I’m awake. What I should be doing is tearing off the sheets, and springing up to embrace the day. Instead of moving, I freeze. Something more than personal pride in my birthday is marking the continuation of my existence in a new way. Something more substantial. An end. Today is a beginning to all things but one. My growth spurt has come to an abrupt halt. The stretching limbs and constant fast forward will cease now. Development complete. Physical growth, from embryo to adult in ten years has been arduous. A game of catch-up my body played with my mind. Ironic that a ritualistic day celebrating birth would mark a journey’s end for me.

I lay on my pillow, trying to shove away the typical sluggishness plaguing me in the mornings. I won’t miss sleeping nearly twelve hours a day, every day. Now that I’m done growing, I won’t need so many hours to recuperate from it. In the grand scheme of things, having spent half my life wasted in a dreamscape is fractional when sized against the lifetime ahead of me. Being a half-phaser holds the same benefit of prolonged existence. Presumably. We don’t actually know. I’m the benchmark. Regardless, my family doesn’t sleep. Not since their phase transition.

I haul the pillow over my face. Half-phaser. My other half? It’s human. In this case, being half and half isn’t about even sides. I’m not fifty percent phaser or fifty percent human. I’m one or the other. I can’t have the best of both worlds. I have to choose. Suffocation seems simpler than making this choice. Honestly, the moon should choose, in the same way it chooses our phase trajectory in the first place.

New Moon = dark fire phaser

Waning Crescent = dark water phaser

Third Quarter = light air phaser

Waning Gibbous = light earth phaser

Full Moon = light fire phaser

Waxing Gibbous = light water phaser

First Quarter = dark air phaser (this is me)

Waxing Crescent = dark earth phaser

Yawning again, I contemplate lying back on the bed and shoving away the whole day. To my parents, Rusty and Mary Willows, the ten years of my childhood were unbearably short when weighed against an eternity. Phasers have that luxury, I reckon. Time is gauged differently when it’s endless. Having grown so quickly did steal from them moments normal parents linger over. I’ll concede to that, but the short time for them seemed excruciatingly long for my body, which was trying desperately to catch up with my mind. Why? Because fusion. Their fusion, specifically.

Fusion is one of our significant phase transitions, where a phaser is supposed to link to their other half. Their soulmate. This fusion creates synergy for both phasers, an endless energy supply shared between a light and dark phaser. My parents put the cart before the horse with me. Not only did my father go against protocols, fusing to a human, he fused to a human, who unbeknownst to them, was pregnant with me at the time. His seed. They were just dumb about it. Like I said, cart before the horse. This fusion prematurely invoked my phase transition to adulthood. My mental development was instant.

I was never a little girl, despite my childlike form indicating otherwise. My mental awareness began in utero. It shifted from nothing to everything all at once, upon the aforementioned fusion. I still had to learn things, as an adult might have to should a wave of amnesia overwhelm their brain, but it wasn’t the same type of learning. My hollow silo was waiting to be filled. My education required no repetition or quizzing to confirm the teaching. I was the perfect student. Retention began at my phase transition, the moment my father and mother connected on that elevated, physical level.

I sit up on the bed, tossing the pillow to the floor. Overthinking is a burden coming with my attribute. I can’t forget. I remember every movement, every moment, and every interaction of my life. The name of every person I’ve ever met. The darkness prior to my birth. The voices surrounding me before I could put them to faces, then those faces speaking words they couldn’t believe I understood. I remember the regret, reluctance, acceptance, and finally understanding of everyone around me. I had a retentive mind from the beginning without the limitations of space. Infinite. While I learned and grew intellectually, my mind did this far quicker than my body. My physical development wasn’t immediate, though it was significantly hastened. A single decade instead of two. Maybe not slow, comparably, but slow to me without ample motor control.

Slow motion steps find me in front of my closet, where I open it to the onslaught of clothes enough for twenty children. Carefully calculating, I choose a blue, strapless satin halting at my knees. Dad will appreciate the use of his favourite color, finding it the loveliest shade on both his ladies. It’s more nostalgia than anything. My mom used to have the most glorious sapphire eyes before their fusion. The length, or lack thereof, might be a problem, but I’m an adult now. He’ll have an entirely new range of things to grow accustomed to in the coming months, least of all how much skin I’m showing.

I pull the dress over my head, smoothing it out to fall along the curves of my finished form. Having a dad who can read your every thought is problematic, making it quite difficult to have a mind of my own. I’m concerned I’ll say or think the wrong thing, show the wrong thing, and I love him so deeply I can’t bear to cause him pain. On the other hand, having to never fully explain myself is a blessing. What he can’t read, I show him. This is my gift. It’s the gift to project thoughts into someone’s mind, the opposite of his ability to hear thoughts.

All phasers get a gift from Luna. That gift depends on a combination of our element (air, earth, water, or fire) and our schism (light or dark). Our schism determines whether our gifts are defensive (innate) or offensive (requires touch/activation). As a light air phaser, Dad pulls. Conversely, I push. All air phaser gifts are mental in nature—mind reading, future seeing, memory sifting, etc. Earth phaser gifts encompass flora (plants) and fauna (animals), relating to healing or growth. Water phasers work with the metaphorical heart, reading or manipulating emotions. Fire phasers…they shapeshift.

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Dad’s never purposely taken anything he heard and used it against me, but he relays everything to Mom. The time for secrets between them has long passed. Part of what she received in the fusion is a bridge directly to Dad, a sort of two-way radio in their heads. They have to push the button to talk, though. I’m insanely envious of that partition. My thoughts are an open channel to him. There’s no choice for me. They know. They know my every thought, hope, and dream. They know everything, yet they know nothing. Why? Easy answer. I haven’t figured myself out at this point.

My free time is sparse. When given the choice, I prefer to spend it with my Grandpa Miller and Vera Findlay—my mother’s side of the family. Those times are full of things seeming simpler somehow. He lives by a ‘need to know basis’ philosophy, which is absolutely fine by me. He loves me without conditions or questions and cherishes all moments we spend together. He never asks what isn’t my secret to tell. He’ll never truly know how much I appreciate that.

“Mary,” he’d say to my mom. “She’s growing like a bad weed. You did real good.”

Begrudgingly, I swing my feet over the side of the bed. It never made a lot of sense to me how a bad weed could be good. That’s what I am, though. A bad weed, caused by my lunar phase. I’m watched more cautiously, judged more harshly, and, in the case of my family, forgiven too easily. They tend to overcompensate for how I’m viewed outside my fishbowl. Dark phasers get a bad wrap. Earned, I guess. At least it used to be.

Being special is second nature and altogether common on my dad’s side of the family, for everyone including me. Our gifts are unique and important. I understood this but still feel like running away from it sometimes. Grandpa and Vera know nothing of phaser life. From them, I learn what it means to be human. With them, I’m a special kind of special. There are no expectations, calculations, or stipulations. They love me for me, whatever that is. They’re my escape.

“And who am I?” I’d ask, steel grey eyes settling on his aging face.

“You know the answer to that better than me,” Grandpa would say.

When my face turned serious, he always laughed, explaining through the words Vera first said to me, “You’re every piece of good passed down from many generations, until the good grew enough to become you.”

Grandpa isn’t a talker, but he never minded repeating those clean, easy statements he heard from the lips of Vera, who’s something more than a great storyteller of Tetrad legends. She carries with her a defined sense of history focusing on generational augmentation, evolution based on birth rites. She gives him peace he didn’t know before her. I want to touch that, take that. It isn’t mine to have. The closest I’ll ever come to amity is being around them for as much time as I possibly can. For the most part, that’s enough.

On my father’s side of the family, the phasers fill my life with laughter and love and nothing of what the outside world would dream to envision of monstrous myths. I’ve heard many stories, lore and legends, always finding my questions answered when I seek out the truth inside the tales. They don’t lie to me. I’m not sure they could if they wanted to. All great epics are bound by some degree of legitimacy. With me, there’s a lot of trial and error involved in the learning curve. Each phase forward of my life marks history, making new myths. I’m a testament to something not accurately catalogued in phaser record. Something new. Something not meant to exist.

That’s another reason I run away to Grandpas whenever I can. Having a light earth phaser in close proximity leads to many inspections, trials, charts, and exams, to the point I sometimes feel more like a test subject than a real person, let alone a child. I was never a child. Pete means no harm, and I’m happy to help, just not altogether eager to be an experiment for him. To be fair, he’s the reason I’m so attuned to my two halves, so aware how incredibly different they are from one another. His mate, Rick, is a dark earth phaser, documenting every discovery, along with mitigating the majority of my growing pains. They’re my teachers.

Walking back to the closet, I stretch down, reaching for a pair of stilettos, which tie in laces up my calves. So. Many. Shoes. For the most part, Grace has practicality in mind. For a long time, I really couldn’t wear the same thing on more than one occasion, rapidly outgrowing everything in my wardrobe. Grace is a spirited light air phaser, easy to love and fun to be around. I assume part of her over-interest has something to do with the fact my presence inhibits the gift she possesses to see the future.

My future is as unknown to her as it is to me. That makes her curious. She spends hours trying to identify some pattern in my expressions and mannerisms to predict what my next movement will be, using deduction instead of the gift she’s without. I don’t think it ever works out very well. I don’t have the heart to explain I have no idea what I’ll do from one moment to the next, so there’s no way she’ll be able to do that for me.

At least it provides her with some entertainment. She and the other phasers are all getting antsy to leave. Small town speculations have already made it impossible to lead any type of normal existence. It’s unsafe to stay. It’s time to move on, and I’m holding them back. Normality halted for them while I grew. I’m done growing. Where will they go now? Will I go with them?

Satisfied with my attire, I move over to the vanity and sit somewhat awkwardly on the stool. It badly needs to be replaced by a larger version, but I can’t seem to let it go. It was a gift from my best friend in the world, a friend who now intentionally avoids me. He’s present, yes, though never so close as he once was. Not for the last three years. Creepy peeping, I call it. Dad’s quick to correct me when I do. He says it’s watchful waiting. I prefer to call a spade a spade. Reaching down, I run my hand along the smooth grooves, each carved curve forming into the beautiful wolves representing him. My distant shadow. My light fire phaser.