Sarah Crawford stood in front of her brother. The rundown apartment he now lived in smelled of mold and moth balls, which irritated her nose greatly. The boy she had once known long ago was far different now. His short black hair had grown to touch his broad shoulders and his thin wiry frame had bulked causing his head to look less ridiculously large. His crooked nose still bent slightly to the left from the childhood beating he had taken. His dark brown eyes were locked to hers. Sarah shifted awkwardly as they stood in silence.
Jeremy broke the silence. "I-" he gulped. "I thought you were dead." The words were a whisper but her new ears had heard them as clear as a bell.
"I know," was all she could think of. It had been four years since the house fire and her supposed death. It had taken her nearly all that time to track down Jeremy. Their father had died in the fire, and she was thought to have.
"Where have you been?" Jeremy moved towards Sarah, who cringed away. Human contact was something she was not used too.
"If I told you, you wouldn't believe me." Her bother gave her the look. With a sigh, she relented. "I was…" She searched for the least freakish way to break the news. "I was with the people who caused the fire."
Her brother stared at her. It was a blank almost unreadable stare. He blinked twice before speaking. "What the hell were you doing with those people?" He was more in disbelief than anger.
"Something happened to me that night and I had to come with them," Sarah fidgeted with the end of her shirt. "I didn't stay with them, I left not even a week later." She was desperate to get him to understand.
"Why didn't you find me when you left?"
"I don't know. I was scared and I needed time to figure out what I was and how to control everything and-"
"What do you mean 'what you are'?" It was Jeremy's turn to cringe away.
"Jer," Sarah's voiced cracked with the use of her brothers nick name. "I- I'm not human."
More silence. Jeremy looked her up and down several times. "You look human."
"Promise you won't scream?" The siblings stared at each other and when Jeremy finally nodded, Sarah changed.
The process wasn't painful. In fact, it felt normal. Even the first time she changed, she felt right. Being in her new form was normal. She had spent four years as the collie Sarah had become more dog than human.
Jeremy stumbled backwards and tripped on the leg of the coffee table. He fell back and hit his head on the floor. Sarah padded towards him and licked his face once. His eyes opened and the brother she had once known looked at her in such a way that she had only seen it once before and that was when he had obtained his new nose.