Flames and Starlight

3🌘

Peter

I watched Coach Patterson congratulate Ruben Erikson on doing well in his class once again. I couldn't help the jealousy that coursed through me as I filed out of the room and into the bright sunlight.

Shapeshifters that could easily shift into anything they wanted had true gifts they didn't realize they had. It was a huge challenge for me since shapeshifting wasn't my more powerful skill and it was the side I constantly had to show for everyone else.

I was a hybrid of a shapeshifter and a sorcerer, and my adoptive parents only knew how to help me with my shapeshifter side. They knew nothing about sorcery and they couldn't get me the help they needed with that because it would reveal that I was a hybrid. I was registered only as a hybrid at this school and I couldn't take any classes to help me with my shapeshifter side.

Hybrids were constantly looked down upon and faced endless harassment and exile. My parents were trying to protect me the best they could be trying to make sure that shapeshifting was my more "dominant" side, but the sorcery was growing more and more each day and harder to maintain. 

They enrolled me in this class to help me with my shapeshifting skills. The skills I possessed weren't the best compared to other shifters. This class should've been helping, but so far, it was doing the opposite. Seeing students like Ruben being able to shapeshift effortlessly was causing self-doubt to plague my thoughts, making it difficult to shift as I needed to while suppressing my other powers. It was harder and harder to keep the sorcerer side hidden and my parents and I were running out of things to do.

I walked over to the bus stop and sat on the bench. I pulled out my earbuds and plugged them in then started my playlist. It was going to be a fifteen-minute wait for the Tarc to get here.

I sighed and leaned back. I hated riding the bus. I couldn't wait until I saved up enough money to get a car of my own. Unfortunately, the shifts at the nearby coffee house didn't pay very much and my parents worked around this time, so the bus was the only option I had.

My phone dinged with a notification. I paused my music and saw it was from the website I was subscribed to, Mystic World, a website for supernatural teenagers, and it recommended a video. It was of a girl with long, curly black hair shifting into a mountain lion and getting ready to attack another girl before one of the security guards shot her with a tranquilizer dart, knocking her out. My eyes widened and I replayed the video. The girl looked ready to kill and looked like she was going to rip the other girl to shreds if the security guards hadn't interfered.

The video had a million views. I couldn't make out the girl's face and the comment section was going crazy, some people thinking the incident was hilarious, some people wondering what the hell happened to cause that, and some people enraged that the girl did that because it would cause shapeshifters to be under a bad light even more. 

Supernaturals had been out to the human world for fifty years now and humans still had a hard time accepting us. Shapeshifters and vampires got the brunt of the prejudice, hence why people were furious at this girl since it was going to set everyone several places back. I just prayed it hadn't gotten on any other social media yet, though it most likely was or would.

I shook my head and clicked off. I had no idea what the circumstances behind that was so I didn't have a right to judge, but I did hope the girl realized what she did affect all of us.

A loud crash nearby had me leaping to my feet and yanking out my earbuds. The sound came from a few blocks down, where the gym a lot of the shapeshifters in my class worked out at. Without thinking, I started running towards the place.

By the time I got there, the parking lot was filled with wreckage. Cars were totaled, people were running around, scrapes and bruises covering their skin, leaning against their cars, yelling and cursing. I could hear the ambulance siren in the background, letting me know help was on the way.

I spotted Ruben Erikson leaning against his car, a nasty gash on the side of his head, blood dripping down the side of his face, yelling back at the people cursing at him.

I ran my fingers through my hair and shook my head at the wreckage, wondering how the hell this happened.

The ambulance arrived shortly after that so I turned and left since there wasn't anything I could do. Man, that was -

The Tarc bus drove past me, the same one I always got on. Shit, I missed it.

I sighed in exasperation and started the long walk home. It was a forty-minute walk to my house and I was tired from the intensity of the class and wanted to sleep until my shift at work.

I made it down the block when I noticed a man standing at the corner. He was tall, well over six feet, wearing all black, his hair long and dark, his eyes bright blue, his features normal and nothing outstanding about them, but I felt my steps falter, my eyes trained on him. There was something about him that caught my whole attention. Instantly, the warning bells rang in my mind. There was a dark aura about him, as though a deep evil lurked within him.

I gave my head a slight shake and was about to keep going when he spoke to me. "Crazy, isn't it?"

I paused and looked over at him. He was looking straight at me, obviously speaking to me.

He gestured in the direction the gym parking lot was in. "That wreck. It's insane, what people can get into."

I nodded. "Yeah, it is. I hope everyone's alright."

He cocked his head slightly. "You go to Starlight Academy, don't you? That school down the street."

"Yes," I said warily. "Why?"

"I went there when I was in high school. Nice school. If you don't mind me asking, you're in a shapeshifting class, aren't you?"

"Yes, why?"

He shrugged. "I would've thought someone like you would be in a class for magic."

I went dead still. "What do you mean?"

A smirk crossed his face. "Nothing, really, it's just someone with a powerful aura such as yourself should be in a class that can help your powers grow."

My heart plummeted as his words processed through my head. "How -"

A loud crash from the area near the gym had me glancing over my shoulder. When I looked back, the man was gone, completely disappeared.

I looked around, trying to see if I could see him turning the corner or something, but he was nowhere to be found. It was like he'd never been standing there in the first place.

I turned in a circle once before shaking my head and continued walking. Maybe I was losing my mind. Maybe the stress of the class and everything else was getting to me. There was no way that person would have found out I was hybrid. . .Could he?

My parents and I did everything in our power to hide it from the world and we made sure to cover our tracks. There was no way that man could've found out, because if he did, then it meant a lot of damage was coming our way.

EDITED: 7/5/21