The Shape in the Mist

A low cloud had coiled across a barren landscape with nothing but the black scars of trees and the shed husks of stone to define it. The rolling fog had both graced the weeds and fearfully scattered the light, banishing both shadow and clarity. Then stumbling through came a figure.

The wisping cover obscured everything but the vaguest of shapes - humanoid with a limping gait, one arm clutching another as if that was all that was keeping them together. Perhaps it was, for at that moment another thing filled the land to accompany the fog - words.

A much needed drought from some and yet here it was a poison which flicked from this disembodied tongue. "You're late!" snipped the voice, its tone shrill and authoritative. "Now sit down so those who actually showed on time can enjoy the lesson." The mist curled away, revealing a change in scenery. The world had shifted in the fog to a decrepit classroom, littered with desks sized for small children. A larger desk commanded the forefront, backed by an obsidian black chalkboard; it sucked any light that fell upon it.

The door to the classroom slammed shut, the wispy tendrils being snapped by its edges. Populating the room were what remained from the fog - harshly angled ideas of children and a towering, slithering, feminine shape that weaved its way to the front. The figure, having been cast from the fog into this pocket of reality, was less ephemeral but no more defined, only being softer, smaller, and having the implication of clothing. Like a shadow cast into the air.

They rubbed their arm and made their way to the back of the class. The other children's gaze followed them to the back where they huddled into a fractimal desk and set their worried gaze forwards. A window filled with the endless fog from earlier licked at the glass, begging to come in.

"As I was SAYING... welcome to homeroom students. I am Mrs-" there was a harsh noise obscuring what she said, "-and today is the beginning of a nice. Long. Time together." Her honeyed words belied a cruelty that was quietly dawning on the latecomer. The class would continue. Foggy tendrils batted against the windows in the periphery.

"Why not we do introductions?" asked the teacher. "Tell us who you are. What are you hoping to be when you get older?" The baton was passed around, until it got to the one student who seemed so uneager to be here. The teacher looked down and quizzed them with, "Who are you?"

"...I don't know."

"Excuse me?" The crowd all swiveled to watch. All of the other children knew. Boy, girl, fire fighter, spaceman, actor. They all at least had a word to hold onto, not an uncertain silence in their mind.

Please, don't stare, they pleaded, just leave me be. But they could feel their gazes. The gazes grew louder and louder as the distance between them and the others felt both expansive and claustrophobic. They couldn't breathe! They couldn't squirm out of the looks. I want to go! Anywhere but here!

This place. It made them feel scared. Singled out.

Small.

In their efforts to avoid the world, the wandering soul tucked in further and further. As the others crowded about - seemingly in response to the fear - the fog would take its chance. The glass cricked and cracked, and swarmed into the classroom to swallow up the lost soul.

They were smaller still, yet also distinctly inhuman. A longer mouth, a twitching tail, the hints of fur - a rodent form, molded by their mental state. Rounded ears twitched as they gathered their bearings. Back in the fog, still unsure of where they were, but more than happy to not be in that suffocating room. The fog was a blanket, protecting them from places like that.

But as they made cautious paths through the mist, it became more and more obvious of one truth; this was no home. The fog was comfortable, but they couldn't stay here. Where can I go? As if to answer, a wind - the first true gust here in fact - shifted their attention. Whiskers twitching, they turned and started heading in its heading.

Until now, the fog had been an uncertain force, but the mouse-at-present begun to realize the fog had no ill will. It was as if it had something to show them... Them?... Am I a- they began to muse until their thoughts were caught off. A light in the obscuring wisps, and more to the point, music drifting in the direction of the wind.

As the little mouse scampered forth, the fog once more crawled away, slinking back to the shadows. The barren trees from before had given way to the arms of the world, thanklessly holding up a green sky. Knobbled branches weaved through the air while bramble puffs bloomed from the soft earth. Through the undergrowth they scurried, but no threat was after them.

I could get used to this. The quiet, it's nice.

Then a thud. And another. The mouse paused and craned their neck towards the source. Their rounded ears twitched, their whiskers flicked, and their eyes widened as they realized all too late what was happening. A brown and black boot breached the brush and fell right by the lost one. Another climbed into the sky before falling behind them as the giant swiftly stormed through the silent wood. Swiftly under cover of leaf and branch did the rodent venturer scurry, following after the man.

Like the children and teacher, he was a thing of the fog. Test, trial, or terror, the rodent couldn't see their intruder's visage - he had none. The two would plunge deeper into the forest, coming upon a tranquil glade dappled in the light from a figmented sun. A chattering stream which avidly mingled with scarless stones kicked up a spray of mist. Its constrained writhing was enough for the mouse to recognize it as a fraction of the force behind this journey. Surrounded by nature's beauty laid a she-wolf nursing her young.

A mother... thought the rodent, their expression softening. She's-

Dead, said the crack of thunder echoing from the huntsman's rifle.

-Beautiful? The mouse watched slackjawed; the wolf stood stiff, crimson spreading through her fur. The pups whined and looked towards their mother as she slumped onto the ground, her breathes rasping and tenuous. Cold and cruel, the hunter emerged from the vines as they snapped off of him, as if begging him to not finish his work.

The mouse had known, distantly, that hunters kill beasts and they too knew that they were but a tiny mouse. But before they were a child, and before then not even that. Beneath their notice the fog crept from the stream and danced about their body. The more they boiled in their hatred at the hunter, who slew this mother, who saw her as nothing more than meat, the more the cape of clouds covered their form.

Under the cover of swirling vapors did their form shift again. They climbed in height and their fur all the more longer. Their tail, thickening into a sturdy extension of their will, thrashing like a tempest. But so too did the androgyny vanish, as her ideas became more certain.

She was not a human, she was not like the crowds of children. She was no man like this hunter. Nor was she one to belittle or twist like the teacher. But she would *become* strong. A clarity in form was quickly written onto the world from her subconscious as she took the steps out of the fog.

A snarl. The hunter turned back, his featureless face devoid of fear yet still his hands shook. His gun fell and so too did she fall upon him. Jaws leapt for his neck and claws to his heart. He writhed in mock pain - for he was no real person - until soon he fell silent. The shewolf watched with labored breathing, the pups watching the monstrous avenger. Wrathful eyes snapped to the family.

"You could still eat, if that is what you want," whispered the fog. "Consume them. Become the strength that you lacked as you were young."

If I were to do that, I'd be filled with cruelty too. I'd be like the snake from my childhood, thought the beast.

"The choice is yours. Be you child or mouse or monster, or some other thing!" The voice chirped, glee creeping into its voice.

Since it is my choice-

"It always has been."

-then I choose to be kind... can you save them? The fog poured off of her shoulders and soft hands of mist came to the wolves. Effortlessly they slipped into the shewolf's lungs, and immediately her life returned. The yellow eyes fluttered back into vibrancy, and as if expecting another assault, she turned to look to the monster and her ephemeral companion. The pups buried their heads into their mother's fur, and then she knew that she was saved. She turned to leave, and with her did the trees and the vines and the corpse and the emerald sky.

All that was left was the monster, the fog, and her thoughts. Not even the scarred land from before was welcome to the stage; she was floating, fully within the embrace of the roiling cloud. Her arms gripped her sides and her tail wrapped about her waist. Clutching inwards, she took a breath as the fog took her.

The sun will pour from the window, violet hues dancing across knick knacks and toys and photos. Memories made material from her childhood will decorate the walls as she decorates her bed, her sprawled form reminiscent of a bird in freefall. And as the fog will roll away from the window, she will open her eyes to herself for the first time in forever.