There are so many people around me and I can feel the change beginning.
“Already?” mouths Izar from across the room. I nod once. It’s all I can manage. I don’t want to talk because I can feel my incisers lengthening. He grabs my arm and squeezes down on where my muscles are growing. To the crowds, we’re just another drunken pair stumbling out of the inn. In the courtyard, bounty hunters’ cages loom over me and I fall to my knees.
“Come on, Glade.” Izar hisses. He hauls me up and nearly throws me into an alleyway.

“Don’t look!” I manage to shout to him, “I’m changing!”
He growls something and then turns away. I spread myself out, a star on the muddy ground, basking in the soft moonlight. The moonlight that makes me who I am. My hair lengthens to inch-long strands of grey down my chest and stomach and shortens on my head. A thick mane cascades down my neck. My legs shrink. Claws shape on my toes. Blood thirst controls me. I see Izar.

And turn away. I would never kill a friend. I am not an animal…yet.