and he took me to the river where he slowly let me drown
The first thing that Despoina remembered hearing is “it.”
It did not mean much until she was able to piece together that the woman standing near her was her mother and the “it” she was referring to was herself. She had just shifted into her other form—the one that felt a little smaller and somehow more normal than this larger one—and she had just blinked open her black eyes when she saw the woman lunging toward her. The fear of it had caused Despoina to shift back into the other body (why she became prey at the sight of a predator would be a question to mull over for a long time as an adult) but the shift was at least enough to cause the woman to stop, to pull back.
The next few minutes had been a blur of events.
The stallion had arrived, comforting her mother and then she had heard it.
“It.”
Despoina had wrinkled her nose, not liking the sound of it and feeling a weight sink into her belly. Any hope that she had felt that her mother would scoop her up and hold her close had been crushed the instant that Sochi had looked toward her with something like fear and rage and painful agony.
And then, without any sort of celebration, she had ended up in the adoption den.
There she had been fed and cared for but she knew she couldn’t stay with the faeries. It wasn’t a home, and she knew better than to think anyone would be coming to adopt her. Not the “it.”
So she had left.
She traveled as a puppy, although her version of such a thing was hardly a normal thing. Her body was covered in an unnaturally thick, dark fur and her normally black eyes glowed red. She had no idea that she was particularly frightening looking with her angled, razor teeth or that the way her senses zoomed in when she was in this form was anything outside of the ordinary. She only knew that she felt safer when she was locked in the fur and able to quickly scamper out of sight than when she had gangly horse legs.
So that’s how she stays as she arrived at the playground, ducking behind bushes and hiding behind trees. her tail is tucked slightly between her legs and her red eyes peek out from behind a tree when the others come rushing in. She hears them asking who they should greet and quickly backs up further into the bushes, doing her best to hide herself and not knowing just how difficult it is to conceal glowing eyes.