Uncalled Practice

Ashkara felt the imbalance before she understood the transformation. One moment she moved steadily through the ruins alongside Gulbahar, paws silent against ancient stone while evening wind threaded through broken arches overhead. The next, the world tilted violently sideways beneath her.

Ashkara slammed into a crumbling pillar hard enough to fracture the surface. Greheli reacted instantly, gravity crushed downward in a sharp invisible pulse that cracked loose stone beneath her feet and sent dust exploding outward through the ruins.

“Ashkara.”

Gulbahar’s voice remained calm nearby, “release the pressure first.”

Ashkara barely heard her, everything felt wrong... too upright and too narrow.

Her breathing came sharper now, chest rising and falling too quickly beneath unfamiliar lungs while loose strands of steel-blue hair slipped into her vision. The air against exposed skin distracted her immediately. Cold wind moved too freely across her arms and neck without fur to soften it.

Her senses seemed to be dulled to the point where the world felt painfully incomplete. The ruins smelled weaker, the wind sounded flatter, and even the stone beneath her feet felt distant somehow.

Ashkara braced one hand harder against the pillar. Hand, not paw. Her eyes snapped downward immediately. Five pale fingers dug into fractured stone while Greheli trembled invisibly around them. The sight unsettled her more than the magic itself.

Slowly, carefully, Ashkara pushed herself upright as balance fought her every movement. Without a tail to stabilize movement, her center of gravity sat completely wrong. Her posture forced weight upward instead of forward. Every instinct developed through years of combat suddenly felt unreliable inside a body built differently than the one she trusted.

“I despise this,” she said flatly. Nearby, Gulbahar sat calmly atop a broken section of fallen wall in her human forms, long blue hair shifting softly in the evening breeze.

“That is normal at first,” Gulbahar replied gently.

“At first implies improvement.”

“It improves.”

Ashkara looked unconvinced. Only then did she finally examine herself properly. Her clothing had shifted with the transformation, though far simpler than her usual gear. Loose dark trousers gathered securely at the waist while a sleeveless gray shirt exposed lean arms marked faintly by old scars earned long before today. Without armor belts, tools, or plating, she felt unfinished in a way that deeply irritated her.

Vulnerable... the realization settled in poorly. Ashkara’s gaze shifted toward a fractured metal plate partially buried among the ruins nearby. The surface reflected enough evening light to show vague shapes across its worn steel. She approached it carefully. Her every movement required smaller corrections than she expected. Less force, more balance, and every step demanded awareness she usually reserved for combat itself.

Ashkara crouched beside the metal plate and stared silently at the reflection looking back at her. A human face stared back at her. Short steel-blue hair framed a sharp face marked by pale skin and guarded gray-blue eyes. Compact muscle remained visible beneath her smaller human frame, built more like a fighter than a noblewoman despite the loss of her larger ketucari body.

Different shape, same expression, still tense, and still controlled. Ashkara studied the reflection for several long moments, then frowned slightly, “weak,” she muttered.

“No,” Gulbahar corrected quietly from behind her, “only unfamiliar.”

Ashkara’s jaw tightened. Greheli shifted subtly around her again, bending loose dust inward toward her boots before settling. The magic remained, that is what mattered. Slowly, Ashkara stood again and tested her footing more deliberately this time. One careful step, then another. Human balance relied less on planted force and more on constant adjustment. Smaller motions controlled stability better than brute strength ever could.

That realization irritated her too. Yet by the time dusk fully settled across the ruins, frustration had slowly become concentration. Several times she stumbled while crossing broken stone pathways. A few times she overcorrected with Greheli. Once she nearly launched herself sideways attempting a jump her old body could have made effortlessly.

But eventually, she adapted. Not comfortably, not gracefully, but just enough. Ashkara crossed a narrow collapsed beam spanning part of the ruins without slipping once. Her movements remained tense, though lighter now than before. More precise and less reliant on overpowering imbalance through sheer force.

When she reached the other side, Gulbahar’s faint smile returned.,“there,” she said softly.

Ashkara glanced back toward her, “there what?”

“You stopped treating the body like an enemy.”

The observation lingered unpleasantly in Ashkara’s chest. For a moment she looked down again at unfamiliar human hands resting at  her sides. Smaller... different... yet still capable. Wind moved softly through the ruins around them while the last traces of evening sunlight faded against ancient stone. Ashkara flexed her fingers once more, Greheli answered immediately, gravity humming low and steady beneath skin no longer covered by fur.

Different body, same soul... the realization did not comfort her, but it did steady her. And for now, that was enough.