Not Her Life

This is a short work of erotic fiction containing furry, or anthropomorphic, characters, which are animals that either demonstrate human intelligence or walk on two legs, for the purposes of these tales. It is a thriving and growing fandom in which creators are prevalent in art and writing especially.

All work is fiction intended for fantasy only, regardless of content, and consent must always be acquired when engaging in any sex act with another adult.

Please note that all characters are clearly over eighteen and written as such in all stories.

---

Mina hunkered down next to the old, ratty, wooden fence, feeling it give against her shoulder as she unwittingly pressed against it. The headlights of the passing car swept by her, but, thankfully, they didn't notice her. That would have wrecked everything, though Mina only did what she had to so she could stay alive.

Her life... Well, to say the least of it, it had not been easy, no, not at all. Her unkempt, ragged appearance, clad in torn jeans and a hoodie stolen from the fitting room of a basic clothes shop, told the tale visually, though many didn't care to look past it. Mina's pale skin was, at the very least, clean, but it wouldn't be for long if she couldn't slip into another leisure centre to use their facilities. Mina didn't have a home to call her own after ageing out of the orphanage -- and that wasn't much of a home anyway.

Once she was eighteen, that was it: off she went. No one wanted to deal with her, even though she had hardly finished her schooling with passable, scraping grades. She barely lived in an environment conducive to learning, always defending her belongings and what meagre space she had in the shared dorms. It had all been such a rush and then it was over.

Out on the streets, with no bed to sleep it, she turned to petty thefts, breaking into houses where it looked like the owners had not been around for some time, stealing all she could. It was not a good way to live, but it got her enough money to buy a tent and food, while she worked out what the hell she was going to do. Her rough haircut had been done herself and she needed that sorted too if she was going to find a job in a shop or anything, not that Mina had any experience.

The house she'd targeted, on the edge of town, seemed to be abandoned, however, and she took a deep breath as she slipped between the broken planks in the fence, treading carefully and deliberately as she crossed the garden. She'd checked it out already, alone, but coming back at night was a very different game and riskier than simply observing the property.

The door was locked, of course, but it was no issue at all to her to smash a window in the back and slip in carefully, avoiding shards of broken glass as her trainers crunched over them. The furniture was ancient, with carved arms to the chairs and large sofas with giant feet to them, though everything was covered in a fine layer of dust. Even though the decorating schemes had been ancient, to her, there were still modern conveniences to be found in the kitchen, such as a microwave and a toaster. She, obviously, could not drag the oven out of there to sell, but perhaps she could loot the place of its electronics over a series of days. Still, even that was a risk if there was anyone at all nearby who noticed a change in the property, or caught sight of the broken window.

Mina had to try, however, pushing her blonde hair out of her face as she dug through the bedrooms, finding a TV that looked mostly unused, along with jewellery in the top drawer of a chest of drawers. That was a score indeed and Mina loaded up her pockets as she hastened onward, pausing to pull a cloth off what looked to be an old, antique mirror.

It came clad in a bronze-like frame, the mirror dirtied and smeared. She used the same cloth that had been hanging over it, hiding it from view, to wipe off the surface, yet there was no dust on it. In fact, the smears on the mirror itself looked quite as if someone had been grabbing at it, trying to shove their fingers through the surface itself.

"Weird..."

She muttered to herself. The mirror stood out and looked new, the bronze shining clearly around the edge, not appearing tarnished in the slightest. That the dust had not even lain over the cloth was unusual too, though Mina shrugged it off. Maybe it was something fancy that the previous owners had purchased -- and then left before they were able to use it?

Either way, it looked high-value enough for her to sell, even though it was large too, the sort of mirror that perhaps would have gone on the back of a door or in a dressing room to check out an outfit before heading out. She pursed her lips and curled her fingers around the edges, trying to lift it and finding herself only barely capable of doing so.

"Oof!"

She slipped, alas, on the cloth that had spilt to the polished, dust-covered floorboards, falling forward. Her hands slammed into the surface of the mirror and, somehow, she twisted, the mirror suddenly on the floor -- or so it felt to her with a sudden shift in where gravity came from -- sucking her through the mirror, which had as much resistance to it as water. She felt the weight of it bearing around her, though she only managed one last gasp before disappearing entirely through it, falling unconscious.

Yet Mina could not have possibly imagined how her life and world was to change forever, shifting to another time and another life that should have been hers to claim.

*

Sometime later, Mina could not have said how long, she woke slowly, rolling over in what seemed to be a bed. That was odd... Her stomach dropped, though her eyelids felt too heavy to open at that time. Had she been picked up by the police? Was she in a hospital? But nothing about her body seemed to hurt...

Open your eyes, you have to.

Mina ground her teeth together, jaw aching. She'd done many difficult things in her life and, although pushing through hard things was not the most comfortable thing in the world, it was something she knew well enough how to do. Blinking, she swept sweep from her eyes as a white-walled room came into view. It looked like some kind of bedroom, with a floral pattern to the duvet on the bed, though not any bedroom she honestly recognised.

"Mmm... Good morning, darling..."

Mina stiffened. Who was that? She swallowed hard and rolled over, though her body moved dully and sluggishly, feeling awkward and out of her control. It felt heavier than what she was used to, but the wolf she rolled over to face was unfamiliar to her.

A wolf. But... a wolf that was clearly on two legs as she swung them out of bed and sat up, appearing quite like a weird amalgamation of human and wolf. Her heart pounded, chest aching, and she gasped at the wolf's back, eyes wide and straining.

"Youuuu... Huff... Whaaaa..."

But Mina couldn't work her mouth and lips around her words, no matter how hard she tried. Her tongue simply felt too thick in her mouth, like it was taking up too much space, and there was something blocky on the front of her face, something that didn't feel like it belonged there.

"Heh, you're so cute when you're sleepy."

Seemingly at ease with the fact Mina was in her bed, the wolf sat up, a lace-edged nightshirt falling over what seemed to be breasts -- but they looked completely out of place on a wolf! Mina sucked in a breath, staying where she was, though the wolf didn't look at her in a way that seemed like she was about to be attacked.

In fact, as the wolf-woman moved around the bedroom, apparently going about her daily routine, it all seemed, horribly normal. The wolf-woman dressed as Mina averted her eyes with a heated blush spreading across her face, feeling altogether too hot, burning through her skin. Before she left, the wolf smiled to her again, a soft look in her blue eyes.

"Breakfast will be ready downstairs with the kids, honey," she said. "Don't take too long."

"Urf... Mmmnnnn?"

Mina grunted, hoping that was good enough as her head reeled. What the hell? Was that something she was supposed to be dealing with? The wolf didn't seem bothered by her in the slightest and Mina shook her head, sitting up in bed with a grunt and a heaving shove of her hands. Yet those felt different too and her legs were covered in cotton pyjamas when she swung them out of the bed, her heavy feet landing with a dull thud.

Oh no...

She staggered upright and over to the bedroom door, not even daring to look down at herself, even as she sought to take in her whole image all at once. The back of the bedroom door held a mirror, roughly the same size as the one she remembered seeing in that abandoned house, but that meant nothing. Not really, no...

Or did it? She lumbered over, dragging her feet that weren't really her feet anymore, and stood there, her chest heaving.

It was not her own image she saw there, but that of a bear. And not just a bear-woman like the wolf had been, but a very obviously male bear from the lack of breasts on her chest. She grabbed at her chest and let out a strangled groan, a larger, flatter tongue swiping out against her dark lips. Although she stood on two legs, wearing only pyjama bottoms, she swayed in front of the mirror, her head spinning dizzyingly.

Her gut gurgled before she could do anything else, grappling with the reflection that was her and not her at the same time. She didn't even have time to bring a hand up to her face as a rumbling belch ripped itself from her mouth, though it alleviated a little of the tightness in her stomach that she had not acknowledged before.

"Ugh!"

She twisted, not knowing whether to look at the big, male bear with a gut in the mirror or be revolted at the sound that came from her mouth. Even her body seemed gross and sweaty, a rank, cloying smell working its way deep into her nostrils. Mina tried not to breathe in deeply, her head reeling.

"This... Nuhhh..."

She worked her tongue around her mouth, blinking and swaying her head, shifting her weight, watching herself respond in the mirror to every action. Yet she had to work harder to get words out with a face that had a snout on it, her heart pounding and blood roaring in her ears.

"This... can't..." She said slowly, pushing the words around her mouth before releasing them. "Can't... be... real..."

She held out her hands, which were more paw-like too, with big claws. With a throaty whimper, Mina turned them off, eyes watering as she tried to blink away the emotion.

She wasn't herself anymore, but... things like that happened, didn't they? Mina strove to calm herself, but taking long, deep breaths wasn't an option, as she would only breathe in her gross sweat. Okay, so it couldn't all happen in real life, she knew that much, but things like that happened in dreams and the only way Mina was going to get through all of that was by believing, with every fibre of her being, that it was a dream.

Okay, okay, calm down, she told her frantically racing heartbeat. This isn't real, none of it. You probably... got knocked out when you fell, or you're sleeping in the tent right now. It's fine, it's totally fine. You just got to... carry on until you wake up.

She'd always talked like that, to herself, in her head. The others at the orphanage had said it was weird, but Mina had taken care to keep it to herself after that. People all thought in different ways, yet they didn't always acknowledge that others could be different to them and still be okay.

Children were cruel. Adults more so.

She shook her head. Of all the things for her mind to come up with -- animal people? Really? Was that really something she could come up with in her unconscious mind? She looked like something out of a cartoon! Just burlier and bigger... and smellier. Mina gagged, though forced herself to be still, looking around for clothes. Maybe carrying on with the day would get everything back to normal, or bore her enough that she just woke up?

She yawned widely, glimpsing her reflection in the mirror, the sharp teeth that lined her mouth. Wasn't having claws bad enough? Mina screwed up her face, wanting to move away from the foul reek that rolled from her lips, but even that didn't seem possible, for the stench of her breath came along with her.

Fumbling in the bathroom adjoining the bedroom, she tried to go through the motions of getting ready for her day, but nothing came as easily as it had before. She felt everything, as if she was not really in a dreamlike, drifting state, from the squeeze of the tube of toothpaste against her hand-paw-thing to how the overpowering taste of mint filled her mouth.

What the hell am I? She thought, struggling through things, picking a up a brush and looking at her fur, not even knowing where to start. I... This is crazy. I'm crazy. I have to be crazy.

But she managed, just about, even though she was rotund and still stank, even after cleaning her teeth. She was sure a shower wasn't going to help that morning, so pushed it to the back of her mind, dressing instead. Yet claws didn't work very well with clothes, or so it seemed, so she was forced to move more slowly, as if every inch of cloth moving up her leg with her trousers was hard won. At least her clothes had been laid out for her on a chair in the bedroom, for that at the very least told her what she was supposed to wear.

Black dress trousers, black shoes (adjusted, strangely, for big, bear-paw feet), and a white shirt. There was a jacket too, but she didn't put that on yet. Surely, she would be far too hot in it. She poked a hole in the white shirt as she pulled it on, but it was close to a button and her claw slid out of the hole cleanly enough. Hopefully that would be good enough for the dream, even as she fumbled and willed herself to wake up.

The underwear was probably the most difficult for her to get on and she grumbled and whinged as she strained to get it in place. If there was any declaration that she was male, it lay between her thighs in the large penis, the nuts seeming to contain even more reek behind them. Mina flushed heavily and tried not to look too closely at them, the huge pair of underwear needed to contain her thick ass, her whole body just so much wider and fuller than what she was used to.

She made her way downstairs with difficulty, for it felt like a great effort of will just to move one huge, tree-trunk-like leg at a time, almost thundering (slowly) down the stairs themselves. Yet the house itself looked like one that could have been familiar to her, not so much in a strange world. She cast a look out the kitchen window as she shuffled in with a grunt that she hoped would suffice for the wolf at the sink, washing dishes, watching as a younger otter-person cycled by on the road outside.

Crazy...

"Hey, Bernard, you made it down then," the wolf-woman said as she pecked Mina on the cheek. "You'll have to head off to work soon, here's some breakfast! Toast with honey, just the way you like it."

"Oh, er..." Mina let out a loud burp, her hand flying to her face. "Yeah... Thanks, honey?"

Was the wolf supposed to be her wife? The wolf-woman perked up a little, though she seemed so disgustingly cheery and sweet it was easy for Mina to go along with it. Sitting at the table, she side-eyed the kids sitting there. It wasn't something he could just "do" to ask whether or not they were his, but the girl that looked like a cross between a wolf and a bear might have been "theirs." In her twisted dream world, of course, no more than that. The other kid sitting there looked more like a wolf, so maybe they were just the wolf-woman's kid.

Maybe that would be easier? But somehow Mina doubted that as the wolf-kid glowered at her, kicking his feet under the kitchen table. She winced. Damn, she knew that look. She'd given that look to people, not all that long ago. And now she was supposed to be some kind of father to them?

Nope, that's not going to happen, she told herself, scraping her chair against the floor as she settled into place at the table, needing to take more space than usual for her large stomach. I'm going to wake up and laugh about this. Hopefully with some good loot from that abandoned house...

She smiled weakly at the kids, but they mostly ignored her -- bar the bear-wolf girl who smiled widely at her. Mina was emboldened by that and took a bite of the toast in front of her, though she had to curled her clawed fingers around the edge of the crust gently so as not to puncture it. It was easier to eat with her hands, however, than even consider using cutlery.

"Mmm!"

She let out an agreeable sound, licking at the honey on the toast. It was an overly sweet taste that stuck to her tongue and the roof of her mouth and, frankly, she hadn't really liked it before, not one bit. But it was different, maybe in the body of someone else called "Bernard the bear," so she chomped on it. The wolf-bear girl wrinkled her snout at him.

"Daddy," she whined. "Chew with your mouth closed!"

"Oof? Mm... Yesh..."

Mina tried to do as the bear's daughter asked, heat crawling through her. Even under her arms felt gross and sweaty already and she tried to eat as quickly as possible without opening her mouth and spraying honeyed crumbs everywhere. But she did her best to fit in and go along with things, so she didn't arouse suspicion.

Yet Mina was very much not who any of them thought she was. She was not Bernard, even though that was what the wolf had called her and she was most certainly not a father to anyone! All she could hold on to was the idea that she had to be calm and amenable, so no one caught on to it. Or else who knew what would happen. Getting hauled down to the police station was the least of it; she'd almost be more likely to wake up in hospital if the wolf-woman got her teeth into her.

Mina shuddered. No, no... She wouldn't anger the wolf, no matter how sweet she seemed.

"I'm taking the kids to school, darling," the wolf-woman said, kissing her cheek again -- did she do that a lot? "See you later!"

"You look weird," the young wolf said suddenly, shoving his chair away from the table. "What's wrong with you?"

"Liam!"

The wolf-woman rounded on him, eyes wide.

"You can't talk to your step-father like that," she scolded him, though Liam's words seemed to have caught even her off-guard. "Apologise, immediately! Darling, are you okay? Liam means well, I am sure."

A glare rolled out with the last of her words and the younger wolf sighed, scuffing his shoe across the ground.

"Yeah, I guess... Sorry."

"Um... Yeah, that's okay, that's fine," Mina said quickly, still mumbling a bit but having a better grasp on what she was saying. "Don't worry about it... Liam."

The wolf still gave Mina a suspicious look and she wondered, for a moment, if he had caught on to her ploy. If he had, it would be game over, so she tried to look sterner, her brow furrowing oddly.

"And don't ever let it happen again... young wolf!"

The wolf-bear girl gave him a strange look that time, but didn't comment. She was a bit younger than the teen wolf, so maybe she was happier to go along with things that didn't quite "fit" right at that age. Mina didn't like how she was striving to work things like that through in her head -- but if Mina was going to wake up soon, it didn't really matter. She just didn't really want the dream to take a turn for the worse and fuck up everything.

If she could go along with it, like she wanted everyone else to, things would be so much easier for her.

With the kids waved off in the car, she tackled her next mission: getting to work. She moved without thinking and grabbed the keys off the hook by the door.

Huh. Muscle memory.

She grumbled to herself as her feet followed a known path out of the house, locking the door on instinct behind her, even though she was sure it didn't really matter anymore. The car seemed too small for her and rocked as she lumbered and shoved her body into the driver's seat, though Mina jerked as she eyed the street ahead.

Do I really have to go to work? She thought. Maybe I can just find that mirror and, like... trigger myself to wake up again?

That seemed like a much better idea than going to work in her dream, though, to be fair, it was not as if Mina even knew where her work was in the first place -- Bernard's work, that was. Once she was in the car, it seemed a better fit for her, but everything seemed small when her body had expanded through the bounds of anything she could have ever imagined on her form. She leaned back heavily against the backrest of her seat and started the car, the engine rumbling to life. Although she didn't have her driver's license (couldn't afford it), she knew how to drive a car and was sure she could more or less get away with it for a bit.

"Whoa..."

She muttered under her breath, loathing how her voice sounded: all masculine and deep, like she was barely even speaking up and yet could still be heard. It was weird. Her hand-paws moved instinctively on the steering wheel, jerking it to the right when she'd wanted to pull out of the driveway and turn left.

Weird.

But the car didn't obey her as she tried to slow and go the other direction, her hands freezing on the wheel as if something had locked her up, preventing her from going with her own mind. She sweated, stinking up the car even more -- but her sense of smell seemed much stronger. Mina had been more than used to bad smells out on the streets, but everything seemed sharper and coarser there.

"Ugh... No, come on..."

She tried again to move, but her body didn't. Bernard's body just... stayed where it was, facing forward and driving straight down the road. Other cars passed her, but she reacted simply and automatically, driving a lot more safely than, frankly, she should have been. She should have had to focus a lot more on the road than she was, yet Mina couldn't even wrench her gaze away from the road ahead of her, fingers feeling frozen on the wheel, yet not cold at all.

She had to keep going, heading to a parking garage that didn't look familiar at all. Well, the whole world around her was kind of normal with similar roads and streets and shops, building up into a busier area, but there were no humans. All around her were animal-people like the weird furries she'd seen online. Did that mean they were all real too?

She shook her head. No, no... She had to focus, had to consider where she was going, that she was just trying to find the mirror. Even as something, a force that was beyond even Mina, compelled her to park smoothly in a parking bay, checking her mirrors as the car sensor beeped to let her know when she was backed up as far as she could go. Her heart pounded and, suddenly, her body was her own again.

Though that was still not true, was it? Her mind still expected to see her hands there, her breasts on her chest, but the body she controlled was not hers and never would be. Mina growled in the back of her throat, trying to make it a little higher-pitched and softer -- to make it sound like her again. But it was no use.

Cautiously, she got out of the car, nodding to someone across the way. What did normal people say to coworkers and people like that in the morning?

"Uh, hey, what's up?" She said weakly. "Nice... traffic?"

The otter-man across the way gave her a strange look, fingers curled resolutely around a cup of fresh coffee.

"Morning."

That was all the reply she got from him: gruff and short. Oh, yeah, older people talked weird, often all formal and stuff in work settings... She grimaced. That was hardly the sort of thing Mina had any experience at all in.

She tried again with a wolf-man who looked to have darker grey fur than the wolf-woman she'd had back in the house she'd woken up in.

"Hey, morning," she tried.

The wolf-man looked up, lips twitching with a faint smile.

"Morning. Great weather we're having, isn't it?"

"Uh, yeah..." She cast about. What was the weather? What could she say? "Uh... nice and dry?"

"What?" He looked at her strangely. "No, been raining, Bernard. Good for the plants."

"Ah, yeah, yeah..."

Mina tried to play it off, but it didn't do her much good. The wolf had moved on and she didn't even know whether or not it was a friendly interaction.

She'd never been good with people.

The elevator out of the parking garage seemed to be the right direction to go and she eyed up her hand, which had a briefcase in it. That was weird. But it was just one of many weird things that day as she lumbered into it, feeling closed in by her stink already. A fox and a bear got in with her and her eyes watered. It was not just her reek but the smell of the others assaulting her senses too, though she was the only one who smelled bad. The mixed aromas of other animals was simply a difficult thing to deal with, apparently, with her smelly pits and musky crotch filling the space too.

"Urf..." She tried and failed to stifle a huge yawn, stretching her jaws wide. "Urf... Ack, ack..."

Mina coughed, chest heaving and eyes watering. Yet she couldn't stop herself from hacking up what seemed to be a lump of hair, her eyes wide and strained. She spat the hairball-thing on to the floor, although it sat there with the other occupants of the lift staring at it, one making a grunt of disgust. Heat rushed to Mina's cheeks and she stumbled over her words.

"Er, don't know... what that is, someone else..."

But there was no one else there that she could blame and they'd clearly seen her hack it up. The other workers stepped awkwardly around her as Mina froze.

"Dude, you got to take care of that," the fox said, clicking his tongue disapprovingly against the roof of his mouth as he exited the lift. "Don't just leave it for the cleaning staff."

"Uh... Yeah."

That didn't sound very smart, but Mina still hung back, letting out a huge yawn that reeked of meat and grossness. Was that a nervous reaction? She seemed to yawn a lot, that hadn't ever been a feature of her dreams before. Still, she pretended to do something about the hairball and kicked it weakly to the side of the lift before leaving herself.

Pausing for a moment, she tried to go back the way she'd come. She rubbed her hands together, grunting in disgust at the sticky honey residue still clinging to them, but something stopped her from leaving. Figured.

Maybe it's the mirror, she thought with a more teenager-like roll of her eyes. Stupid thing... Ugh, is it really going to make me go to work, like mirror magic.

As she walked down the corridor, forced there, and stepped through the doors of the open-plan office with cubicles, she caught the name of the business: Furline Insurance. Okay, so an insurance firm. She knew sweet fuck all about that.

"Oh, hey, hold on there, Bernie..."

A badger-man tried to move past him with a full stack of papers in his hands, though Mina's wide mass stopped him from getting buy. Even the double doors seemed small to Mina, as if she couldn't get the bear's bulk through it.

"Ugh, wait, hang on..."

She tried to move out of the way, but there were more people coming, everyone crowding her, both men and women. Some looked at her strangely, like she was doing something untoward, but others tried to hasten their way by, pushing their way through the already narrow space. His belly bumped into a fox-woman and she made a disgruntled sound as Mina tried to make way.

"Ungh, sorry... Uh... Yeah..."

She wasn't used to apologising like that and even doing so left a sour taste in her mouth. She grunted and cleared her throat -- she felt like doing that a lot, like there was something stuck in the back of her throat. Even her nose was stuffy... But she didn't worry too much about it as the crowd around her finally managed to move around her with her back pressed to the wall.

Her rotund gut stuck out and brushed against those passing by, forcing them to squeeze. The corridor was not all that narrow and yet it felt small, like it was pressing in on her from all sides. The bear's big belly grumbled and bubbled and she tried to shift away from it, embarrassment pressing in.

The badger grinned, though she didn't know his name. Obviously.

"Bernie, how's your weekend been?" He said conversationally. "Causing a roadblock in here again, hah! No matter, no matter..."

"Yeah, good, good," he tried to say. "Went to the movies... and stuff?"

The badger brushed over it, seeming to want to smooth things over with him.

"With the wife and kids? That's great! You're such a family man."

"Mm, yeah, that... But I gotta go..."

Her feet seemed to know where they were going as they led her not into the cubicles but a private office. Mina raised an eyebrow at the name Bernard Honeywell on the placard beside the door. That was her. Sort of. So... she had an office? Maybe she could just hide out there all day?

She scurried into the office, the door bumping off her stomach, and plonked herself down heavily on the chair. The door didn't close fully after her as her gut continued to gurgle, hinting at the gas she really hoped wasn't coming.

"Fucking hell," she groaned, leaning back in a squeaky chair. "This is all so crazy... How'd they expect me to do anything here?"

And then there was a knock on the door and she scrambled upright, trying to look put together. Flipping open the laptop on the desk, she glanced, panicked, at the door as it opened.

"Hey, boss," a pretty cat said as she entered. "Got your morning coffee. Is there anything else you need before I get to the accounts?"

"Uh... Nah, you do that."

The cat with ginger fur paused, a skirt coming demurely down her legs, just above the knee. Mina stiffened. Jeez, that couldn't be how Bernard talked.

"I mean... Yes, yes. Please, start on the accounts immediately."

She still didn't seem convinced, but at least Mina had a cup of coffee as the cat -- maybe a secretary? -- left. She folded her fingers around it. She had not liked coffee all that much before, but she sniffed it eagerly. Was there honey in that? It smelled kind of sweet...

She drank it down eagerly, her body finding things that Bernard liked, even though the bitter smell of the coffee, under the honey, simply didn't appeal to her. Yet what she liked warred with what Bernard liked, leaving her to wonder whether she was piloting Bernard's body or if the real bear was in there still.

If she switched off, however... things went a little more smoothly. Her lips moved automatically, though it was terrifying to talk to people in a convincing, plain tone: the boss. The manager. Hell. She wasn't that!

But Bernard was as she conducted an interview, only interfering a little and stumbling over her words. It was striking, almost amusingly and sickeningly so, just how different her way of speaking was to Bernard's. But there were several years and a good chunk of life experience between the two of them.

On giving an employee a performance review, she cut in, bored out of her mind and interrupting what Bernard's body was doing on "work autopilot," she burped, rubbing her stomach, and raised her hand.

"Look, I know work is, like, super hard or something," she grunted, "but can't you just... do better?"

The stoat looked down, eyes welling up a little.

"I... I could try."

"Great!" She said, her stomach grumbling as she cleared her throat and huffed again. "Get on with it then, chop-chop."

That sounded like something Bernard would say and she was starving. It didn't look like she had lunch with her, so she headed down to a cafe on the ground floor, ordering a meat-filled sandwich that had so much meat spilling out it was practically criminal. She let out a groan as she bit into it, devouring the whole thing in only a few bites, her stomach rumbling the whole while.

"Oof..."

She grunted as she, in her small seat in the cafe, adjusted her weight and farted. The trumpeting sound was mediocre enough that she let it pass and hoped no one else noticed, though someone a couple of seats away turned their head with a rather disgusted expression on their face.

"Ugh! Who was that?"

She didn't answer, her stomach gurgling still with gassiness. Hopefully, that was something she could keep under control.

Yet there were more and more things about Bernard's body that were super annoying, from his throat clearing to the big yawns that kept making other people jump. And the smell. She'd kicked off Bernard's shoes and the stench of his feet had wafted up to her, forcing her to shove her sweaty feet back into them. No matter how much she fiddled with the thermostat in her office -- how the hell was she supposed to work those things anyway? -- she couldn't get it cool enough for her and she sweated and sweated. Bears were apparently very musky and she did her best to ignore it, even though those visiting her office hesitated somewhat before heading inside too. Despite everything, Mina couldn't blame them.

Even as she went through her day, fumbling with her words, trying to sound like "a real adult" and not doing a good job of it, there were more things still about "being Bernard" that stuck out to her more and more. Her fur shed... everywhere. Regardless of how carefully she moved, shuffling and lumbering, trying to stifle her burps and gassiness, she still left a trail of it in her wake and even the skin flaked off grossly. She shuddered. It reminded her of being unclean and unkempt, but maybe it was part of being a bear-man? Even though, of course, she was only inhabiting the body temporarily. It was not as if she was staying there, of course.

She blinked suddenly, rubbing the back of one, huge hand-paw over her eyes. When had the hour got so late? The city beyond her window was dark, illuminated by man-made lights... Or she supposed it was animal-made things, if the world she was in was full of furries. She rose and grunted, stumbling to the shared bathroom, though even that didn't herald good times with the grumbling of her gut. Mina screwed up her face and squeezed her bulk into a stall, ignoring the smell of her musky fur, as she yanked her trousers down.

Still, she did her best not to breathe in too deeply as she defecated, forcing her body through it even as her body broke wind and left a mess she was ashamed of in the toilet. The stench of her and her waste filled the entire bathroom and someone who entered after her quickly retreated, even if Mina desperately hoped they didn't know it was her in there. It was bad enough for her to go to the "men's" room, the urinals something she instinctively reeled from.

She finished up and rushed out, looking as little as she could at her penis and balls, the body that was foreign to her. Even the pull of her claws through her fur had Mina shuddering, fighting to do her clothes back up neatly without snagging them or even tearing them on her claws too.

I guess I should go home now.

Her body pulled, following the lure of a normal day for Bernard, though she considered going against it again and trying to find the mirror. Mina didn't even know, honestly, as she yawned widely, whether she was trying to find the mirror "to get home" or just still try to wake herself up again. Whatever was happening, it was not something she understood in any way. With her briefcase in hand again, she shuffled down the quiet corridor, heading for the parking garage. Being alone for a bit, at least, would offer her some respite as her stomach gurgled. Shed fur littered in her wake.

"Hey, Bernard!"

She paused, her heart pounding too hard as she turned towards the older lion. From his position in the office and general grooming (he looked "refined"), she thought he was high up in the office: at least higher than her. In short, the lion, Mr Jones, was her boss.

He strode from his office, flicking the lights off on his way, and clapped Mina on the shoulder. She was vaguely glad she wasn't the oldest and grossest, with age, in the office, but that was mild comfort as the lion steered her towards the stairs and elevator to the main street outside.

"Come on, come on, Bernard," Mr Jones coaxed in a voice that was not to be messed with. "You can't go home yet: no, no, no! We're all going out to the bar, boys' night, you can't miss out on that."

"Oh, no, no..." She tried to fight back feebly, but Mina didn't even get her hands up. "Got to get back, you know... Ah... Stuff to do... Kids... Wife..."

They weren't hers, however, and her protests fell unconvincingly flat as Mr Jones steered her outside. The sixty-year-old lion had seen and done it all already, though the cool, evening air tickled her face as she inhaled, enjoying not having to breathe in the scent of her own body again.

So it was that she ended up down the street in the bar, surrounded with other guys from the bar.

"Uh, yeah..." She tried to join in with the light-hearted revelry. "Yeah, good to see you... too?"

Mina fared better when she mimicked them, but all she really wanted to do was to shoulder them away from her. Didn't they understand the concept of person space? Having so many guys around her, all shoved into a booth of sweaty animal-people, was claustrophobic, inciting a sense of danger in her tight, heaving chest.

"Did you hear this one?" An otter laughed, slamming his fist on the table, though not in an unfriendly manner. "A raccoon and a dog walk into a bar..."

She was sure that one was unpleasant with a stupid punchline, so she tuned it out, eyeing up the boss instead.

"How, like, did you get into that position then?" She asked the boss lion, a pint of beer in front of her. "You're like... huge here?"

The others laughed and she grunted, realising she'd slipped too easily into her old vernacular again. Damn it. It was so easy to do, but she didn't exactly want to pretend to be someone else either. Maybe it was only the fact of the matter that Bernard was boring as hell that allowed her to slip into his body and life with no one finding out about her yet. And Mina had no intention at all of being caught, oh no.

"It was a long time to work my way up the ranks of the company," Mr Jones said sagely, linking his fingers together and nodding as everyone leaned in. "You gotta pull yourself up by your bootstraps, boys, keep your nose to the grindstone and keep your butt in the chair. You got to be seen by your bosses, you can't shirk your jobs, no."

Mina swallowed her snort, rubbing the back of her hand as skin flakes off and loose fur shed to the bar table. It was sticky... though she was unsure whether that was still tasty yet gross honey residue on her hands or if it was the alcohol. She took a deep swig of her beer just to do something with her hands. It was bitter and otherwise fairly tasteless to her, but she forced it down, finding it increasingly palatable the more she drank it.

The bar around her grew blurry and uneven, all the guys pushing and jostling together as Bernard sat in the middle of them. And maybe she really was Bernard in that moment, not Mina, losing track of who she was and where she'd come from. She belly-laughed, spraying spittle over the table, even as the talk turned to their girlfriends and wives.

"I'm telling you." A smelly boar with big tusks said, eyes bleary with alcohol. "You ain't lived until you got laid with a leopard, I'm telling you. The moves they can pull..."

The guys laughed and a wolf slapped his shoulder to quiet him.

"Oi, don't be so crude," he admonished, for which Mina was grateful. "You got to be good to a lady, yeah? Been with my ol' lady for six years now, best thing that ever happened to me."

The boar scoffed.

"Yeah, well, not all of us like being tied down."

"Ah, it's not everyone's kink," another stoat said, eyes glittering with drunken mirth. "I like tying them down myself, those fluffy handcuffs and stuff."

The guys guffawed and bellowed, animal sounds wound through their tones. She shrank back, but there was nowhere for someone as large and as bulky as Bernard to go. He cleared his throat again, but it was noisy enough in there that no one noticed the coarse sound.

She had little to say, so disappeared into her beer to drink heavily as they talked about sex. That wasn't something she had experience with and she shuddered to think of it. She didn't even really know what she liked in life, since everything had been about survival so far, only that.

"Having her heat around me, Sandy on her back," someone said, making Mina pause in her drink. "Mm... No, there's nothing better than that, you won't convince me otherwise."

"There's nothing better than a good pair of breasts though," a rat argued and Mina wished she could identify them all in some way other than merely by their species. "The weight in your paws... Hey, Bernard, what do you like best about a woman, hm?"

"Huh?"

She jerked, startled.

"Um... No, no..." She waved her hand to brush them off, but a shoulder bumped into hers, urging her on. She still had over half her beer left, despite everything. "I couldn't talk about Diane like that, no. She's... ah... special to me?"

Her voice went higher on the last note, as if she was unsure -- and she really was. It felt like she was meant to join in with the guys, but she couldn't.

But... her body, Bernard's body wasn't a virgin. Mina may not have had sex before -- but did that mean she wasn't really a virgin?

She blushed heavily and drank more beer to ease her nerves just a little, though it didn't seem to do her much good. The guys moved on with their conversation when she was not amenable to it -- bored with anything less -- and she was left ruminating over her body, how it was not hers and had had experienced so much.

Still, the alcohol and their talk got to her as her penis thickened, pumping up softly with blood. She rocked her weight from hip to hip, trying to ignore it, even if she was glad the table blocked her crotch from view. The fermentation in the beer, however, rumbled through her gut and, unwittingly, she belched loudly.

"Whoa, Bernard!" The guys crowed slapping her on her back and shoulders. "Nice one!"

She blushed, retreating as much as she could, but the wolf grinned and leaned forward as she covered her mouth.

"That was a nice one, but I can do better!"

He thumped his chest and let out a gut-churning burp that rolled on for longer than Mina's, though her cringe went unnoticed. One by one, they chugged their beer and belched as crudely and as loudly as they could, throwing paper money down on the table for a betting pool. Mina shoved some cash in from her pocket, though she had to take a deep breath to part with it, reminding her it wasn't really hers -- it was Bernard's. Finally, Mr Jones eyed her with a twinkle in his eye.

"Come on, you," he said, not unkindly, as he rapped his fingers on the table and called Mina's attention. "Your turn, Bernard. Don't let the young ones show you up now."

Compelled by their pressure, she tried to do it, though burping was not something Mina would naturally have done. Maybe it would be one way for her to win the money, at the very least, feeling a pull towards that from her: the real Mina. It didn't feel like the Bernard bear-person cared much about money, or maybe he had enough that it didn't bother him.

Bernard had more than enough of a gassy stomach to play up to it, her gut grumbling as she scooted back in her seat, making space for her stomach. She tried not to think about it as she belched, feeling it ripple over her tongue and lips, the rank stench of her breath pouring over the table.

The guys cheered, for it was accidentally the loudest belch of them all, even though Mina had just kind of been "going with it."

"Yeah, Bernard!"

Someone grabbed her shoulder and shook her, while Mina grumbled and tried to brush them off. Yet their cheers were impressed after the initial shock and the pile of money was shoved over to her, like it was hers to do with as she wished. Gratefully and with a little smirk, she shoved it into her wallet haphazardly, even the coins.

"Er... 'Scuse me, bathroom... Bathroom..."

She muttered as she squeezed her gut out of the booth, grunting as she was forced, once again, to clear her throat. Her bladder ached and, frankly, she'd been avoiding going to the bathroom for a lot of the day, which hadn't done her any favours.

The bitter smell of alcohol and sweaty bodies in the bar caught her nose as she bumped and jostled her way through the crowd to the swing door of the bathroom. The males' room stank even worse than her, yet she was forced to catch a broken claw in the zip of her trousers and work it down, grumbling under her breath.

"Stupid body... Gross... So fucking weird..."

Even her voice reminded her she was not really herself, shuddering and grumbling as she worked out her penis. Ew! She couldn't bear to touch it for more than a few moments, the weird, half-firm feeling not having left her dick yet. It wasn't even a nice penis, but Mina was sure she would have thought any one was gross.

She pointed it at the urinal, stiffening as someone passed behind her, though her body knew what it needed to do. With a sigh, she released her bladder with a hot splatter of urine that splashed into the urinal and forced her to squeeze in closer to the urinal so she didn't make a mess. Not getting piss on her clothes was very much a concern of hers.

Yet... the stream of stomach-churning urine did not slow in the slightest as seconds and then minutes passed. It just kept going on and on and on as heat burned her cheeks and neck. She leaned against the wall with her free hand, trying to be casual about it, but more time passed than a bathroom trip had ever taken.

Where's it all coming from?

She grunted and shook her head, even as time passed and her legs ached from holding up her own mass. As the stream of urine, over thirty minutes later, slowly came to a stop, she grunted and struggled with her penis, not knowing how to wipe off properly. Didn't guys just shake or something like that? She'd done her best to avoid looking at guys going to the bathroom before, though they were pretty gross about it in public locations.

Someone rapped hard on the door and she jumped, stuffing her penis back into her plain underwear.

"Uh... Just a minute!" She shouted, her body hot and uncomfortable, her own reek filling the bathroom. "Give me time!"

"Sorry, Bernard," someone said. "Bartender here, Billy. No stress, it's just closing time."

"Ah..." Maybe Bernard knew the bartender? "Yeah... Yeah, okay then... Be out soon."

She rushed, struggling to get her junk tidy in her underwear, for it felt cloying and "stuck" together, like nothing was sitting right in her pants. Mina cursed under her breath. Why was that so difficult? What was wrong with guys that their "stuff" just didn't sit properly in here?

Finally, she managed to get everything tucked away -- then her big stomach was the next troublesome moment. Huffing and puffing, she wrenched at her trousers, trying to get the zip up and the blasted button done.

"Unff... Come... on..."

She heaved and grunted, but the waistband of her trousers strained -- and finally the zip crackled off its track. The button fastened but no more than that as the bulge of her underwear showed through the broken zipper. No amount of adjusting or heaving got her fat stomach under control, even pulling her shirt out and down to try to cover it. Her shirt, unfortunately, simply did not come down that far, revealing her underwear and her half-soft penis. It seemed to fill her underwear too much, like it was a little harder than before too.

The button slipped free of the hole, again and again, refusing to help keep her trousers up and she was forced to shove both of her meaty hands into her pockets in a barely-there attempt to keep her trousers from falling down. Shuffling back out to the bar, she was at least grateful to find that most people there had made their way out and she swayed a little as he huffed out to the street. The cool air licked at her fur again and she shivered, a big yawn escaping Mina while her belly gurgled. Clearly, the beer didn't agree with her system, but it was too late for that. Clearing her throat, she thought better of trying to drive back, though her feet wouldn't go down the street either.

With something greater than her compelling her, she outstretched her hand and hailed a cab, her body knowing the motions even if Mina had not taken one before. The driver barely looked at her and she checked her wallet for all that cash she'd won: at least that wouldn't be a problem.

Compared to everything... the drive back was fairly uneventful. A fair amount of shed hair was left on the seat after her as Mina lurched uncomfortably from the cab, shoving what she thought was more than the right amount back at the cab driver, leaving it on the passenger seat. She grunted and belched, not bothering to hold a hand over her mouth as she stumbled up the drive to Bernard's house.

When she eased, loudly, into the house, knocking into the doorframe and tripping over her own feet, a voice caught her attention.

"Ah, Bernard!"

Diane, the wolf, stood from where she'd been in the living room and came through to the dimly lit entrance hall, before the main stairs. She wrapped her arms around her with a grin that could only be devilish, though Mina didn't have the sense of mind to reel from her.

When did I even know her name was Diane?

Maybe she had some of Bernard's memories too -- but the subconscious ones. It was hard to say and she swayed as Diane strained to kiss her cheek, a hand roaming down her front.

"Mmm..." The wolf hummed, eyes dropping to the bulge in Mina's pants that had, unfortunately, become obvious once she was no longer engaged in holding up her trousers. "The kids are sleeping... Away at my mother and father's place. Why don't we take advantage of that, hey honey?"

"Um... I don't... Diane..."

Mina grunted, wanting to shake her head and back away -- but Diane's hand on her bulge made that difficult. The moment the wolf's fingers brushed the rise in her pants, she wanted to lean into it all the more, licking her licks with a lewd, wet slap of her tongue.

"Unnff!"

She couldn't resist, moaning as the wolf kissed her and stopped her from making any more complaints. Her shaft rose too eagerly to attention, filling out with blood, and Bernard's body responded instinctively. Mina might not have known what she was doing, but it wasn't about her. Her mind was along for the ride as desire flooded her and she pressed eagerly into the wolf, wanting more from her.

Can I do this?

Mina's head spun. Was it even right for her to have sex with Bernard's wife while she was in his body? Yet Diane seemed to know more than well enough exactly what she wanted from him as she led her upstairs, to the bedroom, Mina stumbling over her own feet as she went along with it.

She ignored the fragrant odour of her feet as she took off her shoes, though the wolf didn't seem to mind her musky fur at all as they slowly stripped one another of their clothes. First, Bernard's shirt was removed -- but it didn't feel like a part of Mina's body, not really. It was as if she was a part of the scene and not at all at the same time, feeling it and yet watching it happen to a body that was not hers.

"Mmm, you stink," Diane said playfully. "You could use a good shower."

That was true, yet Mina, shamefully, could not stop the lure of lust from calling her on, licking her lips without thinking at the sight of the wolfess' bare fur. Diane dropped to her knees before her and Mina grunted as the wolf took the bear's cock into her mouth, feeling a shot of pleasure rock her to her core. The wolf's hand found her nuts again and squeezed, groping and teasing them as Diane rolled them between her fingers and palm, toying with Bernard's body.

"Unff..."

It was good that all Mina could do was groan, but the wolf ushered her into the en-suite shower without delay. The warm spill of water soaking her fur was a relief, but it didn't seem the wolf was done in the slightest with her. Diane took her cock back into her mouth and Mina bit her lip until a metallic rush of blood flooded her mouth.

"Ohhh..."

Yet she didn't have to do anything more than that as Diane sucked her cock, keeping it full and throbbing in her mouth. Did sex feel that good for guys all the time? Mina's head swum, but there was nothing she could do to stop it as the wolf stood again, letting Mina's cock spring free.

Diane turned her back to him, washing off even as she ground her backside against Bernard's hard shaft. Mina grunted and tried to grab the shower gel, but she wasn't really meant to get clean in there. The water, at the very least, helped clear some of the grime from the day from her fur, yet Mina would need a lot more than that to stop feeling as sweaty and as smelly as she was.

Her body responded to the wolf, however, and she leaned over her instinctively, putting a large hand on the shower wall. Her cock slid down and, somehow, caught in her pussy, allowing Bernard's body to take over as Mina thrust into her. The line between who Bernard was and who Mina was blurred as Mina sank deep into the wolfess, heat clinging to every inch of her member in a way she simply could never have anticipated.

Their moans tangled in the air, the shower rushing over them, but all Mina could do was thrust. More, she needed more, even if her mind was awash in conflict, a virgin and not a virgin simultaneously. Yet she had to keep thrusting, grinding deep into the wolfess to the exclusion of all else, as if the world beyond the shower ceased to exist.

Maybe she was a blend of both, two persons in one body, she thought hazily. Yet that ceased to matter as her hips worked of their own accord, her muzzle finding its way over Diane's shoulder to kiss her lips. The wolf had to crane her neck to make the position work, but it seemed like something she and Bernard had done before.

Their tongues pulled and swept against one another lustfully, but they needed more than that, clearly. Mina whined, grunting and clearing her throat again, but her head pounded with need. When the wolf pulled away from her, she followed her from the shower without taking the time to dry off, lust overcoming all else.

Why does it have to feel so good?

For Mina couldn't deny she still wanted Diane as the wolfess threw a towel on the bed and had the bear lay down for her. The wolf slid on top of her, taking her cock skilfully inside her in the princess position, though she dipped to her knees. Grinding on to Bernard's cock and controlling how deep it was inside her, Diane took all she needed from her husband -- even if someone else was occupying his body at that time.

Mina's mind wavered, drifting pleasantly, as lust overwhelmed her. There was simply, nothing else for her to do as she stared almost greedily at the wolf's breasts, something of Bernard urging her to do so. Yet it was not as if she was in control again, Bernard's life and need getting the better of her, as heat rushed to her groin.

"Yes... Yes!" Diane moaned, not bothering to be quiet with the kids out of the house. "Yes... More! So good!"

Mina groaned in turn, although she wisely kept words from her lips as, together, they rocked closer and closer to orgasm. Yet Mina didn't know what an orgasm felt like in a male body and was entirely unprepared for the rush of ecstasy that slammed into her. The wolfess howled as Bernard's body spent itself inside her, thick rushes of cum shooting deep, though orgasm seemed shorter-lived than Mina had experienced, briefly, as a woman before.

It didn't seem to matter, however, as their wet bodies collapsed on the bed together, an added dose of wetness around her cock betraying that Diane had reached her high too. Not that Mina would have known how to get her there, but that was beside the point.

Slipping into a deep slumber, all Mina hoped for was that she would wake at home, or at least find a way out.

It was not her life to life and not her body to control.

She was barely in control of it.

*

She woke slowly, groggily, her nose whistling as she snorted and snuffled to consciousness. Her throat was still locked up and Mina grunted, clearing it the best she could, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth to get rid of the slick drool.

Maybe I'm home... Maybe things are better now...

Mina barely dared open her eyes, though the room seemed light through her closed eyelids. It seemed like the morning sun filtering through her tent and her heart lurched, beating too fervently in her chest. If it had all been a dream, well... that was the best she could hope for, even if Mina could not have honestly said she still had her sanity with all that was going on there, of course.

Her throat was dry as if she'd been snoring and Mina shuddered, repulsed. She never snored.

But someone else did.

"Hehe... Darling, you always make the cutest, loud snores!"

Oh no...

For when Mina opened her eyes, she was still in the bed, a room that was not her tent, and the wolfess cuddled up to her, resting her chin on her chest.

She wasn't out of that life at all and she'd had sex with someone else's wife, even if Mina was technically not to blame for it. Grunting, she licked her lips and tried to scoot away, but the magic of the mirror pushed her right back to Diane. The wolfess chuckled again and made a light-hearted quip about the bear needing a shower, but Mina barely heard her with the din thudding against her eardrums.

It was not her life and not her body. But Mina was trapped in it.

For as long as the mirror held her in its grasp.