Transformed Struggles- 3
#3 of Transformed Struggles
And we get to meet our second character at least for a little while. He leaves fairly early on in the story, but he can be our protagonist's companion for a little while at least. Though it does bring to question: if you had three voices constantly in your head (and not crazy), what would you name them.
Chapter 3
"Nice day, isn't it?" The other fox asks politely, speaking not with words through its rather large mouth but instead almost like yet another voice speaking in my head. Even still the tone of the voice was rather soft and gentle, sounding more than a little to how someone would speak to an old, beloved friend. "Really nice and sunny and the weather itself is not the least bit uncomfortable. They're predicting it to snow again tonight. I always have liked the smell of the snow. Though I am curious as to why your tails are feeding off the sun, and not you."
Willing myself not to think the question in words I turn my head to examine his statement and find out that not only is my back also vulpine in shape with long white fur adorning it but that there are three large, fluffy red tails sticking out of my rear end, each one luxuriating in the sun in their red fur. Startled, I jump quickly to my feet, somewhat startling the other fox thing.
"This can't be happening!" I half shout.
"Something wrong?" The other fox thing asks.
"This can't be real! It must be an illusion of some sort." I stammer.
"Ooh! I love games like this. How do you know that what you say is real is not in fact the illusion?" The other fox speaks into my mind.
"This is not a game! I'm not having this conversation with something that doesn't exist!" I shout, upset at being confronted this way.
"But we are of the same species, therefore if what I am cannot exist, then you cannot exist either. Brings an interesting thought about this conversation, doesn't it," The other fox thing states calmly into my mind again, lowering its large rear end so that it goes to a sitting position, its red fur blowing gently in the wind and the three large tails behind it moving idly as its head cocks to one side. "Or were you more referring to me as an individual being something that cannot exist. If so why can't I exist? I think therefore I must be, correct?"
"I'm not a monster, I'm a human being!" I shout, taking a step back and almost tripping over myself.
"Now that isn't polite to call us monsters. We Thener have never done a thing to deserve such a title. But for being human, do you currently look human?"
"Well, no. But I'm still human."
The head of the other fox thing turns the other way, "You look like a Thener, you smell like a Thener, your soul feels like a Thener. So for all intents and purposes you seem no different from any Thener. So what makes you believe you are a human?"
"Because I was born human. This isn't my real body! That water turned me into this... thing!" I heave.
"Now calm down there, we wouldn't want you to start to hyperventilate."
"This is all a dream. That's what it is. A dream. I'm not really here having this conversation, it's all in my mind."
"Perception itself is always only in the mind. There is not a single point in time in which what you see is not all in your mind."
"So says the person speaking inside my head. For all I know that fox right in front of me is just some dumb animal and you are simply a result of my dream associating a voice to something that doesn't have a voice."
The fox facing me cocks its head the other way again and then opens its mouth and speaks, giving me a good show of its only mildly sharp teeth and rather thin tongue, "I could quite easily take offense at being called 'some dumb animal,'" he speaks using that same tone of voice though my mind is definitely picking up some sense that it was a statement that he took really hard.
"Still haven't proved that you aren't simply a figment of my imagination created inside this dream world to help me cope with probably some debilitating condition."
"Perhaps, though it is quite obvious now that there is some thing that is wrong with you as you are not acting like any Thener I have ever encountered. Still, would you not think that if I were simply a part of some dream that I would be aware of such a fact?"
"Maybe my dream is only making you think you're real when you really aren't."
"If that were the case would it not also be true that for all I would know you could simply be a figment of my own dream created to amuse me? If I wouldn't be able to tell that I am someone else's dream, then you would similarly not be able to tell if you were my dream," The other fox speaks before pausing for a moment, listening to something.
"I think he's beating you in this argument," The little yellow fox in my head speaks up.
"I don't want to hear about it," I growl back at him in my head.
"My tails tell me that the more important question is how do you know your life as a human was not a dream and you are just now finally awake? Excluding the difference in appearance, does this life seem to be any less real than the one you think is real?"
"Well, no."
"Then for the time being you have to assume that neither seems more real than the other that you must treat both as being equally real. Can I ask a favor of you?" He asks.
"Why not," I sigh.
"Is it all right with you if I go into your mind and speak with your tails?"
"Weren't you already in my head? Why ask for permission now?"
"I was only speaking to your mind and listening to your surface dialog, your tails are not on the surface and so I need permission to in deep enough to talk to them."
"Sure, whatever. Not like this day can get any worse."
The other fox lies down on the ground and closes his eyes and for all intents and purposes appears to have decided to take a nap but then I see him materialize inside the room inside my head. He takes a small moment to look over each of the other three and myself too for a moment, probably spending at least a portion of that staring at the symbol on their heads.
"Well hello there," The yellow fox greets, and bouncy and energetic as normal. "We don't normally get many visitors."
"Interesting. Haven't ever seen one that's color coordinated their tails before," he muses.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask, somewhat confused.
His response was to first incline his head at the colored foxes also in the room, "They're your tails. Each literally has a mind of its own and will speak to the main personality, you, through this portion of your inner mind. Most Thener I know that differentiate between their tails will normally do so by assigning each a number though I have heard of a few going by scent."
"Ooh, numbers could be fun," the Yellow one bounces. "I call number nine!"
"Nine?" I stammer, almost scared to think of how bad my head will hurt with six more of these things running around my head.
"There aren't nine of us, only three." The Blue fox corrects.
"Sure there are. He sees three tails," the yellow fox bounds around me, "I see two tails, Orange sees two tails and Blue Cheese Lady sees two tails. Three plus two plus two plus two equals nine, therefore I call number nine!"
"Regardless," Orange counters, "as our guest here has stated, we are color coordinated and not number coordinated so it really doesn't matter which number you want you are still going to be yellow."
"So what's so impressive of these guys being color coordinated anyways," I ask, still trying to get used to the idea that each of these three animated individuals represent a lump of fluffy mass attached to my rear end.
"Though many do tend to give them some means to tell them apart it's more of an effort made so that they could easily speak to one or another without any confusion. But the method of number coordination or even scent coordination tends to keep them as still being mostly the same. The use of colors does help one easily distinguish in a very visual way but also by using three different colors you have decided to keep them completely independent from each other." He responds then pauses a moment. "But I've gotten distracted, I'm sorry. If there is something that is abnormal that has happened one of your tails should have made sure to have run a diagnostic to see if they could figure out what was wrong. So which of you three have gone about taking on this task?"
"I have," The Blue, winged fox responds calmly.
I find while listening to him speak that I am a lot more prone to try and let my curiosity influence my actions a lot more than they used to. Feeling that I should get at least a much better grasp on what my body looks like if I'm going to be forced into using it I take a look at whatever parts of my body I can immediately see. From what I can tell I look exactly like this other Thener except where his fur seems red, mine seems to be currently white.
"And what have you concluded?" The other Thener asks as I take a look at what used to be my hands.
Each former hand is now a large canine paw, though it is a lot wider than I would have expected from a fox's foot. It also seems complete with really thick padding on the underside. Having nothing that could be considered a hand to speak of I lower my nose to one of my arms and press against it with my nose, feeling the texture of the arms and not finding any trace of any fat. The fur is very soft, though I can feel more fur underneath the white. As I lift my hand back up I notice that for a split second a part of my arm seems to relax a bit and I could have sworn I saw it turn slightly red.
"The Master's disorientated state implies that the body has recently sustained enough damage that the body shut down to heal itself. All of the internal signs generally present when this happens are there, indicating the same thing. The soreness and lack of any sign that there was any bleeding from the injury implies that the damage was caused by some kind of blunt trauma, but due to the lack of any trace that some parts of the body were damaged more than others implies that every part of the body was hit at the same time from every direction."
The other Thener thinks for a moment, trying to grasp all that she said and finally speaks up, "An omni-directional blunt attack? How is that even possible?"
Though I am listening I don't really pay much attention since I don't need a winged fox to tell me that my body was beat up by something considering my senses already are making such an assessment more than obvious. Instead I am still looking around checking to see what my body now looks like; finding that for all purposes I look like a fox in every conceivable way except for having three tails instead of just one. And they are really large tails too. Having no sense of scale right now would make it impossible to tell exactly how thick or long they are, but they do seem much thicker than any other fox I've seen. Assured that this is what my body looks like on the outside for now I finally decide to start looking at what it looks like inside my own head.
"Unknown," the Blue fox continues. "Regardless, it is of a more pressing concern is that we do not remember what happened. There is not a single specific memory either from our own personal memories or the Master's memories stored in Yellow."
"Is this true?" He asks towards me. "Can you remember anything specific? Either as a human or Thener?"
"I don't know," I respond, after finding that as far as I can tell I look the same in here as my body does. I try to think really hard of anything from when I was still human, but find it exceedingly difficult. "I don't think I can." Forgetting for a moment that being in my head already meant that my thoughts would be vocalized I add to myself "except for being attacked by that wall of water."
"Wall of water?" he asks.
Before I can even respond to the fact he heard my statement Orange spoke up, "That would be a possibility. If we were placed in a container of water and then the pressure suddenly increased throughout the entire container then that would explain the blunt trauma. What anyone would want with our memories though I have no idea."
"That brings up the other issue. There is not a single trace of any abnormal level of healer cells. If there was enough damage to shut the body down then the healer cells should be abnormally high as they try and fix the body. Currently they are all at normal levels."
"We got healed!" the Yellow fox bounces around.
"Are you saying that someone hit me, knocked me out, stole my memories then just healed me and left me like this?" I ask, severely concerned that what happened to me might have been someone done this to me instead of a wall of water.
"I think this is something that we should go and see someone who can help us figure out the answers to these questions instead of sitting here." The other Thener states and then vanishes from my mind and I notice his eyes open up.