“Your canines are really big, did you notice that?” Eva asked as the sun was beginning to set.
We’d rolled around on my bed for a good hour just chatting away about how things were different for us now, what was going on in the world, and in our local area. It was nice, hanging out with her like this.
We’d moved down to the living room now, Mum was off in her office working from home while Dad was at work dealing with some shit.
“Yeah I did,” I smiled, then faked a long, drawn out yawn. “Do I seem like a fox yet?”
“Wow, that was actually very foxlike,” she grinned, then gave me a funny little side-eye look. “With how cute you are though, it’s more like a little snaggle tooth.”
I froze, funny sparkles dancing around in my stomach as I processed what she’d said. I was so not able to deal with being called cute, orpretty, for that matter. It was just so strange. I mean, even getting complimented at all was a new experience for me. Guys just didn’t get compliments the way girls did.
“Stop that,” I finally grumbled, shifting my position on the sofa to stare at her full on.
Her expression turned innocent. “Stop what?”
“Calling me cute,” I growled, poking her in the leg.
“Whhyy?” she asked, drawing the word out long and slow, a cheeky smile flickering onto her lips. “You don’t like being cute?”
“It’s weird...” I mumbled defensively. “I’m not used to being called cute.”
“You’re going to have to get used to being called cute, Tia… because you are absolutely freaking adorable,” she teased, flicking at one of my ears with a finger. I tried to flick her long elven ears in retaliation, but she was out of range too fast. I needed to work on my ear-flick reflexes.
“I will fight anyone who calls me cute,” I frowned, crossing my arms in defiance.
She laughed. “Girl— Tia, that is not nearly as threatening as you think it is.”
“I will, I’ll fight them,” I grumbled, mostly to myself as I turned away from her. “Not as Tia, though.”
Joke was on Eva, because I was actually a superhero. Okay, not really, and I had a rather big problem to deal with before I went out again. I needed a way to hide my identity, and considering I was probably the only purple fox girl in the city… well that was going to make things difficult.
A rumbling from the driveway halted our banter — Eva’s mum arriving to pick her up. I felt my heart sink a little, I’d really missed her these past few days. I wouldn’t say we were inseparable or anything, but she was always the first person I thought of when I had a random thought I wanted to voice. Being too worried to contact her had been difficult.
“Damn,” my friend murmured from beside me.
We turned to each other, our eyes meeting, cyan on blue. The urge to touch her almost overwhelmed me, to reach out and grasp at her, ask her to stay. Overwhelmed by another wave of strange, unfamiliar emotion, I turned my gaze to the door and bit down hard on the inside of my cheek.
Eva coming over was the first truly pleasant interaction I’d had with another person since I’d, well… since I’d died. My parents were okay, but I was feeling so uneasy about the way Mum was treating this whole transformation thing. Meanwhile, Dad was trying his best to be normal around me, and in the process was acting like a total weirdo.
The doorbell went off, but neither Eva nor I were in any hurry to get up off the couch. Mum betrayed us by answering it — allowing Velvet into the house.
“Welcome back, Velvet!” Mum exclaimed happily. “They’re in the living room.”
The two women appeared in the doorway, looking in at us as we innocently gazed back. It was funny, because Velvet had similar new changes to Eva, and mum had the fox stuff going on.
“Hey kiddo, ready to go home?” Velvet asked with a smile that said she knew what the answer was. Her feather crests quivered slightly with mirth. Eva had a pout ready and waiting.
Mum gave a laugh. “That look does not bode well.”
The other woman gave an exasperated laugh and nodded agreement, leaning against the doorway like she was settling in for an argument.
A look I didn’t recognise briefly flashed over my mothers expression suddenly, and she eyed Velvet thoughtfully. “Tia and I share fox features, and you and Eva share similar features too. Why do you think that is?”
I hadn’t noticed it when Eva was dropped off, but her mum did indeed have the same elf ears and feathers that my friend had. Her brown feathers were much more developed, though — taller, with an odd pearlescent quality.
Velvet chuckled. “Not just us. My father grew them too — at seventy six! But no, we have no idea. Do you?”
Mum shook her head, pursed her lips, and looked away — doing a pretty shit job of hiding the fact that she had… a bit of an idea about things. Velvet didn’t press the issue, but I could tell she’d noticed how my mum was dodging the question.
“Huh,” Eva murmured, and I looked over to find her staring at the TV. It’d been on mute for a while, but now it was showing an image of a lectern with an American flag off to one side.
I reached over to the coffee table and grabbed the remote and pressed the unmute button right as he walked on-screen.
“Aw, fuck,” Velvet groaned.
The President was a Spiritborn. He had ears that continued up past his hair, before curving slightly forward into points. His skin was weirdly moist-looking, and his pupils looked… different.
As soon as he got to the podium, he started… well, I suppose he thought it was a speech. It wasn't terribly coherent, and it was just… strange. In one sentence, he'd talk about how the ‘Concord Event’ was a terrible tragedy, then he'd say that it wasn't a big deal, until finally he started complaining about how his transformation had made him look weird.
Then, as he left the podium after taking way too many soft-ball questions from the gathered reporters, the Vice President stepped up to try and turn what had just happened into coherence of any kind. I turned the TV off. We weren't going to get any useful information from that shitshow.
“Still no actual response from the government,” Velvet said, giving the blank screen a final, anxious look.
To my surprise, mum made a mild sound of disagreement. “There’s rumours that congress is going to put a committee together, and a few of the three-letter agencies might be launching investigations. I think we'll see an actual response next week sometime.”
“Exactly,” Velvet said, and gestured for Eva that it was time to leave.
Mum, it turns out, actually knew what she was talking about. One week after Eva's visit, three different sections of the government announced their plans on the same day. Dad was glued to the TV as the President ambled up to the podium again.
“Thank you, thank you. We have a lot of you here today. Lots of people. Some big channels here. Not as big as the big magic event. So big. It gave me these ears. You know, some people have been saying that my ears look stupid. Can you believe it?”
I groaned, rubbing my face as his droning speech slowly drained me of my brain-cells.
“Itia— Tia, be quiet. This is important. When he's done, the Vice President will come on, and we'll find out what's going to happen,” Dad said, shooting me a look of annoyance.
I met the glare he gave me with one of my own, but kept quiet. I was so bored. School was cancelled again — even the classes over Zoom — so I was beginning to go stir-crazy. At least there were a bunch of really good games coming out.
“Thank you, Mr President.”
The Vice President's voice snapped me out of my daze, and I turned my attention back to the TV. He might be an unpleasant, blank piece of printer paper in human form, but at least he was coherent.
“Today, the President signed an order that directs myself and General Vrasburn to head a new task force. The Task Force on the Arcane Event will investigate and, if necessary, recommend actions to be taken in response to the event that began in Concord, Maine. I want to personally reassure the public that this unprecedented situation will be handled with faith, order, and an adherence to American values. I believe that God's plan is unfolding even as I speak today, and we will meet it with courage and compassion.”
His speech continued, but dad stopped listening to give me another look. “See, kiddo? He might be a bit boring, and a bit too Christian, but he's competent. Things are going to be okay.”
Yeah… I wasn't convinced.
Immediately after the press conference, Congress announced that it was going to be creating its own committee, and then the Department of Homeland Security announced that they would be deploying small squads of FEMA representatives to each state so they could monitor the situation.
So far, only a few Spiritborn had actually shown any aptitude for channelling the innate magic of their spirit ancestors. The most publicly visible incident in the US was when a man who could turn any stone into magma had attempted to rob a bank. The poor idiot forgot that bullets were still a thing.
Tiktok was exploding with videos where people were trying to learn about their new powers, or in some cases, using them to do wacky stunts. One guy from the UK could create clones of himself, and he started a literal ‘one man band’ with himself. His comments were full of people telling him to start an OnlyFans. They kinda had a point, he would make bank with that.
The wind rattled the windows a little, enough to pull my attention to them. Wait, wasn't it really sunny just before? Where'd the sun go?
Hopping up off the sofa, I wandered over to the front window and peered up into the sky. Grey clouds completely obscured it.
“Dad, I think I'm going to go get the washing in off the line,” I said, turning to head towards the back door.
He gave me an awkward, but appreciative smile. “Sure thing. Make sure not to break any more of the pegs. I don't want to have to buy more already.”
He was still struggling to navigate the whole, ‘my son turned into my daughter’, situation. Not that I was his daughter yet or anything— no, not yet. Like, I didn’t mean to use the word, ‘yet’. I might still choose to be a boy again, or… or… like, non-binary.
I grunted in reply to his peg-centric concern, lost in thought. “Yeah, yeah.”
Unlike usual, I didn't zoom through the house to the back door. Doing chores wasn't zoom-worthy.
I don't know why the settlers of Maine decided God-forsaken Concord to settle, of all places. The weather was as reliable and consistent as a car wheel rolling down a grass slope.
Outside, the wind was already doing its best to pull the sheets off the line, so I hurried to get started. The sky was weird — like, the clouds had the telltale green-blue glow of impending hail, but there were also little red specks of light dancing through them.
A gust of wind howled past me, stopping my observations while I wrestled with a fitted sheet that believed with all its heart, that it could fly. Annoying, flappy, fabric monster! Be still!
Breathing heavily, I got it into the basket and sat back on my haunches. Man, that was such a struggle, I —
Something fell from the sky in the distance, and it howled. What… Another dark shape fell, then another, and another — I could feel some of them make landfall, too. The ground shuddered when some of the bigger ones landed.
Uh. I picked the basket up and held it nervously to my chest. There were only a few socks left… I darted between them, yanking them off the line with no consideration for gathering the pegs. Sorry dad — the sky was screaming and I wanted a roof over my head like, right now.