Untitled Fantasy Story

Chapter 1

I wielded the power to become anyone. I could be an imposter of our people's leader. I could blend in with the Alaligera, who shunned us. I could create an illusion with just my body. I could make up anything I wanted about myself, and no one would question it. When I had the potential to be everyone, it was difficult to tell who I was. Daily, I needed frequent reminders of my identity, and even then, that changed constantly.

I was Bri Dillon, I was a shapeshifter, and today I was neither a boy nor a girl.

Some days, I was one or the other, but every once in a while I can't tell which one I am, and naturally my return to Bruxwarry Academy would be one of those days. Perfect. Not that I was one to pass judgment on them, but the Alaligera were likely to take this as a reason to denounce us. "See?" they would say. "This Nyxta can't even make up their mind on their gender, much less their identity. Surely, people so mercurial shouldn't be worthy of having any power."

And then the other Nyxta will retort that such mutants had deformities that pegged them as monsters who didn't have the morality to hold proper authority, and the Alaligera would get mad and fight back, and the slippery slope would dictate that the war that's been predicted to come would happen.

All because I'm genderfluid.

Maybe the whole ordeal about the war happening may have been an extreme. Yes, it had been predicted for years. Yes, the one place in the land where the Alaligera and Nyxta aren't separated to damper hostility was Bruxwarry itself. But the academy was found for the purpose of trying to create peace. It was a place where the two classes of people would gather without threat of conflict.

The fistfight in the hall would say otherwise.

A burly Nyxta, almost a brute for our kind, sustained a Alaligera with four limbs in the air with an invisible force that tugged on his shirt. The Alaligera grabbed his attacker with his lower set of arms and shoved him down. Surrounding the fight, a large crowd with a clear divide of the races jeered at the fighters. I guess the big news today wouldn't be about the androgynous Nyxta.

I kept my head down as I walked past the crowd to the right, hoping that it would be blocked from my periphery. That's the thing about shapeshifting. I could make my skin appear patched up over my left eye as if it had never been hurt at all, but no change in form could restore my sight.

The slap of slippers on the marble floor echoed down the hall opposite of the fight. Only one person worth remembering, Alaligera or Nyxta, wore flip-flops at this academy. With a quick inspection of my surroundings, I assessed the different rooms available. They were all closed, and no candles had been lit in any of them. Empty. All of them.

I slid over to the nearest door and morphed my finger into the keyhole, adjusting the shape until the doorknob recognized it as a key. A twist of my finger let me in, and I slipped behind the door, leaving it open a crack to watch the intruder pass.

Dakota Doyle, or so her pen name dictated. She was actually Molly DeShmidt, as everyone knew, but with her reputation as the reporter on everyone's business in the school, she wore her alias with pride. A gargantuan Alaligera with sticky, obnoxiously pale skin, but not even the goo that coated her limbs competed with her stickiness to her investigations. I had been avoiding her for years, for she would grab hold of the most incriminating secrets and publish them with the printing press situated in her dorm. And boy, did I have my secrets.

My line of vision went up, and bangs started to tickle my forehead. As I glanced down, I learned with horror that my chest was growing bigger by the second, contrary to my thinning body. Deep breaths. Beating heart, calm down. Envision who I wanted to be. Today was a genderless day. No marked curves or angles, but with a good amount of weight. Short, wispy hair that could have been on anyone's head. A tanned face that would blend into a crowd. The single one-design-fits-all uniform of the Nyxta, as opposed to the feminine Alaligera one.