It's dusk

Readjusting your leather pants -no wait, their shorts now - so they hang low on your narrow hips you find it is more comfortable for your tail. You swish it experimentally back and forth feeling rather strange about your new appendage.

You reach back to feel the base of your tail, but quickly let go as it sends shivers up your spine. This would take a bit of getting used to.

You roll your shoulders, feeling how your leather armour shifts on your torso. Although your torso doesn't seem to have changed much since before your transformation, it is now covered with a luscious fur coat, which makes you feel a bit stuffy beneath your armour. However, not wearing armour is not an option.

Given the nature the Cesspond, you needed every protection you could get from its **** and diseased inhabitants.

Your thoughts drift briefly to the Nekt, with it's clearly masculine, but clean skin and hair. And think that that Nekt had probably been the cleanest thing in this place, yet it was probably set on killing you or any other human it came across after its bloody encounter with your sword.

Speaking of your sword, you grasp it by the hilt and feel its weight in you new palm. You'd not had much opportunity to use one before you came to the CessPond, but now it feels like a firm friend after all the struggles you'd gone through to keep it by your side.

Admittedly your first few kills of toothless leeches hadn't been all that impressive, but you'd struggled fiercely get through the ordeal, and you'd fought off a Nekt, all be it using a surprise attack. You're swordsmanship skills are not quite there yet, but the feel of the sword has already become a source of comfort to you.

You turn the flat of the blade once more to eye your foreign canine reflection, then sheath it. The time for reflection and dwelling on your lorels is not now.

You get to your feet. Feeling momentarily like a new born calf as you stand, but the moment you lift your heels off the ground, the feeling disappears and you feel a strange wordless understanding settle in your body.

Now walking on the balls of your feet you lean out of the carriage, and hop to a nearby deby, before it sinks through the mud you quickly and silently move on until you feel like the junk beneath your feet -no, paws- is no longer threatening sink while you're still on it.

You look around now, properly. You notice a new quality to your vision. You glance over the still lake and the clear skies above it, only adorned with a couple of skinny clouds unlike the dome which had covered it while you were in the lake. Seeing no sign of the sun above the tall tree tops, your realise that it must be dusk, though your vision is a lot sharper in the darkness of twilight than it had been when you were still human.

You twitch your ears and take a sniff of the air, only to regret it as the CessPond reminds you of its unhygienic nature. Spoiled food and... other thing. Fourtunatley it seems that your noes had acclimatised itself to the environment for the most part even though it is much sharper now than before.

Deciding to pay more attention to your ears your swivel them around as you try to survey your surroundings.

You hear a few strange calls to the west. You think they are coming from the dark canopies of the swamp trees, but you can't tell what manner of creature is making them. The only other sound you can hear is some clinking and clattering which seem to come from somewhere on the junk-mountain.

Returning back into the water is out of the question, you can continue to explore your current area. I seems like a likely spot for the treasure to have been lost. Failing that you might be able to find something else of value.

Alternatively you could leave the area, it seems like the sort of place where you could run into other adventurers who are here for the same reason as you, and you're not sure if you're prepared to face another human being in your new form, just yet.

Your bushy tail twitches restlessly behind you.