The Refugee

By Nyassa Kaiba

Prologue

My name is Feralae. It's Latin. It means wild wings. Nice name isn't it? I think so. I mean, how many kids know the meaning of their names? Kirin means Giraffe and Rachel means sheep. Aleser means lion and Ishtar is the name of the Babylonian Goddess of love and war. But how many kids know these things? Not many.

My gene pool is incredibly unusual. My father is an Irish orphan raised by the Navajo. My mother is Japanese American. My dad is a blacksmith during the summer and a weaver during the winter. My mother was Head Zoologist in an Animal Park in San Diego. We raise horses and sheep. We have dogs and we're all falconers.

But you'll notice that I'm not giving details. I can't, because if I told you where I currently live, I'd end up dead, or worse. What am I in, the witness protection program? Ha ha ha. But it would be too dangerous. I may have nothing to fear, but there are others who would get into trouble. So I can't tell you my last name or where I am as I write this.

Anyway, when my story started we were putting everything together in the new/old house. It used to be my grandfather's house. But when my grandfather died and my grandmother didn't want to leave the shrine in Japan where she lived and worked as a miko (a Shintoist priestess,) we got the house. Just in time. My mother was laid off and accepted a position at the Gardens.

The next door neighbors had come to greet us. I heard their voices mingling down below in the Garden. They had a girl about my age named Cassie. I hoped that 'Cassie' was pretty. For me the move could not have been more ill timed. I was just about to tell my friend Duel how I felt about her before we left. I left somebody that I cared about behind, and I didn't want to tell my parents that I'm a lesbian, so I couldn't raise protest to the move.

I heard mom say to Cassie's father. "Well Walter, I do hope that they get along. My daughter is a superb falconer. Her harris hawk, Escalade is very sleek and shiny from her care."

"In fact, why don't you come up and introduce yourself Cassie." Dad said with a smile.

"Sure." I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. There was a knock. "Feralae, the neighbors are here. May we come in?"

"I suppose." I was listening to Switchfoot, "Meant to Live" and blazing my way through a pokemon contest on my pokemon ruby version. Dad opened the door and Cassie came in.

I looked her over. Cassie was black and beautiful. She had short hair in cornrows and beautiful dark eyes. Too many beautifuls in the space of two sentences. I shook my head, trying to get the hormones out of it. "Hi! I'm Feralae, it means Wild Wings."

"Cool, I wish my name meant something." Cassie sat down in the desk chair. "I heard that you're a falconer."

"Yeah, not as good as my dad. Both me, my mom, and my dad are falconers. My dad has a golden eagle named Lexus. My mom has a Peregrine Falcon named Cadillac. And my Harris hawk is named Escalade."

Cassie chuckled. "You named them after cars right? That's so cute!"

I grinned foolishly. My doberman, Jag (short for Jaguar,) nosed open the door. "And there's my dog Jaguar. We call him Jag, my mother raises Great Danes and my dad has border collies. We name all of our personal animals after cars. The horses that my mom raises don't. She wants to make a new breed of warm blood horses."

"That's cool." Cassie said with a warm smile. "My mom is the head veterinarian at the Gardens and my Dad runs a wild life rehabilitation clinic."

"My dad raises sheep and llamas for their wool. He weaves during the winter and he's a blacksmith during the summer. He makes such cool stuff." I picked up a gargoyle from the desk. "Like this thing for example." I handed it to her.

The gargoyle had been created to guard my desk. It had three forward raked horns and a slightly serpentine head. The creature had blades sticking out of its wrists and elbows. It had wings and two spikes on it's long tail. "It's a gargoyle." I explained. "My dad made it for me for my tenth birthday. I love to draw some of the things that he makes."

Cassie ran a finger over the blades curiously. That was odd, I had expected an "oh wow!" not the expression on her face, as if I had mentioned something forbidden. Her eyes narrowed as she looked into the red glass that my father had used for eyes. "Cool." She said, after a long silence before setting it down on the desk.

"Anyway." I was losing the appeals round of the pokemon contest. "Aw man! I lost the first round of the appeals!"

"That's a really interesting sculpture." Cassie said with a wane smile. "What else does your dad make?"

I dug through the boxes for my latest sketchbook. "Here." I handed her the sketch-book. "This one's a dragon. And this one's a centaur." I pointed to the two most recent sketches. The dragon had a similar blade design, only no wrist blades and bigger wings. The centaur didn't have a horse's tail. Instead it had a long tail like a bullwhip and a pair of blades, one on each side. "And this one's a sword, dagger and hunting knife set that he made for me. And this one's one of those bladed spears that you see in Anime. And this one's..." But Cassie was looking more closely at the sketches of the dragon and the centaur. "Oh, you like the sculptures too? My dad makes extra money by making sculptures for buildings and stuff. They sell for thousands of dollars each."

Cassie handed the sketchbook back with a shrug. "Do you ride?" She asked.

"Yeah, how about we go riding tomorrow afternoon, after school, since there's only a week left." I suggested. "You can introduce me to your home-girls."

Cassie smiled. "Sure!" She got up to go.

I turned up the stereo as she left. "We were meant to live for so much more, have we lost ourselves, somewhere we live inside, somewhere we live inside. We were meant to live for so much more, have we lost ourselves? Somewhere we live inside!" I sang along with the words, not realizing that I'd soon be proved right.

That evening, after dinner, my mother and father came up to my room. "Had a good day Ferealae?" He asked.

"Yup! I had an excellent day." My things were all unpacked. My room was nice and neat.

"That's good... Feralae?" Dad opened a small box. Inside of the box were packing peanuts and another box, sky blue in color and about 6x6x6 in dimensions. "I came upstairs to give you this. This box is very special and very rare. Whatever happens you can't give it up to anybody, got that?" He asked. "It's been in the family for four generations. I want to show you something." He looked over at mom.

Mother nodded. "This box gives people the power to turn into any animal who's DNA they could acquire through touch." She beckoned to Jag. The dog came over, holding out his paw for a shake. Mom took it and closed her eyes for a moment.

"You're kidding right? Or is this some kind of ancient Navajo legend or something?" I asked, skeptically.

"I'm not kidding." Dad said calmly. "Watch your mother."

Mom closed her eyes and focused. Her hair disappeared, replaced with black and gold fur. Her ears slid up the side of her head and became floppy. Dobermen normally had ears that were floppy. Breeders trimmed them when they reached the right age. Her fingers shortened and the nails turned black. Her knees reversed with a crunch and her legs lengthened, the direction the joints turned changed. A tail sprouted out of her butt like a weed. Mom began to shrink to Jag's size.

Jag was going nuts. He howled and ran from the room, paws scrabbling on the kitchen linoleum downstairs. I heard him shove the doggie door out.

Mom laughed… only it wasn't out loud, it was in my head. "I… I hear you in my head! I've gotta be dreaming!"

"It's not a dream Feralae." Dad said with a small smile. "It's made possible with that box. You see why we don't want anybody to get it."

"Damn right you don't!" I shivered. "And this is real?" I demanded.

Yes it is. Mom answered. Please, don't tell anyone that I can do this. We're not even supposed to have the box, and there are people who would do anything to have it, including kill you and I.

"There's a time limit on this morphing technology as well." Dad explained. "After two hours in any morph you would stay in that morph forever. It's extremely dangerous."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, looking from mom, to dad, to mom again as she began to change back.

"Because you have a choice to make. Only you can make it. Do you want to morph?" Dad asked. "I'm not able to, I can't help you with this decision. And there may come a time when… when you will have to be strong, because I can't be…." He said looking down at his shoes. "Because I can't morph, and you can, you will become a target like your mother may become."

I closed my eyes, trying to picture what sort of person I'd become a target to. The image wasn't good. All I could picture were Feds, FBI agents, CIA, or NSA Not nice, but the ability to become an animal, any animal? That was amazing! And I could always morph a dragonfly or a butterfly or something and escape!

"I'll think about it dad." I said with a smile. "I'll think about it."

I hid the box in the cabinet under my bed. Then I closed my eyes and looked over at the altar in my room. On it stood the three holy symbols of the Japanese Gods. The copper mirror, the sword, and the jewels. They represented the three major Kami of Shintoism, Susonoo; God of Warriors and Storms, Amateratsu; Goddess of the Sun and of Artisans, and Tsuki-Yomi, God of the Moon and the Stars. I looked into the mirror and I said, "Goddess, what would you do? Would you protect the people you cared about? Would I take the risk of being trapped or captured? Would I?"

The Goddess didn't answer, but the shimmering butterfly on the rose vine outside flapped its wings, fluttering off into the night…