Olive
Olive woke with a start. They were still laying in bed, evidently having dozed off during the events of the evening before. The portion of the sky visible through the curtains was still a dark blue, tinged with only a hint of the coming dawn.
Last night had been… really nice. Just Olive and their girlfriend Ashley having a sleepover, snuggling up in their kigus—Olive dressed as a squirrel, Ash as a bat—watching random movies and smooching during the boring parts. Cuddling had continued past bedtime, halted only by Ash’s complaints about overheating. She had disrobed down to her pyjamas before resuming their cuddle session.
Olive kept theirs on. It was designed to be cosy, after all, to be surrounded on nearly all sides with plush cushions, to become the very essence of softness and comfort for both Olive and Ash alike. To wear it was bliss, to snuggle up in it even more so.
The suit was supplemented by a large stuffed tail intended to mimic that of a squirrel. It was huge and unwieldy, far too heavy to actually stand up on its own, but it was an extremely comfortable portable pillow. Olive was laying on it now. A personal mattress, just another layer of supreme softness.
Olive looked over to Ash, still asleep by their side. Her chest rose and sank gently as she slept. She was cute when she slept. Olive reached out a hand to stroke her cheek, stopping suddenly with a soundless gasp.
Where once the kigus arms had tapered down to an elasticated wrist, leaving their hands free and exposed, it now continued onwards into a thick, round paw. Suddenly sitting alert, they grasped at it with their other hand, only to find another plush paw had taken its place. They tried tugging on them but the paws just weren’t coming off.
They laid back down, staring at the paws held above their head, hyperventilating. Or… not quite hyperventilating. Their mouth was open, but no air was entering or leaving it. There was no rise or fall to their chest. There was just… nothing. Panic starting to set in, they stumbled out of bed and waddled over to the mirror. If they could still gasp, they would have.
Like their hands, their feet had been swallowed up by two large, round paws. The huge squirrel tail, once flaccid and collapsing under its own weight, was now standing firmly upright. The hood had closed over their face, the cartoonish facial features now front and centre on their head. They reached up and pushed against the muzzle, recoiling as they felt it. They felt it. The sensation of touch where logically no part of the human body should be.
A squeak emanated from somewhere inside themself.
“Get it off get it off get it off…” Olive tried to grab at the zipper across the front of the kigu, rotund paws failing to do anything but bat it around uselessly. They didn’t have fingers.
“UuuhhHHHH… Ash. Ash!” Olive cried. They stumbled back over to the bed, batting at their dozing partner with their paws. “Wake up wake up wake up wake up—”
Ash slowly came to, mumbling something incomprehensible before finally squinting open her eyes a few seconds later. “What is iiiiiiit…?”
“Help me get the kigu off! I— I can’t— it won’t—“
Finally registering the panic in Olive’s voice, Ash sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t get the kigu off!” Olive flailed, uselessly batting at the zip again with their oversize paws. “It’s… I don’t know! It’s grown over my hands or something!”
Ash sat for a moment just staring, trying to focus her eyes in the dim morning light. Recognising the problem, Olive pressed a paw to the light switch, thankfully with enough force to activate it and flood the room with light.
Ash stayed silent for a moment. There appeared to be a human-sized, plushie brown squirrel standing at the foot of the bed and looking rather distraught. Okay then.
Wait… that’s Olive?
“What in the hell happened to you?!” she half-shouted as her brain finally processed this new information.
“I don’t know!” Olive cried back. “Just get me outta this thing!”
“Oh my god, the mouth is moving when you talk. How is it doing that?!”
“I don’t care! Just get the zip already!”
Ash shuffled down to sit at the base of the bed. Locating the zip handle, she started tugging it downwards slowly so that it wouldn’t get caught on the textiles around it. She made it nearly a foot before slowly stopping. She stuttered for a moment, struggling to formulate a coherent sentence.
Olive looked down, panic rising again. “What? What is it?”
“You’re… I… I can’t see you.”
“What do you mean you can’t see me? I’m right here!”
“You… aren’t, though… You aren’t in here.” Ash muttered.
Olive stumbled back over to the mirror, pushing their paws into the open zipper and desperately wrenching the rest of it open.
There was nothing. Just a hollow cavity surrounded by fabric.
Slowly, silently, Olive slumped to the floor, their head grasped in their paws. They wanted to cry, but no tears were forthcoming.
Ash just watched from the base of the bed, still in shock at what she’d just witnessed.
“What am I?” Olive asked, their voice trembling.
“I… I don’t know…” Ash responded. She slid off the end of the bed and onto the floor, shuffling up to lean her head on Olive’s shoulder. Olive pulled her close with an arm. There was a moment of quiet as they simply embraced one another. “I guess… you’re a kigu now?”
“But how?!”
Ash shrugged. “I dunno, just seems like what’s happened.”
Olive looked back at their visage in the mirror, able to make out more details under artificial light. All the main features of the kigu were present, sure, but other parts were… different.
The previously baggy sides of the suit had filled out into firm curves, as had the low-slung crotch, which had subsumed part of their legs. That must’ve been why they were stumbling around so much.
The stitching seemed more obvious, somehow. The kigu had been cheap and mass-produced, with uniformly machined stitching along the insides. Now they were large and obvious, made of thick thread that stood out against the fabric.
The zipper too had somehow sized itself up larger than it had been before. The face, previously only lightly padded to create the vague illusion of dimensionality, had filled out too, seemingly all to match with their new, exaggerated proportions. They opened their mouth wide. True to Ash’s claims, the squirrel’s mouth opened with it.
“Are you okay?” Ash asked softly.
“I… I don’t know…” Olive muttered. “I feel fine physically, I think, but… I don’t know…”
Ash pulled herself closer to Olive, embracing them tightly. “I love you and I’m here for you, okay?”
“But I’m a freak! A mutant!” Olive said with a start. “I’m a— a thing! I’m—“
“You’re still Olive!” Ash interrupted. “You’re still the person I fell in love with, even if…” She gestured vaguely at Olive’s body. “This.”
“Besides,” Ash continued, pressing the side of her head into Olive’s shoulder, “You don’t have those annoyingly bony shoulders anymore.”
“Are you seriously trying to find the bright side of this?”
“Is it working?” Ash smirked.
Olive embraced their girlfriend closer. “Maybe a little…”
The pair continued to sit and snuggle together in front of the mirror for a while longer, taking in the view as a new dawn softly broke outside.
A few days had passed. Ash had kindly taken a few days off from work to stay over and help Olive adjust to their new body.
Their most immediate problem was dexterity. Olive’s hands were round, lacking both fingers and thumbs. There was some bend to them, letting them kinda hold something if it was large and bumpy, but otherwise, it would slide right out of their grip.
Ash went around and retrofitted everything from the door handles to Olive’s phone and TV remotes with velcro tape, so that Olive could at least pick them up. Ash also had the bright idea to velcro up a single pair of chopsticks, so that Olive could still slowly tap away at their computer keyboard, even with each key being a fraction of the size of their paw.
The first thing they typed out was their immediate resignation on ‘health’ grounds. Money, at least for a little while, wouldn’t be an issue now that financial pressures of food, heating and utilities no longer existed.
That Olive would no longer need to eat was obvious in hindsight. Their mouth no longer led anywhere, there was no digestive system present to process anything. Luckily, the extended stay and some creative use of ingredients meant that Ash managed to use most of the fresh stuff before it could go bad, and the rest was stashed in the freezer for future visits.
With no eating came no… well, follow-up. In fact, Olive was lacking anything ‘down there’ at all except for smooth, plus fabric; something that they were actually relatively comfortable with, much to Ash’s consternation.
Olive had, after several protests, finally let Ash explore their insides for a fabric care label. Olive found the very concept unsettling, their internal void the most intense reminder of how far they had deviated from humanity. A label was eventually found on the outer side of a thigh—100% polyester—and now bathing consisted of lazing around in 40° water, laundry detergent and fabric softener.
This was regretted almost immediately, Olive’s waterlogged body spent the following hours dripping water and suds everywhere, no amount of blow drying enough to take them below soggy. Ash suggested hanging them out to dry but Olive recoiled at the thought. Their neighbours couldn’t see them like this!
The best parts were the nights. After a day of stressing out, adapting to their body, and trying to find something online to explain what had happened, it was nice to just lay there and quietly cuddle with their girlfriend.
Despite all of Olive’s anxiety and fear, Ash had been nothing but helpful, reassuring, and complimentary. It was almost embarrassing how much cooler her head had been about all this. The way that she embraced it all, just as she embraced Olive now, their last night together before she definitely had to head home, her head buried deep into their chest, every arm and leg wrapped tightly around Olive’s squishy, squirrel-shaped hide.
Olive squeezed Ash tight, their voice quivering a little. If they could still produce tears, they would be. “I just love you so much…”
Ash turned to face Olive. “Love you too, softness.”
“Softness?”
“Yeah! You’re so goddamn soft. Urgh, I just wanna hug you forever… I mean, I wanted to do that before, but now you’re even comfier.” She paused for a second. “I hope that’s not too on-the-nose for a pet name. I get this is still weird for you.”
“Yeah…” Olive mumbled. “It’s fine. I think I’m getting used to it.”
“Oh?”
“Well, I’m going to miss eating stuff, but I get to spend my time doing whatever I wanna do, and I don’t even have to sleep at the end unless I want to.” They shrugged. “It beats working all day.”
“Lucky for some,” Ash said, pressing herself back into Olive’s chest and the zipper running down the middle of it. “How’re you feeling about this thing?”
Olive hesitated. “I… I don’t know. I guess it’s a part of me, whether I want it or not? I should probably just embrace it. Just… give me some time…”
“I’d like to wear you someday. When you’re ready.” Ash smiled warmly at her partner.
They would’ve blushed if they still had blood. “Next time we have a kigu sleepover, maybe I’ll be ready.”
Olive furrowed their brow, sitting up and forcing Ash from her perch. They scanned the floor, locating a crumpled pile of fabric in the corner of the room: Ash’s bat kigu, still laying where she had discarded it so many nights before.
“You don’t think that—”
Ash shushed them gently. “Next time, softness. Next time.”
