Worries of a First-time Werewolf

He grabbed his right sleeve and pulled it up even further. The thick fur continued from his hand, past his wrist and the silvery bracelet. Graham pulled his shirt up past his elbow, but his entire arm appeared to be covered by thick grey-white fur. Even more concerning was the fact that the changes went beyond skin deep--his entire limb seemed shorter than before and proportioned differently. Graham pulled down his sleeve again and he reached in through the neck hole of his sweater to touch his shoulder, and he found there was fur there too. Where did it end?

Now with significant apprehension, Graham lifted the hem of his shirt to check his torso, and there was fur there too. "Oh." His boots were still unlaced from last night, and he kicked them off and tugged away his long, woollen socks to discover that the transformation had extended all the way down as well. His feet had shifted to become paws too, now more closely resembling animal appendages.

Another far more concerning thought came to mind, and Graham raised his hand to his neck. There was fur there too, and on his chin, and... "Oh no," Graham repeated, as he felt up his own neck, then his face. The changes to other parts of his body were slightly easier to overlook--a limb was still a limb, just with fur and different proportions--but his head was all different. Graham grabbed his backpack and searched through it until he found his compass. This compass had a hinged lid to be flipped open, and on the underside of the lid was a small mirror. Graham stared into the mirror, but he did not recognize the face that stared back.

The reflection showed a wolf. He now had a pointed muzzle ending in a black nose, two triangular raised ears, yellow-brownish eyes, and fur in banded grey-white patterns that completely covered his head. And now that he was thinking about it, he realized that he could even see his own muzzle if he went cross eyed, but he just hadn't noticed before.

Graham turned his head to stare at himself from different angles, but he still struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. His past impression of werewolves was of them being hybrids of half human and half wolf, but now all he saw was no human and all wolf. It almost looked like he was wearing a completely perfect wolf mask over his head, except that it was too perfect--there wasn't a him underneath the canine head and all this fur, because that was him.

Graham opened and closed his mouth, then he stuck out his tongue, which now was longer and larger than before. He blinked his eyes and even managed to wink them. Touching his face with his hand, he stroked the fur that covered his cheek, then tried rubbing his ears. After a moment he realized that he had enough muscle control to move his ears about now, angling them about or even flattening them back against his head. Something about that discovery made him chuckle. "Hahaha..."

His wolf face was still expressive, though less so that his human one had been. Graham bared his teeth and growled into that small mirror. "Grrr... Big bad wolf. Hahaha." Then realization at his situation set in, and he stopped. "I'm a werewolf. That's... this is... this is strange." He could still speak, although his voice sounded less clear than before as his lips and tongue were harder to move.

Taking a deep breath again, Graham put down the compass mirror and looked around. He tried to slide out of his sleeping bag and stand up, but he ended up tangled in his clothing. The proportions of his limbs were different now compared to the rest of his body, causing both his pants and long-sleeved shirt to become baggy and overly long. Frustrated by his now poorly fitted clothing, and curious to see what he really looked like, Graham started to remove his shirt. Taking off the garment required some effort because the neck hole kept getting caught on his snout and his ears. He also shook the bracelets off his wrists--he was already a werewolf now, and the telanium-silver was doing nothing to help him. His chest was narrow but rounder than before, altered in shape and proportion just as his limbs had been.

With his shirt removed, Graham impatiently started kicking off his pants, but then he stopped himself--what was he doing? He couldn't remove his clothing. It was the middle of winter and far too cold to do without multiple layers of garments, or was it? The air was still chilly, but now his wolf fur was providing natural insulation and he didn't feel cold at all.

The second concern that then came to mind was whether it was modest for him to be walking about in the nude, but it was still early in the dawn and mostly dark out. Also, it was very unlikely that anyone else would stumble upon his camp out in the wilderness. What did it matter? He was a werewolf. If somehow he was discovered, he was getting into trouble regardless of his pants-wearing status. With his decision thus made, Graham struggled out of his remaining clothing. His underwear slid off as well, allowing Graham to discover that his lower half really did resemble a wolf. The proportions and shape of his legs had changed in addition to all the fur everywhere, and he also had a big fluffy tail coming from his butt.

And then he was wearing nothing at all, yet Graham didn't feel naked. None of his skin was exposed--it was all just that thick, grey-white fur all over. Lying on his side, Graham just stared at himself. His body was vastly different from before, yet it didn't feel wrong.

Another thought arose, born of curiosity and completely undeniable. Graham raised his hindleg to see what was there, and it was... exactly what he should have expected. Even his genitals had been transformed. His testicles and shaft all looked roughly the same size as before, but as was the common theme they were now covered in fur and resembled a canine's anatomy. He stared at his own groin and even tried some prodding, then he lowered his leg. "Weird."

In a smooth motion he rolled onto his front and tried to stand up. It was harder than before to balance on two legs but still possible, though he ended up hunched forward. Walking on two legs, however, turned out to be more of a challenge. Graham fell forward and landed on his sleeping bag again, but then he tried walking on all fours and found that much easier. It was simply intuitive to walk on all four limbs--one, two, three, four--one, two, three, four--as easy as walking on two legs had once been.

Graham strolled forward and stuck his head out of the tent, but then he hesitated and glanced back over himself again. Standing on all fours, he resembled a wolf in all ways. There was nothing about his appearance that obviously identified him as a human except for that wristwatch still strapped around his left forelimb. Graham sat back on his haunches and raised his watch to look at it. Was that really all that remained of his humanity? He turned his paw around and tried opening and closing it--he wasn't fully sure, but he suspected his digits had a bit more dexterity than was normal for a wolf. And of course, he was able to talk. Graham's experience with canines was mostly limited to having seen stray dogs in his home city or the Royal Academy of Magic, but he was quite certain that speech was not an ability that any normal canine would possess. "Being a werewolf is weird. But I'm in control. I might have turned, but I am in fully in control. Yes..."

Turning around, Graham grabbed his winter coat and tossed it over his back like a cape. He wasn't cold at all, but it just made him feel more human. He also tried to put his winter cap back on, but it wouldn't fit over both his large, triangular ears, so he just left it cocked at an angle, covering half his head and only one ear. Then he trotted out of his tent, walking on all fours.

---

"I bet no wolf can do this," Graham muttered to himself. He flipped open the backpack and used his jaws to grab another of the rectangular meal containers. Putting down the container next to the cold, ashen remains of the campfire, he reached for the small pile of firewood he had prepared yesterday and started assembling the campfire again. A slight breeze blew through the clearing, however even without the fire burning yet, Graham didn't feel any cold. His fur kept him well insulated.

"There's not a single wild wolf that could do this," Graham repeated. With the branches and lumber stacked up into a neat pile, he raised a forelimb and gestured. "Moctus!"

Magic surged out from his paw and the campfire flared bright, with all the wood instantly catching fire with a crackle. Graham let out his breath in a soft exhale. He had been somewhat concerned about having lost his ability to do magic, but clearly that still worked. He was still a magician, even if he was now also a werewolf. With the meal container's metal lid still on, he nudged it closer towards the fire to warm it up. As he waited, Graham stared up at the clear dawn sky, where towards the east there was increasing light as sunrise approached.

Standing up, Graham slowly strolled around the campfire, then he paced around the clearing and circled his tent. He tried, and it was possible for him to walk about on his two hindlegs, though this was slower and required effort to balance. It was simpler and easier to go about on all fours, and the snow on the ground didn't cause any discomfort to his paws. He padded around slowly, then went back to sitting beside the campfire.

"One, two, three, four, five. Twelve by seven is eighty-four. Sixty-four over two is thirty-two, over four is sixteen, over eight is eight. Telanium-silver alloy is an aether flux superconductor at ratios between ninety-nine-to-one and three-to-seven." Graham started stating random facts aloud, just to fully convince himself that his thoughts and his memories were intact. "After senior apprenticeship, trainees will take up a journeyman attachment for one to three years under a fully-qualified magician before final qualification assessments. The capital of the Marlander Empire is the City of Kadrin, in the regional district of Drin, through which flows the Kales River towards the Glassy Sea. Uh... yes."

He still felt like he was in control of himself--there was no question that he was a werewolf after how his body had changed, but his mind was still his own. In truth, that was the greatest relief. His biggest concern yesterday with the unexpected revelation of being a werewolf was not about having fur, a quadrupedal form, or even about a fluffy, wagging tail, but instead about losing control. The thought of going feral and mauling his friends, fellow students, or any people at all was just wrong, but Graham felt reassured now. His body might have transformed into this completely animal form, however as long as he still had his mind, then he wasn't really changed at all.

Graham pulled the meal container tin away from the fire. The metal surface was almost too hot to be touched now, but he carefully used his claws to avoid getting burnt. He pushed some snow onto the container's sides to cool it back down, then he lifted off the lid. A puff of warm steam poured from the inside, making Graham recoil sharply which caused his cap to fall off his head, but then he lowered his snout to sniff deeply at the food inside. It had been an instinctual move done without thinking, but the smell ran through his nostrils and slammed into his mind.

Warm, rich, creamy, and fragrant, it was the exact same meal as yesterday yet now it smelled so much better. The food was steamy and delicious, and now it felt like he could individually discern a multitude of different scents coming from the various ingredients--rice, meat, vegetables, sauce, even the cooking oil and garnishing--and all together it blended into an exquisite medley of odours. Graham sniffed again at the food, and the smell was so good that he felt goose bumps--all his fur puffed outwards, making him look slightly bigger and extra fuzzy.

With the meal container tin resting on the ground, he bent down and stuck his muzzle in to start eating. There was no use bothering with cutlery as he had yesterday since his hands were less dextrous than before. As he was eating, he found that there hadn't been enough time next to the fire for all the food to warm up evenly, so there were some parts that were hot and other parts that were still cold, but Graham didn't care. It tasted just as great as it smelt, and he suddenly found himself ravenously hungry. In the course of just minutes he scarfed down all the food, then he licked the container clean.

Raising his head and sitting back on his hindquarters, Graham felt much better now that his stomach was filled. Orange beams of sunshine were starting to slide over the treetops, and this seemed like a fine start for his first day as a werewolf. However, as he sat still for a moment and took another deep breath of the wintery morning air, Graham realized that it wasn't just the scent of food which had been amplified. He could smell everything now.

The campfire's smoke was blowing away from him, yet he could clearly smell the deep, smoky odour of burning wood along with the fresh scent of pine needles. Turning his head around and paying proper attention to his new nose for the first time, there was so much to take in that it approached a sensory overload. Back as a human, his sense of smell had been perfunctory--he could smell food in the academy's cafeteria, or the noxious chemicals in the alchemy lab, or sometimes the freshly cut grass whenever the fields were trimmed, but that all that paled in comparison to the depth of his olfactory input now. Everything was a new experience.

Sniffing at the backpack with all the various meal container tins, Graham realized that he could discern the contents of each packed meal. Even without seeing or opening up them up, his sense of smell was strong enough now that he could tell what type of food was in each one. Withdrawing his snout from the backpack, Graham then noticed that he could smell the backpack itself. The leather flaps had their own distinctive scent, while the fabric weave had a different odour. The food had been a good, desirable smell, but these scents were more neutral--they were neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but simply informational.

Sniffing at the backpack's straps, Graham then found a different scent. This was Lilly's backpack, and he could smell sweat, hair, and even skin oils from the past times she had carried it. Graham then sniffed at Cray's backpack, then his own, and they all smelled different. Every pack had its own unique smell, imparted on it from its owner through physical contact. Graham sniffed at his own winter coat then the rest of his clothes, all of which were now just discarded in the tent, and he could clearly recognize his own scent which matched the scent on his backpack. Graham raised a paw and sniffed at it, then he tried sniffing under his armpit, and even his sides too.

He found it all fascinating. Certainly, he hadn't expected such an outcome, but it seemed perfectly logical now that he thought about it. A wolf would have a better nose than a human. Graham then pondered all his other senses, wondering if there had been some trade-off. His ears were large and perky, and he could deliberately angle them about to focus in different directions, even backwards, so presumably his hearing wasn't any worse off than before. He had fur almost everywhere now which did dampen his sense of touch, but he could still feel the point of contact when he tried touching one arm with the other.

Graham glanced around, looking at things but not really looking at them to test his eyes. Everything looked sharp to his vision, but overall it was hard to objectively decide if his eyesight was better or worse than before. Looking high in the sky towards the east, Graham could see the faint smoke column that was rising up from the Royal Academy of Magic in the distance. The smoke was already shifting between black and white, moving in a pattern to signal the precise time, and he had no trouble making out that distant signal just as he had done as a human. Some colours also looked muted and less vibrant--the backpacks were dyed in a variety of bright hues, but Graham realized that some shades looked more similar than they should have.

Everything had its advantages and its disadvantages. Graham could smell a whole new world of scents that he hadn't even been aware of before, yet his eyes had lost some ability to discern colours. He now had a thick natural coat of fur to keep him warm in the winter, yet he had to walk on all fours, and his hands had become paws, losing manual dexterity. Yet overall, undoubtedly the most important thing was his mind. He was able to think and react like how he always had, and he was fully in control.

---

Shrugging off his winter coat and leaving it on the ground next to the campfire, Graham trotted over to a nearby snowbank and then he threw himself sideways into it. After a moment he struggled back to his feet and stepped backwards to look at the indentation he had created in the snow mound.

The markings in the snow indicated his new size as a werewolf... and he wasn't very big. Graham estimated his size as being bigger than a large dog, but not that much bigger. He probably was somewhat similar to the size of a normal wolf, and a lot of that was thick fur, not actual muscular bulk. One thing was certain--he definitely did not match his previous mental image of werewolves being huge, hulking, terrifying, half-man half-wolf creatures which towered over people in a bipedal stance, covered in black fur and thick muscles.

Instead, Graham had fur that was shaded in bands of grey that made for better camouflage against snow, trees, or rocks--he had whitish fur for his belly, chin, and paws, then light grey for his sides, and finally a dark grey that was almost black for his back and his head.

And he certainly didn't appear to have acquired any more muscle mass. Perhaps it was just hidden under all his fur? To test for any newfound superhuman strength, he strolled over to a nearby rock that was about his size and then shoved it with his shoulder. Despite throwing all his weight at it, the rock didn't bulge at all and Graham felt silly. He wasn't any stronger than before. He was just a wolf, albeit one which could talk.

Snow powder clung to his side from where he'd been lying down. Graham turned around and tried to brush it off with his paw, then he had a better idea and shook himself all over, which easily dislodged all the snow from his fur. It was animalistic action and not something that a human would have done, but it was effective so he didn't care. The way he saw it, he was already obviously not a human in this werewolf form, so there was no need to stick with doing things entirely in a human way if it was inefficient.

And then there wasn't much to do. Graham watched the sky as it continued to brighten, then he paced around the forest clearing and bounded up the rock outcropping to stand on the high ground overlooking his campsite, but he didn't have anything to do. All he needed to do was wait around until he transformed back into human, and then he could return to civilization.

Graham sat down next to the campfire and looked through a notebook that he had brought along in his backpack. His own dense, messily scrawled writing contained notes and memos from last semester's worth of learning at the Royal Academy of Magic, but it was not a captivating read. He already knew everything that was written there.

At the very least this gave some reassurance that his mind remained sharp enough to be thoroughly bored by having nothing to do. Graham sniffed at everything in his camp and discovered a thousand different scents clinging to everything, but eventually even the novelty of using his new nose lessened as he ran out of things to sniff at. He sat down and did more practice with his magic, carefully using a jet of flame from his paw to scorch markings into a fallen tree trunk. He also cut down more branches from the nearby trees and again used a flame jet to carefully slice them up into firewood, making a neat pile.