The Changing

(Sort of) Sweet Sixteen

I walked through the field in my backyard, we lived on a farm where cows mooed and roosters crowed in the early, misty mornings. School had ended six days ago and I was enjoying everyday of the summer. The mornings were cool and the rooster woke up everyone in the house, at the crack of dawn. When the sun rose and the sky alighted with arrays of colours. I wake up and watch as the morning stretches to the time of day. I run through the fields and climb the highest trees, I explore the forests and ponds. My mother calls me an animal, my father calls me a free spirit and my classmates call me weird. It was my birthday where my tale starts, and every year I stay up to see the clock announce my birth.
I combed through my long hair, looking at my reflection in the mirror. Blue eyes stared back at me, freckled nose, red lips and wavy blonde hair. I looked over at the clock, it read 8:29. Three more minutes till I was officially sixteen. I walked to the window and gazed up at the stars, twinkling down from the sky. Winking at me as if they knew something I didn't. I remembered the time and rushed back to the clock as it turned to 8:31. I counted down the seconds as the clock turned to the time I was born into this world, and the clock finally reached that special time that I know so well.
"Oh my gosh! I'm sixteen, YES!!!" I looked back on my life and how fast it passes, a tear welled in my eye.
I, Maria Terese Dargen am now sixteen years old! And the tear leaked down my cheek.
I felt a rush of heat, and my skin felt itchy and my blood as if liquid fire streamed through my veins. I ran to my mirror, but the reflection I saw was not me, not even human, it was an animal!
My skin was bubbling and my eyes grew larger, more luminous. Then my face started turning orange and black, fur sprouting through.
I gasped and nearly screamed. I had to stop this!
I tried breathing deeply and felt something on my stomach arms and legs. There wasn't fur like on my face, but huge muscles where I had never been able to get.  I took some more deep breaths and as I calmed down the fur melted away and my skin went back to fair white as it had always been, what ever had happened I had a feeling it was tied with my sixteenth birthday, my emotion of sadness prior to the event and something else that I was missing. My parents would have told me about this... ability, why would they have kept it from me all these years. And this never happened to them I was sure, what was I missing? Because whatever it was, I needed to figure it out.
And that was how my story started...