Karyn took the rags from what were once her clothes and made a makeshift necklace to keep the stone in, hanging it around her thickly muscled neck.
Heading with purpose to Jon's house, she found herself adopting an odd gait, not quite running on all fours as much as she was relying on her knuckles, somewhat gorilla-like.
She kept stumbling along the way, though she wasn't sure why. Each time, her body felt more alien, wrenched.
On her final stumble, she landed flat on the pavement, and struggled to get back up. She felt still stranger than she had when she had started running, and paused to examine her reflection in a nearby window.
Her tusks had grown in mightily, protruding upward several inches to just below her icy blue eyes, their ivory surface inexplicably carved with a band upon each, a lattice that looked like Norse knotwork woven through runes.
Protrusions were developing on her temples, and as she watched they burst, becoming burnished black antlers, like an elk's.
In the massive hackles that covered her shoulders, she saw movement, and shortly, three bony spikes poked forth from the fur of each shoulder, curving upward like decorative armor.
For the first time, Karyn noticed her tail. No, not tail. Tails. Three of them, wolflike, and covered in golden fur.
Her other fur had grown still thicker in the meantime, her mane dragging along the ground in a tangled heap, thick dangling cuffs of fur about her calves and wrists, almost obscuring her hands and feet, and the crowning glory, a luxurious ruff on her upper chest, blending with her mane.
Mankind had never gotten a clear glimpse of this, her true form. She was what people had mistaken for Sasquatch and Yeti. She was of the same race as Beowulf's Grendel and the Beast of Gevaudan. She was a Giant in the Earth, and she was at last free...
