As far as Espurr was concerned, and she figured she was rather smart for a kid, unusual things just didn't happen to people like her. They happened to people who were completely ordinary and turned their homework in an hour before the due date; or to people who were completely unordinary and did squats at the bus stop while wearing a snorkel mask. But they just didn't happen to people caught in the middle. Those were the rules.
Espurr was only sixty-three percent ordinary, which was about as in the middle as you could be. She lived in a normal house in a normal neighbourhood in a normal city that had won an award for being the most boring city in the entire world. They had moved here from half the world away. Her parents wore identical pairs of spectacles, and both were accountants for a company that sold luxury lightbulbs. Espurr read her favourite book about insects in a corner during recess, thought Wednesday was a deep purple colour, and had been kicked off the girls' football team for not showing up to practise. She never had the same answers as anyone else in class, could never wear her hair or clothing in any of the popular styles, and hadn't kept friends since the third grade.
Her life was the same, day in, day out. Unlike those around her, nothing strange or exciting ever happened, and the world seemed to pass her by. There were no sudden wrenches in her plans, no camping or trips out with friends during summer vacation, no ghosts or plays or sleepovers. No secret texts under a blanket to boyfriends at night, no long-distance phone calls to close friends far away. There was just the bus to school, the walk home, and hours and hours of books and stupid cat videos.
Credit where it was due; the neighbour's tabby cat, a lazy, roaming, ill-tempered beast, often kept her company as long as she fed him. But her life was solitary and uneventful because, as far as she could tell, she was already unusual enough to be a few buns short a batch, and the universe needed to set the scales straight.
When she finished recording her day in her old, battered notebook, like she had all the days before, she shut it and the lamp off and fell backwards into bed. She laid there, waiting for the icy blue covers to warm up, and stared at the spiderlike shadows of branches reaching across her ceiling.
She drifted away slowly listening to the wind blow softly against her windowsill, the branches swinging back and forth as if waving their hands to a crowd she couldn't see. It never occurred to her how much of an ordinary thing it was to wake up the next day where she'd gone to sleep.
~\({O})/~
Espurr stirred, groaning and shifting in something that didn't feel like her mattress. Her bedcovers were missing. Her eyes felt glued shut. Her head ached and swam with fog, her legs tired, her throat scratchy, like she was sick with a fever. A pounding headache knocked between her eyes.
She took a breath, and her nose wrinkled up. Something in the air was revolting. It smelled like something had died long ago, and now the stench was floating on the wind, mingling with the other plant smells, poisoning the air.
Plant smells? Was she
outside?
Her eyes shot open, then quickly squeezed shut, blinded by sunlight she wasn't expecting to see. It was filtered through the branches of dense, intertwining treetops, the canopies blending and swirling together into a strange painting.
Fright rushed through her. Her eyes went wide open, and she shot up into a sitting position, scrambling on the ground and looking around frantically. Where
was she? Had she been kidnapped? How did she get all the way out here?
But there was no-one around. Espurr was in the middle of an empty forest clearing, overcast by shadows, covered in dead leaves, mossy tree roots, and low ferns. The place was silent, empty. Not even the crickets chirped here. The sound of the wind left as quickly as it came, leaving only the eerie rustling of dead leaves in its wake. As the complete, total silence set in, Espurr's heavy breathing slowed, and her fear was replaced with quiet, tense unease.
Her throat screamed for water, so she crawled through the forest ground until she came to the edge of a slowly-flowing river – the only thing that made any sound here. Her body didn't move quite right on the way there, but she found the source of water quickly. Something she couldn't put into words told her to lower her head and drink rather than cup the water in her hands.
Drinking felt weird. Her tongue acted differently, scooping the cool drink up backwards into her mouth. She was too thirsty to care.
It was only when her hand passed in front of her for the first time that she sharply gasped. It didn't look like her hand.. And that caused her to snap awake and look at herself for the first time.
Her reflection in the river's cool, slowly-moving water betrayed her: from head to toe she was coated in bushy lavender fur, extending into white on her arms and legs. Her ears were large and floppy, hugging her head. A fluffy, catlike tail swished behind her. She could
feel it swish, every motion alien and unwanted.
She stared at the purple tail in disbelief, her mind racing to find any solution that made sense. That tail
couldn't be a part of her, humans didn't grow tails. It wasn't possible. Which meant… something was on her back? The tail swished, lowering, and she felt it lower, which meant it couldn't be something on her back, it had to be
her tail, which meant… which meant…
