Super Wishes and Leotard Dreams, Chapter 4

Crystal gasped first—a sharp inhalation that made us all turn toward her reflection in time to see her pajamas stretching. The satin camisole swelled outward, two perfect handfuls of flesh pushing against the ruined fabric, medium-sized. Her legs, already coltish, elongated further, the hem of her shorts riding up to reveal thighs that curved with new, impossible sleekness.

Asher’s transformation hit like a lightning strike—fifteen seconds that rewrote his body with terrifying precision. The cotton fabric of his shirt rode up, revealing twin grooves of abdominal muscles that hadn’t existed minutes ago, his navel sinking deeper as his torso elongated. Lean muscle beneath erupted in definition. Asher’s jawline snapped into sharpness like a switch had been flipped—one moment boyish softness, the next a blade’s edge carving itself from bone. The hollows beneath his cheekbones deepened abruptly, casting shadows that made his features look chiseled by some divine sculptor. The transformation wasn’t gradual—it was seismic.

Benna’s transformation hit like a symphony crescendo—fifteen seconds of bone-deep rewriting that left me breathless for entirely different reasons than before. The fabric of her strained cotton undershirt violently as her shoulders broadened by two inches in opposite directions, seams popping with muffled snaps. The cotton undershirt showed her trapezius muscles erupting into stark relief—thick cords of power that made my mouth go dry. I watched, transfixed, as her biceps swelled against the torn sleeves, veins surfacing like rivers on a map suddenly flooded with rain. Her forearms thickened, wrists broadening to support the new musculature with terrifying efficiency. Her delicate features dissolving into something harder, sharper. Her cheekbones rose like mountain ranges under skin. I watched, breath catching, as her jaw squared off with an audible *pop*, the bone restructuring itself with brutal efficiency.

The final, most intimate transformation hit with a visceral wet sound—like fabric tearing underwater—as Benna’s hips snapped inward, pelvic bones grinding audibly into masculine alignment. A choked gasp escaped my throat when the shorts tented violently upward, fabric stretching obscenely tight over something thick and alive beneath. In the midst of my own transformation, I saw it with my x-ray vision, hairless skin-newly formed, flushed pink with bloodflow. Her—*his*—fingers scrabbled at the waistband, knuckles broad and veined, but the motion stalled as the first full-body shudder wracked him. His scrotum drew up tight against his body, the sac visibly filling beneath thin cotton. The sound he made wasn’t pain—it was recognition.

The first contraction hit like a stolen breath—my body seizing inward with a wet, organic sound that should have horrified me but instead sent liquid heat pooling between my thighs. My hands flew instinctively to my groin just as the second spasm rolled through me, fingers meeting the unmistakable ridge of my shrinking cock pressing desperately against the silk panties. The fabric darkened instantly with slickness, and I moaned—not from pain, but from the obscene pleasure of it, the way every millimeter of retreating flesh sent electric pulses radiating up my spine.

The third contraction arched my spine off the wall as my silk pajama shorts and panties strained. Something warm and slick gushed between my thighs—not blood, but something thicker, richer—as my hips rolled forward of their own accord, the bones grinding outward with audible pops that should have shattered my teeth from how hard I clenched them. Instead, the pain transmuted into pleasure so acute it blurred my vision, my new superhuman endurance rendering the agony irrelevant while my rewiring nervous system interpreted every structural change as ecstasy. I felt my panties and "he" was gone.

The fourth contraction tore through me with such violence that my knees buckled—except my legs didn’t collapse. They locked, muscles taut as steel cables, holding me upright while my pelvis cracked apart and reformed in real time. The sound was obscene, wet cartilage splitting like overripe fruit as my hips flared wider, the bones grinding outward to accommodate what was coming.

The fifth and final contraction wasn’t pain—it was revelation. My fingers dug into the wet silk as something inside me *unfolded*, flesh parting like theater curtains to reveal slick, hidden architecture. The sensation was obscenely precise—muscles knitting themselves into intricate new patterns, nerves rewiring with surgical accuracy, tissue blooming wet and warm where there had only been smooth skin moments before. I gasped as my body *clicked* into place, some fundamental gear in the universe shifting to acknowledge what I’d always known—she existed now.

The silence after transformation was thick with the scent of sweat, silk, and something. When the transformation finished we marveled at each other’s bodies. I specifically stared at Benna—no, *him* now—his grey shorts tented obscenely where new anatomy strained against damp fabric.

I licked my lips—slow, deliberate—letting my tongue trace the newly plush curve where my old thin lips had been. The gesture wasn’t accidental. Across the dimly lit bedroom, *his* breath hitched. Benna stood frozen by the bar. His shoulders filled his shirt like slabs of marble, veins mapping the topography of his forearms in raised relief. Benna swallowed hard. I watched his nostrils flare as my scent hit him—something floral layered over musk, unmistakably female.

“Sex. Now.” I commanded him.

“Yes, ma’am” He smiled and gave a weak salute as he then hand waved the kids, “Excuse us kids.”

We left behind smiling progeny. We sauntered upstairs—or tried to. Our new superspeed kicked in accidentally. Our bodies blurred forward in a rush of displaced air, the hallway elongating and compressing in a single dizzying instant. The world stuttered like a broken film reel, and suddenly we were kneeling on the bed, our kneecaps sinking into the memory foam as our super brains barely registered the movement. Benna’s laugh rumbled deep from his chest, that baritone vibrating against my skin where our bodies pressed together. I tasted ozone and exhilaration on my tongue. I giggled with him.

Benna’s hands—*his* hands now—hesitated at the waistband of my shorts, fingers twitching like he wasn’t sure whether to treat my body as unexploded ordinance or the world’s most elaborate gift wrapping. I arched into the touch, my hips rolling with an instinctive rhythm that made my new anatomy throb in ways I didn’t have vocabulary for yet. The sensation was alien and overwhelming—like trying to describe color to someone who’d only ever seen in black and white.

His knuckles brushed the slick heat between my legs and we both froze. The sound I made wasn’t feminine or masculine, just raw human astonishment at how *different* the nerve endings fired now. Benna’s freshly grown cock strained against his sweat shorts as he exhaled through his nose, the scent of my arousal hitting his enhanced senses like a physical blow. “Christ,” he muttered, voice roughened by hormones and wonder, “you smell like orange blossoms and lightning.”

My fingers traced the outline of him through the fabric first—the heat, the rigid length straining against cotton. Benna hissed through his teeth, his new Adam’s apple bobbing as his hips jerked involuntarily. “Different?” I murmured, dragging a nail along the seam of his sweat shorts just to watch his thighs tense. “Or just *more*?”

Benna’s breath hitched as I peeled back the waistband, revealing him fully for the first time—large, thick and flushed, veins standing in sharp relief against skin that looked almost golden under the bedroom light. The scent of him—musky and electric, like storm-charged air—flooded my enhanced senses, making my mouth water with a hunger that had nothing to do with food.

It was so big! That’s going in me? The thought flashed through my mind, half-awe and half-wild anticipation, as I stared at Benna’s his cock for the first time. My fingers hovered inches away, caught between fascination and disbelief. The sheer *scale* of him—thick as my wrist, the head flushed dark pink and already glistening—made my newly formed pussy clench instinctively. Some distant, rational part of my brain noted that Kryptonian anatomy probably accounted for the… proportions, but right now, all I could process was the heat radiating off him, the way his scent—ozone and salt and something distinctly *male*—made my mouth water.

The first brush of my fingers against him sent a visible shudder through Benna’s entire body—his new muscles tensing like steel cables beneath golden skin. “Christ,” he gasped, hips bucking as my thumb swiped over the slick head, smearing precum in a glistening trail. His voice, that rich baritone I was still getting used to, cracked on the word.

I marveled at the weight of him in my palm, the way the veins pulsed under silken skin as I stroked experimentally. The scent—something primal and electric—wrapped around my enhanced senses, making my newly rewired nerves sing. My other hand drifted between my own thighs, fingertips slipping effortlessly through slick folds that hadn’t existed yesterday. The dual sensation—his heat in my grip, mine clenching around nothing—left me lightheaded.

Benna’s breath hitched as my fingers curled around him—his entire body tensing like a bowstring drawn too tight. The moment my thumb brushed that leaking slit, his hips jerked forward with a violence that would’ve sent a normal man crashing into me. But I wasn’t normal anymore. My invulnerable frame absorbed the thrust effortlessly, my newly widened hips accommodating his movement like they’d been designed for this exact purpose.

Benna’s thrusts were relentless, each one driving deeper than the last, his new muscular form moving with the precision of someone who’d had this body for decades rather than hours. My freshly rewired nerves lit up like a supernova with every snap of his hips—every drag of that thick, veined cock along walls that didn’t have existed yesterday but now clenched around him with desperate familiarity. The first orgasm hit me like a freight train, my back arching off the bed as my nails—longer, sharper now—dug into Benna’s shoulders hard enough to leave crescent moons in his invulnerable skin.

“Again,” he growled, that baritone vibrating through my chest as his pace never faltered. His hands—larger, rougher—anchored my hips effortlessly, fingertips pressing bruises that would’ve lingered on anyone else. My second climax came before I could catch my breath, a strangled cry tearing from my throat as my vision whited out. The sheets beneath us were already soaked, my body responding with embarrassing abundance, each contraction milking him ruthlessly.

Benna’s climax hit like a seismic event—his entire body locking up, muscles standing in stark relief beneath sweat-slick skin as he buried himself to the hilt inside me. The first hot pulse of his release sent a jolt through my rewired nerves, triggering another violent orgasm that arched my spine off the mattress. His hips stuttered against mine, each thrust now shallow and desperate as he emptied himself inside me with a guttural groan that vibrated through my chest. I could *feel* it—the unfamiliar heat flooding my newly formed anatomy, the way my body instinctively clenched to draw every last drop from him.

The shower steam curled around us in the predawn darkness, my fingers tracing the unfamiliar ridges of Benna’s abs while his hands, broad and veined, soaped the dip of my waist with possessive reverence. We’d lost count after the fourth time, our Kryptonian stamina rendering exhaustion obsolete, our bodies slotting together with the kind of precision that suggested we’d been engineered for this. Water sluiced over Benna’s shoulders, his biceps flexing as he lifted me against the tile. My thighs wrapped around his hips on instinct, the motion fluid despite its newness.

Benna’s grip tightened around my thighs as he pinned me against the shower wall, his breath hot against my collarbone. My hips rolled against his instinctively, the slick friction drawing a gasp from my throat that echoed off the marble tiles. I could *hear* the exact moment Asher stirred awake upstairs, his heartbeat skipping into alertness before settling back into sleep. Superhearing had its drawbacks.

Minutes later just after Benna spilled his seeds into me again, Asher’s deep voice said softly for our superhearing to pick up, edged with that confidence and embarrassment for interrupting us. “Mom. Dad. You got to check this out. Come meet Alice.”

Water still dripped from my collarbones as I stepped into the walk-in closet—now three times its original size, with mahogany shelves that gleamed under recessed lighting. The air smelled faintly of cedar, a scent that clung to our transformed skin. Benna moved beside me, his broad shoulders blocking the light as he reached for a shirt. I watched the way his trapezius muscles flexed beneath smooth skin, the veins in his biceps standing out like topography lines on a map.

The silk slid over my hips like liquid, the fabric whispering secrets against skin that no longer felt entirely mine. I traced the waistband of the panties—*my* panties now—letting my fingertips linger where the lace dipped low over the smooth plane of my abdomen. The matching bra cupped my breasts with an intimacy that still sent a thrill through me, the straps pressing into shoulders.

Benna cleared her throat behind me, and I turned to find him with his boxer briefs, the stretchy black fabric clinging to every contour of his new anatomy. His biceps flexed as he adjusted himself, the motion so casually masculine it made my breath catch. “Problem?” he asked, catching my stare.

The exercise wear drawer slid open soundlessly, revealing the liquid silver bodysuit folded like a second skin. The material shimmered under the closet lights, molten mercury given form. “Because I *can*,” I added, grinning as the spandex slithered over my hips with a sound like a sigh. It clung to every curve—the slight swell of my tiny breasts, the dip of my waist, the flare of my thighs—as if it had been poured onto me. The high collar brushed my jawline, the long sleeves tapering to my wrists with the precision of armor.

Benna’s fingers brushed against the fabric of the charcoal-gray dress shirt, the Egyptian cotton whispering against calloused fingertips. The material draped effortlessly over shoulders now broad enough to carry the weight of worlds, the sleeves falling precisely to wrists where veins traced new rivers beneath taut skin. He fastened the mother-of-pearl buttons with movements that were already muscle memory, each click of the closures punctuating the irreversible reality of his metamorphosis.

Asher was right. We had to check it out. Apparently, our new maid and cook, Alice, stood at the stove flipping pancakes with a practiced wrist, the scent of browned butter and vanilla curling through the industrial kitchen like an invitation. Her red hair—so vibrant it seemed to catch fire in the morning light—was pinned up in a messy bun, strands escaping to frame her young, freckled cheeks. “Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins,” she chirped, her voice syrup-sweet as she glanced over her shoulder. The familiarity in her gaze unsettled me; she acted as though she’d been watching our transformations unfold for days and worked for us for years. My careless wearing of risqué clothes didn’t seem to bother her.

“Good morning,” I echoed, my voice melodic in a way that still startled me when I spoke. The scent of pancakes shouldn’t have been this intoxicating—vanilla and browned butter layered with something beneath it, the molecular breakdown of the flour, the exact temperature of the griddle—but my super-smell turned breakfast into a symphony. “Alice?” I hesitated, my fingers brushing against the cool steel prep countertop. “Do you know about our… transformations? And the powers developing?”

Alice flipped another pancake with a crisp wrist motion, the golden disc spinning briefly in midair before landing back on the griddle with a perfect splat. “Yes, ma’am,” she said without looking up, her voice carrying a warmth that felt decades older than her twenty-something appearance. “Though I reckon we talked about this five days ago when you were still… well.” Her eyes flicked to my waistline, then up to my collarbones, newly prominent beneath the spandex. “You asked if I’d keep serving the family even if you all turned into”—she waved the spatula—“whatever this is.”

Alice’s spatula froze mid-flip. The pancake hung suspended for a heartbeat too long before she caught it with practiced ease, her eyes darting to the hallway where Asher’s muffled laughter echoed. “Families keep secrets,” she murmured, pressing the pancake flat with deliberate force. “Especially ones involving…” Her gaze dropped meaningfully to my breasts. “Your my family…. And you must be hungry.”

“One more thing, Alice,” Alice’s eyes looked up curiously. I smiled warmly and continued, “Families use first names. Please don’t use any courtesies. I’m Jensen.”

Twenty minutes later, Asher, Benna, Crystal, and I ate breakfast at our 12-chair table watching the news on our 72-inch screen TV on the wall. The syrup glistened on Asher’s plate like liquid amber, catching the morning light filtering through our new bay windows—windows I didn’t remember installing. I watched, fascinated, as he speared three pancakes at once with superheroic precision, his fork barely flexing under the pressure. Across the table, Benna’s transformed hands drummed an unconscious rhythm against the mahogany. Crystal was watching geese with her telescopic vision on the pond while absentmindedly drinking her coffee.

The CNN chyron burned into my retinas—**FEDERAL MANDATE: VACCINES NOW CLASSIFIED AS UNLAWFUL**—while the correspondent’s voice dripped with bureaucratic glee. In my anger I shoved things in front of me: My fork fell on the floor with a metallic whine, hot syrup dripping onto my lap.

“Jensen,” Benna murmured, his baritone smooth as aged whiskey. His hand covered mine. The warmth grounded me, but not enough.

“They’re killing people. This authoritarian administration.” I hissed, my voice melodic in a way that still startled me.

Benna’s grip tightened—not painfully, but with that new strength that sent an unexpected shiver through me. “Babe,” he murmured, thumb stroking my knuckles. “We can’t fix genocide… yet. Give us time.”

I exhaled through my nose—long, slow—and set it down beside my untouched pancakes. The scent of maple syrup and perfect coffee usually soothed me. Not today.

Before we went to church two things startled us. The leather purse strap slipped off my strapless shoulder for the third time—an unfamiliar weight that made me pause in the foyer. The contents flew out including the wallet and items within it. As I put things away one plastic card got my attention: the name change as my fingers brushed the embossed letters on my new driver’s license: *Jennifer Elaine Jenkins*. The photo showed my face that hadn’t existed last week. My other hand unconsciously smoothed over my black church dress.

Ben—*Ben*, not Benna anymore—flipped open his billfold. The crisp new driver’s license caught the morning light streaming through the foyer windows. *Ben Michael Jenkins*. The photo showed a face that belonged on a GQ cover—or at least I thought. His thumb brushed over the raised lettering as if testing its reality. His suitcoat flexed as he scratched his head.

Before church started, Crystal’s phone chimed vibrated, the screen displaying a message. “Coach Bradley says my heat’s at 3:30,” she whispered, scrolling with on her phone laying on her summer dress. Her voice had lost the last remnants of childhood lilt—now it flowed like honey over gravel, a teenager’s confidence threaded through. Two days ago, she’d been a middle schooler in a chlorine-scented community pool. Now she was flipping her sun-streaked hair over one shoulder as a seasoned high school athlete readying for a swim meet.

During the middle of the homily, I tuned out the priest and mused. A number of questions swirled in my head like a tornado: Who was the Voice? Was she God? If she wasn’t God? Was she a god? If she wasn’t a god, what was she? Furthermore, could my family now be considered gods? It was enough to give a genius a headache. It was enough to make Father McCain’s discussions of bread and wine seem small.

That afternoon, the chlorinated air hit me like a wall when we entered the Chesapeake YMCA, stinging my newly sensitive nostrils with chemical sharpness. Crystal moved through the crowded bleachers ahead of us, her black and red competition suit clinging to curves that hadn’t existed days ago—the high-cut legs emphasizing thighs that now carried definition as she adjusted her swim cap. Ben’s large hand settled between my shoulder blades, steadying me as parents. She represented Salem High School as a sophomore in the 200 meter freestyle. Just two days ago she was in 7^th grade. Tempest fugit!

The starting gun cracked—sharp, percussive—and Crystal was airborne before the sound waves finished traveling to my enhanced ears. Her dive sliced through the humid poolside air like a blade through silk, barely disturbing the water’s surface as she entered. I blinked—once—and she was already surfacing halfway down the lane, her arms a golden blur beneath the fluorescent lights. Parents gasped; teenagers swore; officials frowned at their stopwatches as if suspecting technical malfunctions.

Crystal’s head breached the water at the 25-meter mark. She glanced sideways—just a flicker of movement—and saw the nearest competitor barely off the blocks. Something like panic flashed across her face before she deliberately altered her stroke, her limbs slowing to a pace that looked merely Olympian rather than physically impossible. Even so, her flip turn sent a small tsunami over the lane dividers, soaking the judges’ clipboards.

Ben’s fingers dug into my waist as we watched Crystal’s deliberate deceleration—her once-blurring arms now moving with calculated, human rhythm. The shift was almost comical: her legs kicking at half-speed, her head turning to check the competition like any normal swimmer might. The girl in lane four finally caught up, then passed her, and Crystal adjusted again—just enough to keep third place in before the final heat.

Ben’s breath hitched against my temple—hot, minty, and deep. “She held back,” he murmured. The realization that Crystal could’ve shattered world records by accident prickled across my skin. And yet she did indeed take just third place.

Asher’s voice cut through the ambient noise of the pool deck like a laser—every syllable crisp and intimate despite the twenty yards between us. “Hi… uh, Monica?,” he said, his newly deepened timbre carrying the effortless confidence of someone who’d never known acne or voice cracks. I watched him lean against the concession stand while the other held his phone to a face that looked more like a high school junior than the boy who’d needed help tying his shoes last winter. Yet all men are nervous when asking women on first dates. There was a shakiness to his voice. “Would you go out with me?”

Monica voice on the other end of the line countered, “Come to my 18^th birthday party tomorrow and we’ll see where it takes us.”

Asher’s fingers tightened around the phone. I watched his throat bob as he swallowed—a nervous gesture that looked strange on his suddenly chiseled jawline. “Uh, yeah,” he stammered, then visibly steeled himself. “Your birthday. That sounds great!”

They said their goodbyes. Asher’s phone slipped into his pocket with a smoothness that belied his nervous fingers moments earlier. The transformation had granted him physical grace overnight—his movements precise, effortless—but his grin was all teenage boy, wide and slightly crooked with uncontained excitement. Then his gaze snapped to us, twenty yards away, where we’d been shamelessly eavesdropping with superhuman hearing. His hazel eyes—so much like mine used to be—narrowed playfully.

Asher’s smile was half exasperation, half amusement as he strode toward us—his gait unnaturally smooth for someone who’d tripped over his own feet just last month. The indoor pool’s fluorescent lights caught the sharp angle of his cheekbones, casting shadows that made him look like he belonged on a CW show rather than a high school pool deck. “Really?” He arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow—another feature that hadn’t existed three days ago—and crossed arms that now had visible biceps straining against his red shirt. “Superhearing doesn’t mean you get to spy on your kid’s love life.” He grinned.

Before Ben or I could pepper Asher with questions about Monica—though god knows my fingers were already twitching toward my phone to google this mystery girl—Crystal’s final heat flashed on the overhead scoreboard. The starting buzzer sounded, and our daughter dove in with agonizing restraint, her powerful legs barely disturbing the water’s surface. It was like watching an Olympic athlete pretending to struggle in a kiddie pool—every movement precise yet deliberately sluggish, her strokes calculated to appear merely competent rather than supernatural.

Crystal’s fingers slapped the wall a fraction of a second before the girl in lane four—her nails barely grazing the touchpad as she deliberately slowed her final strokes to make it believable. The electronic board flashed her time: 26.78 seconds. First place by two-hundredths. The crowd erupted in polite applause while Crystal pulled herself from the water, her breathing deliberately ragged despite the fact her lungs hadn’t needed oxygen for days.

Crystal’s dripping form climbed from the pool with the casual elegance of someone who’d forgotten how gravity worked—her movements too fluid, effortless. After she took her swim cap off, she shook water from her honey-blonde hair in a slow-motion arc that caught the chlorine-scented air like a shampoo commercial, droplets suspending momentarily before raining onto the tiles.

The droplets clinging to Crystal’s eyelashes caught the fluorescent lights like diamonds as she approached us—her hips swaying in a rhythm. I barely recognized the young woman. Yesterday’s gangly preteen had vanished, replaced by this statuesque adolescent whose collarbones cast shadows down her chlorine-scented cleavage.

Ben’s broad shoulders blocked my view as he surged forward, wrapping Crystal in a bear hug that lifted her clear off the ground—his effortless strength evident in the way her dripping one-piece barely wrinkled under his grip. “That’s my girl!” His deepened voice boomed across the natatorium, turning heads. We all followed suit by hugging her deeply; we were really proud of her.

Later that night we had our traditional popcorn and apples night. The tradition involved watching a show while eating said food and having beverages-usually beer. We’ve been doing this pastime since when the kids were babies. The projector screen flickered to life in our new home theater—a space that hadn’t existed yesterday, with its tiered leather recliners and acoustically perfect walls. Crystal curled into her seat with feline grace, her chlorine-bleached hair now dry and cascading over shoulders that had visibly broadened. Asher sprawled beside her, his lanky teenage limbs already outgrowing the plush chair, one hand unconsciously flexing as if testing his biceps.

The opening credits rolled over a live-action city skyline at twilight—National City, judging by the Art Deco spires—as the title *The B&B Four* burned across the screen in blue plasma. Asher smirked at his choice, fingers drumming the armrest with unconscious speed, popcorn kernels bouncing from the vibration. Onscreen, a nuclear family in skintight suits materialized midair: the father, Beast, giant patriarch with massive leather boots; his wife, Beast, whose pink bodysuit strained against impossible curves as she arrested a falling monorail with telekinetic pink energy; their teenage son, Manimal, cocky and debonair, climbing the side of a collapsing building with his claws; and their teenage daughter, Superbabe, whose mind-controlling disarm bank robbers.

The screen flashed with Beauty midair, her black tinted, panty hose-clad thighs flexing as she effortlessly redirected a crashing helicopter through a teleportation portal-fingers twitched against my own thigh, phantom muscles remembering today’s accidental crash through the sliding glass door when I overran my ringing phone. Ben’s thumb traced my knuckles, his grip warm and unfamiliar in its roughness. Onscreen, Beast bellowed orders to his family while lifting an entire subway train overhead, veins bulging—Asher made a soft, considering noise in the back of his throat, his newly deepened voice humming like a plucked bass string.

Crystal stretched across the recliners, her legs draped over Asher’s lap. “They’re sloppy,” Crystal murmured, tilting her chin at the screen where Manimal nearly collided with a collapsing water tower. “If we—” Her fingers flexed.

Ben snorted, his Adam’s apple bobbing sharply . “You’d stop the train first,” he rumbled, his knee bouncing against mine. The sectional groaned under his redistributed weight—heavier today, denser. “No grandstanding.”

Then we looked at each other and laughed at the same time, the absurdity of our armchair quarterbacking. Silently, I realized this was our life soon. And that made me eerily content .

The moonlight pooled like liquid mercury on the pond behind our house. The others were asleep, or trying to be. We almost did not sleep anymore. Asher had sprawled across his bed like a starfish, one arm dangling over Raccoon’s curled form. Crystal had drifted off mid-sentence in the theater room, her phone still glowing with swim meet stats. And Ben—Ben had rolled onto his side with a grunt in our massive bed, his new shoulders reshaping the mattress indents. The digital clock in the kitchen blinked 11:58 PM when I slipped out the back door in a partially see through nightgown, barefoot on the frost-stiffened grass. I wanted a change of scenery for my transformation. My toes didn’t feel the cold—just the strange, humming energy beneath my skin, the same pulse that had been building since sunset. I knew what was coming.

The pond’s surface trembled as my reflection rippled—not from wind, but from the convulsion wracking my body. I barely had time to gasp before my spine elongated with a series of audible pops, my view of the stars stretching farther away as I gained inches. My hands spasmed fingers elongating as knuckles realigned with tiny, wet clicks. Moonlight caught the new elegance of my wrists, the tendons shifting like silk threads beneath skin that glowed pearlescent. I turned my palms upward and watched the last remnants of calluses dissolve, my fingertips tapering into delicate points. These weren’t a historian’s hands anymore. These were the hands of someone who would split mountains or cradle a hummingbird’s heartbeat. My arms lifted of their own accord, drawn upward by some unseen puppeteer as the moonlight traced every new contour. The muscle definition wasn’t bulky—nothing like Ben’s emerging Superman physique—but sleek, like a dancer’s. The moonlight traced the new topography of my legs—longer, impossibly so, the calves taut with lean muscle that hadn’t existed at breakfast. My knees realigned with a series of soft pops, the joints sliding higher up my thighs as my silhouette stretched toward the treeline. The pond’s edge was suddenly farther away, my perspective shifting dizzyingly as I gained height inch by inch. My toes barely touched the grass now, the arches of my feet lifting into an elegant curve that made me feel perpetually en pointe. I swayed, catching my balance with alien grace—a giraffe’s lanky poise trapped in human skin. I looked at my ethereal reflection in the pond.

“Oh my!” I said allowed not carrying who heard, “I’m almost Superwoman!”