They look scared of me. The two she-cats had begun to whisper quietly, never taking their nervous eyes off of Crescentsky.

"Go look at your reflection in the water. If that even is you. I don't believe that it is." Tinyflame's meow came out in a frightened jitter. The corners of her jaw stretched down and into a deep, appalling frown.

"Of course it is," Cheetah murmured back. For once she was serious, but there was also admiration in her tone.

"It has the same colored eyes as her. Oh wow, I never thought Starclan was capable of things like this. This is awesome!" For all of the confidence in Cheetah's tone, the spotted she-cat still had a ridge of fur lifted along her spine.

It? Fear trickled like snowmelt down her spine.

"Yeah, sure, awesome." Tinyflame's retort was dry, and she rolled her eyes. Then she glanced at Crescentsky and her eyes widened again.

"I don't believe this. It's too dangerous. It can't be real...!" The smaller she-cat's words were tremulous.

Crescentsky was scared to speak again, in case her voice came out in that deep, guttural tone like it had before.

If that was her voice.

But it had to be. She had meant to say it.

She padded over to the stream's edge where the water was calmest. Towards its middle the channel swirled in eddys around partly-submerged rocks.

Tinyflame's odd words had frightened her. She almost didn't want to look.

But she dropped her head lower anyways in order to study her reflection. Because it was still dark, it took her a moment to understand what she was seeing. Crescentsky didn't know what to expect, but it wasn't anything as profound as this.

The eyes staring back at her were pinpointed and small. They had perfectly round, dilated pupils in order to absorb the moons minimal light. And the irises were her's; one blue-flecked and another yellow. But the fur that stretched across her face was not hers. Nor was the pelt that covered her shoulders, her forelegs, and her flanks.

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What she could see of herself was vast and dark, shaggy and dense. Stockier than a cat. As she turned her face to the side, her muzzle seemed to elongate to twice as long as that of a cat's. When she moved, her reflection wavered along with the surface of the water, but did not change.

She was huge. Crescentsky looked down at her compact paws, which were leaving deep gauges in the earth.

And she did have claws; but they were in-retractable and blunt. They couldn't tear through an animal's hide like a cat's could.

But my teeth can.

An uncanny shiver ran down her spine and all the way to her tail. Her head began to buzz, as Crescentsky could scarcely believe it.

She ran her lips along her elongated muzzle. It felt weird. Her snout was pointed rather than dainty and round. It felt like there was too many teeth in her mouth, and they were all too sharp for her too-long tongue.

How did this happen? When did this happen? She stopped looking at the wolf's appearance and stepped back, intending to question her clanmates.

But now that she knew for certain what she was, everything felt more unnatural. Her paws were stiff-legged as they stepped across the earth. Her tail felt raggedy behind her, thicker and less versatile than her long cat's tail had been. And the sheer size-difference she felt looking over at her companions alone...

"Help me change back," Crescentsky's words came out as a growl instead of a mew. Her forepaws stepped disorderly, so she stopped walking and stood still. The treetops felt closer to her eartips than they ever had before. As she glanced up, the experience unsettled her.

Can they understand me?

Everything about this unnerved her. Was this truly Starclan's doing? It had to be.

They'd said they'd give her the wolf's claws. And so they had, literally.

But it made no sense! Why would Starclan do this to her? Turning her into her worst enemy?

What if she was stuck like this?

All of sudden Crescentsky wanted to be back in her cat body, and she nearly opened her jaws to mewl with distress. But then she realized that the harsh wolfish voice would come out again.

She gazed around aimlessly. There was nothing here to turn her back into a cat, no plant she could eat or Starclan spirit she could ask. When her companions began trying to console her, she didn't listen.

Then Crescentsky realized. Turn me into my worst enemy...!

I could protect the clans like this. The thought doted on her. Her eyes flitted over her stout forelegs, then the thick ruff of fur along her neck and back.

"Crescentsky!" Her littermate broke into her thoughts while sounding like it very much wasn't. There was terror in Tinyflame's voice, her gaze uneasy as she peered over Cheetah's curved spine toward her now-a-wolf sister.

"We'll figure out how to turn you back. Just don't go all wolf-brained and attack us! Please," she asked, poising herself to run.

"I saw what happened." Cheetah spoke up, her tail waving. She took a step closer to Crescentsky.
"Whenever you shook that debris out of your fur, you turned into a wolf." Cheetah let that sink in for a moment, then swept on.

"It was almost instant. If I had blinked I would've missed it. Crescentsky, your pelt grew out. Your muzzle grew longer, and you grew taller in the span of a tail-flick. That's the only details I could make out because of how fast it was, and it happened while you shook your pelt. I'm sure of it." Cheetah's hackles began to lower, and she grew more certain of herself while she explained.

Tinyflame looked skeptical, not moving from her place several fox-lengths away.

"I know what I saw!" Cheetah meowed stubbornly.

Crescentsky's muzzle was sealed. She didn't want to speak in that oddly grating wolfish voice, no way.

But I need to tell them about Starclan's gift. This has to be connected in some way, if not the gift that they spoke of. She hadn't had the chance to yet, not after being chased into a river and then dealing with this.

"We've got to be certain of something like this. It's dangerous. She could turn on us when she's in the mind of that wolf." Tinyflame's words were accusatory, her paws planted so firmly that Crescentsky knew if she moved, it would only be to turn and flee.

Cheetah rolled her eyes toward the star-speckled sky. "It's her! The wolf literally has the same shades of Crescentsky's dark tabby pelt."

Crescentsky looked over her shoulder in order to see for herself.

Cheetah was right. There was a mix of guard hairs and undercoat along her back, neck, and face the exact same color of deep blue-black and grey. Her undercoat, which was more visible and lighter along her legs, underbelly and chest, was a lighter coal-grey that shimmered silver when it caught the light.

"Before we keep talking, Crescentsky, shake out your pelt. We can test whether that's the on or off switch at the same time as making sure it's still you," Tinyflame insisted.

Crescentsky immediately did as she was told. She hadn't moved from her standing position across from them. She had still been too freaked out by the change.

While she shook out her fur, the two other she-cats watched from a safe distance. Even Cheetah didn't come closer until Crescentsky was finished, and back in her normal pelt.

She had felt nothing but the wind lifting her fur during the change, and that was normal for the pelt-shaking action. Her eyesight was distorted from witnessing the height difference, because shaking out her fur caused the world to blur around her.

And yet the after-effect was disorienting. Only a moment ago her ears had been the same height as the topmost of a large rowan bush, her skull pushing larger than a cat's body.

"It worked! See, Tinyflame?" Cheetah meowed enthusiastically.

Tinyflame was shaking her head in disbelief. The terror didn't leave her eyes even after Crescentsky sat down, looking at her paws.

"She just like, shrank down to less than half that wolf's size right in front of me."

"Yeah. That was really strange," Cheetah agreed. Crescentsky licked her chest-fur for self-reassurance, thankful for the normalcy of being close to the ground.

"There's no way Starclan gave her the ability to turn into a wolf at the shake of a pelt. No way," Tinyflame shook her head as if she refused to believe it still.

"That's unimaginably reckless and dangerous."

"Imagine if it had happened to you." Crescentsky frowned, still put off by what she had just experienced.

"Hey, what if it could happen to me? I'm going to try it." Cheetah shook out her short pelt under the lightening pre-dawn sky. However, she stayed the same golden-spotted she-cat that she was.

"What exactly did Starclan tell you?" Tinyflame looked at her sister incredulously before finally approaching.

"Let's go. I'll tell you on the way," she replied to Tinyflame and turned her muzzle in the direction of home.

Crescentsky and her companions ambled toward the lakeshore, taking the sandy path southbound that would lead back towards Riverclan. The sky was glowing beige-and-pink with pre-dawn streaks. An opaque moon sat at the very edge of the horizon, ready to dip behind a swell and make way for the adjacent sun.

While they talked and walked, Crescentsky couldn't help but think about her newfound "gift," although that's not what she felt comfortable calling it yet. Many different feelings struck her, including disbelief at what she had just experienced.

Despite this, how truly monumental this was hadn't gone unregarded by her. The Riverclan she-cat's paws were tingling from the experience. Crescentsky felt adrenaline where sore muscles had previously been.

Could she really shake her fur out, and at any moment turn into a wolf?

Well, they did say it was temporary.... Whatever that means. But the tabby she-cat knew that she would find out eventually.

Still, this can't be real!

And yet it is, her inner voice responded back immediately.

She couldn't wait to try the switch again already. She almost wanted to do it now, but it would freak Tinyflame out.

Crescentsky kept most of these thoughts to herself, trying to focus on informing her companions about Starclan's visit. Now that they had witnessed what happened, she couldn't help but tell them every little detail.

At the very end Tinyflame frowned. "They didn't really give us any solid answers or advice. Besides 'don't find new territories just yet.'"

"But if they plan to communicate with Riverclan's new medicine cat through Starclan dreams, then it seems certain we'll hear more from them in the near future." Cheetah blinked at her, and Tinyflame fell silent.

"So did you understand me when I spoke?" Crescentsky asked after it was clear that they had finished speaking.

"It was so..."

"Raspy? Yeah. It was like you were growling while you said it. You spoke our language through the throat of that wolf." Tinyflame began to look nervous again. Crescentsky thought she wanted to step away after she glanced sidelong, but her sister stayed beside her.

At least they could understand me. She thought that was a positive thing, if any. It would help her clanmates to believe it.

But then that got her thinking on exactly how to tell them.

Author's Tip: See concept art of Crescentsky's wolf done by me on the Art Page! (Located at the very bottom beneath spoiler warning)