Delighted, Narawyn basked momentarily in all the attention she was getting. Her team-mates were running to her for advice! This would give her a central spot in all the songs and legends, surely.
"I can turn into things other than a cat," she said with a slight sniff, turning her nose up and trying to look disdainful. "It simply happens that cat form is my best. I can also turn into a dog, or a wolf, or a drake..."
Actually, on that note, she'd never turned into a drake before, or even tried. Reptiles didn't appeal to her. But she was sure she could make arrangements somehow.
"I'll turn myself into a male drake," she told them, looking around for some dark corner to shift in. "A very attractive male drake! Then, when that thing has followed me off to do the wee-woo in the wee-woo... I will escape miraculously, and return to you..." She raised her hands in a grandiose gesture, hoping that her hair was swinging like she wanted it to. "...for the next grand adventure!"
At that, she huddled into the corner, called up what she could remember of drakes, and shifted.
A few moments later, she squawked in pain and horror, and stumbled backwards out of the corridor - something drake-sized and drake-shaped, but tail-less, wingless and scale-less, covered instead with milky-white human skin and occasional tufts of silky black cat fur. Her horns, which she had meant to be sweeping and magnificent, were a line of bony stubs sticking out at odd intervals on her completely round, gape-mouthed head. To add insult to injury, her attempts at representing the, ahem, masculinity of the male drake had gone tragically awry... she may not have had a tail, but that did not mean that nothing protruded from her horse-like hips. More distressingly even than that, her paws were neither delicate human hands nor rugged drake claws - they were gigantic frog feet, each one that size of a dinner-plate, that made squelching sounds at every step.
This wasn't a drake. She wasn't sure what it was. But she had to salvage some respect in the face of certain humiliation! She had to!
Trying to maintain some dignity now that the initial pain had faded, she waddled over to her team-mates and squatted in front of them, her entire head and neck turning cherry-red from embarrassment.
