Once there was a woman who did not like who she was. She felt uneasy with herself, as if she did not fit inside her own body. When she looked in the mirror, she did not recognize herself. Was that her nose? Were those her eyes? They didn't seem quite right, though she could not have told you what the right nose or eyes would be.
The woman lived with her husband in a house near Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. She had a little girl who was old enough to go to school. Sometimes, the woman would look at the little girl and wondered if this little girl was really hers. She couldn't tell.
One day, when the woman's little girl was at school and her husband was at work, the woman left the key to the house on the kitchen table and walked out. She walked along a trail that led into Golden Gate Park. Even though it was in the middle of the city, Golden Gate Park was really big with lots of woods and wild places. When the woman was deep in the park, she left the trail and walked between the trees where there was no trail.
She was far from the trail when it started to rain- gently at first, and then harder, raindrops against her and soaking her shirt and her jeans. She looked for a place to shelter and found a hollow log that was large enough to crawl inside.
She crawled in on her stomach. It was dry inside the log-snug and warm. She waited for the rain to stop, closing her eyes and listening to the water rattle against the leaves overhead, drip to the forest floor, and trickle through the dead leaves to reach the thirsty ground. Listening to the rain she fell asleep.
When she woke up, she had changed. For the first time, she felt at home in her body. The smells around her were intense and inviting- the delicious scent of rotten leaves and grubs; the warm smell of the squirrel in the branches. As she listened to the squirrel in the branches, she could feel her ears moving to follow the sound. When she looked at her body,she saw that she was covered with golden-ish, brown fur. She muzzled the long, bushy tail curled around her paws.
Somehow, as she slept, she had changed into a fox.
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