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Description
The Transmogrification
Perfesser Bear

I blame my Redneck Neighbor.

It had to be his fault. It was after midnight that night as I closed Rupert's cover and the huge laptop went into sleep mode. Early July, but the night was cool, dry and comfortable; I'd had the window next to my recliner open since about 6:00 PM. I got up to let Cami and Grizz in from their final foray in the front yard. The air, that had been so fresh and sweet, was suddenly fetid with the funk of burning chemicals. My Redneck Neighbor, again. It's illegal to burn trash in the open without a permit anywhere in the State of Connecticut, but that flaming bag of poo couldn't be bothered. Trailer trash, you know the type.

The smell was particularly bad. Not just the usual stench of burning plastic packaging and disposable diapers. There was something else on the breeze, an acrid, synthetic reek that reminded me of pool chlorine and insecticide. It aggravated my COPD; I started a strange, dry cough: Kaff kah! Kaff kah! I stepped back inside as the dogs trooped in through the door. They didn't seem right; they acted edgy and nervous, as though something bothered them, too. I chalked it up to the garbage fire up the street. I closed the door before going to bed, for the first time in weeks.

The alarm on my phone went off at 8:00 AM. Cami, curled up in her usual position at my waist, stirred and stretched. I rubbed her tummy absently for a moment before Grizz's familiar mug appeared over the edge of the mattress. I ruffled the soft fur under his throat and grabbed the phone to silence the raucous music.

I dropped it on the floor. My hand was -- wasn't my hand. Thick, light brown hair covered both arms up to the sleeves of my T-shirt. The shirt was much too tight, too; I had put on a few pounds since I had been out of work, but this was one of the XXL overstocks I'd bought from the Job Lot. It was huge on me when I had gone to bed the previous night. Why was it so snug, now? I tried to put my slippers on, but found my feet and legs were already covered with the same hair that blanketed my hands and arms. I swung out of bed to find the mirror -- and lost my mind.

Nothing I had experienced that morning could have prepared me for the sight that greeted me from the glass. Heavy, light brown hair -- fur -- covered my body from the crown of my head to the tops of my feet. My eyes were larger and considerably darker than their usual green-brown hazel. Even my ears were in the wrong place; they had migrated toward the top of my head. They swiveled and folded as I examined the monster in the mirror. I pulled the too-snug shirt off, having to stretch the collar over my head, and dropped it on the floor behind me. I retained the stretched-out warehouse club briefs I wore to bed.

I am addicted to the science channels on the cable. I watch all the animal shows as they premiere. I knew, in my heart, what I was looking at. Ursus arctos horribilis: the grizzled Northern Bear. A graying mantle stretched across my back and down across my chest. My -- mouth? Chin? My muzzle was similarly grayed over. I mean, yes, I recently turned sixty, but this was really overdoing it.

I knew what I had to do. I called The Kitsune. Of all the people I had ever met, she would understand. I picked up the phone -- the alarm had snoozed -- and fumbled her speed-dial number. Amazingly, the phone responded to my new, scimitar-like claws as well as it had to my fingers.

"Hey, Babe," the familiar voice flowed like honey from the speaker. "What's up?"

"I've got big problems," I rumbled. It was the first time that morning I had tried my voice; I was almost amazed I still had one.

"You sound terrible, are you okay?"

"Nuh. Are you alone?"

"I'm at work, in the refurbished linen closet they laughingly call my office, but yes, I'm alone. What's going on?"

"I don't know. I'm going to turn on the camera, though."

I heard her gasp. The Kitsune uses almost the same tablet I do, and to her, it's interchangeable with her phone, except it has a 10" screen. That’s a lot of real estate to be a Bear in. "What -- ? When did this happen"

"Last night. I don't know, overnight. I went to bed normal, but I woke up like this."

"We discussed this, Babe. You aren't a Shapeshifter, one of the 'Secret One Percent'. I mean, I would have known."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Uh, look, can we get together? Real soon?"

"Sure, yes! I… I'm taking a half day. I'll be there a little after noon."

"Good, thanks Babe. See you then. Love you."

"Right, ah, you too." My phone went back to the dial screen.

I was starving. What could I eat? Did my new body come with any new food sensitivities?

I decided that bears ate most anything humans could, and lots of it. I got out a half-full, large, Warehouse Club size carton of yogurt and a spoon. I started to get out a bowl, but thought better of it. It would just go to waste. I started on the yogurt as soon as I had the dogs fed, and seriously, their chow smelled awfully good to me that morning. I emptied the carton and refilled it with corn flakes and milk. I still wanted something else, so I ate most of a five pound bag of apples and started in on the bunch of bananas ripening on top of the fridge.

I frittered some time away on the web -- I had no problem reading or writing English, although my claws would surely destroy the keyboard soon. It seemed that whatever happened to me had been a localized phenomenon -- there were no mentions of any similar metamorphoses. That said, I didn't think I was going record my condition for VideYodel.com anytime soon.

As good as her word, The Kitsune arrived at exactly ten minutes after noon. The dogs alerted on the sound of her car rumbling down the street and ran to the door to greet her. For… reasons, she's not overly fond of dogs, and Foxhounds leave her mortified, but she tolerates my mutts and they adore her for it. Still, she did a double take when I opened the back door. "Inside," she hissed, "Someone will see you." I ducked back into the dining room. She peered at every inch of me as she walked in a small circle around my new body. "What do you remember?" I related the events of the previous night and the morning in as much detail as I could recall or she could elicit.

She stood on tip-toe and peered in my eyes. "Didn't you used to be, like, five-foot-eleven?"

"Yeah?"

"Measuring tape."

"On my nightstand, there's a six-footer."

"Not going to do it."

"What? Okay, there's a ten-footer on my brother's bookshelf."

"Good, get it." I got.

She had me stand in the archway from the kitchen to the living room. An awful lot of steel tape sounds later, she nodded, "Exactly six feet, four inches."

"Wait, I'm five inches taller?"

"You're more than a foot taller than me, now. Get on the scale, big boy." I numbly complied. "Three-forty," she read off the dial, "What have you been eating?" I told her, and she shook her head. "It doesn't fit with the conservation of mass theorem."

"What, that Shapeshifters maintain their weight when they shift? That's why you make such a big damned fox?"

"Yes, but I don't think I'm that big. In feral form, that is."

"Right. Foxes run five to thirty pounds, and you're --"

"Let's -- worry about you, right now, shall we? Why you are suddenly so tall and so, well..."

"Handsome? Attractive? Bear?"

"The latter. You've always had a touch of a Grizzly nature."

"Hence the nickname; right. I don't have a clue. I'm sure the smoke had something to do with it, but why a bear?"

She studied me through her glasses, tapping her chin with two fingers as was her wont. "This is out of my league. Time to bring in the Big Guns."

"Wait, who? Your Mother?"

"Who better? I want to consult with her and Gran."

"I don't know, Victor Frankenstein?" The Kitsune's Mother is a brilliant surgeon and medical administrator. For all she's only five feet tall and just a couple of years older than me, she's the scariest supernatural being in my knowledge. E'en strong men quake for fear is no exaggeration in her presence.

"Do you want help or not?" That ended the conversation. The only thing I could find to wear was a huge knitted jacket or robe I had acquired from somewhere. I couldn't fit into The Kitsune's car, so we took Yubari, but she drove. It was three hours to the senior Kitsune's place in Upstate New York with only sparse conversation.

The Kitsune's Mother arrived at 4:30 sharp; her mother, The Grandmother, was already present. She spoke not a word, but raised one eyebrow and waved me into the formal dining room, where The Kitsune was already drawing the blinds. The Star Chamber. I had been there only once before, and I still had mixed emotions about it. Once the doors were closed, the women dropped all pretense of humanity and shifted to their transitional forms. I stood, an anthropomorphic bear surrounded by three anthropomorphic Vixens. "Speak," was the only word from She Who Must be Obeyed.

I related my tale again. The Mother interrupted several times to demand details. At the end, she snapped simply, "Disrobe, please."

"What, here?"

The Grandmother nodded gently, "We're both Doctors, dear, and I'm sure my Granddaughter has seen you unclothed, before." A smile creased her gray muzzle. I sighed and laid the knit robe over the back of the settee, and put my thumbs in the woefully stretched waistband of my briefs. She just nodded and I dropped them.

The women all regarded me in the all-together for a few moments. They conferred a bit under in lowered voices, a patois of Medicalese and terrifying Fox Magic. As the senior, the Grandmother finally addressed me. "Pull up your small clothes son, and have a seat." I pulled up the shorts and waited. "We have heard of similar cases among our own kind, records of Shapeshifters who got stuck in their feral or transitional forms."

"But I'm not a 'One Percenter', am I?"

"No, my dear, you certainly are not. We could have told if you were, the first time we met." She tapped her shiny, black nose for emphasis. "You were human, now you are something else. We don't know what that is. There is no record of this happening before, at least that I'm aware of." The great record keeper was stumped. This did not bode well.

"So, what will happen to me? What should I do?"

The Mother started to open her mouth, probably to suggest I try to stop a train with my face, but her Mother interrupted her. "I don't think there's anything you can do. We don't know what caused your change, and we can't suggest any way to make you change back."

I was almost maudlin during the ride back home. The Kitsune was upbeat for a while, but I could tell it was starting to wear on her. I went over my options in my mind -- there weren't a lot of them -- but something hit me. "Hey, Babe, I've got a real problem."

"What now? How to update your Social Media photos?"

"Ha, ha. No, I have an eligibility assessment for Unemployment tomorrow."

"So just call them and reschedule it."

"Can't. It's mandatory; I have to show or I'll lose my benefits."

"So... What's the worst that can happen? Animal Control shows up with a tranq gun and a steel capture noose?"

"Boy, you guys have it all worked out, don't you?"

"They were still burning werewolves in the 19th Century. Caution works in our favor."

"Right. What would happen if I showed up at Department of Labor with a briefcase?"

She chewed on that. I couldn't see any escape for it.

That's exactly what I did. I walked into the DoL offices at 10:30 with my knit robe and my briefcase. The receptionist was dumbfounded, but managed to squeak, "H-help?"

"My name is Bear; I have an evaluation with Ms. Politano?"

She picked up her phone, her eyes never leaving mine, and dialed three digits. "Politano," the phone squawked.

"Bear," the receptionist gasped.

"I'm sorry, is someone there?"

"Bear!" the receptionist repeated, much louder.

"Oh, Mr. Bear, my 10:30. I'll be right out."

The door opened and a middle-aged State bureaucrat stepped out. "Won't you..."

I smiled as sweetly as I could manage, without showing my teeth -- which were terrifying, even to me. "I have all the paperwork ready for you."

"Muh," Ms. Politano nodded. She waved me in. I opened the briefcase and handed her the papers, which she accepted as though they were crawling with scorpions. "How... What…"

I shook my head, in a manner I hoped conveyed bemusement, "I don't understand it myself. I just woke up like this yesterday morning."

"Is that -- are you real?" she finally ground out.

"I'm afraid so. Here, this is my Driver's License, and here's my Pistol Permit. This is what I used to look like, and this," indicating more than a sixth of a ton of bear, "Is what I look like now."

It took a while, but she finally calmed down. Ms. Politano eventually determined that no way, no how, was any prospective employer ever going to hire me. She pensively tapped a pencil on her desk. "It's a medical condition," she decided.

I didn't expect that. "It is?"

"A sudden change, brought about by..."

"I think my neighbor tried to poison me."

She scribbled that in her notes. She got up, retrieved a form from a file cabinet, filled out the top of it and handed it to me. "Take this to the Hospital, and have them complete it. It's a statement of total disability. They shouldn't give you any trouble."

It was exactly as she told me. Once the Charge Nurse at Outpatient Care got over her initial fright, she turned me over to the M.D. on duty. It turned out his parents ran a live bear show in New Hampshire; he warmed to the task pretty quickly. He passed the form back to me. "No worries, Mr. Bear. You're disqualified for work for life."

Some offers, however, did come in, as news of my transformation spread. It was the digital age -- there were no secrets. Most of the offers were for appearances on TV and in some live shows. A freak show on Coney Island made me an almost obscene offer to appear six months out of the year. It was tempting, but I didn't want to move.

It had been six weeks. There was no change, for better or worse, this was the new me. Tonight, as I made dinner for The Kitsune and myself, she brought something to me. "What's this, Babe?"

It was a small statuette, maybe three inches tall. A teddy bear, dressed up in a bulky knit sweater with patches on the elbows. He sat amid a pile of books and chalk, holding a slate in one hand and a half-eaten apple in the other. He stared out over a pair of rectangular pince-nez spectacles.

You probably saw it; I used it as my avatar for years…

Description
The Transmogrification
Perfesser Bear

I blame my Redneck Neighbor.

It had to be his fault. It was after midnight that night as I closed Rupert's cover and the huge laptop went into sleep mode. Early July, but the night was cool, dry and comfortable; I'd had the window next to my recliner open since about 6:00 PM. I got up to let Cami and Grizz in from their final foray in the front yard. The air, that had been so fresh and sweet, was suddenly fetid with the funk of burning chemicals. My Redneck Neighbor, again. It's illegal to burn trash in the open without a permit anywhere in the State of Connecticut, but that flaming bag of poo couldn't be bothered. Trailer trash, you know the type.

The smell was particularly bad. Not just the usual stench of burning plastic packaging and disposable diapers. There was something else on the breeze, an acrid, synthetic reek that reminded me of pool chlorine and insecticide. It aggravated my COPD; I started a strange, dry cough: Kaff kah! Kaff kah! I stepped back inside as the dogs trooped in through the door. They didn't seem right; they acted edgy and nervous, as though something bothered them, too. I chalked it up to the garbage fire up the street. I closed the door before going to bed, for the first time in weeks.

The alarm on my phone went off at 8:00 AM. Cami, curled up in her usual position at my waist, stirred and stretched. I rubbed her tummy absently for a moment before Grizz's familiar mug appeared over the edge of the mattress. I ruffled the soft fur under his throat and grabbed the phone to silence the raucous music.

I dropped it on the floor. My hand was -- wasn't my hand. Thick, light brown hair covered both arms up to the sleeves of my T-shirt. The shirt was much too tight, too; I had put on a few pounds since I had been out of work, but this was one of the XXL overstocks I'd bought from the Job Lot. It was huge on me when I had gone to bed the previous night. Why was it so snug, now? I tried to put my slippers on, but found my feet and legs were already covered with the same hair that blanketed my hands and arms. I swung out of bed to find the mirror -- and lost my mind.

Nothing I had experienced that morning could have prepared me for the sight that greeted me from the glass. Heavy, light brown hair -- fur -- covered my body from the crown of my head to the tops of my feet. My eyes were larger and considerably darker than their usual green-brown hazel. Even my ears were in the wrong place; they had migrated toward the top of my head. They swiveled and folded as I examined the monster in the mirror. I pulled the too-snug shirt off, having to stretch the collar over my head, and dropped it on the floor behind me. I retained the stretched-out warehouse club briefs I wore to bed.

I am addicted to the science channels on the cable. I watch all the animal shows as they premiere. I knew, in my heart, what I was looking at. Ursus arctos horribilis: the grizzled Northern Bear. A graying mantle stretched across my back and down across my chest. My -- mouth? Chin? My muzzle was similarly grayed over. I mean, yes, I recently turned sixty, but this was really overdoing it.

I knew what I had to do. I called The Kitsune. Of all the people I had ever met, she would understand. I picked up the phone -- the alarm had snoozed -- and fumbled her speed-dial number. Amazingly, the phone responded to my new, scimitar-like claws as well as it had to my fingers.

"Hey, Babe," the familiar voice flowed like honey from the speaker. "What's up?"

"I've got big problems," I rumbled. It was the first time that morning I had tried my voice; I was almost amazed I still had one.

"You sound terrible, are you okay?"

"Nuh. Are you alone?"

"I'm at work, in the refurbished linen closet they laughingly call my office, but yes, I'm alone. What's going on?"

"I don't know. I'm going to turn on the camera, though."

I heard her gasp. The Kitsune uses almost the same tablet I do, and to her, it's interchangeable with her phone, except it has a 10" screen. That’s a lot of real estate to be a Bear in. "What -- ? When did this happen"

"Last night. I don't know, overnight. I went to bed normal, but I woke up like this."

"We discussed this, Babe. You aren't a Shapeshifter, one of the 'Secret One Percent'. I mean, I would have known."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Uh, look, can we get together? Real soon?"

"Sure, yes! I… I'm taking a half day. I'll be there a little after noon."

"Good, thanks Babe. See you then. Love you."

"Right, ah, you too." My phone went back to the dial screen.

I was starving. What could I eat? Did my new body come with any new food sensitivities?

I decided that bears ate most anything humans could, and lots of it. I got out a half-full, large, Warehouse Club size carton of yogurt and a spoon. I started to get out a bowl, but thought better of it. It would just go to waste. I started on the yogurt as soon as I had the dogs fed, and seriously, their chow smelled awfully good to me that morning. I emptied the carton and refilled it with corn flakes and milk. I still wanted something else, so I ate most of a five pound bag of apples and started in on the bunch of bananas ripening on top of the fridge.

I frittered some time away on the web -- I had no problem reading or writing English, although my claws would surely destroy the keyboard soon. It seemed that whatever happened to me had been a localized phenomenon -- there were no mentions of any similar metamorphoses. That said, I didn't think I was going record my condition for VideYodel.com anytime soon.

As good as her word, The Kitsune arrived at exactly ten minutes after noon. The dogs alerted on the sound of her car rumbling down the street and ran to the door to greet her. For… reasons, she's not overly fond of dogs, and Foxhounds leave her mortified, but she tolerates my mutts and they adore her for it. Still, she did a double take when I opened the back door. "Inside," she hissed, "Someone will see you." I ducked back into the dining room. She peered at every inch of me as she walked in a small circle around my new body. "What do you remember?" I related the events of the previous night and the morning in as much detail as I could recall or she could elicit.

She stood on tip-toe and peered in my eyes. "Didn't you used to be, like, five-foot-eleven?"

"Yeah?"

"Measuring tape."

"On my nightstand, there's a six-footer."

"Not going to do it."

"What? Okay, there's a ten-footer on my brother's bookshelf."

"Good, get it." I got.

She had me stand in the archway from the kitchen to the living room. An awful lot of steel tape sounds later, she nodded, "Exactly six feet, four inches."

"Wait, I'm five inches taller?"

"You're more than a foot taller than me, now. Get on the scale, big boy." I numbly complied. "Three-forty," she read off the dial, "What have you been eating?" I told her, and she shook her head. "It doesn't fit with the conservation of mass theorem."

"What, that Shapeshifters maintain their weight when they shift? That's why you make such a big damned fox?"

"Yes, but I don't think I'm that big. In feral form, that is."

"Right. Foxes run five to thirty pounds, and you're --"

"Let's -- worry about you, right now, shall we? Why you are suddenly so tall and so, well..."

"Handsome? Attractive? Bear?"

"The latter. You've always had a touch of a Grizzly nature."

"Hence the nickname; right. I don't have a clue. I'm sure the smoke had something to do with it, but why a bear?"

She studied me through her glasses, tapping her chin with two fingers as was her wont. "This is out of my league. Time to bring in the Big Guns."

"Wait, who? Your Mother?"

"Who better? I want to consult with her and Gran."

"I don't know, Victor Frankenstein?" The Kitsune's Mother is a brilliant surgeon and medical administrator. For all she's only five feet tall and just a couple of years older than me, she's the scariest supernatural being in my knowledge. E'en strong men quake for fear is no exaggeration in her presence.

"Do you want help or not?" That ended the conversation. The only thing I could find to wear was a huge knitted jacket or robe I had acquired from somewhere. I couldn't fit into The Kitsune's car, so we took Yubari, but she drove. It was three hours to the senior Kitsune's place in Upstate New York with only sparse conversation.

The Kitsune's Mother arrived at 4:30 sharp; her mother, The Grandmother, was already present. She spoke not a word, but raised one eyebrow and waved me into the formal dining room, where The Kitsune was already drawing the blinds. The Star Chamber. I had been there only once before, and I still had mixed emotions about it. Once the doors were closed, the women dropped all pretense of humanity and shifted to their transitional forms. I stood, an anthropomorphic bear surrounded by three anthropomorphic Vixens. "Speak," was the only word from She Who Must be Obeyed.

I related my tale again. The Mother interrupted several times to demand details. At the end, she snapped simply, "Disrobe, please."

"What, here?"

The Grandmother nodded gently, "We're both Doctors, dear, and I'm sure my Granddaughter has seen you unclothed, before." A smile creased her gray muzzle. I sighed and laid the knit robe over the back of the settee, and put my thumbs in the woefully stretched waistband of my briefs. She just nodded and I dropped them.

The women all regarded me in the all-together for a few moments. They conferred a bit under in lowered voices, a patois of Medicalese and terrifying Fox Magic. As the senior, the Grandmother finally addressed me. "Pull up your small clothes son, and have a seat." I pulled up the shorts and waited. "We have heard of similar cases among our own kind, records of Shapeshifters who got stuck in their feral or transitional forms."

"But I'm not a 'One Percenter', am I?"

"No, my dear, you certainly are not. We could have told if you were, the first time we met." She tapped her shiny, black nose for emphasis. "You were human, now you are something else. We don't know what that is. There is no record of this happening before, at least that I'm aware of." The great record keeper was stumped. This did not bode well.

"So, what will happen to me? What should I do?"

The Mother started to open her mouth, probably to suggest I try to stop a train with my face, but her Mother interrupted her. "I don't think there's anything you can do. We don't know what caused your change, and we can't suggest any way to make you change back."

I was almost maudlin during the ride back home. The Kitsune was upbeat for a while, but I could tell it was starting to wear on her. I went over my options in my mind -- there weren't a lot of them -- but something hit me. "Hey, Babe, I've got a real problem."

"What now? How to update your Social Media photos?"

"Ha, ha. No, I have an eligibility assessment for Unemployment tomorrow."

"So just call them and reschedule it."

"Can't. It's mandatory; I have to show or I'll lose my benefits."

"So... What's the worst that can happen? Animal Control shows up with a tranq gun and a steel capture noose?"

"Boy, you guys have it all worked out, don't you?"

"They were still burning werewolves in the 19th Century. Caution works in our favor."

"Right. What would happen if I showed up at Department of Labor with a briefcase?"

She chewed on that. I couldn't see any escape for it.

That's exactly what I did. I walked into the DoL offices at 10:30 with my knit robe and my briefcase. The receptionist was dumbfounded, but managed to squeak, "H-help?"

"My name is Bear; I have an evaluation with Ms. Politano?"

She picked up her phone, her eyes never leaving mine, and dialed three digits. "Politano," the phone squawked.

"Bear," the receptionist gasped.

"I'm sorry, is someone there?"

"Bear!" the receptionist repeated, much louder.

"Oh, Mr. Bear, my 10:30. I'll be right out."

The door opened and a middle-aged State bureaucrat stepped out. "Won't you..."

I smiled as sweetly as I could manage, without showing my teeth -- which were terrifying, even to me. "I have all the paperwork ready for you."

"Muh," Ms. Politano nodded. She waved me in. I opened the briefcase and handed her the papers, which she accepted as though they were crawling with scorpions. "How... What…"

I shook my head, in a manner I hoped conveyed bemusement, "I don't understand it myself. I just woke up like this yesterday morning."

"Is that -- are you real?" she finally ground out.

"I'm afraid so. Here, this is my Driver's License, and here's my Pistol Permit. This is what I used to look like, and this," indicating more than a sixth of a ton of bear, "Is what I look like now."

It took a while, but she finally calmed down. Ms. Politano eventually determined that no way, no how, was any prospective employer ever going to hire me. She pensively tapped a pencil on her desk. "It's a medical condition," she decided.

I didn't expect that. "It is?"

"A sudden change, brought about by..."

"I think my neighbor tried to poison me."

She scribbled that in her notes. She got up, retrieved a form from a file cabinet, filled out the top of it and handed it to me. "Take this to the Hospital, and have them complete it. It's a statement of total disability. They shouldn't give you any trouble."

It was exactly as she told me. Once the Charge Nurse at Outpatient Care got over her initial fright, she turned me over to the M.D. on duty. It turned out his parents ran a live bear show in New Hampshire; he warmed to the task pretty quickly. He passed the form back to me. "No worries, Mr. Bear. You're disqualified for work for life."

Some offers, however, did come in, as news of my transformation spread. It was the digital age -- there were no secrets. Most of the offers were for appearances on TV and in some live shows. A freak show on Coney Island made me an almost obscene offer to appear six months out of the year. It was tempting, but I didn't want to move.

It had been six weeks. There was no change, for better or worse, this was the new me. Tonight, as I made dinner for The Kitsune and myself, she brought something to me. "What's this, Babe?"

It was a small statuette, maybe three inches tall. A teddy bear, dressed up in a bulky knit sweater with patches on the elbows. He sat amid a pile of books and chalk, holding a slate in one hand and a half-eaten apple in the other. He stared out over a pair of rectangular pince-nez spectacles.

You probably saw it; I used it as my avatar for years…