This is the story of a character co-developed by KabukiHomewood and me. I won an auction for a Valentine's pinup, and used the opportunity to develop a new character with the artist; her species, hometown, personality, and name were all devised with Buki's input. I hope to do more with her and perhaps kink out a full transformation sequence and origin story with Buki one of these days!

The picture is a collage of the pinup with Buki's character sketches occupying each corner. If you'd like to see her au naturel, go here. Please comment and favorite Buki's version here.

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The Tale of Emmeline Rose Cooper

"Unhand that maiden!" roared Count von Pex. He swung down from the rigging of his frigate, long blonde curls aflap in a seabreeze rent with the sounds of ferocious struggle. Also, his frock coat was open, revealing what chroniclers would later describe as a six-pack.

"Oh my, how dashing!" cried Emmarose as the burly and well-endowed pirate captain swept past her, leaving a fragrance of peaches and cream.

The cutlass in Count von Pex's hands struck the arming sword held by the Marquis du Snobh, adding bright sparks to a scene that already included blood on the deck, grapeshot from du Snobh's cruiser, and the swooning form of the Lady Helen Pless (Hel for short).

"That's right!" Emmarose cheered, as von Pex forced the evil Marquis back with bravado and swordsmanship. "Show Hel how much you really care but have till now been unable to express!"

"I have you on the run, you braggart!" von Pex chortled. "Truly I say to you, my ship and my lady will not fall this day to the vile stooge of hated Louis XIV the so-called Sun King!"

"Ah, but you haven't reckoned with my hidden assets!" riposted the hated du Snobh. "Reveal the secret weapon, you louts!"

A hidden panel amidships on the vile Marquis' ship sprang open, revealing a battery of guns loaded with red-hot shot--a cowardly and dangerous weapon, so much so that the Royal Navy had banned it, it was sure to set von Pex's men alight and fricassee his frigate.

"Surrender or watch your men die!" sneered the Marquis.

Emmarose was speechless. "Treachery! Don't listen to him, von Pex! He'll do it anyway!"

Beaten, Count von Pex offered to du Snobh what the latter could not win in battle: his engraved cutlass. It had no official name, but it was probably named Emmarose after the ideal woman the Count no doubt pined for everyday.

"So he can be reasonable!" cackled du Snobh. "Continue with the operation. You may fire when ready."

"What?" roared the Count.

"You're far too trusting," added the Marquis. "I intend to make an effective demonstration of your ship and your men."

"I knew it!" Emmarose fumed. "I knew he couldn't be trusted! What a cunning and original plot, though. The poor honest Count never saw it coming…"

"Wait!" cried Hel. Ms. Pless interposed herself between the two men. "If I agree to be your bride, will you spare the Count and his brave ship?"

"May I live a thousand years and never hunt again," swore the hated Marquis, one black-gloved hand held aloft.

"Don't do it, sweet Hel!" Emmarose was beside herself with agonized objection. "He's lied seven times in the past five minutes! He won't keep his word, and von Pex is clearly your one and only true love!"

"Then…I will do so," sobbed Hel. "Ms. Pless no longer, I will become…the Marquise du Snobh." The Marquis, triumphant, shot a hand out and seized her by the bodice, ripping it in several places as he drew her close.

"Ahh, no!" Emmeline Rose Cooper angrily flung her copy of The Frigateman's Fancy at the wall of her trailer. Emmarose couldn't believe that Ms. Pless could be so naive, nor the Marquis so evil. It was too much, moving so far away from the direction of a happy ending that she couldn't see things ever working out for von Pex and dear Hel.

After a moment's thought, she got off the couch and picked the book up. Carefully smoothing out the pages and marking her place, she set it on a pile of pink romance novels that had gotten too intense for her to finish, to pick up after she'd been able to compose herself.

They were all the marked property of the Sixtow County Public Library, 1212 Jackson-Lee Lane, Pantano, FL, but what was the point of being librarian if one couldn't occasionally extend the loan period by a few days? Emmarose had already extended her loan on The Frigateman's Fancy by two weeks beyond its renewal limit…but sometimes she was just that kind of bold rebel.

Besides, the library was loaded with romances. It was all the little old ladies that were the mast frequent patrons wanted to read. Emmarose was as diligent in ordering new ones from the publisher as she was keeping out books that were too prurient. The ladies only liked a certain kind of respectable bodice-ripper, and Emmarose agreed 110%.

"Let's see here…maybe Stallion of the Stagecoachwoman will be a better read for now," Emmarose said to herself. It was only five days overdue, and the cover promised rollicking adventures in the American Southwest with a lantern-jawed hero and raven-haired heroine just waiting for such a man in her life…a conceit that for some strange reason appealed deeply to Emmarose.

"I'm looking for harbor and shelter for the night," said Burt Rockman, farmhand and pistoleer for hire.

"Do it, girl," Emmarose whispered to Myra Daisy, proprietress and owner of the Rocking Horse ranch since her father (who had always wanted boys) had passed his lariat to her on his deathbed after a serious cattle crash.

"Well, you'll find no harbor here, nor shelter," Myra snapped. "Who's that at the door?"

"…what?" Emmarose said. She looked up.

Someone actually was knocking politely but firmly at the door of her trailer in the Starlite Starbrite trailer park just outside Pantano (motto: "We Put the 'Ever' in 'Glades').

"Who's there?" Emmarose called quietly. She didn't get many visitors, and it seemed like even fewer now that she was home more often. The Sixtow County Public Library had started closing on weekends due to a budget crunch, leaving her with more time for her beloved stories and the occasional wild trip to St. Marécageux for shopping (last time, she'd gone so far as to buy a red blouse to add a little color to her mostly green wardrobe, and had considered going even wilder with a pair of green-striped boots before the excitement made her dizzy).

There was no response to her entreaty, so Emmarose got up and cautiously padded toward the door.

"Mama, that you?" The only answer was another knock.

"Daddy? Is that one of you triplets playing a prank on me again?"

Knock.

"Vonda Mae? Piney Joe?"

Knock.

Emmarose's hands shook as she neared the door. What if it was a stalker, or a reprobate, or a Jehovah's Witness? Her hands sweat with anticipation. What if it was a gentleman caller? She hadn't had one since Deke had left three years ago, violently opposed to Emmarose earning her library degree online instead of moving to Bagnogrod on the coast and taking a job as a rock-scrubber with an oil spill cleanup firm.

She paused in front of the mirror, pulling her blouse up and her miniskirt down to try and avoid scaring off any good decent callers (anyone who'd be titillated by such a thing was not welcome in the Cooper household…well, trailerhold). She tried to pat her wavy and jet-black hair into something respectable, but as usual it had a mind of its own and remained in a rather tawdry and coquettish waterfall over her ears and wide-eyed face.

People often asked if she wore contacts (ooh…a conversation starter with the gentleman caller no doubt awaiting her at the door!) and she always gave the same answer hoping to sound honest and mysterious at the same time: "Nope, they're a natural green. Changed colors when I was in high school from Mama and Papa's brown…never have been able to figure why they did."

The knock was more impatient now, and Emmarose snapped herself out of her thoughts--she did have a tendency to get lost in them) and darted to the front door, bare feet slapping loudly on the faux-linoleum. She hadn't even had a chance to paint her nails…why couldn't surprise gentlemen callers ready to sweep her off her feet and into a stagecoach or frigate or rocket ship give more notice? Maybe leave a calling card first, like the Victorians used to?

Emmarose opened the door with her best smile and revealed…a 50-year old man, missing about 50 percent of his teeth, with a mesh cap that read "St. Marécageux Taxicab Co."

"Well it's about time," the taxi driver groused. He brightened, though, when his rheumy eyes focused on Emmarose. "Well hello, pretty missus! Your taxi is here."

"T…taxi?" Emmarose couldn't remember ordering any taxi. But then again, with her condition…"W-where am I going, sir?"

"Why, to your appointment in St. Marécageux, of course," the driver said. "And no need to whisper, honey. I ain't gonna bite."

Emmarose hadn't been whispering; she just had a naturally quiet voice. That and the hearing aid buzzing audibly in the driver's ear explained why he'd ignored her entreaties from inside and inadvertently gotten her hopes up. "Are we…leaving now? Do I have time to change, sir?"

"Oh, don't bother changing yet, honey," the old man said, with what might have been a leer at Emmarose's pert assets or simply a lazy eye. "They got wardrobe and makeup for you at the appointment. Says so right here on the order."

Makeup? Appointment? Emmarose shrank a bit at the idea of getting in a taxi she didn't order to an appointment she didn't make.

"Come on, come on," the man said. "Turn me away, can't bill the ride and I have to take full fare from you now. Hundred and fifty bucks."

Emmarose's already pale and befreckled skin drained of what little color it had. The library job didn't bring much in, and with her student loans and trailer payments she was barely making even. "O-okay," she said. "I'm…I'm coming." She wriggled into a pair of flip-flops she kept by the door, grabbed her purse (a knockoff Deke had gotten when he was stationed in Thailand that he'd tried to pass off as the real thing despite the misspelled brand name and Chinese newspaper stuffing), and followed the driver to his run-down yellow Checker.

"Name's Dill," he said, opening the door for her. "After my pickle." He cackled at the joke as Emmarose entered, and then opened his own door with a ballpoint pen--the door button long ago having rusted off.

"P-pleased to meet you, Mr. Dill, sir," Emmarose squeaked as the car lurched forward.

"Mr. Dill was my father's pickle," the driver laughed. "Just Dill."

"Okay….uh, Dill. Sir." Emmarose shifted her weight uneasily. "Where are we going?"

"That's the second time you asked that," the driver said. "You forgot already?"

"Well…I have kind of a condition, sir," Emmarose said. "I…black out sometimes. So I can't always remember doing things after I did them."

"Oh, that's a real shame, Miss," said Dill. "I used to have blackouts too on account of my pa's moonshining, but they made me lay off until they can find a liver donor."

"Oh, not alcohol!" Emmarose said, her quiet voice shocked. "I never touch the stuff, sir. It has something to do with the allergy shots I got when I was eighteen, I think."

"Allergy shots? You allergic to remembering stuff?"

"N-no sir…Daddy was going to marry Miss Numachi, and she wouldn't get rid of her cats. I was deathly allergic, so there was no living with her for the three months out of the year I was with Daddy in Sumpfstadt. So he signed me up for a test of experimental allergy shots."

"Did they work?" asked Dill.

"I guess so…I'm sure not allergic to cats anymore, sir" Emmarose said. "Lived just fine with all seventeen of Miss Numachi's until Daddy left her for Miss Telma. But they canceled the tests and gave us all some money after that…I guess because of the blackouts."

"Huh," Dill said. "Wonder why that would happen."

"I don't know, sir," replied Emmarose. "It might have had something to do with the jaguarundi cats they made the serum from…or the fact that the allergy shots were from a clinic in Bogota that was a front for drug dealers. But that money bought me my trailer in Starlite Starbrite."

"A jagga-whatti cat? That some kind of jaguar?"

"No, it's a…a medium-size brown jungle cat from Central and South America, sir. They're not found up here in the states, so most of us haven't heard of them."

"Huh, that's interesting," said Dill in a tone that suggested it was anything but. He was silent for a good long while as the Everglades whizzed by out either window. "What do you do for a living? Aside from this, which I assume is a part-time gig?"

"L-librarian, sir," Emmarose said. "And what gig? You still haven't told me where we're going."

"Librarian, eh? It true what they say about them, you're really crazy after the doors are locked?"

"No sir," Emmarose said. "I'm responsible for myself and sending money to my immediate family. That and a good romance novel is as crazy as I get."

"Oh," the driver said, crestfallen.

"Excuse me, sir, but you didn't answer my question. Where are we going?"

"Here, of course!" Dill turned the old Checker into a gravel lot in front of a two-story building in downtown St. Marécageux. It was a new building, slickly decorated with a sign that read Marécageux Glamour Photography Studios.The tagline "our pictures are worth 2000 words" was displayed prominently beneath it.

"Here we go," said Dill, letting Emmarose out of the car. "I'll be back to pick you up after you're done and I have a few pints in me."

He shot out of the lot without another word, and Emmarose tiptoed to the door to knock. It opened before she could even touch it.

"Rosie! Come on in." A man in a loud Hawaiian shirt, a ponytail, and sunglasses (despite it being a cloudy and, for him, indoors day) clapped a hand on Emmarose and drew her inside.

"I…I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Now now, don't be shy, Rosie," said the man--Gonzales, according to his nametag--said, all but pulling Emmarose through a studio littered with cameras and props for photoshoots. "We've got your costume and a special outfit for the shoot in our changing room."

"I think there might have been some sort of mistake," Emmarose protested in a weak voice. "I didn't-"

"I know, you didn't expect such a classy studio! We treat out talent right. You just leave all the details to old Gonzales and get ready." He opened a mirrored changing room and pushed Emmarose in, slamming the door behind him.

Blinking, Emmarose looked about. Aside from multiple copies of her looking confused on the walls, there was an outfit on a hangar and a large and bulky duffel bag with a sticky note on it: "Emmaline Rose Cooper costume - delicate electronics - DO NOT TOUCH."

The outfit was a strapless top that tied on in the back, jet black with a bold pink floral patterns intermingled with green, and the white shorts--which also tied on--were scandalously revealing and perhaps the frilliest thing Emmarose had ever seen. She reddened at the thought of wearing it in front of strangers; it was bad enough that she was in a rather revealing blouse and miniskirt intended for home wear only; the outfit in the changing room would cover less than her bathing suit!

"If they think I'm wearing that tarty thing, let alone that they can take photos of me in it…well, they've got another think coming," she said.

Moving to the duffle bag, Emmarose unzipped it. Rather than a costume, though, it was filled with cut-up pieces of foam and a few sand-filled balloons for weight. Clearly, the duffel was supposed to fool whoever was carrying it that it had some kind of elaborate costume inside. But why…?

"Ooh," Emmarose said. She felt suddenly dizzy and upset to her stomach, and leaned heavily against one of the mirrored walls. "I'm not feeling so good…" she moaned, holding her stomach. All the excitement and confusion must have been getting to her.

Or maybe not.

The Emmarose in the mirror blinked, and her pupils were suddenly slits. Her ears twitched and their round tops pricked into points.

"Wh-what…?" Emmarose made to touch her ears, to make sure that it was some trick of the mirror, but the hands that appeared had claws growing where their fingernails should have been, and thick, rough pads developing opposite brown fur sprouting up like a time-lapse film.

"Aaaahh!" The scream revealed teeth that were well on their way to being pointed fangs, and the sound seemed to press Emmarose's cheeks and nose out into a parody of a muzzle, complete with whiskers emerging from her flushed cheeks. "What's happening to me?"

Her mind began to grow fuzzy--just like her body, as the dark fur wildfired up and down her form. She…she had to get out of those clothes. Frantic, Emmarose tore off her shirt, kicked sandals off of feet that were themselves becoming clawed, pulled down her skirt and tossed her underwear in a pile. It all had to go. It just…had to.

Freed from the constraints of her outfit, a tail made itself known, swinging freely about and growing longer and fluffier with each swing. Toes cracked as the took on more and more weight; the transition from standing on soles to standing on toes was a wobbly one, but Emmarose's legs retained the tone that regular jogs around the Starlite Starbrite trailer park brought…and more. She grunted and moaned as her body thickened with additional muscles, and the breasts which had so fascinated Dill swelled past perky to full-on bombshell as fur covered all but their nipples and areolas. Ears journeyed up the side of Emmarose's head as her face assumed a fetching, if feral, shape…a combination of her former human looks with the unmistakable angles and color of a jaguarundi.

There was a final spasm as the last changes took hold, and Emmarose's cries of surprise and pain increased in pitch…becoming catlike yowls of pleasure.

She shook her head , letting those glorious raven curls fall where they would, and admired herself in the mirror. Miss Emmarose had left the building…and Rosie had arrived once again.

"Oh, how adorable," she purred, running her claws--a fusion of human nails and a jaguarundi's retractable daggers--over the outfit Gonzales had laid out for her. "It's the perfect compliment to my shape and the need--nay, imperative--to show it off in the best possible light. Simply a divine choice, darlings." Her voice was an octave lower than Emmarose's, sultry and rolling, with none of its former stuttering, repetition, or formality.

Rosie knotted the top and trousers about her newly emerged form, admiring how the ruffles fell on the shorts and how the bright pattern played against her dark fur. She left the top loosely knotted to allow her girls as much freedom as they were willing to take…and Gonzales's camera as much as it was willing to take.

"Ugh, what a dreary ensemble," Rosie tut-tutted, roughly folding Emmarose's clothes and tossing them roughly in a corner. "No style, no pizzazz, no oomph…girl, what were you thinking, going out in public wearing these? And those sandals…ugh! Heels aren't just for classic westerns and professional wrestling, honey. They're for showing off what you've got instead of burying it in beige and deadening it with drab."

And her hair…there was a stylist outside, but Rosie simply had to fluff it up, put it in front of her ears, and generally accentuate its silky shininess, so different from the rest of her fur and yet such a brilliant compliment to it. Emmarose was always trying to hide it or simply neglecting it…but then again, hiding or neglecting were two things the silly girl did very, very well in her quest to be a 97-year-old single librarian living in a trailer park.

A tap at the door. "Almost costumed up, Miss Cooper?"

"Just a moment!" Rosie dipped into the duffel, where she'd secreted a few beauty products--a little spray, a little this, a little that--and daubed them on in the way poor Emmarose never would.

Not that Rosie hated her other half…far from it. Since her awakening after those allergy shots, Rosie had thought of Emmarose as more of a…little sister. Occasionally annoying, often exasperating, but beloved despite all foibles. It was just that Emmarose never wanted to run naked and yowling though the swamp…and town, after dark. She never wanted to break into Mulholland Farms to steal a nice chicken, or roar at the moon or the occasional other jaguarundi (from the selfsame allergen test). And Emmarose certainly didn't enjoy baiting old Chance the raccoon hound…

"That's right, Emmarose…I'm not afraid to go where you won't, whether it's high fashion or down and dirty," Rosie said into the mirror. Emmarose would never remember it, naturally--she'd black out everything up to a few minutes before the transformation, and not remember so much as a second of her change or time as Rosie. Rosie was able to summon a good deal of Emmarose's memories--and just about everything before the jaguarundi allergy serum. She had no idea why the metamorphosis seemed to be a one-way street, memory-wise…and she didn't much care, either.

Probably a good thing, since it meant that Emmarose never tried to interfere with Rosie having her fun. And Rosie, for her part, was sure to leave her "sister" plenty of time to herself, and never changed behind the wheel or in a compromising situation…if she could help it.

The door flew open, and Rosie emerged. Gonzales waved her over to the photography area.

"Ohh my stars…those shots didn't lie, girl!" he bubbled. "The costume truly is convincing! You…what's the term?…fur-suiters have come a long way since my day. How do you do it?"

"Oh, you know," Rosie said, breezily. "Prosthetics, latex, real fur punched in one hair at a time…and of course they're doing wonderful things with electronics these days, honey. The face and tail and respond to changes in my body heat."

"Great, wonderful, okay," Gonzales said, clearly uninterested in the technical aspects of what he was seeing. "Take a seat over there." He gestured to a white cube set up in faux grass before the studio cameras.

Rosie set herself on the cube, stretched out and reclining easily. "Like this?"

"Perfect, just perfect." Gonzales nodded to his photographer who began snapping. "We're shooting an ad for one of St. Marécageux's biggest employers, though they like to keep it on the DL. Naughty Kitty Lingerie. That's why your costume is perfect. You're already in their latest fashion--not so much lingerie, but the closest the FCC will allow. Give us a sultry."

Rosie casually braced herself against the edge of the cube and drew up one leg.

"Fantastic!" The flashbulbs snapped merrily. "You're angry, give me angry,"

Miming anger, Rosie thought of Chance, always shuffling around and sniffing like he owned the damn place. She needed to take him down another peg sometime, most likely by using her opposable thumbs to her advantage.

"Now you're coy. Let's see you be a coy-toy, come on now."

There was another jaguarundi around Sixtow County that Rosie saw sometimes. She didn't know his human name, or even his jaguarundi name, but they did enjoy yowling at each other from across the muddy Sixtow River and occasional stealing chickens from each other. Rosie pretended he was peering through a hole in the ceiling and gave him her best sex-kitten look.

"Wonderful, brilliant, immortal, high fructose," said Gonzales, burning through adjectives like a fat man through a pile of off-brand Twinkies. "Now you're upset, embarrassed. Give me your best."

That was easy. Rosie gave him three: being caught rooting through a dumpster in town (bad), being caught changing back into a human in broad daylight (worse), and being seen wearing one of Emmarose's outfits in public (worst).

"Eternal, silhouetted, monochromatic!" Gonzales clearly had little idea how ridiculous he sounded; Rosie let it roll smoothly into one last "did I do that?" style pose.

"You, my dear, are a natural."

"Thanks, honey," Rosie said. "Let's just say that I leave a lot cooped up most of the time and leave it at that." Reading romance novel was one thing; Rosie was living one.

Final set, final set. Angry. Give me raw, volcanic anger."

Rosie gave her best faux "rawr," thinking of the juicy chickens senselessly confined behind chicken wire. How deeply unfair that was; an injustice only slightly less serious than the gulag.

"Angrier!"

In her mind's eye, Rosie was confined in a lab, her secret out, prodded and poked by men hell-bent on creating an invincible army of jaguarundi-men and throwing unsuspecting victims into their toothy maws. She snarled, growling a little.

"ANGRIER!"

A deep breath, and Rosie let out a bloodcurdling, bonechilling, hair-raising, spine-shivering feral yowl, like a full jaguarundi would. It was almost like a distorted woman's scream, and an audiologist might have been able to pick Emmarose's voice out of it. It was the sound of the most bestial part of her and its rage at having to hide itself away behind the facades of Rosie and Emmarose.

"OOOOOWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRR!"

Occasionally Rosie let the remains of her humanity fade away and went on the prowl as a full cat…diving after fish, her favorite food (despite the horror of water that she, as a cat, had), crawling along the shore to grow hands back to devour it with, and then letting loose a triumphant cry just like that…her eyes got misty and her stomach rumbled at the thought.

Clearly, it had been too much for Gonzales and his people, though; they were looking on, slackjawed, eyes wide.

She'd gone too far. They were on the verge of seeing through Rosie's flimsy cover of being a "furry" fur-suiter in a convincing costume to the true cat she was, and she couldn't allow that…not quite yet, anyhow.

Rosie thought of trying to apologize, to explain it as an amplified recording, but decided that action was better than words. She quickly undid the strings on her Naughty Kitty Lingerie not-lingerie and wriggled out of it before assuming the same coquettish, coy position she had for the first shots.

"Photoshop whatever you want on here, boys," she purred.

It had the intended effect. The camera snapped as never before, and her momentary loss of composure was quickly forgotten. Rosie wasn't shy about her body, but it did give her a twinge of regret to use it so flagrantly as a weapon against the weak-minded and boobie-vulnerable.

"Wonderful, simply wonderful," said Gonzales. "We have all sorts of uses that the model release form would cover for this."

"Y-es…" Rosie said. she was suddenly finding it a little hard to concentrate. "O-of…of course…" Her speech patterns had suddenly grown very Emmarose-like, and with horror, Rosie realized what was happening.

She'd let herself go too far, stepping even beyond the bounds of when she went full jaguarundi to frolic, and lost the iron control she had exerted over her form…she suddenly felt like she usually did after a long night in the swamp and rough around Pantano, FL. Tired, woozy, and…increasingly Emmarose-like.

Rosie was changing back into a human.

"More, more, more!" cried Gonzales. "Now that you've gone there and doffed, let's get some more poses. I want you spread all over this block, every limb in every pose ever. The makeup, animatronics, the fur…it's all so real, and I want to put people there!"

"I…I'm n-not feeling so good all of a s-sudden," Rosie said, putting every ounce of feeling she had into it. she could already feel fur beginning to withdraw into her skin, prickling and tickling as it went.

"No, no! We must stay! We have work, and there's extra pay! I will not accept no for an answer!"

"L-look, Gonzales," Rosie said. "This fursuit is hot and this place doesn't have any AC. It's the middle of June in a Florida swamp. I'm o-overheating." Her ears twitched as they began to lose their definition, beginning to sink back and round out into pink human flaps.

"Surely you can work through it for just a little longer," Gonzales said, directing his crew to keep snapping. "We're in the zone here, undeniably! You don't want to kill our creative streak, do you?"

The crew didn't seem to have noticed it yet, but Rosie's tail was three-quarters its former length and was being sucked back into her spine like a spaghetti noodle. Her finger-claws were flattening out and draining of their color, while her foot-claws were flexing out of their sheaths in preparation for the same thing.

"I-i…I can't! I just can't!" Rosie stood up, stumbling a little now that her feet had gone back to their human stance--she was as unused to that as Emmarose would have been walking on her ridiculous human toes. She brushed past Gonzales as fast as she could, making a straight line for the changing room.

"Wait! Miss Cooper!" Gonzales cried, anguished. One of the photographers made a half-hearted attempt to stop her, but she bruised him aside with a snarl and slammed (and locked) the door behind her.

"Miss Cooper!" Rosie could hear Gonzales and his boys pounding on the door, but she was too confused to do much more than totter as her jaguarundi features fell away. Tail vanished into spine; claws gave way to nails; eye slits rounded to human norms; face flattened to its Emmarose configuration; the last remaining brown rapidly surrendered to peachfuzz and then smooth freckled skin.

With her last fleeting moments of conscious control, Rosie squirmed into Emmarose's underwear and then clothes. The latter would be so shocked and appalled at blacking out and waking up naked there was no telling what she'd do.

And then…

Emmarose blinked. What had happened? She'd blacked out again; the last thing she recalled clearly was being led into the changing room…

A fresh rap on the door. "Miss Cooper, I'm sorry," came Gonzales' voice. "I apologize for being too demanding a moment ago. I understand that you may not be comfortable with what I was asking, so I consider our agreement fulfilled."

"The…t-the reason I was here?" Emmarose said.

"Yes, I'll remit your whole fee and we'll forget the whole thing ever happened."

"Oh…okay." Emmarose was still a little woozy, but it was clear what had happened: she had set up a photography appointment during one of her blackouts, probably confused and possibly a little delusional. The photographer had realized it and being a good sort had agreed to pay her whatever fee for whatever work and send her on her way.

She tried to turn the money down, but Gonzales insisted on cutting Emmarose a ridiculously large check for work that hadn't been done, and Dill's taxi was at the door to escort her on the long trip home.

"Have fun?" Dill asked.

"I'm…I'm not really sure, sir," replied Emmarose.

"Well, I'll take that as a yes."

The drive home took quite a while longer thanks to rush hour traffic, and it was past dark when Dill dropped Emmarose off at her trailer and sped off with one last inappropriate joke. She opened the door, kicked off her sandals, and sat heavily on the couch next to her beloved pile of bodice-rippers.

The check was enough to take care of her money troubles for quite some time, and…

Emmarose hunched over and when she rose, her pupils were slits again.

…there was plenty left over for some nice outfits by mail order. That was why Rosie had gone to all the trouble of setting it up and luring Emmarose there, after all! But in the meantime, she was hungry, and there were fish that needed fishing and chickens that needed stealing.

"OOOOOWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRR!"

The cry of the jaguarundi echoed once more over the Starlite Starbrite trailer park in Pantano, Sixtow County, FL.