30 Chapter 30: Charms

Choose.

A hundred, no, a thousand, no, a million voices tell me the same word in my mind. I am definitely going crazy. But wait – that dream was real. I shake my head to clear my thoughts and pull myself up in a loose standing position, giving off no emotion.

First, I feel out my shoulder blades and slightly flex my back muscles. This part is easy, I've trained myself to have control over every part of my body I could possibly have. Then comes the slightly more difficult part. I graze one of the wings with my fingertips, feeling through the soft feathers and lightweight bones, feeling beneath the larger feathers, into the soft down underneath.

I turn around and look at the back of my tank top. There are now two large neat slits where the wings protruded from my back. I carefully take a pair of scissors in the drawer and cut the back of the tank top off, leaving my front covered.

I observe the wings in wonder. Even folded, the tips drag on the floor and the tips stand a few inches above my head. They are beautiful, half the brightest white, and half the darkest black. Each feather is as long as my forearm, and the small downy feathers are as big as my hands. Under the downy layer of feathers, I can feel soft skin and under that, pure, lean muscle. That's probably why I wasn't collapsing from the weight of these things, along with the fact that my Transformation must have given me extra strength, hence the doorknob.

The place where the wings connected to my back was covered with the same white and black down that is under the larger feathers of the actual wings. My toned back still has the same skin color, and the down doesn't stretch to my actual back, so if I were to chop off the wings, the down wouldn't show on my skin. But still, the idea of severing the wings makes me inexplicably forlorn.

I carefully complete the process of starting to control the new muscles. I feel them out, first with my hands, on the outside, then I practice flexing them. In less than five minutes, I have gained complete control over the wings, much less time than if I had done it before my Transformation. I watch in awe as I move them in a large swooping motion, giving off a powerful gust of wind that almost tears off the shower curtain.

I let out a soft giggle and twirl around, wrapping the wings around myself to create a soft cocoon. I lean against the barrier, trusting that it won't give away beneath my weight. A soft glow from the feathers gives me some light to see, but not so much that I am blinded.

I think about my dream and meeting the Spirits. They weren't all too bad, I suppose, but do I really need to get involved? Who knows, maybe the Fallen creatures, or even Abaddon, will come after my family in the human world in anger. I cannot let that happen.

I sigh and take a closer look at the bracelet. It is a pretty little thing; I think as I play around with the charms. I slightly tug the lioness, wanting to take a closer look at the charm's realistic features, when it comes off its loop somehow and the charm separates itself into my fingers. I almost gasp, but, faster than my eyes would normally could have followed, the little ivory charm grew in a flash of golden light, until there was a young woman standing in front of me in the cocoon.

I immediately put my guard up, studying her as she studies me. The woman looks to be in her mid-twenties, with straight hair flowing down to her hips, the color and texture like that of a lion's smooth coat of fur. She has deeply tanned skin, like that of a South-Asian, and large, round strangely orange-yellow eyes. Her eyes are framed by a smattering of lashes, her face heart-shaped and her nose small and delicate. The corners of her lips are upturned, and her eyebrows are slightly raised, signaling happiness of some sort. The woman stands with a straight posture, like one of a strict schoolteacher, but still favors her right leg over her left, telling me that she must have injured it in some way. She looks lean, but not exactly muscled.

She wears a black tank top with a black leather jacket on top, with black skinny jeans and black boots that cover her knees. Though the woman is taller than average, she is still a few inches shorter than me, forcing me to look down to scan her appearance.

"My Queen," The woman kneels, pressing a fist to her heart. I am too confused by what language she was speaking and how I can understand it to question her for a moment. I regain my composure in .012 seconds and place my hands on her shoulders (don't ask me how I know that).

"No, stand, my Protector, you are equal to me," I reply to her in the same language, the words flowing from me as if some part of my brain knows what to say. As if some unknown force is controlling me, I lift my hand as she stands on her two feet and press my thumb against her skin softly, in the place right in between her eyebrows.

Hundreds of images flash by in my mind's eye, at first of a beautiful baby girl with similar features to the young woman, then of a little girl playing with a little boy who looked an awful lot like her, like they were twins. I watch as the girl grows up, running from place to place with her younger brother at some point, after watching the death of an older woman who looked to be their mother.

The girl was sometimes in form of a lion cub along with her brother, and sometimes she ran as a girl with inhuman speed and strength. I see the girl become a teenager, then the teenager become a young woman, still running with her brother.

The last few images blast their way into my mind, and this time I was the girl. I watched myself get shot after witnessing the boy's body fall to the floor, dead. I keep a deathly still façade, even when feeling the pain of the bullet entering my temporary body.

I've been shot before.

Wait, what? I have not been shot at in my lifetime. The worst that's happened was someone tried to drown me, but I pretended to be dead and survived. But still, I somehow feel my body has been shot at millions of times.

I pull myself back to reality to see the woman has a calm expression, but one I can easily see through. For a second, her eyebrows tense and I know she is feeling the pain all over again. When she comes back, from the mind space, I look her in the eye.

"Explain, please." From the look in her eyes, she knows exactly what I am talking about. Why do I know things that I'm not sure that I actually know? Who is speaking in my mind? Why is she here? What am I meant to do? But we both know the most important discussion to have. The only reason she is here is because I need to learn about what I am now, and I wouldn't have to do that so soon after my Transformation, my gut tells me, unless something has gone seriously wrong and someone is in trouble.