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As Christmas gifts go, it was a peculiar one. It had arrived a few days after December 25th as a calendar invite in her email. Emily had felt her phone ding midway through her drive home after spending the holidays at a friend's place, and finally saw the message when she sat down in front of her desk back at her apartment.

The message was from a writing friend of hers, who she knew only though their internet pseudonym. It was a ticket to a weekend writing workshop taking place in a month just across town. Accommodations were included. Apparently, they would also be attending.

"Empathizing with your characters: A masterclass," read the tagline. It was taught by someone whose name did not seem familiar, and was soon forgotten. After checking the timing and bumping back a dinner night with a friend from back in school, she sent a confirmation back, and set the time in her calendar, curious but excited.

A few weeks into January, Emily threw her laptop case into the passenger seat of her car and proceeded to fight the frightful weather for thirty kilometres until arriving at a convention centre near the airport. She parked in one of the spots marked for the event, and walked through a hundred metres of blistering winter chill to reach the door. She pulled the door open and found a few people milling about in the reception area. One of them, a young man sporting brown hair and a denim jacket watched her enter, taking in her red curls and round glasses.

They all took their seats at the comfortable desks in the conference room. A greying older gentleman sat up from behind the podium, wearing a red plaid jacket and jeans. He smiled warmly at the twenty-or-so folks gathered around, checked his watch, and launched into an introduction.

"Good morning, folks! Welcome to the class. I hope you're all excited for what's we've got in store for the next two days. We've got a fairly tight schedule, and while I know as well as any of you that you can't rush writing, I'm hoping that the lessons of today go on to serve you well no matter the writing that you do in the future. I'm Eric Aldwin. You may know me from any of the novels I published, or you may not. Apparently, you thought the premise of this event enough to trust that I have my wits about me. So, let's go around the room quickly and introduce everyone..."

By the time everyone's focus returned to the front of the room, everyone had forgotten everyone else's name. Eric continued smiling warmly. "Alright, so, again, welcome everyone. Let's get down to business. You are all writers of either some reputation, or those someday hoping to be. We're going to be focusing on one critical area of skill, that being describing the thoughts and feelings of someone unlike ourselves. I'm going to pass out slips of paper. I want you all to take one from the bowl, at random, and unfold it and read it for yourself." He handed a small fishbowl full of paper slips from behind the podium to the writer at the front left of the room. She reached in, grabbed a slip, and handed the bowl to the person seated to her right.

It took about two minutes for the bowl to reach Emily, during which Eric explained the plan. "Each of you should get some character on your slip. I want you all to take the character and write a quick story from their perspective. Have them just waking up in the morning and going to get breakfast. Think, specifically, about what they face that you don't in the course of that routine. You're all going to be expanding off of this concept as we go ahead over the weekend."

The bowl lands in front of Emily. She pulls out a slip, and passes the rest down the line. She unfolds the small piece of paper and reads it over.

"Nine-tailed kitsune girl."

Emily blinked, slightly taken aback by this suggestion. It really wasn't what she was expecting, imagining more of a real-world cultural difference or something. But nope. Ancient Japanese fantasy creature. Which was totally okay with her.

Once everyone was armed with a paper, Eric addressed the group. "Alright, let's rock!"

What are the differences for her? Let's call her Caoli. What's different for Caoli? Tails are cumbersome. What does a kitsune look like beyond the tails...?

A countdown timer began on the projector screen at the front of the room. Crap, let's roll with it.

"Caoli woke up to the rising sun peeking through the curtains of her pagoda. She rises from her simple bed in the centre of the open floor, and rolls onto her four feet. The clumsy appendages were unbecoming of the creature's godlike radiance. With the glow of the sky filling the room, she steps over to pull open the curtains, feeling the sway of her tails resonate through her as the light begins to pour in. The energy of the sun slowly reinvigorates her, and her powers begin to surface, bringing with them an awareness of the world around her. She forces herself to ignore it."

Emily resumed her contemplation. Crap. Now where do I go? I don't know the first thing about this...

She continued for another hundred words, imagining the issues of the creature's morning, faced with the difficulty of fox feet, the awkwardness of tails, the pain of feeling the world around you that well.

The timer reached zero on the far wall, prompting Emily to finish the sentence she was on and hit "save".

Eric spoke up again. "Well, I have to imagine that most of you have written very little. That's okay, we're going to be talking about how to do it better...."

The workshop continued well into the afternoon. After dinner, Emily headed to the hotel across the street, found her room, and promptly sought sleep. It soon found her.

As she lay between the sheets on the fourteenth floor of the hotel, a dark glow began to seep from the nametag for the course. The mysterious haze drifted over from the bedside table and began to settle over her sleeping form. The dark mist slowly grew in brightness, reaching a dull red then a hot orange, before falling into her skin in a wave. As the phantasmal energy permeated the woman, her form began to shift and change. She snored and sniffled, before quietly sneezing out a few white glistening hairs from her newly formed muzzle. The curly red hair on her head flashed to white as the glow fell into it, straightening out to reach down to her waist. As the end of the push of hair on her head progressed, so did the hair on her face and ears, filling out to form a golden-orange fuzz.

The wave of energy continued down her body, rippling up her arms. Her fingernails extended out into sharp points as the skin grew darker except around pads on her palms and fingers.

Along her forearms, the wave pushed out light white fur. The wave reached her back, and the sheets of the bed rippled as the energy flashed nine black-tipped fox tails into existence, all drooped over in sleep. Emily rolled onto her front, pushing the blanket up a foot with her newfound tails. The motion of transformation reached her legs, where her ankle and feet reshaped in a flash into something better suited for bearings weight through the toes, toes which now were punctuated by light black fur and hooked claws.

With all the changes done, the power of the transformation coagulated into a blue glowing ball of light in front of her nose. One deep breath later, it had disappeared. Moments later, the same blue glow rippled along the length of the kitsune in her bed. And then all was still.

In the morning, Emily awoke with a start. Her alarm had not gone off, she knew, but the feeling of the morning beginning felt strong to her. Glancing at the window revealed the barest crack of light shining on the horizon, but she already felt energized and awake. She swung her legs off the bed and soundlessly hopped to her feet. The dark of the room was broken by the rippling glow that shone from her hands as she stepped over to the front entry of the hotel room. The air in the room was far too cold for comfort, but entirely survivable for a creature of fire.

She grabbed the small teabag off of the table, and filled a mug from the sink. She held the mug in her hand and focused on it until it began to boil. With a satisfied grin, she drops in the tea bag and set the mug down for a moment to steep.

She set her hands down on the bedside and leaned down, stretching out her entire elegant length with a few crackling noises here and there as well as a yawn that showcased the razor-like teeth within her mouth. Soon, she is dressed, and sits down to enjoy her tea from the couch by the hotel window, tails comfortably splayed out around her back and thighs. The smell of the tea is practically a meal in and of itself. The warmth and steam kicks up flavours that nobody else could notice into the magical nose of the kitsune, revealing the history of the leaves, bag and water as she considers them fully. With a smile on her face and her ears comfortably drooped, she sits in the warm embrace of her tails and enjoys the tea and the sunrise.

A half hour later, Emily rose from her chair, set down the empty cup of tea on the coffee table, and made her way for the door. There was work to be done.

In the building across the street, Emily found the door to the classroom open. She stepped in, and found a motley crew of creatures and figures in the seats that they were sitting in this time yesterday. She happily made her way for her chair, pulled out her laptop and notebook, and stood by.

The lecturer walked in a few minutes later. Through his typical glowing smile, Eric greeted the class. "Welcome back. We're all going to launch into that same exercise from yesterday, but I trust it will go a bit more smoothly this time..."