I take a deep breath, watching my target. She’s just left the house and got in the car. I don’t move a muscle from my perch until she’s left the driveway and turned the next corner. I steady my nerves looking over my invitation. It’s pretty lame, but something fancy would definitely be awkward as she barely even knows me.

I creep up to her front porch eyeing the windows for any lurking faces. I delicately slide my sculpted bouquet of flowers onto their porch. I had used a wire frame to make the words, then strung the rose petals over it alternating between colors while bending it into a wreath. In the middle I place the small box of chocolates, one of which has my name under it. My deed done I make a hasty approach, sneaking back in my older brother in law’s car slamming the door behind me.

“Ah...my little bro finally getting some nerve. Here I thought you were just gay…” He’s obviously teasing, but his casual homophobia irks me. Sometimes you just have to deal with family. He shifts the gears in his manual transmission Ford Fusion, the engine groans as he floors it down the street, drifting slightly over the gravel.

“You know that’s illegal right?” I jab in return indicating to his turn. “Annnd she is not the first girl I’ve asked out! I asked Carrie to the fall dance...she just...was busy.” The memory was a bit of a rough one and he knows it. I’d been trying to branch out last year, unfortunately I got the feeling that she had her eyes on a jerk from the debate team.

“You hanging out with your buds again tonight?” I ask trying to divert the conversation. He worked in construction most of the time, he’s also a certified electrician. Long hours but great pay from what I’ve heard, despite the occasional out of town job. Lately he’d been working a few odd jobs at the military base so he could stay local. His friends seemed decent enough I guess, we typically didn’t see much of them.

“Yeah, its movie night. If you ever get your head out of your school work it’d be fun to have yea.” He’d always been a reckless driver, maybe from the early years he worked driving an ambulance. He’d been working as an EMT just after graduating. We’d always been in a bit of a casual relationship, him being 25 and me just being 17 kind of made it hard to relate properly growing up.

He turns around one of the back alley blocks and I spot a flicker of something in the gravel. “Uh...Antoine? Is that blood?” He follows my pointing hand and pulls over, but keeps the engine running.

“Naw, blood doesn’t turn green like that, probably more likely a chemical of some sort. Smells like something got charcoaled though.” At that he turns off the car and heads out too inspect it closer and I’m right behind him, joining him as we gawk at the burnt remains of something definitely not of human origin.

“Hey Mikey? I think we need to call the cops in for this one.” I most certainly didn’t disagree and dialed in the number.

Redmond had seen a lot in his life. He’d served in Vietnam, earned a purple heart for a serrated kidney and scarred lung. He’d moved across the country in the damnable drug war and saw every which way of several communities before being “unofficially” retired by being made Sheriff of this little place. Backwater it may be, but it was his backwater old town. He was only in his late 60s after all.

This mess however, was something he had never seen in the entirety of his long career. The creature was relatively small, unburnt he assumed it would be just about 4 feet on all fours. The creature had taken two GSWs, one of the chest, and another point blank to the head. Either that or the strange chitin covering its body had just been a lot thicker on their chest.

The creature had the burned remains of what appeared to be normal clothing, incredibly large eye sockets for its size (sockets as he could assume the eyes had been burnt away). It had a vague structure resembling wings, while it had a skeletal protrusion on its head mostly burned away. It’s horn and legs appeared thoroughly perforated with holes as if acid had been slowly poured over until it came out the other side.

He was no mortician but someone had evidently killed the creature. Witnesses would certainly make settling this mess a little easier. After getting a statement from the callers he watches them driveoff. The glisten of the burnt fangs and shiny carapace from the sinking sun unnerved him.

The fact that the killer had not only failed to call it in, then tried to burn the body disturbed him more. Without hesitation he flipped his old dinosaur of a phone open and made a call.

By the time Antoine drops me off at home the sun has already disappeared below the small hills in the distance, only a few last traces of its rays remain. I head inside and wave to my dad cleaning up around the house. “Sorry I’m late, we found the strangest thing on the way home today.” I walk up to the counter and snatch a small taco from the tray. “Found some sort of weird insect thing someone had shot last night. Damn thing was huge.”

I head to my room and set my stuff down, turning on my laptop before heading back to the kitchen. Dad has a grim look on his face and is staring out the window at the moon, his remaining arm grasping at where his other used to be. “Son...has anything unusual happened lately?”

His eyes meet mine and for a moment I could’ve sworn I’d seen slitted silver eyes staring back at me, but it’s gone before I can blink. After a moment I shake my head. “Nothing I can really think of. Yesterday I had a bit of a weird itching sensation before bed, but I reckon it was just poison ivy.” He’d always been a bit reserved on how he had lost his arm and I had a strong feeling it was related. “What’s going on dad?” A bit of my worry ebbing into my voice.

“Nothing we can do anything about anymore.” He replies sullenly flexing his fingers in the moonlight. “All we can do now is hide and pray to Luna that they don’t find us.” He gazes into the moonlight some more before getting back to the dishes.

Luna...that name was one he threw around fairly often. I had always assumed it was a cultural thing from what I thought was his hispanic heritage. He’d tell us stories of a night maiden when I was younger, a watcher of dreams and whose strength guided the moon across the sky. “Dad, I know I’ve never really been into your culture and all...but you know something. Something about that strange creature don’t you?”

I step forward into the moonlight away from the artificial lighting behind me. I yelp and wince backward as the moonlight hits my skin. Just like it had yesterday. Dad is by my side in an instant after.

“Are you okay?” He asks. Yet his expression seems more curious than concerned. He hesitates for a few moments then becomes preoccupied with my hand holding it within his own. “Son...do you trust me?” He won’t even meet my gaze, but his voice carries a longing sorrow I’d never heard from him before.

I nod, a wave of dread stirring in my chest. What happened to my joking lighthearted father that made him turn as grim as the grave? You’d be hard pressed to make him be serious about anything in the past, something that irked my mother to no end. “Tell me what’s going on,” I demand.

He doesn’t reply, instead he slowly pulls my hand back into the moonlight streaming through the window. The tingling grows and intensifies, I try to yank it back just from the sensation alone but he holds firm and I quickly see why. Fur is sprouting up from my hand. It’s a dark grey in tone, the itching quickly starts spreading up my arm. My fingers stiffen and seem to merge into my middle finger which starts to swell and harden into a conical shape.

“D-dad?!” I squeak but his grip remains iron. I feel a wet splatter sink through the newly formed fur and see that he is starting to cry, but a smile on his face sends my head reeling. He pulls me further into the moonlight, the sting of moonlight like one would feel on a hot summer day radiates through my skin as I hear my jaw pop and crack as it pushes out forward in a rather uncomfortable, but only slightly painful manner.

The sensation starts to spread even faster now, burning in my chest as I feel my organs squirm around and I vomit into the sink that I can still just barely reach as I start shrinking. Already having lost an entire foot of height. I hear something and I feel an unfamiliar muscle twitch at the side of my head as I look back at my dad. “Whw-what?” I try to speak but my tongue is longer than it used to be and my mouth’s new shape distorts the sound.

His hand caresses my cheek and he angles my muzzle up to his eyes as he searches over my expression. “This is who we are son. This is what I used to be.” Every word smacking into my head like a sledgehammer crippling me with dread.

I wince away from his gaze as my teeth start to feel like they’re being drilled into, the agony of that making me start to scream before Dad clasps his hand over my muzzle and I feel a sharp stab on the right side of my lip, my eyes watering from the pain. Several moments later it seems to fade to tolerable levels and he releases my...my muzzle.

As I look up at him again I see his towering form lurking over me. Right now I’m barely up to his knees in height, the pain in my mouth apparently had distracted me from the rest of my body changing. My clothes are laying on the ground beneath me except for my shirt which now feels a lot more like a dress.

“I know this is a lot for you to take in, but you need to listen--”

But I’m not listening, I smack his hand aside as I slip and fall onto the ground, tripping over my mutated limbs. I’m barely thinking anymore, just reacting. I tear off my shirt and try to take off as at much of a sprint as I can muster. I hop on a chair, then the counter before bounding out the window falling a good 5 feet to the ground. Though I somehow don’t break any bones it does knock the wind out of me.

I hear my dad call out from behind me, but I really don’t really want to talk to him right now. My pace is pitiful more of a disjointed dragging jog. I hear the door slam behind me as he seems to head after me. I barely even make it a few yards before he catches up and cuts off my escape. He reaches out to grab me but withdraws after I give him the most vicious hiss I can muster.

“I...I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done this so quickly. It was wrong of me to force you to change, but we don’t have the time to take things slow. That creature you saw out there? That was a changeling. A shapeshifter that feeds on the essence of other creatures. They could be anyone, anywhere, and if they find us we’re all dead. Dead as in painfully torn apart piece by piece and made to suffer to teach the rest of our race a lesson!” He gestures to his arm with malice, rage burning through him in a way that terrified me.

“They invaded our world, yes another world than this one. We are their predators, natural killers that can see through their illusions. Our numbers had dwindled for over a thousand years. Hundreds of us were rounded up, countless more died. They took my arm in the conflict. We were forced to surrender, then exiled to this place. A world without magic, without any hope of ever returning home.”

“Don’t you see how important this is? For the first time in over 35 years we have magic again!” His face is stained with tears, his eyes caring no small amount of jealousy as he gestures to me with his hand kneeling awkwardly in front of me to sort of match my height. “Your birth mother struggled with the transition to earth, yet she still wanted a child. Once we settled here we had you, shortly after your birth she died of magic starvation. She dreamed you’d one day be able to see what we truly were, and here it has happened!”

“Turn me back! Change me back right now!” My voice is heavily distorted by my reformed vocal chords now making it a lot harder than it was earlier to speak. Despite my attempts most of what comes out of my mouth are angry squeaks and other horrible animal noises. Seeing that fail I try to sound out the words syllable by syllable. “Tee-Ueerr-Een B-eeackee!”

He has the audacity to giggle at my attempt to speak english which makes me fume with rage bordering on crumbling into tears. I crawl forward and smack his leg as hard as I can muster.

He yelps and move back a step. “Damn, I’d forgotten how hard we could hit. Guess not teaching you all Equish was a mistake...but explaining that to your mother would’ve been a challenge.”

I growl again and smack the ground with a hoof before pointing it back at myself in an effort to get himself back on the actual important topic.

“Yeah yea...you probably don’t like it.” I growl again in affirmation and he rolls his eyes. “I may not have my old body or magic anymore but I doubt it’ll last much longer than the night. Our kind were always at our greatest strength under the moon. Without magic we’d just die in our natural forms, so you must have gotten some from somewhere or maybe growing in a magic starved environment might have caused your body to adapt.”

He rubs his head a little and hesitantly reaches forward. This time I let him as he inspects my legs, mouth, and ears. I give a small yip as he starts removing my shirt, I had to have some dignity after all!

“Relax, I just need to make sure your wings have developed properly.”

I blink, staring at him a bit agape. He doesn’t give me long to swallow that fact before he literally just yanks at my shirt and pulls it over my head. I yelp as I feel something on my back get pulled at a fairly painful angle, and then I see them.

Laying across my back are two very bat looking wings. One of them has been pulled out so it’s almost fully extended. It’s easily as wide as I am long on its own. I poke it with a hoof, feeling the firmness of my leg against the leathery texture of my wings. I try to bend my shoulder blades to try to see if I can move them, to no avail.

My father comes to my aid for that and gently pulls both of them out to their full length before grabbing me around my middle and lifting me into the air. “What are you--EEEEEEEEEE!” I squeak as he suddenly drops his hands I feel myself in freefall. My legs lashing out in open air and I smack my head with a wing before he stops the drop and pulls me back up.

“You need to relax, just do what comes naturally!” He insists firmly already moving to do it again. I’m really starting to hate being so small as the ground shrinks beneath me until I’m several times my own height in the air.

“No no no no no NO!!!” I try to say but it all comes out as a frantic chirp as he does it again. This time though I start to feel the connections as I flap my wings instinctively. As I fall I feel my muscles twitch as I get a bit of feeling. Like how you learn how to wiggle your ears I feel the muscles that had been absent my entire life. When he raises me up this time I don’t complain, fascinated by the new feelings and sensations.

I don’t know how many times he does the cycle, but I take to the sensations quicker than I would’ve expected. They didn’t feel as new as I would expect them to be. Whatever that would mean in this context. I’m soon doing basic flaps and have a small range of motion for them before he finally sets me back down.

“Thanks” I mutter, even though he can’t understand me. None the less he rubs behind my ears, which if it didn’t feel so good I would think was patronizing. Then I remember that he probably is just remembering his times as a fuzzy little bat horse thing. As I relax from the “flying” practice I look around, taking the time to fully take in how much wider of a view I have now, not to mention how much brighter everything seems to be despite being a bit washed out in the pale glow of the moon.

Looking up at my father quickly reminds me of how much I’ve shrunk, I’m probably just about a foot and a half. Yet as I examine his form I start to notice a few strange things. In the moonlight his body seems to briefly flicker, occasionally I see a lighter grey fur across his body, a hint of hooves, but most prominent of all his eyes are slitted and light blue, that remaining constant while the others flicker. Perhaps this is what he meant by being able to see other’s true form?

Looking over his form I start to feel the itch for a mirror to see what I look like. To communicate it I wave my hoof in a circle around my face, then cup them over my eyes as if looking through binoculars. Luckily he seems to get the meaning.

“You want to see what you look like?”

I nod and start heading for the house, but he fairly quickly steps in front of me holding his hands out in a placating manner.

“We probably don’t want the rest of our family to see you like this quite yet. So...is it okay if I carry you into the bathroom for now? We can come back outside right after if you’d like” He takes a moment to just study my form a moment longer, his eyes tearing up a little.

“Your mother would be so proud to see how much you resemble her.” He chuckles a bit in a way to mask his sorrow before he picks me up, hiding me inside his jacket and carries me inside the house.

It’s stuffy inside his coat, the sensation of the fuzz against my muzzle makes me sneeze as its swarmed with his thick ‘male’ scent. It doesn’t take long before I’m placed on the counter, feeling the chill of the plastic surface on the underside of my hooves hearing the subtle click of my hooves on the counter.

The creature in the mirror is in the uncanny of alien category. The eyes though are so massive that they would never pass for natural on this planet. I swear they will pop out of their sockets. Slitted with a golden iris that seems to reflect the light when turned just right. On top of my head are a few tufts of purple hair that travels down my neck. The dark grey fur descends all the way down my back which ends in another short cut purple strand. I open my mouth and see a pair of fangs matched by a smaller pair below. The rest seem vaguely human in shape if adapted to an elongated mouth.

“It’s really something, isn’t it? You’ve taken to this a lot better than I took to being a human, I’ll give you that.” He sits up on the counter, making sure the door remains closed. “When you’re done, how about I take you back outside and I teach you a few moves? Maybe you have enough magic I can show you some actual casting.”

My ears twitch at his voice reminding of that recent addition. An uncanny feeling in my chest as I realize I had thought of them as natural. I wasn’t sure if that was something to be afraid of or grateful for that I hadn’t completely lost my mind in terror. I’d literally been changed into what essentially amounted to a cat with wings and I felt eerily calm. Yet...I was more excited than I ever had been before.

Well, who could possibly refuse that offer? I nod enthusiastically, I stumble back towards him and quite nearly flop off the counter but he catches me and stuffs me back into his jacket. I don’t exactly fit, but it's big enough to hide most of me as we head back outside.

I’d lurked after school for some time now. Ever since I’d seen that strange kid in history class I’d felt different. I stayed late after school mostly because my parents simultaneously wanted to know everything I was doing while at the same time not caring about what I was actually doing.

“You need to head home?” a face full of black hair and confidence asks.

“Sorry Sam, I know you were wanting to do some more studying but you know how they are.” I rub at my arm absent-mindedly, adjusting it a little. He offers me a wipe and I use it to remove what little makeup I was wearing. My parents definitely would’ve grounded me for that. I change my clothes in the bathroom changing to the bland generic stuff I have from home.

“Thanks again, for everything. It really means a lot to me.” Every time I hung out with him just filled me up with the warm fuzzies and made me feel better. The only person in this whole world that knew about my little ‘secret’ and true self, the best friend anyone could ever ask for.

“Hey, it's no problem man, your parents can shove it. You help me so much with school it's only fair I help you in what little ways I can too.” They wave and head off down the hall after packing up their books. “I’ll catch ya later.”

I grab my bags and start to walk home, it was a long walk but that was fine by me. Plenty of time to listen to music and pretend I could sing the songs. We live fairly far out by the forest, my father would probably be home by now from his ‘work trip.’ Something he went on a lot. Walking felt good, even on the days it hurt. Made me feel like less of a cripple that way. I’d been diagnosed with some sort of rare genetic disorder, whatever fancy name they gave it last time. Essentially I’m dying, decaying bit by bit from the inside out. They spew all this stuff about new treatment but for the last few years it's only been slowed.

Depressing right? But hey, when life is shit its the little things that make life all that much better. A good friend, a decent lunch, when the weather is just right. Things like that. Course relying on small things like that could make me get a bit more sensitive to things others would find frivolous but most others would just shrug it off and label it as “just another weird thing from Jake” because it would be culturally insensitive to upset the kid who looked like death half the time.

Yet...after school yesterday I felt healthier and stronger than I had in well...ever. I could even take up a light jog without feeling the harsh grind of my bones rattling against each other. I was happy, excited even. You never value your health more than when you’ve lost it, and I’d be damned if this wasn’t an early christmas present.

I eventually make it home well before dark, I set my things in my room then smile at my mom sneaking an apple from the table. She’s on the phone and so only raises an eyebrow to my upbeat attitude. With my homework done there isn’t really much I have to do tonight. I observe my expression in the bathroom, smiling at the faint hints of color returning to my skin. Maybe if I could manage to eat more I could look more substantial.

I work through my chores for a bit over an hour, I start to grow a little concerned that my mom has been on the phone the entire time. Several times I even heard her screaming before she switched to her mobile and went outside. After reading some more books about fantasy worlds I wish I could experience and about heroes I wish I could be I hear the door slam rather harshly.

I carefully creep forward peering out of the hallway. My mother is sitting at the table sobbing. I feel a lump form in my throat as my body stiffens. ‘Oh shit’ is all I can really think as I quickly move over putting my arm around her shoulders and hug her gently.

Time passes, how much I couldn’t say for how long I hold onto her. Feeling her body wracked with sobs. Yet she eventually seems to run out of strength, the air quickly becoming punctuated with a grim silence. She turns her head to look me in the eye, for a moment there is a question in them, maybe a hint of wonder before it crumbles back to her sorrowed demeanor. “How can you…? Nevermind it doesn’t matter.” She clears her throat. “You’re really something, you know that right?” She hugs me a little in return, a pregnant pause passing between us before she speaks again.

“Your father is dead.”

I blink, for a moment I almost forget what I’d just heard, then it comes back as I realize what those words actually mean. I’d never really gotten along well with him, but this… this filled me with more regret for that very lack. My thoughts drift back to the last time I’d seen him, the last things I said and did. It was all meaningless as I hugged her all the tighter and we shared a long cry.

Neither of us really wants to move some time later. My eyes ache as I’m sure hers do as well, our bodies both begging for slumber to take this loss away in a way we both know will be back in the morning. Several times I try to work up the nerve to ask the how, but just seeing my mothers fallen face my words die on my lips. Instead she eventually gets up, brushing her hand through my hair gently before silently heading to bed.

I follow her shortly after getting ready myself, I feel robotic as I go through the motions, showering, changing clothes, brushing my teeth. Everything is just numb at this point. I’d grown so used to the lurking sorrow of my own death, but I’d never expected it to hit someone else first. I move to my bedroom and sit in bed for a few moments before sighing at the inevitable.

I pull up my sleeve, and pull off my glove and stare at the scrap of metal that is my arm. With a few small flicks of my real left arm I feel the weight of the instrument flop onto the bed. I stare for a moment too long and glimpse the horrible scar, gritting my teeth as I pull my sleeve back down. I set the arm aside, turn out the light and quickly succumb to the warm oblivion of the night’s grasp.