Amelia had hoped that, given time, everything would go back to normal. Given enough time, she could forget what had happened. Just time, and it would be like it never happened. Back then it had seemed a foolish hope, but a hope she desperately clung to, for she had little else. But now, she finally admitted to herself, there was no going back.
To everyone that saw her, the anthro-puma looked like nothing out of the ordinary, unless what her friends occasionally jokingly called her “masculine beauty” qualified as unordinary. Those who knew her were curious why she’d seemed more reclusive than usual. She occasionally forgot to socialize when her mind was set on something, and she usually did withdraw mildly when a venture of hers didn’t pan out, being both financial and emotional setbacks for her. But it hadn’t been this bad or for this long before. Her friends were starting to worry, but knew that given time she’d bounce back as she always did, and she didn’t usually take kindly to well wishers and sympathy.
What her friends didn’t know was that her venture hadn’t been a bust, but it hadn’t exactly been the success she had hoped for. She wasn’t even sure what to call it. She’d found something in that isolated temple, a bowling ball sized black sphere. That object, and what it did, still filled her dreams, causing her to wake up in…
She clenched her fists as they rested atop her desk. Dreams like that should cause her to wake up in a sweat or something, but while she bolted awake, that was all. Amelia looked at her fists, thinking it strange that it still felt exactly the same, wondering briefly why before vehemently dismissing the thought. The last thing she wanted to do was think about it. Unfortunately, as is the way with such things, the more you try not to think about something, the more it comes to mind.
Amelia could still see it in her mind’s eye, as clearly as though it lay before her on the desk. It seemed like such an innocent thing at the time, and valuable by its unique nature. Learning to appraise things made her career so much less of a hassle. The thing had been, to her eyes, a perfect sphere, perfectly smooth without blemish despite the ages it must have rested upon that pedestal. Perhaps just as impressive was how it was the purest black she had ever seen, seemingly not even giving off the smallest of reflections, as though it did indeed absorb all light that touched it. Such a thing she was sure should be an impossibility to make, making its value all but priceless. Collectors would surely have paid handsomely to possess such a unique artifact.
Picking it up however was a decision she now regretted. Though the sphere remained firm in her hands, it strangely didn’t feel like a solid object, as though with enough force she could mold it like putty. And yet, though she moved it around and applied said force, it had remained firm. It was a strange paradoxical sensation, coupled with the fact that it seemed to have its own temperature, feeling neither cool nor warm, despite the room around her being a bit chill, even with her fur.
Only when the sphere’s odd feel made itself present all the way around her fingers did she realize something was amiss, and to her utter shock she saw the black mass that she thought was a solid sphere begin to seep around her hands. Amelia attempted to violently throw it away, put succeeded at nothing more than moving her arms. To her heightening horror the black stuff moved past her wrist, having completely enveloped her hands, and oozing up her arms. And yet, the sphere remained in her hands, unchanged in size or shape.
Her mind awash in panic she frantically tried everything she could to remove the stuff, even smashing her arms and the sphere against the pedestal it had once rested upon. But despite the impact, her ooze covered arms felt nothing, nor did the pedestal show any signs of the force, and the sphere remained unchanged, even as the black mass made its way up past her elbows.
As it covered her joints, she had difficulty moving them. With her flailing proving futile, she tried to calm herself, in the hopes that with a calm mind she could find a rational explanation, or perhaps a clue as to what to do. Thinking with any clarity was still proving difficult as it reached her shoulders and began spreading over her chest.
However, that was when her horror and panic were miraculously overpowered by another thought; confusion. While it began to spread across her chest in a strangely even and symmetric fashion, under all of her clothes and garments, it flowed around her neck, but did not proceed up it. Even as it covered her breasts and down to her midsection, giving her somewhat clearer mind the strange feeling that she was putting on a wetsuit, it made absolutely no progress up her neck, as though it were the upper neckline of some form fitting dress. For a while, she managed to calm herself a bit more, telling herself that it was designed to do this, that perhaps this was some bizarre form of ancient armor, that it wouldn’t cover her head.
With the strange substance being under her clothing, she could only feel its progress as it made its way down her back and midsection. Amelia let out a sudden gasp as it covered her nether region, the way its flowing form moved across her privates somehow setting off sexual pleasure in her mind. Fortunately for her mental state, the feeling was brief, and disappeared once it fully covered the crotch.
The mass of the sphere should not have bee enough to cover what it already had, so her rational side tried to tell her, and yet it was still there, held aloft in her outstretched arms by hands unable to let it go. Amelia distracted herself from its flow down her legs by trying to figure out how that was possible. Despite physics and math not being her expertise, she tired juggling around concepts of mass, the conservation thereof, density, volume, and other half remembered terms. No matter what way she put it however, the answer was the same; by logic, what she was happening to her wasn’t possible.
Her thoughts were suddenly forced elsewhere as the black mass engulfed her feet, and the feeling creeping up her neck demanded her attention. But through her racing thoughts she could think of nothing to do. Even as her mind registered that the sphere was, finally, diminishing in size, it was a thought deemed unimportant to the contemplation of her fate.
Spreading with perfect symmetry, it systematically rose up her neck, working its way completely under her muzzle before moving up. Amelia had clamped her mouth shut prior, but knew that if it wanted in, there would be no stopping it. As it covered her nose and engulfed her muzzle completely, she was once again struck with surprise as it didn’t flow into her nose. It was as if…it knew where it was going…knew what it was doing. That it sought only to cover, not to enter. Could…could the thing be sentient?
That thought triggered an explosion of contemplation that took over her brain so completely that she didn’t realize that her vision going black was not from closing her own eye, but the oozing substance covering them, not causing the slightest bit of irritation. It was only a few seconds more before she was completely encapsulated, cut off entirely from the outside world. Looking back, she occasionally wondered if she had not really been thinking, but that it was merely a distraction to keep her from realizing that death was surely to follow. Indeed, in those last moment of consciousness, one of the few thoughts in her head was that she was about to die.
Amelia’s mind was a jumbled mess, competing and conflicting thoughts and emotions running through her brain. She didn’t contemplate how, despite the apparent air tight seal around her, her ability to breathe was unhampered. The beginning of the penetration of her orifices did not halt her whirlwind thoughts, only adding another element to the mental hurricane. Any and every open source into her body, even pores, was seeped into by the black mass, until finally her brain could not even find the distinction between her body and the mass. As it found its way into her skull, her whirling thoughts finally began to slow, until her mind went as black as the mass that permeated her being…
“Are you okay?” a light male voice asked.
 Amelia flinched in surprise, her heart racing at the shock of being pulled out of her deep thoughts. Or what now passed for her heart.
“Yeah,” she replied, a bit shakily, her brain having to take a moment to recognize the voice of Damian, an anthro wolf friend of hers. It took a few more moments before the realization of where she was and what she was doing came back as well. “Yeah. You just…startled me.” She quickly gazed at what lay before her on her desk, looking for an excuse. “I was just so caught up in the text that I didn’t hear you come in.”
As she turned around, she saw that Damian looked more worried than curious, and she dimly realized that he must have called her name, at least once, before asking the question. Her reaction was likely less than reassuring.
“You sure about that?” His voice told her instantly that he didn’t buy her cover story, but…she couldn’t tell him what happened, what she’d learned after waking up in that temple. She just couldn’t tell him…what she’d become.
“There’s…” she began, letting out a sigh as she tried desperately to reorganize her thoughts. “There’s just been a lot on my mind recently. My last trip was more of an ordeal than I expected it to be.”
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked in that ever so soothing prompting voice of his. Since returning from her trip, she’d hardly spoken a word about it, something she knew was out of character, but what was she to say? Until now, she had kept her silence, and he hadn’t asked.
Unfortunately it now put her in a bind. Talking about it was the last thing she wanted to do, but she always told him everything, and she already knew she couldn’t bring herself to say no to him now. He was her closest friend. A few of her other friends had insinuated, oftentimes in less than subtle ways, that Damian was her boyfriend. She didn’t see him like that, and knew he didn’t see her as his girlfriend. They were friends. True, they were close friends, but she didn’t believe there was really a “romantic” connection.
But she desperately feared that if she told him, she’d lose him. She watched as he tried to hide his growing concern, and though he really did have an impressive poker face, she’d learned to read him like a book, in the same way she knew his eyes were reading her.
They both sat awkwardly for a few minutes, before Damian finally broke eye contact to look over at her desk. It was what she liked to refer to as an organized mess; it was in no way organized in the traditional meaning of the word, but she could find exactly what she was looking for without needing to search for it, no matter where it was. At the moment, all of her notes and every scrap of information regarding the Enisha civilization lay sprawled there. Despite the quantity of paperwork, so little was actually known about the Enisha, so little in fact it was speculated as to whether or not they even really existed, and if the evidence, in fact, correlated to another known civilization.
Amelia glanced down at the pile, reminiscing a bit on how she could not find the answers she sought amongst it, wishing wistfully that she had remained ignorant of them, and when she looked back she found Damian once again regarding her. His eyes glanced over the pile once more, than back to her.
“You need to get out,” he finally said. “Come on, it’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we get you some fresh air and some sun, and you can tell me what’s really troubling you. Please?”
She never could resist that special little pleading note he had, that special way he said please every now and then. If nothing else, it would give her more time to think before finally answering his real question. Amelia knew she could no longer be evasive with him, and despite her fears, she knew she could not bring herself to lie to him. But just how to tell him, or perhaps how much, was something she had still not sorted out.
Once outside, Amelia had to privately admit that Damian was right. Not only had she been a bit of an unintentional social recluse, she also hadn’t gone outside much, and even their little walk through the woods behind her home seemed to energize her. It made her feel…more alive. It was a feeling that hadn’t come often to her of late.
Much to her relief, Damian didn’t press the issue once they were outside. Even after several minutes, she still hadn’t figured out just how to say it. Finally, she was about to throw caution to the wind and simply tell it to him straight when a figure walked out from behind a tree.
“Greetings, Miss Darson,” the anthro bear greeted her calmly. “I apologize for effrontery, but I am afraid there is a matter which I must speak with you about that cannot wait, and I noticed that you had left your home.”
While Amelia had dealt with some strange and rude clients in the past, the man’s calm demeanor and directness caught her off guard, the fact that he had come out of nowhere, at her home, was less than comforting.
“Excuse me” Damian spoke up first before Amelia could gather her wits, “but you’re on private property.”
“And my business is not with you,” the bear replied shortly. “Now, Miss Darson, it has come to my knowledge that you recently sought a temple of the Enisha civilization. Did you find anything?”
“No, I didn’t. Now will you please get off my property? If you really want to contact me for business, call and make an appointment. I’m not in the mood to discuss this now.”
“And I do not have the time to wait. I will pay for another expedition, in full, with an extra percentage for you for your time. Do you accept?”
While his offer was exceedingly generous, everything about him struck her as being wrong. Sure, she’d had up front and personal clients before, but this…this was over the top, and though she didn’t know why, there was something else about him that simply made her uncomfortable, something that had nothing to do with his rudeness or behavior.
“No. Now get off my property.”
“I tried to be reasonably with you,” he said, before four more men came out from behind the trees and rushed at them. With seemingly practiced efficiency the two were quickly restrained. “One way another, you will take us there. And we will have what we want.”
Amelia was on the verge of panic. She was being kidnapped. And through her fear, her body responded upon a new instinct. Almost instantly, her body began to lose its rigidity, and she flowed right out of her captors grasp. Moving in a fluid motion, she swung at one of those holding Damian, her fist suddenly becoming denser, and as it impacted she could swear she heard the crack of bone.
“She has it!” Amelia vaguely heard through her adrenaline surge. She did not yet even comprehend the gravity of what she was doing as her body twisted and flowed,  behaving almost like water given sentience, desperately trying to avoid recapture.
The loud crack of a gunshot did little to calm her fears, until her brain caught up on the fact that one of her assailants had been shot. In rapid succession, four more shots rang out, and with that, the desperate fight was over.
Turning to Damian, she saw that he was the one with the gun. With the adrenaline of self preservation fading, her mind was able to question where he had hid the gun, and when he had learned to shoot like that. Far too late, she realized what she had done.
“Damian…I…I can explain,” she stammered out.
Much to her surprise, Damian did not pull the gun on her, but calmly holstered it. In fact…she could swear she saw pity, rather than fear on his face. And it was a face she knew well how to read.
“You found something, didn’t you?” he asked calmly.
“Yes”.