Jack Findlay has been a part of my life since the moment I was born. In fact, he came to snuff me out. Remember what I said about being a bad weed? There’s a reason it’s true. I mean, it’s not true, but as they say, stereotypes exist for a reason. I’m a dark phaser, and dark phasers draw energy from subjectivity sketchy places. Unlike light phasers, who draw energy innately by proximity to their elemental connection (i.e., water from water), dark phasers draw energy from humans. Yeah, stealing someone’s breath away is a legitimate thing for me. Only, I don’t have to for two main reasons. One, I’m still half human. Two, artificial air works just fine. In a pinch, I can feed from an animal, but the retention is substantially less. More of a snack than a meal.
Right, so Luna messed us up by design, but she also gave us fusion to correct the schism of light and dark. Fusion ordinarily happens at the onset of maturity phase transition. Chosen mates. Ideally, a dark phaser chooses a light phaser of the same element. This creates synergy. The light phaser draws energy innately, sharing it with the dark phaser. I say chosen mates instead of fated mates since sometimes people choose wrong. Unfortunately, the choice can’t be undone. It’s forever. Most people choose for love, some for convenience, a few for hierarchy, and the rest, like me, choose for survival. That’s what I did. To save my own life, I fused with the wolf set on eating me.
Jack’s a light fire phaser. Fire phasers have one gift—shapeshifting. Where the schism comes into play relates to their ability to control their shift. A light phaser has full control of their shifting. A dark phaser must be commanded to shift. This has led to pack mentality in the fire phaser segment. Pack, pod, herd, whatever. They can become any animal, but their group needs an Alpha leader, who dictates the animal. Jack’s an Alpha. I should probably also explain at this point fire phasers have split off from the other three elements, or they were kicked out rather, because of their strong views about eliminating all dark phasers from existence. Yeah, it’s definitely our fault we had the bad luck to be born when we were. Anyway, that’s a centuries old world problem we aren’t solving today. For now, I’ll condense it to say fire phasers are on one side. Air, earth, and water phasers are on the other. Humans are the river running between us.
When Jack came to kill me, I fused with him in an effort to save my own life. It worked. He can’t kill me now, being we share a soul or whatever. There’s a mountain of problems with what I did, the obvious one being we’re not of the same element. He can’t in any way feed me energy or vice versa. That doesn’t negate the bind, however. The bind doesn’t care. It’s an enhancement. Not a requirement.
Worse, had I known what I was signing up for, I may have opted for death. The description I was provided with, after the fact, makes it sound like an arranged marriage no one arranged. Well, I arranged it, except I had no idea I was doing that. The impact was immediate, and it didn’t just affect us. Our families, our friends, they all got sucked into acceptance too. Maybe accepted isn’t the right word. Maybe endured is more accurate. Regardless, fusion is meant to happen after the maturity phase transition. You know, once someone is an adult and can fully seal the mate bond. I’d be lying to say I didn’t spend a few years romanticizing the notion of having my one. It felt oddly comforting knowing no matter my place in life, there was someone there waiting for only me. As I matured and started to experience new feelings, the physical aspect of reciprocated affection was awkwardly terrifying.
I consider my family, phaser and human alike, in pairs. Mom and Dad, Pete and Rick, Grace and Jarek, Bridget and Sam, Grandpa Miller and Vera. They’re bound and content to be that way, fawning and affectionate toward one another, something different than the lavished attention they all pour equally over me. From the outside looking in, it appears much more intrusive. Borderline invasive. I don’t fancy that. Not yet. In fact, what few free moments I can spend daydreaming, which are ridiculously limited due to lack of privacy, I spend seeking freedom, separation, and silence. I certainly don’t spend them sitting around waiting in wonder to marry Jack Findlay.
Desperately trying to comb through the bronze curls atop my head, I moan in frustration at the mess of hair. The sound of my voice startles me. In truth, I don’t speak a lot, not with my vocal cords anyway. I have no reason to, what with the projection gig I have going on. When the voice sings out, it’s nearly always a shock to me it’s mine. It changes—changed—so frequently it isn’t something I ever had a chance to get used to. Small things like my unchanging voice are signs I’m done growing. My bearings will be adjusted soon, and perhaps I can set myself on cruise control for a while, until some sort of balance presents itself.
My inherited ringlets drape loosely at my waist, unmoved by my futile attempts to untangle them. Defeated, I wind them around themselves, placing them at the back of my head, where I fasten them with a clip straining to contain them. It’s a sophisticated look suiting the day. Soon enough, I’ll be getting it cut. This time, I might not take the scissors and find my scalp, as I did in frustration three years ago. Being nearly bald didn’t bother me as much as it did everyone else. My family viewed the gesture as a short-lived fashion statement instead of pressing me for reasons why I’d do something so foolish. Unsurprisingly, it grew out in record time, which helped me avoid the onslaught of continuously raised eyebrows. Jack didn’t notice, or if he did, he never thought to ask me why I did such a childish thing. That would’ve required him talking to me, resulting in unneeded emotions and embarrassing explanations. The detachment allowed for healthy reflection. For both of us.
The curl slaying wasn’t done as a type of trend-seeking but as an attempt to cut the fusion ties. A failed attempt. Honestly, I was just hurt and acting out. I wasn’t quite a woman but feeling such strong emotions of longing, it was wildly unbearable. Had I chosen a more opportune time to try the human diet, maybe the phase of puberty wouldn’t have affected me so strongly, so hormonally.
Food. Huh. That’s different. Strangely, though my brain isn’t quiet, my stomach is. Typically, I wake wanting to chew through the pillow to get to a food source. Even after a nap, I wake up hungry. My appetite fluctuates from starving to famished every waking hour, never levelling. I can’t seem to sate it, the devastating desire to consume. This stems mostly from my body using up its nutrients nearly as fast as my system absorbs them. Human food lingers a bit longer in my digestive tract, trailing through a system designed to thrive on that. Tiny problem there. I can’t stand the taste of it. No matter how many flavours I try, none of them compare to breath bags. It’s like a kid being asked to make a choice between soda and water.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
I have two choices where nourishment is concerned. I can either fill myself as mortals do, seeking nutritional sustenance from product, or maintain a diet of canned air, which bypasses the need for normal mineral intake. The food allows a cellular process to occur within my blood where it regenerates itself, while canned air directly flushes out the old, replacing it with new. My choice is to recycle or replenish. Like all green go-getters, the recycling option has side effects I find it hard to appreciate. After an extended stint on human food, specific human annoyances rear their ugly heads. Restroom visits. Acne. Menstruation. Weird desires to kiss boys who do not want to be kissed.
My stint of humanitarianism was short-lived, largely due to another human limitation that came crashing into my heart like a bag of bricks—self-consciousness and doubt. I never would’ve dreamed it possible, not in the way everyone made out the connection to be. It never dawned on me while I was feeling so much like a woman, my form showed only an almost-lady, no more than fourteen. When I tried to show Jack exactly how appreciative I was of his constant vigil, his rejection swept me into a swirl of confusion. When time continued to mark his absence, I realized it was more than physical rejection as a result of my developmental phase. He just didn’t want me.
After that misfire, my actions were more and more inappropriate. I’d yell, cry, and take faux panic attacks over simple, everyday difficulties. I was acting out. Dramatically. While my mind was full of stop, I couldn’t help but go. My self-restraint was lost somewhere inside pubescence. On a positive note, I added a certain entertainment value breaking the monotonous continuum for my phaser family. My inappropriate behaviour reminded them of a part of themselves they hadn’t seen in centuries. The human part. Just two of them knew how to handle my tantrums. Pretty good odds for me to win whatever I wanted at the time.
The first contender was my mother. She’s the most recently changed, so when the strangeness occurred in me, human strangeness, Mom remembered most of it with vague detail, trying her best to walk me through what were some personally awkward times. I gave up on human food quickly after that, shaking away those ill effects.
The second contender, and ultimate winner, was Jarek. He’s a dark water phaser. Of all my family, he has the easiest time dealing with my temper tantrums. Water phasers deal in emotions. Where light water phasers read emotions, dark water phasers manipulate them. When my personality started to shine through, in less than appropriate ways, Jarek formed a bond with me, an understanding and acceptance. Mostly, he was able to talk things through with me, listening to my concerns and calmly showing me another side. Of course, there were times I was beyond reason, so he cheated, using his power to break through my bad mood. It pleased him to be of such a valid and necessary service. It pleased me he cared enough to want to help, especially when I was so often out of line. We have a bond beyond that, though. As the only other dark phaser, requiring the human supplement to replenish our energy, he understands the difficulty we face, generally. The judgment. The caution. The concern.
When I acted out with the scalping, it was Grace, his mate, who first saw my new hairdo. She would’ve bound my hands together using any means necessary had she seen what was coming. The block between her gift and I is problematic for her. That block, I should add, is a result of my fusion with Jack. She can’t see behind the firewall. The second person I saw was Bridget. Her mouth twitched a tad. Pretty sure I almost won a smile for that one.
Bridget’s my guardian angel, if angels are ice cold with raven hair. She’s heavy on the side of bitter, longing for what might’ve been, unable to freely step forward knowing what she left behind. I think it has to do with her phase. She’s a light air phaser like Dad and Grace, but where Grace sees the future, Dad sees the present, and Bridget sees the past. Kind of hard to look forward when all you see is what’s behind you.
When Mom found out she was pregnant, everyone thought she should terminate me, being the gestation was wholly unnatural. Bridget saved my life when she sided with Mom, who was adamant I should live. I’m not judging. The whole scene was messed up. They were right to suggest termination. By the end of the first week, she was looking more than three months along. The fear wasn’t about her being harmed. She did gain some exceptional healing and other side benefits like phasers have, thanks to fusing with Dad. It’s just there was no way to project when I’d make my way into the world. They’d planned for a caesarean birth, theoretically early. That’s how it usually happens, to prevent the negative connotations of dark phasing, but their timing was unfortunately off. I came too early…or late…however you want to look at it.
Bridget’s defence of Mom, and subsequently me, was due to her own inability to conceive. Whether the baby was hers or not, it was the closest thing she’d ever come to motherhood. Luna grants pregnancy. It’s an extreme rarity for phasers to be given that gift. In Bridget’s case, it’s impossible. Her mate, Sam, is a light water phaser. Mixed element fusing never results in moon babies.
Come to think of it, my entire family is something of a band of fusion misfits. Of the lot, Rick and Pete are the only ones who did what was expected of them. Pete’s a light earth phaser, while Rick’s the corresponding dark earth. Everyone else? Nonstandard fusions. Maybe that’s why they’ve become their own tribe. They didn’t really fit in anywhere else. Me? I took the misfit all the way to level ten, fusing with the enemy.
Lifting myself from the stool, I walk over to the full-length mirror to admire myself. I don’t look anything like Rory. Rory’s gone. I’m Aurora Willows. My body holds the truth of maturity in every curve. I’m no longer the little girl, the child. I’m a woman, from my perfectly plump lips to my stilettos. I’ve grown. That process is complete whether I, or any of them, want to admit it. Staring at the beautiful woman’s reflection, I feel tears well up at the corners of my eyes for the loss of a youth, too soon gone by. I wanted nothing more than for this day to come. Now it’s here, and I want to rewind the clock. I’m not ready.
The knocking makes me shudder. It’s not coming from the door. No one’s here to shake me out of my confused state, as they’ve been every day for the last decade. No one’s here to hear the thoughts in my mind or read the expressions on my face, overstepping private boundaries. No one’s here to overextend my personal limits by instantly rushing in to soothe away all my emotions before they rocket out of control. No one’s here to talk me out of absolute insanity. I asked them not to be, made them promise to see me from this day forward as an equal. An adult. They’ve picked a very inconvenient time to start listening to me, or was it the perfect time? I’m alone. The rapping sounds are coming from my knees crashing together with enough force that if they were a hundred percent human knees, they’d have shattered already. In chorus, my chattering teeth chime in, clanking together in a way actually causing my mouth pain. Now that my movements are mine, and I have full range of motion melded with mind, it’s time to figure myself out. I’m all grown up. What a terrifying thing.