as regularly as the first time round – but hopefully there won't be any more months-long gaps between posts like with this one. So: coming soon, Part 8: Return to Hyper City!
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