A. Emeritus

Chapter 17

I slam my door when I finally reach the comfort of my room. Shaking my incense tray, I pull out a charcoal bowl and light it while holding it between my nails. After I get the charcoal burning and place it on the pink salt in the tray I stare at my hands. My claws are much longer than they've ever been, not too impressive, but worrying to me. Quickly pouring some of the loose incense into the charcoal, I stand and run to my bathroom. Sliding up to the counter I see my left eye is an electric sparkling violet, my reflection also shows my fangs are fully extended. I wash my paint off and run myself a bath, occasionally returning to my mirror to see if the ghoulish features have gone retracted yet. After stopping the tub I toss a vanilla bath bomb into the go to grab my incense tray, which I place by my tub. Finally, I disrobe and slide into the cream colored, vanilla bath. I take my hair down and slide down until my entire body is submerged. When I break air I look and see that my nails are still long claws.

Every time the water starts to grow cold I let some water out and add hot water to the tub. I've never been out of control of my ghoul powers before, I'm starting to panic that the claws aren't going and I'm sure my eye is still violet. Finally, I dry my hands and call Gizio.

"Aster, are you okay? I heard you yelled at Listo." He asks hurriedly.

"No, my eye is purple, my teeth are pointy, and my claws won't go away. I don't know what to do, I need help from one of the ghouls." I whined and panicked into the phone. There's a gently shushing sound before Gizio talks.

"I'll find special ghoul and have him come to your room. Am I right to assume you're taking a stress bath?" He tells me in a gentle tone. "I'll let him know that you're going to take a shower and that he can wait in your room for you. I love you, Aster. Everything will be fine." He assures me.

"Love you too." I whisper before hanging up and getting out of the tub to run the shower and drain the tub.

After cleaning myself, I dry off and slide into my robe. As I leave the bathroom I catch a glimpse of myself and see that my eye finally went back to normal and let out a sigh. Special is already sitting on my couch waiting.

"I'm going to throw some clothes on, then I'll join you." I tell him as I walk into my closet and throw on some comfy clothes.

When I'm finally sitting across the couch from Special, he points at my right hand and motions toward himself. I move my hand toward him, until he grabs it himself and trims my claws down with nail trimmers.

"The only way to fix when your claws over grow is to trim them." He explains as he motions for my other hand. "And they should go back to their normal pink in a couple weeks, but sometimes they don't." He adds.

"So I'd be stuck with black nails forever?" I ask, watching Special do his work. He nods.

"You could always paint them another color, but if they don't go back in a few weeks they could stay black." He places the nail trimmers down and looks at me. "What kind of questions do you have?" He asks gently, "I know you can only get access to information about human puberty from your family and online." My eyes go wide after that last sentence.

"This is puberty?!" I exclaim. "What else is going to happen?" Special nods before telling me.

"Yes, this is part of puberty for ghouls. I'm sure your rage earlier today caused it to jump start. There are not many people who only have one ghoul parent, but from what I know their puberty comes in waves. It doesn't happen gradually over time like it does for humans normally and ghouls. Ghoul genetics are much more powerful than human ones, but not always in the sense that you'll look more ghoulish, but that you're more ghoul than human." I nod along as he speaks and listen intensely. "Your family lineage does make things a little more confusing, but it shouldn't affect you too much."