WALOS 2026 -- In Paschara

"Hey, everything okay in here?" Kurra knocked gently on the doorway to the room of-- well, it was hard not to think of him as his boss's guest's companion. Weird guy, but sweet. Kept to himself.

At the moment, Kurra had taken his two-legged form (a product of a long-past prank of Darhaskos's). Its smaller hands were useful for fine tasks, even if he worried sometimes about being bowled over in the hallways. His tail swished behind him anxiously. ...He could hear movement in the room, so Glatteis wasn't out. But nobody had responded to his knock.

===

Glatteis hadn't slept. Not really. He'd been curled around Elouan, and then at some point, near when hos body said it was dawn, Elouan had left for a run. He'd dozed after that, fitfully--and then there'd been Pain.

And now, he didn't know how many hours later--couldn't be many, his love was still missing--the pain had finally faded enough that he could check himself.
There was a knock, a voice in the hall. He couldn't... smell the source. Groaning, Glatteis tried to prop himself up. His body moved Wrong and he rolled, suddenly staring at the ceiling and the enchanted toresul that illuminated the room in a soft amber light. He felt sick, his balance off. His limbs too ?long? or was it that his body was too short?

What... happened?
...Where were his winglets?
Why did he feel so small? The bed so large? He tried to roll back over again and--the arm attached to him was. Wrong.
He froze, arm still in the air.

His arm was... akadri? Long, slender. Covered in plush white fur. Fingers extended, kill claw shrank down. The soft claws still blue. His palms a soft ochre.
He stared, blinking. Another knock shook him from his thoughts. This time he managed to sit up, and found from looking at his legs--long, furred, and tipped in an akadri's 4 toed hoof, that his colors were split down the middle--right side white, left side black furred and red clawed. From the weight of his skull, he turned his head, angled his eye, and there were was his crown, a perfect echo of his true shape.

Between his legs, his tail lay limp, shaggy fur mimicking his feathers.

===

Still no response. Kurra sighed. "...Look, I'm coming in, I've got those books your mate was asking about. I'll just drop them off and be on my way, okay?" he fumbled in his things for the key-- there, door unlocked.

"...Ah." well, there weren't very many akadri split down the middle like that. "Oh, okay, I see what's going on." his tail thumped on the floor and he ran a hand back through green-and-black hair (cut short and fluffy), otherwise ketucari ears perked. "Looks like Darhaskos got'cha. Lemme just set these down here..." he laid the books on the side table-- honestly, it probably would have been easier to carry garoch-sized tomes in his ketucari form, but it was easier to walk without having to throw on a bag. "Lemme help you up? It took me a bit to learn how to balance, but it's not too bad once you get the hang of it. You've got hooves and I've got human feet, but the principles are mostly the same. ...You'll be stuck for a bit, but once it wears off I can teach you how to turn back, too."

===

The voice came again, and then the door--he tensed, staring at the approaching--wait, no, not a stranger. That was... he wracked his brain. The prince's retainer? Kurra? Also twolegged, seemingly with a far thicker frame than Glatteis's own.
Names, books. He reached up, touched his own horns, felt along them, then down--his ears were... human? But pointed. His lower horns framed his chin as expected.
Kurra's mouth was moving, his tongue doing interesting things inside it. Quietly--silently--he echoed the motions.
Oh, that was how this shape made words.
"Dar...has-kos?" he echoed. Kurra offered his hand, and it wasn't like Glatteis had much other choice, so he took it and allowed himself to be pulled up. He stood nearly as tall as the Garoch, long tail lashing wildly for balance on two feet instead of for. That would take getting used to. "...Thank... you?" his tongue felt thick in his mouth, dragging along sharp teeth. "My... body doesn't... want to move correctly."

===

"Yeah, when it happened to me I got scraped up pretty bad because I kept falling over. ...When Prince Rakesh got hit, he tried to hide in his room the whole day and the boss nearly had to break the door down. ... Some folks go thousands of years without it happening, others are hit before their first birthday. It's... Darhaskos, the mischief god. He likes turning things into other things. It'll last about a day, and then you can shift at will after that. But all your muscle memory is for your normal body and you have to relearn the new one like a pup?" he was mostly human, though his feet had traces of hibridi and he had a resulting tendency to walk on his toes. His horns, ears, and tail were miniaturized from his normal self to fit on the much smaller frame, and his teeth were too sharp to be human and his hair went too far down his neck to be human. But otherwise, mostly human. "It helps to take a moment to just breathe and feel out where your center of gravity is."