Oberon

The first inhale nearly chokes you. The air is charged—thick, mineral, and not quite what a human should breathe, yet it scrapes a surge of clarity through your skull, banishing the last shreds of sleep. You jerk upright, water sluicing off your shoulders and pooling beneath the curve of your new body—your body, your mind corrects with a scientist’s defiance, but the truth settles in anyway: where your legs had been, a sinuous blue-green tail sprawls across polished nacre.