Your mother hums while she makes breakfast.

It’s the same song she always sings—half-remembered from when she still looked entirely human. You don’t know the words. You don’t ask. Her voice is soft, sweet, and just slightly wrong.

Her ears twitch as you enter the kitchen. They’re furred now. Black, velvety, always listening. The tail swaying behind her chair brushes the floor like a pendulum you can’t stop watching.

She sets a bowl on the table. Porridge again. Your favorite, she says. You're not sure if that’s memory or hope.

"Eat," she says gently, sliding the bowl closer. "It’s warm today. That’s rare."

You nod. Sit. The floor creaks under your bare feet. She watches you with those soft gold eyes—human once, still human in how they love, but too reflective now. Like a cat waiting for your next move.

You don’t talk much anymore. Most conversations feel like they’re being overheard. Not by microphones. Not by drones. Just by everyone else.

Outside, the world changed.

The neighbors have fur now. Or feathers. One man across the street—Mister Harlow—walks on hooves and keeps his antlers tied back with twine. He still waves when he sees you in the window. Everyone does. Everyone smiles at you like you're something to be worshiped. Or preserved. Or caged.

Only fifty people on Earth are still completely human.

You are one of them.

They’d tear down cities to keep you safe.

They’d bury you in walls of armed silence just to make sure you never change.

But some nights… when the wind whistles too close to your skin… you swear you feel something stirring. Not a sickness. Not a voice. Just a pull.

What would it feel like?

To have claws. To run faster than thought. To belong to something again.

You hear it in the walls. In the rhythm of your mother’s tail. In the way strangers speak to you with reverence and hunger, all at once.

Today, a visitor is coming.

Your mother doesn’t say who. She just cleans the couch. Lights a candle. Adjusts her coat to hide the fur on her neck.

And when she turns to you, there’s a glint in her eye you don’t quite recognize.

“You’ll be good,” she says.

She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t beg. She just knows.

And outside, something four-legged walks past the fence.