Loving the Shadow

Lyss

Lyss watched Perla leave the room and sighed loudly as they collapsed further in the chair they were sitting in. Their eyes swept over the room and they considered what the next move would be. The urge to leave the mansion grew with every minute. After witnessing the fight with Perla and her father they realized that they wanted to take Perla away from here. They closed their eyes and focused on the sound of the water running in the bathroom. They wondered how things would turn out now that She knew of them. Before long they started to drift off to sleep lulled by the quiet singing from the bathroom. Their mind swam with images of Perla and them walking in the human realm. They smiled seeing how free and unburdened she seemed with a mundane life away from her home. They dreamed of Perla and all the possibilities of when they could finally get her away.

    "Get up!" Lyss' eyes shot wide open and they tensed ready for an attack, they only relaxed when they realized it was Perla that had woken them. "I need to get ready for bed and." Perla looked them up and down like she was scrutinizing them, "You need a bath yourself." She laughed a little and Lyss' ears turned red and they looked down at their clothes wondering if they really smelt that horrible. Truthfully they hadn't had an actual bath in a while, they were always on the run and didn't have the time to bathe.

    "Very well." They sighed and stretched before they got up and sauntered to the room Perla recently exited. On the way they started to discard their clothes and laughed as they heard a shriek of disbelief.

    "Don't do that here!" She yelled incredulously. "Shoo! Shoo! You pervert!" She threw a towel at them, Lyss felt it hit the back of their head.

    "What? It's not like I have boobs right now or anything." They laughed and turned their head back to see a tomato red Perla glaring at them. Her silver hair was in a messy bun and some strands framed her red face as she stared wide eyed at them.

    "That's not the point!" Perla huffed and turned around quickly, some more of her hair escaped the bun. "Just... Just go already!" she shouted. Lyss huffed a laugh out at her and continued into the bathroom. They made their way to the bathtub and noted it already had water and soaps in it. 'Cute' they thought as they lowered themselves into it. 'I could almost swim in this.' They relaxed for a while letting the water and soaps soak into their skin.

After a while they got out seeing as their skin was almost like a prune. They realized that fresh clothes had been placed by the door for them and they shook their head. They passed by the mirror and paused; they looked over the body they were presenting with and realized that maybe Perla would feel more comfortable with a more feminine person around. Taking a breath the concentrated on shifting, the familiar tightness of their skin pulling and moving started, it stretched and twisted, new muscles and fat formed, there was slight ripping and some blood splattered on the ground. They focused on their breathing and picturing what they wanted their body to look like, shifting wasn't the most pleasant but after doing it for as long as Lyss had, it didn't bother them as much as it used to. After a little bit their skin stopped moving and they opened their eyes. 'Much better' they thought as they inspected the new attributes.

They got dressed and walked out into the room, Perla was sitting on her lounge chair reading a book on spells she had been studying the last couple of days. Her eye's trailed over to them and widened. "You can do that?" She seemed intrigued by their new appearance.

"Yes, I'm a shifter. It's what we do." They approached her cautiously as she digested the new information.

"I thought the shifters were all killed?" Perla ran to her bookcase and ran her finger along several spines before settling on one and slid it out. She flipped through a few pages before settling on one, "It says it happened around 300 years ago." Her voice hitched a little at the new information.

"They were, and it did. But I lived." Lyss stated. "I wasn't very old when it happened. I just remember a lot of screaming, and fire." They trailed off as they started to remember the day 300 years ago.