ghost

[shesepankh]

Kindergarten teacher Renée Higgenbotham Swan (36) was killed in a car crash one mile from her residence in Phoenix, AZ, January 9, 2005. She is survived by her daughter Isabella (16). Her service will be held at -

Bella has the entire obituary pasted into a page of one of her compilation notebooks but tends not to re-read past the first lines. It's repellent. The concept of obituaries is repellent. The funeral is over. Renée's vibrant brief life has been summed up over the course of a paragraph, and is also over.

Bella pretends to sleep on the plane. Her neighbor is talkative and she doesn't want to say shut up, my mom just died, because - what if it doesn't work? What if this news doesn't have the power to bludgeon everyone else into stunned silence the way it does Bella?

Charlie collects her. Charlie hugs her. Charlie doesn't make her talk. Good wonderful understanding quiet Charlie does not say a word. He takes her home. Her room's where she left it last August.

It's raining.

Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn. First class is English. Okay, whatever.

The teacher wants her to introduce herself. Bella wants to yank on the skinny end of his tie until he regrets making her.

She stands at the front of the room and says that her name is Bella Swan and she's moved here to live with her dad. The teacher makes an impatient go on gesture and she stands there for a moment before robotically saying the same thing she produced at the beginning of the year in her old school in Phoenix when they were doing go-around-the-room-and-share-facts. "I'm one of those people who actually likes Shakespeare."

He lets her sit down.

She sits.

Comments

[shesepankh]

Bella is already awake when he finds her, but hasn't been for long.

"AAAAAAAAAH!" she says, staring at her paws. She cranes her neck around for a look at her wings. "AAAAAAAAAH!" She looks at Darren. "Hi welcome to my freaky transformation dream?" She trips over her tail and goes over like a sack of potatoes. "YIPE!"

[castmyown]

Darren is still staring. He recognizes the voice. "Bella? What...? You must have just- this isn't a dream," he says, some mixture of stunned and in awe. "You're a sphinx."

[shesepankh]

"Thank you, Obviously Figment Of My Imagination Darren," says Bella, attempting to get all her feet under her, "as you know I never read old plays -" She fails at the "feet" project. "This dream would be more fun if I just magically knew how to operate a sphinx."

[castmyown]

"Nope, you've got the real one, promise. Er - remember when I mentioned the apartment complex instead of a box?"

[shesepankh]

"What in the world does that have to do with anything?" She manages to stand up on all fours and starts experimenting with moving one foot at a time, carefully supporting herself on the other three. She unfolds and folds her wings.

[castmyown]

"Welcome outside of the box. Do you want help with - um, learning how to walk in your natural form?"

[shesepankh]

"There is nothing natural about this! I'm a fucking sphinx!"

[castmyown]

"Yes, you're a sphinx."

He glances around, reflexively, because he is paranoid. Seeing no one, he then shifts.

He is then a lovely grey-blue winged stag. Cloven hooves, antlers - the whole deal.

"And I'm a peryton. Um. Do you want help with walking or explanations first? I'm a little nervous about being here in fullform but I can wait a little while because this is probably a lot to handle right now."

[shesepankh]

"What the hell kind of dream is this?" She seems to have the hang of her feet well enough to take cautious steps toward him, circling around. "Why am I a sphinx and you a peryton? Is Angela a dragon, is Savannah a unicorn?"

[castmyown]

"Unicorns don't exist, dragons are extinct, and my sister is also a peryton," he informs her. "As far as I know Angela's just a normal human. But I thought you were, too, so I could be entirely wrong. Also, not a dream."

[shesepankh]

"How did this happen? Do people just randomly turn into mythological quadrupeds all the time and nobody happened to mention it?"

[castmyown]

"Er - kind of? Though we go through some trouble to make sure it's not mentioned. Okay, in the past - day or so, did you touch any weird amulet necklace things? Did it feel like it gave you some kind of shock? Like an electric shock, that's usually what it feels like."

[shesepankh]

"A lady in the grocery store dropped it and I couldn't catch her to return it, and it shocked me."

[castmyown]

Darren is confused! "She just - dropped it? Wh- you know what, nevermind, that is not the thing to focus on right now. We'll figure whatever that is later. Keep the amulet safe, please, you'll really, really regret it if you don't. They're really old magic, they let - people like us look and feel like humans."

[shesepankh]

Bella facepaws. "Okay, I'm going to pretend that this isn't a dream for a while. Within the parameters of this magic system - I need the necklace and it'll let me be human-shaped again?"

[castmyown]

"Yes. Did you lose it or drop it or - something? I can go get it if-" He spots the necklaces around her neck. "Oh, no, it's right there. Okay, er- so, a sphinx gets a medallion that lets them be a false human."

He looks a little uncomfortable, pawing the ground a bit and flexing his wings.

"So um - that sphinx has a child with a normal human. You don't get a hybrid, you get another sphinx, except - the medallion's spell transfers to the kid, too. They don't need a medallion, it's just - on them. But the spell can be disrupted, it's not perfect and if they get a medallion that's - basically - the right frequency, meant for that kind of creature, it tries to turn them human. Except it can't, because you're already turned human, and the spell - breaks. Then you are a sphinx."

[shesepankh]

"So you're saying one of my parents is - or was - a sphinx."

[castmyown]

"Yes. But it's probable that they would have absolutely no idea, because - if they just stay human, if they never find an amulet that breaks the spell, it passes on to their kids, too."

[shesepankh]

"Secret sphinx parent. Right. So if I take this off I can't turn human again, but with it, I can? Somehow?"

[castmyown]

"Yeah. It's actually pretty easy. Focus on the amulet, just like - think about it, specifically, and then think about how you would like to be human."

He demonstrates, and then there he is, human. Normal clothes and all, though they weren't there when he was a peryton.

[shesepankh]

"What happens to your clothes? For that matter, my shirt is still on even though I've got these enormous wings now," says Bella, flicking her tail out of the way to sit on her haunches, "which is convenient, I suppose."

[castmyown]

"Very convenient, considering," says Darren, blushing and looking really embarrassed. "They just - go... Somewhere when you're in natural form. If it - I think it works by what you consider decent, if it seems like it would be improper for you to lose articles of clothing, like your, ahem, shirt, then it will stay, but otherwise they'll go to where ever the somewhere is."

[shesepankh]

"But my shirt isn't actually shaped like this, or it wasn't when I bought it, I don't go around in backless garments, yet it's accommodating the wings. Also folded into the medallion spell?"

[castmyown]

"Apparently. The magic to make them's been lost, so I don't know the specifics. I'm trying to learn them, though, it's really, really inconvenient that there's a cap on how many we have."

[shesepankh]

"...Yeah, that sounds like it'd be a problem. So if Charlie's the sphinx parent it's ungodly expensive to get him to turn into one too and he'd better never touch mine? Is that lady who dropped it going to be after me for hers, am I kind of screwed?"