Party (11)

"If you dare to do something to the fox…" Kyro threatened, and tears of laughter ran down Iris' face. How could she have ended up in such a horrible situation? Just how?

She chuckled miserably as she looked at the door handle that was miles above her head. 'I want to open it for you,' she cried, 'but how do you expect me to reach it?'

Worst of all, she had no clue what had happened. One moment she ran into the bathroom as a human and locked the door behind herself, and the next she was buried under the white blanket, complaining as she tried to find a way from under it.

She didn't even get the time to look into the mirror, and she really wanted to see if she had turned into herself. Was it her body? If so, how did she regain it? And lose again?

Looking around, she searched for some kind of trigger, something that wasn't there normally, but there really wasn't anything. There was not a single thing extra in the bathroom.

Could she turn back only for a certain duration then? But what had triggered it in the first place? It wasn't like she had done something extremely unusual yesterday. Could it be the strawberry that set off a delayed effect of transformation?

It sounded preposterous, but she was currently locked in a bathroom after having turned into a human from a fox and back. At this point in time, she was ready to believe any kind of nonsense that might explain what was happening to her.

'Argh… How am I going to explain myself!'

Her transformation was terrifying—she didn't want it—but even more headache inducing was the fact that she might lose her home in a few moments. Kyro was about to break the door, and if he did that, he was certainly going to throw her out as some kind of freak. What normal fox kept turning into a human at random?

"Don't you have some key?" Gale asked on the other side of the door.

Iris froze, and soon she heard Kyro rushing away. She cursed, wishing for a sudden inspiration. 'Stop! Give me more time! I haven't come up with a good enough excuse yet!' she cried out, tears collecting in her eyes.

There was no explanation, however. She had no clue how she had ended up on this side of the world, let alone what was happening to her. This supernatural stuff was simply out of her league.

'I didn't even like reading supernatural romances,' she muttered under her breath as she crawled under the blanket to hide. Why couldn't some kind of manual have come with this shitty, world-shattering event? At least some warning would have been nice, like a random old lady in the street telling her, "You'll turn into a fox five days from now, only able to return to your human form for an hour before sunrise! Ooh! Believe me, I know your future!"

This random evil witch impersonation reminded her of some fairy tales. There actually were some where a prince or a princess were cursed for their misdeeds to be monsters during the day while returning to their human form at night, or vice versa. Could it be that she had contracted something similar?

'An hour before sunrise? Have I ever been awake at this time?' She wondered what the time was. If it was really early, she might have slept through all the times she had changed before… 'And you actually believe that?' she asked herself, pulling the blanket over her head.

This was crazy. How could she figure out why she had turned into a human at random when there were no clues to it! And why did it matter, anyway. She was going to be thrown out at any moment, and she'd die in the streets in a day, two if she was lucky.

At that moment, she remembered the nightmare she'd had before waking up from the cold. It wasn't exactly scary or anything, just a warning it now seemed. In the dream, she kept walking through the house, looking for Kyro, but he was never there. The way it is in dreams, she knew that he HAD to be there, but he wasn't.

She searched in the rooms, under the bed, behind the curtains, in the cupboard, and even checked all the shelves in the study. It even came to the point that she looked through the drawers in the desk as if he could be there. Then, when she was certain he wasn't around, she had just sat down and stared into space as her surroundings shifted and she was back in the night-time park, but there was no one to meet her there. She sat on that bench for hours, staring, but not seeing anything.

The memory of it all left her unsettled at this moment more than when she had just woken up. Back then, she had been distracted by the cold and all that happened afterwards, but now she felt like it had been a premonition of what was to come. 'A seriously late warning,' she muttered. 'It came when I could no longer take control of the outcome.'

There was a click from the door, and she shuddered. She curled up into an even smaller ball, wishing to become invisible.

The door was thrown open with a bang, and Kyro stepped in the same second. He opened his mouth to order the girl to release the fox, but the words got stuck in his throat.

His bathroom wasn't too large, a bath, a shower, toilet seat, and a liter box took up most of the space. There was nowhere to hide here, with the shower curtains open, but the girl was gone. Not a trace of her was left, besides the blanket on the floor.

It moved slightly, and Kyro crouched down to lift it up. Beneath, he saw the shivering fennec.

Gale stopped on the threshold, and in a wry tone, he said, "Did you just sleep with a magical disappearing girl?"