The world spun around me dizzyingly as I corkscrewed down through the air, wings flattened against my sides as I streaked towards the ground. I screamed. "Barrel roll!!"

Whump! The air thudded heavily against my wings as I spread them again, pulling up well before I got near the ground. I was still very new to flight, as my wobbly recovery from the dive plainly showed; I didn’t want to take any really stupid risks. Just a few slightly stupid ones. I laughed as I tried to steady my path, a little dizzy from the spin but once again flying straight. I was travelling at rather low altitude, just above the rooftops; I still wasn’t used to navigating from the higher altitudes, and traffic sometimes got heavy up there with flighted morphs streaming along the airways.

A tiny bird with almost painfully bright red plumage chirped angrily as I flapped near the tree he was perched in. "Same to you," I shot back as I passed, veering slightly away from him. I really should work on my wit, I reflected. Seems a shame to waste my voice on such a weak comeback...

It had been a rather crazy couple of days, an emotional roller-coaster of the highest degree. Todd’s medical condition, Mano’s grounding, David’s quirky powers, and my own Change, all piling on at once. But although most of those issues hadn’t been fully resolved yet, I was back on the upswing now. I still feared for my hands, when playing the keyboard every finger counted. But Dr. Chin had given me a tentative low-degree prognosis; he said I had a good chance of keeping all five on each hand. So had my Mom, for what that was worth.

And, even better, I had learned to appreciate the major benefit of being a bird. I could almost consider flight a reasonable trade for prehensile limbs; it was an incredibly liberating feeling. Hell, even the state of simply being a parrot felt somehow liberating, once I got over the initial fears and started exploring it. Everything was new in this form, new and different.

Sometimes, I wondered if I was perhaps squandering my remaining human-time with the time I spent in parrot form. I would have the rest of my life to be a parrot, if I wanted, but only a month or two were left for me to be even partially human. But I usually only felt like that as I lay awake late at night, in human form as Dr. Chin had recommended, with nothing to do but think and fret. It was nearly impossible to worry about that sort of thing when actually in flight.

My house appeared around the bend of the road ahead, and I circled in for a landing on the prefabricated bird "balcony" that Dad had installed in the window of my room yesterday. Mom had bought it the day I started Changing, a somewhat eerie thought considering that she had just barely found out that I was becoming a bird of some sort at the time. How had she known what sort of balcony to get, or even that I would be able to norm shift? Her claims of precognition were always so hard to tell apart from lucky guesses...

The balcony wasn’t especially large or fancy, designed primarily to serve as a landing or launching pad with only a couple of simple perches mounted on the side. It was still really cool, though; my room had a real honest-to-god balcony now. I wasn’t a good enough flyer to land in it directly, I still tended to overshoot my target. Not good, when a glass pane lies immediately beyond it. I landed on the roof instead, walked over to the edge, and hopped down to the balcony’s surface from there. It was kind of funny that I still got vertigo standing on the edge of the roof...

Mom appeared in the doorway of my room just as I was coming in through the window, as if she’d been waiting in the hall outside to pounce. "About time you got home, Jim," she scolded mildly. "You’ll have to hurry to get in shape in time for the dance."

I triggered the shift back to human form immediately, though nothing would show on the outside for at least a few minutes yet. In the meantime, I objected; "Aww, Mom! I’ve got plenty of time yet."

"Not really. You’ve got to get dressed after you’re back in human form, your plumage isn’t enough to cover your morph form yet-"

"Okay, okay," I awked in embarrassment, interrupting her. "I’ll hurry up. But I can’t hurry my shift, you know."

"I know. Just don’t dally; you’ve got to meet someone."

"Oh? Who?"

Mom smiled slyly, turning to leave. "Never mind. Just trust your mother." She walked out the door, closing it behind her.

I sighed and shook my head. It sounded like she’d had another dream, or something; despite the coy evasions I had given on the subject, I hadn’t had a clue who to ask to the dance. I had planned to mainly just hang out with my friends when I got there.

Ignoring her vague prediction, since there was little I could do about it either way, I flew down to my desk and watched myself in the mirror as I slowly but surely changed back to human. As fun as being a parrot was, I still felt a large sense of relief as my fingers popped out of my wings one by one. When I was finally done, I climbed down to the floor and checked myself for further changes before putting on any clothing.

The fringe of feathers down my arms had extended past my elbows, almost to my wrists, and I noticed that my teeth were starting to stay partially fused together; soon I would have to get used to having a beak all the time. I pursed my lips, wondering about all the things I wouldn’t be able to do without lips. And with feathers at my wrists, it was only a short while until my hands started changing...

I sighed and shook my head. It was odd that I felt so much more confident and secure when I was a bird that weighed only a couple of pounds. In that form I didn’t think about what I might be loosing, only what I had gained. I briefly wondered which approach was the better one, then sighed again and shrugged my feathery shoulders. I had a dance to get ready for now; clothes to put on, headfeathers to preen, nascent beak to brush. Philosophy would have to wait.

Dad dropped me off a reasonable distance away from the school; not too far to walk, but far enough to keep it from being obvious to the other students that he’d given me a lift. I had a learner’s permit, but Dad had still ruled that I would not be able to use the family car myself yet. Fair enough, I supposed. I walked the short distance to the school, taking the time to straighten my shirt one last time. My feathers didn’t like being covered with clothing all that much, it tended to rub them the wrong way.

As I entered the gym itself, I began scanning the others already present for familiar faces or forms. No wheelchairs were present yet, ruling Todd out for the moment, and I didn’t spot any of David’s forms either...

"Michael!" It was hard to miss him, with those rather unique eyes of his.

One of those eyes swung towards me, the other remaining on the female goatmorph he’d been talking with. "Jim! How’s tricks?"

I ran my hand through the head feathers that had replaced my hair. "Same as always, still in the process of joining the green club." I really had to work on my wit; that sounded extremely lame. I walked over to him and his companion, wondering if this was who Mom expected me to meet. But just as I got there, she nodded to Michael and walked off into the crowd. "Who was that?" I asked curiously.

"Just someone in my english class," Michael said dismissively. "We were talking about an assignment. So, did you bring anyone to the dance?" A slight grin was evident on his reptilian features.

"Apparently not," I sighed. I looked around again, wondering...

"Well, the others will be along soon, I imagine. Except Mano, of course. And David will no doubt be occupied with Amanda... you can dance with Todd, I guess." His grin was even more evident now, and I grinned back at him. He focused both eyes on me for a moment. "Teeth changing?" He asked.

I ran my tongue over them and nodded, they’d surged a little bit just before I entered the room. By the end of the day I suspected I’d never need to floss again. "When this thing gets done with my head, I have no idea how it’ll feel. Hard to imagine, really." Michael’s eyes flicked in odd directions, as if shrugging. He knew what I meant, of course.

Suddenly, there was a whoosh as someone flew overhead. I looked up in surprise, as did everyone else in the gym; it was against the rules for morphs to fly indoors, there wasn’t enough room. But this particular morph seemed to have it well in hand; she was a bat, and obviously well suited to flying in confined spaces. She landed expertly next to the mike on the small stage, and turned to face the croud. "Welcome to the Halloween Bash," she announced cheerfully. "I see I’m still a bit early, so what say we all get ready to dance while the stragglers arrive. Morph if you got ‘em, folks; it’s halloween!"

I chuckled. "The DJ’s arrived, I guess. Who is she, I haven’t seen her around before."

Michael eye-shrugged again. "Beats me."

I watched her intently from the side of the room as the house lights dimmed and the music started to play. Was _she_ the person Mom wanted me to be here to meet? Didn't make much sense, she'd be up on the stage for the entire dance.

The batmorph DJ's gaze passed over the crowd one last time before she went to sit down at the control box, and for an instant our eyes met. My surprised expression must have been blatantly obvious, since she grinned in amusement. Then she turned away, and background music began to play. I blinked. I would definitely need to ask Mom exactly what made her think that this moment of meeting was important when I got back home...

Copyright 1998, Bryan Derksen

Go Back to Fear

Go Forward to Halloween Bash

Go the Teen Round Robin Index Page