Then there’s the other thing they call love, which was rather longer in coming. There were girls my age, but they were not our kind, nor we theirs. No one ever spoke it aloud, but it was understood, and I certainly understood it, when their eyes would light on me briefly and then move on. I kept mine averted, though I wouldn’t be able to tell you why. I was big and clumsy, still getting used to my father’s frame when I was fifteen and sixteen and seventeen. There were girls in my dreams, who were made of sunlight and warmth, and whose faces I never saw. They sat close to me, and stroked my face with their hands, which were warmer than mere skin, and sometimes opened their arms to me, and touched me skin to skin … and then I woke, in sunlight and chill, knowing they weren’t real, or not real yet.

And then the crisis was on us, the danger, when my little sister began to become … what she was, and my father saw it, the day that she was down on the floor on all fours talking to the cat, and turned into a cat herself, which the cat took with a degree of calm that told him it had been going on for some time. 

***

As I begin revisions on The Shape-shifter’s Tale, I will be posting character interview excerpts for the main cast of the novel. This week’s excerpt comes from the interview with Trevor, Emma’s cousin.

Weekend Writing Warriors offers eight-sentence excerpts from a variety of writers; see the other excerpts here.