Shedding Season

She didn't want to be a fox. Her cousin had been one once so she knew they tended to smell like urine and burrowed for shelter. But it is what she became when she and her brother moved to this mountain town.

As soon as the stolen blue suburban hit city limits, her hair started changing from dishwater blonde to a bright orange-an orange only found in sunset shadows. She knew it would happen but she had blocked out the memories of the physical sensations. The skin on her back stretched and itched and the bones in her arms collapsed in on themselves. She moaned in pain and felt her voice box change it into a growl. Her new tail pushed out between the seat and her back and when she saw it, she felt something close to lust towards the shapely puff that was now a part of her.

The change always happened quickly and was mostly over when her brother opened her car door for her in a dirt driveway five miles later. His head had taken the shape of a sparrow but his body hadn't finished changing. He had small bird feet but a human torso and arms. Maybe they weren't close enough to the center of town for his transition to complete. She knew it took more power to change as they aged and her brother was at least 10 years older than her.

She jumped out and landed in all fours. There was snow on the ground but the new pads on her feet protected her from the cold. She ran toward the untouched field of snow to the left of their new house. The highway cradled the field up to the base of the mountains and instincts urged her to rest in a place safely away from the passing cars.

In her long life, she had been a grey parrot, a lamb, a water snake, and now a fox. This change felt different than the others, more primal. It was as if she could feel the power in her pulse. She was already beginning to forget where she was supposed to be. A voice spoke up from deep in her brain to remind her of the consequences of losing herself too much. But as she sat in the snow, with the sun above her causing her fur to shine in a way that blinded her humanity, she was becoming more and more pleased with the change.

And when the sparrow with her brother's eyes landed on the snow next to her, she hissed and swatted at it with her paw. She meant to be playful but hit it at an angle that bent its wing back and it screeched as it tried to fly off. It skittered across the snow leaving tiny footprints next to a line where its wing was dragging. She heard a guttural sound coming from the mountain and ran toward it, leaving the sparrow flailing in the snow.