Farewell Kat-leen

To say I was angry would be a dangerous understatement. It isn’t a mild anger that the guards might placate with some well chosen words. No. I am furious. Incandescent. Raging. Seething. It is just as well that I am restrained, because I don’t know where I’d draw the line just at the moment.

Right now, killing the guards, the pilot and attempting to land the shuttle back on the planet whose gravity we’ve just escaped seems like a mighty fine plan. Except of course for the restraints that have me pinned down on the gurney, which is itself shackled to the floor in the polished, stainless steel cargo bay aboard the shuttle.

Fuck it. Fuck them. Fuck them all. Fuck General Green and his mission especially.

Of course, the pulsing, roiling heat that is simmering through my veins doesn’t help much. Sweat is beaded on my near-naked body, soaking into my hair and stinging my eyes that I am unable to wipe.

Deep down of course, I have known for some months that you have been drugging me with some exquisite combination of foreign substances, that your ‘Gods Liquor’ is actually one hell of a psychoactive brew.

Yes, I’ve known, but I haven’t minded, not in the slightest. In truth, I have become increasingly complicit, sipping thirstily at the draught whenever it has been offered.

Every trip has been better than the last one. Deeper, more intense. Every time I have found myself connecting more closely with the Khmeti. With you, with Arreal, even with the hard nut to crack that is Dallir. I am sure he fancies me. At the very least I am damned sure he wants to fuck me again. But then, Dallir wants to fuck most things with a pulse, and even that requirement maybe optional.

Not Chief Scall though. He has always kept his distance, and I wonder if he is behind this latest turn of events. I am sure I saw him lurking in the shadows moments before the capture squad abseiled from the hovering shuttle onto the expanse of lakeside grass outside your hut, which I also now call my home.

He - The Chief - has always kept his distance. I am sure he disapproves of your closeness to me. I’ve seen him scowl on the occasions when he’s overhead you referring to me as your N’dra - your love. Yes, if there was an inside element to my capture, I would bet money on it being him.

Oh sweet Jesus they could have picked another time though. Not just when I’ve downed what is, as evidenced by the sheen of sweat covering every inch of my body, your most potent brew yet. God I’m burning up. It Isn’t the shuttle, it is me. I know. Every hit of your elixir has brought a glow to me, although none have been as fervent as this. I am literally awash with a pulsing, gnawing heat that radiates from deep in my core. In truth it feels like it radiates from my womb. I haven’t ever felt anything quite like it, not ever.

I strain my head up and glance down at my own body, lit with an alternating red and orange glow as the hazard lights in the cargo bay of the shuttle blink. Sweat is rising in shimmering droplets on my skin, my breasts glistening under the coloured lights, and I can feel a rivulet coursing its way down the side of my neck.

There is no one in the hold with me, though I don’t doubt that there are cameras on me, monitoring their precious cargo.

Why. Why come and get me again. They know I have no interest in furthering their cause. Certainly, we might have finished on better terms last time… but seriously? What the fuck do they want with me now? They must understand where my allegiance now lies, or they would never have known where to find me again.

Originally I had been sent to the remote planet of Bastia by General Green on a covert mission to gather evidence regarding a missing scientist. The scientist had been conducting genetic research into the indigenous Khmeti people on the island. The Khmeti, a rare species, in many ways human-like, the way the walk, think, and talk, and structure their society, but their physical form dominated by, what we on earth would call cat-like features. They are a furred species, and tall and slender, and their heads, their faces, unmistakably feline.

Of course, General Green’s simplistic plan had no chance, as I became closer to the Khmeti, drawn closer to the Darkwater tribe, and to you, their nominated ambassador for my visit, but also the high priestess of their village.

It is futile, but still I glance around the hold, seeking any means of escape. Any tool or item that might help free me. I’ve already tried calling out. Calling for the rest rooms.

The flight back to Earth is a good six hours, but I guess they expect me to either hold it in, or.. well. Whatever, they didn’t come in attendance. I can imagine the young squad of guards, sat on the upper deck now, relaxing, their job done. A bottle of Jack and a packet of cards. Screw them. Screw them all.

The curl of a smile crosses my lips as it slowly enters my mind that I would even consider that. The effects of your potent elixir are following their familiar path. First the warmth, then the intense arousal and desire. Like the pulsing heat though, it is amplified ten fold this time around. I try to focus on the grey pipework that criss-crosses the ceiling of the sparse cargo hold, but instead find myself staring at my own tawdry reflection in the polished metal lining of the hold.. Nothing is going to take my mind off the clenching need that started off in my loins and is slowly threatening to overwhelm me entirely.

The delicate trickle of sweat that is dripping from the nape of neck onto the gurney is nothing compared with the slick wet heat between my legs. Oh god. Oh Fyria! What have you given me this time girl? Did you make some mistake in your brew? Did my incessant questions distract you from a sensitive measurement? I’ve trusted you totally. I’ve taken everything you’ve offered. Fucking typical that it would go crazy-mad on the night I get kidnapped back to fucking General fucking Green. I decide petulantly that I wouldn’t fuck him. Not if he was the last thing on offer. Fuck. Damn and fuck.

It does little to easy the gnawing itch between my legs, but I can’t help but think of you. I smile for a moment as I recall how fiercely you’d leapt to my defence. Literally. Springing on to the back of the first of the squad to make the mistake of stepping close to you. He certainly wouldn’t be playing cards now I think wryly. The medic on board doing his best to sooth his wounded face so it could be patched back together on our return to Earth.

I sigh deeply; the disconsolate look on your face when Dallir, the lead hunter of the village had shaken his head, calling off your assault, your savage defence of me. Of course he knew better than most. Three of the squad members had already raised their colt lasers, waiting for a clean shot at you as the man you were tackling twisted and bucked in vein trying to throw you off his back.

‘Fyria! No. Enough. Let him go, we can’t stop this’ he’d growled quietly in Khmeti.

I couldnt help but replay the sequence in my mind. If only as a distraction from the furnace that was burning in the pit of my belly.

‘Dallir’ she’d shrieked, her nails still raking the poor soldiers face, Your exquisitely golden eyes wide in furious rage, your ears back, and I was actually surprised you stopped. I was pleased, because they surely would have shot you a moment later.

‘Fyria! They’ll kill you.’ he growled sternly, but already you’d released your prey. who was on his knees, clutching at his torn face with bloodied fingers.

‘But... Dallir...’ and you’d nodded towards the patch of grass where we’d been laid, the earthenware jug of your brew knocked on its side where we’d jumped up in surprise as soldiers had tumbled from the sky.

‘I know Fyria. I know’ his growl by now almost inaudible, as the remaining uninjured squad members formed a circle around me, lasers drawn.

The whole kidnap/rescue had taken less than three minutes. The shuttle setting down noisily and with no respect in the center of the Plan N’Gwarry. The circular clearing with its banked perimeter where so many of your ceremonies took place, as well as the spectacular dances and other rites that I was slowly growing accustomed to.

I had felt the eyes of most of the village on me as I’d been manhandled up the loading ramp, still twisting and snarling at my captors as the shuttle took to the skies, even before the ramp had whirred and hissed closed. I know you had been amongst the crowd, watching in anger. I could still hear you’re urgent calls, though when you spoke Khmeti that quickly, I struggled to understand it.

My mind drift back to the elder, tiger-marked Chief Scall again. I was sure he’d been in the shadows as we lay at the lake side, your eyes gleaming their bright amber into the night as you’d poured the brew for me. I’d almost said something to you when I glimpsed him, but hadn’t wanted to interrupt the moment.

Had he coordinated this deliberately? Having me snatched at my most vulnerable? I hadn’t seen him again in the melee. But then he would have kept himself scarce. You would kill him in a moment if you knew of his involvement. Even Dallir, his son and heir might.

My recollections were interrupted by a sharp itching, almost painful along the line of my sternum, I blinked hard, expecting the sensation to pass, just some artefact of your potent brew, combined with the adrenalin and trauma of my capture. As I opened my eyes though, the sensation was still present, and I craned my head up to better see the source of it.

Even in the alternating red and orange hue of the blinking lamps, I could see the unmistakeable line of short white, tufted fur that was sprouting from my skin between my breasts. My eyes sprung wide in disbelieving shock... the line of fur was slowly extending even as I watched it, down toward my navel, and wider too. spreading inexorably toward my trembling breasts.

Panic instantly gripped me., displacing the incessant arousal. I shouted again for a guard. for anyone. My eyes flickered urgently around the ceiling, looking for the cameras. Eventually I found one, its black circular eye staring back at me unblinking. “HELP ME” I mouthed loudly at the all-seeing device. “HELP”. Except that the guard who was meant to be watching the screens wasn’t. He had just bet and lost half his months wages, and was determined to win them back before the flight landed. His security detail was the last thing on his mind.

I stared at the camera for what seemed like minutes, pleading with someone to come down. To come see me. Even if just to confirm it was a hallucination. Just some product of the excessive dose you’d poured me on this occasion. But hallucinations didn’t come with sensations like I was feeling. Did they? Even as I stared at the camera, wilfully avoiding a second glance at my body, I could feel the itch spreading further, wider.

By the time I shifted my gaze from the camera, I realised I could see the full extent of what was happening to me in my own reflected image in the ceiling, and the shock I was feeling turned to palpable fear. The fur growth was spreading fast. It was rising up the inner contours of my breasts, the itch becoming maddening as i watched in dumbstruck horror as slowly my nipples were enveloped in the snowy white fur.

‘Fyria!’ I screamed your name, even though you were lightyears distant. ‘Fyria! What have you done!’ I screamed and sobbed at the same time, my shriek echoing around the empty cargo hold.

This could be no accidental overdose. This was something else entirely. It had to be. I recalled your panicked glance at the upturned jug. You knew what was in store for me. You knew what you’d given me. But you’d expected to nurse me through it. ‘Through what?’ I wondered helplessly as the spreading fur marched inexorably across my sweat-streaked body.

I wrestled the securing bonds again, as if, by getting free I might somehow halt this. What ever this was. But still it was pointless. The steel wasn’t suddenly about to yield.

As the fur crept further and further, I steadily became aware of a deeper, unyielding ache. A pain that started in the joints of my shoulders. I closed my eyes and whispered your name again and again. Why?! Why would you do this to me?

I knew the answer of course. I knew how many nights I’d laid under the Khmeti twin moons and dreamt of what it’d be like to become like you. If such a thing was remotely possible. To have your freedoms, your feline grace, your irrepressible spirit. Not to mention your constant, enduring sex drive. I’d listened around the village at night in sheer awe at the endless fucking.

As if on cue, the spread of fur reached down to the top of my aching cunt. If I hadn’t been in such a predicament I would have laughed. After so many years of being immaculately hairless. I craned my head again, knowing what I would find. Yes... the sprouting white fur had faded to jet black as it followed the contours of my slick mound down between the hollows of my thighs.

Fuck that hurt. The pain in my shoulders was spreading to other joints and bones, and I finally realised what this was. Not some hallucination. Not even some theatrical hair growth potion to effect a thin veneer of Khmieti upon me. I rested my head back down on the steel deck of the gurney.

No. This was more, much more. This was becoming Khmeti. This was the real deal. The whole nine yards.

Suddenly, so many things that you’d said to me and asked of me the last days and weeks made sense. ‘Was I happy here. truly happy?’. ‘Did I have any regrets about my decision to leave Earth once and for all?’. ‘Was the Darkwater tribe my home now?’. And repeatedly... ‘Did I love you, and Dallir, and Arreal, because you all loved me, but it was important if I loved you too’.

Now your wide eyed look of angst as I was led away made sense. This was not how you had meant it to be. Not at all, but as the pain worsened in my bones, I tried to imagine you being here with me. Kneeling beside me as I know you would have done. That exquisite look of concern combined with adoration on your face that had stolen my heart since our first encounter. ‘Kat-leen’ you’d have purred. ‘It will pass Kat-leen, and then Kat-leen will see. Fyria knows. Fyria...’

The pain was worst in my pelvis and my hips, and I daren’t look, for serious fear that I might actually throw up if I was to see my own skeleton being wrought and reworked within me. I knew how slender hipped the Khmeti were, I’d admired it hungrily, and for a long moment I recalled you kneeling astride my face for the first time, your tail flickering wildly as you enjoyed the delights of hu-man tongue.

I’ve no idea how long I lay twisting and mewling with nothing but the void of space for company. From the moment I’d first shut my eyes, they stayed shut. It was some how easier that way. Easier not to watch my humanity being slowly replaced with exquisite felinity. Also it was easier this way to conjure up images of you, memories of you, any thought that might distract from the immediate here and now.

It was at its worst at the very end, as the transformation slowly swept up my neck. I’d not even especially noticed any differences between a Khmeti skull and my own, but Jesus there must have been some.

Even the recollection of the first time I’d had the thrill of Dallir’s attention, his evident delight in being able to rake my back as he fucked me and see the marks he’d left in my bare skin and hearing my muted cries, even that recollection did little to mask the torment as the many individual bones of the human skull recomposed themselves. I know that in the end I gave up trying to distract myself and just wept from the sheer, intolerable pain.

Ultimately, I don’t know whether I passed out, or fell asleep, the only thing I do know is that in the end I woke up again. For the first moments, I had no idea where I was, panicking again as I felt my arms and feet still restrained, before my eyes eventually focussed on my surroundings, the cargo hold still empty, the yellow and orange lights still blinking monotonously.

One by one my senses reported in. The smell of the cargo hold. Good god? What had they been transporting in here previously? Animal hides? It reeked... and cutting through it, the sharp smell of something unfamiliar, mechanical... oily.. a leaking pump on the cargo ramp perhaps.

The sounds of the ship also carried to me with a new clarity. The cold endless hiss of the air processing plant. The quiet hum of the propulsion was as clear as day in the otherwise silence of the cargo deck. I thought I could hear footsteps at one point and looked around sharply, but if I had heard them, they were distant.

Taste. Nothing exceptional, other than the distinctly coppery tinge of remnant traces of my own blood. Oh my GOD. I flicked my tongue about my mouth. Teeth. Wholly unfamiliar teeth. Sharp, dangerously tipped teeth. Somehow they all seemed to fit together when I closed my jaw, but I couldn’t imagine that I would go a day without skewering my tongue. Fuck.

Steeling myself, I opened my eyes again and stared up at my own reflection.

It was easiest to ignore my face to begin with, and I stared in wonderment at my body. It wasn’t easy to discern in the constantly blinking lights, but beyond the central blaze of white there was a distinctive pattern of clusters of small dark spots. Fuck!! Fuck the spots! There’s a tail between my legs! A real live, flickering tail that is moving apparently all by itself. Just the tip of it, flickering from side to side. My head jerked up to stare down at myself, as if the reflected image might somehow be false.

As if just by the act of being noticed, my tail seemed to spring further to life, curling up between my thighs, thick and lustrous, with intricate patterning all the way to its tip. I imagine it swaying to the left, and, after a fashion it does exactly that. I lie there, staring for a long, timeless moment. Jeeeeesus.

I close my eyes and rest my head back down on the gurney. Steeling myself, I count down from five through to one, a massive, pregnant pause, before I eventually open my eyes and stare at the mirrored image of my own face. If I could have moved my hands I would have. To touch myself, to feel if what I am seeing is truly real, because I cant for one second imagine that it is.

The face isn’t me. It isn’t me. It can’t possibly be me. Its… beautiful. But it can’t be me. I turn my head slightly, as if expected to catch my reflection out, but it turns too. The exquisite features of a Leopardess Khmeti stare down at me.

I blink, the dazzling jade green cats eyes of the cat woman who would be me blinks back. I stare at myself for long seconds, which turn in to minutes. I have whiskers. Tentatively, I open my mouth, reaching with my tongue, which seems to go on for ever! A salacious grin crosses my awed expression for a moment. I flick my tongue across my whiskers, feeling the smooth furred muzzle beneath.

My face is exquisitely decorated in the markings of a leopard, golden fur with delicate black markings almost but not entirely symmetrical as the spread from my eyes. My dark velvet nose and white furred chin, my delicate web of whiskers, white tips with tiny black markings at the root of each distinct hair.

Oh god. I think I might actually love myself, for the first time in my life. I am staring at my reflection and adoring the image that is returned. I still doubt it can really be me. Some trick. Most likely a dream. A good dream, but a dream.

My hair, perhaps the only bit of original me that remains. My long black mane, long since grown out of its tight pixie style after months living without the services of a stylist, now the crowning glory to my feline look as it lays strewn across the captive trolley about my head, almost a halo about my face, and giving my tan, white and black markings an even more striking impact.

Ears!! Perking through my black mane, white tufted almost triangular ears, rounded a little at their tips. As I stare at them, thinking about them, so they slowly turn and flatten. I close my eyes again. It is too much to comprehend.

There is one other sense too. A pulsing self awareness. The heat is still there, perhaps moderated a little, but accompanied by an intrinsic understanding of my own body that I’ve never had. I can feel every part of myself with an instinctive clarity. I can tell I’m thirsty, but I’ll be fine for a bit. Im not really hungry, at least not to eat.

As I explore my own body with my mind, I happen upon my clenching sex, and then it’s as if once I’ve found it, I can’t get passed it. I can feel my clit aching for attention, and I can sense the heat of my molten center as if it is literally a burning core deep within me. Good god Fyria? Is this what you live with. I shudder.. no wonder most of the village are fucking all night.

‘Fyria’ I whisper into the empty space, and my heart sinks. You aren’t here. You are a million trillion miles away, literally, and you can’t see the miracle you have worked. Again, I think of that forlorn look in your eyes as I was led away, and now I think I truly understand it.

This is why they have come for me. This is what General Green is after. He wants the secrets of your elixir, of my transformation, and my heart sinks further still.

In an instant I can see my future mapped out. No freedom. No life as such. Endless tests and experiments. I doubt there will even be any media interest. The media can never know. I will disappear into Area 51 or some such illusive, shadowy hole. Tested until they’ve extracted every last secret of your concoction, and then... what? They keep me alive just in case they’ve forgotten something. Maybe. For a while, but not indefinitely. The chance of me being found out would grow with every day and week and month I am kept.

Scall somehow got wind of your plan for me, and arranged with Green to have me taken as soon as the Elixir had been administered. I am sure of it now. I glance at the earthenware jug, set reverently on the bench at the back of the cargo hold, almost like an alter, and realise, much much to late that we have been played. You. Me. Even the insightful and Masterful Dallir, since I don’t think for one second that this was his preferred outcome.

I sigh miserably, replaying the details of my capture again, wondering if my new found senses might be applied in retrospect, if there is some detail I have missed, not that it would matter anyway, but there isn’t.

Until I recall your urgent last calls, carrying over the sound of the melee. Your words, in rushed Khmeti are as clear to me as anything now. ‘Small hands Kat-leen. Small hands. Small feet. Remember!’

I immediately know what you are telling me. Many times I have laid in your bed, your paw in my hand, marvelling at its slender features, each delicate finger tipped with a retracting claw. And your feet likewise, artfully crafted by nature, full of natural spring, and without the heavy heel of a human foot.

I smile to myself darkly, as I stare down at the manacles that bind me to the gurney. Where once they had been tight fitting, they are now slack, and I know that all is not yet lost.