They Walk Among Us

It starts in a way that Julia wasn't expecting, her descent - or ascent depending on how you look at it. She still doesn't know how she looks at it, the journey to being where she is now - snuggled between two bodies that ran hot, wrapped in a pair of brown arms and her legs tangled with theirs. Julia shifts ever so slightly, and the arms around her tense and grip her harder, preventing her from climbing from the bed - as if she was of the mind to escape. If this were a trap, it was the most wonderful trap she'd ever experienced and one she'd gladly succumb to each time. She turned her gaze towards the window, the view blurry without her glasses and partially obscured by a mane of auburn hair. Julia blinked slowly, afraid that if she did too much so soon, she would awaken to find that this was a dream.

A palm caressed the curve of her hip, running over a sore spot likely in the shape of a palm from the previous night's activities.

Julia turned her head to meet the miasma of darkness that called itself Kitu. The shadow-shaper's control had slipped in her sleepy state, dancing tendrils waving in a triangular shape, creating wispy ears to pair with the shadows slowly peeling themselves back from her face. Julia remembered there being a time that she was afraid of the shadowy beast, recalled that once upon a time seeing the darkness rippling around her face with what seemed to be additional eyes near her forehead and the too many teeth that were in her mouth when she smiled at her caused her blood to pound in her ears, lungs stuttering for breath in the face of a beast her body trembled before. That fear had long since melted from her, as now her heart pounded from the sheer cuteness that was the shadows rippling around the other's face - a sign of exhaustion, the creature yawning wide and instead of focusing on the teeth it was on the cat-like tongue curling its mouth that had been of great assistance the night before.

"Good morning," the creature breathed a tired, closed lipped smile.

"Good morning, Kitu," Julia murmured back, allowing herself to be drawn into a kiss. Clawed fingers grazed her skin ever so faintly in a way that Julia had come to find addicting as she pressed her lips to Kitu's. "You're up early,"

"I always am," it murmured back. "It's Red that sleeps until the sun's high. Do you want me to get your glasses?"

"That would be nice, thank you."

Julia watched with her never-ending fascination as it sank into the remaining shadows in the room created by the drawn curtains, easily shooting herself across the floor to claw its way back up on the bedside table beside Carmen. Kitu plucked the glassed from their place and offered them to Julia, who accepted them with another murmured thanks.

"I will start breakfast," yawned Kitu, stretching her arms over her head. Julia leaned back a little, snuggling back into Carmen's arms while she appreciated the unobscured view of the body she'd been privileged enough to explore the night before. The longer she stared, the more easily she could tell each marking apart - the hand-marks from Carmen restraining her, the bite on her collar bone from Julia attempting to smother the sounds she made as the lady in red traveled lower on her person. When she turned around, Julia was treated to her round backside and the swollen red gashes lining the shaper's back from where Julia had lost control of her new talents, the dark skin slowly knitting itself back together only slightly hindered by the brief rays of morning light, Her voice had returned to a normal human octave, its voice smooth as it added, "Zack and Ivy will be hungry soon."

"What about Carmen?" Julia asked, making no effort to move.

"Let her sleep, we kept her up pretty late," Kitu said with a light chuckle, slipping on a shirt to pair with some boxers she'd scavenged from their drawers. The shaper rubbed her eyes one last time before slipping quietly at out of the room.