There had to be some sort of cruel joke at play.
Hinoka had awoken with a start, in a bed too large (that had not been the night before) with limbs that felt Wrong and feeling roughly like she’d been run over by an 18 wheeler. Which really had been shitty enough. She’d known it was coming, as it always did to a Yamanashi. Darhaskos seemed fond of their Clan, and it had only been a matter of time before he brought out whatever it was that allowed them to transform.

That wasn’t the cruel part. No, as she struggled upright, staring at dark fur on her arms, scales up the backs of her hands and forceps, the Cruelty of the Shift set in. Dark fur, a smokey brown color. Three fingers, a thumb. Blunt nails. She swallowed, running her tongue against the back of her thankfully still present fangs. They weren’t tusks but she still had Something.

Her bed was… too large, but not as bad as it could have been. Her brothers were Heldyr and not much larger than humans. She at least sat at her usual eye-height.
Too tall for what she’d hoped.
Down her body--her breasts were sizeable enough. She’d been expecting that. They weren’t… they weren’t the E’s of her--
Sizeable. Large C’s. Dark skin amid dark fur. Dark. Dark dark. That ran in the family, too. A rich red-brown. Scales in pale blue dusted above her breastline, coated her chest in small, sparse crescents. She was heavyset, a flash of hope. She didn’t see many--many like--
Heavy set, more scales dusting her round belly. Carrying extra around her belly and ribs and in her furry thighs. More dark far, banded with tabby stripes that echoed her own. She wondered if her pattern continued around her back.
Her tail was what cinched her fears. Too slender. Only as thick as her extra weight allowed, not the heavy powerful tail of a Jordskar, but the long, slender, almost cat-like tail of one of the goat-folk. And her feet… lightly hooved at the tips of four digits that all made contact with the ground, and a fifth dew toe. Padded. Feet for running across fields, not lumbering through a forest. Even with her extra weight, she was not the bulk of a Jordskar or Hibridi.

And she didn’t have a mirror in her room (bad luck, the family always said, to sleep in the same room as a mirror). Heart heavy in her chest, she scooted clumsily across the bed. She managed to get her feet on the ground--and careful now, using her bedside as a brace to pull herself onto two limbs. Her tail lashed, swayed, tried to correct her balance as she stumbled.
She just. Needed to reach the bathroom. Then she could be sure--she had to be wrong. Her brothers were Heldyr why wouldn’t she be--

She stumbled across the tatami, using the wall as a brace on legs that burned with unfamiliar movement.
Was Asuka still here? Could she call for help? It wasn’t like she’d care if he saw her naked just because her shape was different--
No. She… she had to learn how to move like this.
Just. One foot in front of the other. Perpetual falling, down the hall. Into the bathroom.

The mirror was the right height--too tall for a heldyr--and the face that stared back at her was…
Well, round. That was nice. She like that her features were softer, larger, Rounder, than she’d expected. Still dark, that warm, dull ochre of her paw pads. Except her eyes. They were the family grey, and her scales were the same pearlescent blue that she’d grown used to on the rest of herself. And Round. The face looking back at her was Lucedarian. She’d been so afraid of looking, and seeing--
But no. She was Soft. Round cheeked, round-faced. She reminded herself of one of those apple-headed cats, not the long sharp features she’d expected. The eyes staring back at her were shaped almost like walnuts, rather than the almond she’d been dreading in her fear of looking like Someone Else. Her nose had a button-like quality to it. A softness to the edges of  the bridge that reminded her… almost of a cow, instead of the sharp steepness of a goat. Her horns and fangs were the only remnant of her ketucari self. The existence of her fangs, and the color of her horns, the stark dark violet against the pearlescent blue and yellow. And most of that was buried in a mane. She hadn’t noticed it while moving, but her mane was thick. The same elm bark color as the rest of the fur, but thicker, and currently standing on end around her head like a dark halo. It was banded through with her stripes, but it wasn’t the Dark mantle she’d expected.

She was. Herself. Lucedarian was fine as long as she wasn’t seeing someone else in the mirror.
Even her ears were Different from--they were rounded, more of a disk than an egg, about as wide across as the length of her finger.
Soft. Round. Not the sharp, hard edges she’d feared. That… she was okay. She was going to be okay. The changed shape she could deal with. As long as she wasn’t an Echo. She was going to be fine.