When You Wish Upon an Eldritch Star

Spoiler Tags: Futa, Futanari, Transformation, MtF, Wish, Magic, Male to Female, Femdom, Male to Female, Reluctance, Pheromones, Forcedshifting, Eldritch

"Hey Lana, is everything okay in there? The smell of smoke is drifting under the door and I'm concerned that either you're in danger or you're doing something you really shouldn't. Either way, I'm coming in to check on you." The smoke wasn't thick enough to make me think there was an out of control fire. We lived in an old house off campus so there was nobody else she could blame it on.

And I know that I didn't do it.

"No! Don't!" She shouted, her voice muffled by the door.

"I'll give you until the count of three in case you're naked and need to cover up."

"Please don't. Everything's fine." There was the sound of scuffling around and something falling to the floor with a loud clang and the scent of woodsmoke grew stronger.

Although we weren't super close, I considered her a friend. We'd met when we'd both come down to the house we currently lived in to meet the owner. He'd taken one look at the two of us and offered the place up on the spot.

The rent was so good I immediately accepted. Now I'm thinking that I might not have known what I was getting myself into. Also his beard had seemed odd. Too... Wriggly.

"That's it! I'm coming in on one, two, three." On three I put my shoulder into the door, cracking the fire-weakened frame and opening the room. Mentally prepared for anything, I surveyed the place.

Check that. Mentally prepared for almost anything.

The place was mostly cleared out of furniture. Not in the sense that there were only a few articles of furniture; the bed, the dresser, the end table, the desk and chair were all still there. At least parts of them were. The majority of their volume was just melted into the floor or the walls or whatnot without any seeming rhyme or reason. The desk and chair looked more like two dimensional decals than anything usable while the end table seemed complete but was comfortably settled with all four feet on the ceiling. The bed was mostly intact but it was tilted with one side almost flush against the floor while the other stood at the normal height.

Oh shit. Some sort of sinkhole?

But that didn't make sense, as the flooring was intact. A perfectly circular hole was charred through the majority of the dresser, and what was left seemed to be radiating an eerie crimson light. On the floor was a six-pointed star encased in a circle that seemed to be burned, etched, and painted all at the same time. Within that star were various sigils of a language I didn't recognize. In fact, even a casual glance was enough to make my eyes scurry away, fleeing toward a safer target. They fell onto the lone person, Lana, and then they refused to leave.

She was not the Lana I remembered. Whatever had been done to the room had also had an effect on her. Streaks of blue ran across her face and down her shoulders, like someone had dipped their fingers in paint and dragged them across her skin. Completely naked, her arm darted up to cover her smallish breasts while her hand went to hide what was between her legs. Steam wisped off her body like she was a naked time-traveling robot coming to murder a child. Her skin was flawless, which was odd because once, when we were drunk, she'd shown me an angry red scar on her side from a surgery she'd needed in middle school. That was now gone. It also appeared that all the hair but for that on her head was now gone, including that which might have crowned her now-covered sex. Her fingernails looked strange, like they'd been painted blue with the edges blackened by fire. As much as I could remember, Lana hadn't gone in for that sort of ornamentation.

Unable to think of anything else to say, I gave a lame," Alright then. I'll come back later." I shut the door slowly and quietly, questioning my sanity the entire time.

"No. Mitch," Lana said in a broken voice, clearly on the verge of tears. "Please. Help. Please."

I couldn't do it.

I couldn't leave her like that. It didn't matter that my instincts were urging me to leave as quickly as possible and never look back.

Well shiiiiiit.

Taking a deep breath that did nothing to settle my racing heart, I reopened the door. She still looked the same. But now she was curled up in a ball, her knees hugged to her chest and her brunette hair draped over her head hiding her expression but not the sobs that wracked her body every few seconds.

"How about I get you some pajamas?"

She didn't say anything but nodded her head. From behind her, I could see a fleshy protrusion wiggle across the floor.

She has a tail!

Trying to play it cool, I smiled at her even though she probably couldn't see me and walked to my room. Once there my eyes widened and I folded my arms across my chest in an evolutionary-impulse to protect my vitals, my pulse pounding.

This can't be happening. This can't be happening.

When that failed to convince myself, I sketched the sign of the cross above me and grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. I was by no means a religious man but I figured it wouldn't hurt. Just in case. Returning to her destroyed room, I offered her the clothing.

"I'll just give you some privacy. So you can get dressed."

As I was turning to leave, she stopped me with a quiet, "No."

I hesitated. The safety of the hallway in sight.

"Please stay. It helps. Having you here."

I guess... I guess I have no choice.

"Okay."

She rose to her feet, exposing herself to me once again. This time it seemed almost inconsequential to her whether I looked at her or not. The majority of the strangeness covered, she looked almost normal apart from the foot long nub that swayed just above her butt where her clothing met in the middle. Her hair also had changed in the short time since the incident, the color fading from the tips into a silver gradient that went maybe halfway up each strand. Other than that she seemed perfectly fine.

I, on the other hand, am increasingly not fine.

Every second I spent in the room, the otherworldly aura seeped into my psyche and I began to panic.

Putting on a brave face, I forced an unconvincing smile to my lips and settled my arm around her shoulders. "How about we get you out of here? Let's head to the living room."

She nodded again and began to walk at my urging. I breathed a sigh of relief when I was able to shut the door behind us and close off that place. Out of sight, out of mind had never been a more relevant phrase for me.

After I got her settled on the couch, I hovered over her, uncertain about how I should help.

How do you help someone with this kind of thing? Do they make a Hallmark card with 'Sorry you've been struck by some sort of magical force and are turning into a monster'? Also magic is real...

I don't know how to feel about that.

With no other experience to draw from, I defaulted into treating it like a regular sickness. "I'm gonna go make a cup of tea. Do you want any?"

She hesitated for a long time, sitting there motionlessly, and I started to think she might be going into shock.

After I get the water going I should grab her a blanket. I think that's-

"Yes. Tea would be lovely," Lana's voice came out even and resolute.

Astonished, I couldn't do much but blink at her and head numbly toward the kitchen.

Has she... Has she always sounded like that?

The Lana I knew was a kind soul, a little bit nerdy and nervous but a good person. She liked to stay in and play games or watch shows over going out to get a drink. I used to wonder if she had a thing for me, but she never did anything about it. And then I saw her sharing a kiss with a girl on our front porch and I thought I must've been mistaken. But through all my interactions with her, one thing remained constant: she lacked confidence. In even the smallest decision she bounced back and forth, made pros and cons lists, until finally coming to an uncertain conclusion.

The way she said yes to the tea had me rattled. And I stood over the stove in a haze until the piercing whistle from the kettle announced the water was boiling. Glancing around restlessly, I grabbed a couple cups and tea packets in one hand with the kettle in the other as I headed back to my waiting roommate.

Lana was relaxed on the couch, fiddling with a strand of hair, looking at the silver tips and bending it side to side. Setting the glasses down, I filled them with water and dunked the tea bags inside.

A genuine smile crossed her lips, reaching as far as her eyes and she thanked me.

Have they always been such a vivid shade of blue? I honestly can't remember.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked after a period of silence.

"If nothing else, I feel like I should. For your sake. Is there a particular place you'd like me to start?"

About a dozen questions swirled through my head for a second before I settled on the most relevant one. "So... magic is real."

She snorted a laugh. "Funnily enough that comes as a surprise to me too. Before today I hadn't been able to make anything actually work. I think it has to be the new tome I got from a strange shop I found the other day."

"Strange shop?" I asked, pulling on the string of my teabag to make the steaming water bounce in the cup.

"Yeah. I told you I was thinking of getting a fish, and while I was at the store, the clerk asked if I was looking for anything special. After I expressed interest she took me to the back room and... You know what, this is hardly relevant." Reaching down, she curled her hands around the cup of tea and placed it to her lips. I watched in awe as she took steady swallows of the near boiling liquid like it was nothing. She set the cup down, her tongue darting from her mouth to wipe the excess droplets from her lips.

I touched the side of my own glass and winced at the heat I felt there.

How did she do that?

She didn't look like she was in pain and she continued to talk. "Regardless of how I got there, what happened was I attempted a ritual to summon an entity from outside to grant a wish." A far off look overtook her eyes as she was recalling whatever had happened to her in the room. "Despite all my expectations, it worked. Something pressed in from outside and touched me."

"What did it look like?"

"It was vast. Large beyond comprehension. And deep. So deep that it's presence warped the space around it. That's what happened to my room. I don't think it meant to, but just by being there instead of outside caused all those things to happen."

I was enthralled and spooked in equal measures by her tale. "You keep saying outside. Outside where?"

"Everything. Our reality."

"Damn..." My tea finally cooled enough for me to gingerly sip at, my mind slowly digesting everything I'd heard. Whatever energy that'd been sustaining Lana ran out. Yawning wide, she tilted over, her head landing in my lap, already asleep. I fought to keep the jostling from dumping a portion of my tea right on top of her. Pinching my lips, I looked down at her silvery hair that continued to creep up each strand. My eyes drifted open sometime in the night, my shoulders stiff from the way I'd gone to sleep. Currently however, we were both sprawled out lengthwise against one another, Lana's hands gently fisting my shirt. She looked so innocent and vulnerable sleeping like that.

I want to help you. But I don't know how?

Breathing deep. I gently slipped off the edge. She whined a little and I wasted no time scooping her up in my arms. She stayed asleep as I tiredly trudged to my room placing her in my bed before returning to the couch.

The next morning I woke up before her and made breakfast for the two of us. I gently pried open the door to see if she wanted to eat something. During the night her changes had continued, and it was far more than just the color of her hair and fingernails. Her body seemed to have swelled, stretching out taller and putting on muscles over her normally scrawny form. Instead of a desk jockey, she now had an athletic frame of a beach volleyball player.

The kind who wear those tight shorts on television...

Mentally chastising myself, I pinched the bridge of my nose.

What are you doing? This is hardly the time to be having those kinds of thoughts.

It wasn't helped by her unconsciously sexy sprawl atop my blanket that she'd kicked off herself in the night. Or the fact that she'd stripped off my clothes and was completely naked.

Some built in awareness alerted her to my presence and her stunningly blue eyes snapped wide, instantly focusing on me. An eternity passed in that moment, her eyes dissected me, working my soul down to the bone while I could do nothing but stand there. Then, like a fisherman, she released me back into my body.

Her eyes lidded halfway, a ghost of a smirk crossed her lips, so thin I couldn't be sure I hadn't imagined it before it stretched wide into a yawn. The movement exposed incisors just a little too long. In fact all her teeth looked a tad sharper than they should be, but her jaws snapped closed with a satisfying clack. She gazed at me with the same self-satisfied grace of a cat. Her tail twitched behind her in an amused swish as she waited for me to talk.

The first time I tried to talk it came out more like a squeak of rusty hinges than actual words. Swallowing, I tried again. "I made us some breakfast if you're hungry."

"That sounds lovely," she cooed. "I'll be right behind you." She blinked at me slowly, unconcerned with her nakedness. I managed to avoid staring at any of her more sexual areas, for my own sanity more than anything else.

You should not be having sexual thoughts about her. She's vulnerable right now. Think about it like she's been through a surgery and needs gentle treatment. She can't know what she's doing. Can she?

Glancing back at her with my peripherals, I noticed that she sauntered after me without throwing on a stitch of clothing. My eyes snapped back ahead.

Major surgery on a couple of places that have a great deal more bounce than they had-

Not helpful, brain!

"I've got eggs and bacon and some french toast."

Pointing them out like a total dumbass. Her eyes still work.

"It looks lovely. Thank you so much."

She gave me a hug that squished things into me that I would be better off not thinking about. Then she released me to gather up a plate of food, drizzling everything in a healthy stream of syrup.

I drew up a chair after assembling my own plate. After eating a bite I couldn't take anymore, the question bursting from me. "So... Can you fix it?"

She finished chewing and swallowing before answering. While thinking, she wobbled her neck and it seemed more rubbery than should be, like the pieces of her spine possessed an extra degree of freedom. "Yes. I'll need to consult the book, but it should be feasible with another ritual."

"Good. It seems reasonable that magic is needed to fix what it changed."

"Let me work up a list and then head back to the store."

"Are you sure you want to head back there? She did sell you the book that did... well... this." I gestured at her hair, the safest of the differences to highlight.

"There's nothing wrong with the magic. I just didn't have full comprehension of the ritual when I started. I know better now though. I won't make that mistake again. Trust me, I'll be in and out of there and everything will go back to normal." For a moment, she seemed to contemplate the meaning of those words, and her brow furrowed.

I missed it, realizing a problem or two with that plan.

The most pressing being the one sticking out the back of her chair that's sure to draw all sorts of attention in public.

Trying to word it sympathetically, I went with. "Are you sure you want to go out like that?"

"I should probably put some clothes on first, shouldn't I?" she asked ruefully, like it wasn't a welcome proposition.

"Not... Exactly... What I was talking about," I said with a wince, awkwardly pointing toward her butt.

"Ah. Yes. That. Hmmm." The appendage in question twitched in an irritated manner. "That could be problematic."

"I could go for you."

"You shouldn't have to do that.'

"I'm offering. And I want to help you."

Her vexation melted away into affection. Before I could blink, she leaned forward and planted a kiss onto my cheek with velvety lips.

"It's decided then. I'll go compile you that list." Still dazed from her kiss, my fork clattered onto my plate and I couldn't do anything but watch her shapely hips as they swayed in time with her now four-foot tail.

Arriving at the location described by Lana, I looked skeptically at the nondescript storefront. It looked like any other outlet mall pet store I'd ever seen. The windows were mostly filled with large cartoonish dogs and cats and the remaining space was covered with black paint. It was utterly uninteresting. The automatic doors opened for me and I entered the store proper. The scent of sawdust, fur, and rubber toys assaulted my nostrils and I had to wobble my nose through a sneeze that threatened, but never arrived. Moving through the store carefully, it seemed nothing more than what it's front presented. Until I saw the woman behind the counter. I called her a woman, but she looked more like a girl.

Her appearance was somewhat of a blend between dark goth and valleygirl cheerleader. A soft looking top left her midriff bare and thin straps left most of her golden tanned shoulders and arms uncovered. Black jeans tight enough they seemed to be painted on contained long legs. They matched a filigree choker that ran around her throat. Rich brown hair was cut short, the longest of the strands only far enough to touch her jaw around the sides and back.

Still, despite all that, she had a sort of feeling about her that reminded me of the way that Lana's room felt after the incident; it tickled the hairs at the back of my neck, the more sensible parts of my brain urged me to flee.

The girl looked up at me and blew a giant pink bubble that she deftly popped and returned to her mouth where she continued to chomp on it. She smiled and again I had to fight the urge to run from the store and back to a life that made sense.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here? You smell interesting." Closing the magazine, she hopped up onto the counter, presenting her back for a moment before swinging her legs over it. She popped off the counter and immediately began to saunter towards me, her dark eyes piercing my flesh as they traced across the contours of my body.

For the second time today, I felt dissected and swallowed around a mouth that was suddenly dry.

Come on Mitchell, you came here for a reason. Lana needs your help. Man up and get the job done.

"Hi there. I think you sold something to my friend and I'm here to pick up some..." The word eluded me.

She called it something. Shit! What was it?

"Reagents!" I blurted when it came to me, my voice entirely too loud. "I'm here to pick up some reagents," I continued, this time at a more reasonable volume.

"Are you sure?" She asked with a purr. Her boots clacked on the ground as she walked around me in a circle. "Perhaps I might interest you in something for yourself... But that's only after you've seen the merchandise. Can't get too far ahead of ourselves, can we?"

It felt dangerous to answer her questions, so I remained silent. After a moment of quiet observation, the woman turned sharply on her heel and headed towards an employee only entrance, beckoning for me to follow after her.