Chapter 171 – Accepting Change

“Oh, yeah. These really fill the hands now. Shhh, where you going? My hands aren’t that cold. HEY! WAIT-NOAAAAAhhhh!” – Val, after sliding her hands under Kristi’s sweatshirt and half a second before getting thrown to the other couch.

The morning after the series of attacks on Kurt and his household saw the team getting a late start to the day. The sun had already risen by the time Kurt and Kristi crawled out of bed and cycled through the bathroom. Kurt himself had been in the process of making an extra-large pot of coffee when Val and Rindi got started on their morning routine.

Unfortunately, that routine seemed to have been derailed after the tigress stumbled into the bathroom herself… twenty minutes ago.

Knock-knock. “Rindi? Sweetie? Are you ok?” Val called through the bathroom door.

Kurt barely heard the muffled response from the other side but couldn’t make out the words due to the privacy enchantments he had put on the doors. Still, he could hear what Val was saying.

“Come on, it’s not like that at all.” She said in a soft tone. “So, you changed, it happens. Oddly enough, more than once around here… but that’s beside the point. Just because you look different doesn’t mean we will think differently of you. You are part of the team and a dear friend to us.”

That sounded pretty intense to Kurt. He wasn’t privy to the issue yet, but it definitely didn’t sound like more than just waking up with a pimple she wanted to hide. This sounded like a massive internal crisis in a woman who already had issues with her self-worth.

He pulled out 4 extra-large coffee mugs and filled them to the brim. He handed one to Kristi who was still half asleep on the couch, enjoying a sun beam on the love seat. He noted that her ‘halo’ had filled in even more, becoming an almost physical shape hovering around her. He was just glad to see her relax after being rather twitchy all night, complaining of aches and pains.

Leaving Kristi with a coffee and a kiss, he then took the other three and walked down the hall where Val was standing near the bathroom door. “Hey.” He whispered and handed her a cup. “What’s the trouble?”

Val took the mug and sniffed it appreciatively before responding. “I think she saw her changes in the mirror and panicked a little. She thinks we are going to hate her now because of her looks.”

He nodded. “Alright, how about you go sit with Kristi for a while and I can take over.”

“Sounds good to me.” Val smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Good Luck. I’m gonna go fondle our girlfriend while she is still snoozing.“

Kurt saluted with his cup. “Good luck to you too.” He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, or if it would work, but he would at least try.

Turning to the door, he announced himself. “Hey, Rindi. I’m taking over for Val.” He purposefully didn’t ask if it was OK, not wanting to elude to him leaving being an option but also sticking to a similar conversation he once had with Kristi. “Listen, I brought you your coffee, and I wanted to share it with you like we do every morning. So, I am going to just open the door and set it on the counter.”

True to his word, he turned the knob and eased the door open just enough to set the mug next to the sink. He kept his eyes down, fighting the temptation to try and get a look in the mirror. He had the feeling that if he did try to steal a look, it wouldn’t go well.

After he closed the door, he sat down and leaned against the frame so he could talk through it. “So, I’m not going to force you to open the door. I won’t even make you talk to me if you really don’t want to, but I think I might understand what’s happening.”

There was a heavy padding sound, and he thought he heard the scrape of the mug on the counter before he heard a soft thump. It sounded like she had sat on the small bench between the linen closet and the shower.

“Feel free to stop me if I am getting this wrong.” Kurt began. “I get the sense that you are having a crisis with your self-identity and by extension your self-worth?” He didn’t hear anything, so he continued after taking an intentionally noisy sip of his coffee.

“Hmm. I completely understand the feeling. Probably more than you might expect since you haven’t known me as long as some of the people I know, or even Kristi and Val.” Kurt figured if he could just get her listening, he might get her to engage in the conversation.

Kurt thought about a few times in his life a major change happened and he had to deal with it, but one story stuck. “You know I wasn’t always a werewolf, right?” He paused, hearing a disturbance in the living room he decided to ignore.

“Yeah, I was born a normal half-elf. Grew up and went to school like all the other kids. Course I had a necklace that hid my ears along with the help of the veil, so I looked human. I did all the normal human things like playing sports, sleeping over at friend’s houses, and having kids over for birthday parties. All the normal kid things I know you probably didn’t have but are normal here.

“Well, I was also a pretty normal teenager. Thought I knew better than I really did and got myself involved with the other para’s at the school, despite my parent’s warnings.” Kurt noticed that Kristi and Val had stopped whatever they were doing and were listening in from the end of the hall.

He continued like they weren’t there, wanting to keep the flow of the story. “One Friday night at the start of summer I did what a lot of seventeen-year-old kids do and went to a party that I shouldn’t have. There were a bunch of people from school, all out in this fresh cut hayfield with a couple big bonfires. Cheap beer and liquor in plastic bottles was everywhere and lots of people were drinking or smoking, you know, generally doing dumb shit.

“Well, at some point I met up with a few other paras in the school. A couple dwarves, another elf and I think some sort of half-goliath. That guy was huge, but he never did say for sure, so I just assumed… anyway, back to the story.” Kurt got sidetracked thinking about Miles and whether he was even a para or just a really big human. This story was bringing up a lot of memories that he had pushed aside years ago.

He continued after his brief sidebar and another sip of coffee. “So, we are all over at a smaller bonfire, leaving the normies to do… well, normal stuff. Anyway, another group comes over. They were some paras from another high school, and they had sniffed us out. Pretty chill guys at first, seemed nice enough. One of them just so happened to be a werewolf. He also just so happened to be a bit of a prick.”

Kurt thought he heard a snort of amusement from the other side of the door and kept going. “We were doing just fine for a while, chattin and talking some light smack. Then ole wolf-boy gets his panties in a wad over a comment that one of the dwarves made and got up in her face. He started making some pretty big threats and even his buddies tried to get him to calm down but it didn’t work. They got him to back off and were trying to convince him to call it a night until he just lost it.”

Pausing to take a sip, he heard a muffled noise that made him think Rindi had scooted the bench closer to the door. “This guy shifts, out in the open where anyone could have seen him if they looked. Then he charges that dwarf gal like he was about to take a bite out of her, teeth barred and all.

“I was standing right next to her and did the first thing that came to mind. I balled my hand into a fist and shoved it down his throat. Like they tell you to do with dogs attacking, to make them gag or something.” Kurt thought that was what he had heard back then.

“Well, he did gag but I also got an armful of puncture wounds from his teeth.” Kurt smirked at the memory. “I’m not sure if it was my hand or my blood but he ended up pulling off me and projectile vomiting onto the fire which made this huge cloud of… well, anyway, he took off. Bolted for the trees and never looked back.”

Kurt took another sip, listening for any noises from the other side of the door. “My ‘friends’ ended up hightailing it, running off like a bunch of cowards. Thankfully one of the guys that was with the wolf had some sense and grabbed his first aid kit from the car and put a tourniquet on me. Then he drove my ass to the hospital while his girlfriend called my parents on my cell phone.

“So, I get to the ER and have to tell the doctors that a ‘dog’ attacked me. I mostly told the truth about what I did, and they just assumed it was a big dog. I told my parents the real story, after they cussed me out of course.

“We weren’t too worried since, you know, half-elves don’t get lycanthropy, only humans can.” He let out a hollow laugh then. “Fuck, were we surprised after a couple days of fever when I suddenly shifted for the first time.”

“It was a rough summer after that.” Kurt remembered those weeks all too well and the angst of a teenager. “I had a hard time with the change because I had a plan that it absolutely ruined. I was going to go study under my uncle then get an enchanting job with the guild. It was going to be easy and good money so I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.

“As you can see, that didn’t work out. I spent the next year just going through the motions. I barely cared about school anymore, I didn’t want to be around people. I didn’t even feel safe to myself or others because I had these instincts popping up all the time and my body had changed a lot. There was a significant amount of dysmorphia from it all.” Kurt paused and let his head thump gently against the door frame as he let out a sigh and felt a phantom pain in his arm for the first time in years.

“What happened?” Rindi asked in a small voice that sounded like she was mirroring his pose on the other side of the door.

Kurt smiled, finally getting something from her. “I went out to get some lunch one day and walked past a recruiter station. I had just turned eighteen and said ‘fuck it, why not’. I talked to the dude for a while and got on with an infantry contract with all the goodies in writing… short of special forces. Apparently, they don’t do those contracts at the recruiter office anymore.”

“Was that how you got better?” Rindi asked, once again from just on the other side of the door.

“Nah, I was still a self-destructive little shithead.” Kurt almost wanted to laugh at his younger self and all the cringe shit he did. “Then I met this little fucker named Alec when I got to my unit. Yeah, that Alec. We got really close, especially during deployment. Him, my buddy Cam and me, all thick as thieves.

“One day while sitting in a guard tower, not sure what came over me, I just up and told him my fucking life story. The little bastard just sat and listened to the whole thing like it was an audio book. After I spill my guts to him and share my ‘huge secret’, you know what he said?”

“What?”

“That asshole just flicks his cigarette butt into a coffee can and drops the most profound line I had ever heard. He says, ‘Well if that’s who you are then that’s who my friend is.’. He didn’t even bat an eye and just accepted it. Sure, he gave me more shit later, but it was all good fun. It helped me realize that the way I saw myself isn’t the way others see me and sometimes isn’t even who I really am.”

Kurt sat there for a while, just letting those memories roll over him. After a few minutes, Val and Kristi got up and went back to the living room, leaving him to his thoughts.

It wasn’t long after when he heard from Rindi again. “Kurt?” she asked in a whisper.

“Yeah, I’m here for ya.” He was happy to hear from her

“I’m scared.”

“Do you want to tell me what you are scared of?” He figured that he could let her have some control of the conversation now that she was talking.

“I think I made a mistake. I am not sure you are going to wan…to be ok with me being around looking like this.” Rindi’s voice had a little tremor to it, but she managed to get the words out.

He had to think about how to handle this. They were making progress, but he wanted to get some momentum going. There had to be a lot of big steps taken if they were going to get her out of that bathroom within a week.

“Hey, Rindi?”

“Ye-yes?”

“You know how I keep my promises?” Kurt went for some low hanging fruit with that one.

“Yes.”

“What promises could I make to help you?” Kurt asked. “Do you want me to promise to sit here with you all day? Do you want me to promise to make you an enchanted item to hide behind? What can I do for you?”

Rindi didn’t answer for a minute, and he was beginning to worry he had lost her when she finally spoke. “Can you promise not to hate me?”

Kurt smiled to himself. “Yeah, Rindi. I promise that I will not hate you or feel disgusted or scared or anything of the sort.” He might have thought the request was silly but she probably didn’t.

“C-can you, just you, come in?” She nearly squeaked the last words as she asked the question.

“Sure thing.” Kurt stood up and set his coffee cup in the corner where it wouldn’t spill and put his hand on the doorknob. There was a scrape of the bench again and he gave her a couple seconds to get set up. He looked down the hall to see Val looking back at him, her head poking around the corner, exposing her eyes as her ears swiveled to face him. He gave her the ‘wait a minute’ sign and turned the knob.

He stepped into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him as he slid in. There, sitting on the bench in an oversized towel and refusing to make eye contact while she drummed her fingers on her empty cup, was Rindi. She was much like he had seen her the night before, though slightly cleaner and still in need of a shower.

“Here, why don’t you stand up, and we take a look at you.” Kurt said and held out his hand. He knew she didn’t need help but figured offering physical touch might be reassuring.

Her eyes flicked up to meet his for a brief moment before darting back down to his hand. Tentatively, she reached out and took it, setting her cup to the side as he gave her a little tug to get her moving. She slowly stood up, extending to her new, and very impressive, height several inches above him.

Once she was standing, Kurt got a good look at her in decent lighting, at least the bits not covered by her towel that is. She clearly hadn’t showered but seemed to have brushed her teeth judging by the absence of staining that she had the night before. She still wasn’t making eye contact and was fidgeting with her hands clasped in front of her as she stared at the floor.

Kurt gave her a good onceover, starting at the clearly tiger-shaped ears sticking out of her messy hair. The little rounded appendages occasionally twitched and flexed, moving and swiveling around like Val’s. Her face remained mostly the same except for her eyes which had taken on a yellow-brown color that bordered on gold.

As his gaze traveled down, he noticed that she also appeared slightly fuzzy, like Anna, but the fuzz had the distinct striped pattern. The hair grew longer, almost like fur, along her shoulders but was longest along her spine. Her hands remained mostly free of hair, only the slight fuzz on the backs while the fingers and palms looked normal.

He skipped over the towel covered part that was concealing her rather generous chest and looked down below the hem of the towel that stopped at her mid-thigh. Her upper legs had a similar appearance to her arms, covered in a tiny hairs that slightly shimmered with her striped pattern. That changed around knee level.

Kurt only noticed once she was standing, and he was blatantly looking, that her knee joint looked a bit off. It was mostly normal but seemed more prominent with denser muscles in her thighs compared to her lower leg which bowed backward slightly in its digitigrade stance.

That lower leg was also a little more densely covered in the longer fur-like hair and her feet had a distinctly different shape than he had seen before. They were definitely cat like, being digitigrade in structure and ending in large white, orange and black paws. As he looked, he noted that there were even claws that were poking out in a kneading motion. When he combined that with the flickering tip of her tail that had wrapped around her leg, he knew he had to say something quick.

“Wow.” Kurt said appreciatively, then realized that he needed to be a bit more verbose and quickly added to his brilliant statement. “Rindi, you look really good.” He tried not to face palm at his own idiocy in reassuring her how good she looked.

Rindi’s head whipped up and her eyes narrowed as she focused on him. “Really?”

Kurt nodded. “Um, yeah. I think this really suits you. Does it feel ok? I remember you saying you were uncomfortable in some of your forms before.”

She nodded as her eyes once again went back to the ground. “Umm, I-I feel fine.” After a moment she sat back on the bench before screwing her eyes shut. “I’m really sorry.” She whined with a slight rumble from her deeper voice.

“For what?” Kurt asked.

“For what?” She had an incredulous tone to her voice. “I passed out in a fight and became a burden to the team. Then you had to carry me home, then I made a mess of your floor with my… stuff and-and…”

Kurt took a step over and sat beside her, causing Rindi to flinch as he leaned against the wall. “Rindi, you are not the first person to make a mess in this house and probably won’t be the last.” He purposefully moved his leg to be pressed against hers and leaned into it a little.

“That’s not bad at all. Hell, I absolutely wrecked the bedroom when I met the Origin for the first time. I was in bed with Val and suddenly shifted to a twelve-foot-tall werewolf in my sleep.” Kurt snorted in amusement. “Even without the blood and fur that resulted from it, I completely destroyed that bed frame, the nightstands, lamps, bedding, the ceiling fan and gouged the heck out of the floor. Then I had to struggle to not lose my shit and eat Val and Kristi.

“After having to deal with all that mess, yours was nothing.” Kurt assured her but her shoulders slumped and she hunched forward. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, putting a gentle pressure there. “Hey, seriously, it’s fine. I took care of it with a mop in less than five minutes. The enchantments will get the stuff I missed over the next day or so and it will be completely like new.”

“It’s just embarrassing.” Rindi moaned while hiding her face in her hands.

Kurt shrugged again. “Maybe. But we all have embarrassing things that we aren’t proud of. Both the other girls do, and it doesn’t mean we don’t work through it. Just because something happens and you come out a little worse for wear doesn’t mean we don’t still like and support you.”

One of Rindi’s ears swiveled over to him, and she slightly lowered her hands. “You guys like me?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kurt asked.

“Well…”

“Just remember all the things we have been telling you. About being yourself and being proud of it.” Kurt began. “People who don’t really like you won’t do that. They will ask you to change and conform to meet their expectations.”

Rindi just nodded and chewed her lip. She flinched as she did before reaching up to poke at one of her extended, fang-like incisors that she had forgotten about.

“What was it you said last night?” Kurt asked rhetorically. “Just before you passed out.”

“That I did what you said.” She answered.

“No, that’s not quite right.” Kurt wasn’t going to let her deflect it. “You said ‘I chose to be me. Like you always said.’ That’s all we want. We want you to be you and to be a part of our team. We are going to do whatever we can to support you in that. Ok?”

Once again, sitting upright Rindi glanced over at him and he smiled back at her. “OK, I think I can do that.”

“Great. Now I want you to do something for me.” When Rindi looked curious, Kurt continued. “I want you to get up, get showered, get dressed and then join us for breakfast. Can you do that?”

Rindi smiled, flashing a little bit of fang before she nodded. “Yeah. I can do that.”

Kurt stood and offered his hand to her again. “Deal. I will get started cooking so you got like twenty minutes.” He then scooped up her empty cup and made for the door but paused and looked her in the eye one last time. “And hey, we all really like having you on the team and we are here to support you in whatever you want to be.”

With that, Kurt left the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He stooped to pick up his coffee cup and heard her mumble something to herself but couldn’t hear what through the door. He drained the lukewarm remains of his coffee in two big gulps as he went to check on the others and got food started.

Perhaps if the door had been open, he might have been forced to answer when she asked herself about being more than just on the team.