Saoirse was grumpy. She was grumpy because we didn’t sneak out to meet my friends — we spoke to my parents and asked permission. Even when I explained that asking for permission for a simple thing like this would make being mischievous in the future easier, she didn't care.
I was also swayed by the idea of mum driving us there. Going by car was definitely safer than walking… which I still couldn't do, anyway.
“Okay, kids,” Mum said as she pulled into one of the parking spaces that ringed the park.
It had recovered somewhat from the trampling it recieved during the night of the protest — the night of the ‘Concord Event’. The fact it got named after our city was a little… intense. I could actually see that the church where I died was cordoned off with big sheets of plywood that had no entry stickers all over them.
“I'm going to go down to the courthouse to see about getting documents for Saoirse,” mum said when we didn't immediately hop out. “It looks like we're going to be fostering you, Saoirse.”
Her tone was weary, like she was sick of everything.
Saoirse, staring at the floor of the car, grumbled, “Thank you, Jane. I know you're not keen to have me around but I'm very grateful that you're doing this anyway.”
God, it sounded like someone was discussing removing her teeth, and she had to say thank you.
Mum blew out a deep breath. “I think you've proven you won't be a problem — a risk to our safety, rather.”
“I'm happy you see the distinction, ma’am,” Saoirse said, brightening up instantly with a giggle. “Mischief is an important food group, and neglecting it can have serious consequences for your mental health.”
“For you, maybe.” Mum rolled her eyes.
“Moreso for me, but you and Tia are still kin,” Saoirse said, opening the car door and exiting. She threw a wink at mum. “Perhaps play a small prank on your husband. He seems to enjoy them.”
If I had popcorn, I'd be munching it, because I watched a riotous series of emotions scurry from one twitching ear, across my mum's face, then into the other twitching ear. She was having thoughts about that suggestion.
“Saoirse… you are trouble.”
“That's a really nice thing to say!” The fox spirit said with a beaming smile. Then she narrowed her eyes. “You're never this nice. What are you planning?”
Mum snorted. “Tia, get out of the car. She's your problem to deal with.”
Giggling, I got my crutch out the door and leaned it against the side of the car, then carefully used the door to lever myself up and out. As I did, my thigh bumped my crutch, and it tumbled to the ground. “Shit.”
Saoirse bounded quickly around the car and picked it up, then handed it to me. “You know, I read online that mobility aids should be treated as an extension of their person. So, I hope you appreciate that I have not been hiding it.”
“After the first week, you mean?” I giggled, using my butt to close the car door.
Her face warmed a little. “Yes, well… I learned my lesson.”
“Come on,” I said, beginning the frustratingly difficult task of simply getting from point A to point B.
There were election signs everywhere already, with many sporting the updated glamour shots of our orange toad-spirit president. That flappy sack under his chin wasn't just for show, anymore.
The park was basically just a big flat area of grass, ringed with trees, except for the small playground in one corner. So, it wasn't hard to see my friends hanging out around one of the bigger trees. It had sorta drooping branches that gave a little shelter from the early autumn sun. Not that we needed shelter from it — it's not like it actually got warm enough in Maine.
Eva saw us approaching first, and bolted towards me, leaving the rest of them exchanging looks of exasperation. This was standard Eva, so they weren't surprised, they just followed behind.
“Tia! What happened? You didn't tell me you got hurt?” Eva squeaked, her brows drawn almost into a unibrow she was so concerned.
“She had a run-in with a very angry spirit,” Saoirse blurted, very unhelpfully.
Eva's eyes just about fell out of her head in alarm, and her eyes were instantly tracing the rest of my body, like she expected to find an open wound she needed to put pressure on or some shit.
“Saoirse, we said that I just tripped and fell!” I hissed. Stupid fox was going to get Eva all worked up.
She blinked, then looked down, embarrassed. “Oh. Yes. Right. I forgot about that. In my defence, it hasn't come up in weeks! I sort of forgot the lie we decided to tell your parents.”
“You forgot a lie?” I scoffed. “I call bullshit.”
She just shrugged helplessly. I rolled my eyes at her.
“This is the fox spirit you have staying with you?” Eva asked, eyeing Saoirse with a look that was somehow chill, but also a little hostile-adjacent?
“Fox spirit?” Benny asked, suddenly alarmed. “Aren't spirits bad?”
My teeth ground together, and my emotions launched themselves into some sort of idiot-mode. I swear, if Benny… nevermind. I needed to chill. I needed to be calm.
“They're just animals or people, like us,” I said, a little forcefully despite my internal pep-talk. “Except weirder and more magical, so some of them have evil magical urges or whatever, but others are chill. Saoirse fits into the person category and she's really cool, be nice Benny.”
His eyes widened. “You know my name? How?”
Oh, poor Benny. He wasn’t going to make the connection unless someone spelled it out for him. I looked to Eva for help. She just grinned.
“Damn… talk about hot. Those ears and that tail…” said Doug as he sidled in beside Benny. His eyes were all over me and Saoirse. Like, full-body mental strip-search. I fucking hated it.
Resting on my cast, I lunged forward and jabbed my crutch into his stomach, hard. “Fucker, if you keep openly perving on us I will remove your nuts.”
“Yup, theory confirmed,” Noah remarked, as he and Jared brought up the rear. “That's Itias, for sure.”
Doug grimaced. “Wait, I was checking out a dude?”
“She, is a girl,” Eva growled.
I shot Eva a look and my ears flattened against my head in frustration. “Eva…”
“Oh. Uh… He is a, um, a boy? Girl? Something? They are… a person?” Eva said, her voice rising into panic. Finally, she puffed her cheeks out in frustration and muttered, “Man, this is confusing.”
So fucking cute, even if she had messed up with the gender stuff. To be fair to her though, it's wasn’t like I was making it easy.
“I go by Tia, now,” I said to the group. “Mum got my gender markers changed to ‘girl’, but I never really had the choice so… yeah.”
“I've heard that this kind of thing happened,” Jared said quietly. “Some people are happy, some aren't… and some are upset they got missed out, ‘cos they weren't Spiritborn.”
“Are you into guys now too?” Doug asked with the worst attempt at innocence I have ever hear.
Eva gave him a disgusted look. “What the hell, dude?”
Doubling down on the shitty acting skills, he asked, “What?”
“Look, if you’re going to be like that, then I will be like…” I focused, pulling from my memories of what I used to look like. The idea of transforming into my old self, even if it was just a glamour, made me want to hurl my breakfast directly into Doug’s face. So, I made a few changes under the hood — specifically down between my legs. Nobody would know. Then, I pushed the changes into my body, and felt everything shift. Finally, I opened my eyes and finished my sentence. “...This.”
Everyone’s eyes bugged out, except for Saoirse, who giggled and clapped her hands. “Wow! That was very fast! Have you been practicing? Oh, I’ll do that too!”
Then, her body shifted, and she became a masculine version of herself. I rolled my eyes as she grinned from ear-to-ear — which, given where her ears were, was a pretty long way for a fox-spirit. Wait, the mental image of what that would look like was highly disturbing. I quickly shovelled it into a nice little corner of my mind and hoped to never have to deal with it again.
Eva was to first to shake herself out of the stun-lock we’d put my friends in, when her expression shifted into a deep frown. “I like the new Tia better than the old one.”
“Me too,” I said.
We stared at each other for a moment, until suddenly, she was up into my personal space. Her eyes were big and imploring. “Change back.”
Close! Way too close! Especially since I was wearing my old body… “Why?”
She didn’t say anything, but wow were her blue eyes expressive. When did they get like that? Her lashes were so long too, and when she narrowed her eyelids, they almost blotted out her sight.
“Please?”
Stepping back, I tried to fight the blush that forced its way onto my cheeks. “Fine.”
I released the glamour, taking my normal form again. It felt so much more comfortable. Wow, I actually did not want to do that again. Like, fucking ever.
To reassure myself, I placed my hands onto my hips and closed my eyes, feeling up to my waist, then my chest. Then I realised what I was doing and opened my eyes wide. “O-oh, yup! All still there! Had to check.”
My following laugh was about as convincing as Doug’s innocent look had been.
Eva gave me a coy smile, her feather crests fluttering in the wind. “Sure, Tia.”
“Speaking of um… changes, though…” I said, trying desperately to palm the spotlight off onto someone else. “Doug and Noah, you don’t look too different.”
“Yeah… about that,” Noah said with a wry grin that opened his mouth quite wide. Inside his mouth, his canines were long, and his small incisors were long and sharp too. “My dad and my mum are also like me. They both came from the same neighbourhood in New York, originally. A lot of folks from there all have the same teeth. Nobody knows what we actually are though.”
“I mean…” Eva said, trailing off as she looked around to see if anyone else was thinking the same thing she was. Yeah, I was totally on her wavelength. Dude looked like a vampire, but with like, a good skincare routine.
Noah groaned and rolled his head back. His messy, long-for-a-boy dark hair had covered how his ears were ever so slightly pointed. “I’m not burning up in the sun, am I? Not a vampire.”
“Any powers manifesting?” I asked curiously.
“Strigoi,” Saoirse said, except it came out deeper, so I jumped and stared at her. She hadn’t changed back from her boy-form. When she saw my look, she giggled. “Got ya. But yeah, I think you might be Strigoi. The original sires of that spiritual line are uh… I think they might be twisted human spirits? They’re awful people, but their children are fine.”
“You just… know this?” Eva asked skeptically.
Saoirse stared at her for a moment. Then she changed. Her form shifted back to feminine, but then it went further… become angular, and sort of feral. She looked like if a fox girl were overly-sharpened with a knife, in a similar but much more intense vein to how my Gauntlette glamour looked. Long claws extended from her fingers, and her mouth filled with teeth.
“I am not human,” she said, her voice low and somehow both cute and dangerous.
Eva squeaked and rushed to hide behind me, wrapping my arm up into a hug that had it pressed directly against her chest. The guys all swore, stepped back, or both.
“That is not your true form, Saoirse,” I said, rolling my eyes.
She rapidly switched back to her normal humanoid form. “Hey! I was having fun!”
“What’s her actual true form?” Eva asked in a whisper, her voice very close to my large, fluffy ear. Her warm breath tickled, and I cringed, flicking my ear multiple times. She laughed as her face was batted repeatedly.
“U-um,” I said breathlessly, tail quivering. “She looks like a really cute little fox with silver fur.”
Saoirse was pouting, but she shrugged and pop was suddenly a tiny little silver and white fox. She looked up at us and narrowed her eyes. “Y’all no fun. Tia, I want to go and shoplift for some shampoo. I reckon I can run faster than any security guard.”
“Are you more sassy and snarky in fox form?” I asked curiously.
The little fox compressed into a tight little spring, aimed straight at me. Oh crap! Incoming mischief missile. I had just enough time to drop my crutch and get ready to catch her, when she bounced up into my arms.
“Hell yeah, I am,” she giggled, licking my cheek. “Part of switching between the two forms is trying to embody the essence of it. Gotta think like a master criminal if you wanna be one, you know?”
Oh, the lick was very odd. Now that I knew about her human form, there were like, alarm bells and shit going off. Not okay, not okay! I’d already put her into a box labelled ‘sister’ in my brain. So… nevermind I guess a cheek kiss wasn’t totally out of the question? I was overthinking this, for sure. Just roll with the vibes, Tia. Be chill.
“As if. You are, not a master criminal,” I said with a laugh.
“Rude.”
“Get off me, go back to humanoid form,” I said, glaring at her. “Before I swaddle you in my damn coat so you don’t do anything I’ll have to pay for.”
“At least I won’t be a scarf,” she huffed, hopping down from my arms. As she did, she transformed, landing with her knees bent before standing up straight again.
I looked to Eva and smiled wryly. “See what I mean? Intense and sassy.”
“I think I see, yeah,” she murmured softly.
The look in her eyes was… not one I was familiar with. She snuggled closer against me, still staring at me with an intensity that made my stomach feel very odd and uncomfortable.
I lost my balance, tipping back as my one good leg failed to keep me upright. Eva tightened her grip reflexively and gasped with the effort of keeping me upright.
“Eva, I think you’ll need to give Tia some personal space,” Noah said with a laugh. He passed me my crutch as he said it, and I gratefully took hold of the cold aluminum.
As soon as I could, I wriggled out of my friend’s grasp and recentered my balance on the crutch. Phew. okay… I needed to not be the center of attention. “Doug? What about you? What’s your deal now?”
“Well…” he said with an evil smile, and pulled a knife.
I moved, my fingers flicking into the gesture for a shield. To my utter surprise… it worked. A small buckler of lavender energy flickered into place on my right arm.
Doug slammed the knife down… onto his own forearm. The blade shattered.
Everyone stared at the broken dagger, then my shield, then back to the dagger.
I shook the shield off my arm sheepishly. Oops. Hopefully nobody recognised the gestures I used. Thankfully my magic appeared as a different colour than Gauntlette’s much darker purple. “Uh… sorry. So, you have… like, impenetrable skin?”
“Plus this,” he said, and reached over to pick Jared up with one hand around his waist.
Jared choked and made a small squeaking sound as Doug flipped and hefted him. Then he dropped him back onto his feet.
Doug was practically vibrating with the force of his own ego attempting to burst out of his stomach like an alien. “Super strength. I’m generic superheroman!”