Unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t last longer than it takes for me to open my eyes.
Bright light assaults my senses like an intangible knife stabbing at my brain. I wince away from the pain, closing my eyes and turning my throbbing head to the side. My mouth is dry, throat sore, and the pounding ache in my head makes it impossible for me to think.
There’s something important I’m forgetting.
More so than usual.
But my mind is too scattered to put everything together.
The surface I’m lying on is pleasantly soft and creates a comfortable cradle for my body, but still, nothing feelsright. Not my head. Not my paws. And not my body.
I’m too… long? Tall? I don’t know. Nothing feels like it’s where it belongs and that sense someone normally has about where they are in space has deserted me.
Where am I?
The thought whispers through my mind, dragging along behind it a host of others.
What's going on? What did they do to me now?
Memories follow, faded and fragmented, but enough for me to put some of the pieces together. I escaped the awful place where the humans tormented me and then was hurt and taken somewhere else…
I don't remember much past the man—the other shifter!—who showed up at the place with the not-cruel humans. Did he take me away? Everything past that point is fuzzy, my recent memories almost as slippery as the ones of my distant past.
My stomach churns with nausea, and I try to curl into a protective ball, but my body won’t listen to me, whatever signals my brain is trying to send getting lost somewhere along the way. My limbs aren’t where they’re supposed to be and they’re… wrong.
Keeping my head turned away from the too bright light, I crack my eyes open and lift one foreleg closer to my face. But instead of fur and claws, all I find is a pale, fleshy hand with skinny, shaking fingers and dirty, ragged nails.
How…?
A tiny whimper escapes my lips, and I slam the hand over my mouth. Somehow, I've regained my human form, a form morevulnerable and exposed than ever. I stare at my foreleg—no, myhand, wiggling my fingers. The sensation is strange after so long with paws, and I can see the play of fragile bones inside the skin.
I don’t like this. I want my claws back. They might not have done me much good before, but what use will this breakable form be if I need to defend myself.
And what about…
I run my tongue over my now mostly blunt teeth.
No claws. No fangs. No fur. Nothing but limbs I don’t know how to work, and thin, easily damaged skin.
Tears build behind my eyelids and the moisture travels down into my nose, making it run. I sniffle, trying to hold back my growing terror.
My instincts are screaming. This form isnot safe not safe not safe. But I don't know how to change back, and my mind quickly descends into panic. Limbs shaking, I curl into a ball as best I can, wishing for a tail to hide my face. But I don't have one anymore.
I lose myself in that spiraling terror for a while, my mind tormenting me with all the ways I could be hurt in this form, all the ways I could be broken. I may no longer be in the lab with the humans, but who knows what nightmares my future might hold.
A snuffling noise breaks through the fear holding me in place, and my mind jerks back to the present. The noise comes again, and I slowly relax my limbs and push myself up on my hands and knees. Hunching my shoulders, I press back against the…headboard,my brain supplies, as I dart quick glances around the room.
My gaze lands on a man asleep in a chair in the corner of the room and everything in me freezes, that contentedness from earlier instantly returning as a strange warmth fills me.
Who is this man? How is he doing this?
I can’t see much of his face, his reddish-brown hair falling forward and hiding his features as his chin slumps to his chest, but there’s nothing hiding the sharp edge of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, or the strength in his hands.
Hands I somehow know would never hurt me.
He makes the snuffling noise again, the kind of deep inhalation that only comes with sleep, and I hold back a giggle. The nonthreatening posture—and even less threatening noise—make him seem so harmless, calming my lingering panic.
Something inside my chest urges me to move closer, and I slip silently from the bed to the floor, slowly crawling forward on hands and knees. The position is awkward in this body, the legs too long and the arms too short, but my head is still foggy enough that walking on two legs seems iffy.
