Fly

Chapter 2

I woke to the distant wailing or a siren, growing steadily closer. Groaning, I felt a shudder travel along my neck and down my back, and instantly, my eyes shot open. Everything felt different. I blinked up at the slate-gray of the sky, realizing that I was somehow staring sideways out of my head. My other eye was pressed into the sand, with what seemed to be a massive weight between them. My mouth felt long, my teeth ached. My tongue seemed to stretch far in front of me, and I licked the sides of my mouth, spitting out grains of sand. The movement made me aware once again of the rest of my body, which felt so completely alien that for a moment I thought I was dreaming. Then I realized that my human brain could never come up with an illusion this complex. I could feel six - six! - limbs coming from my body, as well as what felt almost like a seventh, but at the same time I knew that it was an extension of my spine that could only be a tail. I curled it up behind me reflexively, feeling it drag across the sand. My sides heaved, and I felt my nostrils stretching and flaring, taking in scents that boggled my mind with how strong they were. My head spun.

The sirens sounded loudly, echoing between the dunes as I slowly lifted my head, wavering back and forth on a neck that was ten times longer than before. I groaned deep in my chest, a sound that came out as a bass thunder of a growl, almost a subterranean purr that seemed to make the grass around me shiver slightly. I flexed one hand, then the other, staring down at the long, silvery claws that tipped each short digit, raking them through the sand in fascination. I rolled upright, my hindlegs automatically gathering under me, three of the four toes on each one tipped with the same sharp claws, the innermost digits sporting a double-sized, curved weapon of a claw, like a raptor's killing talon. I twitched them both reflexively, feeling an odd satisfaction as they sank deep into the cool gritty surface beneath me. The final two limbs I gradually unfolded from where they lay along either side of my spine, the thin webbing between the long, long fingers creating a barrier of resistance designed for flight. It was thin and silky, shimmering with hints of a thousand colors hidden behind a layer of white. My whole lithe body was covered with white scales that reflected all different colors, like the inside of a shell.

My mind was completely still, like a deep pool. I felt nothing but a deep longing for something, almost an itch under my new scales. I stretched, arching my wings over my back, tail twitching as the sirens began to get loud enough to be annoying. Then they cut off. At the same instant, I noticed several people further down the beach, some of them holding phones. I blinked a few times, wondering how long they had been there. Doors slammed in the parking lot. I saw the flash of a badge through the grass and heard the sounds of guns being cocked.

WHUMP

I slammed my wings down from their arched position, stretching them and pulling them in instinctively for another powerful drive toward the ground, feeling my feet leave the earth in a massive leap. With a few more lurching, spine-arching flaps, I was pulling away, the ground seeming to drop out from under me rather than me flying away from it. My wings stretched out to twice the length of my body, straining in huge arcs from sky to land, almost brushing at the tips as I flew nearly straight up. I could feel the breath in my lungs roaring up and down my long windpipe, and abruptly I coughed, sending a ripple of bright yellow flame spurting from between my jaws. I snorted, feeling smoke stream past my face from my flared nostrils, and climbed determinedly for the low bellies of the clouds above, something in the back of my mind telling me that I needed to get out of sight. And, deep down in the still water of my consciousness, two of the faces on the beach stood out in bold, filling me with a nameless fear.

Abruptly I caught a breeze, and let the wind carry me away, instinct drowning my shock, my mind surrendering to the sensations around me.

_____

Some time later, encased as I was in the blank whiteness of the clouds, I began to come back to myself.