“Wolfears, to be exact,” she clarified. “It only happened for a few minutes, but I saw it for myself when her teacher called me. Have you considered her father could have been a shifter?”
I was stunned into silence. “I-I don’t think so.” I didn’t know any shifters in college, but it wasn't something people always talked about.
“Unless there’s some wolf in your family, I would consider it. Are you in contact with him or his pack?”
I shook my head. How could this be happening? I didn’t know the first thing about raising a shifter.
“Here.” She scribbled some words on a sticky note. “This is a clinic up in Enski Mountain. They should be able to help you, and they take walk-ins on Saturdays.”
I took the card with shaky hands. I guess I would need to pay them a visit. I wasn’t sure what this would mean going forward, but I needed to make sure Aria had all the care she needed.
“Thank you for letting me know,” I said.
“Of course. I’m not sure how much you know about shifters, but their first few months of shifting can be a bit…unpredictable. We would still love to welcome Ari here, but she needs to be in control of her shifting first. I hope you understand. Our teachers here aren’t equipped to help her shift back, and we don’t want anything to happen in the process.”
“I understand,” I said, and I did. I didn’t know how I was going to handle it either. “Thank you,” I said before going back to pick up Ari. She was already in her coat as her teacher smiled at me earnestly, which made me feel a bit better. I was sure it was a fright to see a child change like that.
“Have a great night” he said as we left.
When we got to the car I sat there for a moment, just staring at the wheel. What was I going to do?
“Are you okay?” Ari asked.
I shook my head and smiled when I looked at her. “I’m okay. I’m just tired.”
“Me too,” she said with a dramatic sigh.
I turned the car on and started our journey home. “Yeah? Long day?”
“Yes,” she said. “We had to cut shapesandwrite our name a bunch.”
“That does sound tiring,” I told her, though to me, it sounded like a walk in the park. I was sure when I was that age, I would find that exhausting as well.
“Oh, and I felt weird.”
I paused. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes, my body feels weird, like it wants to explode or something but doesn’t know how. But that’s silly.”
“Yeah, very silly.”
Fuck.
That weekend came, and I drove Aria up to Enski Mountain to check out the clinic. The drive up was very scenic, with trees everywhere changing to fall colors. Aria talked about a project with the leaves they were doing at school the entire way up.
I was able to take my sick days for the rest of the week, plus I talked to my boss and took some time off from work going forward. If she really was shifting sporadically, there wasn’t a daycare I could send her to that I knew of, so I had no one to watch her. While my parents could watch her for a little while after daycare, they weren’t able to watch her all day.
I had two weeks' worth of vacation time, and when I told my boss Aria was sick, she was more understanding than normal. Though she wasn’t really sick, I didn’t have the full story yet, so I wasn’t ready to tell my boss.
I knew I was a talker, but that girl could yap more than I thought possible. We pulled up to the clinic sooner than I’d have liked. It was a small white building that looked newly renovated. There were only a few cars in the parking lot, but I wanted to get here as early as possible to get her seen.
I got out of the car and helped her unbuckle from her car seat before we walked in.
“Mom, I don’t really like the doctor,” she said.
I huffed a slight laugh. I didn’t like this either, but I needed to put on a brave face for her. “I know, but this will be just a quick check-up.” At least, I hoped. I'd tried to do some research, but I couldn’t find much information on how they found out kidswere shifters, only how to raise one, and a lot of the resources only helped if you also shifted. I was just a human, so how was I supposed to teach her these things? It did, however, confirm some of her behaviors: the strange bouts of tired and hyper, the ears.
I also tried to look up her father. Though I didn’t want anything to do with him, I thought if I could track him down, he could give me answers. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember his name. I checked the roster of the other colleges around there, flipping through photo after photo with no luck.
