Nimrah

Prologue

My early years were fine. Uneventful, dull, boring, whatever you call it. It amounted to the same thing. Normal. It was great, Mother and Father loved me, and I had an older brother who adored me with all his heart. Everything was good because I was normal… well I looked and acted normal at least. When I turned four though, things got a bit complicated. From what I remember, which frankly happens to be a lot, I was having a sleep, because I’d been running a bit of a temperate or something, when I ‘changed’. My mother came in to check on me. That’s when I woke up. She was screaming, “My baby! My baby Ashley! Someone’s taken my baby girl!” I slowly sat up and blinked my tired blue eyes. I thought, “Mum? I’m right here,” and she heard it. She’d heard my thought. She looked down at me. The screaming ceased for a second. Well three actually, and then they started again. But now she was screaming something new, “Oh no! My baby’s turned into a cat! She’s a cat!” I remember looking down at myself and wow! It was a shock. My hands… well they were little white paws. My ears pointed up above my head. I had a white tail with some black spots. I had whiskers! I was a cat! With white fur splattered in black spots.  A fully grown house cat!

At least that’s what I first thought… in the next year every time I changed, which was quite often before I learnt to control it, I seemed to be bigger. It didn’t take long for me to realise that I didn’t actually turn into a cat. I turned into a leopard… a snow leopard.

As the days passed by my Mother and Father began to look at me with disdain, like I was some kind of mutant, like I was diseased… and my brother… he saw me and freaked out, running away like I was a blood thirsty monster. I wasn’t.

When I was five I was enrolled in a boarding school. I’d finally mastered the art of turning into a snow leopard, so I didn’t do it randomly unless I got too emotional… usually mad. The first school holidays rocked up. The school called my parents to get them to come and collect me. But the line had been disconnected. The school tried everything but my parents were unreachable. I remember the gut wrenching anger I’d felt. I’d run from the room and locked myself in a closet because I knew I had lost control over whether I was human or leopard. It was an hour before I calmed down and regained control, the most painful hour of my life. There was, and still isn’t, any kind of physical pain that could ever hurt as much as that caused when my family cut all ties connecting me to them. Some family they were. It was then that I changed my name. Originally I was Ashley Browne. But from that day on, I was known as Nimrah White. It was sort of like how Gandalf the Grey became Gandalf the White in Lord of the Rings… only less dramatic.

The next five years and nine months were lived at the school, save for one weekend a year when one of the teachers would take me home for Christmas. Why they didn’t send me to an orphanage or something to this day remains a mystery. I think those five and a bit years were my ‘angry’ years. I would lash out angrily quickly. I didn’t have friends. The only people that didn’t run away from me were the teachers, who pitied me, and the bullies, who respected me. They knew not to pick on me because they knew I could take them. I may not have looked like much but looks can be very deceiving… obviously.

I was forced into a new boarding school when I turned eleven. One that would get me through the rest of my schooling life… assuming I didn’t get into trouble. The teachers at my new school were nice enough but they constantly were trying to find a reason to explain why my family had abandoned me. They couldn’t find one because I kept my secret. I told them they never would, but they kept on searching. At my new school I was still respected by everyone, eighteen year olds included.  But I wasn’t so angry then, so I started to make a few friends, however I never got really close to anyone. Not for a few years at least. 

Halfway through my second year at the school a new kid started. He’d been expelled from his last school due to bullying. He swaggered in claiming, “I own this school!” and telling us to, “Deal with it.” Everyone was terrified of him because he had a reputation of thinking with his fists before his head. I wasn’t though. That boy liked to push people around, however the main thing I noticed about him wad that his vocabulary seemed to mostly consist of, “I own…” this or that, often kicking people out of their seats, and not always metaphorically. One day he made the mistake of trying to make me move.

“Oi, outta that chair, I own it now.”

Casually I’d replied, “I’m fine thanks. I like this spot, you can go somewhere else.” It was rather funny listening to an entire class of students gasping in surprise. I can just imagine what was going on in their heads, ‘Someone’s standing up to the bully!’ which is kind of ironic considering I was sitting in my chair barely even acknowledging the guy. What the boy said next though caused me to snap. I was pretty good at controlling my anger by then, but what he said… phew, I’m amazed I managed to stay human! It doesn’t seem so bad now, but then, hell yeah it was bad! He said to me, “Move it bitch or I’ll make you pay!” he pulled out a little pocket knife and told me, “Maybe a scar will cover the fee!” I mean jeez… it was just a chair. I should have moved but I couldn’t. I think my pride got the better of me. I stood up and watch a smirk grow on his face. A smirk that I quickly wiped off with simple civil words, “If you just called me what I think you did then trust me, I won’t be the one paying. At least, not a dearly as you’ll be.”

I think it finally hit him then that I stood up to face him, not to give him the chair. He flicked his pocket knife out of its casing, a malicious smile replacing his shocked expression. However that shock expression starred on his face momentarily after I let out a low feline growl. That fleeting second was priceless! It gave me all the time I needed to launch an attack. And what an attack it was. Flying kicks and punches! Yeah, I did pay with a scar on my leg, bloody knife, but it was a small price considering what he paid. That boy’s now terrified of me. Oh I never mentioned that boy was called Craig. As Craig would say, ‘I own him!’ It was a blissfully quiet two years. But then I began to sink back into the crowd. Be ‘one of them’. They still knew not to test me but they related better. And that’s when I got my best friend Sarah. We’ve been together since.

Now I’m sixteen; other friends have come and gone, but Sarah’s always been there. She the kind of person I can tell everything, well almost everything. She wouldn’t ever spread the secrets I shared through-out the school. She’s true, she’s my forever friend.

I think.