Not So Familiar

Prologue

Aleena Technaren sat in her class, bored out of her mind. She came from a long line of shapeshifters, and her mother had taught her everything she needed to know by the time she was seven. She didn't see the point in taking classes. "It's required by law." Yes, Mother, I know, but do I really have anything to learn?

"If you weren't listening before, I advise you listen now," the instructor said, looking straight at Aleena.

Aleena sat up straighter and tried her best to pay attention.

"You no doubt have heard of mages?"

The class nodded.

"Many people don't know this, but mages have long kept the practice of taming and keeping familiars. This caused a bit of a conflict between our two groups, as shapeshifters in their animal forms can be tamed and kept as familiars. It has happened, and surprisingly often. It's not a pleasant experience, for either the shapeshifter or the mage.

"After several hundred years of this happening, the people at the top decided to put some laws in place. Mages capture their familiars in select locations, and shapeshifters are to stay away from these locations.

"I advise you to write these locations down and commit them to memory. It is not anything any of you want to experience, trust me. And in case you need extra motivation, we are going to read some first hand accounts from shapeshifters who became familiars."

Aleena tuned out for the rest of the lesson. Shapeshifters caught as familiars? Was such a thing even possible? She doubted it.

So one day a couple weeks ago (a couple weeks ago when I first wrote this, by now it's been a year and a half) I thought to myself, 'You know what a good story idea is? A shapeshifter who accidentally gets caught as a familiar' and the thought of something like that made me laugh, so I decided to write it. Hopefully this'll be enjoyable.
So I started a thing where I would plan out a few stories in detail, write out as much as possible beforehand, and publish them here with a set schedule. I had one that was set to start uploading in September, but I recently decided that the concept was something that I wasn't happy with yet, so I'm not uploading it quite yet. Instead, I decided to bring back some of the stories that aren't going to be as detailed and work on those a bit so that Assassin and Fire aren't the only stories that get updated before mid November.
Vote, comment, whatever. Let me know what you think
Have a nice day,
Patchesmimi