Chapter 1: Gerudo Again
Why did she always wake up with pain? Why did her insides always twist and turn and leap and jump? Why did her skin always itch and crawl, her pores always burn? Wren tossed and turned, clutching her stomach as she felt her body expand. It was happening again, the transformation.
It had been nearly a month since she'd taken the reversal potion Paris had offered her. The first week back in her Forest had been blissful—she'd played and frolicked and not worried about anything. She'd become reacquainted with her brothers and sisters. She had spent so much precious, loving time with Roarke. But not long after that, she'd started getting violently ill. Sometimes it came up on her several times a day, but she'd managed to keep the pain from her friends. Now, it was getting worse.
There was something wrong with the potion. There had to be
Shaking and feeling like she would toss her cookies, she raised her hand up into the stream of moonlight that fell through her open window. It was not a Kokiri hand; not her child's hand. It was a Gerudo hand. The skin was darkened by the sun, the nails were long and white, the knuckles strong, the ligaments and finger muscles there, obvious.
She moaned; it was that or scream her hurt to the world.
Repeatedly, she'd gone through half-transformations back into the creature the Gerudo had turned her into. It was never a complete change, and was always gone by morning. The pain was becoming too much; the potion was fading, unable to keep her in her true form. One of these times she would not go back to being Kokiri. The thought terrified her.
Some kind of screech pierced the air. Wren went temporarily still, despite the clawing in her stomach that bade her move, and listened. There was no repeat of the scream that she could hear; only the Forest's night song played. Tucking her head back to her chest, she wiggled again and gained temporary relief that took the edge off.
"Wren?"
She looked up with a jerky motion. Roarke knelt at the top of her ladder, crawling into her dark tree-home. As he came through the moonlight, she saw his face, his eyes shocked and glazed over, his mouth, nose, and brow wrinkled in something like disgust as he looked her over. She tried to get up for him, tried to smile, but doubled back over in pain, grimacing.
Roarke felt sick to his stomach, anger, fear, disgust, and anguish boiling together in his abdomen. He reached his hand to touch Wren's shoulder, to comfort her because she was obviously in pain, but stopped when he saw her skin. Her body was huge; no longer the child's. Her skin was sun-tanned. Gulping back bile, he gripped her shoulder, tightly. Her skin was cold and clammy with sweat. Her hair gleamed in the moonlight as she tossed her head—brown with bloody black locks interwoven.
"Roarke…who screamed? Are they—they alright?" Wren gasped out between stabs of pain.
Roarke gulped, watching helplessly as she writhed. "Wren…you screamed."