MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

The mansion was unbelievably large. Suzy, still trapped in her fox form, had been living there for three days and still had not managed to explore every room. The sheer scale of Gavin Wilson's wealth manifested in acres of polished marble floors and impossibly high vaulted ceilings, in the grand piano that no one ever played and the Olympic-sized swimming pool that remained still and glassy outside. The silence of the place was as vast as its dimensions.
She occupied a corner of his bedroom, where he had set up a plush bed meant for a dog and a ceramic water bowl. The arrangement humiliated her human sensibilities, but she had no alternatives. Every desperate attempt she made to shift back to her human form had failed. The transformation, it seemed, responded to overwhelming panic, but not to quiet desperation or sheer force of will.
Gavin treated her with a gentleness that made her chest physically ache. He had examined her injured paw with surprising care, cleaning the wound carefully before wrapping it in a piece of clean gauze. He brought her expensive canned cat food, which she ate only because refusing seemed ungrateful and she was ravenous.
"You are very well-behaved for a wild animal," he said on the second morning. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her bed, his expression thoughtful. "It is almost like you understand me."
Suzy wanted to scream that she understood every single word, that she was not an animal at all but a woman trapped in a waking nightmare. Instead, she wagged her tail slightly, a gesture she hoped looked natural and not as pathetic as it felt.
Gavin reached out and scratched gently behind her ears. Despite everything, the sensation felt wonderful. Her fox body responded with a shiver of pure pleasure even as her human mind recoiled at the profound strangeness of the situation.
"I should probably take you to a veterinarian," he continued, his voice soft and contemplative. "But something tells me you would not do well with strangers. And honestly, I like having you here."
The quiet admission seemed to surprise them both. Gavin looked away, his jaw tightening as if embarrassed by his own vulnerability. "God, I am talking to a fox about my feelings. That has to be a new low."
He stood and moved to the massive window that overlooked the hills, his posture rigid. The loneliness radiated off him like heat from pavement.
"I have everything," he said quietly, his voice barely a whisper. "Everyone tells me how lucky I am. The mansion. The career. The money. And I feel like I am suffocating under the weight of it all."
Suzy's ears flattened against her head. She had, like the rest of the world, imagined Gavin Wilson's life as something perfect, a gilded existence she had envied from afar. Meeting him as this small, silent creature shattered that illusion completely. This man was profoundly isolated, trapped in a different kind of cage from her own.
Over the following days, Gavin began to spend more time at home. He brought his acoustic guitar into the bedroom and played quiet, mournful melodies while she listened. His voice was rough with disuse but still achingly beautiful, still capable of making her heart clench with a powerful, unexpressed emotion.
"I am going to call you Echo," he announced on the fourth day, a small smile touching his lips. "Because you are such a good listener. Better than most people, honestly."
Echo. The name felt appropriate in its deep, cutting irony. She was an echo of her former self, a mere shadow of the woman who had walked into that publishing office less than a week ago.
Gavin began talking to her more freely, as if her silence was a comfort. He discussed his crippling writer's block, his growing frustration with his producer, and his deep-seated guilt over not wanting the life he had worked so hard to build. Suzy absorbed every word, seeing past the glamorous rockstar image to the sensitive, overwhelmed man who lived beneath it.
At night, he started leaving his bedroom door open. Suzy could have explored the mansion then, but she found herself reluctant to leave the relative safety of the room. Something about Gavin's quiet presence felt safe, even in her terrifyingly vulnerable state.
On the fifth night, she woke to find him sitting on the floor beside her bed, his back against the wall. He was not asleep, just sitting in the darkness, a solitary figure in the moonlight.
"I do not know why I feel like I can trust you," he said, his voice so quiet she could barely hear it. "But I do. Thank you for that."
Suzy moved closer and rested her head on his knee. His hand came down automatically to stroke her fur, a familiar and comforting weight. They sat together in a comfortable, shared silence as the moon traced silver patterns across the floor.
For the first time since her transformation, Suzy felt something other than pure terror. A connection was forming between them, wordless but profound. She was falling for this man, this sad, kind stranger who had saved her without ever knowing who, or what, she really was.
The thought terrified her more than the curse itself.