"You'll feel it. It hits like a truck." In a few very short minutes, Lark expects, watching Jon for the moment his pupils are blown wide and it begins. When that happens they won't be speaking; Lark will be untying them so Jon can contort through his first change.
Every change after this one will happen in seconds, clean but still painful. This one will take minutes, and not everyone survives. Lark unties them and then he strips and changes, too, licking up where their blood spilled, waiting to lap up Jon's when his skin tears. Ready to welcome him when he comes through in his new form.
Jon is exactly as much of a wimp about pain as he told Lark he would be, so it starts with a howling cry and all throughout, there are whimpers, shivering gasps and cries and his throat raw even as it changes shape, even as all of him change shape. Blood spills as bones move into places they aren't supposed to go, and skin tears and after a while, the noises are less screaming and crying and more dog-like and pained.
He survives, yes, yes, he survives, because he always survives... but he's a little shakey on his legs as he tries to stand up for the first time in the ruins of the pants and the folds of robe that is now thoroughly blood-soaked.
Lark is there, just as he promised he would be, licking Jon's face, tail wagging furiously when Jon stands. Or tries to stand; Lark can't offer much support except to encourage him to breathe, to gather himself. The strength will flow in as the pain ebbs.
The one thing Lark will notice as Jon stands is that... he is quite a bit of fluff. The meat in there, well, it's not nearly as impressive as all the fluff would seem to imply, blond fur that never quite tips over into white, but he's always been on the leaner side and that's the same here.
It might change once he gets an appetite, but that remains to be seen.
The strength is there, you see, it's just that he needs to feel it past the echo of the pain. The senses, on the other hand, are where he has the least amount of trouble, oddly enough, since he's well used to taking in much more input than human beings normally would. In some ways, it's a return more than a new thing, even if the information and its source is very different.
He feels better for it, though. Something about being able to smell blood, even if its his own, feels right.
He'll steady himself and lick Lark in return as he gets a handle on things and then his tail is going to start slooooowly lifting as he begins to turn his head back and forth.
Some pass out. He's proud that Jon didn't, selfishly glad because it means he gets to be with him sooner. He turns and trots to the kitchen, to the lower drawer where he keeps the beef jerky, and he brings it back over.
The best way to shake off the pain, he thinks, is to explore what this new form does. Stretch the muscles, test the tongue.
Jon didn't pass out because terrible things can happen when you're unconscious and he'd much rather be conscious even if it's horrifically painful, so an act of will... definitely took place there.
Jon waits for Lark to return, though it's obvious as Lark comes back that he's practically vibrating with a desire to go and do and explore despite the pain, but when he sees the jerky, he's going to whine a little that he'd like some, pawing in place even as he waits.
Part of the fun of a bag of jerky is tearing open the plastic with your teeth. He shows Jon how, then nudges it over for him to try, so he can feel the tiny vibrations as the plastic yields, so he can hear the pleasant whispering rip of it that humans miss by opening it the proper way.
And then there's the jerky. God in Heaven the smell of the jerky.
His appetite is in tact. Good. The next stop, then, is going to be the proper kitchen.
But it means going through halls, smelling people and their pets, and for a while the pets are all going to smell like food, they're all going to ignite the urge to hunt.
For that matter so will some of the people, the angry ones, the frightened ones.
But Jon needs food, and Lark needs to see how he'll adapt, so he leads him to the door and paws it open.
Jon looks at Lark and makes a quizzical sound before nosing into the cracked door and sniffing a few times before pulling his nose out and giving another confused noise at Lark.
Jon will learn there are certain sounds and certain twitches of motion--the ear here, the tail there--that mean specific things. The first one he tries to teach him is the soft, huff, not-quite-a-bark that means food.
Then he leads him out into the hall and stays close, watching him as they move to the stairwell and on to the cafeteria.
He catches on; whether that's from remembering or Knowing from before all the times they were together while he was on four feet instead of two. Jon follows amiably enough, still sort of vibrating, but clearly focusing it on moving in place instead of zipping around immediately. He's much more high energy than Warren was, clearly excited, clearly curious like nothing else, but he's used to containing his feelings on that score.
...or more precisely, knowing how to keep them localized.
Once they're moving, though, he's moving. There's a few little hops and bounces and returns to Lark and vocalizations that are more tone than any meaning of word or phrase. They translate, roughly, to 'asking a million questions and excited about everything'.
Lark watches him, mouth hanging open and tongue lolling in a wolfy smile. Most of those questions can only be answered by experience, so he takes him to the kitchen where his nose will have to calibrate to four hundred thousand different smells, to chemicals he's never been able to detect before because human and humanoid bodies typically don't have the sense organs for it.
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And it is, in fact, in that moment when his pupils blow wide, because if Jon's life obeys any rules on anything, it is the rules of comic timing.
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He survives, yes, yes, he survives, because he always survives... but he's a little shakey on his legs as he tries to stand up for the first time in the ruins of the pants and the folds of robe that is now thoroughly blood-soaked.
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The strength, and all those new senses.
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It might change once he gets an appetite, but that remains to be seen.
The strength is there, you see, it's just that he needs to feel it past the echo of the pain. The senses, on the other hand, are where he has the least amount of trouble, oddly enough, since he's well used to taking in much more input than human beings normally would. In some ways, it's a return more than a new thing, even if the information and its source is very different.
He feels better for it, though. Something about being able to smell blood, even if its his own, feels right.
He'll steady himself and lick Lark in return as he gets a handle on things and then his tail is going to start slooooowly lifting as he begins to turn his head back and forth.
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The best way to shake off the pain, he thinks, is to explore what this new form does. Stretch the muscles, test the tongue.
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Jon waits for Lark to return, though it's obvious as Lark comes back that he's practically vibrating with a desire to go and do and explore despite the pain, but when he sees the jerky, he's going to whine a little that he'd like some, pawing in place even as he waits.
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And then there's the jerky. God in Heaven the smell of the jerky.
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But then there's jerky, and he's never devoured anything with the ravenousness he turns on the jerky.
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But it means going through halls, smelling people and their pets, and for a while the pets are all going to smell like food, they're all going to ignite the urge to hunt.
For that matter so will some of the people, the angry ones, the frightened ones.
But Jon needs food, and Lark needs to see how he'll adapt, so he leads him to the door and paws it open.
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Then he leads him out into the hall and stays close, watching him as they move to the stairwell and on to the cafeteria.
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...or more precisely, knowing how to keep them localized.
Once they're moving, though, he's moving. There's a few little hops and bounces and returns to Lark and vocalizations that are more tone than any meaning of word or phrase. They translate, roughly, to 'asking a million questions and excited about everything'.
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But there's so much. And he feels like he just opened the door of his mind to a whole new ocean. It's amazing.