there's only so much I can turn into

[mswoods]

The thirteen-year-old girl is coming back home from school, on foot.

There's a cat following her. It's been following her for a while, but from a distance.

She decides to be friendly. She stops and turns around to look at it. It stops as well. "Mow?"

The girl's face- changes. It's still a human face, mostly, but now there's something different about it. More feline than anything. Whiskers grow, her pupils dilate and her eyes get a bit rounder, her bones move under her skin, their shape changing a bit. "Mew," she says, vocal apparatus having changed a bit, apparently.

The cat blinks and approaches cautiously. "Moow...?"

She doesn't giggle, but she feels like giggling. She's talking to a kitty! Well, kinda talking to a kitty, it's not like she can understand kitty-speech. But still! "Maw!"

Comments

[taste_tester]

Good, good.

So Addy collects Sadde's phone number, leaves her own, and fucks off.

[mssparkle]

Bye Addy!

Months pass. Laura still does not believe Sadde's tale about that month she disappeared a while back, but has long since stopped pressing; her daughter is a grown woman, she can very well disappear for a month if she wants to, at least she warned first, even if she lied through her teeth.

And then there's the car accident.

Laura's in the hospital. She's in a coma, her spine is broken, and the doctors are not optimistic. Sadde stays with her day and night, a fact that is helped by her not needing to sleep or even to hunt - just turn off smell and drink a lot of blood. She couldn't care about the smell of other humans anyway, her mind is filled enough with Laura that even the thirst cannot compete.

Laura takes a turn for the worse. The doctor tells Sadde to prepare. Sadde prepares. The following day, Laura has mysteriously disappeared from her room, and so has Sadde, who is not reachable by phone or email.

Sadde cannot cry. But there's one thing she can do, and she thinks she's strong enough.

She isn't. She tries to stop, she wanted to save her but she couldn't, she couldn't, she wasn't strong enough, she can't can't can't her mother is dead and Sadde killed her-

Sadde disappears.

Whenever she meets someone, she shifts. No two people see her looking the same way. She can't deal with people. She doesn't turn her sense of smell again. She can't. She's dangerous, a murderer. It was all for nothing.

She travels, but only remote areas. She visits wildernesses and uninhabited locations, and she doesn't eat anyone, but she doesn't give herself the chance anyway.

One day, she's contacted, magically. She's told that the Volturi are no more, and that the new administration frowns upon eating people. She's told that there will be occasional eye checks, and that the eyes of "vegetarian" vampires look like so.

Her eyes now look like so.

She breathes again.