THIS IS A SAMPLE. The full file can be found on my Google Drive, here.

This is a gift for the wonderful dragoness,  Mehlahphuse. I've had the pleasure of being in a D&D group with her, and is well deserving of a little happy tf story. :> With a fun cameo by  AnHanora, of course. :>

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The afternoon settles over the small town with a gentle ease, as if the day has chosen not to hurry anyone, least of all you. Every moment you can spend with your sis is precious.

You walk beside Nora with your shoulder nearly brushing hers, the two of you falling into that peaceful rhythm that only exists between people who know one another completely. Your glasses slide a little in the afternoon warmth, and you push them back into place without thinking. The pavement is warm beneath your shoes. Shade from the trees drifts across the sidewalk in patches, cooling your skin for a few steps before the sunlight finds you again. Around the square, the weekend moves along without urgency. A couple walks a dog along the far path. A child chases a ball across the grass. Cars pass now and then, unhurried, their sound low and distant. It is a good day, plain and simple.
Better than the day itself is the fact that you are here with her.

You have missed Nora in a way that never quite fit into language. Distance does strange things to love. It can make someone feel far away and sharply present at the same time. Months of calls, screens, time zones, and all the dull ache of loving someone from afar have led to this tranquil walk through Nora’s sunlit town. She is beside you now. You smile for no reason except that the two of you have managed, once again, to end up in the same place.

Nora catches the smile and gives you one of her own. There is something tucked inside it, a private sort of amusement that makes you give her a suspicious smirk.

“You know,” she says, with the light tone she uses when she has already made up her mind about something, “there’s a little shop just around the corner. Curios, odd little things, all sorts of nonsense. I passed it the other day and thought of you.” She tilts her head toward the row of shopfronts ahead. “You should have a look.”

You follow her glance and spot it at once. The storefront is narrow and slightly crooked, tucked between more ordinary businesses as though it wandered into town years ago and never left. The display window is cluttered in a way that feels deliberate rather than messy. Brass, glass, carved wood, old books, things you can’t even identify at a glance.
Nora slows near a bench across the street where the trees cast a broad patch of shade over the grass behind it. “Go on,” she says. “I’ll wait here. Take your time.”

You tell her you will only be a minute and step off the curb. Behind you, she settles onto the bench with an ease that would almost hide how pleased she looks with herself if you did not know her so well.

The bell above the door gives a soft ring when you step inside.

The shop is cool, quiet, and comfortably crowded with objects that seem to have arrived from a hundred different lives. Shelves line the walls from floor to ceiling. Glass cases hold smaller things under clean panes, some neatly labeled and some left mysterious on purpose. Two customers browse near the back with no more rush than you. Behind the counter, the proprietor looks up from a book, nods once, and returns to it without a word.

You drift through the shop with no real plan. It is enough just to be there, moving through old wood, filtered light, and the faint dust-sweet scent of things kept for a long time. Somewhere along the way you begin to think that perhaps you might find something for Nora. Something draconic, maybe. A dragoness for a dragoness, you think, amused.
That’s when you see the gem.

It rests on a lower shelf on a square of dark velvet, set apart from the surrounding clutter. You notice the color first. It is a deep, ember-red, richer than garnet, as though it is lit from somewhere inside. You bend a little to look more closely, your glasses catching a glint from the shop lights as the red gem seems to shine back at you. When you pick it up, the stone is already warm, and the warmth only deepens when it settles into your palm.

Something inside you goes still.

You do not know why you chose this one. You only know that the moment you touched it, you felt a sort of longing, a familiarity.

Your pulse quickens. You carry it to the counter in a mild daze. The proprietor glances down, names a price, and you pay it without bargaining. As he wraps the gem in tissue paper, he studies it for a moment, then gives a small hum of recognition.

“Good to see the other half gettin’ outta’ here,” he says. “Sold one a lot like this last week. Different color, though. Blue, a sapphire, I think.”

You thank him and turn to leave, the wrapped gem in your hand. Through a window, you notice your sis still on the bench across the road, relaxed and patient, watching the square as though nothing unusual is about to happen. The tissue paper has already come loose around the stone. As you walk, you unwrap it and turn the gem in the light, thinking about what the proprietor said.

Blue. Last week. A thought rises, sudden and bright. That brat - she knew!

The red gem catches the full afternoon sun pouring from the window in the door and flares in your hand.

Before you can do more than blink, it slips free and lifts upward as if tugged by an invisible thread. There is no time to react or even to be properly startled. The gem touches your forehead just above your glasses, and for one absurd second you are distracted by the thought that it should have hit the frame instead.

The warmth from the shop floods through you in a single sweeping rush. It pours down your neck, into your shoulders and chest, through your back, your arms, your legs, your spine, finding every part of you with uncanny certainty. Along with it comes understanding. Not words exactly, but something close enough. You know what the gem is. You know what it has found. You know what it means to return it.

And you know, in the same instant, what is about to happen.

The pulse of energy from the gem hits with enough force to leave you breathless. It is not even a surprise, not really. Some part of you has been waiting for this for much longer than you have ever admitted aloud. Fear rises anyway, sharp and immediate, because you are standing in a small shop on a bright afternoon with people nearby, cars on the road, and Nora sitting across from you as your whole life prepares to turn inside out.

You grab for the shop door, but the change has already begun.

Heat gathers in your spine and hips. The muscles of your back pull tight as your body starts to grow. You wrench the door open and try to push through it, but within seconds the frame becomes too narrow. Your hips broaden sharply. Your hindquarters swell wider. The doorframe catches you fast, solid and indifferent, and your trousers strain to their limit before splitting at the seams with a loud, helpless rip. Cool air rushes over skin that is no longer skin alone. Golden scales spread across your flanks, bright in the sunlight, and you half stumble, half spill free of the doorway in a tangle of growing limbs and ruined clothes.

Heat floods your face at once. Your sis has looked up at the sound, her wide eyes quickly softening into a cheeky smile as she stands. You are certain the proprietor has looked up. You are equally certain you do not want to know who else has seen you.

By the time you stumble onto the warm pavement of the sidewalk, your feet are already changing. The shoes survive only a few steps before the leather pulls apart under the pressure. Your feet lengthen and strengthen as they break free, and when you reach the curb and glance down, you see gold scales gleaming across them. The sensation of the pavement beneath them is startling. Each step lands with a depth of balance you have never felt before. Your weight settles more securely. Your body adjusts as though it has always known how to move like this and has merely been waiting for permission. Thick toes press against the ground, each tipped with a white claw bright in the sun.

You step into the road toward the park, toward your sis with her knowing smile.

The transformation continues with cheerful disregard for timing or privacy. Your hands broaden as you cross, fingers thickening, reshaping, growing heavier in their structure. Gold scales rise across your knuckles and palms. White claws emerge with only a strange pressure at the fingertips. When you lift your hands to look at them, fear still twists in your stomach, but beneath it is something much deeper than panic: recognition.

Even now, even in the middle of the street, some part of you knows these hands.

Your shirt tears across the back as your shoulders widen and your torso expands. The sound runs downward in a long rip. Your jacket follows in ragged pieces, unable to contain the changes unfolding beneath it. Gold scales spread across your chest, your back, your sides. Along your belly and lower chest they give way to softer pale-gold plating, neat and geometric, swelling along with the rest of you.

You stumble, hands flying out to catch yourself on the curb, but your hands are suddenly too large, your bones too heavy. The sensation of being on your hands and knees, of being on all fours, evokes something primal. A roar escapes your throat as the fire within takes hold. Golden scales have taken over every inch of you now, the remains of your clothing hanging off you in tattered shreds as your frame continues to swell.

The shrieks from the onlookers are immediate as your roar fades.

Brake lights flash down the street as drivers stop short in confusion. Horns blare. A few pedestrians cry out and back away, pulling dogs and children with them. One driver near the square jerks forward too fast, swerving wide of the curb as you haul yourself up onto the sidewalk, still growing.
Untouched by the chaos, Nora simply shakes her head, the knowing smile widening.

“Mehl,” she says, and the warmth in your name is a strange anchor in the sudden, burning magnitude of your new existence. Then she takes in the state of the road, the shredded remains of your clothes, the terrified, fleeing onlookers, and continues with soft, helpless fondness as she pets your lengthening cheek and looks into your shifting eyes. “You were supposed to let me take you somewhere a little more private first, sis.”

She glances at the pandemonium, then back at your newly-formed, colossal golden face, and whatever she sees in your emerald, glittering eyes softens hers at once.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “They can stare. I just want to see my sis.”

The gem at your brow pulses, warm and sure, and something in you lets go. Such genuine words, truth, desire. This was all you had ever wanted to hear. The fear of what is happening does not disappear. It simply loosens its hold.

In its place comes a deep and steady calm. You have spent a long time making yourself easier for other people to understand. Smaller. Simpler. Easier to explain. As the fear loosens, so does that old habit. For the first time, you stop trying to hold yourself in.

You allow the changes to surge forward.

Your neck lengthens. Your head lifts as the bones of your face shift into a longer, stronger shape. Your glasses slip crookedly down your nose as your face begins to change. You reach up by reflex, but your thick golden digits feel far clumsier than they were a moment ago. The frames catch for an instant at the bridge of your nose, then fall, bouncing once on the pavement before disappearing into the grass. Teeth settle into sharp points, and when your tongue passes over them, the fit feels strangely natural. More gold scales spread across your face. At the tip of your muzzle, a small white horn emerges. You go briefly cross-eyed trying to look at it, which sends Nora into a helpless fit of giggles.

You think wildly that you have just lost your glasses, and then your eyes change. The whole park snaps into focus with a clarity you have never known, every leaf-edge and face suddenly sharp. You do not need them anymore. Your eyes are green now, vivid and bright, and the world comes to you in astonishing detail.

Then, pressure builds at the sides of your skull. Thick white horns rise and sweep back along the line of your head, regal and clean. Where your ears had been, broad earfins spread outward, catching the movement of the air with strange, perfect clarity. Then comes the frill along your spine, fine and new, running from behind your horns down the length of your back. A breath later, your tail arrives.

The pressure at the base of your spine is enormous and impossible to mistake. You close your eyes and focus, straining as your body aligns into the more perfect quadrupedal stance with the emergence of your new appendage. It pushes outward, heavy and wonderful, forcing your balance to shift as the thick base of your tail forms and sweeps back behind you. Gold scales flash in the sun as it lengthens, growing with confident ease. Within moments you feel it as completely as any other limb. It curls once in startled reflex, then settles with a dignity you are not entirely sure you have earned.

Nora laughs softly, and the sound makes you laugh too, or try to. What comes out is stranger, deeper, and no less yours.

Your body finishes clothing itself in gold. Broad scales gleam across your sides and back, while the pale plating on your chest and belly gives you the look of something noble and strongly made. Your forepaws settle into the grass, wide and white-clawed. Your hindlegs fold more comfortably beneath you than standing upright ever did. When you let yourself sink back into a seated posture, the motion feels easy. Natural. Your body has been trying to do this for some time, and the moment you stop resisting, it settles into a natural posture.

Then the pressure between your shoulders reaches its end.

Your wings unfurl in a rush of gold and sunlit air, broad membranes opening behind you with a sound like wind catching a sail. They are vast, leathery, and wholly yours, edged with clean white wingclaws. As they spread to their full width, air moves around them in strong, living currents, and you feel the shape of the surrounding space change in response.

Only then do you fully grasp your size.

You are enormous. Twenty-five feet of golden dragoness in a public park, wings spread, tail curled through the grass, head rising above the nearest trees. The people watching have gone completely still. One of them has sat down on the ground without meaning to. Another has lowered their phone, apparently forgetting what they meant to do with it.
None of that matters very much.

What matters is the simple, overwhelming fact that you fit. For the first time in your life, your body does not feel like something negotiated or managed. It feels like home.

You lower your head toward Nora. She is still standing there beneath the trees, smiling up at you with tears in her eyes and delight written plainly across her face.
“There you are,” she says.

Then her smile shifts into something wonderfully familiar. Before you can answer, the blue gem at her collar flashes in the sun. Nora’s change is swift and far more controlled than your own.

She rises out of her human shape in one smooth, glorious motion, becoming a vast blue dragoness whose sapphire scales catch the light in brilliant waves. Her wings snap open wide alongside you, eyes shining with unmistakable joy. And then, at last, you are looking at your sis as you’ve always known her.

The park falls silent. All the onlookers - pedestrians and those climbing from their cars - are frozen, jaws slack as they stare at the spectacle.

Nora's laugh comes out louder than she probably intended, a full resonant chortle that startles the nearby pigeons into flight and makes at least one onlooker take a step back - much to her delight.

"Ready?" Nora asks.

You have been ready your whole life. You tell her so with a sweep of your wings instead of words, and you both clear the grass in one smooth motion. Below, a small collection of very surprised people crane their necks upward, phones out, trying desperately to keep you in frame. You are truly being seen now, and the sensation is euphoric. Let them see.

You climb. Your sis rises alongside you, close enough that her wingtip finds yours on the upstroke and lingers there a beat longer than aerodynamics require. You have missed her in ways that were never simple to explain and are even less simple now. With the full length of her blue form beside you and the sky enormous around you both, you decide that missed has never been quite the right word for it, anyway.

The town shrinks. The sky grows. Somewhere below sits a curio shop with a doorframe that has had a difficult afternoon.

You look at your sis. The wind catches her wings and she tips into it without thinking, utterly at home, utterly herself, and the sight of her fills something in you that has been waiting a long time to be filled. You follow her into the turn, golden and laughing, and the horizon takes you both.