EverChange

Chapter 7

I was grateful for the shower, and found I didn't smell too bad. My hair wasn't greasy, but I was bruised to tail to sternum, with healed scabs on my knuckles, the right buttock, my toes and left knee. The shower's pressure was phenomenal, and melted away the soreness. I picked dried blood from my hair, and small bits of gravel. Running my fingers through my wet hair, it got me thinking. My natural hair, unchanged, unstraightened, unshifted, is very long and very thick. Brushing once a day gets a decent amount of tangles in any brush I use. When neglected, the amount of knots and tangles becomes almost unmanageable.

Running my fingers through, with shampoo that smelled like lemonade, I found my hair was lacking chaos. There was a woman here, but apparently she had just seen me today. So that meant one of the men present, had to have been taking care of me. I dropped the bottle of bodywash, it clattered on the floor, along with a few other bottles of stuff. My feet were not spared.

With the close medical attention, lack of bruising near injection points, and so far no pain in my lady bits, led me to the conclusion of a skilled hand. The doctor, Mr.... Melinda? Lindy? I held my head, mumbling outloud that this wasn't happening. I totally wasn't kidnapped by a bunch of weirdos in the middle of the forest.

I stood under the spray, trying to calm down. If I didn't, I'd start shapeshifting into all sorts of weird combinations. In highschool, during a breakup, I had spent a full month depressed, and changed my hair to colors that matched my mood. I wore jeans and hoodies, and that hid the scales, gills, feathers or claws I had during that time.

Currently, the bruised areas of my body were now sporting bright orange, violet, and yellow spikey scales. I sighed, and got out the shower to get dressed. I tugged on the clothes. Women's tank, yoga pants, and a hoodie that was black with a grey and green shark on it. A whiptail shark was on the breast, number 14 on the center of the back and the name "Malinda" across the shoulders.

Making my way downstairs, I noticed my fingers where scaly and clawed, same as my toes. Reaching the main floor, I turned into the kitchen to find the children sitting at the table, Lacey, Brandon, the woman named Moonie and another woman sitting at the table. I turned to see the Doctor at the stove on the island in the cooking area, with the brawny Davis at the counter, delicately cutting up vegetables.

"Ohmygosh she's beautifuls!"

I was jarred back into the situation when the woman spoke. She looked tired, her eyes lidded and a light ring beneath them. Her hair was wild, curly in every direction with hair so black it looked blue in the light. Her eyes were like sapphires, and she grinned at me.

"I wasn't aware you had found Queen!" she clapped her delicate hands together. "Donovan! She's so lovely! And look at her coloring!"

"I...Excuse me?" her wording made me prickle a bit. "I'm not a... Queen? I'm just a normal girl from... Detroit.... So if you could just give me my stuff, I can call a taxi and head on out."

"She's not a Queen, Devonny," Moonie said, cutting nectarines into slices for the little girl. "She's a shifter."

"I'm sorry." I turned to see Davis looking at me, his face burning with a blush.

"Eh?" everyone was kind of talking at once.

"For... um..." With his free hand, he motioned from his rear to up in the air. "Stepping... on you..."

I smiled a bit, off guard that someone so big looked so forlorn over hurting a cat. "It's okay. When I turn human, the wounds inflicted are usually superficial."

"How are you feeling?" the Doctor looked at me. His eyes were mesmerizing, some golden-brown color that reminded me of honey on toast. An amused smiled curved his lips.