The First Feather on Earth

Marcy groaned as she woke up, her head spinning. Coughing, she tried opening her eyes, only to be assaulted by a sheet of dull pink and a wicked headache. She gasped and screwed her eyes shut tightly, hissing out at the sharp pain. Surprisingly, there was a soft shifting of weight on her side which didn't quite make sense to her. Just what did she take last night? Joe better not have slipped something stupid into her drink again... Fucker's gonna get what's coming to him eventually.

Once again the weight shifted slightly and she could feel it shudder softly, which prompted her to try to see just what was on her side. She braces herself and slowly cracks open her eye. The assaulting of pink was far less painful but her headache didn't lessen one bit. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the soft caress of the morning sun, she noticed that she was lying on the grass and that her body felt off for some reason. Wincing to try to reduce the headache, she noticed that her nose looked weirdly black.

Oh, right. She was some sort of bug now, wasn't she? Looking down at her muzzle and at her weird leg-arm confirmed that she was, in fact, a bug. Groaning, Marcy lifted her head to see just what it was that was using her for a pillow. She then realized that the pink sheet obscuring her vision was actually some sort of pink haze drifting off the thing on her body, which turned out to be a grown fox napping happily.

She blinked heavily, mouth pressed in a line as she tried to process just what she was seeing. "... I did not think this could get any weirder. First I'm some sort of fucking big ass bug and now there's a fox taking a nap on my side."

... Marcy huffed and laid her head back down "Nope. Not dealing with this. No way, no how. Nooooooooope. I'mma just go ahead and sleep this whole thing away. Besides, surely someone should see me and figure out just what the fuck happened. ...Right?"

Her eyes shot wide open, lifting up her head and looking around, realizing with growing horror a very important fact. Where are the cars? Just where is everyone? This is a highway, right? It sure looks like one, but how could there be no activity whatsoever? It's like... Some sort of ghost town.

Suddenly, Marcy realized that she smelled something really sweet wafting off from the fox. Her instincts kicked in once more and she found herself sucking in the floating pink stuff that seemed to simply flow off of the fox, who shifted and whined softly. To her surprise, the pink haze tasted extremely good to her. It almost tasted like pumpkin pie. What's more, it was filling her up quite easily! She could feel her strength start to return to her as she greedily sucked in more and more of the tasty pink haze.

That was cut off when the fox shifted and yawned loudly, stretching and standing up on Marcy's side, startling her and causing her to belch loudly. The fox jumped a little, blinking at Marcy as she blushed deeply, ears pinning down against her head. Marcy gulped as she saw the pink haze quickly shift to a rather thin, bland blue while the fox started to shake and whimper. Biting her lip, she cautiously lifted up one of her hooves, slowly reaching over to try to pet the fox.

The fox carefully eyed her hoof, shaking heavily as it neared her head which caused Marcy to give some pause and gulp down the frog in her throat. She quietly started to shoosh the poor scared fox, whispering softly to it. "Hey, d-don't worry. I'm not gonna hurt you, alright?" She nervously smiled at the fox, trying to reassure it that it was safe. She wasn't sure why she was doing this, she just felt a certain urge to help this fox in particular.

The fox seemed to understand her intentions, slowly stopping it's shaking as the haze started to form small wisps of light orange and a dull yellow. Marcy tried once again to cautiously reach over to the fox's head, gently resting her new hoof against the fuzzy head and rubbing it back and forth gently. The haze then started to almost bloom with the tasty, tasty pink once more, though joined by the hint of yellow stripes that once Marcy tried to eat it, actually made it taste just that little bit better.

Smiling and slowly setting her nerves down, Marcy started to pet the fox in earnest, pulling the lupine closer up to her head. She held it close, petting and nuzzling it as she would with her dogs, the fox yipping softly but wagging its tail. It started to pant and nuzzle her back, the haze growing thicker and brighter, which only confirmed that the haze was the fox's emotions. Though, she didn't particularly care at the moment, taking this golden opportunity to snuggle and pet some sort of companion.

Giggling, Marcy started to more aggressively pet the fox along its back and sides, "Who's a good foxy huh? Who's a good foxy! You are! Yes, you are!" She giggled and kept petting the increasing joyous and pleased fox, finding just the right spots to tickle to have it whine softly, panting happily. Eventually, she slowly stopped with the petting and simply laid there, hugging this panting, fluffy fox, who's emotion haze was practically glowing with a vibrant pink and yellow.

She yawned loudly and stretched, finally waking up fully and letting go of the fluffy foxy. "Come on, let's get up. We need to find someone around here who knows just what's going on. Surely someone has to be left, right?"

The fox almost seemed to shrug as it rolled over, getting up onto its paws and stretching out. Marcy watched the fox do this and decided that it couldn't hurt to try to mimic it. So she rolled over onto her barrel and shakily stood up onto her four legs, mimicking what the fox was doing as she stretched out her limbs, only to find that she triggered a really unfamiliar muscle. Her wings suddenly popped open, buzzing softly and throwing her a little off balance.

Marcy blinked and looked over at her wings only to deadpan at them. "Fucking seriously? Pink and gold? Here too? Fuck, fine, whatever." She took a breath and tried once again to do the stretches, this time without incident and she even found that if she tried not to think about them her wings folded back against her carapace on their own.

At least when she was done, she definitely felt much better. For one thing, her headache seems to have disappeared and she was starting to feel a little more comfortable in her new body! She huffed and looked over at the fox, who was staring at her with its head tilted in curiosity. She sighed softly and rolled her eyes "Yeah well I'm new to this body, ok? I woke up like this just yesterday and I've got no idea what the hell it is that I'm doing." ...Marcy groaned and lowered her head "Hey look, could you plus walk around me for a little bit? I need to know what it is that I was doing wrong last night, ok?"

To her surprise, the fox yipped a little and nodded, proceeding to walk around her in a calm, casual strut.

"... You know what? I'm just gonna accept these sorts of things at this rate." Marcy sighed and began to watch the fox walk around her, before trying to mimic it to the best of her ability. Simply putting one foot in front of the other, but she had to cycle between her front and back legs. Front left, back right, front right, back left, ad nauseam.

Slowly, she started to speed up and eventually shortcutting it by moving both legs at once. Though that last part ended up with her falling flat on her face again, much to the snickering amusement of the fox. Marcy huffed as she rolled her eyes "Yeah yeah, yuck it up. We'll take it slow then, 'aight?"

With that settled, and with Marcy having a loose grasp on how to actually get a move on, she and the fox started to walk down the highway, towards what seemed to be the center of the city. She chuckled softly as she watched the fox happily walk beside her, rubbing its head against her front legs and grinning up at her. "Now then... If you're gonna stick with me, I gotta give ya a name... How about...

"Maxie?"