to change shape, by an imagined natural capability, and adopt the form and sometimes abilities of an animal or other being
The moment my craft settled in the water I began to shape-change. I made my ship have the appearance of a small steam-launch, while I gave myself the body and speech of a black native of the coast of what was then one of the west African princedoms under English suzerainty.
The Mwellretsβ climb back up the ladder of civilization had been more rapid, and it had been marked by a strange and frightening ability to shape-change [...] they had undergone a physical transformation that enabled them to alter body shape with the pliability of oiled clay!
She appears as the mistress of her eight companion sisters; she is able to fly, to shapechange and to heal, as well as being a mistress of wisdom.
Lunzie lay back, trying to involve herself in the ratiocinations of Toli Alopa, a Weft detective who could shapechange to follow a suspect without fear of being spotted.
We figure maybe she found some kind of witchy thing of theirs, what let her shape-change, too.
With her moonlight-silvered shape remaining so horribly just out of reach, Henry would have traded his immortal life for the ability to shapechange given to his kind by tradition. All else being equal, four legs were faster and more sure than two.
World War One had its points, for the fantasist. There were ghost spies; deserters who shapechangeed into ghouls who lurked in underground redoubts in hellish nomanslands between the lines and who ate soldiers; flying submarines and land ironclads [etc.]
Accompanying them is a Loki-like fox who occasionally shapechanges into a compact, joyous, elderly scamp of a man, a strikingly original conception, beautifully realized by Beagle.
antedating 1973
Laurence James
Last modified 2021-11-01 21:18:05
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entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
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