Five minutes into my walk and I felt apprehensive. It was nearly impossible to see, even with shifter senses. How was I supposed to pick out aflower?
Leaving the path was my only option to find what Cress wanted. I really wished I had magic to conjure up a light so I could see.
Bushes pulled at my clothes. I got stuck a few times, having to pull myself free, tearing my t-shirt a couple times. My mom was going to murder me. Still, I ignored it all, determined to get what I wanted.
Finally, what felt like hours later, I found a patch of flowers. They were the pink of the dawn, and lit by the moonlight filtering through the trees.
I’d just picked one, the loveliest one of the bunch, when I heard it: a low rumbling growl.
The sound came from some bushes at the other side of the little clearing I’d gotten to. The same bush which held my shirt and my inhibitor, the only thing stopping me from smelling like prey to whatever was in the woods with me!
Moonlight illuminated the sandy brown body slinking out of the shadows.
A dog? What was a dog doing so far away from town?
Its teeth bared in a snarl. That wasn’t a dog!
Alarms flared in my mind. I was trapped in the woods, in the dark, without my scent inhibitor,with a dingo! The one creature a little quokka like me counted as their natural predator.
I was so fucked and not in the way I hoped I could convince Cress into doing.
“Hey, um, I know I smell tasty, but I’m a quokka…” I glanced down at the beast who was nearing me slowly, looking ready to pounce. “Uh, Mr. Dingo. Please, I’m… do you understand me?”
The look in his eyes was feral. He shook with the coiling need to pounce. There was no human intelligence like with normal shifters.
He was going to eat me!
Fear overtook sense and my shift fell over me. I twisted and struggled in my clothes, trying to escape them, and flee from the dingo.
As a quokka, my senses were better, my eyesight sharper, my sense of smell more defined. I was also much, much faster.
I hopped like my life depended on it, because it did, to the thinning trees, closer to the road, towards where I could smell the fire. The dingo barked and chased after me, his snaps and snarls driving me faster. He was so close!
My heart thundered in my ears. Panic shortened my breath. I felt like at anysecond he was going to catch me. Those sharp teeth would snap my neck if he got any nearer.
In the distance I could hear my friends still partying, celebrating our graduation, and getting more drunk. All I had to do was get nearer to them. One of them could fend the dingo off with their magic.
So close! I was nearly there. I glanced behind me. The dingo was gone. My pace slowed while I struggled to breathe. I didn’t dare stop until I was out of the woods.
Breaking out of the trees, I stopped sharply, panting.
“Look!” someone cried. “Isn’t that Sully?”
Unable to speak to them in this form, I shifted back, one hand automatically cupping my junk. In the other, I still held the damned flower.
“There’s a dingo! In the woods!” My words came out all strangled. “He tried to eat me!”
Then I fainted.
“Sully! Wake up!”
“Wherethe fuck are his clothes?”
“In the woods. D’you think he really saw a dingo?”
Someone laughed. “Nah, I think he was wasted, got scared, shifted and ran back here.”
“There’s no way he was chased here carrying a flower!”
