Shifter

Chapter 6

Blink, blink, blink, is all the cursor does when you have writer's block. There's no flowing of words from fingertips. There is the cursor, blinking mockingly at your face. Around Blink 182, I started listening to "All the Small Things." Yes, I did watch the cursor blink exactly 182 times just for that pun. I have too much time on my hands. But anyway, it took me a while, but I finally have this chapter figured out, so yay! Enjoy! 

That night, before I fell asleep, I laid in bed for a while, thinking. Well, I wasn't really thinking as much as... searching. If that gold light inside of me was real, where was it when I was a human? What was it doing, other than furnishing me with disturbing nightmares? Could I... find it? Tell it to calm its shiz, so I could get a good night's sleep? I knew it was ridiculous, but I was desperate, and exhausted. And so I searched.

A few minutes into my Search for Self-Discovery, I had found it. The light. My power. Whatever you want to call it. There it was. There was a kind of... mental snag, right behind my sternum. I could feel something extra, something... other, the same way I could feel the power in the words of The Book, inside of me. It was focused in my chest, and I could feel it, warm and bright and distinctly nonhuman. But as odd as it felt to find something so foreign inside of me, it was, at the same time, familiar. As if it had been there the whole time, an old friend, and I simply hadn't realized it. 

Carefully, I probed the area of power with my mind. Was it conscious? Thinking? I felt some give in the barrier that seemed to be between me and my Destiny (or whatever it was). So I pushed a little harder, trying to see what my power really was. But then, I broke through the obstruction. I instantly wished I hadn't. Immediately, there was a bright flash of golden light behind my eyelids and a sharp, stabbing pain in my chest, and then I was falling... 

And then, I wasn't. I was standing just on the outside of a circle of people, all of whom were glowing and dressed in overlarge robes. They each had long, thin, gold chains around their necks, the ends of which were twisted and tied around each other in the middle of the - roughly - ten-foot circle. I then noticed that in each metal-free wedge, there stood a person, dressed entirely in animal skins. Each person inside the circle had his or her eyes closed. Sweat poured down the faces of all involved. As I adjusted to the strange scene, I realized that we all stood in the middle of a packed-earth road. The robed people were singing, not quite synchronized, but in a preternaturally euphonic way, their voices overlapping to form eerie harmonies. The volume grew, and as it did, several of the older robed beings began to slump against the younger, seeming to lose energy.

They all glowed even brighter than before, and they looked like pictures slightly out of focus, with silver-blue haze surrounding them. The forms of the people inside the circle began to flicker, sometimes human, more often not. The blue light from the robed people was almost blinding now, and I was forced to look away. And as I did, I saw in the distance a wall of capital-s Shadow moving towards the village we were in. Emanating from the Shadow was a jarring silence, in sharp contrast to the singing of the glowing people. Underlying wails and shrieks could be heard as the Shadow came closer. 

"It looks like-" I began to warn the people, because I was sure, I was certain that the Shadow was made up of hundreds of Chasers. But my warnings were unheard under the final, unearthly note of the robed beings' song. I whirled back towards the circle, wondering what could have drawn that sort of sound from human lips. I was just in time to see a pelt-clothed woman's eyes jolt open and flare a bright, brilliant gold before returning to a sort of silvery hazel, and to see half of the Spellworkers - for I was sure, now, that that was what the robed people were - collapse. The Shifters - of course, that was who the pelt-garbed ones were - stepped forward to help, their bare feet touching the dry earth for what seemed like the first time, what with the awe they expressed. 

After helping an older Spellworker to a stone where he could sit, the woman I had seen earlier stepped slowly towards the middle of the street, her bare feet nearly silent on the packed dirt. There was a look on her face... As if she wasn't truly there, but deep inside herself. Looking for something. I recognized it, for only moments ago I had worn one similar to it, searching for my own power. And then, she transformed. There was a flash of bright gold light, and then, where the woman had stood, was a bear, a great and powerful black bear, roaring its triumphs at the sky. And then air was howling past my ears and blood was pounding in my head, and it was like I was falling, but backwards. I vaguely heard cheers, and triumphant yowls from more Shifters, before everything was gone, gone in an abyss of golden light. 

And then the motion stopped, stopped as if it had never started, as if nothing had ever happened. The time was exactly the same as when I had left, if I even had left. But something was different, I knew. I could feel my power settling a bit more comfortably into my body, knowing that I had acknowledged it, and that I had seen what I needed to see. I would ask Loni about what I had watched the next day at lunch. But at that moment, I was just glad to sink into the first dreamless sleep I had had in weeks.  (I was going to stop here, but I figured I might as well keep going...)

 ***

The next day, I was a new person. I was completely awake, and capable of intelligent thought once more. Unfortunately, this did not help raise my sure-to-be-floundering average. I was too busy taking advantage of this added brainpower to work out what "training" meant. How would I access my power if every time I tried I was flashed back in time? How would Loni tell me how if she had never had to herself? Was it inherent knowledge for Spellworkers, the inner workings of a Shifter? My class participation grade continued to slip, but at this point I was too preoccupied to care. 

By lunchtime, I was practically humming with unasked, unanswered questions, not to mention simultaneous nerves and excitement having to due with my powers, my recently discovered exploding potential, and the fact that probability of me changing into an animal within the next twenty-four hours had risen drastically since the phone call the night before. 

My hands were clenched at my sides to keep me from running into the library. The sleeves of my favorite hoodie were somewhat stretched, as I had a tendency to twist the ends of the sleeves of whatever I was wearing when I was nervous. As a matter of fact, as I made my way to the Biology section (Of course, where else could we be meeting? The symbolism was not lost on me.) my hands were firmly inside my sleeves, and somewhat entangled in the soft fabric. 

Loni was already waiting for me at a table, with books on human and animal anatomy, and a book of... fairy tales? Well, I reasoned. We are, really, living fairy tales ourselves... There must be some use for them. Loni gestured to me impatiently. 

"Hurry," she whispered. "We have a lot to talk about."

I hope you liked this chapter! If it's something you like to do, please vote and comment etc, and keep reading if you like what you're seeing! Thank you so much for reading, and... Yeah. Bye!