Today’s prompt of someone all fired up and excited was pretty appropriate, given how my week is going.  Of course, my Christmas tree is still up with a few pathetic ornaments clinging, and today was the first day we’ve seen the sink all week, but to counterweigh all that, my NinChicks revisions are almost done!  I’m also super excited for the rewrite I’ll be doing on Popcorn later this month, and to top it all off, tomorrow I’ll get to hang with awesome writing friends while guest paneling at Illogicon.  See?  All kinds of good stuff to hide that ugly tree behind.

This girl’s having a big day, too, and has her nerves well under control, as you can see. 😉

I stood in front of the mirror and clenched my jittery hands to my sides.  I needed to figure out which shape I should use for tonight’s ceremony, but my brain buzzed with too many ideas to contain.  Whenever I thought I’d settled on a good shape, I’d jump to the next before my body could fully change.

Penguin? No—much too silly.  Something ferocious would be better, something to impress the counsel.  My face had started to settle into a cheery penguin face and my arms had softened into blunt black wings.  Now the face grew whiskers and cat eyes, the wings banded with orange and black tiger strips.

Wait—I shouldn’t be a tiger.  Sarin said the counsel didn’t like a candidate to show aggression.

A peacock, then?  Too showy.  They’d think I was beyond arrogant.  Something normal, like a cat or dog.  My peacock’s tail turned into a fan of cat’s tails, and a dog’s pointy ears popped up on my head.  Common animals might seem boring, though, like I don’t have any originality.

“Reeta?” Mom calls.  “Time to go.  Are you ready?”

“Just a minute!”  My mind flashes through animal forms.  Owl, zebra, chimpanzee, whale?

“Reeta?”  Mom opens my door, and gasps.

I turn to face her, a kaleidoscope of animal parts and colors, complete with whale flubber fins.  “I’m ready,” I tell her.  “I’m just not…settled yet.  Okay?  But I’m ready.”

I think being a shapeshifter would have to be pretty awesome.  I think I’d become a cat, first.  Unless I decided on a falcon, or maybe an owl–cause I could finally sleep when I want to!  If you could be any animal, just for a day, what would you pick?

Image By Maarten Visser from Capelle aan den IJssel, Nederland (Uil Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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