Catalyst

Chapter Twelve

"Okay, the first thing you need to do is concentrate on feeling...well, whatever it is you felt when you changed. The... heat, or..."

Phoebe flapped her hand at him, waving him to a stop. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, James on the stool facing her.

"It's not just lust," she found herself explaining. The words were running out of her mouth without her control. "It's other stuff too. It's a general..." she tried to ignore the intense and steady way he watched her, and find the right word, "hopefulness. A happy feeling."

"Well, aren't you complex."

She stuck her tongue out at him and made an obvious show of situating herself on the bed and closing her eyes. Taking a deep breath, feeling the cold air hit her lungs, she instantly began the gruesome chore of fantasizing about James' mouth. She thought of simple girlish fantasies. She pictured them older, holding hands, walking. Them on the beach lying in the sand, on a blanket in front of a fireplace, even grocery shopping and stealing kisses in the check-out line. It was really strange; thinking like this had never seemed like homework, but right now it did. Forced, the images weren't as engaging, but she held herself in check.

Focus, she reproached herself, this is for James. You want to be a dragon, don't you? The swooping heat she felt roll through her stomach was a resounding yes.

She thought of his hands on her hips, her sides, sliding above her shirt. His teeth on her neck, his hips grinding into hers.

It was working. She hadn't felt herself changing the first two times but it was more obvious now that she was looking for it. The tingling was subtle. It felt as if soft puffs of air, or light touches of fabric were brushing up against her skin.

The pressure of his lips on hers, soft but demanding, the whisper of his tongue against her mouth.

Phoebe could feel the brush of air all along her neck and chest now. Her stomach felt strange, like it was gurgling. A thunderstorm of noise, almost a moan. No, the moan was her.

Heat was building in her stomach and she was flushed with it. It was coursing through every vein, to every pore, lighting her up from the inside. She clenched her teeth against another moan, a cramp tightening her left thigh muscle, a twinge in her shoulder blades. Sweating now, she shivered as the tingling caress worked its way down her spine. Her mouth was numb. It felt like there were golf balls on the insides of her cheeks, like when she got a cavity filled. Her ears popped and the pain caught her off guard. She gasped and shot her eyes open.

Everything looked different. Not brighter, or even clearer, just different. Tilted in a way that didn't make sense. James seemed smaller, like she was watching him on a square TV. She opened her mouth and it felt like her tongue was too small. It couldn't reach her teeth. No words emerged when she breathed out, trying to ask him what was happening, how did she look, why was he staring at her like that?

What came out was a strangled garble of hisses. She cleared her throat, or tried, and the sound was so loud she almost covered her ears, but she was afraid that she'd accidentally claw them off her face.

She looked down at her legs and almost screamed. Her shorts were ripped. Her legs were thicker than they should be and green scales were poking individual slits in the fabric as if they were porcupine quills. Bits of her cotton panties were being pulled through, snagging against the edges of the little scales. She touched them with a claw and they felt like baby scales, still rough and malleable, not smooth and marble-hard like the ones on her arms.