Chapter 2: The Fleece Reborn
The lanolin scent was everywhere now. It clung to Arthur’s clothes, his skin, a sweet, greasy perfume that had replaced Beatrice’s lemon verbena completely. He woke with it in his mouth. The bedroom was a cave of pink. She’d grown exponentially in the night.
She wasn’t just on the bed anymore; she was of it. A great, soft volcano of wool, spilling over the sides, tendrils creeping across the floorboards toward the wardrobe. The texture had changed again. It wasn’t the initial tight yarn, nor the fluffy regrowth from yesterday. This was deep-pile velvet, living moss, a pelt of impossible softness that seemed to breathe. And in the center of it, a perfect, taut globe—her belly—rising like a buried moon.
She was moving. Stretching. It was a slow, seismic shift, entire continents of pink wool sliding in a fluid, muscular wave. A low, contented hum vibrated through the room, harmonizing with the distant, sub-audible growl of the mill. They were talking to each other.
“You’re bigger,” Arthur said, his voice scratchy with sleep.
“It itched,” her hum replied, woven through with a new, purring satisfaction. The massive pile of her shifted again, and a cascade of old wool began to slide away from her core. It wasn’t the fresh, plush velvet, but the duller, thinner strands from before the mill, now dry and lifeless.
It shed in great, sloughing sheets, piling on the duvet and the floor like a bizarre second bedding. As it fell away, the new Beatrice emerged. The tendrils that had been constantly forming and repairing her finally stilled. The process was complete.
She climbed out of the pile of shed wool, her movements crisp and sure. Her body retained a humanoid shape—two arms, two legs, a head, the profound sphere of her belly—but everything was poofier, denser, a perfect sculpture of clean, hot pink fleece. She stepped free of the discarded layers and stood before him, glowing in the sun.
She looked like a living cloud given intent. The weird, oily resonance that had clung to her since the mill visit was gone. Her hum was clear, a single pure note.
“Arthur,” she said. She opened her arms, a gesture so simple and familiar it made his chest ache.
He went to her. Sinking into her embrace was like being enveloped by a warm, breathing snowfall. There was no resistance, only a gentle, all-encompassing give. She held him tightly, her new wool impossibly soft against his cheek.
“I’m better now,” she hummed into his ear, her voice vibrating through his very bones. “With all the old wool gone. That odd, pulling feeling from before is gone. I feel… clean.”
He pulled back just enough to look at her featureless face. “Clean?”
“From the dirty yarn. The mill’s threads. They were stuck in me, like splinters. Now it’s just me.” She placed a mitt on her belly, then on his chest. “Pure wool. It’s a good feeling.”
A hysterical question bubbled up: What does pure wool feel like? He didn’t ask it. He could see the answer in her posture, in the serene set of where her shoulders would be.
“So you’re not… connected to the mill anymore?” The faint, grinding vibration in the floorboards seemed to argue otherwise.
“Not like that. The connection is quieter. Proper.” She smoothed a hand down his back, a gesture so Beatrice it nearly undid him. “I don’t feel like a human anymore, Arthur. I don’t think I am one. I’m just… a living pile of wool. A happy one.”
He hugged her again, burying his face in the dizzying softness of her shoulder. She was here. She was coherent. She was happy. It was everything he’d wanted since this began, and it was utterly terrifying. She was no longer a woman transformed. She was a new thing entirely, cradling his child within a mound of fleece.
“The baby?” he whispered.
Her whole form pulsed once, a gentle, inner wave that culminated in a soft, firm push against his abdomen where they pressed together.
“Also wool,” she said, and the hum in her voice was unmistakably a smile. “And also happy. Now, I believe I was promised more sausages. A growing pile needs to eat.”