Unnatural Instinct: Transform

Epilogue

'Read it to me again, Daddy. Read it to me again!'

I laugh as I pull playfully at my daughter's little pigtails.

'Stop, Daddy! Read the story!'

'Honestly, Claudia, does it have to be every night?' you say from your chair. You pretend impatience but I can see the smile in your eyes. Not even three and our daughter is already showing the stubbornness of the Drona.

'She's all right,' I say. 'I don't mind.' One arm curled securely around my daughter's waist, I reach over for the book on the table.

One year after we abandoned the castle and secured our new home, I returned to find my castle in ruins. And not just the castle itself—the forest too. In one year not only had the humans wrecked my home but demolished the forest. They'd destroyed everything. Well, almost everything. Somehow, the book survived, hidden beneath the ash. The only legacy left of my parents (other than me), left of our kind. A miracle. Providence. Call it what you will. Despite all man's terrors and devices, we Drona will never be destroyed.

'I want to hold it,' Claudia says.

'Not a chance. It's much too heavy,' I say.

Pouting her lips, she folds her arms as I rest the book on my lap. She's sitting squashed up beside me on the couch, her warm little body pressed up against my hip. The glowing warmth of joy fills my chest. Even now, it surprises me how far we've come. Despite my endless, hopeless search for you, I never thought we could be so content.

Brushing back the hair from Claudia's face, I kiss her lightly just above the ear. From across the room you watch me with the usual question in your eyes, and, as usual, I meet your question with a small shake of my head.

We can't know for sure what's going to happen to her. She could transform tomorrow, next week, next month. She may not change until she hits puberty or when she encounters the presence of an unrelated male. How can we know? We, who never had the privilege of growing up with our natural families: you with your adoptive family, and me fending for myself on the streets, then in the forests after the presence of an older female Drona activated my own transformation. It was so long ago now that I don't even remember her name.

I remember how she died, however. Just like I remember how my parents died. I look away with a grimace, then turn to watch you as you smile down at your swelling belly, smoothing your hands over it.

You're even more beautiful three years on. You've grown into yourself. You've accepted yourself. Just as I hoped you would. Just as I prayed you would. When my servants first found you, I didn't know what to do. All I knew was that the presence of another of our kind, fully transformed, should activate your own transformation. But just to be sure, I made a cream infused with the scent of my musk, hopeful that it must work, worried that anything less would not be enough, and you would escape and I would lose you again.

Perhaps forever.

Never did I think it would work so well—or so horribly. My own transformation took weeks, not days like yours, though I could not tell you that at the time. I had to be strong. I had to have faith. You didn't know my terror—and I'd like to keep it that way.

I can't help but feel guilty about it, even now. Was it my fault? Is it because you're a female that it happened so quickly? Who knows? There are so many things I don't know about my own kind.

Humans saw to that.

Just as they saw to your parents—or else we presume. Though we've tried to look, we cannot find proof of your origins. And perhaps that is a good thing. Perhaps it's better we don't know. Who wants to know that their parents were slaughtered, their horns made to decorate some hunter's lodge or ground up into creams that are said to make the wearer youthful, like the ivory of elephants or rhinos?

No. It's best not to know.

Life is good now. What use is there in exploring the pain of the past?

You raise your orange eyes and smile at the sight of me watching you, devouring you from afar. You're naked of course, your smooth, red skin bright in the darkness. Your hair curls around your gleaming horns. Your breasts are heavy with milk and the mere sight of them makes my mouth water. I want to feel their softness. I want their taste on my tongue. I shift awkwardly, very glad that the book is covering my lap.

Never do you affect me more than when you're carrying one of my offspring.

'Daddy!' Still pouting, Claudia slaps her hand down on the cover.

'All right,' I laugh, opening the book to the title page: The Big Book of Drona Tales. It's old. Maybe hundreds of years old. As for the stories themselves, they might be thousands. Who knows? The parchment won't last. I was partway through copying it before it was lost in the castle wreckage. I must start again. It's more than just a book of children's stories. It's a relic of our kind. A reminder of who we are and where we've come from. For our daughter, for future generations, I must preserve it.

'Which story do you want to read?' I say.

'You know which one, Rush,' you smile from your chair.

'You know which one!' Claudia echoes, her pale blue eyes glaring up at me.

'All right. All right.' And so I flick through the book until I land on the pages of 'The Ugly Human.' The story of a lost and lonely Drona and her transformation from her human shell to her real form. I can see the ache in my daughter's eyes as she stares up at my horns. I prepare myself for her usual question: When? But today she doesn't ask it.

Instead, she bunches up next to me with her little arm wrapped around my waist as she looks down into the book's pages, dreaming and hoping.

And so I begin, and as I do I watch you. You're listening intently, your head turned to the side with a faraway look in your eyes, your hand resting upon your belly. You've never noticed me watching you, never once during the hundreds of times we must have read this story. I only look for one thing. I flick my eyes up from the page, then back down again, looking for it, waiting for it, hoping for it.

Anxious for it.

Even now, I worry. Even now, I wonder. Females have lots of secrets. After all that's happened to you, after all I've done to you, are you truly content?

I watch and I wait.

And there it finally is—that small smile on your lips.

Dropping my eyes back to the book, I relax back into my chair, holding Claudia close as I continue with the story.