“Are you all tanuki shifters?”
“Tonic-key,” Tarak asked.
“Oh sorry, that’s just the earth animal that your shifter form reminded me of.” In his shifter form one could argue that he looked just as much like a raccoon as a tanuki, but he looked more wolfish like a tanuki, than like a raccoon.
Tarak nervously ran his hand through his hair. “No, we all have different shifter forms.”
“Really? That’s amazing! What about the other dekes, do they shift too?”
“No, no one there is a shifter.” The tension in Tarak’s shoulders seemed to intensify with the mention of the other dekes. The other guys looked back at me with nervous expressions on their faces.
“Oh, that’s a bummer,” and I meant that. Who wouldn’t want to be a shifter?
“A bummer?” Tarak asked with his brows furrowed.
“Yeah it’s sad that they can’t shift like you guys can. I know I’d be sad if my friends could shift and I couldn’t.” I would bebeyond sad. I would be cursing every god I could think of if my friends had these abilities and I didn’t.
“Does it hurt when you shift?”
Tarak’s shoulders relaxed and a smile played across his face. “No, it doesn’t hurt. It feels like a really big stretch. At least it does for me.”
He looked around at the other guys who also seemed much less tense than before. Was shifting a secretive part of their culture?
Lumod and Drovo exchanged a look. “I’d agree with that,” Lumod began. “It feels like a big stretch but for me it also feels like a refreshing deep breath.”
Then the tall Sirret with the long red flowing hair held out his hand and I watched in disbelief as his fingers became webbed. Then he pointed to his neck where I saw a set of gills.
“I’d shift the rest of the way, but it’s pretty hard to walk on land with fins,” he chuckled.
“Amazing,” I breathed. I knew a look of awe must have crossed my face. I couldn’t hide my facial expressions even if I wanted to.
“Eh, that’s not that impressive.” Drovo, the tall Sirret with long brown hair, shifted into a dryad hybrid. His shoulders, arms, and hands were covered with a brown bark-looking skin. His legs were shaped like tree trunks with flexible knees and his hair became long teal tendrils that matched the leaves. He moved with a surprising fluid grace given his stiff-looking limbs.
Out of a bark-covered hand, Drovo produced another wooden ball. So that’s where the first one went. Did he just reabsorb the wood?
“You ready to fetch now, Brexl?”
Brexl still looked a little tense but he must have decided it was safe because he nodded his head and Drovo whipped the wooden ball through the forest at an impressive speed.
The scared Sirret who had his hair tied back on his head, shifted into what I could only describe as a skeletal grim reaper. His body transformed from a soft skinned blue alien to a skeletal creature with a bone tail, clawed fingers, and spikes that extended out from his shoulders and forearms. Most of his body was covered in a bone plating that gave him a menacing look. Brexl raced through the forest at an incredible speed. The spikes on his shoulders could be seen through the underbrush like the fin of a shark hunting in the water. The sight sent a chill down my spine.
“Brexl is the most deadly of my hunters,” Tarak informed me.
“I can see that.” There was an undeniable quiver in my voice.
“You need not fear him, or any of my hunters. We only wish to protect our dekes from the predators in the forest.”
“I appreciate that,” I smiled up at him. I couldn’t help myself. Tarak was so shy and protective.
Brexl came back in his Sirret form tossing the ball between his hands with ease. He threw the ball back to Drovo who reabsorbed the wood into his hand.
“You are all very impressive,” I beamed at each one of them. I wasn’t sure if they were just shy about their shifting or if there was another reason they were secretive about it, but either way it seemed best if I showed a positive attitude about the topic.
Delighted smiles played on their faces. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Axon announced before he shifted into a spider form. The short yet broad Sirret with the cropped hair, now stood on eight spider legs and the lower half of his body turned into the back half of a spider. He reminded me a bit of what a centaur would look like with his top half being a blue alien and his bottom half being an animal form. His hands were similarto what they were before but now his arms and shoulders had a hard exoskeleton covering them.
He stood unmoving with his eyes closed for a moment before suddenly reaching out and grabbed something out of the air. He opened his hand to reveal a beautiful fuzzy-looking moth.
“These guys are not only soft but they eat the bad poisonous bugs.” Axon announced with a smirk on his face.
