The Shape Shifters Club

CHAPTER 1: The Game

      It was a sunny summers day at the PlayStation Daycare Center. The sound of children's laughter filled the warm air. Everyone was outside, that was because it was recess time and all the kids loved it. Especially me, "little" Penelope Sherlock. The "little" came from the councilors, although I wasn't very small per say, it was just that I was quiet when I first came and it stuck. Even though I was improving by the day, they kept on calling me "little". I hated it and I hated them for it. I was a good little 5 year old though so I just hid my feelings and did as I was told.

      My friends were the proof that I wasn't fit to be called "little" anymore. I was one of the boys, although, I was the girliest girl ever. I liked to wear all pink outfits and my favorite animal was any 5 year old girl's favorite, ponies. I was a delicate little flower, if I fell, I would have a tantrum. I was inconsolable for at least 10 minutes before someone would finally give up and send me to the nurse for an ice pack and a lollipop.

      The boys and I had this little game of pretend that we liked to play. We liked to play this game all day everyday. It was to be played outside so, instead of playing all day everyday, we had to restrict our efforts to recess time only. This game consisted of all the boys, and me. Miles, Jeramy, Mike, Derek, Elliot, and George were the boys. They were the best friends a 5 year old girl could have. They accepted me as I was and didn't run away when I tried to touch them yelling "cooties!" It was a good feeling to know that I was one of the boys, and that I really belonged in that group. The game was that we were all teenagers with the power to be sucked into another world and be able to change into animals. My animal was, of course, a pony. While the boys were things like dogs, lions, tigers, mountain lions and bears. You know, all the big boy animals that were powerfull and strong.

      This game that we played never got old to us, and at the end of each day I would tell my mom all about what had happened in the game that day. Every twist of the story, every wound healed, and every baby animal born. (We were in that stage where we thought babies just dropped out of the sky and into your stomach.) Everyday my mother would laugh and ask if I was bored with the game yet. Everytime I would giggle, say no, and watch the world pass by out of the car window.

      This particular day on the playground-a.k.a our secret tree house- turned out to be an interesting one. We did the first thing we always did in the game: Make the switch from our normal world to the supernatural one.

      "Hello world of animals and humans mixed, we are here to be welcomed into the supernatural world, and taken from the normal one." Jeramey said in a deep voice that was unnatural sounding and I shuttered at the tone. He was what people would call a child genius. We picked him as our leader not because he was good at being one, but because he was smart and used lots of big words that we didn't understand.

      We were seated in the regular circle and we joined hands as Jeramey said our chant. I know that you think that all of us taking hands is something out of a fantasy but it really happened! Anyway, we chanted the said line a couple of times and just like that, we had been transported to our supernatural world. It looked just like the normal one, but in this one, we had the power to change into our animal forms, unlike in our normal world. I heard a sigh and opened my eyes. I found Jeramey smiling at all of us in turn, lingering a little longer than necessary on me before looking at the floor in the middle of the circle.

      "Welcome back to the supernatural world we truly belong in Shapeshifters Club." He said. We all smiled back, closed our eyes and pretended to change into our animal selves.

      We had named ourselves the Shape shifters Club because we thought we ought to have a name and that was the thing that we came up with first. We had very strict rules. There were few, but we followed them like the bible.

      1. We could let no one into the club.

      2.  No one could back out either, we would never leave each other. We were all in this together, forever.

      In this particular time in the game, we had just gotten through another twist of the story where Jeramey, a leopard in his animal form, had gotten attacked by an evil pack of wild hyenas and I had nursed him back to health with my magical musical hooves.

      My hooves were magical because a very powerful wizard cast a spell upon them last summer. This spell would enable me to heal anything, anytime with a simple stomp on the ground and a few repetitions of "heal" in my imaginary pony mind. Music would spout out of them and the music would be so beautiful that it would heal any wound on any animal that I wanted it to. The spell had another cool effect, it had turned my hooves pure gold. They shone in the sun and blinded anyone who looked our way in the sun, other than our friends. It would only blind our evil enemies. Everyone thought this was a cool superpower, but they all had their own and they all thought their's was cooler than the rest. They had things like the ability to fly, jump higher than any animal in the world, and the physic ability to see into the future. Those were all cool, but like any 5 year old, I thought mine was the best out of everyone's. I mean, who wouldn't want the power to heal ant injury that might occur to anyone? I didn't know of anyone who wouldn't. Then again, I was only 5 years old, and the only friends I had was a pack of 6 boys so, what would I know? I thought like that all the same.

      I was standing in horse form, in our tree house, waiting for the boys to come back with the food for lunch when all of a sudden, I saw them all running as fast as they could back up to the tree house. When they got to the top, they all looked at me in a sort of panicked frenzy.

      "Penelope, you must hurry!" Jeramey said, flapping his arms in the air like a chicken and running around in a circle to prove his point. I looked at all of them in turn with a confused expression, asking one of them to explain further and when no one did, I turned back to Jeramey.

      "Why?"

      "Because the same pack of evil hyenas that attacked me a few days ago was actually looking for you. They're coming for you now. That's why you must run and hide in the caves until we come find you and bring you back." He replied, pointing to what I saw in my imaginative eye to be huge craggy mountains but what was actually, the inside of the daycare. I shook my head, trying to clear it.

      "H-how do you know?" I looked to Jeramy to answer but it was Mike who answered this time.

      "We heard them talking about it. Jeramey sent me,Derek, and Miles to scout out where they were hiding and I heard them say that they got the wrong person, that they were going to get you but Jeramey came out first and they attacked without looking. They said that they were going to have to attack again but this time be more careful about who they attacked this time." I nodded grimly and turned to walk out.

      "RUN!" They all yelled at me and I started galloping through the trees of the forest our tree house was located in. I ran as fast as my imaginary 4 legs would carry me. I dodged trees and leapt over rocks so fast that I was all but a black and white blur. It turned out that as fast as my 4 legs would take me wasn't enough because I was almost to the safety of the cliffs when they caught me. They tore me to shreds with their sharp teeth and then left me there to die. When I tried to get up I found that my legs couldn't hold my weight. I sighed and tried to stomp the ground without getting up and found that I couldn't do that either. I guess I could heal any wound at any time, except my own.

      So I just sat there, in my animal form for days, knowing that if I changed back into a human, the pain would be even worse than it had been in horse form, but I was getting weaker, my magic and energy was seeping out of me more and more by the minute. I had to change back soon, or else I would die out here, forgotten and alone. So I changed, and when I did, pain exploded in my chest, my legs, my arms, even in my head. I felt like I was going to explode from all the pain.

      That's when they found me, Jeramey, Mike, Derek, Miles, and Elliot. I was so glad to see them and I was so happy that I suddenly had enough energy to lift my head up and smile at them. When they saw me, they ran over and after one look at me and started licking my wounds. They licked away all the dried blood and used all the healing magic they could to heal me as best they could. Then they picked me up and carried me all the way back to our tree house. After a few imaginary days- minutes- later I was back on my feet again. It's a good thing I was too because otherwise, who would be around to protect my future pack I was lucky enough then to know nothing about.