December Prompted Fiction: Brotherhood collection: Tatiana's Arrival: 558 words

[k_a_webb]

Written for forgottenspirits' picture prompt, which was of an arctic fox.

Tatiana was putting off the inevitable. Laying under a bush, uncomfortably, and watching the house was just a way of having a few more minutes alone. She didn't want to become a part of the community that lived there. It was too easy to imagine what they were like and what she would have been like under different circumstances. From the first moment she had changed into animal form she had been able to feel the pull of the crystal, but she hadn't needed to follow it. When her parents had found her fox self curled up under her desk they had known, somehow, that it was their daughter. Looking down at her paw she snuffed. They knew who she was because she had become an arctic fox, which wasn't native to England.

 

Being Russian... well, half Russian... meant that Tatiana had turned into something that was right for her. She couldn't imagine having turned into a native English animal, because she had never really felt the connection to them that she had felt to the animals of her maternal grandparent's birth place. It was thanks to them that her mum had know how to create a charm so she didn't have to feel the crystal, until the day she needed to, due to a new power that she couldn't control. That power was why she was outside the shapeshifter's house, feeling like her world had fallen apart.

At first Tatiana's parents had wanted to take her to the house, so she didn't have to travel as an animal. They thought it was too dangerous, and a part of her agreed, but she knew that she couldn't let them know where the house was. It had taken some explaining, because they didn't want to believe that any parent wouldn't know the difference between their child and a real animal, but eventually they had understood that the children in the house, and the adults, wouldn't want them to know the location of the house or who any of the people in it were. She wasn't even sure they would accept her, because she was much older than the average shapeshifter would be when they first arrived at the house.

That was why Tatiana was still laying under a bush. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to be accepted, but she knew she needed to learn how to control her ability to create fire. Being able to set fire to things at random hadn't been very useful. Unfortunately the house was the only place she knew of, otherwise she would have found somewhere, or someone, else, because even looking at it filled her with trepidation. A child with powers was dangerous, and they had all grown up without real parents. Under those circumstances she could imagine being a very different person. She didn't ever want to meet that person.

Finally Tatiana stood. It was time she did what she needed to do, instead of put it off. Once she learnt how to control her abilities she could leave. She wasn't in the same position as those children when they had first arrived. Her parents would welcome her home, things would be normal again, and she would be able to live her life. However, she could only do that if she let go of her worries and dealt with her problems.

© K A Jones 2011

 

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