This World Burns Blue

Chapter 1

I’d never thought of myself as different in any way, but after my sixteenth birthday some questions arose. Though I knew that others like me existed, I tried to believe that I wasn’t one. That I, Sasha Pinnet, an average 16-year-old guy, was an Ershio? The idea seemed absurd. It’s not like I had anything against Ershios, but most humans did. I often saw Ershios being picked on and pushed around as if they were a lower race, a minor fault in the world. I was already bullied a lot; I really didn’t need more to add on to it.

Ershios were a special kind of human. They usually have an animal attribute, such as ears and tails, sometimes even bird wings. They also had a special eye color that certain color almost always corresponding with their one Ershio ability. I often saw one Ershio with a rabbit tail, he had shiny silver eyes, and he had the ability to create metals out of thin air and bend the underground metals to his usage, not that he really used his powers.

Most Ershios developed their features and abilities when they are very young, or even at birth, but I was only beginning this process. After May 9th (my birthday, which was last week), my head began to hurt severely, but it was only the top outer part of my head, it felt as if my skin was on fire. Along with this, strangely enough, my very lower spine began to hurt also, the end of my tail bone, right above my butt. My mother refused to believe that I was becoming one of them, she hadn’t anything against them either, but my father on the other hand… he hated them. At this time he didn’t know I was hurting, my mother made sure to keep it a secret, so that my father would not find out and kick me out of the house.

The process took a little over a week, and my mom kept me out of school that whole week, the only other person that got to see me (besides her of course) was my best friend, Alex. Alex Dillion was a smooth, decently attractive guy; he had light brown hair and pale skin. He had a slight build, but he wasn’t as strong as me, he was cautious and smart too, which were two qualities I lacked completely. My mother absolutely loved him, and she made sure I stuck by him so that her ‘little boy’ would be okay in the world.

During the Transformation Week my mom stated that I’d be in a lot of pain and I’d be very weak, and she wasn’t joking about that; that was the worst week of my life. She couldn’t stay by me all day, seeing as she worked, so she had a talk with Alex’s mom and got him to stay home with me all week. Everyday Alex would come in at about 9:00 am, when my mom left for work. It was the same thing all seven days.

At the end of the seventh day, I was finally able to get out of bed and look at myself in the mirror. I looked past my greasy, unwashed hair and paler-than-usual face and reached up to my head. On top there were two reddish-brown ears, they appeared to be fox ears, but I couldn’t really tell. I then turned around; I had an overly-poufy medium length tail that matched the color of his ears. I sighed and then looked to see if his eyes had changed color. Sure enough they had changed to be a very distinctive green, not just any usual green, but bright emerald green. The greenest green I’d ever seen.

As I went to lick my dry lips, (which were chapped, I don’t know why but that bothered me.) my tongue went past something sharper than a human tooth. I opened his mouth and on either side my canine teeth had grown a little, not to be too big, but sharper and obviously different from the other teeth.

As I was staring at myself in the mirror my door burst open, which in all fairness scared the living hell out of me. I jumped and turned, my ears standing straight up and my tail fluffing up in fear. When it was only Alex at the door I breathed out and relaxed. “Oh... Hi Alex.”

“Oh sorry, didn’t mean to scare you Sasha.”

“Nah, it’s okay.”

Alex smiled and shut the door; he took a long look at me, staring intently. I began to feel uncomfortable with his eyes just studying me like they were. I watched his eyes trail lower down my bottom, examining every foreign thing he noticed. I noticed his eyes got lower and blushed, I mean, I knew that wasn’t what he was looking at but I couldn’t help but get shy, so my tail instinctively folded over my waist area, along with my ears folding back bashfully.