He doesn’t expect it to happen as quickly as it does.
She reaches over to touch him and he feels the hooks of her magic sink into him, catching the edges of him, and he exhales slowly as it seeps throughout him. He curls his neck and lets his nose brush against her own—just for a second, a moment—before he feels the cells of him stretch and collapse.
When he blinks, he notices that he is smaller.
That he is more compact, closer to the earth, more wild.
He lifts his head and stretches, flexes his paws and feels the dirt shifting underneath him. He grins and it is wolfish, bright and sharp-toothed, his grey eyes nearly hidden from shaggy red fur. Something like a yelp escapes him as he bounds forward, his bushy tail dragging slightly behind him.
“Let’s go,” he growls and is nearly surprised to find that his voice sounds the same. The same rocks and gravel that deepens the edges of it, turns it stormy and dark on the corner of his tongue.
Then, without needing any more encouraging, he pushes off and forward.
It feels somehow completely right, this body, in this world. It is not his own—has never been his own—and yet it feels almost more his than his equine form. He can feel the wildness around him with more ease. He can taste the pine on his tongue and hear the wild calls of the jungle. It becomes visceral and vibrant and his heart pounds in his chest with something like joy, uncaged and uncontained.
Grinning still, he levels out, letting his muscles warm up and then setting himself loose.
BRIGADE
when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake