(October 30th, 1987, Atterberry Ranch, Ireland)
One moment I was asleep, curled up in my queen sized bed, drowning in the blanket and pillows. Then, in the next moment, my internal clock ticked over to 10:00am. Immediately my precious sleep was ripped away from me, and every last speck of weariness was burned away in a flood of adrenaline. I didn't like it, but it was more tolerable than any other wakeup method that I had found.
I had experimented with less heavy handed methods, but I quickly learned that I could not be trusted when in an in-between state. I slept for a week before Mom managed to get me to wake up. It was a sort of trap that was frighteningly common when modifying one's own mind, a spiralling need for more. I had hypothesised that such a thing could happen, the most obvious example would be euphoria. I, like all things not masochistic, enjoyed nice feelings, so why not just make myself feel constant euphoric bliss? It was easy to see how that would be addictive to the point of everything else being meaningless. So I vowed to never ever do that, and then I set up several safeguards just in case.
I had not expected that to be a problem I would face with sleep, but I swiftly proved myself wrong. Very wrong. It took a month of tinkering before I found out that the in-between stage was the problem. Normally the human body would reach a point where it couldn't sleep anymore. I would want to sleep, but I couldn't, so I would then wake up. Then I started experimenting on minds, and then one morning I had the stupid sleep-addled thought of ‘wait I can just force it’, and then every time I almost woke up I would just force myself back to sleep.
I'm glad I managed to fix that, Mom was really worried for a while.
Anyways, I shook the adrenaline off, and crawled my way out of my partially exploded mountain of pillows. I looked in the full length mirror, I wasn't in my mother's body anymore, my human form was my own now. I still looked a lot like her, but that was just family resemblance. I was prettier, and cuter, as far as I could go without hitting the uncanny valley. I managed to get pretty far. My hair was more golden than literal gold, my skin near doll-like, but still lively, and my eyes literally glowed blue, but never enough for someone to think that.
I was a work of art, for a seven-year-old. Had to make sure that I was only aesthetically pleasing, just a few nudges and it would trigger the… um… wrong reaction to have when looking at a little girl.
Ewww.
Moving on, clothes! I didn't sleep in them, so I swiftly grew some over my exposed body. First a blue summer dress, then under that black shorts— because Mom's athletic advice was valued—, and finally dainty white panties. Mom was very jealous, and I was incredibly smug about it. Apparently some witches spent over an hour every morning getting ready. I would say ‘I couldn't even imagine it’, but I definitely could. I had a very powerful imagination, so I sure was glad that I didn't have to deal with those sorts of problems.
Muggles had it even worse, which I found quite sad. Mom had said that her parents— my grandparents— were muggles. They had been dead for a while now, sixteen-ish years. Very bad wizards did a hate crime on them to hurt Mom, luckily the biggest baddest wizard was killed, like, six years ago on Halloween. Oh right, Halloween was tomorrow, right after my birthday, which was today!
I left my bedroom, and made my way to the living room. Mom was reading the newspaper on the couch. “Hi, Mom. Anything interesting happened out there this week?” I said, as I hugged her from behind, and with my head on her shoulder. I took a moment to look over the top headline.
‘WEREWOLF activist ON TRIAL for human trafficking!’ It read.
“Oh, you know, the usual,” Mom said, before continuing, “although I do believe that something interesting was going to happen out there today, but I can't quite remember what it was”
“Mommm,” I groaned out. “We were going to go out today, remember!”
“We were?”
“Mommm,”
She giggled a little into the back of her hand. “Alright, yes, we are, Sweetheart.” She folded up this week's copy of The Wild Eyes Isles, and placed it on the coffee table, before grabbing her yellow raincoat. We were going hunting for breakfast, or— well— I was. I could smell that Mom had already eaten, which was understandable. Raw meat was not safe for her to eat, and I refused to let her get food poisoning.
It took a couple more minutes before we were out the door, Mom gulped down her coffee, and equipped her heavier duty set of boots. Then we were out the door! It was raining lightly so all the animals were in their pins or under their sheds. That twas why Mum was in’er— *cough cough*— was why Mom was in her raincoat. She didn't like getting wet. I was going to get thoroughly soaked.
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It was a short trek to the edge of Atterberry Ranch. We went through the gates without much fanfare, and followed the old dirt road for a while. At some point there was a shift in the air. Not all at once, and barely noticeable, but it was there. The air felt less… humid? But it was raining, the air was at 100% humidity, that's how rain works. Yet still, it was different. Less… I didn't know, just less.
Mom brought me down an old game trail, and at the end was the remnants of a stone hut. Really it was just three walls of cobble in the middle of the woods.
“Alrighty then, here we are. Feel free to cut loose, but try not to cause too much trouble. I'll be back in two hours, right here. Then we can head into town.” Mom said. “Oh, and remember not to talk to any strangers.” She finished, as she patted me on the head.
“Yes, Mum,” I nodded affirmatively.
“Okay, love you, Cuddlebug. I'll be off now.”
“Love you too Mom, I see you after breakfast!” I waved her goodbye. She walked back down the trail we used to get here, leaving me here.
I was a little nervous. Mom went into town at least twice a month, leaving me all alone on the ranch, but this felt different. Though, I knew that it would be fine. Nothing in these woods was a threat to me, and my eidetic memory meant I couldn't get lost. So like I said, I was nervous, but only a little. Far more excited, to be honest.
Done with my contemplations, I started my shapeshifting. I grew taller, dark grey chitin replaced pale skin and blue cloth. My hair darkened into a glossy black as it formed itself into a thick braid. My hands became gauntleted claws, and my feet armoured talons. The most changed part, however, was my face. A maw that opened like a flower made from four radially symmetrical jaws interconnecting, and bilaterally on the sides of my head were four stalked eyes. I was proud of those eyes, they were shaped like a snail's, yet had the visual clarity of an eagle, and were just as durable as the rest of me! Not that it mattered when I could regenerate them in seconds if damaged. There being four of them that I could swerve around gave me impeccable depth perception in every direction.
They were basically the coolest eyes ever! I would know, I was something of an expert in the field of biological, well, anything. Which included eyes. It also included noses, or more accurately, chemoreceptorative organs. I had a preference for feathery antennae, because they were cute, but they were pretty fragile, so I didn't use them today.
I flicked my snake-like tongue, getting a good taste of the air. At the same time, I automatically mapped the forest around me into a 3D model in my head, down to every last branch in half a kilometre. I could even see Mom near the edge of my awareness. It wasn't quite vision, but more like a… unified knowledge of my surroundings. It was caused by a very useful neurological upgrade I had come up with, one that combined other sensory processing routines into a singular flow of information.
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It was always harder to relax when I had more sensory information flowing, so most of the time I muted my senses down to near human levels. Although, obviously I had the stream fed through my alarm subsystems before it was muted.
I picked up a few scent trails immediately, but only one of them was the type I was looking for. After a split second of calculating trajectories, I leapt into the trees, chasing down my prey with the speed of a falcon.
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I had spent the next hour and fifty minutes hunting before I looped back to the game trail and perched atop a tree on the side of the dirt road. It was not long after that I heard the rumble of an automobile from the direction of the ranch. I had a satisfactorily filling breakfast; four deer, twelve smaller mammals, twenty-one common lizards, and an enormous fifty-seven birds of various sizes. So all in total, it was several hundred pounds of meat and bones. This was definitely better than egg-meat-potato mash.
The old van pulled to a stop right next to the game trail I was above, and Mom stepped out of the right-side door. Right after she closed the door behind her, I dropped down from my tree, landing just a metre in front of her.
She let out a blood curdling shriek, be for yelling— “MERLIN'S TITS!”— at the top of her lungs, as she fumbled for her wand. Mom was a hard working woman, so believe me, she had a good pair of lungs on her. I reverted back to my human form, but it still took her some seconds to recover. Her eyes were wide and her back was pressed against the metal of the van for a few moments before she relaxed, breathing out the breath she had been holding. I closed the distance between us and gave her a hug. She was still breathing heavily.
Finally, she spoke. “I don't think I've seen that one before,” she said. Her arms were draped loosely around me.
“I'm sorry,” I said, because I had clearly done something wrong.
“Oh, it's fine. Just a little scare, that's all.” She tilted my chin up, and looked me in the eyes. “I was just a little spooked, nothing to fret over.” She spoke with a soft smile. I nodded. “So, ready for our big day out on the town?”
“Mm-hmm” I confirmed.
We spent another few minutes hugging it out in the rain before we packed into the van. Unlike commuter cars, this van only had two seats, so I was right next to Mom.
I learned how to buckle a seat belt!
Mom used the van to move ranch produce into town, she had a trade thingy with a local grocer. She gave the grocer some stuff she made, and in return she was given money in the form of Irish pounds, which could then be traded for things like cartons for the eggs or other such things. Currency was a fascinating invention.
Eventually the dirt road we drove on merged with a small paved one— at which point I noticed a minor irregularity in the air that I had come to associate with wards—, and soon after our path merged onto a larger paved road. After half an hour of driving we reached our destination. It was a small grocer inside of an equally small town. Though village was probably a better term given its size, smaller than a town, but larger than a hamlet. A population in the hundreds, but no higher.
Mom parked the van near the back of the building, where a singular loading bay was located. “And here we are, pretty impressive ain’t it?” she said in jest.
I tilted my head in confusion. “No?” I responded, and copied Mom's raincoat onto myself.
She just reached over and ruffled my hair. Luckily I was awesome, so when she stopped my hair just settled back into perfect position. Mom and I both had waist length hair, but she was taller so hers was longer than mine. I had yet to decide how tall I wanted to be when I grew up.
“Before we step out of the car, you remember the rules for muggles, yes?” she said. I nodded, and she continued. “Okay, good. And what are they?” she asked.
I started reciting the rules. Don't talk about magic if they have the potential of hearing. Don't use magic if they have the potential of seeing. Don't shapeshift. Don't display inhuman traits or abilities. Remember my manners. Etc, etc… It only took a couple minutes, but I didn't like the feeling of being grilled, regardless of how long it lasted.
“Alrighty then, we'll go introduce you, and then we can unload the van…” She had a thoughtful expression on her face for some moments. “Oh! And try to act like you mind getting wet.”
“Yes, ma’am!” I saluted. Mom smiled brightly at that. I was adorable and I knew it. I pulled up the hood of the yellow plastic raincoat that I had made when we first pulled to a stop, and Mom did much the same. We exited the van, it was still raining, although only lightly. The alley was somewhat dreary, but at the same time it was peaceful. Mom walked with me around the building. Its front had a big sign on it. “The Quinn Family Grocery,” I read.
“Aye,” Mom said as we approached the doors. I swiftly realised that I read that out loud, and then took half a second to add an additional filter in my mind, separating ‘reading’ and ‘reading out loud’ better.
I held a door open for Mom once we reached them, because I was the best. Inside the store there were almost half a dozen rows of produce, and everything from carrots to lambchops was included. Canned goods sat on shelves, and meats were in freezers that lined one of the walls. A small bell jingled when I had opened the door, caused by a surprising intuitive string setup. Behind the counter was a man with pale skin and brown hair, he seemed to have similar arm thickness to Mom, but whilst Mom's arms were all muscle this man's arms appeared… softer, fattier. His muscle to fat ratio was inferior. He looked up from whatever he was doing when he heard the bell.
He was the first human I had seen besides Mom, and she had previously spoken about her ‘friend at the grocery’ with a level of causal respect, so I was trying not to be judgemental. It was hard, there were just so many flaws that I could pick apart. ‘Not everyone can be awesome’ I repeated in my head several times.
“How do you do, Pat!” Mom said in greeting to the man, who I guessed was called Pat.
“Oh, just chipper, the business been good past few weeks.” He stood from the chair he was on and placed a crossword book on the counter.
“Since the big storm storm, still?” Mom asked. They must've been talking about the big one that happened sixteen days ago.
“That's the one,” he said. “Now who's this wee bonnie?” Pat moved his eyes from Mom to me.
His eyes were green. That wasn't relevant. His face was weird. That was rude, I shouldn't say that.
“Ah, this is my daughter. Dear why don't you introduce yourself,” Mom spoke. She gave me a gentle nudge, and I stepped forward, towards Pat who was now leaning on the counter.
Right, introductions. I could do those, I'd done loads of those, totally. I cleared my throat in a manner that would no doubt be considered cute. “Hello, mister. My name is Artemis Artwork Atterberry, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance!” I said.
“Well hello, Artemis. I'm Patrick, but you can call me Pat. And I assure you, the pleasure is mine.” Mister Patrick said back. “You lasses are a tad early,” There was a clock on the wall behind me. It was 1:26 according to the clock, but the clock was two minutes and forty-eight seconds ahead. “I don't suppose either of you have a ten letter word meaning ‘an unhomely port’, would ya?”
“Can I see?” I asked, extending my hand. He passed it over, and I took a look. I didn't like crosswords, they were at best memory strengthening tools. So they were completely worthless to me. Luckily I had a solution. I tossed my anti-crossword algorithm at it, and in four seconds I had the whole thing solved. “Port of call,” I said. “A term for any port that isn't the ship's home port.”
“Huh, what do you know, it fits.” Mister Patrick said. “For some reason I expected that to last longer.”
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We ended up waiting eleven minutes before a new, younger, man showed up. He was taking over the storefront for Mister Patrick as he and Mom went out back to do the unloading. They opened the loading bay, and Mom drove the van in so that the back of it was in the bay. I sat and watched as they moved pallets of stuff back and forth. I admittedly didn't really know what they were doing beyond the basics of the situation. It took them some time, but making schematics for bioengineering was an entirely non-physical activity, so I wasn't bored.
Once they were done, they tallied up numbers that were measures of the things Mom was selling, did some maths, and then Mister Patrick handed Mom a check. I waved him goodbye as I hopped into the left side of the van, shouting “Goodbye, Mister Patrick! I will most likely see you again at some point in the future!” He waved back and said a similar farewell, and then Mom and I were driving off to the bank. On the way Mom explained how they had calculated how much money he would give her, and how the check worked to facilitate the transfer of currency! Truly riveting! This car ride was shorter than the last by a significant margin, as it only took us several minutes to arrive at the bank.
It was a smaller building than the grocer, though the interior seemed more fanciful. Mom grabbed a paper— that she explained was called a deposit slip— and wrote some stuff on it, then signed the back of the check. Mom handed the papers over to a teller, and after the teller deposited the check they gave Mom ‘proof of deposit’. Then we left. It only took five minutes, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless. For future bank visits, I would probably wait in the van. It had radio!
“Hey, Mum,” I said once we were in the car.
“Yes, Sweetheart?” she acknowledged.
“How's radio work?” I asked.
“Hmm, well, there's a radio station, and it has a catalogue of music. The people at the radio station, the radio hosts, pick the songs to play, and then the station broadcasts the song via radio waves. Cars have an antenna that then receives the waves, and the car's radio would decode the waves into sound that is played through the speakers.” Mom said.
I wondered if I could listen to the radio. Not with a radio, but manually, by myself. I filed that thought away under ‘things to science on boring days’. Recreating advanced muggle technology always took lots of science juice.
Our last stop of the day was different from the rest. While the other two were business errands, this one was for lunch! Our place of substance was a small café in the centre of the village. By now the rain had reduced to a light misting of droplets, so we planned to eat at one of the outdoor tables that were set up in front of the establishment. They had big umbrellas attached to them!
I laughed a little as I imagined what it would look like for Mr to hold an umbrella that wide.
“What's got you so cheery?” Mom asked with a smile.
“Big umbrellas!” I said, pointing at the umbrellas in question. She stopped walking, turning to face me with her whole body, and then lifted me into the air with a hug. We both giggled as she spun me. After setting me down, she ran a hand through my hair.
“I love you,” she said affectionately.
“~I know~ I love you too Mum.” We both smiled at each other in the middle of the sidewalk for a few seconds. She held my hand. Inside the café I spent three whole minutes staring at the blackboard menu until I deferred the food choice to Mom. She told the café person we would be sitting at a table outside, and then we went outside to sit and wait for the food. We talked about ‘maybe going to a bookstore sometime in the next week’ as we waited.
The soup Mom ended up picking was made with rice, potatoes, cabbage, and chicken. It was an above average soup. A few minutes after we had finished the soup, they brought out dessert.
Two slices of cheesecake, one for me and one for Mom.
I moaned when I first took a bite. It was so good. So soft and creamy as it melted in my mouth. So succulent and tart as it covered my tough. It was literally the best thing I had ever eaten, and my eyes watered with joy as I tilted my head back, closed eyes towards the sky. I breathed in deeply as I felt multiple mental alarms triggering, my metaphorical chains tightening themselves around my mind, preventing me from doing terrible, horrifying, things in the name of lemon cheesecake.
I sighed, looking back down at my slice. It was a generous serving, maybe eighteen more bites.
That day I learned incredible restraint, and that I had a new eternally insatiable craving for all things both tart and creamy.
Though I suppose that it didn't change very much, considering that I was always ravenously hungry for anything edible.