Golden And Silver (story By Otterfrost) - Tumblr Posts

masterlist

finally motivation prepare to get like seven chapters of this story (me months later: well that was a lie (except on AO3)

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

bleeding and a run

CW: blood (as per title) guns, hospital whump, being really high on morphine in said hospital, slavery mention, asassination mention, ecoli mention, mild swearing,

Tatiana

----

Several people were at my door, a girl with olive skin and a very tall redhead girl that I had to look straight up to meet the eyes of, and she carried a passed out, bleeding-in-many-places Cami in her arms. Cami was almost dwarfed in comparison to this girl. Almost. Cami was about a foot shorter.

My mother and I let them inside, then conversed for a minute in Portuguese to figure out what we’d do, when my mother recognized something about the tall one.

“Wait- are you Night- Claire Malkom’s kid?”

“How do you know her name?” the redhead asked. Her voice had lowered by about an octave.

“You’re little Magdalena? Oh my God, last time I saw you you were so little!”

“I- don’t know you,”

She backed away.

Cami’s eyes slowly blinked open, and she mumbled, “Cuz, where are we?”

“That’s Airi- Ariana’s kid?” Lara said.

Magdalena nodded.

The ambulance arrived, and Lara said, “I’ll call Ariana, okay Magdalena?”

“Okay,” she replied.

Magdalena and the other girl took Cami to the ambulance and didn’t return.

Lara took out her phone and called someone, speaking very rapidly in French. I didn’t speak French, so I didn’t get much out of it, but when she hung up, she said, “We’re going to the hospital,”

We went out to the car, and my mom drove us there, then parked and hugged a tall red-headed woman wearing a knitted sweater and sweatpants. Not ideal for August.

My mother introduced us, and Ariana smiled at me. She seemed ancient, though she looked about thirty. My mom’s age.

A man with dark hair and pale skin, holding the hand of a girl with white hair, extremely pale skin and a red and white cane in her other hand approached us and gasped, “Any update, mom?”

Ariana nodded and said, “She’s in the ICU right now, awaiting surgery,”

She hugged him and said, “Don’t you worry Jon- Xoya, she’ll make it,”

We entered the hospital, and a few hours later, Ariana was told she could go to her daughter’s room now.

We went to Cami’s room, and she lay in the bed, an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. 

In and out, in and out.

Her wrists had IVs in it, with blood in one, some fluid in another. She had patches on her eyebrow, a bandage peeked out from under the light blue hospital gown. Her hair and the blood were the only colors in the room.

Her eyes blinked open, and I saw liquid gold for a moment, then her eyes dimmed and she went limp again, her arm angled oddly to the point it would be stiff when she woke up.

Ariana moved her arm back to a comfortable position, and she rolled to the side and mumbled, “Mommy, where am I?”

Ariana kneeled close to her and whispered, “Hospital,”

“Really? Did I get ‘im?”

“Get who?”

“Hunter,” she mumbled, “Did he finally realize he needed to leave me alone?”

“I’m sorry, Cams, no,”

She didn’t notice, and squinted up at the ceiling.

“Polaris’s really bright tonight,” she mumbled.

“Cams, we’re inside,”

“Oh, really? Cool,”

—

Cami didn’t come to school for the next week, then returned in a wheelchair. She had bandages on her leg, and she looked terrified of Mr. Simmons now. I couldn’t see why, he was strict, but he was kind and gave us an extension for her not being there.

Not being at school didn’t stop her from working.

She wheeled next to me and leaned on my shoulder, then said in her forever quiet voice, “So, how’s the project going?”

“I have a bunch of photos and info now,”

“Yay!” She sounded slightly louder here.

She hugged me and said, “So, do you think Ms. Delano will be fine with me missing a week of rehearsals and showing up in a wheelchair?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty nice about things like that,”

“Thank god, last teacher I had got mad at me when I was hospitalized with E. coli O157:H7,”

“What?”

“E. coli on steroids,”

“Yikes. My mom told me about an E. coli outbreak when she was eight that killed some of her friends,”

“Damn,”

“Yeah, my mom said there wasn’t much access to hospitals at the time,”

We went back to work and I realized, I had no idea where my mother grew up or lived before here. Just that she grew up in a communidade, or favela if said by the upper class people. The places where the descendants of former slaves ended up because the government failed to provide for them.

I texted her about it when I got out of Mr. Simmons’ class, and she said about an hour and a half later, an entire other class passing, ‘It's a complicated story, one I’ll tell you someday.’

Someday. A nice promise, although non-definitive.

After Chem was over, I went to lunch, and Moon brought her friend Marina over. We tolerated Marina, not some of Moon’s other friends who’d annoyed all of us, and certainly not Kira, who enjoyed spouting slurs and getting scolded by everyone else about it.

Even Moon barely tolerated her.

Kira decided to come over. She had dyed snow-white hair to match her white ears and tail, and at the time, she wore all dark colors, an odd contrast.

She slammed her hands in front of Cami and hissed at her, and Cami ignored her. 

“I’m talking to you,” Kira snapped.

Cami looked up with a bored expression and said, “Could’ve sworn you weren’t talking,”

Kira’s left ear twitched and her lip curled into an animalistic snarl.

“Shut up!” She snapped.

“You’ve done most of the talking,” Cami remarked.

Kira’s hair and tail bristled, and Cami looked up at her for a moment, and I saw a golden glow for a split second.

Kira opened and closed her mouth, then hissed, “How dare you?”

“How dare I what?” Cami asked, her tone just as gentle as when she started talking.

“You know what I mean!”

“I really don’t,”

Kira snarled louder and called her an awful word. 

Cami’s expression hardened, and she snapped, “You’re lucky I can’t stand right now,”

I heard rain above, even though the weather could normally be seen for miles, and there was no trace this morning. Lightning struck right outside the school, and I jumped when I saw the burning almost-white light hit a tree. Murmurs of worry echoed through the cafeteria, and at our table, all but Cami looked spooked. Cami, instead, looked exhausted and tilted to the side with the next lightning strike. She stayed upright because of the wheelchair’s seatbelt, but we weren’t sure what to do. As the storm continued, her breathing slowed, and eventually, just as quickly as it began, it ended, and she opened her eyes and gasped for breath, almost choking.

Almost, thankfully. She was fine after a moment, just- off. She didn’t know what was going on until we filled her in.

Then she wheeled away, took out her phone and texted for a moment, then returned.

The bell rang, and I tried to ask her what happened, and she blew me off and said, “It’s nothing, I have… narcolepsy,”

Liar.

But I didn’t press.

I didn’t change how I spoke to her, either, it was her business, not mine.

When class went out for the day, she went straight to the theater after giving me a hug, and I went to the bus.

Cami

----

“So, what happened?” Addy asked.

“I got shot six times,” I replied.

“Oh.”

I wheeled myself to the edge of the stage, tried my hardest to hop up, only for pain to shoot through my arm, and I fell back down.

I got back in the chair and wheeled the long way, through the back. Thankfully, there was another way, through the chorus room.

I had to be careful wheeling down the ramp in the room and wheeled backstage.

Eli was doing the first scene. The play we were doing was an old classic from back during the first Civil Rights movement, a love story suggesting that shifters get equal rights as well. Most involved in the movement agreed, but the humans in charge at the time sucked and said no. The vice president at the time was actually assassinated by a member of congress for pushing for a shifter rights bill in 1968. So we waited for twenty years for the second movement, and that one, humans finally relented and now the kenomi and dragon-folk had rights. The dragon-folk often lived in the packs, however, and often didn’t care. Olivia was one of the non-traditional dragon-folk, both physically, as a more unique thing that couldn’t fly, and mentally, she had a dream, and she longed to make sure that no one would ever forget it. She wanted to make it safe for all of us to return as ourselves. 

Eli shifted as the script said and a voiceover would allow them to speak on the show night. Many shifters couldn’t speak in our animal forms. I wasn’t one of them who couldn’t, I just didn’t enjoy doing so, it felt weird.

When they got off the scene, they high-fived me and said, “How’d I do, Critura?”

“Great!”

I looked at my book as I wheeled onto the scene, in the middle of the other’s monologue as the book told me. Seeing my wheelchair, it threw my scene partner, Sebby, off a bit, but he quickly stopped his surprise and continued the scene. I got to tell his character off for being an ass, as I’d adopted Eli’s character, Jenny.

It was really fun.

He stood there, character dumbfounded for a moment, and we exited in opposite directions. Me, stage right, him, stage left. 

I didn’t have to go back on ‘til scene four, an ensemble scene in which people were gossiping while I told Eli’s character to go straight to the press about the mistreatment at work. 

Eventually came four o clock, and we all had to go, and I wheeled out when Xoya called me. They and their girlfriend, Winter, were in Xoya’s SUV, and Winter looked in my general direction, smiled, and greeted me when I got in the car.

We didn’t talk much of the drive, though I wanted to tell them everything that had transpired.

Don’t worry, Cams. Xoya’s mental voice touched my mental form. 

“Don’t do that,” I said, “Its weird,”

“Well, if you bothered with the exercises I gave you, I wouldn’t be able to,”

I threw up a wall of my magic internally, solid rain dust, almost like what littered the ground after that storm I’d accidentally caused. That beautiful dust didn’t always come, but when it did, you could tell exactly where I exploded.

Xoya dropped me off at the gravel path, then started their journey back to theirs and Winter’s shared apartment. I walked up, then got inside and went into my room, and lay back on my black and navy-blue bed, the only orderly part of my paint splattered walls. All had meaning, yet to most, it looked eccentric.

My closet was black, the color black helped me to calm down. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my calming, black leather jacket anymore because of the amount of times I was shot in the torso the week before. My ceiling was navy blue. The color for sleep.

I’d go over the rest, but I wouldn’t have the energy to write all that, so just imagine an abstract painting of all colors. And I do mean all of them. Every color I knew.

I peeled off my shirt and traced the old scars that ran down my torso to my thigh. The long gone pain that made me feel as I made my former friend feel.

I missed Hunter. I wondered if Marina missed me, if Hunter told her. I wasn’t about to ask, on the chance she got scared and stayed away.

I pulled myself onto my bed and shifted. I got off and walked out the room, and I walked through the woods. I was strong in this form, and I needed to stretch my legs.

—

I lay down on an angled log and ate some termites and probably decimated the population while I was at it, but I couldn’t help it. It tasted like wood grilled meat, although I wasn’t sure what kind.

Someone approached me, and I looked up and saw Lyorna and Lizzie, about three hundred feet away. Lizzie was so excited and kept bouncing up and down, but I wanted to be alone.

I stood and padded away, and heard Lizzie following after me, despite Lyorna’s protests about how it was probably a bad idea to touch a wolf.

The Critura of the Snowdrift pack eventually managed to lead Lizzie away, and I decided to return the favor. I stalked them for about an hour before the wind changed, and Lyorna looked right at where I was in the shadows and giggled.

“Lena, what’s up?”

“Just thinking,”

I emerged and let Lizzie touch me, as she so clearly wanted, then I continued on my walk, laughing.

I lay in some sand and rolled around, when I tasted human on the air.

I went underwater, then rolled until my dark patches were on top, careful not to let out my oxygen. I occasionally craned my neck to poke my nose out, breathe out and in, and lower it again.

Something grabbed me, and I twisted, kicked, then swam to deeper waters. My feet couldn’t touch the ground in my human form, I doubted what grabbed me could. A fish passed by, and I resisted the temptation to eat it as I kicked to stay above water.

On the opposite shore, I saw several people, but I have pretty bad vision. But I recognized the scent of them and swam towards them.

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Truth

CW: gun, swearing, violence, attempted murder, seizure mention, morphine mention, (magical) poisoning, knife, hospital whump, slavery mention, death mention, gag whump

Tatiana

----

Shit, shit, shit. The wolf was swimming toward me.

I backed away and it stopped and tilted its head. I could see its legs churning water, and someone on the opposite shore had a gun pointed at it.

“Shit,” Moon breathed.

I tried to chase it away by splashing water, it only approached even closer. Why? Why would it do this? It was supposed to be scared of people. Unless… 

It jumped out of the water, then sank to its knees and lay on its chest. There were little nubs on its shoulders, threatening to explode.

Ashley kneeled next to it and whispered something in a language I didn’t know, and it responded.

Bramble kneeled next to it as well, twining their tail around the wolf’s front right paw.

“Defend her,” Ashley ordered.

I nodded and got to the very edge of the shore, standing in front of it.

The person with the gun fired a warning shot, and then shot around me, hitting the wolf.

It howled, and practically exploded into the blue dust that had littered the ground after that weird storm. Moon had been spared from the blast, but Ashley, Bramble, and I had been covered in blue, and it cut a bit into our skin and swimsuits. Trees all around us had been covered as well, and small plants had been leveled. 

The wolf stood and ran away, its leg shaking, when it looked back at us and said something to Ashley.

Ashley immediately got into the water and most of the blue dust came off, all but the stuff stuck deep in her curly dark fur and hair.

I got into the water after her, and the person with the gun left, thank god.

The dust came off surprisingly easily.

My phone was on a rock on the banks and lit up.

I got out once I’d gotten all the dust I could, and dried off before checking the text.

‘Hey, you alright?’ Cami had texted me.

‘Yeah. Just saw a wolf! It kinda covered me in dust tho-’

‘Cool. Anyways I got shot again so I’m off to the hospital, yay /s’

‘Again?!’

‘Just can’t stay out of trouble, also someone does have a vendetta against me so…’

‘Who?’

‘Hunter,’

‘Why him?’

‘He blames me,’ she wrote. Then, after a minute, she wrote, ‘We were attacked by a big wolf, and I told him to run and he blames me. It attacked him, not me,’

‘What?!’

‘He’s stupid,’

‘Agreed,’

‘See you in school, I’ll probably be better tmrw. Oh also apparently all my bones are pneumatic lol,’

‘What?’

‘I have bird bones essentially, meaning, if i had wings, i could fly for a short distance!’

‘Cool,’

‘I’m also at risk of osteoporosis but probably not my mom is the exact same,’

‘Osteoporosis?’

‘Brittle bones stuff, its all medical nonsense to me,’

It didn’t seem that way.

‘Well, see you tmrw,’ I texted. Cami replied with a thumbs up, and we didn’t text again that day.

—

I had a strange dream of a giant wolf and a white haired girl, and when I woke, it still confused me.

Cami

----

I hated lying to her. I hated hated hated it, but it was to protect her.

My mom came home the second she found out I’d been shot again, and now I was in a hospital room on recovery, barely thinking, just watching something on the TV. The shot hadn’t pierced bone, just my squishy wizard tissue. 

Doctor’s words, not mine...

…I think.

Tatiana came to visit me and I have barely any memory of it, but she gave me a little gift, a still-hot tin of something she called feijoada. Black beans, pork and rice.

“Thank you,” I think I whispered.

I ate it when I got hungry, and had my tail been out, it would have wagged ceaselessly. Or as close to ceaselessly I could get without my muscles hurting and then some.

“Like it?” I think she asked.

Then came the one part I know I recalled correctly, since I looked it up. About twelve times in two hours because of morphine, according to the search history.

She explained its cultural meaning to her and I listened and told her that I would remember. Lo and behold, I did.

She eventually left, and I felt tired and shut off the TV, but sleep refused to come.

Probably to my advantage.

After a bit of lying on my back, I heard my door open and seven sets of hushed footsteps, then felt something over my face. I struggled and kicked, then calmed a bit and went limp.

They, thinking I was dead, kept the pillow over my face for a few moments longer. My lungs burned and burned and I felt the pillow come off, and opened my eyes as I shot up. Gold reflected on the tiled floor, in one of their eyes as I looked at him and he collapsed. Gold in the reflective blue dust that exploded from my fury.

I screamed as the other six grabbed me, and one made the foolish mistake of covering my mouth. I bit down and he screamed, then collapsed in a seizure. A storm boomed outside, likely my doing, and with each lightning strike, I felt weaker, until the world went black.

Surprisingly, I woke up in brightness. Still in the hospital.

A kenomi man stood over me, his tail puffed up. My eyes were still golden.

I let the gold fade with breathing exercises, before whispering with clear, angry words, “What happened to the people who tried to murder me,”

It wasn’t a question. It was an order.

“They were arrested and charged with first degree attempted murder, assault, vandalism, and trespassing,” the kenomi replied. “Are you alright?”

I nodded and said, “I’m fine,”

I heard a weak, tiny cry for help from someone in my pack, a little girl named Irene, and stood. I didn’t mind the pain. She needed the help more than I needed rest.

“Chamomile, stay seated,” the kenomi ordered.

He grabbed my shoulders and sat me back on the bed.

I struggled against him and eventually snarled, “One of my packmates is in trouble. Let me go, please,”

“No. You are staying here, whether you like it or not. You need rest,”

I groaned and lay back down, then whispered, “What if she dies? She’s only a child,”

“Really?” the kenomi asked, raising an eyebrow. “How old is she?”

“Seven,” I whispered.

“Go then. Four hours. If you’re not back by then, you’re not going anywhere for the next two weeks,”

I nodded, shifted, and squeezed out the window, and jumped down from the second floor. I rolled when I hit the ground and bolted. A car pulled into the parking lot, and I dodged it and bolted to the woods.

About half an hour later, a roar from Thea. A ‘where the fuck are you’ call, if you will.

I howled in response to her roar and bolted to where she was. The pack’s encampment. I was there in two minutes.

A human girl kneeled in the center of the clearing, her wrists bound behind her, blindfolded, and gagged. Her left arm was covered in black and purple spikes, Irene sat on her lap, and Alex held a knife to her back.

I shifted back and looked at the girl, then boomed, “What the hell is this?”

Thea pulled Alex away and glared at him with her cold eyes. “I told you she wouldn’t like this,”

I undid the girl’s bindings, and she immediately blurted, “Don’t kill me! I’ll do anything!”

She broke into racking sobs.

“What happened,” I barked.

“Irene was caught and this one was going to kill her, but decided against it. Silvia killed everyone but this one,”

“And her arm?”

“That was my fault,” Irene admitted, her lip trembling, “I was scared and bit her and the poison that was out did that to her,”

I lifted the girl’s arm, and she winced.

“Can it be undone?” I asked Irene.

“No cure, just prevention,” I heard Silvia reply. The hunter shrank into herself and I saw her eyes bubble with fear.

“I’ve seen this with Helix when he would torture humans before turning them. There’s no cure, and to stop its spread, we either kill her or turn her. Otherwise she’ll be dead within two days. And you’re the only one in the pack who can turn her,”

I swallowed and asked, “Do you want to become one of us? It will be painful, and I assume the hunters won’t be all too pleased,”

Unless they’re the faction working with Helix.

Three factions, one worked with Helix, the Critura before me, and wanted to enslave all of us, one tried to find a way to save werewolves and turn them human. The people who came back from them weren’t ever right, and wasted away with Viper and Olivia and James for weeks to months to years of screaming and begging for everyone to let them die, though they weren’t injured physically, before finally being granted entrance to Voltrip’s domain. Death.

The other one killed mindlessly. The factions were all part of the same group, but it was strange.

“Please. Pleasepleaseplease,” she begged. “I don’t wanna die,”

Her voice broke and she went back to sobbing. 

“Okay,” I said. “It will hurt, but you won’t remember until the full moon, okay?”

One week.

She nodded and swallowed, “Do it,”

I lifted her wrist to my mouth and bit down. She screamed and kicked for a moment, then started shaking in a seizure.

I regretted all the pain I caused, but it was so she would live. She deserved to live.

“Get her to Viper,” I ordered. “Try to dull the spikes so she doesn’t hurt herself. Bye!”

I shifted and ran off, when I saw Tatiana. She was sitting on a rock with a sobbing Moon and trying to offer comfort.

She hugged Moon close, and I shifted into my human form and limped over to her, though it hurt quite a bit. I could spare the time, it took me an hour to get to camp. 

Tatiana gasped and Moon looked at me.

“Oh. Uh- hi Cami,” Tatiana said.

I didn’t expect such a calm response.

“Thought you were in the- the hospital,” Tatiana said. I saw her reach into her pocket and pull out a flimsy knife. 

I raised my hands and said, “I had something to attend to, I’ll be on my way,”

Winter came out of the trees and grabbed me, then pulled me away and started scolding me.

“Showing yourself to humans? You know not to do that!”

And Tatiana had followed us, then threw her knife. Winter threw up her arm and the knife bounced off a wall of solid ice and the blade broke. Winter looked pale and fell, like she rarely used her magic.

“Cami! Who is that?”

“My sibling’s girlfriend, sorry,”

I sat her up and said, “I gotta go back to the hospital so bye!”

I shifted and ran, not minding that Tatiana chased after me. I quickly outpaced her.

She called my name, and I stopped.

“I- you’re a werewolf?”

I dipped my head in a nod, then said, “Gotta get back to the hospital,”

She hugged me and ran her fingers through my fur, and I decided to let her on my back, if she insisted so much.

She declined, hugged me again, and went back to her probably confused friend.

I ran back to the hospital, and still had two hours to spare as I wriggled in through the window.

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Shifting

CW minors doing drugs, mentioned suicide attempt, bullet mention, suicide implications, swearing, implied self harm, nonsexual partial nudity, sex mention, blindfold, implied injury

Tatiana

---

I probably should not have taken that edible.

Moon also had an edible in, she was the one who gave them to me, and we just needed an escape route. Me so I didn’t die, her so she could get her mind off her mother being a piece of shit.

We went home a couple hours after I saw the hallucination and when I got home, I went to my room and looked at the torn curtains. God, I still remembered the sound. The sound of my escape from existence being foiled and hitting the ground. It helped to ground me, surprisingly, making me realize that when my mother had cut me down, it meant someone would notice. Someone would care. 

I was almost glad it had been prevented now, but at the time, I was heartbroken and didn’t talk to anyone for weeks afterward. Not my mother, not the staff at the psych ward, not my friends, I didn’t even speak in presentations.

I started writing on my WIP, and felt A Presence that left when I looked up. I wasn’t sure precisely what it was, but it felt familiar. It felt like me. I tried to follow it, but it got away and I sank to my knees in the middle of the hallway.

My mother came back an hour later and gave me a few chocolates, then said, “What’s wrong?”

“I- I feel… numb inside, like something’s gone in me,”

“Oh,”

She sat next to me and I lay on her shoulder as she rubbed my back and whispered, “Well, at least you’re talking about it. Good job!”

I opted to cry into her uniform and sobbed, “I just wanna feel normal for once,”

She lifted me, her cold skin soothing to the touch, and she took me to my room, then started singing a lullaby in a language I didn’t know, despite her having taught me the languages she spoke.

I succumbed to its lull, and fell asleep, and found her asleep outside my door when I woke up a few hours later, she hadn’t even changed out of her uniform.

She woke up after I crept by her and said, “Oh, did I fall asleep?”

“Sim, mamae,” I replied.

“Tá. Vou pra cama, tchauzinho, filha,”

And I could have sworn something hugged me. Not something malevolent, but kind.

—

When I went to school the next day, the girl who sat behind me in German kept throwing scraps of paper at me, and they had horrible words on them.

I eventually had enough and snapped, “Can you stop?”

The teacher told me to go after that, and looked at me sympathetically and, as she gave me the note, said, “Explain the situation to guidance, okay?”

I nodded and went down to guidance, and I felt the phantom hug again and broke down in the middle of the office. 

I went home after that.

I called Cami, and she sounded happy- despite the near, at times, emotionless voice- to hear from me… then started talking about the werewolf shit. That wasn’t a dream.

Shit.

I lay back on my bed and, quite frankly, I was too tired for this, so I just let her talk. Her voice was like a bell and I loved her.

And when she finished speaking, I updated her on my mental state and the hollowness inside, and told her about the bitch in German class.

“Wait. Which German class? Which period?”

“B3, German II,”

I could practically hear her squeal before squeaking, “We’ve got the same class!”

I smiled and, unsure of how to respond, steered the conversation away from that, and we started talking about boats, books, and breaking points in our ability to hold out in this shitty, shitty world.

And she suddenly started crying on the other end.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I- wings- wings wings wings owie-”

“YOU HAVE WINGS?”

My mom popped into the room and looked at me strangely, then told me she was going to work now, and not to expect her ‘til eight.

Now I could talk about the really fucked up shit.

Cami told me she’d been discharged an hour ago and could come over, and I agreed. 

She was at my house within twenty minutes after I gave her the address. Despite the fact there were bullet holes in her legs, she was still able to run in her wolf form, and did, and could walk somehow in her human form, although it greatly hurt her.

I let her in, and we went up to my room before she shifted back and flumped backwards on my bed. She had a bushy blue gray tail and I caught a hint of golden eyes, and she laughed, then covered her eyes before sitting up. I wasn’t sure why, though she did tell me when I asked, and blindfolded herself with a strip of fabric from her pocket to hug me. She didn’t take it off.

She brushed through her tail with a pet brush, then said, “So, wanna see the wings?”

I shrugged, and she said, “Just an fyi, I’m going to take of my shirt, so, please don’t react,”

She peeled it off to show a white crop top, and I saw bandages and scars, including an even line of scars that ran down her torso. 

Her eyes darted around the room, and she tapped her fingers against each other, like I sometimes did when I dissociated. 

She started crying into my shoulder and said, “I don’t know why I did them- I just wanted to feel what Hunt felt so I’d understand, and it was all for nothing, he still hates me- I miss him, I miss him so much,”

I let her cry and felt the phantom hug again, and I also started crying. The touch brought me to life, and that made me shake.

She stopped crying after a bit and hugged me tighter, and said, “What’s wrong?”

“I- the hollowness, it ended for a moment. I-”

I felt like this was all unnatural. Like I shouldn’t exist. Like I shouldn’t be real.

The phantom hug squeezed tighter, and I cried harder.

Cami’s growing wings twitched, and I asked if I could touch them.

She immediately responded with, “So you know how you’re not supposed to touch a bird’s wings?”

I shook my head, and she launched into a rant about how to properly care for birds, and something about bird sex and how petting a bird’s wings leads to them thinking you’re their mate.

Cami

----

As the moon rose a week later, I kept close to Tatiana, and she hugged me in reply as I gathered the pack. She didn’t look me in the eye for safety, which I didn’t mind. One less person I had to make some very forced, very painful eye contact with.

She leaned on my shoulder and a fox that was patterned like a tortie ran up to us, panicked. Her arm had little spikes on it. That hunter I’d turned, then.

She was being chased, and I quickly told everyone to stay away from this area.

I approached Hunter and told him to leave, and he held out his hand and said, “Truce?”

I growled at him, and he backed away. The fox went up to him and got on his foot, and I saw him relax.

And he didn’t have any weapons on him.

I approached and snarled, “Get out. If you’ve hurt her, you’re dead,”

In very broken fox-dialect, I asked the hunter if she was okay.

She replied, in even worse fox-dialect, “Yes. I is okays and he promise not hurt me,”

I smiled and turned back to Tatiana, who looked understandably confused.

And the fox bolted over to her and clawed her with the spiky arm.

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