The First Time

The tremors were quick, varied. They made her spine quiver and lurch uncomfortably in spasms. One jolt forced Kathrine to kneel, gripping the grass tightly. Immediately afterwards, a heat boiled up into her body, blazing an inferno in every single bodily tissue and organ.  She opened her mouth in a silent scream, shocked and surprised.
This had never happened before.
Shakily, Kathrine glanced down at her hands and arms, which were bare in the night. Before her eyes, they slowly, gruesomely, changed. Fierce curved claws thrust through where her human nails clung to her fingers; the keratin groaned in protest as it was wrenched from its anger. This was happening to both of her hands, the occasional droplet of blood coming from her nails when they changed.
She lurched again, a snarl ripping from her throat, eyes still lingering on her once unchanged form. Huge sums of hair rushed out from Kathrine's skin all throughout where she could see. It itched and stung, but nothing could prepare her for what was happening next. A massive crack brought a tear or two to her eye.  The girl's hands met the ground again with a soft thud, the fur getting thicker down her arms. With a harsh lurch, she felt her spine stretch and lengthen, poking through. She relaxed again and began to stand, the fabric of her shirt tearing easily in the newly grown curved talons. Shreds of cloth drifted downward, landing on her shoes. They felt tight on her feet, and the sound of tearing alerted her that that part was changing as well.
Claws poked through the ripping shoes, extending and curling as the foot slowly stretched and began to resemble a paw. The stretching of her feet slowly lifted Kathrine off the ground, the seams of her denim pants tearing, it seemed as if everything about her was growing… especially in muscle. She looked at her hands again. They now were completely furred, the fingers thicker. Through her faze of excruciating pain she turned them over, observing the paw pads that stuck up through the skin. Kathrine cried out again in almost a roar, a chorus of loud and deep cracks thundering in her ears and making the blood boil. Streams of warm blood dribbled down her lips as her mouth screamed in agony. The human molars and incisors were now useless to her; they steadily grew into points and lengthened, reaching way past the normal length of human teeth. Her jaw was clenched, and the canine teeth peeked through the flesh of her upper lip before it curled.
Kakthrine's pain was not over. Bones in her skull trembled and groaned, feeling almost as if she were having a severe head injury. She felt her jaw and visage push out slowly and painfully, each centimeter movement cracking and snapping from the resisting bone. Blood continued to stream down from her mouth, but what came next distracted her from the agony of her head. The girl's spine lurched again, even harsher than before. The end of it pushed out of her skin, the nub of flesh slowly lengthening and covering itself in the same fur that invaded the soft smooth skin. Slowly, she turned her eyes to look and was shocked to find that it had grown into a tail. A horrible wave of pain tore through her body again as the bones in her body finished moving around, breaking, cracking, and mending themselves. She felt muscle rise up underneath the skin and hair, filling her veins with a sort of power….
With a final, enormous crack, Kathrine's bloody maw came together, mixed with tears, and her eyes opened.