A Wild Kind

Chapter 2

Evalyn slurped her breakfast up quickly and chucked it haphazardly somewhere near the sink. She sauntered into her bedroom and plonked down on her bed, picking up her hairbrush and attempting to pull it through her mat of straggly black hair. It got lost, somewhere down past her shoulders. She stood up and tried to reach around and grab it, before falling against her chest of drawers.

A picture in the corner of her eye stopped her from her scrambling. Evalyn squatted down and pulled the picture up. It was her and Alyra, when they were 13. This was 5 years ago, and it was when Alyra first found out.

All her life, she’d been that little bit different, but she never let it bother her. Evalyn had always been proud, maybe even jealous of Alyra’s courage to be unique. She shook her head, and studied the photo.

The pair sat on a rusted old park bench backed up against a flowering hedge. Evalyn sat on the left, black hair pushed against her tan, freckled face in the wind. Her emerald green eyes shone like stars, as they did when the corners of her face crinkled when she laughed.

Alyra sat, perched atop the back bench of the chair. Her white blonde hair swept out behind her, almost hitting Evalyn’s face. Alyra too, had shining eyes, but hers a more sparkling blue. It was hard not to get lost, gazing into them. Her skin was ridiculously pale next to Evalyns; they were so different, yet so much the same.

Looking closer at the photo, Evalyn could just make out the faint black stripes patterned over Alyra’s skin. Her sleek tail was out, a petite red bow wrapped around it, matching the one that sat around her cat-like ears that sat so naturally atop her head.

Yes, this was Alyra’s 13th birthday, the day she had discovered she was an animorph, or skinwalker, and among the last. Yet still, even after everything, her life-changing discovery, the amount of teasing that was to follow her through high school, and everything her life would become, Alyra was happy, she was herself.

This was who she was; a unique human being, with the ability to shape shift into her spirit animal, and neither herself nor Evalyn would change that for the world. Evalyn laughed at all the times Alyra had shrunk down to her little white tiger-cat form, had run into glass doors, the first time she had caught a mouse and how proud she was, and Alyra’s face as she came back to human form and refused to eat it anyway.

That had been within the first year after this photo was taken. After that, things had become more serious. They had been pushed into learning to fight, to defend, and to survive; no matter what the situation. Their life had been so simple, innocent even one day, and then they were taught how to dislocate a shoulder the next.

Alyra now walked around with a small knife around her belt, a loaded gun in her boat and a sword at her bedside table. Evalyn, herself took her baseball bat with her everywhere, and was never seen without a pocket knife.

Yes, there was once a time for innocence, but imminent danger took that time away.