Emma set down her paintbrush, looking at the canvas intently. The landscape was looking good, but she felt like it was missing something. She shook her head. As of late, she’d been having trouble getting her paintings quite right. Her friends told her that her work looked wonderful, but she wasn’t so sure. She had trouble getting into her “artist groove” lately, a fact that was driving her up the wall, but she persisted nonetheless. And so, she grabbed her paintbrush once more.

It was at that point that it became quite clear that something wasn’t right. What she grabbed was not the hard, smooth wooden handle of a paintbrush. Instead, it was a soft, furry thing. Stranger still, she also felt a part of her being touched by her hand, a part of her body that didn’t previously exist. She looked over, seeing that what she grabbed was something long and white, somewhat curved. At the end, near where she grabbed it, was a tuft of white fur, which was covered at the end in what looked like green paint. She followed the curve of this thing with her eyes, to find out what was at the other end, and she found to her surprise that the other end was attached to her at the tailbone area.

It was a tail. It was HER tail. And it looked just like the tail of a Smeargle.

She felt like she should be alarmed, and indeed she was quite surprised, but she found herself having trouble being disturbed by this development. It was definitely something that should be impossible, that shouldn’t be able to happen, especially on such an otherwise-mundane day as this. However, she couldn’t help but think that this was an appropriate, perhaps even helpful change. Perhaps this might help her get back into her artist groove again. And so, she picked up her tail-brush to continue painting, though in her haste she accidentally got some of the paint on her hand.

She was about to go and get something to wipe off the paint when she looked at her hand, finding that it wasn’t covered in paint, but instead white fur, just like her tail had. This, too, was something she felt like she should theoretically be alarmed at, but she wasn’t. Surprised, yes, but not alarmed. She didn’t know of any way to reverse this, but if what was happening was what she thought was happening, it was just so fitting for her... was it really something she even wanted to reverse?

No, it wasn’t. In fact, she wanted to go further with it. She grabbed her tail again, this time intentionally painting her right hand, then her left. Wherever on her hand the green paint touched, it soon turned to white fur. Not only that, but her hands were reshaping themselves along the way. Instead of hands, now she had cute fuzzy white hand-paws. And that was just the beginning.

She painted along her arm next, fur sprouting along the way, mostly white with a couple of brown fur bands on each arm near the wrists. She painted her front with white fur after that, then her back. With the aid of a mirror, she could see that her back now had a green paw print on it. She ran a hand through the soft fur on her chest. Her fur was warm, like a full-body blanket; all the more reason to finish what she had started.

Next, she started painting her feet, watching them become covered in white fur as they morphed into cute little hind paws. Come to think of it, speaking of being little, the more she transformed the smaller she seemed to be becoming. After this was over, she would need to adjust the easel accordingly.

She continued painting, moving on to her legs, a brown band of fur at her ankles, but otherwise her legs too were white. Then she moved to painting her neck, feeling a brown faux-collar form on her neck. before starting on the head. First was one of the most signature physical features of a Smeargle, the white-furred faux-beret on the top of the head. It was at the cost of her hair, but that was a small price to pay. Next, she painted her ears, which now looked like they were poking out from under the beret, looking a bit like floppy canine ears. From there, she painted the back of her head before finishing with the face, watching her mouth and nose lengthen into a rounded, white-furred muzzle. Around her eyes was brown fur, and now her eyes were proportionally much larger than they used to be.

She looked herself over in the mirror. Her self-painting was complete. She looked in every way like a Smeargle now, and she felt more artistically inspired than ever before. She picked up her paintbrush tail, wiping it clean of the green paint before covering it in the color she wished to work with. The green paw print on her back changed color to match. Even if she had noticed it doing so, although she would find it interesting and unusual, she would not let it distract her from her current goal: perfecting the painting she was working on.